Top HeadlinesGoogle's Susan Wojcicki says the viral success of a Pepsi prank video shows how online ad viewing is becoming a voluntary experience where marketers strive to produce content viewers want to watch. Read More »Paywalls can bring in extra revenue for newspapers and other traditional media outlets, and they can help keep existing readers from leaving -- but how do they help bring in new readers? And what happens if they don't? Read More »BajaLibros, a large Spanish-language digital bookstore headquartered in Argentina, announced its launch in the United States Wednesday. But the company may have trouble breaking through because Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple have all also launched Spanish-language bookstores in the U.S. Read More »Read Petite, an e-singles subscription site, will launch in the U.K. this fall. Waterstones founder Tim Waterstone is chairman. The site was founded by literary agent Peter Cox and consultant Martyn Daniels. Read More »Although its Storyboard editorial operation won awards for the content it curated from the Tumblr network, founder and CEO David Karp said Tuesday the unit is being shut down and all the editorial staff are being let go. Read More »People wondered why Google sold Frommer's Travel barely nine months after acquiring it in the first place. The answer is that it's keeping a huge number social media followers from sites like Facebook. Read More »There's been plenty of focus on how publishers are catering to advertisers by producing "native" advertising, including sponsored content -- but a much bigger trend is brands and advertisers that are becoming publishers themselves. Read More »Mendeley, an open collaboration platform for scientific research, has promised that it won't become less open after being acquired by journal publisher Elsevier, but some prominent users aren't waiting around. Read More »Nonprofit Worldreader says that its e-reading app, which is aimed at users in the developing world on 2G networks, is now installed on over 5 million feature phones worldwide. The platform counts 500,000 active readers a month. Read More »Barnes & Noble has rebranded its self-publishing platform, PubIt!, as Nook Press, and is offering some new features intended to make self-publishing faster and easier. The platform is only available to authors in the U.S. Read More »A new site called Blackstrap will let you turn the articles you've saved on Instapaper, Pocket or Twitter into a $15 printed book. But does anybody actually need this service? Read More »In a new book, former Kindle exec Jason Merkoski examines where e-reading platforms are now and how they could change in the future. If you're looking for secrets about Jeff Bezos, though, you're in the wrong place. Read More »Digital First Media chief executive officer John Paton says that paywalls aren't the answer for newspapers, and that print is eventually going to go away -- which is why the company needs to take more risks. Read More »BuzzFeed has become the poster child for what some call sponsored content or "native advertising," but despite the skills of founder Jonah Peretti, the secret to making ads go viral is not quite as simple as it appears to be. Read More »In "The Slow Death of the American Author," Scott Turow decries the state of the country's copyright system. He gets it wrong and hurts the Authors Guild's standing among potential allies. Read More »The Week surprised the publishing industry by carving out a profitable place in the competitive world of magazine news. Now, it is building up its operations for the digital long term. Read More » |