Audiobooks
- TikTok and Audible have partnered on a marketing effort. This arrangement follows marketing partnerships with other retailers and platforms, such as Spotify and Barnes & Noble. The only question is why it took so long. See the announcement.
- What are the differences between reading a book and listening? It’s not that one’s better than the other; it’s that they lead to different experiences or interpretations. Read Sean Delone at Dear Head of Mine.
Traditional Publishing
- Nonprofit presses can survive if they have a strong backlist. The publisher at Open Letter Books says there are three main pathways to survival for nonprofits like his: a runaway mega-bestseller, like Elena Ferrante; a major donation; or a substantial backlist. Twas ever thus? Read Chad Post at Three Percent.
- Big publishers join revived BookCon. The convention, to be held at Javits Center in New York City, is sold out and will feature about 400 exhibitors. Read Ed Nawotka at Publishers Weekly.
- How do co-author and/or author-ghostwriter collaborations work? How much money changes hands? What are the royalty splits? There isn’t a single answer; it depends on many factors. Longtime agent Richard Curtis explains clearly and entertainingly. Read at Inside Agenting.
- Entangled, the publisher of Rebecca Yarros, gets private equity investment. Chermin Group has invested in other media companies, such as Barstool Sports, Hello Sunshine, and Crunchyroll. The Wall Street Journal values the deal at $400 million. Publishers Lunch notes, “That puts Entangled in league with Sourcebooks for helping to break long-established precedents on cracking the highest echelons of trade publishing. (And the two are joined by the smaller Zando as a trio of independently run, female-led publishers growing at high rates.)” Learn more about the deal from Jim Milliot at Publishers Weekly.
Bookselling
- Is it really a problem that “too many” books are published? Agate Publishing founder Doug Seibold says no, but that the issue is worthy of discussion. “Truly registering the volume of books being written and published each year is one important key to understanding every dimension of the publishing industry, whether you’re a writer, an industry professional, or a reader. In my view, the relevant question isn’t whether there are too many books published every year, but rather what this super-abundance means to every part of the chain that connects writers to readers.” Read at What Publishing Is.
- An interview with the CEO of Books-a-Million. This Q&A by publicist Kathleen Schmidt covers recent initiatives at the US chain store that’s too often overlooked. Read at Publishing Confidential.
Trends
- The success of Dungeon Crawler Carl and author Matt Dinniman. The litRPG series has sold more than 6 million copies and been translated into 20 languages. He has 12,000 paid members on Patreon and a print-only deal with Ace Books (Penguin Random House). Read Alexandra Alter at the New York Times (gift link).
- Considering the division between high and low culture in book publishing. “As the [19th] century progressed, this fantasy of a neat divide between high and low culture, never quite true in practice even at the high-water mark of high modernism, nonetheless continued to maintain a chokehold on writers themselves, though they would constantly transgress its porous borders.” But then something changed in the 1980s. Read Jon Repetti at LA Review of Books.
Culture & Politics
- Celebrity books don’t necessarily sell. People outside of publishing love to talk about how little books sell when they’re by names in the news—in this case, Olivia Nuzzi’s American Canto sold just 1,200 print copies in its first week. People inside publishing already know that most books don’t sell that well because it is challenging to sell books regardless of who the author is. Read Mary Whitfill Roeloffs at Forbes. For better analysis than Forbes, see John Warner, who looks at five reasons why the book hasn’t taken off despite Nuzzi being in the headlines. Read at the Biblioracle Recommends.
- Related: Nuzzi is part of a recent spate of “grievance memoirs.” Read Carlos Lozada at the New York Times (gift link).
- The Poetry Foundation has phased out all public programming; some are unhappy about the change. The foundation says it intends to focus on funding other organizations, although that reasoning is disputed by employees. Read Sam Spratford at Publishers Weekly.
- Charlie Kirk’s new book reached number one on the Amazon Top 100 bestseller list. It was published by Winning Team Publishing, co-founded in 2021 by Donald Trump Jr. Read Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg at the Wall Street Journal (gift link). I was able to find at least five copycat titles on sale at Amazon when searching for the title, Stop, in the Name of God.
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.