Links of Interest: Feb. 2, 2022

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Traditional Publishing

  • Publishers and agents are grumbling about subpoenas in the antitrust case against Penguin Random House. As part of the discovery process, the Justice Department is seeking information about book deals going back years. Some say the requests are too broad and seek sensitive information. Read Rachel Deahl and Jim Milliot in Publishers Weekly.
  • Amazon shuts down Westland Books. Amazon acquired the India-based publisher in 2016. The closure came as a surprise, as Westland is a major English-language publisher in India with a range of bestselling titles. (Why not sell it?) Read more at Scroll.in.

Supply Chain

  • Independent publishers are seeing as much as a 40 percent increase in printing costs. In the UK, supply chain issues have been exacerbated by Brexit-related problems, leading to price increases from printers. For small publishers in particular, the increased costs can mean the difference between profit and loss. Some are calling on readers to buy direct rather than from a bookstore. Read Ruth Comerford in The Bookseller (subscription required).
  • Two highly anticipated cookbooks were lost at sea. A cargo ship that set sail from Taiwan experienced a container collapse on its way to the US, and numerous containers fell into the sea. The cookbooks’ publication dates have been pushed back. Read Rachel Sugar in Grub Street.

Bookselling

  • BookTok is giving bookshops a boost not seen since JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series. So says James Daunt, the CEO of Barnes & Noble and Waterstones. The growth of BookTok has encouraged young people to buy from physical bookshops. Read Sian Bayley in The Bookseller.
  • Independent bookstores did well in 2021. Booksellers interviewed by Publishers Weekly staff typically saw gains of about 10 percent for the year—and some did even better than that. But the outlook for 2022 is less certain. Read.
  • A long-term look at bookstore sales: Sales peaked in 2007 and then declined by 45 percent through 2019. During that same period, the number of stores fell about 40 percent. Read Jim Milliot in Publishers Weekly.
  • Sales jumped 20 percent at Half Price Books last year. The company celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and sells a mix of new and used books. Read Ed Nawotka in Publishers Weekly (subscription required).
  • Andy Hunter discusses Bookshop on its second anniversary. Nearly 80 percent of Bookshop customers say they used to buy their books from Amazon. Read Porter Anderson at Publishing Perspectives.

Creator Economy

  • Creator funds fall short of rewarding creators. Hank Green recently posted a video explaining how little TikTok pays in relation to YouTube, entirely by design. Read Casey Newton at Platformer. (Subscription required to read the entire post, but key points are in front of the wall.)
  • Instagram launches a subscription test. Soon, creators will be able to set a monthly price, unlock a Subscribe button on their profile, and offer certain content only to subscribers. Read Todd Spangler at Variety.

Trends

  • How Colleen Hoover became so influential. After self-publishing her debut novel in 2012, Hoover has spent a combined 120 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. She’s the third-most-followed author on Goodreads, behind Stephen King and Bill Gates. She’s now enjoying popularity on TikTok. Read Lily Herman at Elle.
  • How accepting will the market be of AI narration? Audible rules say that audiobooks must be narrated by a human, but some titles are slipping through with synthetic voices. Defenders of AI narration say this is not a threat to professional narrators because AI is used for books that would not have otherwise been recorded due to cost. Read Tom Simonite at Wired.
  • Girl power, book power: Publishers Weekly interviews multiple adult and children’s publishers to learn how their programs serve women and girls. Read Diane Patrick and Calvin Reid.

Culture & Politics

  • A closer look at the head of Skyhorse, which picks up “canceled” books. Tony Lyons discusses publishing books by Woody Allen, Philip Roth, and Norman Mailer, among others. Read Edward Helmore at The Guardian.
  • Some efforts to ban books in public schools are funded by rich donors. The director of the American Library Association says the number of attempts to ban books in schools soared in 2021 and appears to be an organized effort by a number of advocacy groups. Read Adam Gabbatt at The Guardian. The New York Times also has a feature that says much the same. While book bans are nothing new, they have become politicized as such battles move into statehouses, law enforcement, and political races.

Marketing Toolbox

  • The best promo sites for ebooks in 2022. David Gaughran curates a list of promo sites for self-publishing authors. Read at his blog.