At the American Book Producer Association’s recent panel, Jon Fine, Director of Author & Publisher Relations for Amazon.com, spoke about the ways smaller publishers and self-publishers can use Amazon to produce, promote, and distribute books in what he anticipates will one day be an “inventory-free” process. The event reflected Amazon’s recent attempts to present its…Continue Reading
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Tagged Amazon Advantage, Amazon.com, AmazonCrossing, AmazonEncore, American Book Producers Association, Author Central, Best Translated Book Awards, CreateSpace, Google Editions, Jon Fine, Search Inside the Book, Three Percent
Thanks to marketing consultant Rich Kelley for this piece. “Ever-evolving engines” was the theme of this year’s Search Engine Strategies conference in March in New York—but finding the tactic that gets the best results was much more on the minds of the 5,000 attendees. “Traditional direct mail generates conversions of two to three percent,” noted…Continue Reading
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Tagged Amazon.com, AttentionWizard.com, Avinash Kaushik, Bryan Eisenberg, Business.com, Byron White, ClickTale, ClickZ, Compete, Content Grader, conversion, Crazy Egg, Facebook, Forrester, Google Analytics, Harry and David, ideaLaunch, Keurig, MarketMotive, online retail, Outspoken Media, Page Grader, Patricia Neurav, pay-per-click, Position Tech, PPC, Rae Hoffman, Raven, Return Path, Rich Kelley, Sarah Smith, Schwan's, Search Engine Strategies Conference, SEO, Sephora, SiteTuners.com, SpyFu, Stephanie Miller, Tim Ash, Todd Friesen, UserTesting.com, Website Grader, WiderFunnel, WordVision
Like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, the passage to the digital realm can be a vulnerable and tremulous thing. Nowhere is this more evident than in the quantum mechanical realm of trade ebooks. The problem du jour: can ONIX, the electronic standard used for the last five years to send bibliographic data (title, author,…Continue Reading
It’s just possible that vanity presses — or print-on-demand subsidy publishers, as most prefer to be called — may be improving their reputations and, in some cases, even gaining respect among traditional publishers. Not only is the list of self-published books that have been picked up by traditional houses growing, but the vanity presses are…Continue Reading
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Tagged 1stBooks, Amazon.com, AuthorHouse, Baker & Taylor, Barnes & Noble, Carl Semmelroth, Diane Gedymin, Fidlar-Doubleday, HarperSanFrancisco, iUniverse, John Freeman, Lisa Grant, Mercury Print, Palace Press, Random House, Random House Ventures, Richard Sarnoff, Robert McCormack, Susan Driscoll, The Anger Habit, The Writers' Collective, Xlibris
Two New Surveys Suggest That Book Price-Elasticity Is Getting All Stretched Out Among the persnickety trends of 2002 was continued brow-furrowing from industry observers and surveyors about the perception that book prices are disastrously high (see article). Some have cited the ruinous effect of “increasingly ubiquitous remainders” on the one hand, and stunningly deep discounts…Continue Reading
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Tagged Amazon.com, Authors Guild, Barnes & Noble, BN.com, Book Reporter, Bowker, Carol Fitzgerald, Christopher Dreher, Jeff Bezos, Len Riggio, Michael Cader, Mike Shatzkin, New York Is Book Country, Open eBook Forum, Robert Sahr, Tablet PC
Amid Booming Book Biz Coverage, Critics See ‘Gaping’ News Holes First there was Keith Kelly at the New York Post. Then there were the hot-shots at Inside.com, and thus dawned a new era of frenzied jockeying among daily media scribes to fling arrows into the side of the homely book publishing business. While stalwarts such…Continue Reading
