The changing face of publishing...

I’m squeezed for time....so I am going to give you a short blog post...(yay i hear you say..)

This week I have been mulling over the impact of the iPad and digital publishing on the publishing industry....We are in a state of change and authors...not to mention publishers and their staff are probably feeling like they are on a hillside covered with shale...one misstep and down they go.

So how can we feel our way through the shale?

I am reading interesting commentary, on the web about the publishing future...and I note that in the New Zealand International Festival of the Arts-Writers and Readers week, on at the moment here in Wellington, that some of the writers have commented on the future of e-books and that the industry panel on Publishing in the 21st Century has sold out for Friday.

Everybody wants to know what the future will look like.

Here are two voices with slightly different points of view on the future of publishing.

Mike Shatzkin of Idealog has a wide following and his blog post looks at the challenges and changes of this new world.

We are now seeing the early signs of what will soon be a tendency, then a trend, and then a stark reality: you just can’t sell as many copies of most books if you don’t have a proprietary position with a vertical audience.

Craig Mod has started a blog specifically in response to the iPad and the challenges of the new digital mode of publishing verses the old from a book design perspective. He has lots of pictures to illustrate a very comprehensive post on the future of the airport blockbuster.

I want to look at where printed books stand in respect to digital publishing, why we historically haven't read long-form text on screens and how the iPad is wedging itself in the middle of everything. In doing so I think we can find the line in the sand to define when content should be printed or digitized.

This is a conversation for books-makers, web-heads, content-creators, authors and designers. For people who love beautifully made things. And for the storytellers who are willing to take risks and want to consider the most appropriate shape and media for their yarns.

If you have no idea what the iPad is and what it will do- take a look at this video of the Penguin CEO taking an audience of industry professionals through the possibilities of content publishing using Spot and DK Human Body.

And finally another video....this one from Pub Rants Guest blogger Simone Elkeles and how she came to have a book trailer shot as a movie...for her second YA Book...the comments after the blog post echo my thoughts as well...there is still money to throw around...with a seven figure advance to a new teen author from Harper Teen last week.

(warning- a bit steamy...)

maureen

ps Cool links at Nathan Bransfords blog

image from this is london website

Awards... Lets Amplify...OK?

Awards...who needs ‘em....

Um, well lots of us do... so we know what to read...or who to envy...who to celebrate with....

As I have said before, we need to do more celebrating of our amazing children’s writers in this country. Yesterday, the shortlist for the New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards 2010 came out.

Once again I wish there was a longer short list...because I know many great Kiwi writers who published great books last year and deserved to be on it and were not. Sigh.(drowning sorrows with wine...)

I was also interested to see the make up of the Young Adult Short List...how would you choose from that stellar bunch? I’ve said it before, but we have amazing Children’s and Young Adult writers living in this country... (and Lia was born here.)

The other thing that caught my eye was the Aussie publishers who made sure that their Kiwi born writers books were submitted to the awards...coz they should be, as Elizabeth Knox pointed out last year when her Aussie published book wasn’t submitted. (They won’t make that mistake again...)

I note that the mistake I saw yesterday, on the booksellers website, that had Cowshed Christmas written by Gavin Bishop and illustrated by Joy Cowley has been fixed up...and that all the illustrators have equal billing with the author on the website today.

In the Picture Book category, another strong showing which has TVNZ slavering...Novice up against heavyweight authors...yes but what about Kyle I think...is he up against himself or Katerina Mataira’s translation of his words and if it wins who gets the award...the translator or the author? (and what does it all mean then...)

The Non fiction section has the usual spread of very different ages and stages of information. What a job to try to compare such a wide ranging group with each other. (In the ring today we have Willie against Ben and Mark...)

Oh plenty to ponder and discuss and gossip about...

Congratulations to everyone. A special wave out to all my friends who are spread out across the list, I bask in your reflected glory and wine drinking has commenced to toast you all...(like I needed an excuse. I foresee a tipsy weekend is ahead of me what with commiserations, congratulations and a birthday.)

In my continuing exploration of Social Media as it applies to marketing I have been thinking about this cool site that Jon Bard of CBI mentioned. Amplify is the place you always wanted to store those blog clippings, interesting news etc etc that you keep to yourself, because it would just be too hard to post the links to the six different social media sites you belong to....

Aha...Amplify does it for you. Clip once...click the social media links and you are done!

Best of all you can add your take on what you clip...so all your many followers can see and engage in conversation about it or not...so many possibilities...

And finally a very very good article on the future in Digital Publishing...we don’t know where we are going but we are going somewhere...

Unlike the author in this video....Did any one of our finalists have this conversation with their editors???

enjoy

maureen

RIP Jo Nobel