Dismayed by the loss of trust in facts, and seeming preference for half-truths that appears to be driving our political present, Robert Harington decided to catch up on his reading over the weekend, and stumbled across a stimulating article in Publishers Weekly, entitled How to Sell Nearly a Half-Million Copies of a Poetry Book, by Anisse Gross.
Customers have accepted the analogy that they “buy” e-books, but publishers may be faced with accepting the fact that they’re selling licenses. What this could mean to their bottom lines may not be the most painful part of this shift.
Lack of information about how books are actually used has resulted in a set of actions that don’t make solid economic sense. Now that more end-user information is becoming available, the book business is likely to adjust its practices.
When a University of Utah professor grew frustrated with the slim textbook offerings available to students of Arabic, she turned to the library for help. The result was the collaborative creation of a new and radically cheaper text — that got much higher ratings from students than the old one had. How did we do it?
Controversial self-publishing editor, El Naschie, to step down in 2009. Professional affiliations cast in doubt.
Indexing and metadata sharing are the lifeblood of scholarly journals. Even with services and infrastructure available to all journals, the effort needed to participate is not small. Journals that are self-published and on their own platforms need significant resources to implement metadata sharing and depositing. This guest post serves as a case study and provides suggestions for how to make it easier.
What can be learned about science and publishing from the El Naschie controversy?
Two fiction publishers decide to delay release of their e-books, further marginalizing their books. Meanwhile, an STM book publisher gets it right.
2017 may have been a watershed year for the Internet and its future. What did we learn? And what factors may shape 2018?
As spam defines one end of abundance, targeting enters to deflect the damage. Can they co-exist? Or will one become the defining trait of the age?
Publisher asks for submission stop while searching for new editor-in-chief.
Robert Harington asks how scholarly societies are coping as the global coronavirus pandemic continues to cast a shadow, certainly well into 2021 and very likely into 2022 and beyond?
A boycott is being organized in California against Amazon to oppose Amazon’s resistance to collecting state sales tax. But Amazon may be too interwoven in the world today to be effectively opposed.
Creating Kindle and iPhone versions of a book — simple. Selling them is another thing entirely.
A viral book sensation’s obvious story may not be as obvious as some think, harder to replicate, and indicative of a strong counter-trend.