“You don’t understand,” the three-time, big-six published author told me. “Books aren’t designed for you, the customer. Today, non-fiction books are business cards--for speaking, consulting, and deals.” I was meeting this friend for dinner in New York City and had mentioned a trend I had noticed in nearly every book I’d seen in the last year: They never say what they’re about. Almost as a rule, hardcover books (and increasingly ebooks) favor laudatory “blurbs” over descriptions--opting for short quotes from important authors, CEOs, celebrities, or media outlets to make their case. At the time, I was in the middle of designing the back cover of my own book, and being somewhat new to the game, I could not understand the benefits of doing this. Wouldn’t it be better to use that space to describe the contents of the book? Isn’t that what “customers” would want? Why bury the content on the inside? I was missing a fundamental change that has occurred in the publishing business, particularly for authors. Faced with declining sales and the disappearance of book retailers like Borders, authors have diversified their income streams, and many make substantially more money through new business generated by a book, rather than from it. Today, authors are in the idea-making business, not the book business. In short, this means that publishing a book is less about sales and much more about creating a brand. The real customers of books are no longer just readers but now include... Continue reading at 'Fast Company'
[ Fast Company | 2012-09-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
After his bestselling love story about finding a partner, Nicholls' new book Us will look at holding on to oneIn his hugely popular novel One Day, David Nicholls explored the search for a soulmate through the long-drawn-out love affair between Em and Dex. Five years on, Nicholls is set to take... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2014-03-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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It’s 2014, and for North American manga publishers, the digital revolution is well underway. Where there once were only a handful of publishers offering their titles online or via ebook apps, now almost all of them are offering, or negotiating to offer at least some of their current and backlist... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-02-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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It is rare that an industry would see the declining growth rate of its fastest-growing product as anything but bad news. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2013-11-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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When Vice first appeared on Ad Age's Magazine A-List in 2010, it raised more than few eyebrows among industry stalwarts. For one thing, it was the first free-distribution magazine Ad Age had ever honored. And another thing—OK, the main thing—Vice is a cheerfully irreverent, quasi-rude... Continue reading at Crains New York
[ Crains New York | 2013-10-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The good news: According to a new report from the National Endowment for the Arts, more than half of American adults read books for pleasure in 2012.The good news: According to a new report from the National Endowment for the Arts, more than half of American adults read books for pleasure in... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2013-09-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Barnes and Noble has not had an easy go of it. The brick-and-mortar stalwart has seen its revenues and profits steeply decline as we've entered the age of the ebook. In fact, profits haven't just shrunk; they've disappeared. During the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2013, the company suffered a... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2013-06-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
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(Reuters) - Canadian newspaper publishers Torstar Corp and Quebecor Inc delivered more bad news to investors on Wednesday, saying that cost cuts were failing to keep pace with an accelerating decline in print media revenue. Torstar sha ... Continue reading at Editor & Publisher
[ Editor & Publisher | 2013-05-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Borders’s closure in 2011 served as a gloomy backdrop for the panel at the New York Public Library on February 12, “The Future of Art Book Publishing,” whose title carried a hint of bad news for catalogues and monographs. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2013-03-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Barnes & Noble’s second-quarter financial performance had both good news and bad news. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-12-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Yesterday will not be remembered as a great day in Google's history. As well as the vertiginous stock slide, which sliced 9% off its share value before trading was halted for a couple of hours, the search engine firm threatened war with the French media. L'horage dans le teacup is over a... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2012-10-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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“You don’t understand,” the three-time, big-six published author told me. “Books aren’t designed for you, the customer. Today, non-fiction books are business cards--for speaking, consulting, and deals.” I was meeting this friend for dinner in New York City and had mentioned a trend I had... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2012-09-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The newspaper business’s reliance on the industrial machine of printing and distributing is often understated. It’s a delicate ecosystem that can have a real effect on publisher margins – as the fluctuation in newsprint ... Continue reading at Editor & Publisher
[ Editor & Publisher | 2012-08-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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There's a strange concept in marketing that no publicity is really bad. If people talk about you, it broadly raises brand awareness. People eventually forget the bad news but not the brand. Who remembers last year's furor over Apple's onerous publisher subscription terms? That's the eventual... Continue reading at Betanews
[ Betanews | 2012-01-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Germany’s top fiction title at the end of December, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out His Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson climbed up from #5, supplanting previous chart-topper Inheritance (Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance was also #2 in Spain). Jonasson’s novel has sold more... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-01-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Restaurant chain McDonald's is to give away nine million copies of Michael Morpurgo's... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-01-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Ever since Algonquin used the American Booksellers Association’s Winter Institute to get booksellers to read and fall in love with Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants, which sold more than a million copies before being turned into a film, publishers have been using the winter bookselling confab to... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-01-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Wed, 07/09/2011 - 08:15 Pan Macmillan has acquired a title which has sold, according to the publisher, more than a quarter of a million copies in eight weeks in France and went to number one in the bestseller charts. Editorial director Liz Gough... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-09-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Publication Date: Tue, 30/08/2011 - 08:40 Puffin is to release an initial print run of half a million copies of the new Wimpy Kid title, Cabin Fever, published on 16th November. The print run is the largest in the history of the children's publisher, and will be Penguin's largest initial UK... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-08-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Tue, 16/08/2011 - 14:41 Kathryn Stockett has become the first debut author to join the Kindle Million Club after selling over a million copies of her novel The Help (Penguin). Janet Evanovich, Headline Review author of the Stephanie Plum novels, has... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-08-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Philip Stone Publication Date: Wed, 13/07/2011 - 15:38 Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Quercus), the first book in the late Swedish journalist's Millennium thriller trilogy, has become only the sixth adult novel to sell more than two million copies since records... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-07-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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