Links of Interest: July 21, 2021

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Traditional Publishing

  • Agency contract dispute lands in court. Literary agent Brooks Sherman, who was recently accused of misconduct, has sued his former employer (a literary agency) for commissions. Andrew Albanese wisely notes, “While the complaint and counterclaim contain some bombshell accusations, the legal matter appears to be a fairly straightforward contract case which, if it is not settled, will likely come down to how the court reads the employment agreement.” Read in Publishers Weekly.

Bookselling

  • Bookshop (still) doing well. Sales are up 17 percent for the first half of 2021 compared to 2020. The site hosts 1,100 bookstores, with 400 using Bookshop exclusively for ecommerce. Six of the top 10 highest earning bookstores are Black owned. Read Ed Nawotka in Publishers Weekly.
  • Bookshop’s founder says every book lover should fear this graph. It’s a graph showing Amazon’s market share of all book purchases over time. Read Andy Hunter at Medium.
  • How are Black bookstores doing a year after #blackoutbestsellerlist? Traffic and sales have decreased; optimism remains. Read Erika Hardison at Book Riot.
  • Supply-chain issues continue to plague book publishing and drive up costs and uncertainty. It’s not just tightness in the paper and printing market, but also truck driver shortages, port congestion, and container costs. Advice for publishers: Look at domestic digital printing and lower the total cost of ownership, not just unit cost. Read Jim Milliot in Publishers Weekly.
  • Amazon suspends hundreds of top Chinese sellers. Amazon is enforcing its own rules, such as manipulation of customer reviews. Read Juozas Kaziukėnas at Marketplace Pulse.

Trends

  • Email newsletters: a new literary genre? Yet another trend piece looking at the rise of Substack and similar services. Read Molly Fischer at The Cut.
  • How your Netflix habit is changing contemporary fiction. TV adaptations of literary works are increasing, and successful shows tend to focus on complex characters and world building. Read at The Atlantic.

Culture & Politics

  • An interview with a Big Five conservative editor. In a Q&A with Laura Miller, Eric Nelson at HarperCollins’s Broadside Books imprint says, “In the past five years, my primary political belief is in the capital-T truth. It’s really important to me that people are trying to make the world a better place regardless of their ideology.” Read at Slate.
  • The American Booksellers Association faces intense criticism. In its July white box mailing (a promotional mailing sent to all member bookstores), the ABA included a book widely considered anti-trans. It also used an incorrect cover image when promoting another work. Read Alex Green in Publishers Weekly.
  • Twitter didn’t break YA because YA isn’t broken. Written in response to a recent essay blaming Twitter for the ills in YA publishing, this essay looks at the problem of gatekeepers in YA. Read Kelly Jensen at Book Riot.
  • Library and school boards have become the latest focal point of the culture wars. US public schools and libraries have found themselves at the center of debates on books about race and gender. Read NBC News as well as Christina Joseph at School Library Journal.

Marketing Toolbox

  • A beginner’s guide to pre-orders. The Alliance of Independent Authors has an overview of when and why to offer a pre-order, with a range of author experiences. Read at their site.
  • A good look at how to adjust to upcoming privacy changes to Apple Mail. As Apple iOS 15 rolls out, your email newsletter open rates may look significantly different (and wrong). Here’s clear-eyed and calm advice on how to adjust your email marketing practices. Read Eric Shanfelt at Nearview Media.
  • BookFunnel adds custom domains. BookFunnel, the popular service for facilitating the distribution of review copies and giveaways, now allows you to use your own domain name with the service. Learn more.