The Reading Edge Podcast

On March 13, 2010, during a break between sessions at South by Southwest Interactive, I interviewed Rusty Shelton, who is managing director of Phenix & Phenix, a 16-year-old literary publicity agency based in Austin.

His agency helps authors build relationships using print, radio, TV, and online. Their clients include everything from the Chicken Soup for the Soul books, to true crime, to Christian books.

If you have any interest in publishing your own work taking advantage of online tools, I think you’ll find Rusty’s advice valuable and though-provoking.  In general, I found it intriguing to see into the fast-changing world of publishing through the eyes of a literary publicist who loves his job and clearly knows what he’s doing. Click here to follow Rusty on Twitter.

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Douglas Rushkoff, author of Life, Inc.: How the World Became A Corporation And How To Take It Back (Hardcover, Kindle), was a featured speaker today at South by Southwest Interactive. His topic was “Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age.”

After signing his books (including the staged “signing” of the copy I’d downloaded to my Kindle, in photo at right), Doug agreed to do an interview for the podcast while I drove him to the airport for his flight home to New York. This gave me a chance to hear his views about the role of eBooks in the long sweep of history that he is considering these days in his critique of Internet culture and the corporatization of life in general.

Despite his weighty obsessions and somber views, Douglas Rushkoff in person is full of life and wit.  He described his preparation for an appearance in July, 2009, on the Colbert Report interview hot seat, and I’ve included the audio of that encounter at the end of the podcast. Click here for the video.

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James McQuivey of Forrester Research

On the Monday after the weekend when Amazon and Macmillan faced off in a dramatic battle over eBook pricing, I turned to James McQuivey, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, for his perspective on who won, what the stakes are, and what might lie ahead.

James says his contacts at other publishers are disappointed that this turned into a mud fight, but he suggests there will be benefits from having the issue finally out in the open.  He also shares his thoughts on how Apple’s new iPad figures in to all this.

I’ll have the second half of this interview on The Kindle Chronicles episode 81, which will be uploaded as usual on Friday, February 5.  In that portion, James will discuss what he and his teammates at Forrester are calling “The Kindle Flame,” by which they mean the next generation of Kindle that might, if it gets certain things right, set the eBook market fully ablaze as opposed to merely kindled.

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