Traditional Publishing
- When authors support their own books with marketing dollars: Authors are seeing the investment as necessary even if they have a traditional publisher; some publicists say they’re receiving far more outreach requests for services than they did 10 years ago. Read Arvind Dilawar at The Guardian.
- EU sees increasing sales of English-language import editions. European publishers, particularly in Holland and across Scandinavia, are seeing increased sales for popular authors in English. Publishers have been lobbying to acquire rights to produce English-language editions of their own alongside translations. Read Claire Moses and Elizabeth A. Harris at the New York Times.
- Barnes & Noble has purchased Tattered Cover bookstore. The store will continue to operate under the Tattered Cover name; B&N anticipates continuing store events and offering employment to most of the current employees—in other words, running the store as usual. While it might be tempting to see this purchase as ominous or bad news, don’t forget that Barnes & Noble now gives decision-making power about what to order and stock to local booksellers, even if there is corporate guidance, recommendations, and centralized buying. (And publishers can’t pay for B&N merchandising or guarantee their new releases will be displayed in every B&N nationwide.) So this acquisition makes sense, given B&N’s leadership under James Daunt, who also leads the Waterstones bookstore chain in the UK. There, Waterstones has acquired multiple UK independent bookstores, kept them running under the same names, and transformed them from precarious businesses to flourishing ones. For those who have forgotten, Tattered Cover’s problems began during the summer of 2020. Read Judith Kohler at the Denver Post.
Trends
- The latest on reading and leisure habits in Canada. One part of the survey found that 58 percent of audiobook listeners obtained their books from free sources, such as the library or YouTube. Meanwhile, 62 percent of ebook readers and 51 percent of print book readers found free sources for their reading material. Take a look.
- Authors Equity announces its first 10 titles. Most of the books are by well-known names, bestselling authors, or public figures (for example: Seth Godin, Rachel Hollis, Reid Hoffmann, and James Frey). Interestingly, the announcement includes information about the independent editors assigned to each author. Read the announcement. Don’t know what Authors Equity is? Read our earlier coverage.
- Learn about a UK-based fantasy book subscription box company, FairyLoot. The business has grown tenfold since the onset of the pandemic and has tens of thousands of subscriptions. Read Ed Nawotka at Publishers Weekly.
- Taking webtoons into print: The editor in chief of Oni Press discusses her acquisition of webtoons for print publication. Read Brigid Alverson at ICv2.
- Fashion’s in love with literary intellectuals. Enjoy it while it lasts? Read Madeleine Schulz at Vogue Business.
Legal
- Publishers sue Google over ads for unauthorized works. Google allows advertising of unauthorized, infringing copies of traditionally published textbooks and educational works—which of course leads to profits for them. Even though publishers have reported infringement, Google has ignored all pleas to cease advertising for such works. Read Jim Milliot at Publishers Weekly.
AI
- Surprise, surprise: AI bots may still scrape your website content even if you’ve asked them not to. A study by Wired shows that Perplexity, an AI chatbot that promises to offer real-time, accurate information, ignores Robots Exclusion Protocol. It’s also not necessarily accurate in its answers. Read Dhruv Mehrotra and Tim Marchman.
- Educational publisher Wiley reaps profits after striking licensing deals with AI companies. Wiley received $23 million from a tech company to use previously published book content to train generative AI models. Another deal with a different tech company, for $21 million, will be realized in fiscal year 2025. Wiley says there’s growing interest from AI models for Wiley’s technical content. The publisher hopes deals like this will become recurrent, rather than remain a one-time cash influx. Wiley is perhaps best known in the general market for its Dummies series. Read Madeline Fitzgerald at Quartz.
- A range of authors sell their voices and commentary to an AI-powered app. Rebind Publishing allows users to read books while chatting with AI versions of their authors and other experts. Roxane Gay, Margaret Atwood, and John Banville are a few of the authors who’ve signed on so far. Read Steven Kurutz at the New York Times.
- A copyright scholar reviews copyright claims and remedies sought against AI companies in recent lawsuits alleging infringement. What if one of the lawsuits succeeds in making its copyright infringement claims? What will the remedies be? Read Pamela Samuelson at Communications of the ACM.
Culture & Politics
- What exactly is a book ban? NPR asks various stakeholders in the literary community for a definition. Read Elizabeth Blair.
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.