FutureBook

Having a top-selling e-book isn’t as fulfilling as having a book deal, panellists admitted at a recent panel debate.

Self-published authors Mark Edwards and Joanna Penn shared the stage with Henry Volans, head of digital at Faber, to debate whether traditional publishing was being ‘dismantled’ by straight-to-market writers. But the conclusion wasn’t ‘Smash Publishing’, as the event had been titled, but ‘Keep Publishing Yourself Until A Better Option Comes Along’. Read more »

So, then: e-books. What do they mean for traditionally published writers? My main problem is that seeing my novels in the kindle store is only a Higg’s-Boson-sized thrill in comparison to the rush of God Particle joy I get seeing my real books in a real bookstore. But I’m glad they’re available on Amazon and Apple, because if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be selling in the same sort of numbers. It means there are more ways for readers to get at books and that can only be a good thing. Read more »

A Q&A with Headline senior marketing manager Vicky Cowell about making the book trailer for The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jen E Smith (January 2012)

1. Trailers are becoming a standard part of a book marketing campaign - how do you make a trailer stand out from the pack? Read more »

Academic publishers, having to appeal to digital natives who are used to consuming quick, accessible information on the internet, have been granulising their content digitally for a while now—be it chapters of different authors' works bought together under set themes, or digital platforms making the reading and buying of journals easier. Read more »

The University of Warwick has launched a new app which shares "the creative secrets of world-class authors" for would-be writers.

The ‘Writers’ iPhone app provides access to more than 200 rare recordings of over 150 authors and poets discussing their work and creative process, from the 1970s to the present day as well as hints and writing tips for budding novelists. The Writers app has been developed by the in-house Web Development Team at the University and the developers are currently planning an Android version. It is available to download free-of-charge from the iTunes store. Read more »

The V&A has produced a new app to coincide with its major Spring exhibition- The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement 1860–1900.

The Cult of Beauty app will include a walking tour through Chelsea (voiced by Rupert Everett) that explores the lives of the artists who lived and worked there and an audio gallery guide within the exhibition itself, written by 19th-century design expert Charlotte Gere, that will provide an introduction to 25 masterpieces within the exhibition. Read more »

In recent months various surveys of consumer attitudes towards e-books, e-readers and devices have been released. All of them have revealed trends for the future of digital publishing, with some responses bucking oft-envisioned ideas and others helping to support common e-predictions. Read more »

I received an email from the lovely Sam Eades (@SamEades) this week about Julia Crouch (@thatjuliacrouch), one of Headline's debut authors for Spring, who is proving that the internet really is opening up different routes to publishing.

Julia completed her debut Cuckoo, a psychological thriller, during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) the annual creative writing challenge which sees participants try and write 50,000 words between 12:00:01 on November 1st and 11:59:59, November 30. Read more »

Google Goggles have landed on the iPhone...

I popped over to the London Transport Museum today so that Sony could show of the latest models of its two eReaders, both of which come complete with a Google books link but no wireless technology. The snazzy new Reader Pocket edition and the Reader Touch edition will be available in stores from the 17th September. Read more »