Saturday, January 16, 2016

Publishing Industry News

This week's publishing news 1/1/16-1/16/16.


Publishing News

Author Solutions was purchased by a private equity firm, Najafi Companies.

After the lawsuit with Open Road (in which Open Road published an ebook edition of Julie of the Wolves, and judges ruled this violated HC's copyright), HarperCollins publishes an ebook edition of Julie of the Wolves.

The Association of American Publishers teams up with UNCF to increase diversity in the notoriously non-diverse traditional publishing business.

The Authors Guild begins a campaign to raise author income, starting with an open letter to the Association of American Publishers to offer better terms in publishing contracts.

A number of Hong Kong booksellers have gone missing after working in shops that publish books criticizing China's government. Publishing associations speak out.


Industry Blogs

On Writer Beware, Victoria Strauss notes the sale of Author Solutions, making it now a privately held company, not that it's improved the company's reputation any. And she then explains exactly why the company has such a poor reputation. She also points out an organization with lots of red flags, an author behaving poorly, and a plagiarizing spam site.

Agent Janet Reid answers questions and offers advice. Go ahead and build your website. She gives an example of ineffective promotion (Twitter spam) and how to fix it. And who should be on your mailing list? Also, if you wind up in a bad anthology, is it going to kill your career? (No, but it should teach you to be more careful about which anthologies you contribute to.) Should you disclose that you have and use an established pen name that sounds non-Caucasian, but you're white? (No; what people assume about you is their business, and you don't have to disclose your pen name in your query, anyway.) And buying book reviews is terrible.

Agent Nephele Tempest offers links for writers on her Friday Links for 1/08/16 and 1/15/16. Of particular recommendation is the Opportunities for Writers for January and February.

Interested in querying a BookEnds agent? Find out what they're looking for! Also, just because an agent gives you a line of feedback in response to your query, doesn't mean they're you're critique partner. Plus she gives a query critique.

On the Editors Blog, a warning that if you're self-publishing your own book and doing your own formatting, you might find you wind up tweaking your work once again.

Author Jim C. Hines posted his 2015 writing income.

Author Kristine Kathryn Rusch reflects on the Authors Guild letter, what parts of it she suggests taking with a grain of salt, and how the Authors Guild isn't truly representative of all authors.

On the Futuristic Fantasy and Paranormal blog, three posts on how to keep your writing resolutions.


Not publishing related, but we've also lost famed and excellent actor Alan Rickman.


What other major publishing news have you encountered in the past two weeks?

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