The author contract battle goes global Dated today, 5th January, the Authors Guild’s open letter to the Association of American Publishers leads the loudest call yet for contract reform in publishing’s relations with authors. This is a coordinated campaign being mounted by the world’s key author-advocacy organisations. The letter’s signatories include the UK’s Society of Authors, the Authors Licensing… Read More
Starting 2016's Journey: Are Author-Editor Relationships Endangered?
One of the things that makes the 2015-2016 transition interesting in the creative corps is a subdued, reflective, sometimes exhausted, and often pensive mood. A lot of it revolves around marketplace fatigue. And it might not be helping that a one time-honored relationship—that of writer and editor—seems to be changing, for both parties, to what is… Read More
In 2016, Adult Coloring Books: Only Half-Good For Publishing
Color Us Skeptical One of the things the book publishing industry produces best is confusion. Its gray areas (not unlike its Grey areas) are fogs of speculation, partial truths, gossip, and misty-eyed hindsight. Among the most beloved notions this year has been the idea that print books entered a renaissance in 2015. In bookseller’s dreams, consumers… Read More
It’s Fat Season For Diet Books
Larding On The Advice According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, roughly 38 percent of American adults are technically obese (with a body mass index over 30), up from 35 percent in 2011-2012 and 32 percent in 2003-2004. That’s Robert Paarlberg at The Washington Post in a new commentary, Why Can’t America Get Its… Read More
Truth Be Told? Truth Is on Thin Ice
‘Your Capacity for Change’ Go slowly. Makes it easier if you take this one line at a time: Authenticity is equal to your unique voice, multiplied by truthfulness, plus your capacity for change, multiplied by range of emotional impact, raised to the power of imagination. This is the “Authenticity Formula.” It opens designer and author Marc… Read More
BitLit expands bundling in audiobook partnership with Findaway
‘Freedom across formats’ Fast on the heels of announcing last week’s deal for ebook bundling with Springer, Vancouver-based BitLit today is announcing an expansion to include audiobooks as in its bundled offerings. A partnership with US audiobook distributor Findaway is the key to this late-year development. Based in Solon, Ohio, Findaway is bringing audiobook bundling of… Read More
SELF-e And The World’s Authors: Is English Our Lingua Franca?
‘Keep Calm And Study English’ “Since the smashing success of the first Harry Potter novel—which was a No. 1 bestseller in Germany in its English version at one point—we have evidence of English, as a reading language, to be a global phenomenon.” Rüdiger Wischenbart is the Vienna-based publishing consultant who produces the Global eBook Report and directs… Read More
'Closing the last mile to the customer's doorstep': Ingram buys Aer.io
‘I’m committed for years to come’ If a startup acquisition in the publishing space has ever looked like a match made in digital heaven, the Ingram Content Group-Aer.io deal announced today is it. (Our news story on the acquisition by my colleague Philip Jones is here.) “Effectively, the team is staying together,” says founding c.e.o. Ron Martinez. No carpet strewn with… Read More
Your 2015 high points
Let’s do the time warp again Then Amazon switched to per-page payouts on KDP Select. Right? And then Amazon changed it to different per-page rates for various territories. And then Amazon opened a physical bookstore. Run for your life! (If the latest Shelf Awareness account of reactions to that bit of bricks and mortar is right,… Read More
A message to #FutureBook15 from #AuthorDay
To work together, not as antagonists The Bookseller’s Author Day conference opened this year’s FutureBook Week on Monday (30th November). It was the inaugural staging of a conference expressly meant to bring together publishing professionals, traditionally publishing authors, and self-publishing authors. Our term for the conference’s intent is “issues-driven,” by which we meat that it was not… Read More