ENTRIES TAGGED "community"
Seth Godin: Community and Interactivity Would Benefit Kindle
Seth Godin weighs in with random thoughts on the Kindle, including: The Kindle does a fine job of being a book reader, and a horrible job of actually improving the act of reading a book. Godin says the Kindle reading experience — particularly with non-fiction titles — would benefit from reader recommendations, Digg-style voting, and hyperlinks. The post also…
BN.com Redesign Nets Significant Traffic Increase
Barnes and Noble is seeing positive results from its 2007 Web site overhaul. From Publishers Weekly: … in 2007, the online arm of the retailer posted a 10.1% sales increase, helped by a strong fourth quarter, and the solid results continued into the first period of 2008: B&N.com posted a 7.2% sales increase, compared to an increase of 1.1%…
Cautious Optimism for Britannica's Hybrid Web Community
There are a few red flags, but a new project from Britannica shows promise in connecting user-generated content and traditional editorial.
Early Look at HarperCollins' Social Network for Writers
HarperCollins' social network for burgeoning authors, Authonomy, is now in private beta. Booktwo.org provides an analysis: The real challenge, of course, is to persuade wannabe writers to post their work at all — in my own personal experience, unpublished writers are terrified of their work being 'stolen', enough to be suspicious of publishers themselves, let alone your average web…
Web Community Lessons from Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert's cheeky use of the Web contains valuable lessons for book publishers looking to build Web communities.
German Wikipedia Coming in Book Form
Bertelsmann is putting 25,000 German Wikipedia entries into The One-Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedia. From the New York Times: Bertelsmann says the project should not be judged as a re-creation in book form of what appears online, but rather as an attempt to harness the collective wisdom of Wikipedia’s users. Arne Klempert, executive director of Wikimedia Germany, says the book is a…
Shelfari Rolls Out Editable Author Profiles
Shelfari is looking to spur author-reader community through editable author profiles (here's an example). From TechCrunch: Each author's page will feature an open wiki in addition to a message board and a list of written books. Shelfari hopes to set itself apart from other big name wikis (namely Wikipedia) by encouraging authors themselves to join the community and modify…
Local Focus through Community Newspaper Book Reviews
Sanford Thatcher, the departing head of the Association of American University Presses (AAUP), advises his colleagues to go local by way of the review: It seems to me that there is likely to be no better market for the general-interest titles that we all publish from time to time than the college towns in which many of our presses…
Opportunities in Book Publishing and Web Communities
Book publishers have a unique opportunity to find and foster Web communities.