Your bimonthly (or so) publishing news! Covering 10/3-10/19, a couple of extra days because last post came right before the fabulous Moonlight & Magnolias conference in Atlanta, GA. Because of the extra days, the news list is rather long, so I'll be keeping the blog section short & sweet.
Industry News
What do you think about letting people pay what they want for your book? The Humble e-book collection is trying this, letting customers pay what they want and donating the proceeds to charity. They've raised over $900 thousand, so it must be working well!
Quercus, British publisher, opens an office in New York to begin taking advantage of the U.S. markets. There's a new publisher on the block, folks, with a debut list for fall 2013.
Amazon releases the new Author Rank feature. Many authors seem to be displeased--who wants to see how far down the list they are? Volunteers? No...?
Amazon reminds customers that they may be receiving credit (aka money towards new e-book purchases) from the deal struck by Hachette, Simon & Schuster, and HarperCollins in the lawsuit filed by attorney generals over e-book pricing.
Speaking of litigation, the Association of American Publishers sued Google over the Google Library project. Now, seven years later, they've reached a settlement. Unfortunately the details are mostly confidential. Writers groups are going on record saying that they want these details made public.
And the Authors Guild vs. HathiTrust lawsuit has been tossed, after the judge ruled that the HathiTrust follows the Fair Use clause. The Authors Guild disapproves, but hasn't yet thought of what to do next.
Earlier this year we heard that the publisher Dorchester was closing. Now they're trying to revert the rights of books back to authors.
Kobo's expansion in self-publishing continues as they add capabilities for several new languages. They also acquire a selection of new resources, such as buying a company that makes publishing multimedia for comics and children's' books easier, and making deals with bookstores.
Hachette restructures its sales departments to incorporate digital publishing. Unlike most 'restructuring' these days, nobody got fired--although there were a few promotions and a few new jobs.
Budding authors may now publish through their local libraries.
Have a Tumblr page? Want to figure out what your stats mean? Now they have an official analytics tool.
And Random House, the publisher, experiments with TV. They'll be basing shows off books. At least we know they've got tons of material to draw on, so I'm curious to see how this turns out. (But why did they have to wait until I canceled my cable?!)
The Overdrive library program expands into audiobooks.
Industry Blogs
QueryTracker for 10/19, 10/12 and 10/5.
If you have the option to set your own price on your own e-book, you're probably wondering what to price it. Jason Ashlock gives some advice and his observations based on The Rogue Reader imprint. $2.99 isn't the magic number anymore; $3-$8 is picking up popularity.
GalleyCat has an interesting infographic on how e-books are affecting publishing.
Planning to publish? Rachelle Gardner gives her readers a glimpse of what a book edit really looks like, as in describing all the different forms of editing that are involved.
Janet Reid discusses what to do if your agent quits.
On QueryTracker, Sarah Pinneo gives advice on how to ask for a blurb.
See? Told you I'd keep it short!
What interesting publishing-related news or blogs have you come across in the past two weeks?
Industry News
What do you think about letting people pay what they want for your book? The Humble e-book collection is trying this, letting customers pay what they want and donating the proceeds to charity. They've raised over $900 thousand, so it must be working well!
(Did I waste 20 minutes of time that I should have spent blog writing browsing my new e-books instead? Don't worry; your 20 minutes when you should be reading the industry news will cancel it out.)Kindle has a new app that allows teachers and businesses to share e-books. Not individually bought ones, of course, but free e-books and documents can be made available to everyone on the network.
Quercus, British publisher, opens an office in New York to begin taking advantage of the U.S. markets. There's a new publisher on the block, folks, with a debut list for fall 2013.
Amazon releases the new Author Rank feature. Many authors seem to be displeased--who wants to see how far down the list they are? Volunteers? No...?
Amazon reminds customers that they may be receiving credit (aka money towards new e-book purchases) from the deal struck by Hachette, Simon & Schuster, and HarperCollins in the lawsuit filed by attorney generals over e-book pricing.
Speaking of litigation, the Association of American Publishers sued Google over the Google Library project. Now, seven years later, they've reached a settlement. Unfortunately the details are mostly confidential. Writers groups are going on record saying that they want these details made public.
And the Authors Guild vs. HathiTrust lawsuit has been tossed, after the judge ruled that the HathiTrust follows the Fair Use clause. The Authors Guild disapproves, but hasn't yet thought of what to do next.
Earlier this year we heard that the publisher Dorchester was closing. Now they're trying to revert the rights of books back to authors.
Kobo's expansion in self-publishing continues as they add capabilities for several new languages. They also acquire a selection of new resources, such as buying a company that makes publishing multimedia for comics and children's' books easier, and making deals with bookstores.
Hachette restructures its sales departments to incorporate digital publishing. Unlike most 'restructuring' these days, nobody got fired--although there were a few promotions and a few new jobs.
Budding authors may now publish through their local libraries.
Have a Tumblr page? Want to figure out what your stats mean? Now they have an official analytics tool.
And Random House, the publisher, experiments with TV. They'll be basing shows off books. At least we know they've got tons of material to draw on, so I'm curious to see how this turns out. (But why did they have to wait until I canceled my cable?!)
The Overdrive library program expands into audiobooks.
Industry Blogs
QueryTracker for 10/19, 10/12 and 10/5.
If you have the option to set your own price on your own e-book, you're probably wondering what to price it. Jason Ashlock gives some advice and his observations based on The Rogue Reader imprint. $2.99 isn't the magic number anymore; $3-$8 is picking up popularity.
GalleyCat has an interesting infographic on how e-books are affecting publishing.
Planning to publish? Rachelle Gardner gives her readers a glimpse of what a book edit really looks like, as in describing all the different forms of editing that are involved.
Janet Reid discusses what to do if your agent quits.
On QueryTracker, Sarah Pinneo gives advice on how to ask for a blurb.
See? Told you I'd keep it short!
What interesting publishing-related news or blogs have you come across in the past two weeks?
No comments:
Post a Comment