One of the themes mentioned by just about every keynote speaker at the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference last month in New York was Digital Rights Management (or DRM). This is software that prohibits unauthorized copies of media (songs, e-books, etc.). Cory Doctorow of boingboing.net fame gave an impassioned keynote titled “Digital Distribution [...]
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 [...]
Here’s another theme from the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference last month in New York: E-readers. New versions were demoed and, the day before the conference, Amazon had announced they would start delivering the updated version of their popular Kindle Reader. There have also been many articles and blog posts declaring the “death [...]
February 3, 2009 – 2:48 pm
Lately, it seems, not a day goes by without an article, blog post, or interview regarding changes the publishing industry is going through and likely will continue to go through for some time. These changes are affecting all forms of traditional publishing: Magazines are scaled-down versions of their once-robust selves. And have you noticed how [...]
January 14, 2009 – 1:27 pm
Most of the recent posts on Literary Magnet have been about the book publishing business and writing. But I ran across this article about entrepreneurs, and since Creative Byline is a start-up and I’m an entrepreneur, I thought I’d include it. I’m pretty sure that this isn’t the most flattering view of entrepreneurs, as Guy [...]
October 29, 2008 – 2:45 pm
With the radio news and the daily papers headlining the economy every day, it’s a little hard to put the subject out of your mind. That’s led me to think about the economics of the writing life. It’s one thing to be hired to write an article or a brochure and to be paid immediately [...]
September 7, 2008 – 9:03 pm
We’re happy to be getting confirmation (like the one above from Peter G. from Oregon) that the Creative Byline process is doing exactly what we’d intended: helping writers find publishers and present to them their best work. These comments from Creative Byline members tell the story: Keith M, from Illinois, said, “I am very pleased [...]
Based on our poll results, the biggest gripe writers have about the old, paper submission process is “interminable response times” (60%), followed by “rejections that don’t give useful feedback” (23%). What do editors most dislike about the old process? “Having to slog through 100 manuscripts. . .before finding one that shows promise” (35%), “Feeling perpetually [...]
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 [...]
February 8, 2008 – 2:32 pm
Tor Forge, the largest publisher of science fiction and fantasy in the world, is the latest publisher to sign up for Creative Byline. Earlier this week, we trained more than 35 editors at St. Martin’s and Tor Forge and some are already able to accept submissions through Creative Byline. Others will be doing so soon. [...]
