Seth Godin, Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, and even billionaire Mark Cuban have gone the DIY route, and now Collins is joining their ranks.

Although she will continue to work with her traditional publisher for other books, Collins was going through her old work recently when she thought that The Bitch would be the perfect eBook. The novel was also a movie, which Collins said “wasn’t that good and didn’t turn out the way that I wanted it to.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

In the interview, Raab (pictured, via) defended her imprint’s standard practice of giving authors a 25% royalty rate for eBooks: “We have an infrastructure to support.” She outlined the values of what traditional publishers have to offer whether they are new in their writing career or established New York Times bestselling authors.

When asked on whether or not she fears big-name writers will take a less traditional publishing route, she replied: “I think about that a lot because I know it’s on authors’ minds. And I think it’s incumbent on every publisher to do a better job than they’ve ever done before — more creative on marketing and eBooks, working in partnership more closely with their authors, keeping them in the loop, publishing more strategically.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Last August, Godin made a surprise announcement: “I’ve decided not to publish any more books in the traditional way.” He then launched the Domino Project through Amazon, publishing 12 books. The list included Do the Work: Overcome Resistance and Get Out of Your Own Way by  Steven Pressfield. General Electric sponsored a free download of that “sponsored book.”

Godin explained why he is stopping in a blog post: “By most of the measures I set out at the beginning, the project has been a success. So why stop? Mostly because it was a project, not a lifelong commitment to being a publisher of books. Projects are fun to start, but part of the deal is that they don’t last forever. The goal was to explore what could be done in a fast-changing environment.” (Via Publishers Lunch)

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

In Godin’s view, libraries should not focus on acquiring large print book collections or implementing eBook lending solutions. He pictured the librarian of the future as a “producer, concierge, connector, teacher and impresario” who helps patrons navigate through that wealth of digital information. What do you think?

Here’s an excerpt from Godin’s blog post: “Wouldn’t you want to live and work and pay taxes in a town that had a library like [this]? The vibe of the best Brooklyn coffee shop combined with a passionate raconteur of information? There are one thousands things that could be done in a place like this, all built around one mission: take the world of data, combine it with the people in this community and create value.“

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The eBook will be free until May 20th. It regularly retails for $7.99. The new publisher began by partnering with Amazon and is also talking with other corporations about future eBook sponsorship.

What do you think about this new kind of eBook funding? Godin explained in the release:  “Since it costs very little to deliver one copy of an ebook, the economics favor sponsorship. By paying the author directly, a sponsor like GE is able to earn the gratitude of hundreds of thousands of readers and spread an idea that matters.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Instead of doing our traditional year-in-review post, we’ve decided to collect the ten most popular stories on GalleyCat each month–sharing the stories that mattered most to our readers. Looking back at these headlines, we can see the hopes, fears, and distractions that obsessed the publishing industry in 2010. Follow this link to see the rest of the year unfold.

1. New York Times Bestseller Seth Godin to No Longer Publish Books Traditionally
2. Women in Publishing Twitter Directory
3. Rooney Mara to Star as Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
4. Haruki Murakami Adaptation: Norwegian Wood Trailer
5. The Worst Negative Book Review Clichés
6. Free Dating Site for Book Lovers
7. Simon & Schuster Publisher Reorganizes
8. Steampunk Sarah Palin
9. Artist Builds Rooms Out of Books
10. Mockingjay Embargo Broken in LA Times Review

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The book will help fans “inspired by” his traditionally published title, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? Readers must purchase the title in a $16 five pack, and Godin did not offer a digital edition. The author intends for readers to write in his workbook while working on team projects.

Check it out: “In the 32 page shipit workbook, we nail the lizard to the wall, identify it, defeat it and make something happen. If you push yourself and your team to get through the workbook, I promise your product will ship (or you’ll know why). I’ve tested this on the road trip, taking thousands of people through it, and it’s working. I hope you’ll discover the same impact. Five copies cost $16 (about $3.20 each) but the price will probably rise after this printing is sold.” (Via Creative Penn)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The post touched a raw nerve in the publishing community, generating over a thousand retweets and comments around the Internet. Godin himself wrote a longer piece about the issue on his blog. We’ve collected a few of these comments below, but read them all at this link. Share your thoughts as well, we will continue to share the debate.

Novelist Colson Whitehead wrote: “Is he going to publish his books….WITH HIS MIND????”

One anonymous reader wrote: “narrative–fiction–takes longer than a Twitter post and is, despite what everyone who is mesmerized by new technology believes–served by a longer gestation period. Although Kerouac believed the first draft was all, most writers benefit from an editor … It’s mystifying why Mediabistro is so ‘fascinated’ by Godin’s ultimately corrosive affect on culture, on art, on the difficult, and the human.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

If you are interested in participating, you can fill out the application here. The application deadline is March 31. We are very interested to see how this promotional experiment turns out–the lecture tour crossed with a business school workshop.