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Tagged A Reader's Manifesto, Adrian Zackheim, Amazon.com, AOL Time Warner, B.R. Myers, Bertelsmann, Bill Goldstein, Bitch in the House, Books & Books, Catherine Arnst, Condé Nast, Daily News, Dave Eggers, David Carr, David Kirkpatrick, Dennis Loy Johnson, Dinitia Smith, Elizabeth Manus, Felicity Barringer, George Gibson, Hardy Green, Homestore.com, Inside, Inside.com, Jeffrey Trachtenberg, Judith Regan, Keith Kelly, Kurt Andersen, Kurt Cobain, Langewiesche, Len Riggio, Linton Weeks, Lorne Manly, Maria Russo, Matthew Rose, Melville House, Michael Cader, Mirta Ojito, MobyLives.com, Nancy deWolf Smith, New York Post, New York Times, Paul Colford, Peter Kaplan, Poetry After 9/11, Portfolio, Publishers Lunch, Publishers Weekly, PW Newsline, Random House, Rebecca Traister, Richard Bernstein, Ruth Lilly, Salon, Salon.com, Sara Nelson, Snowball's Chance, Stephen Kinzer, Steven Erlanger, The New York Observer, The New York Times Book Review, Valerie Merians, Walker & Co., Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, William Morrow
Though most of us can name a few Australian authors — Tim Winton, Robert Hughes, David Malouf, Colleen McCullough, Shirley Hazzard, and Thomas Keneally — the fact is we may not understand the greater context from which they have emerged. And judging from a week spent as a guest at the 2001 Sydney Writers’ Festival,…Continue Reading
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Tagged Amazon.com, Colleen McCullough, David Malouf, Harmony Books, NSW, Rebecca Strong, Robert Hughes, Shirley Hazzard, Sydney Writers' Festival, Thomas Keneally, Tim Winton
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT INSIDE.COM (4/23/01) You can’t blame Thomas Middelhoff for trying. The chief executive of German media behemoth Bertelsmann — doted on in the business pages as a Visor-toting visionary dragging an ossified corporate empire out of the Westphalian mist — has upped the ante for global synergizing in one of his company’s most…Continue Reading
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Tagged Amazon.com, AOL Time Warner, BarnesandNoble.com, Bertelsmann, Bertelsmann Content Network, BMG, BMG Direct, BOL, Book-of-the-Month Club, Bookspan, CDNow, DirectGroup Bertelsmann, George McMillan, Gruner + Jahr, Klaus Eierhoff, Markus Wilhelm, Random House, Thomas Middelhoff, Wal-Mart
Not surprisingly, 1999 — a year which occurred in that surreal interlude before anyone could imagine the impact of April 2000’s dot-com dump — was a year when everything came up “e”. And, as we glance at our prognostications of last year, we find that Publishing Trends exhorted publishers to embrace the opportunities that were…Continue Reading
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Tagged Amazon.com, Bertelsmann, Business Week, Elmore Leonard, Frederick Forsyth, Industry Standard, Inside.com, Publisherslunch.com, PW Daily, Random House, Stephen King, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Variety, Variety.com
When Bobby Flay went down in flames on the Food Network’s Iron Chef program last Sunday, having been crushed by opponent Masaharu Morimoto in the gladiatorial cook-off, you might have thought the Mesa Grill honcho’s defeat would darken one of the culinary universe’s brightest stars. Not likely. What with Nina and Tim Zagat among the…Continue Reading
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Tagged Amazon.com, Anthony Bourdain, Arthur Samuelson, Bloomsbury USA, Blue Ginger, Bobby Flay, Boy Meets Grill, CDS, Charles Gibson, Chowhound.com, Clarkson Potter, Cooking.com, Crown, Doe Coover, eCookbooks.com, Epicurious.com, Fox, Good Morning America, Holiday Food, Holtzbrinck, Houghton Mifflin, Ina Garten, iQVC.com, Iron Chef, Jeff Capshew, Jessica's Biscuit, Jim Leff, Katie Workman, Kitchen Confidential, Kitchenlink.com, Larry Chilnick, Lisa Ekus, Mario Batali, Martha Stewart, Masaharu Morimoto, Ming Tsai, Ming.com, Molly O'Neill, National Turkey Federation, New Yorker, OneBigTable.com, Pam Anderson, Pam Krauss, Pillsbury Complete Cookbook, Random House, Robin Straus, Rux Martin, StarChefs.com, Steve Riggio, The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, The Perfect Recipe, Williams-Sonoma, Zagat
