Traditional Publishing
- What types of books are hardest to sell? Big Five editor Sean deLone discusses at length the various factors that affect whether an editor makes an offer on your book. Along the way, he offers a hierarchy of the most challenging projects to sell, with one list for fiction, one list for nonfiction. No surprises here for me, but a recommended read for those in the query trenches especially. Read at Dear Head of Mine.
Audiobooks
- Audio outsells print for some titles. The Wall Street Journal looks at specific titles for which the audiobook edition outsold the hardcover, including S.A. Cosby’s King of Ashes, Jeremy Renner’s My Next Breath, and Brooke Shields’s Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old. Read Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg (gift link).
Marketing & Promotion
- Social media trends in 2026: The digital and social media coordinator for a literary agency discusses how the landscape might change, and what platforms may rise and fall, next year. Read Lacy Phillips at my site.
- End-of-year platform tune-up. This is a helpful checklist of things for authors to periodically re-evaluate and update. Read Jeffrey Yamaguchi at Book Publishing Brick by Brick.
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.