The Dallas News has a bold new strategy for "becoming the most comprehensive and trusted partner for local businesses in attracting and retaining customers and continuing to generate important, relevant content for our consumers": Making it's editors report directly to advertising sales managers
posted by Artw on Dec 3, 2009 - 87 comments

WANTED: EDITOR OF A SUCCESSFUL LIB-LEANING BLOG AND NEWS ORGANIZATION LOOKS TO HIRE A PUBLISHER. Say what you will about the relative merits of Talking Points Memo or whether or not it's the triumphant example of why we don't need "real" newspapers or journalists any longer (previously on Mefi [1] [2]), but it does seem we've turned a corner (or perhaps jumped the shark?) when editors hire publishers instead of the other way around.
posted by bardic on Nov 28, 2009 - 36 comments

"Seed" - an anthology of short fiction published on a USB flash drive shaped like a penis. Sample story. More on the concept without pictures of plastic penises. (Safe for workness may vary)
posted by Artw on Nov 21, 2009 - 30 comments

Revenue reality of a bestseller. Lynn Viehl's Twilight Fall was a top 20 mass market paperback bestseller. Here, she analyzes and posts her royalties and discovers "If I published only one book a year, and it did as well as this one, my net would be only around $2500.00 over the income level considered to be the US poverty threshold."
posted by HumanComplex on Nov 18, 2009 - 175 comments

Perhaps you have seen the recent video of flies zooming around a "German trade show" like little banner planes? That "German Trade Show" was the Frankfurt Book Fair (Frankfurter Buchmesse)—the most important event in the book publishing world. It's international; all the major US publishers go, as do many agents, to meet their foreign counterparts and to buy and sell projects amid publishing's eternal and ever-present air of fatalism. This year's fair had some interesting subplots, the most visible of which was the complicated dance the organizers did with this year's guest of honor, China, as accusations of censorship (on the part of China) and of brown-nosing (on the part of the fair's organizers) flew. [more inside]
posted by ocherdraco on Oct 30, 2009 - 16 comments

The brain's plasticity has some neuroscientists worried about what the internet will do to reading - and to humanity. [more inside]
posted by smoke on Aug 13, 2009 - 64 comments

“They are brands that may not be considered cool by the often elitist and self-absorbed standards of New York media,” she said. She had taken a car from Manhattan that morning, and wore a pink wool shirt-dress, patent leather Manolo Blahnik heels, and diamond hoop earrings.

Reader's Digest jumps the shark. (NYT)
posted by squalor on Jun 19, 2009 - 177 comments

Research journal accepts a computer-generated nonsense paper, and leads the editor-in-chief to resign his post. The authors write about their hijinks on their blog The Scholarly Kitchen. [more inside]
posted by NikitaNikita on Jun 12, 2009 - 83 comments

There's been more and more rumblings lately about the inclusiveness (or lack thereof) of diversity in the circles of sci-fi and fantasy. Pam Nole's classic Shame essay hits a lot of points and while the Carl Brandon Society has been fighting the good fight for some time, more and more people are gathering their own projects, such as Transcriptase or Verb Noire to create spaces and publishing arenas less biased. Are these even necessary? It seems the fans think so.
posted by yeloson on May 13, 2009 - 91 comments

In September 1969, Simon & Schuster was preparing to publish Irving Wallace's The Seven Minutes, a novel about the obscenity trial of a fictitious book of the same name by the fictitious author J.J. Jadway. Maurice Girodias, head of the erotica and avant garde literature publishing house the Olympia Press had a clever idea: what if I publish Jadway's book? [more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole on Apr 22, 2009 - 16 comments

John Gruber of Daring Fireball:

"My friend Merlin Mann and I had a session at SXSW Interactive about two weeks ago. It certainly wasn’t a panel, and it wasn’t really a presentation. It was more like an hour-long duet rant, the main goal of which was to inspire anyone who wants to publish or write on the web to pursue their obsessions in a serious way. We got the audio recording of the session from SXSW a few days ago, recorded short intro and outro segments, and Merlin spliced it together and has published it on his 43 Folders podcast. I encourage you to go ahead and listen to it."

posted by Brandon Blatcher on Mar 27, 2009 - 26 comments

How will the Kindle change the publishing business?
posted by Pants! on Mar 9, 2009 - 130 comments

JPG magazine is going out of business. An experiment in crowdsourcing, and the home of some excellent photos, the magazine and Web site are finished as of Monday, Jan. 5. [more inside]
posted by diddlegnome on Jan 2, 2009 - 34 comments

