Publishing

Literary Prizes 2014: The Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction

The shortlist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction was announced last week at a press conference in Toronto. Congratulations to the five finalists! Interested in how this literary prize affects sales in Canada? Check out some highlights from BookNet Research in this blog post.

Infographic: Canadians Adopting Ebooks

According to data from The Canadian Book Consumer 2013: Digital Sales and Trends, 17% of books purchased in Canada in 2013 were ebooks. Canadians still prefer to read ebooks on dedicated e-reading devices, but 8% of our survey respondents say they do read on their mobile phones. Want more juicy details about digital reading? Check out our infographic.

Storytelling Platform Storybird Makes Publishing Social for Young Writers

Toronto-based “visual storytelling” platform Storybird has garnered a large and engaged online following around the simple premise of enabling users to read, write, and share their own picture books.

We spoke to Mark Ury, Storybird’s CEO and cofounder, about reader trends, monetization, user experience design, and more.

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.

Infographic: Kids & Teens E-Reading Study

Our new study, Measuring Attitudes and Adoption of Digital Content for Kids and Teens, delves into attitudes and behaviour around book buying and reading for the juvenile market. Do teens prefer ebooks to print books? When do kids start getting access to apps? Check out our snazzy infographic for answers to these questions… and more!