OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn
Podcast: Download (Duration: 33:50 — 7.7MB)
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Kirk Biglione is a new media consultant, writer and technologist. In addition to his extensive Internet experience, Kirk has also worked in radio and the music industry. He is Principle at Oxford Media Works, co-founder of MediaLoper and partner at Quartet Press.
In this brilliant podcast, Kirk and I discuss ebooks and the future of digital media, as well as various forms of social media opportunities for authors.
In this podcast, you will learn:
- What’s going on with ebooks right now?
- The convergence of technologies with openness by publishers plus new marketplaces for digital media
- Ebook sales to voracious readers who buy a lot of books – a surprising shift of book sales to digital because e-readers buy more books
- More innovation, experimentation with devices and platforms to come
- On the Google Book Search settlement
- Will Apple save the digital publishing industry?
- The future is multi-platform and multi-device
- As an author, you need to be more aggressive in your marketing to stand out from the crowd
- Why ebooks don’t seem to be a global platform yet: wireless carrier issues, regulatory concerns and copyright by territory. All these currently stop the global sale of ebooks, even for self-published authors.
- The future could be licensed by language instead of territory to ensure global penetration
- My own frustrations over Scribd.com not allowing non-US publishers
- The Cool-er reader deal with Google Books
- What e-formats should you publish in? On ePub, PDF and mobi.
- On Smashwords.com: How the platform formats your book for you and is an immediate marketplace. It also distributes on the iPhone through Stanza and now has a deal with Barnes & Noble
- On Piracy vs Obscurity. Digital piracy is reality, but worse than that is no-one even knowing about you. (Quote attributed to Tim O’Reilly).
- DRM (Digital Rights Management) is a ‘locked-up” ebook but this doesn’t guarantee that the book won’t be pirated.
- Kirk’s take on Gary Vaynerchuk’s social media success. “Try anything without fear of failure…don’t give up”.
- How building a fantastic author platform can help you get a book deal and why that attracts publishers who understand social media
- Has social media replaced Search Engine Optimisation? Does your personality and reputation matter more than the keywords people use to find you?
- On Twitter and StumbleUpon for traffic, and at least monitoring Twitter for your reputation if you don’t want to join in. But it’s definitely in the top 2 or 3 things you want to do for author/book marketing
- On Quartet Press, a new digital publishing house. What it means for authors.
- About Booksquare University and why authors need to know about social networking and other ways to promote themselves. Tweetcamp was the first course, with Facebook to come next.
You can find Kirk Biglione on Twitter @kirkbiglione
That was a very interesting and informative interview.
And another corroboration that 2010 will be the turning point for ebooks. (Or perhaps we’ve already passed the point.)
Thanks very much Joanna and Kirk!
–MP
Great podcast full of valuable information. Thanks!
Thanks esp. for the question, “What about piracy?” I hear this all the time from other authors and have not been able to successfully explain that it’s not a reason to let that hold them back from making an ebook. Now I can direct them to this podcast.