September 15, 2009 – 2:38 pm
When we launched Creative Byline early last year, one of the underpinnings of the value proposition was that writers (and really any creative type) are a smart lot. They don’t need to be talked down to about the business of writing and publishing. In fact, as the digitization of the written word continues, the need [...]
As I suggested in the last post, publishers have played the role of gatekeeper in the book industry. They filter millions of potential books (in the form of manuscripts) down to ones that they stake their reputations (brands) on. There are other filters in the book publishing eco-system: agents, brick-and-mortar bookstores (they can’t stock all [...]
A local restaurant owner uses this tagline to promote his small chain of (of course) steak houses. This kitschy slogan made me think about traditional publishers and their value proposition: selecting manuscripts and turning them into books that people want to buy, and doing this consistently. In a way, they stake their reputations (brands) on [...]
There are complex brand issues that emerge from the “author-as-brand” versus the “publisher as brand” evolution (assuming the publisher was ever really the true brand). To me the central question is: What’s the relationship between the author’s brand and the publisher’s brand? In what model might they coexist in the marketplace? Hold that thought.
At the [...]
We at Creative Byline subscribe to many newsfeeds, blogs, and newsletters about publishing and writing. As a result, we come across many interesting perspectives and new insights about the business. Here are a few from the last week or so:
On her blog, Gretchen McNeil featured an interview with agent Ginger Clark about the trends in [...]
February 20, 2009 – 10:16 am
I attended the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference last week in New York. It was well attended by an interesting mix of old-world publishing types and new-media technology types. There were a lot of predictions and pontifications, but some common themes emerged. I’ll share a few of them—at least as I saw them—over [...]
There’s a good reason Creative Byline requires writers to include an outline as part of the submission package. While we were in the development stage of Creative Byline, editors told us they would prefer to know the manuscript is completed, but because a chapter-by-chapter outline shows the writer has thought through the entire story, an [...]
January 5, 2008 – 3:21 pm
We spent several years researching the submissions problem, and then we built the best manuscript submission system we knew how. Now we’re eager to know how we did–and people are telling us. We don’t mind constructive criticism (that’s one way we’ll know how to make it better) but we also don’t mind when clients take the time to tell us we got it right.
Here’s [...]
October 3, 2007 – 12:05 am
The submission process is every writer’s favorite whipping boy. Writers complain about having to wait six to 12 months for a response to their submissions, and when a response finally does arrive, it rarely contains any feedback about how to make the manuscript stronger. Furthermore, writers are frustrated by the lack of access as more [...]
