Me in Publisher’s Weekly: On Virtual Book Touring
I was recently asked to contribute to The Viral Issue of Publisher's Weekly where I had a few thoughts on virtual touring and the sharing of ancillary book data.
It all comes down to serving the dedicated book fan. Today, that fan has almost unlimited options online, yet they choose to spend their time and money on books. We should use the Web to empower that passion. So far, however, the book industry has remained tied to the idea that everything a publisher touches should be as proprietary as the words inside a book—cover art, author photos, cataloguing taxonomies and, despite our company’s efforts, tour information. Publishers place these bits of ephemera on their own Web sites or in their office databases and are sometimes unwilling to share them freely. It’s rightfully theirs, of course. But if GoodReads, Book Glutton, BookTour or whoever wishes to build a company around bibliophilia, around the act of proclaiming a love of reading and books, why not find a way to assist?