Archive for October, 2009:
When Publishing Is More Than Publishing
posted October 30, 2009
Posted by Mariko Fujinaka in Bookselling book design books publishing
Publication Studio Makes A Book from Mike Merrill on Vimeo.
I was reading the local newspaper this morning and came across an interesting article about a print-on-demand publisher called Publication Studio. Their publishing model is unique in that Publication Studio aims not just to print and bind books but to create a community interested in the books. The publisher thus sponsors get-togethers to discuss publishing trends, books, what have you.
Illustrator Laura Carlin for the Folio Society
posted October 27, 2009
Posted by Anne Healey in book design world literature
I’m gazing longingly at the Folio Society website, particularly this lovely clothbound edition of Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier, illustrated by Laura Carlin.
Here’s an interior illustration:
In the last couple of years, Facebook has eclipsed MySpace as the world’s most popular social networking site. Facebook now has 95 million active users, compared with only about 65 million on MySpace.
What’s more interesting than these numbers is the way that users of the sites appear to break down along demographic lines. In an NPR story that aired on 10/21, students at an elite private high school in San Francisco explained that Facebook is “safer and more high class” than MySpace, which is “trashy.”
Another group of San Francisco teenagers—the mostly Latino, mostly lower-income students in an art class at a community gallery called Southern Exposure—had a different take on the difference between the two sites. As 19-year-old Diego Luna put it,
“I have friends who are white . . . They are my white people friends and they are mostly on Facebook. That’s why I use Facebook. My brown people are on MySpace.”
From France, Love Letters to Booksellers
posted October 23, 2009
Posted by Thomas Riggs in Bookselling E-books books publishing technology trends
What is the biggest challenge for publishers and bookstores today? The simple answer, of course, is that people are buying fewer books, and when they do buy books, it’s increasingly online. But it’s not as if people are reading less. They might, in fact, be reading more, except now they have a new option: free content in the ever expanding virtual world of the Internet.
I sometimes think of this as an American phenomenon. In the United States attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, and people seem more interested in reading blogs or watching strangers lip sync on YouTube than doing something as sedate and tedious as reading a novel. But I was discouraged to learn recently that in France, too, book buying is on the decline.
Blending the Old with the New: Backlist Titles in Ebook Format
posted October 21, 2009
Posted by Mariko Fujinaka in Bookselling E-books publishing
Some big-name publishers are banking on digital publishing. Jane Friedman, who has worked in the publishing industry for some 40 years, most recently as president and CEO of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide, now has a new company, Open Road Integrated Media, that will concentrate on epublishing. Friedman’s cofounder is award-winning movie producer Jeffrey Sharp. Not only will Open Road digitally publish new titles but it will also reissue in ebook format backlist titles from prominent authors, including Joseph Heller, Pat Conroy, and William Styron.
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