BookNet Canada

When other resources are in short supply, the one thing all publishers always have more than enough of is content. So how do you maximize that resource to help you reach new audiences? As a preview of the panel he'll be joining at our Tech Forum conference on March 24 in Toronto, McSweeney's Jordan Bass joins us on the podcast this month to talk about their approach to repurposing content. (Find t...

This month in the BookNet Canada podcast we talk with Ashleigh Gardner, Head of Partnerships at Wattpad about the evolution of Wattpad as a company, their models for monetizing content, and some of the things Wattpad has learned from their largest audience - the under 30 set. Ashleigh also talked to us a little bit about Wattpad's newest app, Tap, and it's freemium, candy-crush-like model. (Find t...

In this mini episode, we run through the bookish highlights of 2016, including the current size of the Canadian book market, industry updates, and new research on consumer buying habits. (Find the transcript here: https://www.booknetcanada.ca/blog/2017/1/31/podcast-a-look-back-at-2016).

In the second part of our series on the print book and why it won't be going away any time soon, we talk with David Sax, the author of the new book, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter. With the recent resurgence of brick-and-mortar bookstores and the plateauing of ebook sales, David sees a bright future ahead for physical books and the people who love them. (Find the transcript...

Is the print book as a technology underrated? In this month's episode, Joanne McNeish, a professor who studies the resilience of incumbent technologies, discusses why readers prefer print books, the challenges ebooks will have to overcome to be more competitive, and why we shouldn't expect physical books to ever be replaced entirely. Stay tuned for Part 2 in December 2016. (Find the transcript her...

At last year's ebookcraft conference, Teresa Elsey, the Digital Managing Editor of the Trade & Reference Division at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, shared her experiences maintaining backlist ebooks with her team. Besides the technology advances that affect the quality of those earlier conversions, she explained that those backlist ebooks aren't getting any more semantic, aren't getting any more legal...

Publishers opening their own physical bookstores seems to be all the rage these days. We sit down with two Canadian publishers—House of Anansi and Penguin Random House Canada—to talk about their new shops and why they've decided to take the plunge into brick-and-mortar. (Find the transcript here: https://www.booknetcanada.ca/blog/2016/9/26/podcast-publishers-enter-the-bookstore-game).

Long live the audiobook! Thanks to smartphones, podcasts, and our oh-so-busy lives, the digital audiobook is making a comeback. We talk with some industry players to discuss the format's reinvention, how the industry is adapting to increased demand, and where Canadian-produced audiobooks fit into all this. (Find the transcript here: https://www.booknetcanada.ca/blog/2016/7/27/podcast-the-audiobook...

Laura Brady, ebook developer and principal of Brady Type, joins the BookNet podcast to educate us about the benefits and challenges associated with bringing accessible features to ebooks in Canadian publishing. We talk about ableist privilege, InDesign quirks, and if the future of print and digital in harmony includes coding that old book smell. (Find the transcript here: https://www.booknetcanada...

After another round of inspiring talks, illuminating research, and innovative ideas at our annual Tech Forum conference on digital developments in the book publishing industry, we're here to share some highlights from the conference. We've got consumer research on how millennials buy and read books, how and why the industry should work to include more diverse voices, five recommendations for impro...

It's been a big year for adult colouring books in Canada: they've dominated the non-fiction bestseller lists, adults are frequenting drinking 'n' colouring nights, and everyone seems to have an opinion about the trend. So are they on the decline, or here to stay? We investigate by examining sales trends from the past year, talking with consumers and experts on the subject, and surveying adult colo...

Kaya Thomas, creator of the app We Read Too, joins BookNet on the podcast this month. While still in her undergrad at Dartmouth College, Kaya developed We Read Too—a book resource application that showcases a directory of hundreds of children's and young adult fiction books written by and for people of colour—which contains over 600 books and has over 4,000 downloads. Kaya has held software engine...

Can quantitative analysis be used to predict bestselling or prize-winning books? We discuss this question and more with Andrew Piper, an associate professor at McGill University where he's also the director of .txtLAB, a digital humanities laboratory focused on applying computational approaches to literature and culture. This month, it's all about how data can be used to better understand books. (...

