Kevin Kelly at Technium plots out the sliding price of the Kindle (@AmazonKindle) and suggests we could see free Kindles by November. Could Amazon conceivably package the Kindle in its Prime service? How about if a buyer promises to buy, say, 20 books then he or she can get a free Kindle?
How should publishers prepare for this possibility?
As of March 1, the Jerry B. Jenkins Christian Writers Guild (@CWGuild) will have acquired Sally Stuart's Christian Writers Market Guide, the annual comprehensive resource guide offering up-to-date information on the Christian publishing industry. Stuart's annual publication, now in its 26th year, has become a reliable source for the critical information needed by those seeking to publish their work in the Christian community. The resource will still be published by Tyndale House (@TyndaleHouse), but with the 2012 edition will change its title to The Christian Writer's Market Guide and the byline will switch from Sally Stuart (@stuartmarket) to Jerry B. Jenkins (@JerryBJenkins).
Christian Writers' Market Guide offers tips and ideas for Christian writers and includes contact information, pay rates, submission guidelines for more than 400 book publishers, 600 periodicals and websites as well as information on hundreds of literary agents, contests, conferences and editorial services.
In an article in Christianity Today (@ctmagazine), Marilyn Chandler McEntyre writes about the importance of reading, saying it “can change the way we listen to the most ordinary conversation.”
I have long valued literary theorist Kenneth Burke's simple observation that literature is ‘equipment for living.’ We glean what we need from it as we go. In each reading of a book or poem or play, we may be addressed in new ways, depending on what we need from it, even if we are not fully aware of those needs. The skill of good reading is not only to notice what we notice, but also to allow ourselves to be addressed. To take it personally. To ask, even as we read secular texts, that the Holy Spirit enable us to receive whatever gift is there for our growth and our use. What we hope for most is that as we make our way through a wilderness of printed, spoken, and electronically transmitted words, we will continue to glean what will help us navigate wisely and kindly—and also wittily—a world in which competing discourses can so easily confuse us in seeking truth and entice us falsely.
In all our concentration trying to forecast where publishing is headed as a result of the digital revolution, we must remember the basic premise remains foundational just as it did centuries ago: reading, itself, sparks vitality.
Tell us your comments on the matter.
This article by Katherine Boehret (@kabster728) in The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) highlights the new ability to wirelessly download electronic books from your local library using the Apple iPad or an Android tablet. She writes, “OverDrive Inc. (@OverDriveLibs) released OverDrive Media Console for the iPad, a free app from Apple's App Store. With the app, you can now borrow eBooks for reading on the go with a tablet.” She goes on
You can already borrow an eBook from a library using an eReader, including the Sony Reader and Barnes & Noble Nook, but you'll need a PC and a USB cable for downloading and synching. Amazon's Kindle doesn't allow borrowing eBooks from libraries....
There's a major downside to borrowing digital books. If the book you want is checked out, you still have to wait until someone returns it to borrow it. OverDrive's licenses allow one book copy per person, so several people can't simultaneously borrow the same eBook. Libraries can buy several licenses for a title so they can have multiple copies of popular books for borrowing….
OverDrive serves more than 13,000 libraries with a catalog of 400,000 titles from 1,000 publishers
How do you see the free digital borrowing of ebooks from public libraries to be a positive development for book publishers?
Editor of PW Religion BookLine Lynn Garrett (@LynniGarrett) reports
The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (@ECPA) has debuted a new consumer-oriented website. ChristianBookExpo.com (@ChristianBkExpo) is the new home for ECPA’s bestseller lists, list of Christian Book Award and sales award winners, and more than 200 author interviews and book trailers. Michael Covington (@m_covington), ECPA information and education director, says the top reason people visit the ECPA website is its bestseller list. So the trade group decided to re-organize its online resources to “cross-pollinate” programs and raise consumer awareness of authors and titles. www.ecpa.org will function as a social networking site for professionals in the Christian publishing community. That site will also be the home in the future of online industry forums, Covington says.
