While authors have always been – and will continue to be — the driving force behind popular children’s characters, more publishers than ever are now also looking in-house for the ideas that will eventually become the next Fancy Nancy or Hunger Games. Original, publisher-generated intellectual property (IP) is nothing new—Alloy has long perfected this model with…Continue Reading
“Twitter is really the stupidest thing in the world,” Chris Brogan, blogger and social media expert, said in his Blogging and Social Media panel at the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishers conference in February. But he didn’t mean it. At first blush, Twitter does seem like a dumb idea. It describes itself as “a…Continue Reading
In the War Over Market Share, Focus Groups Are a Secret Weapon If you wandered into the loo of London’s Grosvenor House Hotel last month, as did plenty of attendees at the British Book Awards, you’d have found one of the more literal-minded brand campaign “roll-outs” in recent years: stickers slapped on rolls of toilet…Continue Reading
Trading Places Guillou Turns Publisher, Potter Imposter in Spain, and Bridget Jones Down Under The prolific writer-turned-publisher Jan Guillou has commandeered the top three slots in Sweden this month, all of them part of his journey through the Middle Ages. At the top of the heap is the third in his trilogy based on the…Continue Reading
