Francis

In book-publishing you can run all the P&Ls, focus-groups, forced-publicity, social-media-presence you want and still only HOPE for a hit. And sometimes you just get lucky.

If you are a Jesuit publishing house right now, you are in luck: the first (and only) Jesuit pope (you can bet it won't happen again in our lifetime) who is media-savvy, down-to-earth, and, most importantly, a writer, is also a media sensation. Rare is the week that Papa Francesco isn't in the news. Right now his highly-anticipated Encyclical Letter on the environment, On Care For Our Common Home

While Pope Francis’ recent ”cri de coeur” over man-made global warming and climate change sounds like the first chapter in a cli-fi novel, it’s never going to end up as in an American or Italian novel because it’s already been published by Our Sunday Visitor publishing company as a 176-page pamphlet. Yes, “Laudato Si” has […]

The post The Pope’s climate shout-out is a book now appeared first on TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics.

Direct-selling to institutions by publishers proved a thorny issue at the Bookseller Association's Academic, Professional and Specialist conference in Brighton yesterday (12th March).

Giving a welcoming address at the event at the Old Ship Hotel, Dan Johns [pictured], the chairman of the BA's academic group, warned he would stop providing publishers with vital information if they continued to sell directly to universities.

With the first papal ‘selfie’ going viral earlier this year, Pope Francis has upped the  ante, and camera selfies  will never be the same. Not only is the word in the dictionary now, selfies are  getting some help from a likely place: Japan. Yes, leave it to the Japanese and their zest for inventiveness. Once [...]

The post As first papal ‘selfie’ goes viral, camera extensions add depth appeared first on TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics.

Written by Wall Street Journal Asia Editor Paul Beckett (@PaulWSJ) and Delhi-based reporter Krishna Pokharel (@PokharelKrishna) along with contributions from other reporters and editors from The Wall Street Journal, the book also examines two other narratives of exploitation and abuse in India and is available for download from Apple iBooks, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google Play and Kobo.

Other highlights from the book include:

• Updates on the fate of the suspected rapists and the efforts of the young woman’s family to cope with her brutal death;

Despite the predictions of gray skies that have become increasingly prevalent in forecasts for the book publishing industry, a recent survey conducted by Book Business shows that the large majority of industry executives still cast an optimistic eye toward the future. In addition, most respondents foresee a lucrative long-term future for their companies and appear unconcerned that digital-format books will eventually replace print. Sixty-eight percent of those surveyed replied they feel “optimistic” about the industry’s future and another 10 percent are “very optimistic.” Just 16 percent consider themselves to be “pessimistic.” Furthermore, these executives appear to, for the most part, have high hopes