News and Trends
- There’s a groundbreaking FTC case against the use of fraudulent Amazon reviews. It involves a weight-loss drug, but the larger ramifications are significant for all products sold at Amazon. Amazon says they welcome the FTC’s work in this area. Read Nick Statt at The Verge.
- The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) is hosting their usual virtual spring conference on March 16. It’s free to all and runs 24 hours. (Disclosure: Jane is a presenter.) Register here for access.
- The Los Angeles Times is attempting to gain IP rights to its staffers’ creative works outside their journalistic duties. Quite rightly, the Authors Guild says this is unacceptable. Read the AG blog.
- The Nebula Award finalists include an unusual cohort of indie authors who are members of the Facebook group 20Booksto50K. It has raised suspicions of an organized campaign. Read about it at Cora Buhlert’s blog.
- GalleyMatch hooks up publishers and book clubs. Forty publishers and 450 book clubs now participate. One of the founders calls it a dating service. Read Alex Green in Publishers Weekly.
- Humble Bundle Books enjoys continued growth. For book-related bundle sales, the promotional site works with a group of 19 book publishers. Part of the proceeds go to charity. Tech book bundles generated the highest revenue. Read Calvin Reid in Publishers Weekly.
Traditional Publishing and Bookselling
- Houghton Mifflin reports a great year due to licensing. Sales were up more than 10 percent in 2018 due to licensing deals for 1984, Animal Farm, and Carmen Sandiego. Read Jim Milliot in Publishers Weekly.
- Cengage’s first textbook subscription service has reached 1 million paid subscribers in seven months. Students can get access to everything the company publishes for $120/semester. Publishing-industry vet Michael Cairns comments on the strategy.
- Traditional comics retailers face challenges. PW’s recent comics retailer survey has interesting insights for those who write graphic novels. Read Shannon O’Leary in Publishers Weekly.
- Stephen Faber, CEO of the 90-year-old Faber & Faber in the UK, says publishers have a cultural responsibility in the face of Brexit, and that “the real issue is to serve the writing and the writers” in addition to the readers. The interview is at Publishing Perspectives.
Children’s
- Are teens reading less? In short, no. But how they read is changing. Read Karen Jensen at School Library Journal.
- A recap of 2018’s children’s bestsellers. Heavily represented: backlist and movie tie-ins. Read Emma Kantor at Publishers Weekly.
- Kids Can Press in Toronto has released an animated short film. It features Whoopi Goldberg’s voice and is based on Ashley Spires’s The Most Magnificent Thing. Read more at Publishing Perspectives.
Podcasting
- First signs emerge of a subscription model for podcasts. New platforms and tools are entering the market that allow podcasts to be monetized using methods other than advertising. Read Mary-Katharine Phillips at Twipe.
- Can Spotify help fix podcasting’s biggest challenges? For more on the monetization issue, here’s a look at Spotify’s recent acquisition of Gimlet and Anchor—and what might happen next. Read Steve Smith at Folio.
Self-Publishing
- Draft2Digital now distributes to Google Play. The program is still in beta. Learn more.
- Smashwords launches digital coupons. It’s a marketing tool that allows authors to assign a single coupon code to two or more books in their catalog. Learn more.
- StreetLib has launched digital publishing portals in 20 African countries. The Italy-based ebook distributor now offers portals in 45 countries. Learn more in the press release.
- Books-A-Million ends its self-publishing program. All users are being sent to FastPencil. Read Mark Williams at The New Publishing Standard.
Marketing Toolbox
- Comp titles and what they say about you as a writer. Small press founder Anne Trubek discusses comp titles and their use for publishing industry insiders. Read her newsletter.
- How to pitch Bookish. In this interview with the executive editor of Bookish, learn how to get featured at the popular books site (owned by NetGalley).
For Fun
- The London Review Bookshop has matched dinosaurs with publishers. Makes the most sense if you’re familiar with UK publishers. Take a look.
New Imprint Alert
- Hachette UK’s Octopus is launching Endeavor. It’s a narrative nonfiction imprint focused on popular science, culture, business, and science books. Read Mark Chandler in The Bookseller.
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.