"authors" entries
Google Reaches Book Search Settlement
Google has announced a settlement plan for the suits filed by the Association of American Publishers and the Authors' Guild. From the Google Book Search site: Today we're delighted to announce that we've settled that lawsuit and will be working closely with these industry partners to bring even more of the world's books online.Together we'll accomplish far more than any…
Where's the IMDb for Books?
Over on the TOC Community, David Henley expands on recent discussions around publisher and author brand building by drawing an interesting connection to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb): Not everyone chooses a film because of who directs it or who the screenwriter was, but some of us do, and now with databases like IMDB we can easily find lists…
How Should Authors Promote Themselves Online?
As the director of an organisation for writers I was curious about the announcement of Random House's new Web toolkit to assist RH authors to set up and maintain their own Web pages. booktrade.info reports: … the toolkit allows authors to customise their pages with a choice of backgrounds, fonts and colours. Authors can then select different types of content…
Web Publicity Grows Up, Learns the Value of Conversation
Web publicity works best when the audience is spoken with, not at.
Do Publisher Brands Still Have Relevance?
Kate Eltham espies HarperStudio, asking whether they should have a separate Web portal/site, or just operate with a blog. She wonders: can a publisher drive a brand these days? Or just authors? What would make the return on investment worthwhile? Personally, growing up, discovering reading, I remember some imprints with fondness, and I might see their name as an…
Why You Should Care About XML
There are two places to look for useful clues about how XML will actually fit into a publisher's workflow: Web publishing and the "alpha geeks."
News Roundup: Digging Around Amazon's Topaz Format, Twitter Novels, June Ebook Sales Up 87% Over '07
Digging Around Amazon's Topaz File Format Late Night Code is popping the hood on Topaz, that mysterious "other" file format used on the Kindle: Mobipocket files purchased from Amazon have an AZW extension (which presumably stands for Amazon Whispernet – the name of the Kindle wireless download service). Mobipocket files from other sources will have a MOBI or PRC…
Writing Novels with Twitter
ReadWriteWeb has a brief survey of mini serialized novels in the U.S.: In Japan, mobile phone novels called "keitai shousetsu" have become so successful that they accounted for half of the ten best-selling novels in 2007. Here in the Western world several would-be novelists are attempting to use Twitter to create the same phenomenon. Some of the novels tweeted so…
News Roundup: Amazon Acquires Shelfari, Hyper-Local Author Events, The Myth of the Level Digital Playing Field
Amazon Acquires Shelfari Amazon is turning its investment in Shelfari, a book-centric social network, into a full acquisition, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Financial details haven't been released, but Shelfari CEO Josh Hug confirmed the acquisition on Shelfari's blog: We've got some big plans ahead. With more resources and Amazon's expertise in building a platform where people come to share ideas,…
Shopping Electronic Publishing Rights
Kassia Krozser discusses why and how authors are getting savvy to retaining electronic publishing rights. From Booksquare: As publishers like Random House try to redefine concepts such as "out-of-print", savvy authors and agents will be more diligent about defining tight deadlines for contracts (in fact, I'm a bit surprised this isn't happening more frequently). Firm deadlines allow authors to…