Links of Interest: August 3, 2022

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Traditional Publishing

  • Callisto Media cuts employees and titles. Callisto has laid off about a third of its workforce. Callisto’s business model is not like that of typical publishers. It is based on analyzing sales data, developing content and intellectual property in-house, and hiring freelancers. Read Nathalie op de Beeck in Publishers Weekly (subscription required).
  • Cindy Spiegel and Julie Grau have gone independent. Three years after departing Penguin Random House, the two storied editors speak to Publishers Weekly about their new publishing effort and how things are going outside of the Big Five. Read John Maher.
  • A TikTok sensation scores a book deal with Barnes & Noble’s publishing arm. Self-published author Melissa Blair sells the rights to her YA fantasy series to Union Square & Co., owned by Barnes & Noble. Read Iyana Jones at Publishers Weekly.
  • Learn about the most in-demand audiobook narrator. And guess what? She now has her own novel coming out. Read Katherine Rosman at The New York Times.

Unionizing

  • Employees at Bloomsbury UK have unionized and are seeking recognition from management. They are motivated in part by inflation and increasing costs of living. Read at The Bookseller (subscription required).
  • West Hollywood’s storied bookstore, BookSoup, unionizes. Vroman’s, which owns the bookstore, voluntarily recognized the union of a dozen booksellers. They seek increased pay and more staffing. Read Dorany Pineda at the LA Times.
  • America’s Test Kitchen workers have voted to unionize. They are concerned about low pay, healthcare expenses, staffing, and high turnover. Read Dialynn Dwyer at Boston.com.

Book Reviews

  • The New York Times Book Review has a new editor: Gilbert Cruz. He replaces Pamela Paul. Read the announcement.
  • The newspaper book review is dead. The New York Times Book Review is the last standalone books coverage section of any newspaper. No more than a dozen staff critic positions exist in the United States. Read Frank Guan at The Nation.

Book Banning

Children’s Publishing

  • How and why children’s authors cross into adult categories. While authors are often encouraged to stick with one genre or focused readership, some authors seek freedom to explore new horizons. Read Joanne O’Sullivan in Publishers Weekly.

Sales & Marketing

  • A Canadian publisher says BookNet misses a lot of sales. BookNet Canada is the sales tracking service in the Canadian book market, but a publisher says there are big gaps in its data. Namely, it doesn’t include any Amazon sales. Read Kenneth Whyte at SHuSH.
  • Three authors launch a successful Kickstarter campaign for a fantasy romance series. The initial goal was to reach $10,000. It has raised nearly $400,000 as of this writing. Read Sophia Stewart in Publishers Weekly.

The Future of Publishing

  • Learn how Sudowrite, an AI writing program, helps novelists (and others) write and finish books. Joanna Penn is featured and quoted as foreseeing a future where writers are more akin to “creative directors,” directing the AI to produce the desired output. Read Josh Dzieza at The Verge.
  • Crypto wants to reimagine how authors make a living. Here’s the starting pitch: What if you, as a reader, had invested a small stake in supporting a literary property before it became a blockbuster—say, Harry Potter? Why, you’d be rich! This article explores what the future of crowdfunding and patronage of authorship could look like and how new models might allow for monetization of fan fiction. Read Elle Griffin in Esquire.

Culture & Politics

  • Mike Pence’s memoir will publish on November 15. The title is So Help Me God; it releases from Simon & Schuster on the same day as Michelle Obama’s The Light We Carry (from Penguin Random House). Pence’s book chronicles President Trump’s severing of their relationship on January 6, 2021. Read Virginia Chamlee at People.
  • On deciding not to read a book: It’s not an admission of ignorance, argues one writer. It’s a mode of engaging with a text. Read Ika Willis at The Conversation.
  • A troubling trend of closing literary prizes. UK writers say they are losing a lifeline. Read Ellen Peirson-Hagger at The New Statesman.
  • Get the full story behind a book that was canceled due to plagiarism. Jumi Bello’s debut book was dropped by the publisher. Was this preventable? Read Johanna Berkman at Air Mail.
  • Author Carmen Maria Machado considers how much business should be taught in MFA programs. Part of her impetus for writing on this topic is the above article about Jumi Bello, which she doesn’t think is all that great. Read her newsletter.
  • Book Twitter is petty drama masquerading as literary discourse. So says Miles Klee, who complains about a recurring cycle where tweets ignite a backlash and then a backlash to that backlash. Read at MEL Magazine.

Supply Chain

  • Britney Spears’s memoir has been delayed. Paper shortages are the culprit. Originally planned for January 2023, the book no longer has a definitive release date. Read Jordan Hoffman at Vanity Fair.
  • Printing schedules in North America and Europe are taking twice as long as they used to. Academic publishers in particular are altering their plans and using different types of paper as well as more on-demand printing. Prices have increased between 11 and 15 percent. Princeton University Press has pushed back publication dates for up to 40 percent of its books since the start of the year. Read Bethan Staton and Cristina Criddle in the Financial Times (subscription likely required).