Astra Publishing House, owned by a Beijing-based company, consists of children’s publishers Boyd Mills & Kane and mineditionUS—and now a new imprint, Astra House. It will publish 20 to 25 adult titles a year across literary fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Half of those books will be works in translation. Next year, the company will also launch Astra Quarterly, a new literary magazine. Learn more from Jim Milliot in Publishers Weekly.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
