With the London Book Fair ahead of me, and with it a debate on Amazon’s role in the publishing industry, I’ve been asking myself a few questions (which is as weird as it sounds by the way) about our industry.

The question I keep coming back to is culture, specifically the culture that dominates the publishing workforce. Lots has been said about the new skillset that publishers require, but not so much about the new culture publishers require. The one is irrelevant without the other. Read more »

I'll be honest, when I saw tweets yesterday mentioning a book from 'Kindle insider' Jason Merkoski I was rather excited. The initial interview on the New York Times' blog offered plenty of tantalising quotes. Read more »

What is your company name? The Book Club 

Where are you based? UK Read more »

This is how people feel about paper books. It's worth remembering, as we talk about digital, that the physical world exerts a grip on us - as it should - which exists at a very basic level in who we are. And books, which combine the physical or the immediate and the cognitive, are liminal things which command the attention of both parts of our selves.

Sermon over. Watch the video. With props to Sam, who saw it first.

Ilex Press recently announced the publication of the Pilot issue of Photographer’s i Magazine—a multimedia, interactive magazine app for iPad and Android tablets. Soon to make an appearance on the iPad newsstand, the Pilot issue is currently selling ahead of expectations. Read more »

In fits and starts, Spanish publishing is poised to join the digital (r)evolution. Rather than the imminent landing of the major international players, a proof of this has been the XIX Liber (October 5-7), the trade show that is a reference to both the Spanish and Latin-American markets. Sponsored by the Federación de Gremios de Editores de España, Liber is a good indicator of the temperature of the industry. Read more »

Going through the process of turning over 750 blog posts on GAMESbrief into three volumes of edited thoughts has taught me a lot about the difference between the printed word and the online word. Anyone thinking about the transition from physical to digital would do well to understand the differences. Read more »

Book publishers were at the forefront of app development when the iPad debuted in 2010. Start-ups and corporate giants alike created numerous interactive books that augmented the reading experience with gaming mechanics and cinema-quality animation.  Read more »

In The Netherlands, with a population of 16,5 million people,  there are about one million people who want to write a book. I’m sure there must be millions of them in the UK as well. And although many of them hold the secret desire that their book will be a bestseller, their first goal is the book itself, because even if you hardly sell any copies, you are definitely a writer. Hey, that’s something to talk about when you go to your next school reunion. Read more »

Let's make a wave...

I have been heard to say - loudly, in public places where there are publishers - that we in the book trade have to stop waiting for Google or Amazon or Apple to come along and do clever things and then hope that they will cut us in on the deal. We have to get out in front. 

I have also been heard to say, in general, that people who make sweeping policy statements but have no concrete suggestions are very, very annoying. So, on the understanding that I am engaging in blue-sky thinking here... Read more »