Forbes Column 08: Web-Savvy Authors Reap Fame, Fortune

My new column on Forbes, Web-Savvy Authors Reap Fame, Fortune tells Elle Newmark’s story of how she got to a seven-figure book deal using the Internet and print-on-demand technology.

Book Business

The Economist echoes what I wrote in Forbes recently: The book business is going to change in favor of authors. “Publishing has only two indispensable participants: authors and readers. As with music, any technology that brings these two groups closer makes the whole industry more efficient—but hurts those who benefit from the distance between them.”

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What’s WRONG With Publishing (Really)?

Why am I down on the publishing world? It’s starting to make little sense why I would write something that while widely read could be given out in a “cleverer” format. Doing a book with a major corporation just starts to seem…odd, given the proclivities in which I do everything else now. With that far-reaching statement, and by means of explaining my thought process, here is why publishing, as the kids say, needs to man up and change itself.

Interdigital: Key Valuation Assumptions

By Vijay Nagarajan, Guest Author As I mentioned in the prequel, the uncertainties surrounding the IP business model and also its new ASIC ventures make it impossible to come up with an accurate mathematical model for Interdigital’s valuation. Nonetheless, I have made certain simplifying assumptions to make the problem more tractable.

Money for Nothing, Books for Free

Well, not really. Have you written a book? Do you aspire to write one? Read this piece from Fortune: Author Paulo Coelho’s profitable Net obsession

Deal Radar 2008: Amie Street and the Twenty First Century Renaissance

AmieStreet.com is an online music destination that allows (a) musicians to release, (b) music fans to discover, and (c) listeners decide the price they would like to pay for new and independent music over the Internet. The site has excellent music. In August 2007, Amie Street raised an undisclosed amount of Series A round of

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Re-engineering the Book Business: Blurb CEO, Eileen Gittins (Part 2)

SM: What was the market landscape like when you founded the company? EG: Well for one thing, Blurb was a very contrarian play at the time. VCs were funding blogging platforms and social networks and online plays – and here we were taking bits back into atoms. But fortunately I had good relationships in the

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