July 11, 2017
I do fret about the future of publishing. For all kinds of reasons. We’ve seen what happened to newspapers. And then the same thing happened to magazines (more or less). The future of periodical publishing in print is between challenging and bleak. (more…)
May 30, 2017
…with good luck, not with a solid strategy. So writes Sam Missingham in an astute article published yesterday, called “Print sales might be rallying, but don’t get complacent.” It should to be read by the management of every traditional publishing company. (more…)
December 22, 2016
I’ve become intrigued with the intersection of book publishing and machine learning, text mining, natural language processing and the like: technologies that get lumped under the rubric of artificial intelligence. Cliff Guren, who runs the publishing consultancy Syntopical, is emerging as one of the book publishing industry’s top specialists in this area. I thought it would be fun to catch up with Cliff on this topic — and others — as we approach the end of 2016. (more…)
September 21, 2016
The Bestseller Code is already the most talked about insider’s book on the writing and publishing industry. Who wouldn’t want to know if a computer can predict whether a manuscript will be a bestseller? What author wouldn’t want to know if there’s a scientific formula for plotting and writing novels that will propel them onto the New York Times bestseller list?
I don’t have to do any computational analysis to predict that The Bestseller Code will itself be a top bestseller. It’s provocative and it’s profane: the book challenges many of our assumptions about how writing and publishing work. It embraces a complex scientific methodology and makes it (almost) fun and (almost) comprehensible. The co-authors, Jodie Archer & Matthew L. Jockers, both PhDs, keep things rolling along: the text is bright and lively. (more…)
March 1, 2016
Catching up on my industry reading I’m facing the large effort required to try to digest the latest Author Earnings report and then wading into the vast cesspool of vitriol it engenders. (more…)