Pando Daily Does It Right

Posted by trav in Digital Publishing, E-Books, New Releases, Publishing Industry News      No comments

May
16

The new tech news/culture site Pando Daily is a daily read for me and I’ve been keeping up with founder Sarah Lacy since reading her book Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good a couple of years ago. They’ve done a great job of sourcing and surfacing interesting pieces. On top of that, they have a pretty solid editorial process. All of which adds up to . . . publishing. Which is why they have just released their first eBook: Buy This Book Before You Buy Facebook. It’s priced at $3.99 and, so far, is only available on the Kindle platform. I do hope they share their thought process on why “just Kindle”. I’m guessing it’s either revenue related or they felt the tools were better to self-publish with. But whatever the reasons, there are lessons for every publisher. Here’s a quick rundown of the four points they got right and the one they missed:

1. Identify your silo/niche/subject and position yourself as a category expert. General publishing is in for a world of hurt over the next few years. There is a reason why we’ve seen some big publishers this year launching new imprints. This is something that needs to be considered at the publisher, series, author and title level.

2. Build a community and engage daily. Things like brand, sales, followers, etc. will all come from this. Pando Daily is nearing 20k followers on Twitter, which is where they first announced the eBook. In just 12 hours, their ebook moved up from a sales rank of #4,871 to #672 in the Kindle store. And that was overnight. This a function of building the community first to tap into.

3. Pay attention to the news cycle and have tools in place to allow you to collect around a specific topic. It’s no coincidence that they are releasing this Facebook IPO eBook today. Traditional publishing has been good at this… looking long term. But not so good at building books that repsond in the short term. That is changing. Ten years ago, only marketers thought about the news cycle. Now publishers, acquisitions editors, authors and product folks need to be paying attention.

4. Build your product and add value. Don’t just collect all of your posts from one category. Add something. Make it worth your community’s time. For this product they gathered the folks who have been posting about Facebook and asked for some exclusive essays on the topic. And it can’t be too much, the eBook only has about 74 pages. They also had a solid cover design done. All of which add value. This is something the Pando Daily folks understood even bringing some publishing help from the NSFW Corporation news magazine start-up.

5. Promote and sell where your community is. This is the one they missed. I can’t find the book on Kobo, Nook, Google, etc. By restricting to one platform they are allowing a third-party’s technology, accounts, payment processing and walls to restrict their content. I hope they take the time to build an ePub so they can push their book out on more channels.

I hope publishers everywhere are watching outfits like Pando Daily. They are fast. They are low overhead. They are sharp. And they are fighting for the same eyeballs, dollars and readers that traditional book publishers are.

Chip Kidd Video Talking About 1Q84 Book Design

Posted by trav in Book Covers, Book Design, New Releases      No comments

Oct
28

It’s always interesting hearing boko designers talk about their projects. Even better when it’s Chip Kidd. Here he is  discussing text and cover design for Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84.

Free eBooks from Birmingham-Area Libraries

Posted by trav in Birmingham, Book Talk, Digital Publishing, E-Books, New Releases, On the Web, Technology      3 comments

Aug
25

It is 11pm and I just checked out a book from my local library.

This week the JCLC system turned on its Overdrive-powered eBook network. So far it’s very very cool. The only complaints I have are tied to the CRAZY complicated hoops Adobe Digital Editions (which you will have to download) has in place. But that’s no fault of the library system and is required by most publishers anyway. But once you get the Adobe Digital Editions set up right, it’s great.

Via my JCLC account, I have “checked out” an eBook and am reading it on both my laptop and on my desktop. I have not tried to put it on my Sony eReader yet, as it needs a new battery and won’t hold a charge (yeah yeah, I know. That’s not a problem people reading print books have, but hey… did I mention, I just checked out a book at 11pm!) Anyway….

Here is the one tip I can offer: Once you download your eBook file (it has a .acm extension), “right click” (or ctrl-click) and choose “Open With…” and navigate to Adobe Digital Editions. The permission drm-wrapped file that is downloaded is not a straight up ePub and this seems to work better than opening Adobe Digital Editions and trying to import the .acm file into the library.

Cool factoids of the new system:

• You get to choose your “check out period”. You elect 7 days, 14 days or 21 days at checkout.
• You can checkout up to 5 titles at a time
• Every digital file has icons showing which platforms/devices that book can be read on
• So far there are 477 fiction books and 435 non-fiction books listed

The eBooks are not Kindle-friendly nor iDevice-friendly, but here is a list of all compatible devices. I’m going to take a look at checking out books to the Sony Reader and various iDevices.

Kudos to the JCLC System in bringing another great service to us. You guys really are something Birmingham can brag about.

Barnes & Noble eReader for Mac – My Thoughts

Posted by trav in Digital Publishing, E-Books, New Releases, On the Web, Technology      2 comments

Aug
3

So I downloaded the free Barnes & Nobel eReader 1.0 this morning, to check it out. I’m on a Mac and was glad to see that B&N rolled out versions of the readers for iPhone, Blackberry, PC and Mac all at the same time. That’s a good move.

