Technology • Innovation • Publishing - Issue #147

Blockchain startup Propy plans first-ever auction of a real apartment as a collectible NFT — techcrunch.com

Propy used blockchain technology to smooth real-world real estate sales by introducing the concept of smart contracts, now they are auctioning a real apartment as an NFT. #NFTs

Quincy Jones Is Backing a New NFT Marketplace Designed for the Average Music Fan — www.rollingstone.com

It will accept credit cards (so consumers don’t have to worry about crypto, wallets, etc.) Plans to have affordable NFTs for music lovers, including teens and kids. Runs on Tezos (which uses the more environmentally-friendly POS model — and there’s a good explainer of this tech in the article). Will launch w Whitney Houston, John Legend, and hoping to spotlight emerging artists as well.

‘Fathom’ №1 NFT Sells for $100,000 — www.hollywoodreporter.com

Aspen Comics sold an NFT of the cover to “Fathom №1, the work from late artist Michael Turner that became the top-selling comic of 1998. Along with the cover, the NFT sale also included Turner’s pencil drawing, the chance for the winner to be drawn into an upcoming Fathom comic, and a behind-the-scenes look at Aspen and Mythos’ upcoming plans by zooming with its execs.

You Can Buy a Piece of a Nobel Prize-Winning Discovery — www.nytimes.com 
Berkeley will auction NFTs of invention disclosure forms filed by the creators of CRISPR and cancer immunotherapy.

Charlie Bit Me won’t be leaving YouTube after all, father says — qz.com

Of course! Once the viral video is taken down, the meme would be forgotten and the NFT would become worthless.

Technology

A thread of product management frameworks

twitter.com

MT @shreyas (this might be useful if you are a product manager, product leader, or founder) Frameworks will not fix all your problems. Used right, they should help you 1) better understand your context 2) create structure for problems 3) communicate ideas & solutions

Instagram launches a new section for shopping product drops — techcrunch.com

Instagram today announced it’s adding a new feature to help connect online shoppers to product drops through its app. Drops, which are a newer e-commerce trend, help sellers create buzz for forthcoming products in the days and weeks leading up to their availability.

You can now join Twitter’s Clubhouse-like Spaces rooms from a browser — www.theverge.com

Previously, you could only join Spaces from Twitter’s iOS and Android apps.

Senate Preparing $10 Billion Bailout Fund for Jeff Bezos Space Firm

theintercept.com 
Bezos’s Blue Origin lost its bid for a major NASA contract to Elon Musk, but the Senate is ordering the agency to give a second one now.

Amazon’s ad revenue is now twice as big as Snap, Twitter, Roku and Pinterest combined — www.cnbc.com 
Amazon’s ad unit is growing 1.7 times as quickly as other digital ad rivals, according to analysts at Loop Capital.

Jeff Bezos to formally step down as Amazon CEO on July 5, Andy Jassy to take over

www.cnbc.com 
The date coincides with the anniversary of Amazon’s incorporation.

Amazon Introduces Tiny ‘ZenBooths’ for Stressed-Out Warehouse Workers — www.vice.com 
The AmaZen meditation booth is a small room where employees can watch company videos about mindfulness while a small fan moves the air around.

Op-ed: Facebook’s Nick Clegg calls for bipartisan approach to break the deadlock on internet regulation — www.cnbc.com

He wants a new US Digital Regulator

Media & Publishing

We Need to Talk About the Backlist — thefutureofpublishing.com

Backlist matters for two simple and connected reasons: it’s two thirds of what people buy, and it’s markedly more profitable for publishers, with better margins and fewer returns from bookstores. Period. Via @ThadMcIlroy

Back to the Future: Kobo Launches Writeable eReader

lunch.publishersmarketplace.com

If you remember the Newton and the early days of dedicated ereaders, Kobo’s new product announcement is a trip down memory lane. Their Elipsa reader, launching June 24 is oversized — a 10.3-inch screen — and writeable. It comes with a stylus and lets you annotate ebooks and PDFs (depending on the DRM permissions).

Inside Adanne, the New Brooklyn Bookstore Celebrating African-American Culture — www.vogue.com 
Fashion designer and teacher Darlene Okpo has opened a bookstore in Dumbo. Here, she shares the inspiration behind her curation, and suggests a few titles for kids and adults alike.

Black Creatives Revisions Workshop

diversebooks.org

MT @diversebooks Congratulations to the inaugural cohort of the Black Creatives Fund Revisions Workshop!

U.S. Book Show: Making Publishing More Inclusive Demands Leadership — www.publishersweekly.com 
On the anniversary of the death of George Floyd, a panel at the U.S. Book Show discussed the challenges of and best practices for establishing a more inclusive publishing industry. It starts at the top, with a leadership that is willing to embrace the process of change.

Online Bookselling at the U.S. Book Show

www.shelf-awareness.com

Interesting: partnership between http://Libro.fm and Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn — The bookstore does an online event once per week that it records and turns into a podcast, and Libro turns that into an audiobook.

U.S. Book Show: Why America Needs Libraries Now More than Ever

www.publishersweekly.com

In his May 25 keynote at the U.S. Book Show’s Libraries Are Essential program, author and sociologist Eric Klinenberg called libraries the best exemplars of our collective life, arguing that strong libraries will be key to the nation’s recovery after a historically challenging year. #LoveLibraries

An Ear for Reading: Audiobooks Take Center Stage in the Classroom — www.slj.com 
Educators are using audiobooks in new ways to teach material and help students build literacy skills. Plus: 15 classroom-ready podcasts.

