A couple of months I wrote an article for the Futurebook blog in recognition of the site’s world-wide reach, and I thought it was time to share some of these thoughts with the BookMachine crowd and also re-visit some of the scenarios, which have now been published.

Working at a design agency that primarily works with educational publishers has given me an understanding of many requirements and considerations that need to be met for producing material (both print & digital) for many different markets. However, publishing for a global market is different to market specific publishing. The premise is that technology has made content (books, ebooks, websites, resources etc) accessible to a wider range of audiences across the world. This poses new challenges for publishers who need to meet the demands and requirements of a global market.

Publishers generally don’t sell advertising space. There’s an underlying fear that this will have a negative impact on readers. What is this fear based on and are there examples of how this model can work?

One of the criticisms of advertising is that it offends the consumer’s sense of good taste by insulting and degrading his intelligence. But surely that’s a criticism in itself? I’d like to think that as a consumer you are deemed intelligent enough to decide what is the right product for your needs.

Let’s start with some sums and a hypothetical situation for book publishers and an app build…

A team of designers and researchers over at OnlineTeachingDegree.com have designed an infographic highlighting how they believe e-readers are inspiring us (or folks in the States at least) to hit the books.

What do you think? Are e-readers making a difference? Take a look below…

(via Kaitlyn White)

Last week there was a bit of a furore in the publishing world after a Guardian journalist Ewan Morrison slated social media promotion by self published authors, basically saying that as a promotional tool Twitter and Facebook etc were overrated and authors should focus on writing books, probably. I know that was a rabid paraphrase, but do go read the article if you want specifics because it’s interesting and incendiary, which are two of the best things an article can be.

This is a guest post from Kathy Meis, who is founder and president of Bublish, a social book discovery platform that is revolutionizing how writers share their stories and readers find books they’ll love. 

In the world of business journalism, where I come from, the idea of a publishing brand, is common. Forbes, Financial Times, and The Economist are all household names. Book publishing, however, evolved quite differently, primarily because of its distribution and monetization models. Book publishers haven’t traditionally sold directly to their customers nor have they had to worry about making money through advertising, which requires a strong brand and an intimate understanding of one’s readership.

This is a guest post from Margaret Eckel, who is a freelance PR Co-ordinator. You can find her on Linkedin and Twitter.

Earlier this month children’s author G.P. Taylor began a debate on BBC Breakfast by announcing he thought children’s books ought to come with age certifications similar to films.  His comments elicited strong criticism from other children’s authors, including Charlie Higson, who wrote a rebuttal in the Guardian.

It’s not the first time age ratings have come up.  A few years ago, publishers tried to introduce them and were met with resistance from authors, educators and the public.  The No to Age Banding Campaign collected over 4,000 signatures and the idea was dropped.

So why is it back?  Taylor said he believes children’s books have become too scary and that we need to be careful what we expose young readers to.  Higson argued that it is important for children to be able to explore dark themes in books because they experience all sorts of things, are exposed to all sorts of information, and books need to reflect that to be relevant.

My gut reaction to the discussion Taylor sparked is that age certifications are a bad idea, and I spoke to children’s librarian Clare Hartnett and children’s bookseller Kate Agnew, of the Children’s Bookshop in Muswell Hill, to find out what they think about age certifications and scary books for children.

Here’s what I learned…

This a guest post from Simon Appleby, who runs Bookswarm, a digital agency specialising in delivering projects for authors, agents and publishers. Simon has 15 years’ experience of scoping, pitching, architecting and delivering digital projects. He has worked for a number of digital agencies, and more recently has worked client-side at Octopus Publishing Group (a division of Hachette UK), where he ran the e-book conversion programme and worked on a number of iPhone and iPad apps. His first course at the Publishing Training Centre runs at the start of October with co-tutor Zelda Rhiando.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin…

Human beings love stories. Narrative is central to how we make sense of the world around us. It explains religions, superstition, myths and legends, and it’s core to our culture. In fact, in one of my favourite popular science books, The Science of Discworld II: The Globe, the authors, Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, devote themselves to the importance of narrative (or narrativium, as they would have it) to the world, and suggest that instead of Homo Sapiens, a better name for the human species would be Pans Narrans – the Storytelling Ape.

True story: there are some really, absolutely, unquestionably terrible book covers in the world – ones that make you want to approach bookshelves with a flamethrower rather than an open wallet – and while we’d like to curse these to that terrible time in history when ‘fashionable’ was synonymous with ‘seizure’ (the 80s), this isn’t always going to be the case. Given that some people still believe a large stock image and a whacky font is a winning way to represent their title, I don’t think we’re going to be stuck for contenders for the worst book cover award any time soon.

Can’t say there’s been much news this week – no big mergers to report, and no-one has invented the Next Big Thing to save/destroy publishing, which leaves me discussing something rather close to my own heart. Something I see all too often when I’m trawling Twitter, or browsing pins, or trying unsuccessfully to suppress a rage-induced hernia while posting on Facebook.  Something more horrifying than a Justin Beiber fan and more plentiful than 50 Shades of Grey knockoffs.

Last week, a new alliance between supermarket Sainsbury’s and social reading site aNobii rocked the publishing world. As I’ve said before, aNobii have been ramping up their online presence of late and it seems to have paid off with this deal, sparking some discussion as to whether this was Sainsbury’s well and truly making their move into eBook retailing.  But can they realistically take on the giants of the book selling industry? In a fight between young-gun Sainsobii and godly Wamazon*, who would win?