Blog & Free Advice: Harebrained Ideas
BookCamp Vancouver 2010
The second BookCamp Vancouver is this Friday, October 1. BookCamp is a conference that brings together 250 members from the technology and publishing industries to talk about digital aspects of book publishing and how online media is changing the game. The early days of the internet brought to publishing: Credit card payments Shipping trackers Inventory counts Reviews Buy and recommendation engines Communities and tribes Sharing, collaboration, organization and knowledge exchange were reinforced through easy tools, search and...
CBC Interview with Benjamin Rivers: The Future of Publishing is Small and Light
This month, the CBC Book Club is exploring the future of reading. Here’s an interesting interview with Benjamin Rivers - an independent game developer, comic artist and web designer - that looks at the interactive and cross-media opportunities that are now available with books. In his words, if you’re a publisher today “you should be thinking small and thinking light.” Read the full post on CBC.
The Promise of AT & T (from 1993)
This montage of AT&T ads came from a 1993 Newsweek CD-ROM, when Newsweek thought that one day, magazines would be sent to you in CD-ROM form, sponsored with ads. It’s an interesting view of the future. What is your business promising?
How the Internet Has Changed Book Discovery and Sales
The iPad launched in Canada two weeks ago now and we’re waiting to see what impact it will have on book sales and the publishing industry as a whole. While it’s still too early to get concrete data (in Canada few books have even been licensed to the iBookstore) some early stats are exciting. Wired magazine released the numbers for their iPad app, stating that they sold 24,000 copies of the app...
Lead from Any Chair: The Lone Evangelist
Leadership doesn’t always come from the top. You can show leadership no matter what chair you sit in for the organization. Below are some tips. If you’re the lone evangelist in your organization, the person who wants to experiment with social media, or wishes for a website redesign to increase usability, or needs tips for talking to the boss about why online marketing is important, you are not alone. There are...
How Digital Sales Changed the Publishing World
How do digital sales affect how books are published and promoted? My day job here at Boxcar Marketing is about helping companies understand what they can do on the web to promote themselves, to build their customer base and to interact with their customers effectively. A lot of that work has to do with words. Writing and editing content for webpages, press releases, email newsletters, blog posts, tweets, surveys, downloadable PDFs, search ads, banner ads,...
Clay Shirky on Media Models
Clay Shirky fascinates me because he thinks about the world within the context of thinking that has gone before him. In his recent post, The Collapse of Complex Business Models he references Joseph Tainter’s 1988 book called The Collapse of Complex Societies. Shirky is able to take Tainter’s work, on how several societies (such as the Romans and Mayans) arrived at a remarkable level of sophistication only to suddenly collapse, and apply...
Shaping the Future of Publishing
On December 30, my article “Use Clay to Shape the Future of Publishing” was posted on the BookNet Canada blog. The original is missing the proper links and some blockquotes so I’m going to post it again here. Use Clay to Shape the Future of Publishing As I reflect on 2009, there is one author who continually comes to mind as a thought leader for the publishing industry, and that is Clay Shirky....
Clay Shirky and Jay Rosen Talk About the Future of Publishing
5 Online Tips for Weathering the Economic Crisis
According to MarketingCharts.com, Agency Clients Slash Budgets 20% or More, Digital Only Bright Spot. Digital is always the bright spot! It is not just agencies that are slashing budgets. Companies large and small are looking for ways to scale back costs and increase efficiencies. Here are the highlights from the MarketingCharts survey: More than two-thirds (70 percent) of global ad agency CEOs say that their clients are cutting back their 2009 budgets, and more than 83 percent of...