Much conversation and virtual space has been devoted over the last week to the announcement by O’Reilly that they are discontinuing the Tools of Change conference. The announcement stunned many, and lamentation abounded at the loss of what had been, for many, a forum for hearing new ideas and, equally important, an arena for networking and maintaining significant ongoing professional connections. As the producers of the Publishing Business Conference & Expo, one of the events in the same space as TOC, we have long respected our colleagues at O’Reilly. It might be expected that we would jump into the fray and exclaim...

From Boing Boing comes news of this year's Locus nominees, shared there because one of its editors, Cory Doctorow, is nominated. I am not a huge SF reader, so most of these have stayed off my radar. But if you go for that stuff, enjoy this list of good books! SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL • The Hydrogen Sonata, Iain M. Banks (Orbit US; Orbit UK) • Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen) • Caliban’s War, James S.A. Corey (Orbit US; Orbit UK) • 2312, Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit US; Orbit UK) • Redshirts, John Scalzi (Tor; Gollancz) FANTASY NOVEL • The Killing Moon, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK) • The Drowning Girl, Caitlín R. Kiernan...

Last week, NAPCO's Publishing Media Group launched its new video chat series, Literally Speaking Publisher Chats. The chats will take place every Friday at 11 a.m. EST, and I will be speaking to a variety of publishing people. The fun new video platform Shindig is hosting our events. On Friday, May 3, I spoke with Beth Kephart, an amazingly prolific author who has written in multiple genres including YA and memoir, and who has worked with a range of different sized publishers, from Gotham Books to Temple University Press. Kephart’s new YA novel, Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent, was just published on Wednesday and her next book, Handling...

The Rise of the Digital New Media Entity panel at the paidContent Live conference was one of the more interesting ones on Wednesday. The moderator was Jim Weisberg, chairman and editor-in-chief of the Slate Group. He weaved current events into the discussion to talk about how these new platforms have a responsibility for what is being put on their sites, especially when it comes to sites with large amounts of user-generated content, like Reddit. One particular topic that was raised involved the subreddit in which users have been combing through photos of the bombing at the Boston Marathon. Weisberg asked Reddit’s Erik Martin about his...

Data. Traditional publishers have not used the word often when it comes to marketing. But newer publishing companies are using data in a way traditional publishing houses have not, several members of a panel at PaidContent Live said in New York City on Wednesday. “The old evolution of traditional book publishers used to be very allergic to data," said Dominique Raccah, the publisher and CEO of Sourcebooks. "What you just heard is a very different approach from that. For us it’s about metadata and surfacing, and then rinse and repeat. Metadata is a new term in our industry.” [caption id="attachment_83482" align="alignleft" width="154"] Sourcebooks CEO Dominique...

Yes, I was male suburban cliché: Like thousands of other disaffected middle-class white kids before me (and many more after, I'm sure), I discovered Jack Kerouac's On the Road in high school—I'm proud to say I still own the very same copy I picked up at a long-since shuttered Borders Books in McMurray, Penna. It was the first book I ever read, front to back, in one sitting. (Embarrassing as it is to admit, Bukowski's Ham on Rye was the second; The Catcher in the Rye was the third.) I have a few other good Kerouac stories: When I moved to San Francisco...

More than a few self-published authors, of course, have found serious success through various channels over the years—selling a vast amount of books on their own, for instance, or having their previously self-published book picked up by a big publishing concern. And yet, contrary to popular belief, not every self-published author actually wants to be picked up by a mainstream publishing house. Some are more than happy working independently, and pocketing as much money from their DIY publishing project as possible. This topic was brought up last Sunday, March 10, during the Self-Publishing in the Age of E panel at the SXSW in Austin, Texas. The...

A truly historical literary event took place last weekend in Southeast Asia that doesn't seem to have enjoyed quite as much attention from the Western media as it probably should have, and so we figured we'd briefly mention it here: During the first three days of February, Myanmar—the country still known to much of the world as Burma—held it's first-ever literary festival, the Irrawaddy Literary Festival. The Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was released in November 2010 after serving 15 of the past 21 years under house arrest as a political prisoner, was the event's guest of honor, and arguably its main draw. According to an...

We've been covering the international e-book scene for some time here at TeleRead, but Cuba is one county we haven't had the opportunity to discuss much at all. TeleRead founder David Rothman wrote this thought provoking piece about the Cuban literary landscape back in April 2009. But given that Cuba is a county with virtually no digital publishing infrastructure, there really isn't a lot to talk about. But that may be changing—and perhaps sooner rather than later. Back in December 2012, Publishing Perspectives ran a forward-looking article about Cuba's e-publishing ambitions that was filed after a visit to that year's Guadalajara International Book Fair in Mexico. The bulk...

Author Rita Toews reached out to me recently and mentioned that Read an E-Book Week—that would be March 3-9—is currently in the process of gearing up for its 2013 festivities. This will be the event's 11th consecutive year, by the way. And Toews tells me that any author, publisher or vendor who's interested in being a part of this year's celebration of e-books is welcome to contact her via email, at r[dot]toews[at]shaw[dot]ca. Naturally, you'll also want to keep your browser tuned to the event's official website, where you'll find information about everything from the event's origins and the history of the e-book. Incidentally,...

Our friends over at Digital Book World are partnering with PlayScience, a New York-based children’s entertainment and education research company, to produce a free hour-long webinar, The ABCs of Kids & Ebooks. The webinar, which will look at the e-reading habits of children aged two to 13, is scheduled to take place from noon to 1 p.m. on Tuesday, January 29. [caption id="attachment_77480" align="alignright" width="180"] J. Alison Bryant, Ph.D.[/caption] According to DBW, which recently conducted a "nationally representative survey" with PlayScience, "it was found that 55% of all children aged 2-to-13 in the U.S. read ebooks." PlayScience president Dr. J. Alison Bryant, Ph.D., will...

By Eugene G. Schwartz Where is the book industry going; what will my workplace and career opportunities be like; what do I need to know to keep up with the times? Or, in a more cosmic vein, what does the future hold? In an effort to answer these questions, publishers have settled each year into a series of industry meetings of general interest. Each has a unique theme, as noted below. They make the effort to bring together a cross section of publishers, associations, service providers and media professionals to connect with audiences ranging from first-time aspirants to seasoned managers and executives...