ENTRIES TAGGED "Books"

The book as a standard of quality

It's time for the industry to agree on maintaining certain standards

Publishers have long commandeered respect for the quality of their work. Traditional processes may be cumbersome, reliant as they are on an infinity of minute, specialised steps, but they have helped maintain consistently high standards, at ever-lower prices. Authors may sometimes hold fantastic positions, but publishers have largely upheld their part of the bargain: giving them a clear, intelligible voice.

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Fiction is a feminist issue

Why publishers can and should encourage men to read fiction

Yesterday we saw some friends and I gave the female half of the couple a bag stuffed with books. Her husband looked downcast and said “Don’t you have any books for me, Bethanne?”

I explained to him that I did not–I receive fewer nonfiction books and pitches these days because I tend to write about and talk up fiction, although that could change any day depending on what project I’m working on at the time. His disappointment, however, sparked a dinner conversation about why men tend to choose nonfiction over fiction–especially because on of the books we discussed was Midnight in Peking, and our friend’s comment was “It was so good; it read like a novel!”

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In-book Purchases

Expanding reach and creating new revenue streams

We’re all familiar with the in-app purchase model. It’s a way to convert a free app into a revenue stream. In the gaming world it’s an opportunity to sell more levels even if the base product wasn’t free. Each of the popular ereader apps allow you to purchase books within them, of course, but why does it end there? What if you could make additional purchases within that ebook?

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Five digital design ideas from Windows 8

Five digital design ideas from Windows 8

With Metro, it's clear Microsoft has put a lot of thought into touchscreen design.

Microsoft's Metro interface offers plenty for digital book designers to study. The best part? Whether or not Microsoft actually ships something that matches their demo, designers can benefit from the great thinking they've done.

Sifting Through All These Books

We have a massive and growing supply and demand imbalance in the book business. And, as the technologies for creating and distributing books becomes trivial, the supply of books is just going to keep growing exponentially…. How are people going to sift through all these books to find what they want?

Coverage of StartWithXML

Turns out I was not the only one on Twitter for the StartwithXML Forum on January 13th. Joe Bachana was tweeting as well. Kind of interesting to see the posts side-by-side. David Rothman of Teleread also has some great things to say, as does Richard Curtis over at e-reads. We also got nice coverage from PW, as well as Publishers…

iPhone App Outperforms Most Print (Computer) Books This Holiday Season

Conventional wisdom suggests that when choosing pilot projects, you pick ones with a high likelihood of success. It's hard to argue that iPhone: The Missing Manual was a reasonable choice for testing the iPhone App waters. But while we knew it would do well, we've been quite pleased with just how well: If the iPhone App by itself had been…

History Repeating with Book Publishing's Mobile Efforts

A Computerworld blog post from Mike Elgan looks at recent mobile announcements from book publishers. From the perspective of technology, watching book publishers slowly grapple with the tentative migration of books to mobile platforms is painful. Interestingly, the comments attached to the piece are almost all more conservative. The music industry was holding on to physical CD sales so tightly…

Publishers: Let the Containers Go

In a guest post at Boing Boing, Clay Shirky says publishers who focus on book lovers rather than readers are setting themselves up to fail: Businesses don't survive in the long term because old people persist in old behaviors; they survive because young people renew old behaviors, and all the behaviors young people are renewing cluster around reading, while they…