With direct-to-consumer (D2C) e-commerce websites a growing feature of the UK publishing / bookselling scene, in the wake of the success of these sites in the US, I have a few tips on what and what not to do with regard to user engagement during the checkout process. There are many ways to enhance publisher sites - book reviews, author blogs, author events and other promotional activities, newsletters, competitions, reader forums, etc. Read more »

Following on from Predictions part 1, here's what our international bloggers and commentators predict for 2012:

Julieta Lionetti, publishing consultant, Argentina Read more »

Thought it might be useful to see all of the big digital stories of 2011 as a timeline. It really has been an extraordinary year. My next blog will be your predictions for 2012. If you haven't let me know yet, then tweet me.   

January

Ebook sales in US comprised 23.5% of all trade book sales in January. 

February Read more »

‘To echo what many publishing executives have been saying to us, 2011 will be the year when digital finally takes a significant and measurable share of UK ‘book’ sales.'

Philip Jones’s blog, January 2011 Read more »

I was on a plane.

So, while you wretched lot were boozing it up at the FutureBook Conference, listening to Charlie Redmayne tell you true things about branding and all kinds of other coolness, I was doing a seven and a half hour prison sentence with a furious fifteen month old and a vast quantity of projectile humous. You lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky people. Read more »

The end of this four-part series is really why it all started: the differences between the digitization of the music industry and the world of books. This series is beautifully summed up in one big illustration, made by Esther Gons (@wilg). Click for big. Read more »

Two days ago we did a brief history on the digitization of the music industry, yesterday the digitization of the book world. Today: the similarities between the two industries, tomorrow the differences. Read more »

Previously in this series: how the digitization of the music industry went. Today: the world of books, tomorrow the similarities and the day after tomorrow the differences between these two worlds. Read more »

'We've become victims of our ever-increasing capacity to store, organise, instantly access, and share vast amounts of cultural data.' Simon Reynolds, Retromania

‘I’m bringing sexy back.’ Justin Timberlake Read more »

This series of blogposts originated on Twitter, when a few people from both the book world and the music industry came to the conclusion that there has been written a lot about the developments in both worlds, but never before in one big comparison.     Read more »