Links of Interest: February 15, 2023

Traditional Publishing

• Meet the champion of debut authors. Debut authors of literary fiction and nonfiction will want to take note of this podcast and website. Read Ruth Madievsky at Electric Literature.
• An agent finds sensitivity reads problematic. Jeff Herman offers the story of a client who received a Big Five contract, then had to revise his manuscript late in the editorial process because of an anonymous sensitivity read. Read at Publishers Weekly. (To learn more about sensitivity reads and how they can be done well, see our November 2022 item.)
• Four authors transition to YA romance. A look at novelists who are accustomed to writing for adults and how they’ve adapted to writing for Gen Z. Read Iyana Jones at Publishers Weekly.
• The Authors Guild wins concessions from defunct publisher. After being sued by 10 authors, Authors’ Place Press has agreed to revert rights to authors, provide authors with production files for their books, and make a token monetary payment. Authors’ Place has since shut down operations. Read the press release.
• An agent told a bestselling debut author to stop writing fiction. Now she’s back. Read the story of Laura Zigman, author of the chick lit bestseller Animal Husbandry, who is back with a new novel after many years. Read Beth Teitell at the Boston Globe.
• Authors report problems at Adelaide Books. The independent publisher, launched in 2017, has delayed publication dates and failed to deliver royalty statements, among other problems. It has contracts with about 450 authors. Read Jim Milliot at Publishers Weekly.

Self-Publishing

• TikTok has become a discovery tool for publishers to find self-published hits they want to acquire. Keep in mind this trend is nothing new—every time a new platform becomes popular, it leads to superstars signing deals. One editor says, “The resurgence of publishing self-published authors is primarily driven by TikTok, especially seeing as romance and science fiction and fantasy make up a large percentage of TikTok-famous books. I would also say some of the resurgence comes from a wider demand for ‘non-traditional’ authors and stories—people who write around day jobs, haven’t attended well-known writing courses, and so on. I think people want a more diverse and interesting publishing ecosystem, and I think the industry itself notices that it’s missing out on great stories and writers by sticking to the same formulas.” Read Lauren Brown in the Bookseller (subscription required).
• Author raises more than a half million dollars for a book about keyboards. Interested in the history of keyboards, from early typewriters to the present? Then be sure to check out this two-volume set that includes 260,000 words and 1,300 photos. It already has 3,000+ backers and about 20 days to go in the campaign. Visit Kickstarter.
• Authors start a petition over unfair removal of KDP Select content. Authors who enroll their ebooks in KDP Select cannot sell or make those same ebooks available elsewhere. If they do, Amazon can take their book out of Kindle Select and Kindle Unlimited, its subscription service. However, bad actors are known to pirate works and distribute them elsewhere, which leaves authors in a bind, trying to explain to Amazon that they haven’t actually breached their agreement. In response to a query on the matter, Amazon told Publishers Lunch, “We work directly with authors and provide an extended timeline to resolve the issue. After a period of time, books may be removed from KDP Select until the issue is resolved. Even while an issue is unresolved, books are still available for sale on Amazon.” Read the petition.

Culture & Politics

• Novelist Salman Rushdie speaks out after his near-fatal stabbing. He was hospitalized for six weeks. “There is such a thing as PTSD, you know,” he says. “I’ve found it very, very difficult to write. I sit down to write, and nothing happens. I write, but it’s a combination of blankness and junk, stuff that I write and that I delete the next day. I’m not out of that forest yet.” Read David Remnick in the New Yorker.
• The legacy of “the clinch” on romance covers. Victoria Lessard looks at the history of romance covers. Read in Hazlitt.
• When the novel swiped right: Contemporary fiction authors need to consider dating apps in their story lines. Read Jennifer Wilson in the New York Times.
• Consumer demand gets revealed in book sales. Kristen McLean of NPD BookScan is interviewed on a business podcast, where she discusses how books provide insight into consumption trends—e.g., cookbooks focused on convenience and easy-prep meals or making your own baby food. Listen.

AI

• Long and thoughtful discussion of what AI might mean for writers and artists. This piece doesn’t take sides (thankfully) as much as examine the long-term implications and questions raised by the technology. Read Jason Sanford’s Genre Grapevine.
• OpenAI has launched a paid subscription for ChatGPT. The cost is $20 per month for priority access during peak times, faster responses, and access to new features. Read Alex Konrad at Forbes.
• Copyright won’t solve creators’ AI problem. Cory Doctorow argues that today’s creators have more copyright protection than ever, the companies that buy creators’ copyrights have more profits, but creators are poorer than they were 40 years ago. Read at Pluralistic.

TikTok

• How one author boosted his sales through TikTok. It took him about six weeks to build a meaningful following as a nonfiction author with a well-defined niche (in this case, crypto). His book will release next year from Penguin Random House. Read Nat Eliason at Infinite Play.
• On BookTok, is being a reader more important than reading? A skeptic who takes a look at BookTok activity and sees a shallow lifestyle aesthetic wonders if BookTok’s fate will be similar to that of BookTube. Read Barry Pierce at GQ.

Amazon

• For anyone who’s been purchasing Kindle ebooks for years: A Kindle customer, Rick Monro, recently shared his long, frustrating process of trying to regain access to dozens of Kinde ebooks he purchased as far back as 2013. He only discovered recently that he was unable to access these older purchases, and he was told his orders were “too old”—that he would need to purchase again and request a refund for the older purchases. Whether this is an anomaly is hard to say (this reader can still access Kindle ebooks purchased as far back as 2009), but it demonstrates a key problem in buying ebooks that you don’t really own: they can be taken away at any time. Learn more in Monro’s thread.
• Why does it feel like Amazon is making itself worse? Well, this question isn’t that hard to answer for anyone paying attention, but if you want all the gritty details about how shopping on Amazon is more like shopping on eBay or a junky bazaar, then read John Herrman at New York.
• It’s Amazon’s first unprofitable year since 2014. It lost nearly $3 billion despite holiday-season sales growing 9 percent. Part of the problem: a hefty investment in an electronic automaker whose value plummeted. Read Alina Selyukh at NPR.
• Amazon rolls out its new ebook return policy. Amazon is cracking down on ebook returns if a book has been partially read, which it agreed to do last year as a result of conversations with the Authors Guild. Read the update.

Audio

• Why Spotify’s podcast bet went wrong. Its recent cuts to the podcasting division have triggered, according to one writer, a “podcast winter.” Read Max Tani at Semafor.