All Episodes
Best of BTB: What Makes a Book a Book?
For publishers, authors and their readers, 2010 will likely go down as the year when e-books finally and decisively won a permanent place in the literary hierarchy. At Beyond the Book, we've followed in recent weeks a number of angles in this important story: Covering...
BTB #156: Report: ‘The State of Copyright Age’
Traveling this weekend to New York City for the sold-out “Tools of Change (TOC 2010)” publishing industry conference? Consider putting on your schedule Copyright in Motion featuring Ned May, Director & Lead Analyst of the research firm Outsell. Monday, February 22, at...
BTB #155: The Printed Word: ‘A Technology’ like all others
In an interview recorded last month at Digital Book World on the morning before Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad, Evan Schnittman tells Chris Kenneally that even in a world dominated by bits and bytes, “Print is not going away. Print is a different metaphor, it’s a...
BTB #154: Before Google ‘Fairness’ Hearing, Wasoff Reviews Latest
A class action lawsuit of historic scope. An Internet Goliath. Thousands of authors, publishers and other rightholders. National governments and multi-national corporations. These are the ingredients of a dish called the Google Book Settlement. First announced in...
BTB #153: From the Frontlines of the E-book Wars
Ten years ago, when the “Big Bang” of online media gave birth to rudimentary e-readers, devices like the Rocket promised the moon but didn’t quite deliver. Today, the e-readers have proliferated in a kind of arms race underwritten by Sony, Amazon, Apple and even media...
Live Webcast: From the Frontlines of the E-book Wars
From the debut of the iPad to MacMillan’s challenge of Amazon’s pricing model for Kindle book downloads, the news in recent weeks on the multiple fronts in the electronic publishing revolution has raised many questions and heightened concerns for the future of our...
BTB #152: With E-Books, Take Time & Be Sure
In the middle of the e-book hurricane, it may be time for some calm thinking – along with a little debunking. Founder of Unlimited Publishing and book industry analyst Danny O. Snow tells Chris Kenneally now is a good moment for publishers and authors to stop all the...
BTB #151: OnCopyright 2010, Where Ideas Collide (Not People)
When it comes to typical conferences on the topic of copyright, four forces – technology, society, law, and the arts – interact to generate a charged debate. Conference organizer Bill Burger tells Chris Kenneally that OnCopyright 2010 will be different. For this...
BTB #150: Electric Literature Is Shiny New Home for Fiction
Tired of hearing that literary fiction is doomed in the digital age? Well, Scott Lindenbaum and Andy Hunter, were – in fact they became so tired of hearing that Kindles and computers were killing literary fiction, the pair from Brooklyn College started an online...
BTB #149: Bringing Data to the Debate on E-book ‘Piracy’
As e-readers and e-books gather momentum in the early days of 2010, some book publishers find themselves on the horns of a marketing dilemma. Do they join the new e-book club to capture sales, or do they stand back to keep their content safe from online "pirates"? In...
BTB #148: In Soho, A Digital Start-up From the Book World
When Jane Friedman and Jeff Sharp first became business partners several years ago at HarperCollins, they sought to join the eye of a Hollywood film producer for a striking image and the ear of a publishing executive for evocative language. The pair have since carried...
BTB #147: Journalism Doesn’t Pay
The self-supporting journalist, making a living from assignment to assignment, is an endangered species. James Rainey, who reports "On the Media" for the Los Angeles Times, has recently documented the decline of freelance writing. Payment in the low-two figures is a...