Roxane Gay Gets Imprint at Grove — www.publishersweekly.com

Grove Atlantic has teamed up with author Roxane Gay to form the Roxane Gay Books imprint. According to Grove, the new imprint will publish three titles per year, a mix of fiction and nonfiction. They are also creating a one-year fellowship, intended for people from underrepresented groups.

Haymarket to Issue New Edition of Angela Davis Autobiography — www.publishersweekly.com 
Haymarket Books has acquired the rights to publish the third edition of Black Liberation activist and scholar Angela Davis’s autobiography, originally published in 1974. The book will be released in October with a new introduction by Davis.

Discovery-WarnerMedia’s $3 Billion Cost Savings: Where Will That Come From? — www.hollywoodreporter.com

A view to a killing: how Amazon will exploit Bond and other MGM classics

www.theguardian.com 
The pay-TV giant has the chance to turn popular films into ‘universes’ of stories — and steal a march in the content-hungry streaming wars

SiriusXM is starting a TikTok music channel to appeal to the teens

www.theverge.com

SiriusXM is partnering with TikTok to launch the TikTok Radio station, which will play trending sounds from the app. Some TikTok stars will also host and curate Pandora playlists as part of the deal. #TikTok

Lessons learned from the pandemic-era subscription boom — digitalcontentnext.org 
Highlights across digital engagement, subscriptions, retention, and conversion during a year of increased appetite for news content.

What Axel Springer and Axios Could Gain From Each Other in an Acquisition

www.adweek.com

Both parties would shore up gaps in their editorial offerings. #media

Axios Local Is on Pace to Generate Up to $5 Million This Year — www.adweek.com

The newsletter-based program has attracted 350,000 subscribers in four months. #newsbiz

New York Times in talks to buy The Athletic — www.axios.com 
The Times is eyeing a full acquisition, not a joint venture or strategic partnership.

How Publishers Plan to Recoup Lost Event Revenue — www.adweek.com

Conde Nast is planning 500 virtual and in-person events this year, and is bullish it will reach 2019 levels of event revenue by 2022.

Meredith to use the sale of its local media group to grow national publications into multi-platform brands — digiday.com

While mergers and acquisitions have been a trend in the media industry as of late, M&A is not top of mind for Meredith. #magazines

9 ways newsrooms can incorporate more audio in their work

www.rjionline.org

HT @BoSacks In 2021, the media platform with the highest weekly reach in the United States is audio. Data published last month by Nielsen revealed that radio reaches 88% of U.S. adults each week, ahead of smartphone apps (85%) and TV (80%).

Tribune Publishing offering buyouts to newsroom employees, two days after purchase by hedge fund Alden — www.chicagotribune.com 
Two days after hedge fund Alden Global Capital completed its acquisition of Tribune Publishing, the new owners of the Chicago-based newspaper chain are offering newsroom employees a buyout.

One-third of large newspapers cut staff in 2020: Pew — thehill.com

#newspapers

The Chadwick A Boseman College of Fine Arts, at Howard University, led by Dean Phylicia Rashad. — www.washingtonpost.com

Opportunities & Resources

Work-in-Progress Fellowship — Latinx in Publishing

latinxinpublishing.com

MT @LatinxinPub In case you missed it, there’s one more day to apply to our inaugural Work-in-Progress Fellowship sponsored this year by @MacmillanUSA! Work 1 on 1 remotely with an editor at Macmillan for 10 months on your WIP. Visit http://Latinxinpublishing.com/wip-fellowshipfor more info

DVdebut Resources Sign-Up

docs.google.com

RT @beth_phelan Our applications are closed, but you can still sign up for our resources for debuting marginalized book creators!

Apprenticeship — Feminist Press

www.feministpress.org

MT @LaurenRosamaria We’re hiring for our paid apprenticeship program this fall! Deadline to apply is June 17. Check out the @FeministPresswebsite for more info.

Capital B job opening: Editorial Director

capitalbnews.org

RT @laurenwilliams Capital B is hiring! We’re looking for an editorial director to join our founding leadership team to help us launch a first-of-its-kind local/national news nonprofit for Black audiences.

BitchMedia Executive Director Job

www.journalismjobs.com

MT @hanbae Senior-level job alert!o @BitchMedia is hiring an executive director. Full time, remote, perfect for a leader in media or nonprofits with 5+ years of work experience. Salary in $90–100k range. Spread the word for one of the media orgs I care about most!

Women’s Media Group — Negotiate for Your Career Success with Deborah M. Kolb PhD

www.womensmediagroup.org

Last chance! Sign up quick for Tuesday night’s virtual @WMG_NYC event on Negotiation for Women — it’s free for members, $15 for non-members

Here are the pioneering women who will be on new quarters — 19thnews.org

Women’s faces will appear on quarters for the first time beginning in 2022. First in circulation: civil rights activist and poet Maya Angelou and astronaut Dr. Sally Ride.

Vaccination Scholarship Incentive — www.governor.ny.gov 
Enter your vaccinated 12–17-year-old for a chance to win a full scholarship to a SUNY or CUNY school.