It seems like hardly a week goes by without one literary writer or another hyperbolically decrying the way we’re all going to hell in an electronic handbasket. First Jonathan Franzen argued that e-books are damaging society and suggested that all “serious” readers read print. Last week Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Egan complained of social networking, […]
End of Publishing As We Know It
This Week in Books 2/10/12
This week! Books! It’s been a while! The elephant in the Amazon has been the subject of many an anguished quote from many an anonymous publishing executive, who are extremely nervous about What Amazon Is Up To With The Kindle And The New Amazon Publishing Imprint Thing. The latest notable entries in the field: Confessions […]
Amanda Hocking and the 99-cent Kindle millionaires
As Amanda Hocking said herself, “I don’t understand why the internet suddenly picked up on me this past week, but it definitely did.” And how. The writing world is abuzz about Amanda Hocking, the 26-year-old self-published author who sold over 450,000 copies of her e-books in January alone, mostly priced between 99 cents and $2.99. […]
This Year in Books 2010
“Transition” is the word I most associate with 2010. 2010 will always be a year of major transition for me personally as it was the year I disembarked from an eight-year stint in publishing for a new life in the tech world. But it was also a year of major transition for the industry as […]
This Week in Books 12/17/10
Books……… this week! It was another big week for e-books and e-book readers, so let’s get started. First up is my former colleague Sarah LaPolla, who wonders, are we still really worried that e-books are going to destroy the (still here) physical books and the world of books as we know it? Really? Really really? […]
On the Pointlessness of Questioning Whether “X” Classic Book Would Be Published By Today’s Publishing Industry
You know how whenever someone gets disgruntled with the publishing industry they invariably name a classic book and say, “Well, [insert James Joyce, William Faulkner, Herman Melville, other dead white male/Jane Austen here] would NEVER have found a publisher today.” And this is supposed to remind us about the fickleness of today’s crass publishing business, […]