In this month's episode, we ask our Bibliographic Manager, Tom Richardson, to ruminate on how subject metadata can be optimized to better serve the book industry. Strap in for 20 minutes of subject codes, meandering, and lots of telling it like it is. (Find the transcript here: https://www.booknetcanada.ca/blog/2016/1/29/podcast-best-practices-for-book-classification). Looking for the keywords whi...

BookNet Canada invites Canadian publishing superstars Allister Thompson, Leonicka Valcius, and Rachel Letofski to discuss the growing trend of adults purchasing Young Adult books for themselves, but misidentifying the target audience for those books as adult. According to a report put out by BookNet Canada entitled The Canadian Book Buyer 2015, consumers think they're buying 14% juvenile and 50% f...

There are three iron laws of information age creativity, freedom, and business, woven deep into the fabric of the Internet's design, the functioning of markets, and the global system of regulation and trade agreements. You can't attain any kind of sustained commercial, creative success without understanding these laws—but more importantly, the future of freedom itself depends on getting them right...

This week’s episode is very meta, in that it’s a podcast about podcasting. If your mind is still intact after being so spectularly blown, and if you’re interested in how podcasting can help you build a relationship with your audience, then you should definitely give it a listen. The talk is from Anshuman Iddamsetty, who up until recently hosted Hazlitt Magazine’s book podcast, The Arcade. (It was...

With the growth of subscription services such as Scribd and Oyster, and sites such as Pottermore, many publishers are starting to think differently about their businesses. The time has come for experimenting with conversion architectures: business models that involve attracting an audience, retaining it in various ways (website visits, email lists, newsletters, etc.) and monetizing it. Brian O'Lea...

Striking a balance between books, games, and community. Keith Fretz of Scholastic US explores three main components of a successful transmedia property: attracting and retaining interest with gamification, using usage data to inform the evolution of your product, and building and maintaining a vibrant community. Presentation slides: http://www.slideshare.net/booknetcanada/transmedia-success-striki...

As more and more publishing houses bring in talented digital employees there’s a likely clash of cultures on the horizon. How can publishers with their rich history work alongside technologists and their history of “disrupting” everything? A sometimes humorous, sometimes frustrating, but ultimately optimistic look at the future of the people behind the books. (Find the transcript here: https://www...

Drawing on their extensive history with the middle school market, Melanie Jeffs from Orca Book Publishers will examine how engagement, not only with customers but with staff and authors, can inform content generation as well as lead to successful marketing strategies that result in increased print and digital sales. Slides are available at http://www.slideshare.net/booknetcanada/engaging-everyone-...

BookNet Canada conducts regular market research and consumer research, giving you a detailed picture of the Canadian book market and Canadian book buyers. In this session, Noah Genner will present some of BookNet's recent research, including not-yet-released stats. Presented by Noah Genner at Tech Forum 2015 / BookNet Canada / March 12, 2015 (Find the transcript here: https://www.booknetcanada.ca/...

Is there a difference between readers who mainly purchase heavily discounted ebooks versus those who pay full price? How about readers who purchase an ebook as soon as it's available, compared to readers who wait until the ebook price drops in correspondence with the trade paper release? What about readers who make spontaneous purchases, like Daily Deals? In this presentation, Kobo Director of Mer...

Many publishers are interested in bundling ebooks and print books, but don't know where to start. Will ebook bundling erode traditional ebook sales? Which price points are most likely to attract readers to bundle their books? Can ebook bundling be used as a discoverability strategy? And, what are the different options available to publishers who want to start offering print and ebook bundles? Mary...

Concerns about ebooks “killing” publishing are just the latest in a centuries-long tradition of worrying unnecessarily about the end of reading. The rise of ebooks and, not by coincidence, big data, will be good for reading, writing, publishing, and bookselling, or at least for the people who learn to embrace them. Everyone else is right to be worried. Kevin Ashton draws on his experience as a boo...