The first thing I tried to do was open some pdf’s, mobi, epub and prc files…

read more

Allowing Comments to in-progress Manuscripts

Posted by trav in Book Talk, Digital Publishing, New Releases, On the Web, Publishers, Technology, Upcoming Titles      No comments

May
22

O’Reilly Media’s Programming Scala won’t hit bookstore shelves for a long time. But the entire working manuscript has been posted to their site! Each and every paragraph, sidenote, chart and graph has a comment box underneath it. They are hoping that the community will contribute knowledgeble bits of information and ideas, which the author will vet and toss or incorporate. The idea is that this crowdsourcing filtered through their expert author will produce a more auhtoritative work.

Not too mention the marketing side of things. I guess one side could say “you’ll sell fewer books, because all of your hardcore readers have been reading while it’s been written”. Which might hold true for a few folks. But can you imagine the buzz this would build within the programming community? Or how much of a boost the book might get from folks talking about/buying a book that they were involved in producing? The system has a sign-in for commenters so that they can be credited in the final book, if their contribution is used. O’Reilly also provides RSS feeds for the various sections so that a commenter can keep up with that specific section of the text.

Obviously, this idea wouldn’t work for every type of book and the progamming community is a good place to start. It’s not the first book to be published from crwodsourced information, but it’s the first time, I’m aware of, a major publisher has added a crowdsourced component to the traditional publishing workflow. Which means that it gets checked and balanced by author and editor, which may be enough to sway a few naysayers.

I wonder what Andrew Keen would think of this community/professional mashup? Ha!

The 5% Sweet Spot

Posted by trav in Book Talk, Events, New Releases, Publishers, Upcoming Titles      No comments

Mar
23

Chris Anderson says his new book Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business will be unleashed – free- upon the world on July 6th. As popular as his first book The Long Tail was, I’m sure I’m not the only anxious to read his latest thoughts.

In the interview he had with Guy Kawaski, Anderson does say that he expects the free version of his book to spur print sales. Something many in the industry are watching, I know. How does a publisher make money at giving their products away for free? While I’m sure the book will contain nothing as useful or solid as the formula filled The Art and Science of Book Publishing, Anderson says

“If you can convert 5 percent of users to paid, you can cover your costs. Anything above that, and it becomes extremely popular.”

I haven’t started crunching the numbers yet, but that seems to assume a very slim overhead. But it gives us a starting point. Something for the industry to aim for or pass. We’ll see. Five percent it is.

One of these days I am going to have to make it to SXSW…. but until then, thank the internet gods for blogs and twitter.

Jimmy Carter in Birmingham

Posted by trav in Authors, Birmingham, Events, New Releases      No comments

Jan
29

Friday, January 30th, Former President Jimmy Carter is scheduled to be at the Books-A-Million in Brookwood Mall signing his latest book We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land. I couldn’t find where you could reserve copies in advance, but he’s scheduled to be there at 7 p.m.

What Would Google Do?

Posted by trav in Book Talk, New Releases, On the Web      No comments

Jan
27

Via the HaperCollinsCanada Facebook group: “We’ve got 100% of Jeff Jarvis’s What Would Google Do? opened up for reading via Browse Inside.”

More and more publishers seem to be taking advantage of Google Books in the early stages of promoting their titles. I wonder if HarperCollinsCanada plans to leave the entire book up (which released today)or take it down eventually? Either way. I’m stoked about this being put out there for us and will dutifully spread the word! Ha! See? I’m a sucker for book marketers.

So, click on over and give the entire book a look, if you’re interested.

Penguin posts new ebook buffet

Posted by trav in Book Talk, New Releases, On the Web, Publishers      1 comment

Sep
7

I haven’t tried it yet… but Penguin is now offering (what they call) ‘ebook tasters’. These are files are from upcoming or newly released books, in a digital download form. It seems they are only available in ePub format which means you’ll need an ereader or Adobe Digital Editions installed on your computer. I’m sure all of this is a DRM move, which I’m not sure is a wise thing, if you’re only giving away samples. Wouldn’t you want to make that as hassle free as possible?

Philip Roth Live Simulcast

Posted by trav in Authors, Birmingham, Book Talk, Bookstores, Events, New Releases      1 comment

Sep
2

On September 16th, at 6:30pm, The Alabama Booksmith will play host to a live simulcast with author Philip Roth. The Booksmith is one of a handful of venues that will be dialed into the event, allowing visitors to watch Philip Roth and participate in a Q&A with the reclusive author.

According to their site, the Booksmith will have copies of all 29 Roth titles available and will be serving wine (to help fortify your courage to throw out questions to Roth, on this national stage).

Roth’s new title (with a ho-hum so-so cover) drops a couple of weeks from now and is titled Indignation.