Links of Interest: June 23, 2021

Trends

• Did bookstore closures hurt frontlist sales? You’ll hear most Big Five publishers say yes. But Mark Williams questions that conclusion. (Also note that in the UK, sales of the top 10 debut novels in 2020 outpaced the sales of those in 2019, a stat rarely mentioned in any discussion.) Read The New Publishing Standard.
• Everyone’s publishing for kids these days. Media outlets as varied as The New York Times, The Week, and America’s Test Kitchen are doing very well with kids’ content verticals. Read Kayleigh Barber at Digiday.
• Historical fiction is no longer fusty, proclaims The New York Times. The article notes Jonathan Franzen’s resistance to historical fiction (we’re not sure why), alongside some terrible stereotypes of the genre. Still, the piece reflects on what is in fact happening: renewed interest in the genre. Read Jonathan Lee.

• TikTok drives sales of lots of things, not just books. In essence, it has become a recommendation engine for Gen Z. Read Emily Johnson at The Drum.
• The number of people subscribing to audio services has doubled since 2015. That’s according to the latest research from Edison. As of 2021, 47 percent of Americans subscribe to some kind of audio streaming service (Spotify, Audible, Apple Music, etc.). Read Larry Rosin at Edison Research.

Amazon

• Amazon blames fake reviews partly on social media companies. Sites like Facebook are used to solicit fake reviews; when Amazon reports the abuse, it can take several days before accounts or groups are removed. Read Alex Hern at The Guardian.

Traditional Publishing

• McGraw Hill is sold to another private equity firm. With the prior owner, McGraw Hill carried about $2.23 billion in debt; with the new owner—who borrowed money to make the acquisition—the publisher now carries a further $2.25 billion in debt. In its most recent fiscal year, the company had an operating loss. Read Jim Milliot in Publishers Weekly.
• Meanwhile, textbook publishers like McGraw Hill had a legal win. Lawsuits were dismissed that accused the company (and others) of conspiring to raise textbook prices through subscription deals they strike with publishers (known as “inclusive access”). Read Lilah Burke at Inside Higher Ed.

Creator Economy

• The Royal Road to riches (or exhaustion)? Novelist Elle Griffin explores the most likely ways for self-published authors to find an audience, including the site Royal Road. Read The Novelleist. Related: Griffin also has an interview with a successful writer of LitRPG who monetizes his activity through Patreon.
• If you’d like to get excited about the potential for NFTs and authorship: Joanna Penn has an interview with John Fox on the latest episode of The Creative Penn. Listen, or read the transcript. Fox says, “A lot of people live online. They value online things or digital things almost more than physical objects. It’s this really strange, like generational divide. NFTs are a way to sell digital objects,” he explains. Strange indeed. Most of the principles expressed here aren’t that different from selling limited runs or digital exclusives, but the execution is enhanced by blockchain technology, which allows for resale and for a portion of the proceeds to go back to the author.
• Substack gets into comics. Some argue that if the site is to grow, it needs to attract authors beyond nonfiction/journalism. So they’ve hired a known comics writer to help them sign advance payment deals to other comic book writers. Read Emily Zogbi at CBR.

Startup Money

• BookClub rakes in another $20 million. That makes a total of $26 million raised since last year; funders include the co-founder of MasterClass and the co-founder of Goodreads. The service remains in private beta. Read Natasha Mascarenhas at TechCrunch.

Libraries

• Libraries see surging interest in graphic novels. Digital lending for children’s graphic novels was up between 400 and 500 percent at one library. Read Heidi MacDonald at Publishers Weekly.
• Lyrasis acquires BiblioLabs. BiblioLabs is the creator of the BiblioBoard platform, which in part supports distribution of self-published ebooks to libraries. BiblioLabs will continue to operate as before, but as a for-profit division of nonprofit Lyrasis. Lyrasis has supported the development of the SimplyE ebook platform used by the New York Public Library, among other projects. Read Andrew Albanese at Publishers Weekly.

Marketing Toolbox

• When to use CPC versus CPM ads. Should you pay per click or based on number of impressions? BookBub advises. Read Carlyn Robertson.

Politics & Culture

• Today’s readers seem to have trouble distinguishing between fictional characters’ beliefs and authors’ beliefs. Authors Elin Hilderbrand and Casey McQuiston have changed lines in their published novels after readers conflated the characters’ speech with the authors’ speech and called them out on social media. Critic Laura Miller says, “Complaining about other, more successful writers is one of the most popular activities on Twitter, as is devising elaborately exacting standards of correct speech and vigorously, if informally, prosecuting those who violate them.” Read at Slate. For more commentary, see Lincoln Michel’s newsletter, where he writes, “The ideal that a book must signal so clearly [to] delineate its author’s politics to a degree that no reader anywhere could possibly take away the ‘wrong’ message is quite literally an impossibility.”
• A rift between two Nigerian authors erupts into the open. And, no surprise, it’s partly about the toxicity of social media. Apparently referring to another author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote on her website, “There are many social-media savvy people who are choking on sanctimony and lacking compassion, who can fluidly pontificate on Twitter about kindness but are unable to actually show kindness.” Read Alexandra Alter at The New York Times.
• HarperCollins buys Jared Kushner’s book. It will be published under the conservative Broadside imprint and was acquired by Eric Nelson. Read the brief at Publishers Weekly.
• Trump has given a lot of interviews for other people’s books. Sources say Trump makes each author feel they’re getting something special. Read Mike Allen at Axios.
• The audiobook industry continues to struggle with representation and casting. Most narrators find themselves getting asked to voice marginalized characters from backgrounds that bear no resemblance to theirs, and they fear backlash. Read Laura Miller at Slate.
• Does it make sense to group novels by geographic region? Some authors don’t like it when their books are categorized narrowly, as in the case of “Asian fantasy,” because it could indicate a niche audience. Read Kalyani Saxena at NPR.