They're Always After Me Red Lemonade!

Richard Nash needs no introduction but if he does you can do no better than to tune into the talk he gave at the 2010 BookNet Technology Forum. Nash has been re-imagining the business of publishing for some time and, in fact, left his post at Soft Skull to begin building that re-imagining.

Red Lemonade, his new project, is all about connecting readers and writers and has that social community goodness baked right in. There are no walled gardens here.

Does this on its own reinvent publishing?

Going Mobile

A recent New York Times article pointed to the need for retailers to retool their sites for mobile shopping. There is an opportunity here for book retailers too, if not exactly to lead the way, then at least not to lag too far behind. It would seem like there is no time like the present to get your e-commerce site optimized for the mobile space. It isn’t really rocket science. Here are a few things you may want to consider when thinking about this…

E-Book Advertising Is Here

There was a piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday about Harry Hurt III’s upcoming e-book. Hurt sought out many sponsors for his book, which sounds like it involved a lot of travel (i.e., is expensive for the author to write). The sponsors gave him money, equipment and products in exchange for ads inside the book and “significant product placement woven throughout [the book’s] narrative.”

Will readers mind the advertisements in the book? Is it possible to work product placement into your narrative seamlessly?

You Need to Know: The Canadian Book Market 2010

Every year BookNet Canada publishes The Canadian Book Market. I think you can guess what it’s about.

The CBM is the comprehensive guide to the Canadian book trade. It includes in-depth analysis, comparative data and statistics making it essential reading for anyone involved in the book industry in Canada.

As the industry changes and becomes more and more competitive, can you afford not to know it inside out?

Is Self-Publishing the Book Equivalent of Demand Media?

Demand Media is what most would describe as a “content farm”: It’s the equivalent of factory-farmed chicken. The content is created and put out as cheaply and quickly as possible, but the welfare of those involved and the nutritional content is questionable. I don’t want advice from that kind of content source. And yet I have a hard time not getting these sorts of results in my web searches. Parallels can be drawn between what’s going on in publishing and Demand Media’s invasion of the web content world.