Don’t Get Left Behind! Stay current with these online resources

By Ramon Rocha III, MAI director of publisher development

What’s new? With technology churning at a fast clip, writers, editors, book designers and publishers need to keep updated with the latest news, trends and ways of doing things in the print and digital world. This short list of websites and blogsites is our humble attempt to help you stay current.

*We apologize sincerely, we are experiencing technical difficulties. Some of our links were dysfunctional below where there is an asterisk. We have included the URL for you to copy/paste into your web browser.

For publishers:
–Digital Book World offers educational and networking resources for consumer publishing professionals and their partners online and in person.
–Publishing Perspectives is an online magazine of international book publishing news and opinions.
–Book Business is a leading publication for book publishing executives that evolves with the changes in the book market.
–Publishers Weekly is a weekly news magazine focused on the international book publishing business.
–O’Reilly spreads the knowledge of innovators and expert early adopters to everyday users through books, conferences, news reportage, videos, and classes.
–The Shatzkin Files features blogs and speeches by Mike Shatzkin, a widely acknowledged thought leader about digital change in the book publishing industry.
–Emedia Vitals serves marketing and media professionals who are increasingly leveraging digital media.
*-PaidContent (paidcontent.org) has an audience of 5.5 million monthly unique readers who rely on its coverage of cloud, mobile, cleantech, and consumer web media.
*-MindTools (mindtools.com) provides cloud-based training solutions to companies and government agencies worldwide.
–HubSpot is ranked as the world’s #1 inbound marketing software platform in g2crowd.com and has over 10,000 customers.
–SlideShare is the world’s largest community for sharing presentations. Besides presentations, SlideShare also supports documents, PDFs, videos and webinars.

For writers and editors:
*-Books & Such Literature Management (www.booksandsuch.com) is a literary agency that helps each author reach his or her writing and publishing goals.
–Rachelle Gardner is an agent with Books and Such Literary Agency, who often pens helpful articles for writers. Check out this one on writing book proposals.
–Jane Friedman is a co-founder and co-editor of Scratch Magazine, and an editor at the national award-winning journal, the Virginia Quarterly Review.
–Yates & Yates serves as creative counsel for top-tier authors, artists, and creative organizations.
–Chip MacGregor has a comprehensive knowledge of the industry—from book development to writing, acquisition to production, marketing to sales.
–Christian Writers offers discussion forums, tool, resources, and reading materials for Christian writers.
–Writers Digest provides various resources, online communities, and forums for writers to celebrate their writing life and discuss what it means to be a writer in today’s publishing environment.
–The Steve Laube Agency is a literary agency focused primarily on the Christian marketplace in the USA. International friends may find helpful blog posts under “Book Proposals” and “The Business Side.”

For book designers:
–The Book Cover Archive features countless book covers.

Ian Darke, coordinator of Letra Viva, contributed these websites for Spanish language speakers:

For publishers and others: 
*-Letra Viva (www.letraviva.com) is a network of evangelical book publishers in Spanish-speaking Latin America.
*-PublishNews (publishnews.com.br)in Portuguese, is an affiliate of Publishing Perspectives.

For writers:
*-Adece (adece.es)is a Christian writers group, based in Spain.
*-Aventura de Escribir (www.aventuradeescribir.com) is the MAI-related writers’ blog in Spanish.
*-RAE (rae.es) All Spanish writers should use this site of the Real Academia Española, which covers Spanish language usage around the world.

What other websites do you find helpful to keep up with the latest in publishing?

Photo above courtesy David Castillo Dominici, Freedigitalphotos