Publishing top guns: industry must adapt to recover from recession, if recovery is even possible.
2 years ago - 
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1 Hugh McGuire gives us four reasons to be worried about publishing.
(Don’t worry, all’s not lost.)
Publishing horror stories from editors and agents.
Example:
A senior editor: I knew the book was going to tank minutes after we acquired it. We had a new editor in chief and she was frantic and bullheaded. She heard about a book project I had in and told me to bid six figures. It had a great title, but I hadn’t even finished reading it. We “won” the auction. When I asked the agent who the underbidders were, she said she didn’t have to disclose that. Excuse me. I told her my boss would want to know. And again she declined. Obviously, there were no other bidders. The book, as it turns out, was horrible. It tanked in every way. The author had no expertise and couldn’t write. Worse, she still sends me Christmas cards.
Plastic Logic's e-reader to be the "Blackberry" of e-readers?
“The Plastic Logic QUE proReader connects users to business and professional newspapers, books and periodicals over 3G wireless networks, which will allow them to keep their publications up-to-date.
The QUE proReader also supports business document formats including PDF files and documents for Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT)’s Word, PowerPoint and Excel applications, and includes tools to interact with and manage the content.
Plastic Logic has already lined up content partners for its QUE proReader, including a mix of professional and leisure publication providers.
They include Barnes & Noble, news organizations USA Today and Financial Times and digital news provider Olive Software, which develops technology that allows newspapers, magazines and other content publishers to produce online versions of their current and archived publications.”
NYT: Tina Brown ventures into "insta-publishing" dead tree books.
Titles published by Beast Books will be about 40,000 words or 150 pages long, with a turnaround time of 2 to 5 months. Exciting!!
This is a must read for the editors of tomorrow.
God, I hope there will still be jobs…
Ralph Nader (yeah, that Ralph Nader) wrote a book. Not just any book, but a 733 page “utopian fantasy” novel. The initial print run for this book was 40,000 copies, and an extra 5,000 are being printed.
Not only is this not a very “green” move, but Nader fans (all 45,000 of them?) are either intensely loyal, or the publisher is insane in the membrane. (Like how I pretend a third option, that the book could be very good indeed, doesn’t exist?) *stares threateningly* I’ll be watching yoooo.
