OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn
Some interesting recent news …
- Scan barcodes with a Google Android phone and immediately search inside that book at Google Book Search. This app will no doubt be extended to other phones and as more books are loaded onto Google Books, it will be more useful. I am currently loading my book into Google Book Search so I will report back on how it goes.
Kindle 2 is already out (before we even have 1.0 in Australia!)
- Houghton Mifflin Harcourt have put a freeze on any new manuscripts, focussing on completing their pipeline. I have an article in the works about what publishers are useful for these days – watch this space!
- Random House have doubled their e-book capacity to 15,000 books including authors such as Harlan Coben
- Pan Macmillan, a leading UK publisher, joins the ebook revolution with Stanza on the iPhone
- Very cool video of how the Espresso Book Machine works. It prints a perfect bound, library quality paperback book in 7 minutes. It's being sold to bookstores and University campuses at the moment, but I can definitely see it in airports for those commuter flights.
- Recent launch of Yudu.com – another print-on-demand publisher. All these new companies must be putting pressure on the old established publishing houses…
- The UK publishers are worried about Google Book Searchbut authors are welcoming. Margaret Drabble comments that authors need to look out for themselves and Google will enable another revenue stream for authors.