Alastair Horne observes some things happening the science fiction world that may point to good ideas for publishers. In brief:
- Crowd-funding cross media: Publisher Gollancz contributed to a Kickstarter campaign for the video game “Elite:Dangerous” on the contingency that they have the rights to publish tie-in novels.
- Bundling ebooks with print and perhaps book-selling location.
- Digital conversion of mid-list books: Again Gollancz has taken an impressive lead for its readers.
- Dropping DRM on ebooks: Baen and Tor have already done it.
- Accepting fan fiction.
- Publisher subscriptions for a year of books, something Cruciform Press has been doing since the beginning.