Mark Coker

Back in the early days of ebooks, it was common to hear experts prognosticate that ebook customers would prefer shorter books.

After all, the theory went, ebook readers are on the go, more subject to the ADHD distractions of the Internet, are reading in shorter bursts on mobile devices,...

The U.S. Department of Justice is considering suing Apple and five large U.S. publishers for allegedly colluding to raise the price of ebooks.

At the heart of the issue, I suspect, is concern over the agency pricing model. Agency pricing allows the publisher to set the retail price...

Amazon yesterday launched a broadside against competing ebook retailers when it introduced a new program that requires authors to remove their books from competing retailers.

The new service offering, KDP Select, promises participating authors a shot at earning their share of a $500,000 monthly pool of cash....

Books are moving to a screen near you, says new data released today by Pew Internet Project.

According to Pew, for the month of May 2011, e-reader ownership grew to 12 percent, up from six percent six months ago.

Tablet ownership grew from five percent to eight percent...

Today's indie author revolution can trace its roots back to the Free Speech Movement that began at U.C. Berkeley forty-seven years ago.

I gave a presentation in Berkeley this past Sunday before the Northern California chapter of ASJA where I argued that book publishing...

Have you ever wondered where the most voracious ebook readers live?

I wondered, so I crunched Smashwords ebook sales data from Barnes & Noble for the three month period beginning December 2010 through March 2011. Some of the numbers are surprising (see the last section of the post for my...

A revolution is brewing that will topple Big Publishing as we know it.

At the heart of every revolution is a loss of faith in the prevailing regime.

In Egypt's case, a number of catalysts precipitated the revolution; chief among them an oppressive political environment that offered little...

It's annual prognostication time when folks like me stick out their neck and try to predict the future of book publishing.

I invite you to join in the fun. Brush up your crystal ball and share your publishing predictions for 2011 in the comments field below.

Earlier today, Jeff...

At first glance, Brian S. Pratt of Boswell, Oklahoma, doesn't fit the stereotypical profile of a best-selling author. Yet he, and other indie ebooks authors like him, represent the future of book publishing.

Pratt began publishing with Smashwords (the ebook publishing and distribution platform I run) in early 2009. His...

In July, the Association of American Publishers reported that for the first five months of 2010, eBooks accounted for 8.5 percent of a trade book sales, up from about 3 percent for all of 2009.

Whether you're a self-published indie author or a large traditional publisher,...

Charles Dickens didn't invent serialized novels, but he's certainly one of the best known authors to use the serial approach. Stephen King experimented with the approach in 2000 with his serialized ebook, The Plant.

Whereas the traditional story has a beginning, a middle and an end, the serial...

The ebook market is growing faster as it grows larger.

The International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), in an email to members Friday, reported U.S. wholesale ebook sales for the month of January, 2010 rose 261 percent to $31.9 million from the same period a year ago.

To put this in...

"Color faded from the world for me the moment I heard [my dad] was really gone," recalls John Buffalo Mailer, the youngest son of Norman Mailer.

In this final installment of my two-part interview with John Buffalo Mailer, the 31-year-old progeny reveals intimate details about how his father...

John Buffalo Mailer, the youngest of nine children, grew up in a household that honored the power of the written word.

His father, as you might guess by the name, is Norman Mailer, the two-time Pulitzer-prize-winning American literary giant. His mother, Norris Church Mailer, is an accomplished novelist, painter,...

For one week each year, Rita Toews, 61, a soft-spoken mother of two and grandmother of one, sits at the center of the ebook universe.

Operating from a spare bedroom in her home in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada with her cat Lola by her side ("Every author needs a cat," she...

On the morning of January 19, one week after the earthquake in Haiti, indie author Greg McQueen found himself feeling helpless.

From his home in Denmark, the U.K. transplant, like millions across the globe, was wracked with grief as he watched the tragedy unfold in Haiti. He wanted to help.

The sold-out O'Reilly Tools of Change book publishing conference wrapped up this week with keynoters including Raymond Kurzweil, Tim O'Reilly and HuffPo's very own Arianna Huffington.

A good conference challenges you to stretch your thinking, and in this regard TOC didn't disappoint.

My personal highlights follow:

Killing DRM Softly

O'Reilly...

Print books are like zombies. They don't die easily.

There's a dark side to these zombies of the printed page. We never throw them out, so they're difficult to kill.

We pass them on to friends who read them, and then they pass them on again. We sell them,...

Why do writers write?

Last week, Maria Schneider's popular online writing community, Editor Unleashed, launched an essay competition, challenging writers to write why they write. The top 50 entrants will be published in a free ebook anthology, and the grand prize winner will earn $500.

The answers to...

Does Stephen King still need a publisher?

My previous post was an allegory for why book publishing is like venture capital. Publishers, in exchange for investing their cash, talent and connections, become part owners of the author's book project. Authors agree to share ownership in exchange for the...