Quotation for the Week of October 28

“What greater gift than the love of a cat.”
-- Charles Dickens

Cat bounce!  (via The Bloggess)

I loves me some cats.

Quotation for the Week of October 14

"Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content."
-- Paul Valery









 

How Publishing is Allowing itself to Die (Updated)

Can other publishers do what Pottermore did? Well, sure, says Pottermore CEO.

To quote the article:

Unlike every other publisher in the world that distributes its books to e-booksellers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble which then sell them to consumers, Pottermore sells the books directly to consumers with those big booksellers driving readers to the site for the purpose.

Very literally, Pottermore turned the model on its head.

The model can work for other brands, according to Pottermore CEO Charlie Redmayne, who was interviewed by PaidContent reporter Laura Hazard Owen at the PaidContent 2012 conference in New York today. The key is creating a strong brand.

“Publishing companies now need to understand that the thing people like Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other retailers really respect, it’s a brand,” said Redmayne. “If we’ve demonstrated anything, it’s the power of a brand.”

In taking what was previously unavailable – Harry Potter e-books – and making them widely available, Pottermore was able to get Amazon and others to agree to a distribution deal that normally would have been unheard of.

Yeah, I'd say it helps a whole lot when your brand is J.K. Rowling.

Harry Potter's mum

But what other brands could do what Pottermore did?

Redmayne said that J.R.R. Tolkien or The Hunger Games might be able to create multi-platform interactive destinations like Pottermore. But could those brands get Amazon and Barnes & Noble to send buyers there?

“I don’t know,” he said.

 Uh, hello. I think it's supposed to be the other way around. The brand should be strong enough to stand on its own without depending on Amazon or other retailers. But what do I know? I'm just a gimpy writer.

And in other news:

B&N reports record preorders for Nook. I wish I could say the same about my Nook sales.

Well ... at last! this is great news for the Nook.

Meanwhile, a financier has bought a small arty press. Isn't that awesome?

And at the Frankfurt Book Fair, booksellers tried to figure out WTF they were doing.

Furthermore, if you'd like to see an infographic of how Amazon is killing the publishing industry, because publishing is based on such a stupid business model and has been for ages, click here.

PS: I'm also working on a teleplay for another contest, if I can finish on time. And I'll be at the Austin Film Festival next week, so see you in two weeks!

UPDATE: And this is part of why I insist upon publishing my print books through LSI and not CreateSpace.

Quotation for the Week of October 7

"A stitch in time would have confused Einstein."
-- Unknown