The original purpose of Sharpwriter.com, launched in 1998, was to serve as a writer's complete personal desktop—with every imaginable resource for the professional author's constant use. Sharpwriter.com was a portal, but it also developed lots of content, including reviews and interviews. We evolve, and so do our websites. Sharpwriter.com faded during the Dot Com Bust of 2000. It was retired in the mid-00s as a new and far greater set of national and world crises knocked the wind out of digital's sails for a few years. But the changes overwhelming all media industries, on so many fronts, are real, and pressing. The transitions are multiple and simultaneous. They cry out for crystal balls, midnight hand-wringing, tears, blues, and too many chocolates. We'll get through it all. …top

Why?     Sphere?     Format     Disclaimers

Why?
In the enormous publishing industry transition from print domination to a new digital standard, there is a need for voices that make sense of the past (print), the present (upheaval), and the future (digital, wireless media). With parallel developments in music and other media, it's clear that a millennial change is underway. We need to understand what it means to every denizen of the connected future. This website offers a progressive view of what's strong (and not) in both worlds, while staking a position (held by publisher John T. Cullen since his initiation to Digistan in 1996) that the future is totally digital. It will be challenging for all of us to let go of the past, and just as challenging to embrace the exhilarating future.

Sphere?
How do you say Hard News vs. Soft News? If you are a fellow journalist, you immediately see the issue—though you may have a different and/or better idea for snap presentation. The term Sphere came to me not so much as a synonym for 'Globe' as 'Sphere of Influence,' from my History writing. It signifies Soft News in the broadest sphere of influence in the publishing industry.…top

headingtext
In launching PIN, I have made a number of choices, based on many years of experience on the Web. Most media websites today violate the most basic good principles of web design, by incorporating myriad slow-loading, animated ads, which prevent a smooth reading experience. For this site, I have chosen a retro-look that mimics the dense reading columns of long ago newspapers, but with larger print and fewer columns. Call it the magazine look, perhaps. Print publications were largely driven by advertising, more so than by subscriptions, so PIN will inevitably invite advertisers. How that will play out remains to be seen, in an open-minded way.…top

   Notices and Disclaimers.

1. Links—Not Responsible. Third party names of book manufacturers and other common industry resources, mentioned in these articles, will generally be found on the Links page. Publishing Industry News (PIN) makes no claims, certifications, or endorsements of any kind on their behalf. Their names and links are merely offered as resources that you, the self-publisher or similar industry professional, may or may not choose to investigate, entirely on your own responsibility, as is expected of any bona fide business person.
2. PIN Goals. This venture (Publishing Industry News, or PIN) has one primary goal, which is to help struggling authors become better writers and also business entrepreneurs, thus avoiding the traps of smooth-talking middlemen or 'publishers' who charge a lot of money to deliver only disappointment. This outlet of news, information, and opinion is strongly slanted toward digital and entrepreneurial (self-) publishing. It enables me (and possibly some contributors along the way) to vent our disgust at the abuses of the Big Six (New York City cartel of six conglomerates who owned the old print industry). I want to help entrepreneurial, upcoming authors learn the business, including the nuts and bolts of formatting, graphics, design, acquisition editing, line editing, wholesale distribution, and retail (the latter a world unto itself). I want to take the mystery and hullaballoo out of the industry. I want to drive away the spooks of divine inspiration and authors dying in garrets for importantly earnest Literature graduate students, and show this is just a business like any other. That makes it accessible to you, the aspiring author and business person. I accept no advertising of any kind, nor do I shill for people offering services (a policy developed over more than a decade during which I published Sharpwriter.com, a #1 writer's resource site and portal). My only strategy in self-interest is to advertise some of my own copious writings in the form of novels, short stories, and nonfiction articles. There is no hidden agenda here to sell you books about publishing or writing. I will amend this policy in an open letter to you if it changes. As it stands, and forevermore, there is no hidden agenda here to charge you money. Everything is free, and designed to help you in your publishing career.

Museum Pieces
Author, publisher, and editor John T. Cullen has been a pioneer in digital publishing since 1996, when he launched his first websites (Neon Blue Fiction and The Haunted Village).

He was the first person in history to publish entire proprietary novels online in weekly serial chapters (Clocktower Books, originally Clocktower Fiction).

For several years he edited the world's oldest professional online magazine (Far Sector SFFH, which was formerly (with Brian Callahan) 0uts!de: Speculative & Dark Fiction then and Deep Outside SFFH.

John created and managed Sharpwriter.com, a resource for writers and readers (1998-2006) which is the parent of Publishing Industry News. John has published over twenty books, as well as many short stories and nonfiction articles. Clocktower Books is the world's sixth-oldest digital publishing house.…top

John T. Cullen earned a BA in English (University of Connecticut, Storrs), a BBA in Computer Information Systems (National University), and an MS in Business Administration (Boston University)..—top

Week's Feature

Umnitsa: The Good Girl. US Navy Lt Tim Nordhall pursues a triple master-spy among the ruined cloisters of WW2 Blitz London, the shark-haunted beaches of South Atlantic Africa, and ultimately the City of Love, San Francisco in 1945. Along the way, the pensive clock-maker from New Haven treads his way among beautiful women whose playbooks include eroticism, betrayal, tragedy, and redemption—sweeping saga recalls Boris Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago, Herman Wouk's The Winds of War, and Graham Greene's The Third Man among great period thrillers.