Archive for the 'On publishing' Category

A Better Way to Sell Out

Writing makes me happy. But I have something of a strained relationship with publishing. Being an introvert, I don’t want the spotlight, though being human, I do like being well-regarded. Publishing is legitimizing, but it’s also exposing, which depending on your personality can be invigorating or shall we say unpleasant, as in fly-unzipped-on-laundry-day awkward. So if I’m going to do
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At holidays, ebooks sell more than print

In a move that had Asia’s trees all a-flutter, this season during the holidays it happened: ebooks sales of the top 6 bestsellers outsold print. Thursday’s USA Today bestseller list (1/6/11) “will show digital’s new popularity: E-book versions of the top six books outsold the print versions last week. And of the top 50, 19 had higher e-book than print sales.”
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How Publishing Is Changing

Author Tim Ferriss on debuting at #1 on the NYT list: "We’re at the dawn of the creators’ age, when you don’t have to dumb down your material to have a bestseller; you don’t have to kow-tow to big media that wants to dilute your message so that it offends no one and interests no one.  The publisher — you
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Why the New Books Want to Be Free

Convergence. Moving toward union or uniformity; especially coordinated movement of the two eyes so that the image of a single point is formed. We might hold such truth to be self-evident, but convergence, the merging of distinct ideas, people, industries, and technologies into a unified whole balanced in equality, is the basis of our government, healthy relationships, of spiritual lives,
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The All-Time Top Reasons to Pursue Big Publishing, Part 3

The question was raised by an author who's recently been offered a contract, would it make sense to push for hardcover, the thinking being this raises credibility and importance in the eyes of buyers. Sure, if it's a good size run as well, but it'll be more expense for buyers too, so it's a gamble. And hardcover alone doesn't get
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