Peter Beisser

In this month's issue, Book Business digs into the DRM debate, as contributor Peter Beisser talks with major sci-fi imprint Tor/Forge, which has dropped the technology on its catalog. Elsewhere in the issue:

John Scalzi won't have to field any tough questions about how digital rights management software (DRM) works at tonight's book signing. The author—out on tour promoting his newest science fiction novel, "Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas"—says those difficult discussions popped up regularly when he engaged with his tech-savvy fan base in the past. But he doesn't expect any of that negative discourse at tonight's Boston-area signing event—or at any of the other scheduled stops on his current campaign to promote the New York Times bestseller.

Since December when we launched Publishing Business Today, the daily headline-roundup e-mail newsletter we produce with our sister magazine, Publishing Executive, we've noticed that the only thing that produces a bigger spike in open and click-through rates than putting news about Amazon in the subject line is putting bad news about Amazon in the subject line.

To survive and thrive as the book industry's digital revolution pushes forward, and as better inventory management drives the shift toward smaller print runs, the smarter printers are doing everything they can to ensure they'll be a part of that ongoing transformation. This includes incorporating newer technologies with an ever sharper focus on customer support and service. Book Business spoke with executives from Quad/Graphics, BookMasters, Sheridan Books, Walsworth and Thomson-Shore, and asked about their outlooks for their businesses. The general consensus: They're ready for what the next year (and the years to come) have in store for them.

In preparation for the release of "Faefever," the third installment of Karen Marie Moning's “Fever” paranormal thriller series, Bantam Dell decided to utilized a varied set of promotional tools. Regular installments of a free podcast containing the full audio of "Darkfever," the original book in the series; a mass-market paperback release of "Bloodfever," the second entry in the series; and online excerpts of the first few chapters from the new title all helped push “Faefever” onto The New York Times Best-seller List.

A commercially viable, point-of-sale, print-on-demand (POD) option—a device capable of creating a single perfect-bound paperback book at a time—has remained, up until this point, beyond the book industry's reach. With the announcement last week of New York-based On Demand Books' newest version of its Espresso Book Machine, set to roll out early next year for initial testing, the current age of printing and distribution as we have come to know it may be on the verge of a major transformation.