News
- Author Earnings is offline. It’s been a year since the last report. Read Mark Williams at The New Publishing Standard.
- A revamped version of Oprah’s Book Club is coming to Apple TV. There aren’t any specifics yet, but Oprah signed a multi-year deal with Apple. Read in Shelf Awareness.
- Patreon is changing up its offerings. New users of the service will have to fork over a greater share of their donations or go with a “Lite” plan. Read Paul Sawers in VentureBeat.
Traditional Publishing
- 2018 was a good year for the big trade publishers. Digital audio and backlist sales drove an increase in profits at four of the five big New York publishers. Read Jim Milliot in Publishers Weekly.
- Sourcebooks’ sales are up, driven by juvenile nonfiction. Adult fiction is up as well. Read Calvin Reid in Publishers Weekly.
- Brexit might hit British academic publishers the hardest. UK publishing profits are driven by export, plus scholarly publishing may suffer an inability to attract the same talent as before. Read Andrew Albanese in Publishers Weekly.
Bookstores and Bookselling
- Waterstones is being petitioned to pay booksellers a living wage. The UK bookselling chain is feeling the heat from its own staff as well as from high-profile writers, who say the rate of pay is unacceptable. But James Daunt, the bookstore’s director, said the chain could not afford a pay increase: “We’re simply not profitable enough to wave the magic wand and shower gold all around.” Read Alison Flood in The Guardian.
- LifeWay Christian Resources is closing its 170 stores. It is the second company to close all its Christian bookstores in two years. The company will continue to sell products online. Read Shelf Awareness.
- Another Barnes & Noble prototype store has opened in Michigan. The store is about half the size of a traditional store and has plenty of non-book merchandise. Read JC Reindl in the Detroit Free Press.
- Hudson sales are flat. Best known as an airport bookstore chain, Hudson saw a 5 percent decline in sales of books, magazines, and newspapers. Read Jim Milliot in Publishers Weekly.
Culture and Politics
- Learn about the literary agency that sells Trump administration memoirs. They try to advise their clients on media and marketing strategy to secure the best possible deal and sales, but not all of them listen. Read Jason Zengerle in The New York Times Magazine.
- A PEN panel on call-out culture tackles timely issues for writers. Earlier this month, PEN moderated a panel, “Writing Wrongs: Call-Outs, Correctness, and Culture Wars.” Discussion included the topics of sensitivity readers and whether writers can or should write characters outside of their own experience. Watch.
- The RITA award finalists (still) lack diversity. Romance Writers of America is struggling with reader-biased judging in its award series, the RITAs. The awards will be given this year nonetheless. Read the statement from the RWA Board.
- Where is the line between criticism and “cancel culture”? Katy Waldman explores the increasing influence of social media criticism on YA publishing. Read in The New Yorker.
- The fate of the book review in the age of the algorithm. A critic writes in Harper’s Magazine about the dumbing down of literary coverage in newspapers and magazines. Read Christian Lorentzen.
Amazon
- How publishers should navigate Amazon’s terms of service. The first thing to understand: there are actually several sets of terms of service, and they’re not all in sync. Read Ian Lamont at Lean Media.
- How Amazon algorithms have created a dystopian bookstore. Wired looks at the problem of Amazon categorizing and recommending pseudoscience as science. Read Renee DiResta.
Marketing Toolbox
- How to sell books in 2019. Indie author David Gaughran covers advertising and price promotions in a comprehensive post. Read at his blog.
- Librarians harness Instagram. And the library is looking pretty cool. Read Karen Springen in Publishers Weekly.
New Imprint Alert
- Trigger Publishing is launching a children’s mental health and wellbeing imprint. Upside Down Books will “focus on mental health issues while also promoting positivity, emotional intelligence, and wellness for children.” Read Katie Mansfield in The Bookseller.
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.