News

Via Publisher’s Weekly:

Barnes & Noble is entering the self-publishing business with the summer launch of PubIt! by Barnes & Noble that will allow independent publishers and self-publishing writers to distribute their works digitally through Barnes & Noble.com and the Barnes & Noble eBookstore. Publication and distribution will be limited to digital works with no sales through the B&N stores. The company said it will release details of the royalty model and compensation process at a later date.

To distinguish itself from other companies offering digital self-publishing services, B&N is highlighting access through the Nook and other devices compatible

Via Publisher’s Weekly comes news of the publisher Hay House signing up with Author Solutions in order to create a self-publishing division similar to the one with WestBow Press and the ill-fated Harlequin Horizons:

Author Solutions has signed its third deal with a traditional publisher to create a self-publishing division, inking an agreement with Hay House to create Balboa Press. According to Hay House CEO Reid Tracy, the publisher receives “thousands of manuscripts annually, but we can publish only 100 products a year.” Similar to agreements with Harlequin and Thomas Nelson, Hay House will monitor the self-published titles to

Two recent discoveries that illustrate the shifting landscape in publishing.

First, Yudu, which comes from a press release, but still interesting:

A shortcoming of all eReader platforms, including Apple’s iPad, is their inability to process Flash, a multimedia platform commonly used for web sites, digital magazines and other interactive media. Because Flash is the basis for the page-turning technology used by most digital publishing solutions, this meant that page-turning digital publications such as eMagazines, eCatalogs and many types of eBooks were difficult to port to these devices. Publishers had two choices: format content separately for each individual mobile

If you’ve published with Smashwords, you’ve already gotten the email, but big news: Smashwords will now distribute to the iPad iBookstore, which is set to release on April 3rd. What’s interesting is this is being touted as the way into the iPad on Apple sites. While you can publish to the Kindle via Smashwords, you can also just upload a file to Amazon directly. With the iPad, this is now the best way to have your book listed.  Here’s the lowdown from the email.

What does it take to qualify?  Please read carefully:

1.  Your ebook must be accepted

Read an E-book Week is here.  Some info:

History – Read an E-Book Week was first registered with Chase’s Calendar of Events in 2004. Chase’s is a day by day directory of special days, weeks and months used by event planners or anyone looking for a reason to celebrate. By having the week officially recognized, e-book authors and publishers acquired a certain extra “legitimacy” during that week to promote the new technology of e-books. The public and media were initially wary of e-books and many doors were closed to promotion. With the week officially recognized by Chase’s, authors reported they

It’s always been my contention that for self-publishing really to enter the mainstream and be taken seriously as an avenue for all writers, it would have to gain popularity as a medium for literary fiction.  That would lend it instant respect and credibility.  After all, The Shack has sold two million copies and Still Alice has spent many weeks on the NY Times bestseller list – but still there are some of the same old arguments about self-publishing being a good or bad outlet.

Today there was a really interesting development where two-time winner of the Faulkner Award for fiction, […]

Jason Epstein is, and has been, one of the preeminent powers in publishing for nearly half a century. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Epstein) Few, if any, know more about the business than he does.

This is an extraordinary article he has just written about what the future has in store: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23683

Digitization makes possible a world in which anyone can claim to be a publisher and anyone can call him- or herself an author. In this world the traditional filters will have melted into air and only the ultimate filter—the human inability to read what is unreadable—will remain to winnow what is