The Future Of Publishing Blog by Thad McIlroy

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May 26th, 2023

What Happens When AI Reads a Book?

I’m borrowing this title from another newsletter deliberately — there’s no need to try to improve on it. It gives me a chance to alert my readers to the person who I think is the finest commentator on practical AI — Ethan Mollick, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, who…

May 22nd, 2017

The Best Advice an Author Can Get

Self-publishing has an ill-deserved reputation for being easy. Sure, you can take a bad manuscript in a Microsoft Word file, skip editing, design your own cover, and upload the mess to Amazon. That’s easy. Doing it well, doing it successfully, is damned difficult. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Though when it works, it can…

September 21st, 2016

Classified! Does the Bestseller Code Divulge its Secrets?

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…

July 6th, 2016

Barnes & Noble Throws Self-Publishers a Bone

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone — W. H. Auden, Funeral Blues, 1936 The big news about Barnes & Noble is that after twenty years of battling with Amazon they have finally made a competitive move that Amazon cannot match. Barnes & Noble, with 640 bookstores in 50 states, is giving self-published…