Today's publishing news and industry blogs post covers from 8/7-8/23/2013.
Publishing News
The Simon & Schuster vs Barnes and Noble terms disagreement has been settled. (And the S&S authors rejoice.)
A new Writer Beware warns writers against American Book Publishing's new arm All Classic Books. Of note is the heavy pressure to buy hundreds of copies of your own book to distribute for reviews. Another recent warning is about Iconic Publishing, whose owner has registered copyright on books despite contracts clearly saying the copyrights remain in the name of the authors, and the authors having not agreed to the transfer.
Did Overstock.com end its "stealth war" with Amazon over prices? Nope, not exactly.
What do you think of paying $200 on course books for your college classes? CourseSmart offers a rental program that allows students to rent 6 books for a semester for just that much.
So Barnes & Noble isn't planning on selling the Nook business after all.
Nielson has purchased book tracking services from Bowker.
Judge Cote ruled on the DOJ vs Apple court case. The injunction she suggests against Apple displeases publishers, who say it affects them, and would disrupt the deals they carefully began establishing after the settlements to be in line with the settlements (and since they've already settled, ruling against them is not part of the deal). Of course the proposal doesn't actually attempt to rewrite directly the publishers' settlements, or their deals with other companies beside Apple. The DoJ dismissed the complaints, and meanwhile Kobo cheered the injunction.
Apple has proposed an October 2014 liability hearing for the damages ruling on the trial (basically, they want to delay the punishment until after they've had a chance to win an appeal). The request to stay the damages hearing until then was denied. They'll be back in court August 27.
**Added Friday afternoon: More publisher warnings from Writer Beware.
Industry Blogs
QueryTracker's Publishing Pulse for 8/9 and 8/23.
Dana Sitar offers advice on connecting to readers: don't rely on loyal fans for their money (or why should they be loyal?), have real non-sales conversations with people, and more.
Rachelle Gardner talks about how we help ourselves focus on writing as a business.
On QueryTracker, Rosie Genova offers another form of organizing plot, for those of us who don't work so well with notecards, sticky cards, or Scrivener: Word tables. (I have a personal hatred for working with them myself, but that's more to having to fix them when the formatting runs around at work after the 6th person has edited that file across 3 different versions of Word...) And Stina Lindenblatt explains ways authors can do giveaways. Did you know you cannot do promote contests on Facebook outside very specific methods, but you can install a Rafflecopter on your page?
Also on QueryTracker, writer Elizabeth Craig talks about her life as a hybrid author (that is, an author who is both self-published and traditionally published.) And what is Novelrank.com and how does it help you? How about telling you what your Amazon sales are? Sarah Pinneo describes how it works--mostly by watching Amazon's author rank, the ranks of books right above and below you, and tracking when your books move apart as proof of something being sold. Carolyn Kaufman also describes what exactly plagiarism is, and how to avoid being plagiarized.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch makes the point that innovation is now in the hands of indie authors, in no small part because the Big Six are now the Big Five (and possibly whittling those numbers down further). If you do go traditional publishing, she says, be prepared to be a team player, because publishing houses are in it for the money, and like Hollywood prefer reliable sellers to risky new ideas.
How can indie writers find reviewers? GalleyCat offers links to a couple of resources.
Blogger Justin Swapp puts together some free Scrivner templates.
Don't overuse words, such as suddenly, in your novel.
So how about fighting piracy by surrendering customer data to antipiracy organizations, and putting watermarks on your ebooks when you buy them?
Beware of traveling internationally with your e-reader. In fact, don't update when traveling, because you might find you can't read some of your books afterward if you do.
15 places for free e-book promotion (as assembled by GalleyCat). And 23 query letters that got writers agents.
And Smashwords now has a tool that allows authors to interview themselves. (Um, thanks for agreeing to this interview...)
What relevant publishing news have you encountered in the past two weeks?
Publishing News
The Simon & Schuster vs Barnes and Noble terms disagreement has been settled. (And the S&S authors rejoice.)
A new Writer Beware warns writers against American Book Publishing's new arm All Classic Books. Of note is the heavy pressure to buy hundreds of copies of your own book to distribute for reviews. Another recent warning is about Iconic Publishing, whose owner has registered copyright on books despite contracts clearly saying the copyrights remain in the name of the authors, and the authors having not agreed to the transfer.
Did Overstock.com end its "stealth war" with Amazon over prices? Nope, not exactly.
What do you think of paying $200 on course books for your college classes? CourseSmart offers a rental program that allows students to rent 6 books for a semester for just that much.
So Barnes & Noble isn't planning on selling the Nook business after all.
Nielson has purchased book tracking services from Bowker.
Judge Cote ruled on the DOJ vs Apple court case. The injunction she suggests against Apple displeases publishers, who say it affects them, and would disrupt the deals they carefully began establishing after the settlements to be in line with the settlements (and since they've already settled, ruling against them is not part of the deal). Of course the proposal doesn't actually attempt to rewrite directly the publishers' settlements, or their deals with other companies beside Apple. The DoJ dismissed the complaints, and meanwhile Kobo cheered the injunction.
Apple has proposed an October 2014 liability hearing for the damages ruling on the trial (basically, they want to delay the punishment until after they've had a chance to win an appeal). The request to stay the damages hearing until then was denied. They'll be back in court August 27.
**Added Friday afternoon: More publisher warnings from Writer Beware.
Industry Blogs
QueryTracker's Publishing Pulse for 8/9 and 8/23.
Dana Sitar offers advice on connecting to readers: don't rely on loyal fans for their money (or why should they be loyal?), have real non-sales conversations with people, and more.
Rachelle Gardner talks about how we help ourselves focus on writing as a business.
On QueryTracker, Rosie Genova offers another form of organizing plot, for those of us who don't work so well with notecards, sticky cards, or Scrivener: Word tables. (I have a personal hatred for working with them myself, but that's more to having to fix them when the formatting runs around at work after the 6th person has edited that file across 3 different versions of Word...) And Stina Lindenblatt explains ways authors can do giveaways. Did you know you cannot do promote contests on Facebook outside very specific methods, but you can install a Rafflecopter on your page?
Also on QueryTracker, writer Elizabeth Craig talks about her life as a hybrid author (that is, an author who is both self-published and traditionally published.) And what is Novelrank.com and how does it help you? How about telling you what your Amazon sales are? Sarah Pinneo describes how it works--mostly by watching Amazon's author rank, the ranks of books right above and below you, and tracking when your books move apart as proof of something being sold. Carolyn Kaufman also describes what exactly plagiarism is, and how to avoid being plagiarized.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch makes the point that innovation is now in the hands of indie authors, in no small part because the Big Six are now the Big Five (and possibly whittling those numbers down further). If you do go traditional publishing, she says, be prepared to be a team player, because publishing houses are in it for the money, and like Hollywood prefer reliable sellers to risky new ideas.
How can indie writers find reviewers? GalleyCat offers links to a couple of resources.
Blogger Justin Swapp puts together some free Scrivner templates.
Don't overuse words, such as suddenly, in your novel.
So how about fighting piracy by surrendering customer data to antipiracy organizations, and putting watermarks on your ebooks when you buy them?
Beware of traveling internationally with your e-reader. In fact, don't update when traveling, because you might find you can't read some of your books afterward if you do.
15 places for free e-book promotion (as assembled by GalleyCat). And 23 query letters that got writers agents.
And Smashwords now has a tool that allows authors to interview themselves. (Um, thanks for agreeing to this interview...)
What relevant publishing news have you encountered in the past two weeks?
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