Links of Interest: March 1, 2023

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Traditional Publishing

  • The HarperCollins union contract terms are now available. The minimum salary is now $47,500, which will increase to $48,500 in January 2024 and go up to $50,000 in January 2025. More details of the agreement can be found here.
  • Suspicions arise over business practices at literary journals and presses. The literary publishing community has long involved submissions fees, long wait times, and unclear connections among editors. Writer Becky Tuch starts to pull at the loose threads and raises legitimate questions. There’s been both support for and criticism of the players involved. Read Lit Mag News.
  • Small Press Distribution closes its warehouse. Moving forward, SPD will use Ingram Content Group and Publishers Storage and Shipping to assist the 400 presses that it distributes. This involves a crowdfunding campaign with a goal of raising $100,000. Read Jim Milliot in Publishers Weekly.

Culture & Politics

  • Catapult’s CEO, the very wealthy Elizabeth Koch, gets a New York Times profile. The reason for the profile: to discuss Koch’s startup, Unlikely Collaborators, and her concept of the Perception Box, a term she has trademarked. The write-up comes on the heels of Catapult’s announcement in February that it is closing its online magazine and course offerings to focus solely on its book publishing program. If you visit Catapult’s website today, you’ll find the mission statement now mentions “the walls of our Perception Box.” Anne Trubek digs into the history of Catapult and its funding in her newsletter, where book critic Ann Kjellberg comments (subscription required), “We need better supports for the small businesses that sustain our culture so we do not have to be dependent on these people. … One is curious whether the decreased footprint [of Catapult] was because [Koch] wanted to stop putting as much money into it, or just wanted to decrease the managerial burden, or some other reason.” Read “The Billionaire’s Daughter Knows What You’re Thinking” by Brooks Barnes (gift link).
  • Dilbert cartoonist dropped by his publishers and agent. After Scott Adams made racist remarks on a recent YouTube show, Andrews McMeel announced it is severing its relationship, which includes syndication of his strip to newspapers. Book publisher Portfolio (an imprint of PRH) announced it would not move forward with his upcoming book. His agency, Levine Greenberg Rostan, has also dropped him. Read Ivana Saric in Axios.
  • Celebrities churn out children’s books. It’s nothing new, of course—but it does feel like an endless list here. Browse at USA Today.
  • The end of the English major? During the past decade, the study of English at the collegiate level has fallen by a full third. Read Nathan Heller at the New Yorker.

Libraries

  • An in-depth study on politics and school libraries. Brookings analyzes the holdings of more than 6,000 schools across the country, across conservative and liberal counties. One finding: Access to controversial content is related to local political environments. Read Kirsten Slungaard Mumma.
  • Ebook bills are back. Library advocates are launching new efforts to “regulate” ebook licensing rather than mandate terms, since attempts at the latter have been unsuccessful. Bills have been introduced so far in Massachusetts and Hawaii, with more coming. Read Andrew Albanese and Jim Milliot in Publishers Weekly.

Amazon

TikTok

  • Why don’t more people embrace BookTok’s goodness? A literary writer discusses the stereotypes now surrounding BookTok and wonders why the literary/MFA community isn’t more curious about the platform that sells so many books. “While outsiders perceive BookTok as a contraction or reduction of books and ideas to what ‘performs’ best in a visual medium engineered by Chinese geniuses to destroy our attention spans, fans tell me that being on BookTok has expanded their horizons as readers.” Read Leigh Stein at Lit Hub. (Note the comment thread is lengthy and full of pushback.)
  • Check out the 16-second video that caused an old book to shoot up the bestseller charts. A daughter makes an inspiring TikTok video about how her dad spent 14 years writing a book. Watch.
  • BookTok fuels the rise of English-language imports to Germany. Publishers are under pressure to bring out German licensed editions at the same time as the original edition for popular fiction and YA. Read Benedicte Page in the Bookseller (subscription required).