The Neglected Books Page
posted by anastasiav on Dec 5, 2008 - 13 comments

"...the best place to hide bulls**t is in a refereed journal that’s not open-access!" The math-physics blog n-category cafe digs into the curious case of M.S. El Naschie. El Naschie is editor-in-chief of the journal Chaos, Solitons, and Fractals, published by the well-respected scientific publisher Elsevier and sold to academic libraries for US$4,520 a year. The problem? El Naschie has published 322 of his own papers in the journal -- papers that John Baez (of "This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics" and "The Crackpot Index") describes as "vague, dreamlike imagery," "undisciplined numerology larded with impressive buzzwords," and "total baloney." Is El Naschie a reverse Sokal? Or a Markov process for producing random publishable papers? One thing's for sure -- he knows how to cure cancer.
posted by escabeche on Nov 12, 2008 - 49 comments

How One Nearly Forgotten 1920s Publisher's “Little Blue Books” Created An Inexpensive Mail-Order Information Superhighway That Paved The Way For The Sexual Revolution, Influenced The Feminist And Civil Rights Movements, And Foreshadowed The Age Of Information. [more inside]
posted by amyms on Sep 4, 2008 - 29 comments

Warren Ellis on the grim future of science fiction magazines. Some of the previous posts he mentions, and response to one from Cory Doctorow (unsuprising short summary: Blogs!). Jason Stoddard on 5 small things and 5 big things Science Fiction can do to improve its image.
posted by Artw on Aug 3, 2008 - 67 comments

Remember Philip M. Parker, the much-reviled "author" whose system churns out ultra-long-tail books on ultra-niche topics? Well, here's video of his software, in action. (Via)
posted by jbickers on Apr 14, 2008 - 37 comments

Shepard Fairey's cover art for Penguin releases of 1984 & Animal Farm.
posted by jonson on Apr 13, 2008 - 29 comments

Amazon.com dropped a bombshell on the publishing industry with the announcement on Friday that they will no longer allow print on demand books printed by vendors other than Amazon, to be sold directly by Amazon. In other words, use our print services or lose your listing on our site. This decision effects over half a million books listed on their site and could be a defining moment for both publishing and the future of online retailing. [more inside]
posted by Toekneesan on Apr 3, 2008 - 43 comments

If you're a girl and you grew up in the 80's, chances are you read Sweet Valley High books. Guess what? They're being re-released. Don't worry, they're being updated to reflect the times- Jessica and Liz will be a size 4 now, and Liz's gossip column will be a gossip blog instead. Those wishing to relive the glory days can read reviews of the old series at The Dairi Burger, a blog devoted to all things Sweet Valley. [more inside]
posted by ThePinkSuperhero on Mar 27, 2008 - 63 comments

The Pelican Project - six decades of Pelican book covers.
posted by dobbs on Jan 31, 2008 - 12 comments

15 Publishing Industry Trends to Watch in 2008
posted by stbalbach on Jan 9, 2008 - 54 comments

The late-fifteenth/early-sixteenth century French publisher Simon Vostre was renowned for his Books of Hours. [more inside]
posted by thomas j wise on Jan 3, 2008 - 4 comments

This one's for all the editors out there! Remember when index cards were actually used to create... indexes?
posted by scody on Dec 20, 2007 - 21 comments

You'd think news of a Creem Magazine retrospective book would be greeted with cries of glee. You'd be wrong. Occasional staff shutterbug Bob Matheu licensed rights to use the name of the beloved, iconoclastic Detroit rock zine years after it ceased to be relevant, but despite occasional "Creem is back" announcements, only produced a website. [more inside]
posted by Scram on Dec 2, 2007 - 12 comments

Future Reading. Anthony Grafton explores what we can learn about the future of the text from the history of libraries, publishers, and the sorting of books. [more inside]
posted by Toekneesan on Nov 1, 2007 - 8 comments

National Novel Writing Month (seen before) starts Nov. 1. The goal: complete a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, Nov. 30. If you'd like to start, or are otherwise working on a novel, Sean Lindsay and others would like you to please stop. [more inside]
posted by kurumi on Oct 31, 2007 - 42 comments

New Yorker Festival Interveiw with Seymour M. Hersh [more inside]
posted by hortense on Oct 10, 2007 - 8 comments

Books: The Opaque Market. Eric Flint (the author who set up the Baen Free Library) argues against using DRM in publishing and in favor of pirating yourself. (via Jay Lake)
posted by joannemerriam on Jul 29, 2007 - 32 comments

"It seems like a really original and interesting read." It is a truth universally acknowledged that the first line of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" is one of literature's most famous, wittily kicking off one of the most beloved of all classics. And yet, 17 British publishers failed to recognize it and rejected the manuscript when Jane's name and the title were changed. What happens when the gatekeepers of literature are illiterate?
posted by CunningLinguist on Jul 19, 2007 - 124 comments

NoMediaKings.org will tell you how to hand-bind books in a variety of ways. Then you can make the movie of the book. As a bonus: Time Management for Anarchists.
posted by WPW on Jul 8, 2007 - 10 comments

