App Development

Buyer's Guide 2015: Ebook & App Solutions
April 1, 2015

There is no longer any doubt that digital content is an absolute imperative for book publishers. With the rise of mobile devices and new digital distribution platforms like Oyster and Scribd, publishers need the digital chops required to make their books available everywhere and anywhere there readers are. Determining which digital products will best engage readers and how to get those products to market at scale remains a challenge.

SXSW Interactive 2015: More Relevant Than Ever
March 19, 2015

A year doesn't pass without someone asking me: Is South By SouthWest (SXSW) really worth it? After five years of SXSW Interactive, my team and I still maintain that it is. While Interactive started as the place we went to glimpse the near and not-so-near future, to expand our thinking, and to consider the possibilities ahead, it has also become the place to get hands-on with the here and now. It is impossible to leave SXSW without being excited, hopeful, and perhaps just a little bit terrified (isn't the unknown always a bit scary?).

Literary Hub Wants to Bring Together Everything Literary on the Internet
March 18, 2015

Listening to Morgan Entrekin is a shot of adrenaline for anybody concerned about literary culture. "Independent publishing is the healthiest I've ever seen it," said the president and publisher of Grove Atlantic, who recently passed 60 like a marathoner in the third mile.

Far from planning his retirement, he's about to launch his most ambitious project ever: Literary Hub, a new Web site that attempts to bring together everything literary on the Internet. After more than a year of a planning, LitHub.com will go live on April 8

The Fanfiction Boom Is Reshaping the Power Dynamic Between Creators & Consumers
March 17, 2015

Once exiled to obscure corners of the internet, fanfiction - amateur fiction based on characters from preexisting works or real-life celebrities - has lately become a force driving popular culture. As Proulx realized, fans these days aren't satisfied to just sit back and consume. They want to participate. They want to create. And they don't want to wait for anyone else's permission to do it. Millions of fanfiction stories have been uploaded onto vast online archives where other fans read, rate, and comment on them.

China's Amazon? Tencent and Shanda to Merge Online Publishing and Ebook Services
March 17, 2015

Two of China's largest online publishing companies announced this week that they will merge, creating what some have called the 'Amazon of eBooks'.

Tencent Literature and Shanda Cloudary will become Yuewen Group, the country's largest online publishing and eBook company.

With 1,200 employees and more than three million books, the new company expects to attract around 100 million readers generating more than 200 million yuan (US$31.9 million) per year, said Yuewen CEO Wu Wenhui.

Pearson Monitors Social Media During PARCC Testing, Raising Privacy Concerns
March 16, 2015

Pearson, the world's largest education company, is monitoring social media during the administration of the new PARCC Common Core test to detect any security breaches, and a spokeswoman said that it was "obligated" to alert authorities when any problems were discovered.

The superintendent of a New Jersey school district wrote an e-mail to colleagues (see below) about the monitoring, saying that she found the practice "a bit disturbing."

Why Books Are Sharks: Neil Gaiman Salutes Douglas Adams
March 6, 2015

The Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture is held every year to raise funds for Adams' favorite causes, Save the Rhino and the Environmental Investigation Agency. Hopefully I don't have to tell you who Adams wasand what he wrote. But you may not know about one of his lesser works, and in my opinion, one of the best popular science books ever written, Last Chance to See. If you haven't yet read it, you'll learn much about endangered species and find your heart being broken even as you laugh out loud.

Understanding the Big Picture of the Five Ed Tech Trends Highlighted in the 2014 Learning Impact Report
March 4, 2015

This week IMS Global released the 2014 Learning Impact Report which summarizes trends we are seeing in the ed tech sector based on the current year and historical winners of IMS's annual Learning Impact competition. Many thanks to those that participated in the competition from around the world and, of course, the evaluators and editorial panel! Ed tech researchers or leaders interested in helping with the Learning Impact work in the future please contact us!

So Many Perspectives on "The Future of the Book" What do You Think?
February 20, 2015

You don't have to walk very far to bump into someone offering an assessment of "the future of the book". Many of these assessments feel like an extension of the current situation, though a touch more "digital". Relatively few get at "what reading could be."

A think piece by New York Times reporter David Streitfeld provides an example of the "extension" school of thought. Streitfeld has written a number of articles about "Amazon's diminishing discounts", a focus that perhaps inevitably led him to explore "the future of the book".

Why Fan Fiction Is The Future of Publishing
February 12, 2015

Traditional publishing houses have been forced to catch up to a suddenly mainstream genre once considered purely niche. "Fan fiction has absolutely become part of the fiber of what we publish," Gallery Books publisher Jennifer Bergstrom told The Washington Post in October. "This is changing at a time when traditional publishing needs it most."

Twilight has proved in recent years to be one of the most fertile grounds for fan fiction, begetting not only Fifty Shades, but other trilogies such as The Beautiful Bastard and the Gabriel books, among others.