While I'm not sure the
fiftieth issue of this newsletter signifies very much (not even five
years!), every time I begin to put together the next newsletter I
reflect on who the recipients are and where their interests and
talents lie.
For instance, many of my
friends from the printing industry, both book and commercial, receive
this newsletter each month. Many are still working on the shop floor,
some still work in the industry but as free-lancers now, and some
have left the industry all together and found new careers in other
disciplines. Ironically, it is the latter group that contacts me most
often.
And out East there's a
former Harper Rowe editor who I believe could be persuaded to pick up
a blue pencil again to tame an unruly manuscript.
One recipient is not only
a publisher but an importer/manufacturer who fills his wholesale and
retail orders from over 80,000 square feet of warehouse space. His
company began many years ago when he would get home from his day job
and and roll a Radio Shack TRS80 out of his closet, using a
forerunner of the PC years before most believed the primitive
computers of the day had any business applications.
Another distributes his
books from a series of pole barns he's added to his property, often
traveling to quiet corners of the Midwest with books for his Amish
audience.
There are many, many
astrologers who read the newsletter. It was a curious course of
events that put me in touch with this group, but they are generous
people who freely passed my name among themselves whenever an
upcoming book was mentioned, and astrologers write (and buy) a lot of
books.
There is a gentleman who
for years supplied me with information about all things paper, now
happily retired. While some paper reps came and went, he became the
one who always had the answer, could offer advice when described the
application, and endeared himself to our shop by bringing pizza for
all. All this after years with a web press book manufacturer.
And I've stayed in touch
with a wonderful group in California that collects donated technical
books to ship and distribute in Asia.
My newsletter archive
even has two people who follow each posting although I have no idea
why it interests them.
But the majority of you
are publishers and authors, often both. When sorting through thirty
days of articles to report on and link to, my selection criteria is
first and foremost, “Is this interesting to a book publisher? Will
this influence the future of book publishing?”
Still, there are
stories like the re-imagined library in Australia, or the mother who
uses her Kindle as a bookmark that I include...well, just because.
Just received this
article from Salon concerning the book industry seen through lens
of the BEA.
Book
Expo More Optimistic
Book
Expo is opening in NYC as I write this. This
preview describes a more hopeful attitude in the air compared to
the past few years. And yes, NYC allows the publishers to throw some
swell parties, but I still would like to see it in some other site in
the future. The Big 6 can't dictate to the industry as they used to.
As
If You Didn't Know
Over
the past twenty-five years, beer prices have matched cost of living
increases while book
pricing has slightly decreased. Obviously textbooks
weren't considered.
Magazines
Popular on Campuses
Everyone's
assumption that the first generation to grow up in a digital
environment would shun ink and paper content for pixels. Everyone
was wrong.
Kindle
Fire Tablets Target Apple, Samsung
Amazon
will make it's new Kindle Fire Tablet and HD 8.9” tablet available
in over 170 new countries and will offer Android apps in 200 new
regions in a challenge to counter Apple and Samsung's
international market penetration. The Fire was previously offered in
seven countries.
The
Rebirth of Indies
As
predicted after the demise of Borders, independent
bookstores
are beginning to re-appear, and
regional chains are expanding.
A co-owner of Ann Arbor's newest, Literati, remembers that Borders
store #1 “was always a part of what made Ann Arbor”.
New
Perspectives On Backlists
How
many publishers employ half of their staff as marketers? How many
“backlist only” publishers offer 3,000 titles, all as digital
editions, plus a few in print? Open
Road is that backlist publisher,
and when a lost Pearl S. Buck manuscript was recently discovered in a
storage locker, guess which publisher was first offered the
opportunity to release it?
Crowdfunding
Book Fairs and Books
Kickstarter
is the most famous of the crowdfunding websites having raised over
$600 million to fund 42,000 projects since 2009.The Sonoma County
Book Fest is hoping for sufficient Kickstarter support to hold its
13th
Festival in September. Pubslush
is a web site that focuses on funding for authors and publishers.
“New”
J.R.R. Tolkein Book Released
J.R.R.
Tolkein's unfinished and unpublished poem, The
Fall of Arthur,
has
been released as a book.
Tolkein's son Christopher has been working on the manuscript which
was written in Old
English alliterative meter and also in modern English.
Stephen
King Releases Paper and Ink Novel
Although
Stephen King released an “ebook only” novel in 2000 (“Riding
the Bullet”), and his 2009 novel “Ur” focused on interacting
with a Kindle,
he has announced that his next novel , “Joyland” will be
available as a printed book only without an ebook edition, ostensibly
to buoy up sales at bookstores.
However...
A
few days before “Joyland” is released, King will release a
digital work through Apple's iBooks. While it is a digital book,
“Ghost
Brothers of Darkland County”
includes music by John Mellencamp and T. Bone Burnett who teamed up
with King to produce this “supernatural digital book musical”.
Paper
Mill Fined
For
all the strides the paper industry has made to become environmentally
friendly, a Texas Temple
Inland mill owned by International Paper has
been fined $3.3 million for releasing “black liquor” into the
Pearl River and causing an extensive fish kill. The liquid is
generally recovered from processing pulp and reused inside the plant.
Rubber
Stamp a Book?
While
GalleyCat is all breathless about a
“printing a book” with your children educational toy
introduced at BEA, actually The Creative Company has issued a set
of rubber stamps,
which, I suppose, if you have the time and inclination you could
produce a book with. I got my first
Superior press
when I was 10 (you set the rubber type with tweezers)...and I
actually could have printed
a book; if I started then it would have been finished about now.
Final
Thought
