News
- UK abolishes VAT on all electronic reading materials, including ebooks. The decision comes after years of lobbying by media companies, especially Rupert Murdoch’s businesses. The new law will take effect on December 1, 2020. Read Jim Waterson in The Guardian.
- Janet Evanovich moves to Simon & Schuster. The bestselling author signed an eight-figure deal for four books with Atria Books. Since 2010, she has been with Random House’s Ballantine Bantam Dell imprint. Read Rachel Deahl in Publishers Weekly.
- The Authors Guild issues an updated model trade publishing contract. For decades, the Authors Guild has offered its members a model trade publishing contract as an educational guide. The new version, just released to members, covers all aspects of licensing, publishing, and distribution, with suggestions for how authors can negotiate each and every clause with a publisher. Learn more.
Trends
- Good news if you’ve written a novel about epidemics: There’s a predictable sales boom for both classic and contemporary literature about disease, including Albert Camus’s The Plague and Stephen King’s The Stand. Read Alison Flood at The Guardian.
- PenguinTeen created a viral hit for TikTok. Even adults might enjoy this one: it’s a video of 600 books set up to fall like dominoes in Penguin’s offices. Prior to posting the video, Penguin’s TikTok account had 24,000 followers. It now has 117,000. Read Sara Grochowski at Publishers Weekly.
Amazon
- Amazon offers to license its brick-and-mortar retail tech. Everyone is buzzing about Amazon making its Just Walk Out technology (shopping with no checkout) available to all retailers. Some believe Amazon is interested not only in profits, but in gathering competitor data. Read Leo Kelion at the BBC.
Culture and Politics
- Little improvement on diversity in romance publishing. In its fourth annual report, Ripped Bodice bookstore has found that 8.3 percent of traditionally published romance novels are by people of color and indigenous peoples. In the first year of the survey, that number was 7.8 percent. Read Jason Boog in Publishers Weekly.
- Asian representation is growing in audiobooks. Publishers are taking more care to cast representative narrators who have experience with culturally specific language and dialogue. Read Victoria Namkung at NBC.
- Archive of Our Own (AO3) has been blocked by China. One of the most popular fan-fiction sites stopped being accessible at the end of February, presumably as a part of China’s crackdown on queer and explicit content. The site was not given advance warning. Read Aja Romano at Vox.
- Learn about the first novelist accused of appropriation. Alexandra Styron reflects on her father’s works, Sophie’s Choice and The Confessions of Nat Turner. While admitting to her father’s arrogance and privilege, her final verdict is a bold one. Read at The Atlantic.
Toolbox
- How to calculate series read-through on Amazon. Self-publishing authors need to evaluate read-through to help determine if they should continue their series, ensure ad profitability, and adjust pricing. Read Malorie Cooper at Kindlepreneur.
- Ingram’s guide to using Goodreads, Facebook, and Twitter. While their guide is geared toward publishers, authors just starting to build an online presence will find good working principles here. Read at Ingram.
- There’s a new free Word-to-EPUB converter for Windows users. The DAISY Consortium, which focuses on accessibility in reading and publishing, has released a free tool that exports Microsoft Word documents as valid EPUB files. Once installed, it works through the Word toolbar. Learn more.
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.