3 ways Publishing Companies can increase website traffic in 2012
Publishing Companies are making transitional changes, and discoverability of Website content is key to growth. Laura Austin reports on 3 ways Publishing Companies can increase website traffic in 2012.
Why Copy-Editing Skills is the ideal course for anyone looking to break into publishing…
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When I left university I knew I wanted to work in publishing. I jumped straight in and got in touch with The Publishing Training Centre and luckily secured an internship. One attractive benefit of being an intern at The Publishing Training Centre is that you are allowed to attend a course of your choice. Having editorial work in mind, I chose Copy-Editing Skills, a three-day intensive course that covers everything you could possibly need to know about proofreading and copy-editing, which are two of the main duties of editorial assistants. |
The Art of Bundling Short Stories
In the style of so many 90s TV shows, the short story is making a comeback, and if you think Captain Planet is cool as hell, you ain’t seen nothin’. While huge publishers like Random House, and… booksellers, Amazon, are now discovering something most of us have known for years (that short fiction is the greatest writing there is) there are a bunch of publishers out there who have been promoting the form for longer than I’ve been alive.
5 Online Tools for Promoting Real-life Events
How do we organize our bi-monthly BookMachine tweetups alongside full time jobs? Well, doing this has only become possible in the last few years, and all thanks to social media. We spend just two to three hours a week on promoting our events. Here are the top five free tools that help us out: (this post was originally published on www.publishingtalk.eu on August 10, 2011)
#kindleweek: Top 5 Tips for Kindle Publishers
I’ve been producing Kindle-ready ebooks for a while now. Through a process of trial and error (sometimes it’s been a trial, and I’ve made lots of errors…) I’ve realised that the whole experience needn’t need tooooo difficult, provided you keep a few basic do’s and don’ts in mind…
This post is part of BookMachine’s #kindleweek. Join the debate on Twitter.There’s no E in book: 5 non-digital book-based innovations
Printed books will never really go away. They’ll be superseded by e-books, sure. They’ll become a minority interest. They’ll be treated as relics of a bygone age, one where you had to actually leave the house to, y’know, get stuff.
But just as vinyl records have survived in the sweaty-but-carefully-dust-gloved hands of music geeks, and cinephiles are ignoring the convenience of watch instantly video streaming in favour of the hi-def glories of a decent Blu-Ray restoration, there will always be an audience, however small and specialist, for a nice binding and a dog-ear, ready and waiting for publishers to peddle their wares.
Alternatively, publishers could decide they’re not content to punt such simple pulp-and-ink pleasures, and instead chuck gimmick after gimmick at the reading public until something sticks. Either way. Here’s five of the latter.
How to get in to the mobile app game without losing your shirt
Ustwo’s Nursery Rhymes iPad app by most measures is a success. An innovative interactive ebook, by mid-June after less than four months it had shifted over 37,000 copies, was subject to rave reviews and benefited from being promoted several times by Apple itself. Most developers would be extremely pleased. The only downside: £60,000 spent, £24,000 in income; it is still a long way off from breaking even.
There’s little doubt that their app will eventually make a decent profit. Ustwo was remaining fairly philosophical about the situation: “Innovate now, don’t think this is about making money now. It’s about pushing the medium forward. Have a lot of fun and you’ll benefit in the future.” A view I highly applaud, but a view which many publishers will understandably be weary of. There’s no shortage of avenues where money can be spent with no return! But mobile apps need not be one of them.
I’ve worked on a successful series of apps for an educational publisher. Below are my views about how publishers can get into the right frame of mind to approach the app market and avoid common pitfalls.
The COMPLETE digital publisher
Over at BookMachine’s LinkedIn group of late, there’s been some chatter around the subject of publishing courses. With this in mind, we’ll be aiming to post details of courses we see coming up that might just be worth a look. First up, is The Complete Digital Publisher.
