"This week 75 years ago, Penguin brought out the first modern paperback," reports the Read Street blog (Baltimore Sun, 7-29-10). Penguin's first paperbacks were works by Ernest Hemingway, André Maurois and Agatha Christie. "They were colour coded Read More
Writers and Editors (RSS feed)
Freemium, a business strategy that worked for one writer
July 30, 2010
Freemium, a business model in which you give away a substantial amount of a core product for free in order to generate revenue by selling a select few premium products to a small percentage of the freebie audience. Businesses that have used this mode include Skype (only 12% of users pay), Flat World Knowledge Read More
Documentary Filmmakers Win Exemption from Digital Millennium Copyright Act
July 28, 2010
"Documentary filmmakers today gained access to previously 'locked' DVD content for fair use in their productions under an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act granted to them by the US Copyright Office," according to the International Documentary Association. Entertainment attorney Michael Donaldson assembled a coalition of documentarians and filmmaker organizations, led by the Read More
Agent Wylie's bold step enlarges authors' share of e-book rights
July 23, 2010
In a stalled rights debate between authors/agents and book publishers about the author's share of income on sales of e-books for backlist titles, literary agent Andrew Wylie took a bold step that may influence negotiations over those rights, writes Julie Bosman in Literary Agent Plans E-Book Editions Read More
16th edition of Chicago Manual of Style released August 2010
July 22, 2010
You can now order the new 16th edition of the The Chicago Manual of Style , the style bible for books and some magazines. This time it is simultaneously releasing a subscription to an online edition) Read More
Issuing public corrections when newspapers err bigtime
July 21, 2010
Poynter's Mallary Jean Tenore's column on what happens when newspapers make big mistakes (such as the Chicago Tribute's "Dewey Defeats Truman") and how "the provisional nature and accelerated pace of journalism can lead to error" and why "news organizations don't correct most of their mistakes -- and what they can learn from them." Her essay Read More
New Mysteries from Japan, Nigeria, Germany and Korea
July 3, 2010
"It seems a certain Swedish hacker heroine with a dragon tattoo has paved the way for a surge of international crime fiction," writes Alexandra Alter in Fiction's Global Crime Wave (WSJ 7-2-10). "Spurred by the popularity of Swedish writer Stieg Larsson's Read More