If you are looking for a little perspective on the Potter keg that is going to explode on July 21st when the last book in the series is released have a look at Lenore Skenazy's piece in the New York Sun, "For Harry Potter Fans, Time to Enjoy Unkown."She does a nice job of putting the phenomenon in historical context.Here are a few Potter puffs:-It is the most successful series in the history of publishing.-The forthcoming finale Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has the largest first printing in publishing history.- A first edition of the first Potter book sold...
Books: The Last Physical Media Product That Makes Sense
That's how Chris Anderson, Editor of Wired Magazine and creator of The Long Tail concept, put it during his keynote at the inaugural O'Reilly Media Tools of Change for Publishing Conference taking place this week in San Jose.The goals of the conference are:-To raise "the level of technology knowledge and discourse in the publishing industry"-To provide "a meeting ground for everyone involved in the future of publishing"It's a big week and I suspect a much more relevant one these days than the recently held BookExpo.As comforted as I was by Anderson's acknowledgment of the staying power of the book I...
Simon & Schuster 2.0
Simon and Schuster has been on the loose lately.In January they partner with Gather.com and Borders for a nationwide literary contest that reeked of American Idol. They framed it this way "Publisher Leverages Power of Social Media to Find America's Next Great Writer"Then they go ahead and Long Tail their standard author contract so that technically a book never goes out-of-print.and now they've launched the ambitious BookVideos.tv. A "social media video site...where you can engage with the literary community on a whole new level."All the books on the BookVideos.tv website are available for sale directly from S&S. They provide you...
Buy – Dry – Read
This is Paolo Orsacchini's striking design for a limited anniversary edition of the Italian publication of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.The book comes wet. Soaked in sea water then sealed in a nice clear pouch.Luckily, the paper is waterproof so if you want to read it you simply set the book out in the sun. Let it dry then read.I haven't been able to find out much about the book details, like size of the edition and retail price, but the image and the story have been deservedly making the rounds of the design blogs.The concept alone...
Readings For Money and Books For Free
You get a sneaking suspicion reading Ceclia McGee's piece in the New York Times "A Way to Give Authors a Lucrative Second Platform" that the model for author readings has changed drastically and that the free in-store author reading is endangered.Many of the major publishing houses have set up in-house speakers bureaus which now hire out their authors to various groups and businesses for a fee which includes travel expenses.Why are they doing this? The publishers say "they are responding to common industry trends: fleeting tastes in mass-market books, shrinking shelf lives in bookstores, disappearing book review sections, and the...