Deal volume, which increased in 2020, continues to grow in 2021, according to reports at Publishers Marketplace, which has been tracking deals for more than 20 years. Total deals are up 19 percent over 2020, with gains across all categories. Nonfiction has seen jumps in memoir, religion/spirituality, and business; in fiction, debuts and women’s fiction/romance are doing well. Also, good news for translation and foreign rights deals: while they were down by 8 percent in 2020, they’ve now recovered and are up 29 percent over last year. Read more from Michael Cader (subscription required). As a side note, Publishers Marketplace, to better serve writers, has recently made available $10 one-day passes and launched a discussion forum.
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.
