Was it an 'appy Christmas for publishers?

As promised before Christmas, today we launch our first ever survey of digital Christmas trading. With many publishers rushing out apps in time for Christmas Day, and the days thereafter, this year is probably the first to properly test the theory that first thing that happens after the unwrapping frenzy is that book buyers with new digital reading devices look for content.

I spoke to two digital directors before Christmas, and one was convinced that Christmas Day and Boxing Day would be key dates; while the second was convinced by the exact opposite. Read more »

With a Little Help from My Online Friends

Debut author Talli Roland talks us through her tactics for creating buzz and generating sales for her ebook: In the battle to get books into bookshops, small presses with even smaller marketing budgets are often no competition for publishing Goliaths who shell out for promotions and prime places on shelves. But in the burgeoning market of ebooks – where all books have equal space despite the budget – it’s a level playing field. Read more »

My Kindle experiment

Four weeks ago I put three of my books onto Kindle as an experiment – all priced at 99 cents.

I thought you might be interested to know that in all over the four weeks I have sold 7,529 copies  and that all three books got into the Top 20 in the UK Kindle Top 100 list. I was no way near as successful in the US, however!

The books are  -

Once Bitten – a thriller based around vampires in LA

The Basement – the hunt for a serial killer in NYC

Dreamer’s Cat – a virtual reality murder mystery Read more »

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Profile: Stephen Cole, Founder and CEO of eBooks.com

eBooks.com celebrated its tenth anniversary this year. Founder and CEO Stephen Cole discusses some of the hurdles he jumped in order to bring eBooks.com to where it is today, and some that lie ahead – like competing with Amazon and Google: 

Origins Read more »

A cloudy future

The e-book wars have entered the next phase. First Google eBooks (the artist formerly known as Google Editions—the new name far, far clearer for the consumer, surely) launches in the US, to be followed by a UK and Continental Europe launch presumably early next year. Read more »

Welcome to Cyber Monday - The Most Exciting eCommerce Day In Publishing History

If last week was anything to go by then during the time it takes you to read this article, UK consumers will have spent over a £1m online. It's "Cyber Monday / Mega Monday" or what the retail industry predicts is the going to be the biggest online sales day in UK history. Publishers should all be very excited by the UK consumer’s appetite for online shopping as books were one of the first to go online and they continue to feature in the top 3 most purchased products. Read more »

Announcing FutureBook Digital Innovation Awards

I'm very excited to announce the first ever awards for ‘digital innovation’ across publishing. These awards will celebrate how the trade is embracing the future. The awards will run biannually and all category winners will go through to compete for the Digital Innovation award at The Bookseller’s Industry Awards in May. Read more »

Facing the first truly electronic Christmas as an Independent Publisher

Steve Emecz runs independent London publishers MX Publishing specialising in NLP and therapy books. He talks us through the huge growth in e-book sales over 2010, what he anticipates for Christmas and into 2011: We are facing the first truly electronic Christmas trading period in the book publishing industry, and looking back on the last twelve months it has been an incredible period of change.

Agency backlash

For the past couple of months we have been reporting the ongoing struggle over the adoption of the agency model in the UK, with retailers and publishers seemingly on opposing sides of an argument that will govern the way we think about and sell e-books for years to come. One party we've hitherto neglected to mention in greater detail are the agents, but without these literary gatekeepers on side the model will surely collapse—even before the Competition Commission swats it down. Read more »