Laurel Zuckerman's Paris Weblog

Read first, pay what you want: Bartlomiej Filipek on new publishing options

One of the great pleasures of the London Book Fair is discovering innovative approaches to publishing, marketing, and distributing books and ebooks. Thus I was delighted to meet Bartlomiej Filipek, the General Manager of OpenBooks.com which proposes a new business model for ebooks, designed to facilitate sharing and discovery. Books are openly shared and readers pay, if they want to, after reading -  an amount they fix themselves. Could this be the model for you?

London Book Fair Special: a talk with Bartlomiej Filipek, General Manager of OpenBooks.com,

a Paris Writers News interview

Garry Trudeau's Shame

I loved Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury.

As a teenager I couldn't wait to read his comic strips and bought all his books.

I thought he was brilliant. Speaking truth to power.

Now, in a disturbing - and very sad - turn of events, this once admirable satirist has shamed himself and his profession.

In a speech delivered on the occasion of an award for lifetime achievement, Trudeau blamed the victims in the Charlie Hebdo attack, ignored the very real risk of death that satirists - as well as many other people - face from Islamists today, and advocated self-censorship to avoid offending people.