eBookSummit

Happy Friday! As you head out for the weekend, here is a roundup of eBook news from this week:

Mediabistro successfully hosted our second annual eBook Summit. Check out our coverage here.

We continued to find eBook price disparity between Google and its indie bookseller partners.

Amazon said that they have sold “millions” of Kindles.

Both Ruckus Mobile Media and Random House released kids’ book apps.

Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing released a number of new eBooks.

eBook sales increase numbers made Time Magazine’s Top 10 Everything of 2010 list for numbers.

Kobo celebrated their one-year anniversary.

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

As the book industry evolves, authors are challenged to use online tools to help build their audience. In a panel at the eBook Summit called, “Perspectives on Writing in the 21st Century,” journalist Jon Fine, said that the era of getting a big advance and using it to map out book tour, is a thing of the past. Nowadays, you have to have a blog and a Twitter feed, he said, particularly if you write non-fiction.

Fine also noted the way that blogs can help authors generate their book content. He cited a project by author/blogger Colin Beavan called No Impact Man, in which the writer created a blog about becoming carbon neutral as the basis for his book on the subject. Fine also pointed out that you can have blog readers help you shape the story.

In the same panel discussion, author/journalist/professor Adam Penenberg said blogging and Twitter are important, but finds it challenging. He said that the catch is that when it comes to Twitter, it is easier for authors and personalities who already have a known presence to build a large following.

Penenberg also said that the roles in publishing are changing these days. He said that while in the 1980s editors were focused on finding great talent, today their job is to think about marketing and selling books. From Penenberg’s perspective, agents are now tasked with discovering good talent.

What do you think the role of blogging and Twitter is for authors?

Writing a pitch to describe a book is similar to creating an online dating profile, said Richard Nash, founder of Cursor, at the eBook Summit today.

In a panel called, “How to Get Published: Interactive Pitch Slam,” Nash said that the challenge is that you have to convince a reader to take the time to read a book. “The power and challenge of a book is that it typically takes ten to fifteen hours to consume, which is five times longer than a movie,” he said. “There is a real burden on the consumer to figure out if you want to spend ten to fifteen hours of your life with that authors voice in your head.”

Jason Ashlock, principal at Movable Type Literary Group, recommends that authors get to know their genre before crafting their pitch. “Authors should read in their category and genre to understand where their book fits in,” he said. “You should become a voracious reader, particularly in the category of which you are hoping to enter. Our jobs are made easier if you can clearly articulate to us where your book fits into a person’s library.”

Kate McKean, literary agent at the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency recommends that writers stay on topic. She said that writers shouldn’t come to the table saying how they are not going to be the next best thing and making comparisons, but rather should say what their book is about. “The number one thing I see not happening in pitches is not telling me about your book,” she said. She also reminds writers who are pitching, to “remember that you are talking to a person,” she said. “You should also be a person when you do that.”

Is Nielsen’s BookScan good for writers? This was a question raised at today’s eBook Summit, by author Douglas Rushkoff. He thinks it isn’t.

“BookScan is a writer’s nightmare,” he said. “It generates a kind of accountability that is actually counter productive to business. Banks are not accountable to the present. They are only accountable to the future. BookScan removes speculation from the book industry.”

But while an author may not like to be classified by his or her BookScan figures, the Nielsen data service can still help publishers understand a title. Consultant Jim King, a former BookScan executive, admitted that BookScan is not a forecasting tool, but he said that it is a helpful way to understand how titles are selling.

He did admit that this is easier to do with backlist titles than with new releases, but recommended that publishers use the tool to track the life of the book.

What do you think of BookScan?

Publishers need to learn the DNA of social media and ask themselves, how the social web is affecting their business, said consultant Jim King at the eBook Summit today.

In a presentation called “Who is the Customer: What do Jane Austen, Lady Gaga, and Video Games Have in Common?,” King encouraged publishers to use social media and blogs as locations for doing market research.

