Nepatron Brandon

Neopatron Brandon

Longtime readers of this blog will know that a core theme here is charting the death of oldpub and trying to envision what comes next. I predicted oldpub's demise years ago, not that it takes a prophet to foresee that a business locked into expanding its share of a contracting…
Bravalanche

The Bravalanche

A concept introduced on this blog that's gained some traction in newpub is the neopatronage model. Though still developing, this is the proposition that societal changes will cause a shift away from the old entertainment business model. Instead of artists selling their rights to corporations in exchange for access to…
patrons

Neopatronage Revisited

In light of Amazon's latest shenanigans, this time involving Dragon Award-winning mega best seller Nick Cole, author Benjamin Cheah revisits my concept of neopatronage. During the Renaissance, the wealthy supported up-and-coming artists through a patronage system. The artist was able to earn a living and create masterworks. The wealthy in…
eBook Zombie Memes Won’t Die

eBook Zombie Memes Won’t Die

If recent events have taught us anything, it's that we can't trust experts or establishment media. Independent journalists and internal whistleblowers caught Google manipulating search results around the 2016 election. More than one online consumer revolt disclosed that journalists maintain secret email lists to collude on disinfo ops. All of…
No Seuss for You

No Seuss for You

Conservatives catch a lot of flak for their failure to conserve pretty much anything. Now we can add Dr. Seuss books to the rapidly lengthening list.Predictably, the mainstream media are rushing to the book burning with jugs of kerosene and bags of marshmallows. Just as typically, their Conservative media camp…
No Titanic Tickets for Traitors

No Titanic Tickets for Traitors

Now that the Death Cultists are feeling their oats over slaying their orange bogeyman, they're planning an unprecedented sacrificial orgy to appease their gods. In their primitive cosmology the only explanation for their 2016 defeat is infidels angering the spirits with their -isms, so atonement must be made by offering…
Aspirational Marketing

Aspirational Marketing

Most folks in newpub unconsciously stumble out of the gate by calling themselves "indie authors". I know I did. But newpub means more than writing. If you go indie, you accept all the responsibilities of an author AND a publisher. As a result of indies' author-centric focus, a lot of…
Newpub Marketing Manual

Newpub Marketing Manual

Embarrassing admission time: I have a chronic case of Boomer tech when it comes to social media. Longtime readers know I relentlessly advocate for elevating publishing out of the oldpub tar pits and into the newpub promised land. I'm the first to ditch obsolete publishing bromides and embrace newly emergent…
The Big Four

The Big Four

A predictive model is only as good as its results. That means a reliable way to assess the value of a business strategy is to look at the projections made by people who employ that strategy. If their predictions based on a given model consistently pan out, it's a good…
Hanging by a Strand

Hanging by a Strand

 A venerable bookstore that's served New York for 93 years may become the Death Cult's next sacrificial victim--by ritual suicide.On Friday book-loving New Yorkers got a shock as the city’s largest bookstore — The Strand — announced that it risked going out of business. A post on Twitter from the…