Barry Eisler made headlines last year when he walked away from a $500,000 two-book deal with St. Martin’s Press in favor of self-publishing his next book. He made headlines again in the spring when he announced a deal with Thomas & Mercer, the new mystery/thriller imprint crafted by Amazon.com, to release his latest novel...
I recently became an independent publisher of Science Fiction, focusing mainly on Steampunk, and one of the first things I decided was to publish our releases in eBook form before moving into print-on-demand paperbacks. This meant my nascent company had a distinct problem: each of the four major eBook publishing platforms have different formatting...
Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett move closer together as the music swells. Soft strains of flutes and violins surround the scene as one of the most romantic moments in the whole of Pride & Prejudice is about to happen. You turn the page of the eBook, breath — wait a minute … turn the...
John Pettitt is no stranger to creative work being stolen without attribution. The former Chief Technology Officer and co-Founder of CyberSource and Beyond.com worked for a time as a professional news photographer. He covered the presidential campaign of Howard Dean in 2004, and remains a member of the National Press Photographers Association email list....
“Print is dead” appears to be a common refrain these days. Publishers lament that no one reads any more, and many published books are aimed to hit the lowest common denominator with the idea to entrance non-readers into wandering into a corner bookstore, Barnes & Noble, or the book section at the local superstore...
Published in the July issue of Independent Publisher magazine From the Tech Desk This Month: The Worrisome Nature of Spam in the Kindle Store by Matthew Delman The eBook revolution has made it possible for authors and publishers to easily get digital copies of new releases to the masses. As a result, sales of...
Published in Independent Publisher, June 2011 Only a few years ago, Print-on-Demand technology was touted as the next big thing in publishing that would revolutionize the industry and allow books not typically printed by established houses to find a home. POD, as it’s commonly called, was also seen as a way to save costs...
Published May 2011 in Independent Publisher magazine. From the Tech Desk This Month: Has the eBook Agency Model Harmed Sales? by Matthew Delman Over the course of a single weekend in early 2010, a seismic shift occurred in the way eBooks were sold in the Amazon Kindle store. This transition occurred after John Sargent,...
From the Tech Desk: The Idiocy of Digital Rights Management
Digital Rights Management encourages piracy. I realize that’s a sensational statement to lead off with, but hear me out for at least the length of this column so you can understand where I’m coming from. The entire concept of Digital Rights Management, or DRM, is to prevent unlicensed copying of copyrighted material. This can...
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