Data

LitHub has launched Book Marks, a site developed as the book world’s answer to Rotten Tomatoes. Once a book has been reviewed three times by an “important outlet of literary journalism,” those reviews are aggregated, fed through through a rubric, and a grade given. It could be a really handy tool for those who like…

Calling their latest Author Earnings report “definitive” might seem risky. After all, Data Guy and Hugh Howey’s quarterly reports will always change, with new data. If we ever get the “final answer” that Merriam-Webster calls “definitive,” it will mean that All Literature has become backlist—much of it heavenly, some of it hellish. Charon and I will come…

Back in the early days, Amazon recommendations were decided by human beings. The company went on a hiring spree, bringing in editors to manage the site. Typically these were not the kind of West Coast engineers that typified the company; rather they were Manhattanites, steeped in the world of books and culture. Well-read, opinionated, they…

Editor’s Note: On May 18th, Book Business’ sister brand Publishing Executive hosted a free webinar titled, “Innovative Strategies for Growing & Monetizing Your Audience.” The webinar is available to watch free on-demand and covers a topic that is particularly important for book publishers. As publishers up their direct marketing efforts on their websites, newsletters, and…

The premise of Goodreads is simple, as it has been since the service launched in 2007: Track the books you read, leave ratings and reviews, and network with fellow readers. In practice, though, the platform has grown to be a sprawling literary social network, equal parts Facebook, Yelp, and Reddit. Message boards, recommendations, and listicles…

Prior to working together at Ricoh, Lisa Oakleaf and Erik Fritz had worked together in printing. “We both come from the production side of the print business,” Oakleaf says. Erik Fritz had worked in technical implementation of new software, looking for challenges in the printing processes and “trying to alleviate the pain points,” as Oakleaf…

What was the pervasive theme of IDPF DigiCon this year? Digital publishing, of course. Data, obviously. But also, libraries. Likely because DigiCon was hosted in Chicago this year, home of the American Library Association, library professionals had a seat on multiple panels throughout the conference and shared their perspectives on issues like book discovery, digital…

Thanks to the rapid increase in computer processing speeds over the past decade, data has become easier to analyze and more available than ever before, and it’s changing the way we do business, said Sean Callahan, author of The Big Data-Driven Business and senior manager of content marketing at LinkedIn. Callahan led one of the…

There are a number of key attributes successful publishers will be known for in the future. These core capabilities will be very different from the ones that have led to the modern empires of the Big Five. Some attributes will remain the same, of course. For example, it will always be crucial for publishers to…

Next week I’ll be attending IDPF DigiCon in Chicago on May 10th and 11th. Now boasting a new name and location, DigiCon looks to tackle many challenges within the book industry brought on by rapidly changing technology. Sessions ask forward-looking questions like: How can publishers reimagine the ebook as an open and cross-platform experience? How…