“Websites, blogs and social media are becoming the most important points of insights for publishing companies,” he said.

He recommended working with a vendor to help measure these social media sites effectively. King said there were many technology partners out there, but said that publishers should consider the data that they provide and what kind of customer service they offer, when selecting a partner.

In a digital world, we should be worrying less about how to make videos and more about how to find and create good writing, said author Douglas Rushkoff at the eBook Summit.

“Real viral is not a video that people pass,” he said. “Viral means it provokes a cultural immune response. Hemingway having sex with the wrong person or beating something up or is viral. For me, making a video for a book is not viral.”

Rushkoff also used the stage to discuss why he hates iPads. The reason, it is an entertainment tool, not a tool for creating. “It communicates to the user, ‘stay away,’” he said.

Rushkoff recommends that indie authors and publishers take advantage of all of the channels for getting books out. In his presentation, Rushkoff said, “The beauty of being indie is that we are like the rats after the apocalypse. We can exploit every system.”

Building relationships between readers and authors is a great way to market books online, said Brendan Cahill, VP and Publisher, Open Road Media, in a panel today at the eBook Summit.

In the presentation called “Setting the Stage,” Cahill spoke about how Open Road Media uses the Internet to connect their readers to authors. The digital publisher creates author pages with videos and photos, as well as social media accounts to help build a platform for the write online. “We follow the marketing process to empower the author to connect with readers,” he said.

Cahill said that creating a connection with readers is a great way to build readership over an author’s career or to establish an author as an expert on a particular subject.

While Open Road has a marketing budget to create professionally produced videos, Cahill advises authors looking to take a DIY approach and make their own online videos using Flip cameras or home video cameras.

Tomorrow is our second annual eBook Summit at the New Yorker Hotel in New York City.

The day will address the evolving literary landscape, as books move from print to digital, through panels by top industry players. Author/journalist Ken Auletta will address Google’s role in digital publishing. Andrew Weinstein from Ingram will speak about adapting content for eBooks. And execs from Electric Literature, comiXology and Idealogue will speak about digital storytelling. Follow this link to see the whole program.

For more information on how to attend, follow this link. If you can’t be there in person, we’ll be live blogging the event, so follow our blog and Twitter feed.

Mediabistro’s eBook Summit opens on December 15th, 2010, a day-long conference featuring digital publishing pioneers, application creators, literary agents, editors, and digital strategists from major publishers. To prepare, we compiled a Twitter list linking to all the eBook Summit at GalleyCat. Beaufort Books called it “a who’s who of digital and print publishing.”

Register for the eBook Summit here and then add your Twitter handle in the comments section–we will add your name to the list. We hope to host an engaging and practical dialogue about the future of publishing, both online and offline–the conversation starts with this directory.

You can check out the complete program here. At the summit will will also share the Best eBooks and the Best eBook Apps, so follow those links to add your nominations to the growing lists.

Last night we held our first annual eBook Summit book pitch party. At the event, ten finalists gave their two-minute book pitches to a room full of publishing folks and our distinguished judges.

The pitch party winners were: The Robin Hood of Harlem: The Complex Criminal Life of Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson, a biography by Margaret Johnson and Leonard J. Greene; No More Tears: A Mom’s Guide to 50 Fabulous Trips, a travel guide by Anne Uglum; and The Speed At Which I Travel, an earthbound sci-fi novel by Chris Cole. Meet the other finalists below. Follow this link to read more about the other seven finalists.

These three writers won tickets to our eBook Summit on December 15th. Judges of the contest — literary agent Kate McKean, Movable Type Literary Group founder Jason Allen Ashlock, and Cursor founder Richard Nash– will share book proposal advice for all writers in a panel discussion at the event.

The one-day summit will feature practical case studies from a range of publishers:  Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Mischief and Mayhem, Open Road Media, and HarperCollins. The program also includes digital survival tips from writers Douglas Rushkoff and Ken Auletta. For more information on the eBook Summit, follow this link.