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5 Things We Learned About Teens at TOC
At TOC on Wednesday afternoon, we attended “Youth and Creativity: Emerging Trends in Self-expression and Publishing,” a session by Evangeline Haughney (Adobe) and Bill Westerman (Create with Context). They hung out with real teenagers in their homes to get a look at their creative processes. When choosing which teens to follow, they looked for those [...]
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TOC: The Narrative Is Changing
On the final day of TOC, Tim O’Reilly gave his keynote, following on the heels of the inventive Nick Bilton from the NYT’s R&D labs. (Bilton created the interactive website for David Carr’s book.) Much of what he discussed was focused on the topic that was subsequently addressed at the next session, where a group [...]
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10 Things We Learned from Chris Brogan at TOC
Yesterday, PT attended Chris Brogan’s “Blogging and Social Media” tutorial at Tools of Change for Publishing 2009. Brogan is a social media/community-building super blogger–check him out here. His panel wasn’t a lecture or traditional speech; rather, it was a conversation with the audience. He jumped from topic to topic; showed us his Facebook, Google Reader, [...]
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Librarians on Street Lit
Brooklyn and NYPL librarians recently ran a survey about street lit (what is it? here’s Wikipedia’s entry), and they’ve written up the results in the most recent issue of School Library Journal. Some findings: 49% of the respondents worked in urban libraries, 43% in suburban libraries, and 8% in rural libraries. 92.5% offered street lit [...]
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Why Do You Go to the Library?
In the most recent issue of Publishing Trends, we wrote about book rental companies BookSwim, Booksfree, and Paperspine. Read the article here. The comment that leapt out at me during the interview process and has stuck in my head since I wrote the article was from Doug Ross, CEO of Booksfree, who said: “When you [...]
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Book View, February 2009
PEOPLE There are so many changes to report this month that we are highlighting only some of the moves and, where available, contact information. Rebecca (Becky) Saletan has been appointed Editorial Director of Riverhead, reporting to Publisher Geoff Kloske. She was most recently SVP and Publisher of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Her appointment is effective March [...]
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Netflix for Books?
It’s hard to remember a time when Netflix didn’t seem like a good idea. The company opened its first distribution center, in San Jose, CA, in 1998, and initially aimed to create the typical Blockbuster experience: Each rental was $4, plus $2 for postage, and there were late fees. In a 2002 interview with Wired [...]
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Beyond the Bazaar
Despite its rich literary past, the Arab world today is more often thought of for its culture clashes and political discontent than its potential future as an international hub for book publishing. But with government cooperation and cash flow, it is easier for publishers to move past differences in societal standards and censorship battles to [...]
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I run a self-publishing site. I tweeted an interview with Tessa Dick, last wife of Philip K. Dick. Very soon after it was picked up by the L.A. Times Jacket Flap blog (a follower). From there it kind of exploded into many other places (NY Times, Guardian…) Not really sure how else the link could have been found at that point except Twitter.
Anyway, Twitter has been good to me. I wrote a post about Twitter and book marketing if anyone’s interested:
Using Twitter for Book Marketing
I indie-published a Japan memoir and just joined Twitter last fall. Skeptical, but now I love it. I learn so much, keep up with news, get ideas for blogposts, etc. I follow one agent who is an informative and fun twitterer and several big publishers who are not interesting. Publishers ought to have a face on Twitter for good pr, providing publishing info (comments, answers, links) and promoting their author events. We find you, but most of you are boring.