Links of Interest: September 4, 2019

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News

  • Bibliotheca calls out Amazon’s meddling in the library ebook market. There is only one company, they say, that has access to readers’ online book purchases and digital library borrowing habits: Amazon. Read Andrew Albanese in Publishers Weekly.
  • Penguin Random House posts double-digit gains. Profits, driven by the acquisition of other publishing houses, jumped 33 percent during the first half of 2019. Organic growth was led by Michelle Obama’s memoir and digital audiobook sales. Read Jim Milliot in Publishers Weekly.
  • The Authors Guild says Cengage failed to renegotiate contracts. Cengage now employs a usage-based royalty model that authors say violates their agreements. Read Porter Anderson in Publishing Perspectives.

Trends

  • The Calm smartphone app offers stories to put people to sleep. Most popular: travel stories with the rhythm of trains. With the exception of classic children’s tales, all stories are original. Read Liz Hartman in Publishers Weekly.
  • “What the $%@ have you wrought, Mark Manson?” In August, four of the top ten bestselling books in the self-help category—when counting print unit sales in the Canadian English-language trade market—had swear words in the title. Read Shimona Hirchberg at BookNet Canada.
  • Learn about Canadian book-buying habits during the first half of 2019. Print purchases make up about 75 percent of all sales; in-person purchases have increased this year. Read at BookNet Canada.

Bookselling

  • Booksellers are planning big events around Margaret Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. The new book, The Testaments, will release September 10. Read Claire Kirch in Publishers Weekly.

Culture and Politics

  • A high-profile author with Brockman Inc. is concerned about his literary agent’s connections. How did Jeffrey Epstein meet so many luminaries in the worlds of science and technology? It all might trace back to a literary agent. Read Evgeny Morozov in The New Republic.
  • Poets & Writers interviews Daniel Mendelsohn of the New York Review of Books. The exchange touches on the value of negative criticism in light of current events. Read Michael Taeckens.
  • Why is likability even relevant? Writer Teow Lim Goh unearths what’s missing in the conversation about likability in literature. Read at the Los Angeles Review of Books.

International

  • China Lit has become subject to censorship by the Chinese government. The publishing startup is being pressured to remove objectionable material, and its stock price is plummeting. Read Ed Nawotka in Publishers Weekly.
  • US publishers’ interest in Spanish-language audiobooks is increasing. Such titles are sold not just in the United States, but also in Spanish-speaking countries. Read Porter Anderson in Publishing Perspectives.

Self-publishing

  • Joanna Penn has released her annual earnings update. Her book sales income is slightly up; ebook revenue is down, but audiobook and print sales have made up for the shortfall. She spent 20 percent of her book sales income on advertising. Learn more at her site.
  • Google Play moves to 70 percent payment terms for ebooks—but only for sales in the US, Canada, and Australia and for a specific range of prices. Payment is still at 52 percent for other countries. Read more from Nate Hoffelder at The Digital Reader.
  • Get a landscape analysis of open-source publishing tools. It’s the most extensive study we’ve ever seen and will be of most interest to those working in scholarly publishing. Take a look.

Survey

  • Author Josh Bernoff is surveying authors of business and self-help books to get a more detailed look into what’s driving that market. If you’re an author of such books, you can take the 10-minute survey here. Josh will be sharing the summarized results with anyone who completes the survey, so you can get an idea of what’s happening among the active community of business authors.