Here’s more from the post: “That’s what this leveraged program is about. Find extraordinary people working in important organizations and give them insight and confidence to bring more leverage to their work, to allow them to use their jobs as a platform for making a difference. A difference at work, a difference to your co-workers and a difference to everyone who is touched by you.”

UPDATE: Godin added this commentary: “Thanks for the link, but I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong conclusion. This isn’t promotional at all (5 days in my office with 11 people isn’t going to sell many books). This is something I’m doing because it’s my passion, not because I’m itching to sell a few books.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

To find out more, we caught up with Vook CEO Brad Inman–who said the company has more than 500 titles planned for 2010. According to Inman, the company shot between six and eight hours of footage for the Rice vook, including a New Orleans tour with her son, Rice interviews, and expert commentary.

The company recently secured $2.5 million in seed funding, and he shared some upcoming projects: “We will be releasing a vook for Seth Godin‘s “Unleashing the Ideavirus” next week, which we’re thrilled about. We have also just released “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” which includes beautiful videos about Lewis Carroll and the Oxford community that inspired him to write this classic tale. We think that people are really going to enjoy it, especially as enthusiasm grows around this story with the Tim Burton movie coming out on Friday.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The whole event will be hosted by author Seth Godin (pictured). Speakers include NY Times contributor Anna Bernasek, former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, business author Tom Peters, wine and social media expert Gary Vaynerchuk. The short conference includes breakfast, idea sharing, and a forum. Each participant receives a signed copy of each panelist’s current book.

Here’s more from the site: “re-Set Business is an innovative speaker series designed for senior-level executives to share thoughts with the world’s leading visionaries about how the world does business in a variety of fields, today and in the future.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

It was not that long ago when people said, “Google, who?” Now, Google has become a verb as in “just Google it”. Google, once only a search engine, is poised to partner with book publishers or perhaps one day go head-to-head.

That’s not all. Since the Year 2000, we’ve seen the creation, rise and sometimes fall of Napster, the iPod, the Kindle, and Smashwords. We’ve seen massive lay-offs at major publishing houses and experimental publishing entities created such as Vanguard Press, Open Road Media and HarperStudio that have challenged the way the book business has existed for the last century.

What changes will we see in the next 10 years? What will life be like for the book publishing industry in 2020? In the next series of articles, we will uncover predictions by some of the industry’s most respected and vocal advocates for change.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Godin’s grim post broke down the problems he saw in the traditional industry, but nevertheless, this market is on the verge of massive changes. Last week, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that he hopes to switch students to digital math and science textbooks, and many companies are vying for control of this digital market.

Here’s more from the post: “They are expensive. $50 is the low end, $200 is more typical. A textbook author in Toronto made enough money from his calculus textbook to afford a $20 million house. This is absurd on its face. There’s no serious insight or leap in pedagogy involved in writing a standard textbook. That’s what makes it standard. It’s hard, but it shouldn’t make you a millionaire.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Jeff VanderMeer sold his newest book, Bookdeath, including chapters like: “How to Use Personal Information About Your Enemies in Your Fiction.” Meanwhile, Publishers Weekly raved about a new reality TV show for writers.

The Kenyon Review has purchased conglomerate publisher Random House for a low six-figure deal. The FBI has deputized the entire team at Writer Beware for a special publishing scam task force: “Rich, Victoria and I will be reporting to Quantico for special training next Monday. At the end of our training, we’ll be issued our badges and guns, and begin our tour of the country.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

“If every time you read a blog post or bit of online content you enjoyed you clicked on an ad to say thanks,” he said, “the economics of the web would change immediately.” Yes, several critics answered, it would—for the worse. J.D. Roth offered a particularly thoughtful response on his Get Rich Slowly blog: While there’s nothing wrong with following up on ads for products that genuinely interest you, “there are long-term ramifications to empty clicks,” he explained. “If an advertiser spends money on a campaign that doesn’t work, it’s not going to renew it.” Instead, Roth proposes, if you like a blog and you really want to help it flourish, you should take active steps to strengthen its audience—get your friends to read it, for example, or mention it on your own web site if you have one. “Trust me,” he says, “if new readers come, revenue will follow.” Instead of creating a extra chore for readers (“I haven’t clicked on an ad here in a while, I suppose”), websites should strive to inspire readers to “spread the word” without thinking twice about it.

This is where authors, publishers, booksellers and others who have built websites, with or without the “support” of advertising, should ponder one question carefully: Why are you cultivating that audience in the first place? Are you creating a pool of potential customers for yourself, or one that you can rent out to the highest bidder? (OK, that was two questions, and, yes, I suppose you could answer the last question with “both.”)

But Godin wasn’t done explaining his theory yet.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.