Hundreds of authors head into the ballrooms of New York City’s Roosevelt Hotel at Madison and East 45th this week for Writer’s Digest’s Annual Conference. There, many of them will woo literary agents in the confab’s huge Pitch Slam. And this year, the savviest of them will know exactly what moves those agents are looking for, thanks to… Read More
1.1 Million Copies Later: Go Mock A Watchman
‘I Told You So’ In under a week, Harper Lee’s Go Set A Watchman has sold more than 1.1 million copies in the States, according to HarperCollins, as reported by Sarah Weinman at Publishers Lunch. Don’t worry, there are 2.2 million more copies for you to buy, we’re told. In the UK, my associates at The Bookseller… Read More
'And We Are Outbound From Pluto': Twitter Is A News Medium
‘We Have Visited Every Planet In Our Solar System’ Before Tuesday (14th July), we couldn’t say that we human beings had in some way engaged with every planet in our solar system. Now we can. That’s one of the lines I got out on Twitter Tuesday evening — maybe you did, too? — as soon as NASA… Read More
50% Royalties On Ebooks, 5-Year Licenses: New Publisher Canelo
It’s the Canelic Arrival of the new digital press created by three familiar players in the UK market, publishing director Michael Bhaskar, m.d. Iain Millar, and technology director Nick Barreto. The fledgling company’s first three titles release today, the work of authors John Gapper, Chris Lloyd, and Martin Davies. Writing about the new effort in January, my… Read More
Are Book Prices Too Low?
‘A long summer absorbed in our colouring-in books’ My colleague Philip Jones at The Bookseller today is making the case today in his leader piece that Harper Lee’s endlessly watched Go Set a Watchman “is the latest big title to demonstrate how the trade’s pricing strategy remains too set on using discount to drive sales —… Read More
The Competition For Authors’ Dollars: ‘Writer Beware’
‘So Many Are A Waste Of Time’ Writers between the ages of 18 and 35 in the UK and Ireland have been rushing to get their work entered into the newly revived Sunday Times / Peters Fraser Dunlop Young Writer Of The Year Award. Having been on hiatus since 2008, the rejuvenated competition has been… Read More
The Amazon Birthday Party
On the occasion of its 20th birthday, The Bookseller would like to wish Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos many happy returns. Amazon is a remarkable business led by a remarkable visionary. My colleague at The Bookseller, Philip Jones is right — party hats: on. In his leader piece for today’s edition of the magazine on… Read More
A Conversation With the SELF-e Team: Exploring Payment for Authors
Note from Jane Friedman: Earlier this month, I featured a guest post on how self-published authors can distribute their ebooks to libraries, through the SELF-e program from Library Journal and BiblioBoard. That post wasn’t without controversy, since the program doesn’t pay authors for licensing of their ebooks. I invited the folks behind SELF-e to comment on the program, to start a… Read More
Reaching for accord: Authors' Contracts and Controversies
Authors approaching accord Two venerable author advocate groups, the UK’s Society of Authors and the Authors Guild in the USA, have recently stepped into the limelight to announce that they are fighting for fairer contracts between publishers and authors. The impetus for these actions seems to come from reports that authors’ median incomes have dropped precipitously since 2009, while publishers have fared… Read More
Is A Fan A ‘Quantified Reader’?
Michael Bhaskar: ‘Fans are critical to what it means to be a publisher today’ Historically, publishing meant amplification. “Making stuff available,” Canelo Publishing’s Michael Bhaskar told our Berlin audience. Putting something into print was enough to amplify it. But actually, now, on the Internet, when everything can be made available automatically, simply having stuff available is no longer… Read More