Do you know that it’s only been five years and change since Harlequin announced that it was going to start offering self-publishing services? By comparison, digital-first publishing seems downright ancient. I don’t know if you remember how that Harlequin announcement blew up the internet, or how contentious the discussion ... more >
Last week’s post on digital book prices for commercial fiction engendered a lot of great responses, reflecting some really passionate opinions on how books are priced and how readers make their purchasing decisions. Judging from that completely anecdotal, self-selecting, limited sample, it seems like $12.99 is out of reach for ... more >
I don’t know about you all, but I could use a small breather from the heavy this week. So as I was thinking about this week’s post, I kept circling back to a couple of interesting tweets from Digital Book World. First, a comment from Kobo’s head bookseller, Nathan Maharaj, ... more >
Last week, Laura Hazard Owen of Paid Content tabulated that about 500,000 digital copies of Harry Potter have been sold since their release on March 27, 2012. Harry Potter series have reportedly sold 450 million copies in print. Despite those record breaking print sales prior to the official digital release and ... more >
In the past two weeks, we’ve seen two publishers engage in some experimental changes in the way they sell digital books. Sourcebooks launched a DRM free subscription site and TOR/FORGE announced it would be selling DRM free digital books beginning this summer. Traditional publishers have been quietly moving toward digital ... more >
I’m concerned that publishers have a deep disconnect with readers. This shouldn’t be a surprise given that readers aren’t the customer of publishers, but recent events really highlight this. I have wavered on posting this article because on the one hand, do I really care what happens to publishers? Won’t ... more >