Writers and Editors

"The new economics of the e-book make the author's quandary painfully clear," writes Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg in the Wall Street Journal. "A new $28 hardcover book returns half, or $14, to the publisher, and 15%, or $4.20, to the author. Under many e-book deals currently, a digital book sells for Read More 

Since 2006 PBS MediaShift has tracked how technology and the Internet are changing our media world, which now includes weblogs, podcasts, and citizen journalism. Journalists must now master multimedia. You can learn a lot on MediaShift--see, for example, these postings:
Mediashift: Your Guide to the Digital Revolution (PBS) Read More 

Hundreds of award-winning authors have spoken at the National Book Festival on the National Mall in Washington, DC, during its storied decade-long run. Who is your favorite author from this talented crowd? Find that author’s name using this alphabetical list:
http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/vote/  Read More 

Were you a Girl Scout? For their diamond anniversary (2012) the Girl Scouts have undertaken an oral history project, which you can read about here: http://www.girlscoutsdiamonds.org/images/Oral_History.pdf (PDF). Note: "We also need Girl Scout alumni who are willing to share their Girl Scout experiences on camera  Read More 

Volume of Kindle book sales stuns Amazon's Jeff Bezos (USA Today's tech columnist Edward C. Baig interviews Bezos). The comments are as interesting as the article. An avid book reader, for examples, says, ". I have no way  Read More 

Inspired by Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing, the Guardian asked several authors for their personal do's and don'ts. Read what the following authors have to say: Elmore Leonard, Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Read More 

"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 

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 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 

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