Traditional Publishing
- 2018 is off to a “decent start” for the Big Five publishers. Revenue is being driven by backlist and digital audio sales. Read more from Jim Milliot in Publishers Weekly.
- Textbooks authors sue Cengage. After launching Cengage Unlimited, a subscription access product, in January, the educational publisher is now being hit with a lawsuit by two textbook authors. Read more in Publishing Perspectives.
- Hachette Book Group has launched Novel Suspects, an online community for mystery and thriller fans. HBG says it will include other publishers’ titles on the site. Like other book community hubs, the site will include short-form articles, listicles, and videos. Visit Novel Suspects.
- An illustrator paints a picture of Brexit’s potential fallout for publishing in the UK: German-born illustrator Axel Scheffler tells the British Book Awards audience he worries he’ll have to leave England. Read more in Publishing Perspectives.
News and Trends
- Are ebooks dying or thriving? It depends on what or who you’re counting—and it depends on understanding how Amazon affects the bigger picture. Read Thu Huong-Ha at Quartz.
- Customers can get banned from Amazon for making too many returns and other problematic behavior. In a scenario that some authors can relate to, customers see their accounts closed without warning and with little or no explanation. Read Khadeeja Safdar and Laura Stevens in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required).
- After 37 years, Romantic Times has closed. The magazine, RT Book Reviews, and affiliated events have shut down. The website will remain up for about another year. Learn more in Shelf Awareness.
Self-publishing
- How much can we trust the information coming out of Author Earnings and Bookstat? Mark Williams crunches the numbers and asks Data Guy some questions about his figures. Read at the New Publishing Standard.
- A roundup of ebook marketing analytics tools: The list is divided into market research tools and sales reporting tools—most of them Amazon focused. Read Nate Hoffelder at the Digital Reader.
Audiobooks
- 17 secrets of audiobook narrators. MentalFloss gathers insights such as “It pays well” and “Not every author who wants to narrate gets to.” Read all 17 from Michele Debczak.
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.