News and Trends
- Are sensitivity readers helping or hurting? At the New York Times, Alexandra Alter discusses the online outrage that can surround YA and children’s books in particular, and whether sensitivity readers are a wise precautionary measure or a form of censorship. Read.
- The story behind China’s online literature boom. The Hong Kong Free Press looks at the IPO and value of China Literature, host to an “intellectual property frenzy.” Read more by Jack Hu.
- We may need to give Donald Trump the Bookseller of the Year award, as he spurred almost immediate sellouts nationwide of print copies of Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury. The book saw an accelerated release in defiance of a cease-and-desist letter from the president’s attorneys. Read about it in Publishing Perspectives.
- The industry strikes back: Macmillan CEO John Sargent has issued a resounding defense of freedom of publication, calling the Trump effort to block the Wolff book a “flagrantly unconstitutional” attempt at prior restraint. Publishing Perspectives has more.
Amazon
- Publish Arabic language ebooks via Amazon KDP. Kindle now supports Arabic, but the program is in beta. Learn more. (Side note: A Swedish company has also launched a self-publishing platform, called Hekayh, for Arabic ebooks. Learn more from Mark Williams in the New Publishing Standard.)
- Silicon Valley (that is, Amazon) won’t save books: An argument that the Kindle hasn’t really changed books in the last 10 years, and won’t be changing them in the next 10. Read Alex Shephard in the New Republic.
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.