Since our article on how book publishers should be using Twitter, some other publishers have chimed in with their own experiences. Here’s Mark Long, publisher of TSTC Publishing in Texas, on how Twitter can help small companies track larger trends: “For me, I think the best part of Twitter is being able to engage in…Continue Reading
PEOPLE This past month brought more layoffs, but some hires as well. We’ll start with those, but see below for layoffs, and where available, contact info. Robert Riger has been named Director of the Pimsleur Language Program at Simon & Schuster Audio, succeeding Whit Waterbury. He was most recently Associate Publisher of SparkNotes/B&N. Luke Dempsey…Continue Reading
@ChelseaGreen Has 2,350 Followers. Here’s Why. by Jesse McDougall, Web Editor, Chelsea Green Other book publishers often ask me, “How do we market our books on Twitter?” My answer: “You don’t.” The fastest route to failing on Twitter is to view it as a marketing channel. Twitter is not a platform, a social network, or…Continue Reading
Of the nearly 200,000 books published in the United States each year, about 3% are translated. When you consider the category of literary fiction and poetry, that number shrinks to about 0.7%. That sliver of a pie graph was firmly placed in the back of Chad Post’s mind when he joined the University of Rochester…Continue Reading
The feature article in our March issue will be about how book publishers can use Twitter–which, as Chris Brogan says, is an increasingly important business tool. We would love to include input from blog readers in the article. Let us know your thoughts in the comments, via e-mail, or, of course, on Twitter. Do you…Continue Reading
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…Continue Reading
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…Continue Reading
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,…Continue Reading
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…Continue Reading
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…Continue Reading
