Amazon
- Does Amazon know what it sells? The short answer is no. Of Amazon’s top 50 sellers in the category of children’s vaccines, 20 are by anti-vaccine authors and five are novels about fictional pandemics. Tech industry expert Benedict Evans asks how much content moderation a universal book shop should do. (Evans’s discovery is just the tip of the iceberg, as most authors know. If you drill down into just about any nonfiction category these days, you’ll run into huge loads of nothing. Try “chronic pain” and you’ll see endless pain tracker logs and journals. This is exactly why IngramSpark had to abolish journals from its service last year.) Read at his site.
- Amazon’s ad revenue is twice as big as Snap, Twitter, Roku, and Pinterest’s combined. And it’s growing 1.7 times as quickly. Read Megan Graham at CNBC.
- Google feels threatened by Amazon’s growth in ads. It has partnered with Shopify, Square, and others to capitalize on the e-commerce boom and diversify its business. Read Mark Bergen at Bloomberg.
Long Reads
- A history and exploration of backlist: Backlist titles are typically considered to be those older than one year. Publishing industry consultant Thad McIlroy dives into the topic with 9,000 researched words. Definitely one to keep around. Read at his site.
- A look at nonprofit publishing after 1980. This article looks at a 25-year period when nonprofit publishing split off from conglomerate publishing and gave rise to publishers such as Coffee House, Milkweed, and Graywolf. The authors perform a computational analysis to identify differences between conglomerate and nonprofit novels and find that nonprofits produce more “literary” work. It is easy to take issue with this, but it’s an interesting exploration nonetheless. Read Dan Sinykin and Edwin Roland at Post45.
Creator Economy
- How John McCrae earns six figures per year writing fiction. Most of his money comes through Patreon supporters. Things really took off when another author recommended his work. Read Elle Griffin’s interview.
Social Media
- A thoughtful discussion of bookish influencers on social media. This is particularly interesting because it comes from Ann Kjellberg, who was on the editorial staff of The New York Review of Books for about 20 years. Read Part 1 and Part 2.
- Learn about Gen Z creators who are talking about books. It’s the third item in the newsletter and mentions four accounts to keep your eye on. Read The Publish Press.
- The past, present, and future of BookTube. This is a deep and meaningful dive into the bookish community and ends with a look at how BookTubers interact directly with the publishing industry. Read Danika Ellis at Book Riot.
- Discord’s user base doubled last year. The service was first popular with gamers. Then the pandemic brought blossoming growth. All types of businesses and organizations are finding Discord to be an ideal and more private place to establish community (as opposed to sites like Facebook). But that doesn’t mean it’s without problems. Read Jeff Beer at Fast Company.
- How to troll book people. The antagonistic relationship between writers and critics has produced a rich literature of trolling. Read Lauren Oyler at Bookforum.
Trends
- YA dystopia has burned out. A writer argues the subgenre has died because it didn’t evolve. But we’re willing to bet someone will find a way to breathe life into it (although it may take some years). Read Bashirat Oladele at Polygon.
- But YA print sales are doing better than ever. More than 10 million YA novels were been sold in the year from April 2020 to April 2021, creating an all-time record high, according to NPD BookScan. Why so much success? TikTok. Read Elisabeth Buchwald at MarketWatch.
Culture & Politics
- The market for anti-Biden books is ice cold. Right-wing podcast host and author Ben Shapiro says, “You kind of feel bad attacking him, honestly, because it feels like elder abuse.” So authors are going after easier targets, like “wokeness” and “cancel culture.” Read McKay Coppins at The Atlantic.
- Publishing staff are speaking out more loudly than ever before against books they find harmful. The tension that exists between profit and morality is nothing new, but the industry finds itself at a watershed moment. This piece has the UK perspective on the matter. Read Alison Flood at The Guardian.
- The clinch in romance covers. There’s a lot to unpack in the imagery that’s become iconic for the genre. Read a written version of the 99% Invisible episode The Clinch, produced by Katie Mingle.
- The revenge of realism. Do we have more to learn from the 19th-century novel? Read John Merrick at The Baffler.
Audio
- Best practices for turning your book into an audiobook script. It starts with reading your book out loud and highlighting areas that will not work in audio. Read MK Williams at the Findaway Voices blog.
- Findaway Voices is offering a royalty bonus to authors who haven’t yet gone wide with an audiobook series. Authors who use Findaway Voices to go wide for the first time with a series will be offered a 50 percent royalty bonus for the entire series on their best month of sales from July through November 2021. (Earlier this year, ACX announced that authors can move from exclusivity to non-exclusivity after 90 days.) Learn more.
Miscellany
- Wish you could read The Hot Sheet on your Kindle? Here’s a tool that will send email newsletters to your Kindle: Newsletter to Kindle (free for 10 emails every month).
- How to title a book so it sells. Dave Chesson offers a 13-step process. Read at Kindlepreneur.
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.