Publishing Talks: David Wilk interviews Mark Coker, Founder of Smashwords
November 18, 2009 by David
Filed under PublishingTalks
In this series of interviews, called Publishing Talks, I am talking to book industry professionals who have varying perspectives and thoughts about the future of publishing, books, and culture. This is a period of disruption and change for all media businesses. Publishing has been a crucial part of human culture for as long as people have been writing and reading. How will publishing evolve as our culture is affected by technology, climate change, population density, and the ebb and flow of civilization and its economics? Publishing Talks interviews help us understand the outlines of what is happening, and how we might ourselves interact with and influence the future of publishing as it unfolds.
Publishing Talks interviews give people in the book business a chance to talk about ideas and concerns in a public forum that are often only talked about “around the water cooler,” at industry conventions and events, and in emails between friends. This series of talks will give people inside and outside the book industry a chance to hear about some of the thoughts, ideas and concepts that are currently being discussed by engaged individuals within the industry.
Mark Coker is the founder of Smashwords, an online publishing and distribution platform for ebooks. Smashwords publishes and distributes more than 4,000 original ebooks on behalf of 2,000 independent authors and 70 small publishers around the world. They have recently made distribution deals with Barnes & Noble and Indigo’s new Shortcovers program as well. I have recommended Smashwords to a number of authors and publishers who want to experiment with digital publishing.
Mark has been a long time technology entrepreneur. He talks here about the founding of Smashwords and why he started it. He has many interesting and valuable things to say about digital publishing and how technology is changing the future of books and reading. His approach to publishing is creative and usefully disruptive. You can read some of his thoughts in the new book section of Huffington Post, where he is blogging regularly.
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Publishing Talks: David Wilk interviews Richard Nash
November 13, 2009 by David
Filed under PublishingTalks
In this new series of interviews, called Publishing Talks, I am talking to book industry professionals who have varying perspectives and thoughts about the future of publishing, books, and culture. This is a period of tremendous disruption and change for all media businesses. Publishing has been a crucial part of human culture for as long as people have been writing and reading. How will publishing evolve as our culture is affected by technology, climate change, population density, and the ebb and flow of civilization and its economics?
Many people are thinking deeply – and some acting on – the nature of change and the challenges and opportunities that face us all. Publishing Talks interviews help us understand the outlines of what is happening, and how we might ourselves interact with and influence the future of publishing as it unfolds.
Publishing Talks gives people in the book business a chance to talk about ideas and concerns in a public forum that are often only talked about “around the water cooler,” at industry conventions and events, and in emails between friends. This series of talks will give people inside and outside the book industry a chance to hear about some of the thoughts, ideas and concepts that are currently being discussed by engaged individuals within the industry.
Richard Nash is an independent publishing consultant and entrepreneur, presently developing a start-up portfolio of social publishing communities/imprints. For most of the past decade, he ran the iconic indie Soft Skull Press for which work he was awarded the Association of American Publishers’ Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing in 2005. Books he edited and published landed on bestseller lists from the Boston Globe to the Singapore Straits-Times and on Best of the Year lists from The Guardian to the Toronto Globe & Mail to the Los Angeles Times In 2006, Publishers Weekly picked him as one of the ten editors to watch for in the coming decade. This year the Utne reader named him of the Fifty Visionaries Chaning Your World, and Mashable picked as the #1 Twitter User Changing the Shape of Publishing. Richard’s blogs at the eponymous Richard Eoin Nash – The Blog.
“If you like massive anxiety attacks, go watch Soft Skull’s former boss Richard Nash speak at a conference as you battle a hangover.”
Richard and I had a terrific talk beginning with his history in publishing and now what he is doing to help reinvent it with his new business, Cursor, a portfolio of niche social publishing communities, one of which will be called Red Lemonade (which has an interesting live link here.)
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