From Start to Finish: First-Time Author Celebrates Success of The RV Centennial Cookbook

What a miraculous idea. Travel across the country in a vehicle reminiscent of a home?  The American people have been doing just that since 1910 in recreation vehicles of all different sizes. The year 2010 marked a century of RVing, and the occasion didn’t go unnoticed. The Recreation Vehicle Industry Association (RVIA) dubbed the year the “RV Centennial Celebration,” meant to commemorate the joy people get from RVing.

Borders Reorganization Plan, Will It Work?

Feb. 16, 2011, isn’t a significant date to most people. For Borders Inc., however, it is a date probably still ringing in the ears of executives and employees. On that date, Borders Inc. filed for bankruptcy.

Electronic or Traditional Books? An Irrelevant Question

The battle continues as the printed book industry fights the crippling effects of e-books. Undeniably, the increasingly popular new technology has bullied the dwindling traditional medium. E-book sales trumped hardback sales this summer, consumption of the former swelling 191 percent from last year, as reported by The Association of American Publishers . Contrarily, the printed book saw sales decrease in every category but one.

Literary Reviews- Old School vs. New School

Well, it was bound to happen. Book reviews have now moved online as book bloggers fill the gap left by increasingly limited print reviews. Many publishing companies are very supportive of these book bloggers, most of whom work for free simply for the love of spreading the word about good books.

Amazons Kindle Books Outsell Hardbacks

Amazon Kindle book sales are now outselling Amazon’s hardback books in the U.S. Amazon says in the last month they have sold 180 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books. This includes the sales of hardcover books that aren’t being sold in a Kindle book form. Although Amazon hasn’t revealed its sale of paperback books it is still believed that they are selling more paperbacks than Kindle books currently. This could in part be due to the fact that Amazon has millions of books on site but only 630,000 Kindle books available.

Where will books end up?

Matt Stewart, a San Francisco-based writer, posted his entire book, The French Revolution, on Twitter. All 95,000 words of it. This experiment took him four months and 5,000 tweets to complete. With the advancement of technology and all the new forms of communication, Stewart was seeking another way to reach his audience. Now his book is coming out in print form but that isn’t stopping him from trying to make book reading more interesting. He has teamed up with Ricoh Innovations to create a free companion iPhone application to the book. He is intrigued with the idea of giving books the same kind of bonus features and deleted scenes as movies have. An iPad would be able to do this, showing pictures of different locations from the book and interviews, but not many people are reading books on the iPad yet.

From the Publisher’s Desk: Taming (or Not) the Textbook Market

A recent article at Inside Higher Ed, “Taming the Textbook by Market” by Steven J. Bell, takes yet another look at the ever-increasing price of textbooks and posits yet another solution to the problem. As he writes: “What if instead of being forced to buy a $160 textbook, your students had access to a compendium of online resources handpicked and customized by you [the instructor], and available at no cost to them, unless they preferred to purchase a low-cost, print-on-demand copy?”

What if, indeed?

From the Publisher’s Desk: The Semi-Latest Book Publishing Industry News, 4/3/10

So this Saturday finds me up at the office with the blinds shut on my window while getting caught up on a variety of things that I didn’t get done during this four-day week that had a two-day trip out to Abilene wedged into it to discuss all things wind energy: approving pending requisitions, sending out belated emails, and closing out weekly reports. Plus, to top it all off, with all the running around, I didn’t even remotely have time to watch over my rss feeds like I normally would so that’s why this is the semi-latest publishing news as it comes from the week of March 22-26. On the other hand, this week’s news has been dominated by all things iPad and until I actually get to play around with one, I’ll try to stay out of that discussion.

From the Publisher’s Desk: Top Book Publishing Industry News 3/5-3/19/10

The conversation piece on my desk this week has been this coffee mug that Wes & Sheila picked up from another publisher—a venerable, long-time university press—at the TCCTA convention week before last. If I was still teaching, I could use it in class to illustrate the definition of disingenuous. I mean, c’mon people! If you’re not trying to sell books, make money, make a profit (if for no other reason than to keep your hard-working employees gainfully employed), then what are you doing in an exhibit hall trying to pick up textbook adoptions!?! Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not exactly the most money-grubbing book publisher alive—I’m working on it, though—but we can all at least be honest about what we’re doing and what effects we’re hoping to achieve.