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24 Dec 2009: Happy Christmas!
Happy festive greetings, one and all. Don't the years go by quickly. We live to tell the tale, once more, unlike Borders and a handful of indie publishers. This year I have been incredibly time poor, what with Ro and all, but you know what? It's meant I focus in on what matters: the books (and my RoBerry, of course). Before having Ro I sat on this committee, did that speech, contributed to the other project, went to this conference (and Twittered, blogged and Facebooked my life away too). This year, I've focused right in on the books, selling them, thinking about them, designing them, talking about them. And I think this will continue into next year when we have some really astonishingly good books to bring you. I'm still not quite recovered from reading the delivered manuscript from Thomas Emson a couple of weeks ago of his Zombie Britannica. I can't wait to introduce you to Mark Hodder, with his debut steampunk thriller Spring-Heeled Jack, and Wayne Simmons' startling Flu. And Sean Cumming's Shade Fright is something you'll love, I just know. Here are some covers to whet your appetite.
Off to Wales in the morning for a few days, so Happy Christmas and new year. See you in 2010!
posted on December 24, 2009 11:46 AM | link | Comments (3) | Leave a comment
16 Dec 2009: Digging in
Here's the sort of thing that annoys me: "Simon & Schuster, in tandem with other big houses, is trying to protect income from print books by delaying the publication of new ebooks by four or six months after release of the hardback editions."
It's from an article about the rise and rights of ebooks here. It's the notion of 'protecting income' that pushes my buttons. Yes, publishers must strive to make money, but they are not monarchs of the written word and they have no god-given right to charge a toll on the road between authors and readers.
Continue reading "Digging in" »
posted on December 16, 2009 07:35 AM | link | Comments (3) | Leave a comment
14 Dec 2009: Gift tip
What with it being Christmas soon, and men everywhere (maybe even some disorganised/busy women) are starting to think about Christmas shopping, I feel I should mention that play.com have the entire, seven-season box set of The West Wing for £39.95, including delivery. That's giftacular and Christmificent, in my view. That works out at around 36p per hour for some of the best TV ever made.
posted on December 14, 2009 10:42 AM | link | Comments (6) | Leave a comment
14 Dec 2009: Frequently Answered Questions
The last time I mentioned manmade climate change I got a lot of comments telling me it didn't exist (or was nothing much to worry about). The reasons given tended to contradict each other, but the sentiment was shared: we can't agree on why, but we know humans aren't disrupting the climate. That strange pseudo-consensus really confuses me.
Having just read Ben Goldacre's latest article, I thought I'd pass along the link he mentions to realclimate.org which contains a refutation of the most common reasons people give for discounting manmade climate disruption. Maybe, if your favourite reason is on the list you might want to read the rebuttal. Or maybe you'd rather not. Really, the whole thing has me perplexed.
As the Goldacre article puts it: "why do roughly half the people in this country not believe in man-made climate change, when the overwhelming majority of scientists do?" And I can't believe the answer is that non-scientists are just better at understanding this stuff.
Continue reading "Frequently Answered Questions" »
posted on December 14, 2009 07:15 AM | link | Comments (2) | Leave a comment
04 Dec 2009: eBooks
And so to Centrepoint where I took part in the Futur(e)book conference. I was talking about using ebooks as marketing tools (slides below). Amongst other initiatives, we've used Facebook to communicate directly with readers, and to offer them a free ebook of the first in a series - hoping that once they've finished it, if they love it, they'll buy the next one.
As well as Facebook, we use Issuu.com too. Check out some of the viewing numbers on our page on issuu.com . 31,000 views of George Mann's The Shattered Teacup. 25000 views of Thomas Emson's When Soft Voice Die. 17,000 views of Family Cycling. Even our automatically generated pack of AIs enjoyed 6000 views. These are sensational numbers for a tiny publisher. And a gazzillion views is going to result in something happening somewhere - if a tiny percentage of those viewers loved the work and buy Thomas' and George's next book, that's pretty effective marketing since it costs nothing to put books on issuu.com.
If you'd like to talk to us about using ebooks as marketing tools, drop us a line at Onix Central where we'd be happy to help.
posted on December 4, 2009 03:51 PM | link | Comments (4) | Leave a comment
03 Dec 2009: Christmas TV
When I was little, and there were only three TV channels, Christmas was pretty exciting because the usual, staid schedule was shaken up and they started showing films. Before everyone got into the habit of owning their favourite movies on pre-recorded (or maybe home-recorded) VHS, films would appear at the cinema and then disappear forever into some mythical, rose-tinted recollection of how good they were. But at Christmas, you might be able to see that one stunt from that amazing Bond movie again. You might even be able to do so while eating a mince pie in front of a log fire.
Then VHS became common, and later DVDs, and then satellite movie channels. And now you can see movies the whole time. So, at least in televisual terms, Christmas is a lot less exciting.
Latterly, things seem to have gone into reverse.
Continue reading "Christmas TV" »
posted on December 3, 2009 07:44 AM | link | Comments (5) | Leave a comment
03 Dec 2009: Winter Kindling
As one more data-point in the attempt to work out the possible fate of e-book readers and their impact on the world comes the following quote about the Amazon Kindle:
It is "the most 'wished' for, the most gifted, and the number one bestselling product across all product
categories on Amazon."
[Excerpted from an article about gadgets as Christmas presents here]
posted on December 3, 2009 07:33 AM | link | Comments (2) | Leave a comment
03 Dec 2009: Clay Futures
There's an interesting essay by Clay Shirky on local bookstores and the ways in which they may need to evolve in order to survive here.
"If you had to choose between buying books only offline or only online, the choice that maximizes the number of ideas in circulation is unambiguously clear."
posted on December 3, 2009 07:25 AM | link | Comments (2) | Leave a comment