ePublishing Week in Brief – May 6th to 10th, 2013
ePublishing Week in Brief – May 6th to 10th, 2013
Book Buzz: Celeb publishing imprints on the rise
In today’s book news, Amanda Knox’s memoir debuts at No. 7 on the book list and ‘Wonder’ is being adapted for film.
Here’s a look at what’s buzzing in the book world today:
‘Wait’ is over: After a major media blitz, Waiting to be Heard, the memoir by Amanda Knox, the American college student who spent four years in an Italian prison until her murder conviction was overturned, lands on USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list at No. 7. Knox, 25, and her book were the focus of hour-long specials with Diane Sawyer on ABC and with Chris Cuomo on CNN. She also did interviews with USA TODAY and People magazine, and appeared for two days on ABC’s Good Morning America. Knox, who expects to graduate next spring from the University of ….
http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2013/05/09/book-buzz/2147199/
Author Margaret Atwood on e-publishing
At 73, the writer still rares to go beyond her comfort zone. She is now looking to adapt the 19th-century form of serial novels to the web
If you want a sense of how Margaret Atwood operates, you could do a lot worse than watch her keynote address at the 2011 O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference in New York. “This is not the kind of thing I usually do,” the author begins, speaking in a quiet deadpan, before stepping away from behind a podium and moving to the lip of the stage. It is a simple shift, but it reminds us that she is out of her comfort zone, a writer speaking to a tech conference about both the consolations and the limitations of technology.
Atwood, of course, has made a career out of stepping beyond her comfort zone, and that of the culture at large. Her early novels, such as “The Edible Woman” and “Surfacing”, staked a claim for women’s fiction, even as she resisted the label of feminist writer, because, she argues, her first objective was to write a story rather than to make a political point.
Harvard Business Publishing shares cloud migration lessons learned
LAS VEGAS — For some companies, moving to the cloud can become a business imperative, particularly as industry changes fuel tectonic shifts in business processes.
Watertown, Mass-based Harvard Business Publishing (HBP), for example, found the ground moving beneath its feet. Its flagship publication Harvard Business Review, a monthly magazine that provides strategic and how-to information to business executives, needed to adjust to the era of digital media.
Other aspects of HBP’s business also needed to scale, given the advent of trends such as distance learning and social media, explained Ken Griffin, director of IT services and operations for HBP, during his session “Preparing Your Application for Its Journey to the Cloud: Lessons Learned from the Application Battlefield,” at Interop here this week.
“We made a conscious decision to reinvent our business. But the impact of that decision did nothing less than burst IT at the seams,” Griffin said. “It blew us out of the water.”
The changes prompted new technology and new websites. It also required the conversion of thousands of articles with tags for online search.
3M Cloud Library Talks eBook Pilot Projects
The 3M Cloud Library service may only be a few years old, but the company has developed a cohesive business in a short period of time. The company finds a ton of success in functioning as a content distribution system for libraries. The 3M platform is very attractive to publishers and they have secured numerous pilot projects for Penguin, Hachette and Simon and Shuster. What exactly goes into the formation of these limited programs and how do libraries benefit?
I spoke to Tom Mercer, Cloud Library Marketing Manager at 3M about what goes into setting up these pilot projects. He said “Pilot projects open with a dialog with the publisher, we talk to all the big six, and all of them are willing to take our call. This is mainly because of our track record, we meet all of our deadlines and if we say we will do something, we do it. 3M goes to all the major events on the publishing circuit, such as; BEA, London Book Fair, Frankfurt Book Fair. We ask them about their primary concerns, barriers and sales cycle. For example, Penguin opened up with us at first, with just their backlist eBook titles, and after they were happy with our delivery of data, metrics and statistics, they felt more comfortable and opened up all of their titles.”
http://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/3m-cloud-library-talks-ebook-pilot-projects/
Multiplatform publishing: Three magazine approaches
Editors from the Haymarket network, Top Gear magazine and Grazia share their thoughts on the type of content that is best suited to print and digital
Use print skills online
Simon Kanter, as editorial director at the Haymarket network, produced the daily London 2012 magazine last summer, garnering praise as the “holy grail of magazine making… taking speed-publishing to a more significant level” from Jeremy Leslie in Creative Review, according to Kanter.
They delivered 1,836 pages of content over 27 days in 19 locations with a daily 8.30am deadline. The magazine was a success, said Kanter, in both the the enjoyment for readers and writers. But what made the difference?
“Above all it is about talking to communities with an authentic voice and doing it with authority,” he said. “We enquire and we inspire.”
He said it is not a question of “print vs digital”, but of print being a part of the digital mix and reapplying the skillsets that are so important in print media to the various different platforms available in the modern digital world.
Content and context
Jane Bruton, in her role as editor-in-chief at Grazia, has come to believe that success in publishing is still about great content, but also the context in which it is delivered is equally important.
Publishing Industry Stock Update – May 2013 – Zacks Analyst Interviews
The U.S. publishing industry has long been grappling with sinking advertising revenue, and the global economic meltdown has only worsened the situation. The downturn in the publishing industry, which has been going on for the last few years now, came in the wake of declining print readership as more readers choose to get free online news, thereby making the print-advertising model increasingly irrelevant.
Changing consumer preferences and the advent of new and innovative technologies have been altering the way news is read and offered. Readers now have more choices to collect and read articles and news through devices such as netbooks, tablets or other hand-held devices.
These have been weighing upon the print newspaper industry, as advertisers now get low-cost avenues through which they can reach their target audience more effectively. Let’s have a look at what is happening in the publishing industry and how newspaper companies are adapting with the changing scenarios to keep themselves alive in the race for survival.
News Corp results beat Wall St estimates, publishing biz spin-off on track
Its revenue rose 14 percent from a year earlier to $9.5 billion in the quarter, ended 31 March, News Corp. said on Wednesday. The company posted adjusted earnings of 36 cents per share, just beating the 35 cents expected on average by analysts, according to Thomson Reuters.
News Corp. shares rose 3.6 percent to $33 in after-hours trading, after closing at $31.86 on the Nasdaq. One-time items, including the purchase of a controlling stake in German pay TV operator Sky Deutschland and the sale of an ownership stake in New Zealand’s Sky Network Television, helped lift net income to $2.85 billion, a jump from $937 million a year earlier.The New York-based company said it is on track to separate its cable channels, movie studio and other fast growing entertainment assets from its newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, near the end of its fiscal year in June.
Its entertainment assets helped boost revenue a