This Friday's #FollowReader: Jane Friedman Talks about New Publishing Models

Jane Friedman of Open Road Integrated Media

Our stellar guest appearances for #FollowReader chats continue this Friday, when we’ll be joined by  Jane Friedman, CEO and Co-Founder of Open Road Integrated Media.

Conceived as  a content marketing company that places the e-book in the center of a multi-platform universe, Open Road Integrated Media is taking a bold approach to the business of books as well as to their format.  ORIM is doing away with author advances, instead offering authors a higher-than-normal royalty, coupled with aggressive marketing.

And, what exactly will ORIM be marketing, you may ask? Good question, and ORIM has a good answer:

• e-versions of popular backlist titles (among the first ORIM e-rights to be acquired were titles by Dame Iris Murdoch, Pat Conroy and William Styron),
• Studio “e-riginals” – titles developed for digital format, and
• ORIM also plans to launch a premium self-publishing program which will be called Discovery.

We’re excited to talk with Jane about Open Road, and about the quickly changing landscape of publishing in general. Some of the topics we’ll be discussing on Friday include:

• What is the traditional role of publishers, and how is this changing?
• What about agents?If advances seem to be going the way of the dodo, is it time to re-evaluate how agents are compensated?
• What should authors and agents make of MacMillan’s boilerplate contract (20% net for digital sales); what about RH + others who are a bit higher, but still at net?
• How much should authors be asked to do in regards of marketing and promoting their books? Should authors be compensated for the marketing efforts they are asked to undertake?
• As the barriers to actually publishing a book erode, does the role of the publisher become more or less important to the reading public?

And, as always with #FollowReader, the conversation will no doubt be fun and interesting.

Please join us – this Friday, December 11th at 4pm ET.

New to #FollowReader chats? It’s easy:

1. Just before 4pm ET,  log in to Twitter or whatever interface you use (e.g. Tweetchat.com, Tweetdeck, Twitterific, etc.)
2. To follow the discussion, run a search for #followreader
3. To post to the discussion, type #followreader in each tweet

NOTE: You might want to experiment with TweetChat, which refreshes quickly and automatically loads your hashtag when you are in the discussion.

And if you can’t make it, don’t feel too bad. We will post a recap of the highlights, along with a summary on the blog.