publishing
Latest
Medium's subscription offers all-you-can-read stories for $5
We knew that subscriptions were coming to the popular blogging platform, Medium. But, we didn't know the full details of what'd be included or the price. For $5 a month you'll get access to exclusive pieces of writing, site features before anyone else sees them, an offline reading list and ad-free browsing.
The first games published by Humble Bundle are super clever
Humble Bundle has ballooned from a small company offering "pay what you want," charity-focused video game sales to a major player in digital distribution. Humble is taking on Steam's marketplace with the Humble Store, and it's attracting subscriptions with Humble Monthly, a program that delivers a curated selection of games to your digital doorstep 12 times a year. This month, Humble announced it would start funding and publishing games, starting with seven titles across a range of genres. At GDC 2017, we got our hands on four of them: Staxel, HackyZack, Ikenfell and Keyboard Sports. Though each game is vastly different and built for disparate audiences, they're all refreshingly creative in their own way.
Telegram launches a blogging platform for the impatient
If you've ever wanted to write something online really quickly but didn't want to go through the hassle of signing up for a Medium, Wordpress or Blogger account, maybe Telegram's new Telegraph platform is for you. The messaging app launched the service today, and as VentureBeat notes, it's really fast. Dropping links to Twitter posts and YouTube videos automatically embeds them, and you can upload photos, too. For example, this post took me under five minutes to go from a blank page to being published.
Adblock Plus launches its very own ad network
The immensely popular (and sometimes controversial) Adblock Plus browser extension is taking the next step in its crusade to clean up online advertising -- even if that effort comes at a cost to users and publishers. On Tuesday, Adblock Plus announced it is joining the ranks of those online advertisers and launching its own ad network called the Acceptable Ads Platform.
NYT's curated news app will shut down next month
Just about two and a half years after launching its NYT Now mobile experiment at South by Southwest, the New York Times has announced it will be "officially shelving" the app. After August, NYT Now will no longer be be available for download, but many of the features have already been rolled into the main NYTimes app or the paper's other digital platforms.
ThinkProgress joins Medium's growing list of publications
When Medium shifted its focus from independent writers to a more full-fledged blogging platform earlier this year, it nabbed an impressive lineup of small, but influential sites. Now Medium can boast its biggest addition yet when the liberal site ThinkProgress moves over to the platform next month.
GameStop starts its own game publishing wing
Now that GameStop has dipped its toes into game publishing, it's ready to jump in with both feet: the retailer has launched GameTrust, its own publishing division. The new wing will initially handle titles from existing partner Insomniac Games (of Ratchet & Clank fame) as well as Frozenbyte (Trine), Ready At Dawn (The Order: 1886) and Tequila Works (Deadlight). As you might guess, this isn't a traditional publishing business. GameStop is taking a hands-off approach to the actual content. Instead, it wants to create "exclusive real estate" online and in physical stores to help people discover indie games that might otherwise get missed.
'The Walking Dead' studio will publish '7 Days to Die' on consoles
Telltale Games is best known for its emotional point-and-click adventure games The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us and Game of Thrones, but the studio's publishing division is just getting started. Telltale Publishing will bring The Fun Pimps' first-person zombie survival game 7 Days to Die to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in June for $30. This is the second game from Telltale Publishing, following its work on the retail edition of the Jackbox Party Pack.
Medium attracts The Awl and other influential publishers
Medium started as a no-fuss blogging site for passionate writers seeking good design and a larger audience. Over the last three years, however, the platform has slowly expanded and become a home for larger publications too -- both established brands and smaller ones conceived by Medium. Today, the company has announced that a whole slew of small but influential websites are migrating to its platform. These include The Awl, Pacific Standard, Femsplain, The Banana Boat, NewCo Shift and The Bold Italic. Time Inc's Money and Fortune magazines will soon follow.
Medium is working on paying its contributors
Getting paid to write is hard, a situation that's not helped by so many places asking you to work for free. Medium CEO Ev Williams has let slip that he's working on a way for his service to enable writers and publishers to get paid. In an interview with BBC News, Williams revealed that his team was "just starting to work on that now, actually." He added that a monetization feature is being built "right now" and will be available before the end of the financial quarter.
Medium overhauls its collaborative publishing platform
Medium's management unveiled a radically redesigned publishing platform on Thursday including a host of new formatting and production features. These new writing tools include the ability to include Twitter-style @-mentions, additional text formatting options (including drop caps to start paragraphs) and a slick "TK reminder" that prompts users before publishing that they've forgotten to finish a thought and left a TK reminder in the text. Additionally, the company is rolling out a mobile publishing app for both iOS and Android, as well as a developers API so that the CMS can be integrated into other sites and apps. Medium has also made it easier to import existing blogs and publications into its custom domain system. Even the company logo received an refresh.
Facebook 'Instant Articles' plug in content from NYT and Buzzfeed
Facebook wants to do for news content what it's done with native video, and the first bit of self-hosted editorial content ("Instant Articles") could go live tomorrow. It's starting with The New York Times and will include Buzzfeed, NBC News and National Geographic if unnamed sources speaking to New York Magazine are to be believed. Apparently NYT's business side is why a deal that surfaced in late March is only coming to fruition now, with CEO Mark Thompson's push for "the most favorable" terms causing delays.
Google makes nice with European news publishers
European publishers have long chastised Google for allegedly hurting their bottom line, but the internet giant is now trying to meet them half way. It's launching a partnership with eight news outlets (including the UK's Financial Times and Guardian) that will develop publisher-friendly products and create a €150 million ($163 million) "innovation fund." The hope is that the collaboration will keep journalism viable in an era where you can sometimes get the gist of a story through a simple web search.
