Publishing News -- 1/2/2009

Happy new year and wishes for a healthy and fruitful 2009!

Featured Event: Janet Evanovich Book Signing (Plum Spooky), Barnes & Noble, North Dale Mabry, Tampa

Publishing and the Economy
What's Killing Publishing? We are. -- Publishing group demands fee for sale of used books. (Editorial comment: Instead of regulating or establishing fees, they should improve their business model.)

Are Books Doomed? -- Maybe it's not as bad as it looks. Maybe e-Books can enhance sales of paper books.

Amazon Launches New Author Pages -- Stephen King, JK Rowling, and James Patterson among the first wave of featured authors.

Digital Publishing
Why e-Books will Rule -- More reasons physical books are doomed (or not).

Move Over Kindle, e-Books hit Cell Phones -- Romance novels are most popular, but users download about 40,000 books a day.

Marketing Your Work
How to Bring Your Book to Book Clubs -- Includes a link to a book club wiki, providing authors with information about book clubs.

Blogging Tips for Beginners -- A blog is an excellent way to add buzz to your book. Here's a great reference for getting started.

69 Questions to Ask to Review Your Blog -- Comprehensive list to consider in improving your blog, which can help market your work.

Surviving the Recession
15 ideas for eZine Articles -- eZine articles can add to your income and extend your reach. Here are some ideas for them.

Looking for a job? Social Media Offers Opportunities--and Obstacles -- Facebook, LinkedIn, et al, offer great tools to help in a job search.

Social Networking
Spending on Social Media and Online Content will Increase -- More than two-thirds will invest in social media initiatives in 09.

Social Media Wins in Marketers' '09 Plans -- Even in down economic times, social media should see more resources and opportunity in the new year.

Publishing News -- 12/8/2008

Publishing and the Economy
Tribune files for Chapter 11 -- Filing includes Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Baltimore Sun, but not the Cubs or Wrigley Field, which have been on the market for months.

Ad losses send newspaper industry into a tailspin -- More than 30 papers are up for sale, and buyers are scarce.

Agent Predicts More Celeb Books -- In a world of austerity and risk-averse publishers, celebs are a known commodity.

Author Tools
Blog Book Tours Yahoo Group --Planning a release in Spring 2009? Check in here to plan a blog book tour.

The Radio Show for Authors -- Not sure how big the value proposition is, but if nothing else, you can get used to being interviewed.

Digital Publishing
Sony Sells 300K Digital Readers -- iPhone also has a digital reader. Both compete with Kindle.

e-Book Romancers Set Out to Capture New Mass Market -- Ravenous Romance, a venture partially owned by Florida Writers Association friend Lori Perkins, has online offering with prices ranging from 99 cents (short stories) to $4.99 (novels) to $12.99 for MP3 audio books.

The Death of Print Magazines and Other Fairy Tales -- Pro and Con about the future of print and digital media.

Social Networking
Regulation for Social Networking? -- Recent online suicide, MySpace suicide lead some to call for oversight.

How Photographers Use Twitter for Fun and Profit -- Except for the specific photogs named, the model could also apply to writers.

Top Social Networking Sites -- More sites (and types of sites) than you can shake a stick at.

Surviving the Recession
Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn -- LinkedIn is a business social networking site. It's a useful tool for reaching out to others in your industry.

Searching your network for jobs

If you're a writer, accountant, or practically anything else, the best way to find a job is through people you know. LinkedIn is a professional networking site that allows you to electronically link to people you know and meet. It's sort of like Facebook for work.

I started working Linked in earlier this year, and after a hiatus, I'm up to more than 60 connections. However, my connections also have connections, which expands my network exponentially.

Where this expanded network can pay off is using LinkedIn's job search function. After establishing your profile, you can list job searches based on the same criteria (job title, location, etc.) found in many other job search engines.

With each job listed, LinkedIn includes a link allowing you to list who you know at that business. This link gives you an inside track. Most companies pay employees referral bonuses, which gives you a company insider powerfully incented to assist you in landing the job. Your contact may also provide insider information about the job, the hiring manager, and the corporate culture. In this job market, a bad job is better than none, but in any job market a good job is better than a bad job.

Publishing News -- 12/3/2008

Publishing and the Economy
Stop the Presses? -- Analysis about the ramifications of Houghton Mifflin's decision to stop buying manuscripts.

Houghton Mifflin Publisher Resigns -- Resignation follows announcement HF would no longer acquire manuscripts, increases rumors of sale.

How to Publish without Perishing -- One view of how book publishers can survive in the digital age.

Digital Publishing
Academic Publishers Debate the Digital Future -- Academia is divided on the future of the book and the universities' place in pushing foward the digital frontier.

Social Networking
Twitter Considers Charging for Business Use -- As Twitter grows, the changes may be necessary to attract venture capital.

Social Networking Provides Raw View of Mumbai Attacks -- Some of the first and most gut-wrenching pictures and works came via sites like Flickr and Twitter.

The future of social media -- One man's guesses on the changes that will be caused by social media.

Social Networking

In the world in which we write (and want to sell), the future is online. If you look at Barnes and Noble, take a mental snapshot and compare it to the way B&N looked five years ago. The amount of space dedicated to books is shrinking. There are now games and even cooking equipment where there used to be books.

Let's face it, paper and fuel are now both commodities. And they are where a lot of the cost of the book comes from. To print any significant number of books, a deep and complex supply chain is required, from acquiring the resources to put the book together, to getting them to the bookstore (then paying for the utilities and people at the bookstore).

I'm not sure what the future holds, but I know it's different than the present and a lot different than the past. Kindle (Amazon's book reader) has all the buzz right now, but I can't see the return on investment on a $350 book reader that doesn't do much else.

So as computers and cell phones and MP3 players continue to merge into hybrids, I think the future is there. If you can buy a book for seven or eight bucks, rather than $25, then read it online, you can keep it without filling up a bookshelf. Of maybe the future of books is a Netflix model, where you check out a book online, watch it, then check it back in and get the next book in your queue.

And don't forget about the extras that readers will expect, much in the same way views expect extras on their DVDs. The extras aren't mandatory, but they'll provide a nice discriminator for those who include them.

This is a time of great opportunity. People have been preaching revolution since the beginning of time, but we may be on the cusp of one now. If not, then the pace of evolution will continue to increase.