ePublishing Week in Brief – December 2nd to 6th, 2013
ePublishing Week in Brief – December 2nd to 6th, 2013
2013 was a year of changes for publishing in B.C.
The past year in B.C. books included major changes in the British Columbia publishing scene, some excellent and deserving awards for writing and a Nobel Prize for Alice Munro, 82, an author with ties to the province.
B.C. author Robert Wiersema said the fact Munro was in Victoria when it was announced she’d won the world’s biggest literary prize has meant a great autumn for Munro’s Books, the store she co-founded with her now-ex-husband James in 1963 when she lived in Victoria.
“She was able to dodge the world’s media because she was staying at the Royal Scot Hotel in Victoria,” Wiersema said. “If I had just won the Nobel Prize, I would move to the Empress, but it’s totally Alice Munro to stay at the Royal Scot. Charming would be the euphemistic word for it.”
Munro’s latest book is Dear Life, a short story collection. She has won three Governor General’s Literary Awards, two Scotiabank Giller Prizes, the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Man Booker International Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Trillium Book Award, the Rea Award for the Short Story and the Marian Engel Award.
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/entertainment/books/2013+year+changes+publishing/9256914/story.html
Online-only is growing trend for magazine publishing
Magazines used to exist solely in a printed format and purchased at physical newsstands.
Today, most such publications have digital incarnations. But some newer ones never were and never will be printed. These also sometimes are bought at newsstands — the digital kind, that is, installed as content-organizing apps on smartphones and tablets.
Offline Magazine, launching as a monthly this week, is such a digital-exclusive publication being offered via Apple’s Newsstand app. It is vying with a growing number of other digital magazines to find a new generation of readers who mainly use tablets and smartphones to peruse the written word.
Offline, co-founded by Brad Flaugher of Minneapolis, also offers its five monthly articles in audio format, narrated by professionals. This gives subscribers the option to use their eyes if they are on their recliners in their dens, or their ears if they are on their morning commutes — with the content streams always kept in sync.
Amazon Launches New Short Story Publishing Imprint StoryFront
One of the most potentially useful features of digital publishing was the ability of authors to publish their short stories without the tedious process of anthology selection. In the past, authors who pen short stories had to submit their stories to collections publishers, and those anthologies are typically only published periodically; barring that, the author could try to submit a full collection of his own works, of which few are traditionally published and almost never from a debut author.
Digital publishing and self-publishing threw open the doors to short story publication, and a resurgence in the genre has been enjoyed by readers of short form literature. Companies like Vook, Atavist, and Now & Then Reader have contributed to the renewed interest in the essay or pamphlet publishing of centuries ago, and today, Amazon Publishing announced its effort to bring short stories to the forefront of publishing.
http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/amazon-launches-new-short-story-publishing-imprint-storyfront
PictureBox to End Frontlist Publishing
Although Nadel told PW that PictureBox continued to be a viable publishing company, he said he was shutting down frontlist publishing “for personal reasons.” Nadel, an acclaimed small press publisher, described a business situation familiar to most small and undercapitalized publishers. He was PictureBox’s only full-time employee. “I could blame it on a hard business environment but it wasn’t that,” he told PW during a phone interview, “I couldn’t really grow the company in any significant way and I couldn’t shrink it either. I’d really done all I could do.”
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/comics/article/60235-picturebox-to-end-frontlist-publishing.html
Rapid Growth of Internet in Africa Leading to Digital Publishing Boom
Africa has long been referred to as the dark continent, which means there is ample scope for the light to shine; and that is exactly what is happening in that part of the world. Focusing on just one measure of development, internet usage in Africa has hit the fast lane. Even this can be termed an understatement given the astounding 3,606 percent growth rate that internet usage has reached in the continent achieved since the beginning of the new millennium. Of course this has led to a ripple effect as this has spurred the demand for internet based service, with digital publishing being just one of them.
“The proliferation of smartphones across Africa, combined with the inevitable burst into e-commerce, means that we would be foolish to ignore what is about to happen with publishing in Africa,” said Jeremy Weate, associated with Abuja-based Cassava Republic, a Nigeria based e-publishing firm that publishes fiction, non-fiction and children’s books. The obvious reference here has been to the more than 160 million Africans that connect to the internet, with it being smartphones that has emerged as the most preferred device to get online.
http://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/rapid-growth-of-internet-in-africa-leading-to-digital-publishing-boom?utm_source=feedly