You can now listen to the 'Game of Thrones' audiobooks on Scribd
At this point, it's almost illegal if you don't describe Scribd as the Netflix of reading, which has just signed a new audiobook deal with Penguin Random House. The agreement gives the service access to 9,000 of the super publisher's library, including blockbuster titles like the Game of Thro... A Song of Ice and Fire series. If your inner goddess prefers something more sensual, however, you can enjoy Fifty Shades of Grey on a train before jumping on transport-based thriller Girl on the Train. The titles are available to everyone who pays the $8.99 monthly fee, but we should warn you that it's not likely that you'll finish all of George R.R. Martin's books before the fifth season of Game of Thrones ends.
Investors plug $6 million into Majesco
Majesco Entertainment completed an investment round that resulted in $6 million in funding, the Cooking Mama publisher announced today. $1 million of the funds were issued to the company with the rest stashed in escrow until certain, as-yet-unknown conditions are met by Majesco. The company also appointed two people to its boards of directors to replace two that stepped down, one of whom is Jesse Sutton, who will remain Majesco's CEO after resigning from the company's board. SEC filings in November admitted that Majesco "suffered losses that raise substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern." It reported a 27.2 percent drop year-over-year in net revenue in September, as well as net losses of $2.7 million. As a result, Majesco laid off several staff in October to reduce fixed costs. The company also noted last month that it is "currently not developing any significant new games for release in fiscal 2015," which ends on October 31, 2015. [Image: Majesco]
Nordic acquires adventure games from Awesomenauts publisher
Nordic Games continued its spending spree today, picking up a few properties from Awesomenauts publisher DTP Entertainment. Nordic purchased three intellectual properties from the German publisher: The Moment of Silence (seen above), The Mystery of the Druids and Curse of the Ghost Ship. DTP also agreed to hand over commercial use of Overclocked and 15 Days to Nordic Games. Each of the five properties listed in the purchase agreement were developed by House of Tales, a Bremen, Germany-based PC adventure game developer. Nordic said its adventure games division, The Adventure Company, "gets a considerable increase" thanks to the IP acquisition, adding that it "will make good use of these new opportunities." The publisher completed its purchase of the de Blob series from THQ last month, over a year and a half after the Austrian company bought dozens of other THQ properties such as Darksiders, Red Faction and MX vs. ATV for $4.9 million. [Image: DTP Entertainment, err, Nordic Games]
Majesco doubting 'ability to continue' following layoffs
Majesco has fallen on hard times, as the Cooking Mama publisher "implemented a reduction of our workforce to reduce our fixed costs," according to recent SEC filings. The company's layoffs came at the very end of October, just after its independent label Midnight City launched Costume Quest 2 on PS3 and PS4. The publisher reported a net loss of $2.7 million in September for the quarter ending July 31 as well as a net revenue of $2.9 million, a 27.2 percent drop year-over year. When pointing to the earnings report in a November 6 filing, Majesco said it "suffered losses that raise substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern." Likewise, Majesco is "currently not developing any significant new games for release in fiscal 2015," a period that ends on October 31, 2015. The three games slated to launch during that time are Hello Kitty and Sanrio Friends 3D Racing for 3DS, Gone Home's console port courtesy of Midnight City and Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms for PC, which is currently available in early access form on Steam. [Image: Majesco]
The Banner Saga, Armikrog journey to PS4 in early 2015
Four games from independent developers will arrive on PS4 in early 2015, each courtesy of publisher Versus Evil. The publisher, which specializes in assisting independent devs reach new platforms and regions, revealed Stoic Studio's viking RPG The Banner Saga among the handful of games destined for the PlayStation Network. The Banner Saga's first episode launched in January after a successful $723,886 campaign on Kickstarter funded the game in April 2012. Versus Evil will also help another Kickstarter-funded game to reach PS4 early next year, Pencil Test Studios' clay-sculpted adventure game Armikrog. The other two games arriving on PS4 in 2015 thanks to the publisher are Kyn and Toren, the latter developed by Brazilian studio Swordtales. Players guide a "Moonchild" through the stages of childhood while ascending a tower in Toren, solving puzzles and slashing at enemies along the way. Versus Evil noted in PlayStation Blog's comments that none of the games are slated to reach Vita as of yet. [Image: Stoic Studio]
Cast your vote for the next crowd-selected Kindle books
Similar its original series' pilot season, Amazon is opening up its Kindle publishing arm to crowd voting. The so-called Kindle Scout program allows you to peruse portions of unpublished works before nominating worthy pieces for proper e-reader release. If you're looking to lend a hand with the vetting process, voting is now open for submissions that span sci-fi, romance, mystery and other genres. After a 30-day nomination window, the folks at Amazon will review the tallies before picking what gets made into a Kindle edition. In return for backing a chosen author, you'll get the published book for free one week before it releases for the masses to download. Not too shabby.
Publishing houses are throwing book deals at YouTube 'stars'
Let's say you can't get enough of it'sGrace (above) on YouTube but you're taking a week-long no-tech camping trip soon and aren't excited about missing her wit and charm. Well, host Grace Helbig's book Grace's Guide: The Art of Pretending to Be a Grown-up is out next week, so that won't be a problem for much longer. She isn't alone, either, as other YouTubers are getting publishing deals as well, according to The Wall Street Journal. Alfie Deyes of Pointless Blog fame and style/make-up vlogger Michelle Phan have tomes out and en route, respectively, too. All have subscribers by the millions (Phan has over 7 million), and publishing houses are apparently hopeful that their online success translates to reaching teens, getting them to post about the books on Twitter, Instagram and probably Tumblr too.