The @ChristianBkExpo Twitter stream is included in the Publishing tab of the SomersaultNOW dashboard.
What are your thoughts about the new ChristianBookExpo.com?
When you write copy, you own the right of copyright to the copy you write, if the copy is right. If, however, your copy falls over, you must right your copy. If you write religious services, you write rite, and own the right of copyright to the rite you write.
Conservatives write Right copy, and own the right of copyright, to the Right copy they write. A right-wing cleric would write Right rite, and owns the right of copyright to the Right rite he has the right to write. His editor has the job of making the Right rite copy right before the copyright can be right.
Should Reverend Jim Wright decide to write Right rite, then Wright would write right rite, to which Wright has the right of copyright. Duplicating his rite would be to copy Wright's Right rite, and violate copyright, to which Wright would have the right to right.
Right?
(Source: Mikey's Funnies)
It’s no secret that book publishing is changing at high speed. So fast, in fact, you may have missed Seth Godin’s announcement about his new publishing partnership with Amazon. Together they’ve created the publishing imprint “The Domino Project” to publish an initial list of 6 titles using Amazon’s new “Powered By Amazon” publishing program. Powered by Amazon enables authors to use Amazon's global distribution, multiple format production capabilities, including print, audio and digital, as well as Amazon’s personalized, targeted marketing reach.
Godin is the lead writer, creative director, and instigator for a series of "Idea Manifestos" under his new imprint, which will include books by other bestselling authors, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders. These books will be made available for sale in print editions via Amazon.com and as audiobooks via Amazon.com and Audible.com, at bookstores nationwide and as ebooks exclusively in the Kindle Store.
Godin’s first book in this program is Poke the Box, coming in March.
What implications does this have for other independent authors who no longer want to use traditional publishers to represent their books? How do you foresee this affecting publishers and booksellers?
Chart of the Day (@chartoftheday) displays the optimistic 5-year predictions by Morgan Stanley on the tablet market. Keep in mind that ALL the devices tracked in the forecast are able to be used to read and/or listen to books. The market is growing.
Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) is covering the Tools of Change 2011 (@toc) conference in NYC. It concludes today. PW’s articles include “Old Pros, New Tools and the Future of Publishing,” “At Morning Keynote, Margaret Atwood Reminds Attendees Change Can Be Bad,” and “Technology Wars Never End.”
Tuesday’s TOC program closed with a keynote presentation by publishing consultant Brian O’Leary (@brianoleary) called “Context First: A Unified Field Theory of Publishing.” ... [H]e tried to outline the need for a publisher shift from a “container-first model,” i.e., an industry geared to focus on physical books, to a “context-first” digitally-focused model, a model that by its very nature will produce content prominently tagged and coded for easy and immediate discovery online, unlike the physical book. It’s a model O’Leary expects to dominate the newly emerging era of the “born-digital”—both the new generation of digital consumers and the digital-first ventures launched to serve their needs.
We hope you’re finding our online dashboard for publishing and marketing professionals, SomersaultNOW (http://netvibes.com/somersault), to be useful in staying current with the latest important news and information relating to your work. (Read our announcement about SomersaultNOW.)
We created the dashboard tabs to reflect Somersault's focus on book publishing, editorial oversight, innovation, leadership, branding, marketing/PR, social media, and research for the publishing community. We also included a tab to quickly read breaking religion news stories, another tab to help you monitor your brand every day, and another with links to sites for reading on your mobile device.
One of Somersault’s values is to be flexible and nimble. We’re keeping our eye to the horizon to anticipate the next change-wave coming. So we’ve added to the dashboard the new tab “Future,” where articles by futurists can be read as a way to help you prepare for future technology, future cultural norms, future reading habits, etc., that will impact your publishing strategies and sustainable growth. We hope you’ll benefit from it.