Category: publishing

Publishers are experimenting with marketing books through cell phones. Just around the corner? Delivering mobile text books…

Jeanne Bice, a clothing entrepreneur, wrote a book. Instead of hyping it the conventional way, she went on the TV shopping network QVC. She sold 15,000 books in 8 minutes. “Then she sold roughly 9,000 and 10,000 more books this month during two more sessions on the channel, for a total of 34,534 books ordered in less than half an hour of accumulated air time.”

The Los Angeles Times has a new books editor. He’s David Ulin, 44, a longtime champion of West Coast writers. He’s “written for numerous publications, including The Times, and served for three years as book editor of the Los Angeles Reader. John Montorio, the top editor of The Times’ feature sections, said that Ulin would be empowered to accomplish a complete makeover of book coverage when he starts in October. “I think that the review will remain urbane and sophisticated, but we want it to be far more accessible and far more attuned to what is really hot in the book world.”

The first online library is an enormous chain letter of books. “After choosing a book, each reader sends a stamped addressed envelope to whoever owns the volume. The owner posts the book and the reader is allowed to keep it for up to five weeks before passing it on to the next person in the chain. After beginning its journey from reader to reader, each book is destined to remain in circulation indefinitely. Anyone failing to keep the chain in motion will have membership frozen, although there are no plans to introduce library fines.”

America’s newsweeklies are losing single-copy newstand sales at an alarming rate. “The decreases again raise the question of how general-interest publications can hold on to their audiences in a 24-hour cable news and Internet environment while competing against increasingly popular entertainment, pop culture and specialized magazines.”

Norman Lebrecht decries the closing of London’s Whitechapel Library. “It illuminates the glaring failures of English education and integration over the past generation, and its transferral to an ‘ideas store’, half a mile away beside a Sainsbury’s supermarket, says all you dreaded to know about the confusion of culture with consumerism that has overtaken the governing classes of this country with such devastating social consequences. Need to know cause and effect for street crime and drink culture? Start with the wrecking of our library system.”

Amazon has started selling short stories online for 49 cents. “The new program, called Amazon Shorts, is starting with 59 authors, which include well-known names such as Danielle Steel and Terry Brooks. Their submissions range in length from about 2,000 to 10,000 words, which the company expects to translate into an average about seven pages each. Customers who purchase a piece can read it on the Web, download and print a copy, save it in a digital locker, or send the story to an email address.”

The owner of a new online cooperative lending library says interest in the idea is overwhelming, and the website hasn’t even started yet. “The website asks its members to add a list of 10 books they own to its online catalogue. The listed books can then be exchanged between members for the cost of postage and packing. Our community of readers can save money, have a bigger library and help the environment by saving a few more trees.”

Need a book fix in the middle of the night? If you’re in Paris, now you can go to one of five book vending machines. “Stocked with 25 of Maxi-Livres best-selling titles, the machines cover the gamut of literary genres and tastes. Classics like ‘The Odyssey’ by Homer and Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ share the limited shelf space with such practical must-haves as ‘100 Delicious Couscous’ and ‘Verb Conjugations’.”

Print-on-demand books are becoming a big presence in the book marketplace. “Unlike previous self-published books, PODs are digitally printed, which makes them cheaper and quicker to produce. Since 1997, when the technology became widely available, print-on-demand companies have taken over a big chunk of the book industry. Out of the 195,000 titles printed last year, one of every four was a POD.”