YouTube

A book trailer is a kind of content that supports a book promotional campaign. It started in the late 90s in the US. Since then, the type of content available on video format has become increasingly diverse. When we speak of book trailer, we are doing so more general terms and include audio-visual productions such as teasers, or video-interviews with the author or the publisher, video summaries, video recommendations from readers or literary industry players, etc..

On behalf of all employees at Smashwords, I want to start by thanking every Smashwords author, publisher and agent that publishes and distributes with Smashwords.  We serve at your pleasure and we appreciate your trust, partnership and support. 

I also want to thank the retailers and library aggregators that comprise the Smashwords distribution network.  Every day, you work tirelessly and often without adequate recognition for the amazing service you provide our authors and publishers.  You receive, ingest and merchandise our books to your customers.

In a move highlighting the increasing role that user-generated content plays in the news business, News Corporation, owner of The Wall Street Journal, announced on Friday that it had bought Storyful, a company that calls itself a "social news" agency.

Storyful, a self-described "social news" agency, sifts online content and sends authenticated reports and videos to its clients.

Storyful monitors websites like Instagram and YouTube for compelling news and video, has its journalists confirm the material's authenticity, and distributes it to clients in newsrooms around the world.

Simon & Schuster UK has recently announced the launch of a genre-specific social media and blog site, meant to entice avid readers of its New Adult and Romance titles. Called The Hot Bed and curated by an in-house team of four Simon & Schuster UK professionals, the site aims to be the source for news about S&S’s top-selling and most well-loved romance authors, as well as a blog for those authors to make appearances.

Some of you, over the last week, may have noticed me proclaiming the coming of the future… The Futurist Panel, that is. Yesterday we convened the first of what will be a monthly gathering of forward-thinking publishing experts. In a wide-ranging 30-minute conversation, this insightful group began some interesting inquiries into how publishing has changed and will continue to morph, and how its future identity might shape up. 

In 2013, if you're involved in children's entertainment, you're increasingly unlikely to be focusing on one medium or product. TV channel CBeebies makes mobile games, virtual world Moshi Monsters makes magazines, and apps company Outfit7 is working on a TV show from its Talking Friends apps. It's also why a book publisher like Egmont's new thing is a "multi-platform humour brand" called Jelly Pie, which launched earlier this year as an HTML5 website, a YouTube channel and a mobile game. 

Guinness World Records has launched a range of digital offers as part of its plans for 2013, and is is hoping for an uplift in sales and audience reach. Guinness World Records said it had "undergone a revolution; embracing new technology, engaging new audiences and reinventing its brand to bring relevance to a new era". The 2014 edition of the book was released on 13th September and has so far sold more than 50,000 copies through bookshops.

A new partnership between Naperville, Ill.-based published Sourcebooks and Toronto-based writing community Wattpad will result in published print and ebooks and will bring Sourcebooks and its authors closer to the growing workshopping platform.

First, Sourcebooks will edit and and distribute several select Wattpad manuscripts under its young adult imprint, Sourcebooks Fire. The titles will be made available in print and ebook formats and distributed to physical and online bookstores around the world.

When the news hit that a photographer was suing BuzzFeed for $3.6 million for reusing one of his images, some on the internet reacted with fear and horror. Because many of those people - and websites - are notoriously loose with reusing images, and they like to hide behind the blithe view that it's all "fair use."

These debates about the bounds of fair use will always be important, but they obscure a very unfair dynamic that is squeezing artists - and turning the web into a battleground between humans and machines. 

Today online sales only make up a small fraction of the overall retail space. Their growth, however, is inevitable. Driven by the deflationary realities of price transparency, the face and shape of retail will continue to change. This fundamental shift will affect more than just the retailers. Indeed, it will encompass all aspects of the retail supply chain, from the shop floor to where that shop floor is located.

This report examines the long-term strategic impacts of this shift, highlighting the changes in the environment, the potential competitive responses, and...