It’s Never Too Late To Embrace Your Cognitive Dissonance Here’s an interesting irony for those following — or being battered to bits by — the Amazon-Hachette mania that’s enraging so many people in book publishing in this loud, hot summer. Edan Lepucki, author of California, the Stephen Colbert-promoted Hachette book, is married to Patrick Brown — the main spokesperson for… Read More
When Authors Turn Against Authors, Or: Storytelling Folks Should Stick Together
“The Corn Is As High As An Elephant’s Eye” I started by asking James Scott Bell about Casablanca. Bell is an attorney, a fellow former Equity actor, and both an indie author and one published with Hachette. And I told him that last week’s dueling open-letters between independent and traditionally publishing authors reminded me of the scene… Read More
#FutureChat recap: Authors in the hot zone
Each Friday, join us for a #FutureChat session, live on Twitter, at 4 p.m. London time, 11 a.m. New York time, 8 a.m. Los Angeles, 5 p.m. Berlin, 3 p.m. GMT. Still crazy from the heat For all the posts, counter-posts, comments, counter-comments, and general online debate generated by the authors’ “dueling open letters,” as some… Read More
#FutureChat: Authors in the hot zone
Each Friday, join us for a #FutureChat session, live on Twitter, at 4 p.m. London time, 11 a.m. New York time, 8 a.m. Los Angeles, 5 p.m. Berlin, 3 p.m. GMT. Crazy from the heat Disagreements that might cause minor annoyance on a cool day have a way of escalating when the mercury rises. Most riots… Read More
The NYPL Amazon panel: Views and reviews
“Concentration of power” “The theme of this is really concentration of power and when do we start getting worried?” It was WME literary agent Tina Bennett who suggested to LIVE From the NYPL’s curator Paul Holdengräber that the program have an evening’s conversation titled “Amazon: Business as Usual?” on the New York Public Library’s (NYPL) series. And… Read More
The Hachette-Perseus-Ingram pas de trois: “Too early to say”
No sooner had The Bookseller’s Philip Jones written “It is no longer enough to have a conversation just about Amazon” on Tuesday, than the afternoon news from the US proved his point about the industry’s changing context. Late in the day in New York, Michael Cader at Publishers Lunch posted his extensively prepared article: Perseus Imprints to be Sold to Hachette Book… Read More
Publishing's southerly migration at BEA
“The sound of silence” has never muted the industry! the industry! On Tuesday in this pink space, The Bookseller’s Philip Jones neatly positioned “the continuing negotiations between Amazon and Hachette” as “how much heat can be generated from so little information.” In fact, Publishers Weekly’s Calvin Reid and I found ourselves talking of a mounting tone of hysteria around the publisher’s and retailer’s… Read More
The Talk Of BEA: Amazon Blogs The Hachette Hoopla
As I write this at the sprawling glassed Jacob Javits Convention Center on Eleventh Avenue, the Big Five publisher Hachette’s round marquis floats above the BookExpo America (BEA) floor. That floor is strewn with wooden crates and crawling with forklifts. BEA opens to the throngs Thursday. About half a city block away from Hachette’s installation, the Amazon… Read More
BEA on Ice! (That Retailer-Publisher Chill)
For all the hot and humid “how dare they?” rants greeting Amazon’s standoff over sales terms with Hachette, our more sensitive spines may be feeling a chill. Cooler heads are trying to remind the anti-Amazonian forces that Barnes & Noble created a very similar crisis for authors last year without suffering nearly so much criticism.… Read More
When Retailers & Publishers Collide: Who Gets Hurt?
Has anybody told the readers about this? You know, the customers? What if they were brand-savvy enough to know what they’re missing when a contract dispute stalls out the shipping of their favorite author? What if we tell them? If readers were aware of who published what and, in the current example, became incensed that… Read More