Happy New Year! Time to stop being snooty. It's the first Saturday of the month and you all know probably don't know what that means - The Creative Brief is here!
Aside from goofy resolutions, it's been a busy month in the world of ebooks and book marketing. People are scrambling to predict what's going to happen to books in 2013 and I'm one of them.
Check out the top stories below. They're all indicative of some pretty big trends this year.
Creatively yours,
Blaise Lucey
BlaiseLucey.com
|
 The Death of the E-Reader Plummeting sales show an underlying trend A new study has found that sales of e-Readers like Kindles and Nooks have taken a nosedive: in 2012, the number of e-readers sold dropped by 32%.
The main culprit? Tablet computers, like iPads.
|
 NY Times Turns to ebooks A new way to make news profitable The New York Times is getting into the business of ebooks by partnering with publishing start-up "Byliner."
The goal is to take previously published articles about one particular topic and throw them together to make a topical and timely book.
|
 5 Start-Ups That Will Revolutionize eBooks Games, subscriptions, and online libraries - oh my! A great article on some of the tech companies that have launched with the goal of making eBooks a little more internet-friendly, including:
1. Oyster: A company that will curate free books & deliver them to readers via monthly subscription fee
2. Ownshelf: Start-up focused on creating virtual libraries for people to store and talk about their books.
3. Game of Books: Think reading should be more like a video game? This company does.
4. Coliloquy: Or what about having some control of the latest romance novel? Coliloquy is working on a platform for polling and personalizing content depending on readers.
5. Small Demons: Essentially the organized Wikipedia for book characters, plots, and more.
|
 eBook reading jumps to 23% So... still not that many
When you're on the front-lines of eBook mayhem, it's easy to forget that a lot of people still just aren't reading them.
A new study by Pew Research found that 23% of Americans read an eBook in the past year, up from 16% in 2011.
The study goes on to spell doom for print books: the number of Americans who read printed books fell to 67% in 2012, from 72% in 2011.
The study is of about 2,200 people, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.3%.
So... in other words, printed books are completely fine and ebooks still aren't that popular.
|
 Let's talk Fifty Shades of Grey How E.L. James has the best Facebook Page of all A month ago (or something like it), I talked about five famous authors who were using Facebook and graded them.
Only E.L. James got a non-embarrassing grade, so I decided to revisit her Facebook Page and study exactly how her publishing team keeps the Page whip-and-chains above the rest of author Facebook Pages.
|
...and let's start the new year off with something free.
 My brother started a website to help show off his set design work.
For Christmas, I haphazardly made him a guide about how he can take his blog to the next level.
Even though it may or may not be bad advice.
But he liked it, and you might, too. So here's my free guide. Send it to friends, too -- they'll just have to sign up The Creative Brief to download it.
Download it today and let me know what you think!
Sign up for The Creative Brief email list. |
