A few weeks ago The Huffington Post posted an article by James McGrath Morris called “Will eBooks Make Midlist Authors Extinct?”, a suggestion so dramatic (a.k.a Internet-friendly) that it led to much linking and re-blogging within the publishing community.
With Digital Publishing, Bad Data = Lost Sales
Kobo gives us some examples of how data issues can impact your book sales in the digital market.Sending good quality metadata in the first place will help you get your books to your readers on time. And that’s what we all want, right?
I asked Michael to list the most common metadata issues they see at Kobo. Here is his list (in order).
Reading the Future
According to the results of The Bookseller’s recently released Reading the Future study, an annual survey of UK consumer reading habits, people are either getting tired of this whole digital-reading thing or just learned it exists.
Super Saturday a Little More Suped Up
On Saturday I attended the CBA Super Saturday conference for indie booksellers. I sat in on a discussion that sparked a recurring dream of mine: Finding Hidden Money. Bronwyn Addico and Mandy Brouse (the winner of this year’s inaugural Chase Paymentech Young Bookseller of the Year), from Words Worth Books gave this talk and they were mostly talking about running events and the way that events should be run. First of all the similarities to the idea of providing local news in a hyperlocal model came to mind.
Back to the Future
The other night I went to a panel discussion billed as the Future of the Bookstore and I have been trying to collect my thoughts about it ever since but not sure I have yet. Predicting the future is a tough business and maybe not a fruitful one unless you’re Ray Kurzweil or an investment banker.
BNC Visits the Espresso Book Machine at McMaster University
Earlier this week, the BookNet team took a field trip to Titles McMaster University Bookstore to check out their Espresso Book Machine (EBM). Mark Lefebvre, BNC Board member and our gracious host for the day, took us on a tour of Titles and gave us a live demo of the EBM (with some help from Laura the EBM magician).
Don’t know what an EBM is?
Facebook's Open Graph Has Huge Potential for Books
Facebook announced it’s Open Graph earlier this week, opening up to the rest of the web and making the user experience more social in the process. But what does this mean for books?
The Agency Model: What Does It Mean for Publishers, Retailers, and Readers?
E-Reading on the iPad: Where Will Your Content Come From?
Now that that the iPad announcement excitement (and screams of “I lost sound, do you have sound?” from across the office) have died down, let’s take a look at the iPad as an e-reader.
iPad, iBooks, iAwesome?
As some of you may have heard, Apple had their big tablet announcement today. What? Apple tablet announcement? Crazy, I know. And, no, Steve Jobs didn’t ride out on a unicorn as we all (ok, maybe only the BookNetters) had hoped.
Here’s a breakdown of the details plus a more extensive look at the ebook element.
