Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Conversations on the Future of Publishing

Michael Wolf, the Vice President of Research at GigaOm, today released a podcast interview with me. You can access it here at his podcast site, Elitzr.

It was a wide-ranging conversation. We talked about our progress at Smashwords; best practices of the most successful indie authors; why a great book is an author's single most important marketing tool; ebooks as apps; how the power of publishing is shifting to indie authors and small publishers; the future of Big Publishers; the changing attitudes toward self-publishing; and what's next for Smashwords.

My thanks to Michael Wolf for helping to shine a bright light on indie ebook revolution.

What Can Big Publishers Learn from Self-Publishers?

This Thursday at 10am Pacific, I'm participating in a free O'Reilly webcast titled, What Traditional Publishers Can Learn from Self-Publishers.

Fellow panelists include Chad Jennings of Blurb, Pete Nikolai of Thomas Nelson Publishers, and Bob Young of Lulu. Click here to register and learn more.

The panel is led by the amazing Joe Wikert, General Manager and Publisher at O'Reilly Media. Joe also writes the Publishing 2020 blog. A bit of trivia: Back in early 2008, Joe was among the first three people to receive an advance sneak peak of the Smashwords platform pre-launch. The other two were David Rothman, the founding editor of Teleread, and Eoin Purcell in Ireland.

REPLAY AVAILABLE: Click here to listen to the archived replay until September 22, 2011.

8 comments:

D Doyle Reynolds said...

Very nice. I hope this podcast is made available afterwards as I am not available at 10am this Thursday. Good work though!

Anonymous said...

Yes ... I second what Doyle Reynolds is saying. Would love to have a podcast version of this webinar.

Anonymous said...

I'll chime in as number 3 ;) Especially since it's Thursday at 1pm now...

Webbiegrrl Writer said...

I clicked through to O'Reilly's page for the webcast and it does not have any links to a transcript. I then clicked through to the O'Reilly YouTube Channel and do not see any listing for this specific webcast (out of 200+ a search yielded nothing on self-publishing).

If you have a link to a transcript (printed, so we can read it) or a recording (MP3) we can listen to as a podcast, please provide the link--maybe post another blog entry announcing it? The "What Big Publishers Can Learn from Self-Publishers" bit was virtually buried in this post :-(

Dovetail Public Relations said...

O'Reilly's planning to release an archive of the call, possibly as early as later today. Once I get confirmation it's up, I'll add a note here and in Site Updates.

LB Andy Andrews said...

This was an outstanding conversation. Mark has Smashwords in great position at the perfect time. I'm impressed and encouraged.

Dovetail Public Relations said...

Just posted the replay link at the end of the post. Good until September 22.

Deirdra A. Eden said...

You have a fabulous blog! I’m an author and illustrator and I made some awards to give to fellow bloggers whose sites I enjoy. I want to award you with the Best Books Blog Award for all the hard work you do!

I invite you to follow me, if you haven’t already done so, since we have a lot in common, but no pressure. I’m not giving you the award just so you will follow me. You really do deserve it!
Take care:-)

Go to http://astorybookworld.blogspot.com/p/awards.html and pick up your award.
~Deirdra

P.S.

Since you are an avid reader I was wondering if I could interview you and get your insights into the books you enjoy.

I'm also looking to interview published authors (agented, self published, small press, etc.) to find out what they wrote and what the pathway to publishing was like for them.

Let me know if you are interested in being interviewed and I will send over the questions you can fill out at your leisure. My email address is Guidedhope (at)gmail(dot)com.