FutureBook has a piece by Kay Sayce of digital publishing firm Firsty Group talking about the newly-recognized need for publishers to sell e-books direct to the consumer through their websites. Sayce cites a recent survey by the American Association of Publishers which indicates that US publishers’ direct-to-consumer (D2C) websites make up an average of 44% of those publishers’ sales revenue. Creating a D2C website, Sayce explains, is a three-step process, requiring building first the website itself, then a strong relationship with readers, and finally brand awareness. She goes into more detail about the process, and notes that Firsty Group...

At one time in my career as an editor my function was crystal clear: everyone understood and agreed on the role a copyeditor played in the publishing business. But as the years have passed and the traditional publishing industry has consolidated into six megacorporations whose decisions are made based on bean counting, what was once clearcut has become fogged. (For an overview of the various editorial roles, see Editor, Editor, Everywhere an Editor.) This was brought to mind the other day when I was contacted by a client to copyedit a new medical book. The client's inquiry included these points: has recommended...

Hiroki Kamata, the Editor of E-Book 2.0 Magazine, explains on Publishing Perspectives why, despite being a leader in technology and consumer electronics, Japan only has 30,000 Japanese language ebook titles available: Simply put, publishers continue to remain reluctant to convert their books into digital formats due to cost, as well as their own ongoing fears about digitization. Why are publishers so suspicious when it comes to e-books? First, they believe e-books will eventually cannibalize their print book business. Second, they suspect the book market will continue to decline and, ultimately, become less lucrative. Third, they think international e-book businesses, especially Amazon’s...

Last week, The Digital Reader noted that erotic fiction publisher Ellora's Cave plans to release a custom ereader device at its annual RomantiCon Convention in September. Although it's rare to see a publisher move directly into the device space, it could bring obvious benefits, like lower costs and direct access to shoppers. It's also the sort of thing one might expect to see first from a romance or erotica publisher, since those genres tend to have customers who are comfortable buying and reading ebooks. (Only some of Ellora's Cave's titles are sold in print.) There's not much information about the device...

Futurebook has an article looking at a recent discussion in Soho held as part of a “Future of Publishing” conference series. As the piece points out, it seems like you can’t turn around without running into another conference or other event trying to determine how to deal with the “future of publishing”, but this series differs in that it tends to offer some hands-on exercises aimed at finding practical solutions. A few interesting things that came out of this discussion include the contention that, even though e-book readers and tablets have taken off in the last few years, the...

Long has my inbox-on both LinkedIN and Facebook-been filled with inquiries on various ePub creation software, especially regarding two specific platforms: Sigil and Calibre. Both are free, open-source creations of unselfish and brilliant folks that saw the eBook industry coming a long time ago. I've fiddled around happily with Calibre for over a year and been fairly happy, but only just this week did I pay heed to the various forum posts praising Sigil. After watching a few video tutorials and scrolling through the basic crash course I downloaded the open source system in less than a minute. The pros of...

There have been several moments these past few months where I've looked in amazement at what some photo and drawing apps can do on the iPad, and wondered whether they'd be good tools for book cover design. Not only has Piotr Kowalczyk at Password Incorrect wondered the same thing, but he's actually starting to experiment with the idea. Specifically, Kowalczyk is testing an app called Phoster, which provides 70 templates that let you combine your own artwork with pre-designed typefaces and layouts. With the right photo and some thoughtful adjustments, the resulting images can pass for clean, modern book covers...

Do I really have to say anything else?  I have dropped my ebook prices, across the board, to 99¢ ($0.99US). Well, except for the free books.  They're still free. Okay, maybe I need to say a bit more about this.  As in: Why did I do it? The short answer is, I did it because my book sales have been in a slump for the past few months.  I could, of course, speculate on all sorts of arcane market forces, bad breaks, genre popularity slips and pirate conspiracies to account for that, but I'm pretty sure the...

The short (somewhat obvious) answer, aside from errors introduced by OCR: because publishers cut corners by laying off proofreaders and copy editors, then rush the manuscripts out too quickly for their skeleton crews to catch gaffes. At least that's what one editor confessed to Virginia Heffernan at the New York Times. Another editor, however, says in the era of word processors authors have gotten lazier and stupider: "It is amazing how little review seems to have occurred before the text is sent to the editor. Seriously, you have no idea how sloppy some of these things are." Still, if you've...

Over at the blog Taleist, Steven Lewis has posted a half hour audio interview with Jeff Rutherford, founder of Delabarre Publishing. Rutherford works with authors, freelance writers for hire, and layout and design experts to produce titles in niche cateogries (so far joke books and travel), then uses his own PR and marketing experience to make sure they're discoverable by those customers who might buy them. Delabarre put its first title up for sale in August 2010, and over the past eleven months has sold over 7,000 copies, most of them at the $2.99 price point. In the interview, Rutherford talks...

Over at Publishing Perspectives, Hannah Johnson reports on a panel at the recent Tokyo International Book Fair where publishers discussed ebooks in Japan. It's an interesting look at what some publishers think, especially if you've read Robin Birtle's Innovation in the Japanese eBook Market that we posted last week. From Johnson's report: One of the roadblocks to developing Japan's e-book market lies in the usability of e-book stores and devices, according to Fujio Noguchi, Senior General Manager of Sony's Digital Reading Business Division. Noguchi said currently, customers are confused about where to buy e-books and how to get that content on their...

Overseas attendees at this week's Tokyo International Book Fair can leave their phrase books at home since they will only need the line "atsui desu ne?", the ubiquitous Summer greeting that means "It's really hot, isn't it?". Temperatures in the high 80s will be compounded by crushing humidity that can stifle even the liveliest of debates. The eBook International Session boasts three respected executives for its speakers but these speakers may find the session's agenda is more of a hindrance to debate than the weather at Tokyo Big Sight. The session blurb promises answers to questions such as...