Links of Interest: May 11, 2022

Traditional Publishing

• The fastest growing publishers of 2022. The list includes Microcosm Publishing in Portland, Oregon, which stopped selling books on Amazon. Read Jim Milliot and Claire Kirch in Publishers Weekly.
• The history of small press distribution in the US: This long overview is part of the Publishers Weekly series that reflects on the last 25+ years of traditional publishing. Read Julie Schaper.
• Children’s publishers test the waters for in-person events. Everyone has to be comfortable—author, store, audience—before events take place. Read Joanne O’Sullivan at Publishers Weekly.
• Penguin Random House sees Spanish-language book sales surge. In the last two years, sales have doubled. Read Ed Nawotka’s interview with PRH’s Silvia Matute.

Trends

• The state of YA fiction in 2022: No matter the subject, one thing remains constant: feelings drive the story. Read Toni Fitzgerald at The Writer.
• Books sell very, very well when they’re adapted to the small screen. In Canada at least, sales increased by more than 400 percent over a 25-week period for books adapted for TV. Read Aline Zara at BookNet Canada. There’s also a companion post that looks at books adapted for the big screen.
• Penguin Random House employs a book influencer. Cree Myles curates and publishes content focused on Black books on Instagram, @allwaysblack. Read Maayan Silver at NPR.
• Manga is booming. All publishers are reporting stronger sales than usual. Read Deb Aoki at Publishers Weekly.

Bookselling

• In 1996, independent bookstores commanded 18 percent of the US book market. Today, their market share is believed to be around 5 percent. Read Judith Rosen at Publishers Weekly.
• Wholesaling has consolidated just like the rest of publishing. It is mainly in the hands of one entity: Ingram. Read Judith Rosen at Publishers Weekly.
• Bookstore workers are unionizing. Bookstores typically offer low pay and few or no benefits. Unions promise to change that. Read Kim Kelly at Teen Vogue.
• What happened to all the old Borders stores? Learn how the stores were repurposed—into supermarkets, restaurants, furniture showrooms, and more. Read Addison Del Mastro at The Bulwark.
• Get an inside look at new and upcoming titles being marketed to book clubs. On Friday, May 13, ReadingGroupGuides.com will host a virtual version of its Annual Book Group Speed Dating Event. Representatives from 14 traditional publishers will share selections from their publishing houses. Sign up for free.

Audiobooks

• Google Play Books expands AI narration. The program now allows publishers in six countries to create, edit, publish, and sell AI-narrated books. While in beta, the program is free. Read Shannon Maughan at Publishers Weekly.

Amazon

• Disability fiction for adults will now be listed as a separate book category on Amazon. Authors campaigned for the change. Read Sian Bayley at The Bookseller.
• Kindle will finally support EPUB files. The Send to Kindle function will soon let you send EPUB files directly to your Kindle. Read Alex Cranz at The Verge.

Creator Economy

• Brazilian superfans gamed Spotify. In doing so, fans underlined the problem with using raw play counts to divide up payments to artists. Should one person playing one song 10,000 times mean that the artist gets paid for 10,000 plays? Read Marília Marasciulo at Rest of World.

Politics & Culture

• Senator Josh Hawley targets Disney’s copyright protections. His intent is to shorten protection for specific types of companies, like Disney, from 95 years to 56 years. It is unlikely the legislation will pass. Read Ted Johnson at Deadline.
• The ethics of writing violence in fiction. A New York Times bestselling author doesn’t want to cross into the pornography of violence, nor does he want to sanitize it. Read Don Winslow at Time.
• A second J.D. Vance book falls through. Vance was contracted with HarperCollins, the publisher of Hillbilly Elegy, to write A Relevant Faith on American Christianity. Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019. Read Hillel Italie at AP News.
• Political books are published for many reasons, but the most elemental is money. To be commercially viable, such books need at least one unexpected disclosure, Peter Osnos says. Read in Publishers Weekly.
• Conservative book publishing is a major force in the business. Once upon a time, conservative books were considered “niche.” Read Marji Ross in Publishers Weekly.
• Some writers don’t like “supportive” rejections. Such rejections essentially say, “It’s not you, it’s us!” Read Nicholas Russell at Gawker.
• There’s a new place to get your daily dose of publishing snark. Vol. 1 Brooklyn talks with the Instagram account Publishers Brunch, which is skewering the publishing industry one meme at a time. Read Jonathan Agin at Vol. 1 Brooklyn.

Book Banning

• Gender Queer is the most banned book in the country. Maia Kobabe’s debut graphic memoir is about coming out as nonbinary. Read Alexandra Alter at The New York Times.
• Tennessee state may get veto power over school library collections. While there are well-established policies in place for concerned parents to review or challenge books, the new bill gives the state new powers to ban books statewide. Read Andrew Albanese at Publishers Weekly.