Cartoon covers have been pretty much axed from the romance cover catalog due to declining sales of books with those covers. I admit that I was never a huge fan of the cover, but neither did I find them totally offputting. There are worse things than cartoons, right? Today’s first ... more >
Letters of Opinioncovers / RomCon51 Comments
I can't remember when Sarah and I first conceived the Reader Roundtable idea, but we have had a great time conducting these little events, first at Romantic Times and then twice (by accident) at RomCon. One of the greatest things about having a blog is having constant reader interaction. It's ... more >
Letters of Opinionauthor / Barry Eisler / covers / publishing143 Comments
A common refrain arising out of last week’s Magic Under Glass cover controversy is that authors are afraid to speak out against their publishers — even over racial misrepresentation on their covers. It seems authors fear that if they speak out they could be labeled as troublesome, and that the ... more >
Ebookscovers / ebook-conversion / Ebooks37 Comments
These images are the covers to ebooks from Random House, Pocket, and Berkley. I’m a big champion of ebooks, obviously, but there are all kinds of problems with ebooks from the expensive hardware to the ridiculous number of formats and DRM encryption schemes. Those are issues that publishers may not ... more >
Ebooks / Letters of Opinioncovers / digital publishing / Ebooks19 Comments
Last week, I wrote that publishers had sacrificed the quality of the printed book in order to preserve their margins reducing the shelf worthy quality of hardcover, trade and mass market fiction. Because of the decreased quality of the printed books, it’s no real sacrifice to move to digital books. ... more >
Book Reviews / Letters of Opinionbook business / covers / Ebooks39 Comments
Those devoted to paper in publishing houses worry that digital publishing will lead to the loss of the art of publication. The sad fact is that the art of publication has been subsumed in mass production long ago. With increased paper costs, distribution costs, lowering margins, publishers have cheapened the ... more >