Links of Interest: June 24, 2020

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News

  • UK book wholesaler Bertrams is going bankrupt. As expected, Bertrams is going under and fired most of its employees last week. Its assets, including remaining book inventory, will be sold off through an online auction in July. It has considerable outstanding debt to publishers. Gardners is the last remaining wholesaler in the UK. Read Neill Denny in Publishers Weekly.
  • James Daunt plans to invest in Nook. In an interview with The Bookseller, the head of Barnes & Noble says he is not anti-ebook. “I consider the ability to sell ebooks to be a great strength, and the company had stopped investing in Nook. That will change. We will make Nook very much part of what we do [in the US].” Read Philip Jones (subscription required).
  • Apple discontinues iBooks Author. The free software was launched in 2012 to help authors create ebooks. Now, the company is encouraging Mac users to move to Pages and will offer an export tool to facilitate the changeover for existing projects. Books previously published to Apple Books using iBooks Author will remain available. Read more from Juli Clover in MacRumors.
  • RWA takes steps toward greater advocacy. Romance Writers of America has told members it intends to “strengthen [their] professional relations advocacy.” As part of that initiative, RWA announced a plan to advocate for Dreamspinner Press authors who have not been paid royalties. Learn more at the RWA website.
  • What does the Diamond-DC split mean? DC Comics dropped its longtime comics distributor, Diamond, which has long been the only comics distributor. Jim Dandy explains what this means for the industry and for fans of comics. Read at Den of Geek.
  • Bookshop is on track to exceed $40 million in sales this year. Site founder Andy Hunter predicted they might reach that figure by 2022, but the pandemic has sped progress. More than 750 bookstores have joined the site, and Bookshop has generated more than $4 million for independent stores. It plans to expand into the UK with book wholesaler Gardners. Read Alexandra Alter in The New York Times.
  • Kobo files complaint against Apple in the EU. It alleges that the 30 percent fee that Apple takes for all ebook transactions in its app is anti-competitive. Kobo is not the first to air such grievances, and many do not like the ambiguity of Apple’s terms for revenue sharing. Some companies must offer a cut of revenue and others don’t. Read Tom Warren at The Verge.

During the Pandemic

  • Bookstores take a slow approach to re-opening. Even though governors are eager to see businesses reopen, bookstores are acting with caution. Read Alex Green in Publishers Weekly.
  • The Smashwords founder offers predictions on post-pandemic publishing for authors. Mark Coker believes more books will be written, print sales through physical stores will decline, ebook sales will increase, subscription services will gain in popularity. Read at the Smashwords blog.
  • Children’s publishers take stock. There’s high demand for free digital resources, and publishers are placing new emphasis on digital marketing and virtual events. Read Shannon Maughan at Publishers Weekly.
  • New York’s major publishers won’t reopen until September. Labor Day is the current target, but some think even that date is not realistic. Read Jim Milliot in Publishers Weekly.
  • An author resumes in-store events. A novelist is holding four bookstore events with in-person signings, which requires significant planning and safety precautions. Read Ed Nawotka in Publishers Weekly.

Trends

  • Kids now spend as much time watching TikTok as YouTube. Kids spend about 85 minutes per day watching YouTube, compared with 80 minutes on TikTok. Read Sarah Perez at TechCrunch.
  • Amazon’s media business has a hidden value of $500 billion, says analyst. The interesting detail here is that 20 percent of Prime members say the streaming services are the main attraction. Read Ari Levy at CNBC.
  • PublishDrive reports dramatic sales growth in May 2020. The ebook distributor, which works mainly with self-publishing authors, says that May sales are up by 60 percent compared to last year. Read the full analysis, with genre and outlet breakdowns, at their site.

Culture & Politics

  • The Black Writers Guild tells UK publishing to get its house in order. Representing more than 200 Black writers, the guild is asking for an audit of the advances of Black authors, submission-to-acquisition ratio of Black authors in the past five years, and funding for marketing and publicity (among other things). UK publishers have acknowledged they have work to do. Read Katherine Cowdrey at The Bookseller.
  • Merriam-Webster is modifying its definition of racism. A 22-year-old recent college graduate from Missouri emailed the dictionary to let it know its definition of the word racism was inadequate. Read David Williams at CNN.
  • Publishing’s next battle: conservative authors. Can publishers continue to cash in on authors like Donald Trump Jr. while also claiming to support movements like Black Lives Matter? Read Alex Shephard at The New Republic.
  • The president’s niece will publish a tell-all this summer. Mary Trump’s book promises information damaging to Trump; the President says she can’t publish because she signed a nondisclosure agreement. Read Lachlan Cartwright at the Daily Beast.
  • When women stop reading, will the novel be dead? Another installment in a very old discussion about the relevance of the novel, with a sort-of new twist. Read Gareth Watkins at MEL Magazine.
  • Writers must rejoin the working class. So argues Jason Boog, author of The Deep End, which looks at writers’ political activism during the Great Depression. Read Claire Fallon at HuffPost.