"authors" entries
Book^2 Camp opens the lines of communication
People from across the publishing world came together for a pre-TOC unconference.
Book^2 Camp attendees were impressed with the open-forum setting that brought together people from all areas of publishing — authors, publishers, distributors, programmers, and many others.
Author, sell thyself (but in a good way)
Authors who want to jump into Twitter, Facebook and all the rest should pay heed to Chris Brogan. He's spent years — more than a decade — carrying on a conversation with his audience. Take a look at the sheer number of @ replies in his Twitter feed and you'll see how seriously he takes this stuff. In the…
New on O'Reilly Labs: Open Feedback Publishing System
O'Reilly engineer Keith Fahlgren has formally launched our new Open Feedback Publishing System over on O'Reilly Labs: Over the last few years, traditional publishing has been moving closer to the web and learning a lot of lessons from blogs and wikis, in particular. Today we're happy to announce another small step in that direction: our first manuscript (Programming Scala) is…
Authoring Tools from Alpha Geeks
Cory Doctorow (@doctorow) has posted a nice article covering some of the tools he's built or borrowed to make his writing life more manageable. I'm especially intrigued by the Flashbake project, which augments simple use of version control (something many of our authors have been using for years, and which we use extensively in our production toolchain) to automatically capture…
"None of this is good or bad; it just is"
Lev Grossman takes a pragmatic look at the changing state of authors, readers, and the definition of publishing: Self-publishing has gone from being the last resort of the desperate and talentless to something more like out-of-town tryouts for theater or the farm system in baseball. It's the last ripple of the Web 2.0 vibe finally washing up on publishing's…
Point-Counterpoint: Digital Book DRM, the Least Worst Solution
In the second part of a point-counterpoint exchange, Bill McCoy examines two scenarios: a publishing industry that doesn't embrace interoperable DRM, and one that does.
Publishers Need to Get In on the Conversation
Kassia Krozser has a Cluetrain-like manifesto for publishers. From Booksquare: It's time to get your hands dirty, to dig into the real-world conversation. It's a weird thing, and sometimes awkward and uncomfortable, especially if you're accustomed to public relations-speak and the cheerleader behavior that accompanies marketing messages. When you talk directly to real people who read and buy books,…
Change Always Leaves Someone Behind
Seth Godin discusses the realities of digital change and free distribution in an interview with HarperStudio's The 26th Story: … the market and the internet don't care if you make money. That's important to say. You have no right to make money from every development in media, and the humility that comes from approaching the market that way matters. It's…
Report: Random House Shifts Ebook Royalties to Net Receipts
Richard Curtis says Random House has announced a shift in its ebook royalties in a letter recently sent to literary agents. From E-Reads: Commencing December 1, 2008, the new royalty rate for sales of ebooks will be 25% of the amount received for all sales, Random's letter goes on to state. What does Random House actually receive? Most e-book retailers…
Reaction to Google Book Search Settlement
Updated 10/30, 7:53 AM — Publishing experts, bloggers and interested parties are weighing in on the Google Book Search settlement. I'll be updating this post as new material comes in. If you see something that deserves notice please post a comment: Posts Added October 30 On the Google Book Search agreement(Larry Lessig, Lessig Blog) The hard question for the…