Reprinted here with permission of the author, Matthew Hughes. Keynote Opening Speech to the Surrey International Writers Conference (This is a speech I gave to about six hundred emerging writers a few years ago. I thought it might be inspirational – except for the scary parts) Good morning. I thought I would tell you the story of my life as a writer. It’s meant to be inspiring, though for emerging writers, parts of it may…
I’ve been thinking a great deal more about indie publishers and authors and their standing in the marketplace, stimulated by a read of Aaron Shepard’s book, Aiming at Amazon. The book is a frank insight for indie publishers into the burgeoning world of online booksellers versus bricks and mortar stores. In the book Shepard submits that Amazon sales rankings are definite indicators of a book’s marketing success. He breaks those rankings down thus: Top 10,000….
I’ve been schleping Five Rivers’ books now for a year and have discovered some rather startling facts about the retail book industry, the sort of thing that isn’t written in agreements or contracts, the insider sort of thing a person only learns through experience. One of these discoveries centres around the relationship between publisher and bookseller. I thought it would be a straightforward thing. But no, like everything else in publishing, there are rituals and…
On Sunday, September 27, from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Queen’s Park will be home to more than 200,000 avid readers celebrating literacy and the written word, and this year Five Rivers makes a debut appearance at Toronto’s Word on the Street. If you love books, and you’re in the Toronto area, you need to experience this remarkable book festival. Five Rivers’ booth is FB18, in the Fringe Beat section, south of St. Joseph Street…
I read an article today at Bookseller.com by Benedicte Page entitled ‘Publishers cancelling books to cut costs.’ Needless to say the thrust of the article was rather germane to what’s going on in the publishing world, and in particular to the evolution we’re experiencing here at Five Rivers. Once more it seems the legacy houses are cutting back, claiming publishing Armageddon, only this time they’re cutting not just staff but authors, in fact killing off…