Audiobooks
- Scribd is pushing to acquire audiobook and ebook rights for published books, but the contract is less than stellar. Victoria Strauss analyzes the deal and details her concerns. Some writers have been able to negotiate changes to the contract. Read at Writer Beware.
- A look at the evolving options for AI narration of audiobooks. High-quality text-to-speech is the holy grail for many big tech players, including Google, Amazon, Facebook, and more. Read Thad McIlroy in Publishers Weekly.
- Hoopla expands into Australia and New Zealand. This marks the digital library platform’s first overseas expansion since launching in 2013. Hoopla focuses on a Netflix-like model of always-available streaming content, including ebooks, audiobooks, movies, TV shows, music, and comics. Read Andrew Albanese at Publishers Weekly.
Supply Chain
- How bookstores are adjusting to supply chain issues: One store is mostly worried about their stock of cookbooks, which are often full color and printed overseas. Read Laura Adamczyk at The AV Club.
- Publishers’ costs skyrocket. Illustrated children’s publishing in particular has seen printing costs rise significantly, but all categories are seeing increased costs. Read at UK’s The Bookseller (subscription required).
- Was publishing’s supply chain always set up to fail? Industry vet Ann Kjellberg looks at the industry’s reliance on a handful of companies to print, distribute, and warehouse books. Read at Book Post.
Social Media
- LinkedIn launches a freelance marketplace. The move essentially makes LinkedIn a competitor to services like Fiverr and Upwork. Read Ingrid Lunden at TechCrunch.
- Everyone can now share links in Instagram Stories. You don’t need 10,000 followers. Use the Link sticker to add a link to your Instagram story. Learn more.
Trends
- A roundtable discussion about horror fiction. The genre has grown and become more prestigious recently. Read Molly Odintz at CrimeReads.
- After a 22-year run, The Best American Travel Writing will no longer be published. Sales just kept decreasing. The same fate befell The Best American Sports Writing. Read Thomas Swick at Lit Hub.
- On hypercompetition in book publishing. A 30-minute conversation (including transcript) with Andrew Savikas on the past, present, and future of the industry. Visit Bubble Trouble.
Amazon
- France shields its book industry from Amazon. Recently passed legislation imposes a minimum shipping fee on books to protect other booksellers from Amazon’s 1-centime shipping. Amazon started charging 1-centime when France outlawed free shipping in 2014. Read Elizabeth Pineau at Reuters.
- Amazon growth slows and costs jump. Labor became the retailer’s primary capacity constraint during the third quarter. Read Jim Milliot at Publishers Weekly.
Culture & Politics
- How do we fix the creative writing workshop? Matthew Salesses’s latest book offers an alternative to existing biases of MFA workshops and pedagogy. Read Jennifer Schaffer at The Nation.
- Beloved enjoys a sales spike. A parent tried to have the 1987 novel by Toni Morrison banned from her son’s school; that parent was then featured in a campaign ad by Republican Glenn Youngkin, who won the Virginia governor’s race. Beloved has seen increased sales from the political attention. Read Courtney Vinopal at Quartz.
- There is a long history of beautiful fictional heroines—and no plain ones. Few contemporary authors have invented a heroine who fails to be attractive; too often women are described—by both male and female authors—as the sum of their desirable body parts. Read Lucinda Rosenfeld at Lit Hub.
- Discover the internet at its utopian best. A writer celebrates the wonders of The Public Domain Review. Read Frances Wilson at the Times Literary Supplement.
- Grub Street reckons with its Bad Art Friend troubles. While the nonprofit organization was not directly involved in the controversy, its employees and board members were. Among others, Sonya Larson has departed from her role heading up the annual Muse & Marketplace conference. Artistic director Christopher Castellani has asked for forgiveness and remains with the organization. Read Alex Green at Publishers Weekly.
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.