How do you know if what you’ve created is worthwhile? In my experience, it has to pass the “good enough to steal test.” Business owners, authors, artists, and musicians don’t like to hear this, but it’s true. The fact is the majority of goods and services produced do not actually meet this benchmark of success.…
Now is better than later because later might never come. Among the many tragic losses related to the above wisdom, one of the most trivial revolves around the topic of shopping behavior. (Apologies to the Maharishi inside us all.) And this matters a great deal in the world of books, where we know from our…
Books as a technology have been around for such a long time that it’s easy to forget that they were once major innovations themselves: Before the book there was the scroll, and the clay tablet before that, and it wasn’t until the end of the 16th century that modern indexes were invented, still largely the…
Editor's Note: This post was originally published on The Future of Publishing. Netflix released its latest quarter earnings report today. In a Letter to Shareholders (PDF), Netflix CEO Reed Hastings described the competitive landscape the company faces. In doing so he framed the challenge faced today by all publishers, certainly all book, newspaper and magazine publishers.…
Publishers know promoting books and authors on Facebook is smart, but it's a lot more impactful when there's high engagement from Facebook users. Why do some publishers earn 1,000 or more likes on a post while others may receive as few as 7? If you want to increase Facebook engagement, here are 12 tips you…
Mike Shatzkin said in his opening remarks at Digital Book World 2016 that publishers need to help authors with their marketing efforts. “At the very least, every house should do a ‘digital audit’ for every author they sign that includes concrete suggestions for filling in gaps and improving discoverability and engagement. To my knowledge, not…
I’ve been a fan of unlimited e-reading services for at least a couple of years now. When Oyster Books went under I shifted to Kindle Unlimited. For short-form magazine content I use Texture, the offering formerly known as Next Issue. Prices for these services are typically in the $10-15/month range and, for the most part,…
Sophie Rochester asks in a recent article on The Bookseller, “Can publishing keep its soul in an increasingly data-driven future?” Rochester seems to have her doubts. She makes the argument that data-driven decision making conflicts with the creative intuition of editors and authors. If all book publishers do is chase sales data, then they will…
Scholarly publishing is a technology business. That’s been true for some time, of course. Yet the technology-driven approach to business is profoundly and fundamentally different from traditional publishing practices. How can scholarly publishers reconcile that dichotomy? How should a publisher utilize today’s technology in order to drive innovation? Those were the questions recently put to…
Last week at the Professional and Scholarly Publishers Conference -- an event hosted by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and Professional & Scholarly Publishers (PSP) in Washington D.C. -- keynote speaker Joseph Esposito posed a question that all publishers, not just those in the professional and scholarly segments, are struggling to answer. That question…