Traditional Publishing
- After five months as COO, Demos Parneros is now CEO at Barnes & Noble. He has thirty years of experience in retail at Staples. Here’s Alexandra Alter’s report at the New York Times.
- Houghton Mifflin is laying off 8 to 10 percent of its employees. This spring, the publisher will complete a reorganization that will eliminate around 360 to 450 people, as estimated by Publishers Marketplace (paywall).
- Penguin Children’s is launching a new imprint, Penguin Workshop. According to the press release, it will publish “new voices and established brands for readers ages birth to 12.” The imprint so far includes a Girls Who Code middle grade series. Learn more in Publishers Lunch.
- Tor Books—the science fiction and fantasy imprint at Macmillan—is launching Tor Labs, which will specialize in experimental and innovative methods of genre fiction publishing. The new line debuts in August with a serialized science fiction audio podcast, Steal the Stars, written by Mac Rogers. Learn more at Tor’s site.
Amazon
- Amazon has launched a self-service subscriptions marketplace. It’s a clearinghouse for tech companies, magazines, and other services to market and sell subscriptions to Amazon customers. Learn more at Amazon.
- Authors who work with Amazon Publishing have a new author portal. The gateway offers access to real-time sales data, reader feedback, and monthly royalty statements. Here’s a brief from Publishers Weekly.
- Are Amazon imprints crowding out other publishers on bestseller lists? The folks at ALLi are charting how many books from Amazon Publishing are becoming bestsellers, by category. Read at the ALLi blog.
Marketing Toolbox
- What are effective ways to market and promote a podcast? The folks at Patreon offer concrete tips, such as creating detailed show notes. Read more.
- Who are BookBub subscribers? The vast majority are middle-aged women, and the genre of highest interest is mystery/thriller. Learn more at the BookBub blog.
- How do pop-ups, interstitials, and other intrusions affect your site traffic and optimization? The Moz team offers an easy-to-read and understandable analysis of whether your pop-up email newsletter sign-up forms might hurt you with Google. Visit Moz for 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.