According to a new study in Biology Letters (Royal Society journal), plants respond competitively when forced to share their pot with strangers of the same species, but when placed in a pot with their siblings are more accomodating. PDF, HTML.
posted by christopherious on Jun 17, 2007 - 41 comments

McSweeney's is holding a big sale and auction to make up for $130,000 lost in a distributor bankruptcy. Soon we'll be adding one-of-a-kind pieces from Michael Chabon, Sarah Vowell, and Marcel Dzama—and every single thing we've got is on sale, cheap.
posted by KokuRyu on Jun 14, 2007 - 38 comments

The Internet Library of Early Journals :: A digital library of 18th and 19th Century journals
posted by anastasiav on May 31, 2007 - 23 comments

More and more authors are turning to podcasting to find their audiences after being rejected by traditional book publishers, it seems. Interested in hearing some of their stories for free (or if you're feeling generous, a suggested donation of $9.99)? Check out PodioBooks, where there's a tonne of free literature just waiting to be downloaded to your iPod.
posted by Effigy2000 on Mar 8, 2007 - 9 comments

Ken Steacy runs a print on demand publishing company, (he recently brought the book "As I See" back in print) and is a fantastic comic book illustrator. Last week he put 600 of his best drawings on flickr. (as seen on drawn.ca)
posted by joelf on Mar 8, 2007 - 7 comments

The Independent Press Association is officially dead. It's demise was a long time coming. The future of small magazines looks pretty bleak.
posted by serazin on Mar 6, 2007 - 17 comments

Dave Sim gets a book proposal from a furry.
posted by Lentrohamsanin on Feb 23, 2007 - 79 comments

POEMS-FOR-ALL "Small poems in small booklets half the size of a business card. A project of the 24th street irregular press, which cranks them out to be taken by the handful and scattered like seeds by those who want to see poetry grow in a barren cultural landscape." (via Ward 6)
posted by otio on Feb 5, 2007 - 21 comments

While the standard King James Bible remains huge business for publishers, in recent years a number of alternative formats have sprung up, hoping to capture the niche Christian dollar, or more charitably, to spread the good word to an audience that wouldn't find the tradtional bible all that relevant. Daniel Radosh's piece in the New Yorker examines the alterna-Bible publishing phenomenon, along with a great slideshow of several in-market concepts.
posted by jonson on Dec 13, 2006 - 16 comments

Kevin Kelly on the latest in personal book publishing advice.
posted by stbalbach on Dec 8, 2006 - 63 comments

We Are Smarter Than Me
The MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, Pearson Educational Publishing, and Pennsylvania University's SEI Center for Advanced Studies In Management at The Wharton School are collaborating on a project to write a business management book, wiki-style. Wanna help?
posted by carsonb on Nov 28, 2006 - 11 comments

As he read, Mr Sterling became convinced he had to publish the book. Jed Rubenfeld's "The Interpretation of Murder" had an intriguing cast of characters, an engaging plot and a dash of kinky sex. It was a historical thriller, one of publishing's hottest recent categories. It had the potential, he thought, to be the next "Da Vinci Code."

The Wall Street Journal details the fascinating mechanics of modern-day book marketing as Henry Holt & Co labors to birth this year's must-buy publishing phenomenon.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese on Oct 16, 2006 - 14 comments

Helix is a new Science Fiction magazine on the Internet. Run by managing editor Lawrence Watt-Evans and senior editor William Sanders, Helix is free, with no advertisements or registration. They do accept donations. This follows Watt-Evans's success last year with his Spriggan Experiment, in which he substituted reader donations for the traditional advance from a publisher. The result of that experiment, The Spriggan Mirror will be available from Wild-side Press in September 2006.
posted by notbuddha on Jun 15, 2006 - 15 comments

Assistive Media is a non-profit organization dedicated to offering audio access to literary works for the blind. They have placed an extensive archive of downloadable magazine articles in mp3 format online, including selections from The New Yorker, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic and American Heritage.
posted by huskerdont on Jun 11, 2006 - 13 comments

The Illustrated London News :: an archive
posted by anastasiav on Apr 27, 2006 - 4 comments

Kaavya Viswanathan is a 19-year-old Harvard student whose first novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, just cracked the New York Times bestseller list. The problem? The Harvard Crimson and SF Gate assert that the author plagiarized much of it from two books by Megan McCafferty. Of course, it's not like this kind of thing hasn't happened before with young writers.
posted by mothershock on Apr 24, 2006 - 222 comments

The 1st Blooker Prize, awarded to books based on blogs, goes to the Julie/Julia Project.
posted by liam on Apr 3, 2006 - 19 comments

Bloggers make terrible novelists. Ana Marie Cox's "Dog Days" meets a reader.
posted by The Jesse Helms on Jan 3, 2006 - 42 comments