Blog — BookNet Canada

industry commentary

New Bestsellers List for Indies

There’s a new bestsellers list in town.

In a joint initiative with the Retail Council of Canada (RCC), we’re excited to announce the launch of the Indie Bestsellers List, which will track the best-selling books sold at independent retailers across Canada. The list will hopefully shine a light on the important role indie booksellers play in the Canadian market.

The New Reading Experience: BiB IV

Last week at Books in Browsers IV, Baldur Bjarnason gave a talk titled Interactivity Is What You Do that I kept referring back to over the two days of sessions. He pointed out that interactive media isn’t what you watch, hear or read, but is “composed of the meaningful actions the user takes while interacting with your work.” There are two affirming ideas in this statement. One is that “meaningful actions” has a wide enough scope to include all behaviour. Second is that producers of interactive works build an entire experience, not simply an object, for an audience.

Just Browsing

How do you like to browse? Browse the internet, that is.

So many of us simply use whichever browser came pre-installed on our computers—and if you’re using a desktop PC, chances are that browser is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. If you click on a big blue ‘e’ to get to the internet from your computer, then you can count yourself among the Internet Explorer users across the country. 

Future-Proofing Publishing

This year, Technology Forum 2013 closed on a particularly inspiring and energized note with Robert Wheaton’s presentation called “Future-Proofing Publishing: Lightweight Technologies Publishers Should Be Watching Right Now”. Robert is VP of Strategic Digital Business Development at Random House of Canada and the fearless leader of the Hazlitt team. His background in inventory management at Indigo and web development in the arts gives him a unique perspective. He has a vision for publishers and on March 7th, he had attractively packaged it in an Indiana Jones metaphor. 

Opportunities in Self-Publishing

Self-publishing has always suffered from PR problems, but its days as the ugly duckling of the publishing world are numbered. Readers are showing a willingness to buy titles from no-name imprints, and it’s becoming more common to hear about traditionally published authors making the choice to go the self-publishing route.