Watching the publiching industry crumble, we have a glimmer of some good news for those hearty souls that survive the next few years. According to the National Endowment of the Arts, “For the first time in more than 25 years, American adults are reading more literature.” Better yet, it is Read more…
A thought occurs to me about publishing in general. Not the current business model, but just the idea of selling books to people. As I said earlier, books are not mass media. Even a best-seller is a more of a niche than the most nichey of cable TV shows. This Read more…
The world of publishing is imploding and Jane over at Dear Author has written a fairly lengthy piece on the need for innovative publishing in order to save the industry. I’m not as frightened, at least in the long term. Publishing will continue, books will be written and sold for Read more…
Via Futurismic, we have a post on The Long Tail blog. The post is a reflection on economies where creating the supply of the goods is its own reward. Take acting, for instance: The thing about acting is that the labor force (actors) actually value the ability to do work Read more…
Dear Author again graces us with examples of the paleolithic thinking of the old media. The upshot is, the NY Times thinks used bookstores are the reason publishing is in a crisis right now. Yeah, right. This is the true sign of a crisis, when the old guard suddenly tries Read more…
From Dear Author we have something that just amazes me in shear economic WTFry. We all know at the wonderful, and oh so successful, way that major content providers (MPAA, RIAA, Viacom etc.) have tried to impose 19th century “this is my widget” mentality to IP law in the digital Read more…
Someone, somewhere, in the 19th Century Ivory Tower that is the publishing industry has realized that allowing bookstores to strip unsold mass-market paperbacks and “return” them (i.e. tear the cover off for credit from the publisher and giving the naked book to cousin Billy.) is not a viable business model. Read more…
Over at Juno Books they have some sales figures for October, and the news is somewhat depressing: Publishers’ net book sales fell 20.1% to $644.5 million in October, as reported by 80 publishers to the Association of American Publishers. Sales for the year through October were down 3.4% to $8.362 Read more…
On Dear Author we hear of a woman who’s held a funeral for her failed writing career. When I read the post my thoughts went something like this: Sixteen rejections is a low threshold for career failure. Can you base a career on the viability of a single novel (probably Read more…