Booksquare

The beauty of the various entertainment industries is that there are many parallels to be drawn. Despite their apparent differences — sound, pictures, and words — are built on common distribution methodologies, they use the same accounting principles as their base (tweaking as necessary), and they make the same mistakes.
As noted about a gazillion times, [...]

I have been thinking a lot about about advertising lately. I have decided, much against my natural skeptical instinct, to accept the theory that it works. This despite the obviously flawed quality and rather obscure messages. Yesterday at the gym, I saw four commercials in a row…and not a single, clear, understandable explanation about the [...]

For the past week, the notion of genre and images has consumed me. Okay, also wondering what’s for lunch, but the genre question has been more than a little all-encompassing. In addition to the fantastic article written by Pam Jenoff for BS last week, back channel discussion about Nicola Griffith’s Always has been happening (Gwenda [...]

The thing that has amazed me the most these past months is the onslaught of publicity given to Andrew Keen. Keen, for those who haven’t had the pleasure, has written a book. Following the traditional author trajectory, he has embarked upon a round of appearances and media carnivals. Given that the circus has been in [...]

So Borders has seen Barnes & Noble and raised the stakes: rather than ad nauseum reprints of classic, public domain cash cows, novels, Borders has gone ahead and published an original novel by a living, breathing author. Living, breathing authors are useful because they can do things like publicity. You don’t see Charles Dickens out [...]

Let me share a sad, sordid tale with you. Be forewarned: I do not look good in this tale and admit to what some might consider an ethical lapse. If you are not willing to have your illusions shattered, read no further.

The sad thing is that the industry has the technology to get this book [...]

[BS: As we are off to attend O'Reilly's Tools of Change conference, we invited a guest writer to fill in. Ronin Kurosawa came highly recommended, though, in retrospect, we should have been more suspicious of his references. Still, we find his reporting to be thorough and excellent reading. One note, however: Ronin seems to be [...]

Now don’t get us wrong, we think that Richard Charkin is a bright, savvy man. We would have, at one point, even suggested that he understood the difference between search and anonymity. Sigh. Let us try this one more time.

Search is not about Google — search is about making sure your customers find you.

Publishers are [...]

Regular readers will recall that “death of the novel” stories appear in traditional print media (also, non-traditional non-print media) with comforting regularity. Sort of like Spring cleaning without the Windex. Somehow, there is an editorial guideline out there that equates “reading elsewhere” with the “death of reading”. We dispute this assertion.

Those who declare that the [...]

We spend quite a bit of time at Booksquare headquarters talking about what’s wrong with the publishing industry. These discussions usually focus on the industry’s seeming fear of new technology and the fact that, some days, it seems like the future of publishing will never happen.
We suspect that it’s not so much a fear [...]