Friday, January 25, 2013

Publishing Industry News

Publishing industry news and helpful blogs for 1/12/13-1/25/13.

 Publishing News

New imprints for those looking to traditionally publish include Amazon Publishing's two new children's imprints ranging from picture books to young adult, Algonquin's new children's publishing imprint for ages 7-17, a realistic sci-fi imprint from Osprey, and Entangled Publishing's Edge for authors with single-title works that have strong romantic elements.

MyiLibrary, run by Ingram, will be adding Random House books to their selection. OverDrive will be adding MacMillan.

Want to find content in a non-fiction how-to guide, but don't want to purchase the entire book from Amazon? Inkling, a new web program, allows readers to search for specific content in a book and purchase part or the entire thing through use of Google searches.

Now Penguin books can also be printed via the Expresso Book Machine. Press a button, print the book of your choice, right there in front of you!

Publishers Weekly creates a podcast describing how the Penguin Random merger will work.

Book Country adds a free self-publishing feature, which leaves authors with 85% of the royalties, while those who pay $399 get 100% of their royalties. I'm still not sure about them... I always recommend against the "pay to publish" method, and even with the free publishing added in, I'd want to read the contract in further detail. No longer will they be producing print books, either.

Professor Micheal D. Smith announces that while 3 studies show piracy doesn't hurt book sales, 25 studies show it does. He says the best ways to fight piracy are to make the content available digitally and participating in anti-piracy policies.

The National Book Awards will announce the top 40 this year, instead of the top ten, although only the top 10 will receive awards for each category.

Have you been asked to speak in the UK, and then during process, been asked to purchase a work visa? You've been scammed. Don't fall for this one. John Scalzi, sci-fi writer, first reported it, and points out what tipped him off to the scam.

Heard of Quora? It's a new blog site. GalleyCat talks about the details and what it can do for you.

Vantage Press authors have until January 31 to get their rights back. The vanity publisher is going out of business and closing down.


Industry Blogs

QueryTracker's Publishing Pulse for 1/18 and 1/25.

Mur Lafferty shares the economics of book deals, and shows how $100K deals translate into much smaller annual incomes. Author Jim Hines shares his actual writing income over the years, for comparison.

Publishers Weekly reports that at Digital Book World, the main topic of discussion was how publishers can take advantage of opportunities offered by new technology.

Sarah LaPolla talks about how to vet new agents to see if they're legit (what ask, where to look, etc).

Download a free cheat-sheet on the physical signs of anger to include body language in your novel.

GalleyCat offers a list of 6 ways to promote your book on a budget. Online giveaways and free promotion sites are a good place to start. Also, figuring out to format your manuscript for e-book distribution? GalleyCat links to formatting guides to 5 major self-publishing sites.

Andrew Lownie Literary Agency asks editors at major houses what they're looking for this year. Answering are Bill Strachan, Editor at Large, HarperCollins; Michael Szczerban, Simon & Schuster; Daniela Rapp, Editor, St. Martin’s Press; Robert Pigeon, Executive Editor, Da Capo Press; Luba Ostashevsky, Senior Editor , Palgrave Macmillan; Alex Littlefield, Editor, Basic Books; Rob Kirkpatrick, Senior Editor, Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press; Serena Jones, Editor, Times Books; Brent Howard, Senior Editor, New American Library; Michaela Hamilton, Editor in Chief of Citadel Press and Executive Editor of Kensington; and Amy Cherry, Vice President & Senior Editor, Norton.

 QueryTracker talks about why you should critique other people's queries (it helps you improve your own), and what exactly an agent learns from a query (everything from your grammar to whether or not you have a focused plot).

Laura Bickle explains that creating a timeline can help you prevent your characters from doing more in a day than is physically possible. Make one after finish your rough draft, compare to your story, and revise with that timeline in mind.

The Editor's Blog compiles their most popular and most important posts from 2012. These run from "how to format your manuscript" and "duties of an editor" to "common writing mistakes." Also, a post from this week on writing numbers in fiction, such as spelling it out if it's up to one hundred, numerals if higher.

Agent Kristen Nelson answers "What can book publishers learn from self-publishers?" They can release a lot of content, and pay attention to the metadata.

And on Thursday Night at the Question Emporium, a writer asks agent Janet Reid what to do if one agent responds to a query with a request for an exclusive and the full, and another responds the next day with a request for the full, non-exclusive. She suggests telling the first agent it's not exclusive and sending it to both.

The Business Rusch offers a very interesting and very thorough explanation of working with editors, how to avoid getting screwed by contracts in relation to edits, and who the different editors in traditional publishing houses are. It takes a little while to get to the point, but it's worth a read. You've got your acquiring editor, your content/line editors (sometimes the same person, sometimes not), your copyeditors, and your proofreaders (who aren't technically editors but are noted anyway). If possible, don't sign a contract that gives the editor the final say in your work, and include a limited number of revisions, with an option to keep the advance if you make more than x (1, 2, 3, whatever you're comfortable with) revisions. Part of her blog replies specifically to the blog of an editor, Lynn Price, discussing why it's important to trust your editor and not verbally abuse them. Price points out that it's okay to disagree (disagreements can be discussed), but don't get defensive or abusive.

Rachelle Gardner makes a list of 8 ways to help your favorite authors. Write reviews, like their Amazon page, blog or a tweet a quote from the book, and more.

At Writers Write, tips on how to end your novel. I really rather like the referring to your opening events advice.

Cover artist for the Wheel of Time books, artist Michael Whelan talks about how book covers are made.


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

3 comments:

  1. I love your blog.. very nice colors & theme. Did you create this website yourself? Plz reply back as I’m looking to create my own blog and would like to know wheere u got this from. thanks

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    1. You can go to blogspot and set up a blog yourself. I went through the background images under the "template" and chose a background I liked, then went into "advanced" and under each section (such as text, links, etc) I played with the colors until I thought they matched by background. Blogger makes it pretty easy to customize. :)

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