News and Trends
- Three of the largest publishers saw flat sales in 2018. Simon & Schuster and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the two smallest of the large publishers, did better than their rivals. Jim Milliot in Publishers Weekly looks at the lack of growth in the US and Western markets.
- How Trump is shaking up acquisitions in New York publishing: America’s “literary bubble” is rethinking its identity, Lakshmi Varanasi reports at Politico.
- Sales are down at comic retail shops. Periodical comics sales were down 10 percent last year (compared to 2016), while graphic novels declined 9 percent. Read more from Heidi MacDonald in Publishers Weekly.
- Romance has a diversity problem. Black authors have written less than half of 1 percent of the total number of books considered as prize finalists by the Romance Writers of America, even though research shows that the person most likely to read a book of any genre is a college-educated black woman. Listen to NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro.
- Wattpad Studios is opening a film and digital content arm in Asia. Dexter Ong, formerly of 21st Century Fox Asia, leads the effort from offices in Hong Kong. Read more at Publishing Perspectives.
Audiobooks
- A comprehensive overview of the audiobook landscape for independent authors: Get in-depth analysis on distribution, royalties, and aggregator options. Read at Deborah L. Jacobs’s website.
- In the UK, audiobook sales have doubled in the last five years. Genres such as science fiction and fantasy, classic fiction, self-help, history, and science are outperforming in terms of sales. Meanwhile, UK consumers bought 3 percent fewer books across all print and digital formats. Read Heloise Wood in the Bookseller (subscription required).
Marketing Toolbox
- Get in-depth answers on how to be GDPR compliant by May 25. No matter who you are or where you live, GDPR will likely affect you, assuming you collect email addresses for marketing. Get a simple but comprehensive overview at Kirsten Oliphant’s blog.
- Learn how to use Amazon also-boughts in your marketing strategy. Sell more books by understanding Amazon’s algorithms and recommendation system. Read Ricci Wolman at Written Word Media.
- Get expert insights from the Self-Publishing Advice Conference. More than 24 experts (including Porter and Jane) presented 24 sessions in a 24-hour period. Review all the sessions here.
- Heads up: The UK-based Writers’ Workshop is now Jericho Writers. Run by hybrid author Harry Bingham, the site offers an extensive array of services and resources for both beginning and established writers. Learn more.
Amazon
- Amazon Studios is closing to submissions. Right on the heels of the Kindle Scout closure, Amazon has ended its open call for script and concept submissions. Learn more at Deadline by Dino-Ray Ramos.
Imprint Alerts
- Strange Light launches in spring 2019 from Penguin Random House Canada. The new imprint will publish “cutting-edge voices exploring evolving literary forms.” The first two titles will be from Sara Peters and Anshuman Iddamsetty. Read the press release.
- W.W. Norton is launching its first imprint for young readers. Norton Young Readers will publish books for children of all ages, in all genres, from preschool through college. Read more in Publishers Weekly from Emma Kantor.
- Skyhorse is reducing its title count. The publisher, which was established in 2006, released 1,120 titles in 2017. This year, it will reduce that number by 25 percent due to a 19 percent decline in sales. Learn more in Shelf Awareness.
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.