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On the List: The Nurses
The Nurses enjoyed a spot on the New York Times combined print and ebook bestseller list, as well as its ebook nonfiction bestseller list.
Closing Image: June 29, 2016
The Codex Group recently surveyed about 5,000 book buyers and found that the percentage of adults who read ebooks has flattened.
Are Traditional Publishers Lowering Their Prices? Author Earnings Says Yes
A few months ago, we reported the concern was that publishers weren’t devoting sufficient resources to price experimentation.
Time after Time: A Rare Handle on Publishing’s Fading Memories
In corporate settings, the term institutional memory normally refers to the valuable insights carried by senior members of a company’s team.
Keep Your Eye on This: The UK Weighs Its EU Membership
By the time you receive our next edition, the result of the June 23 referendum on the UK’s membership in the European Union will be known.
Another Reason to Learn to Read Those Royalty Statements
An important issue has come to light via agent Kristin Nelson, who makes a specialty of demystifying royalty income for authors.
What Happens to Authors When Their Hybrid Publisher Goes Bust?
Earlier this year, we reported on the closure of Booktrope, a hybrid publisher that raised millions of dollars but never became profitable.
Profile: Roxana Robinson
The president of the Authors Guild since 2014, Roxana Robinson says the industry must address what commercial realities are doing to author income.
Closing Image: June 15, 2016
Employment in the book publishing industry has dropped 32.5 percent from its peak twenty years ago.
Self-Publishing: A Significant but “Separate” Book Market
The London-based Enders Analysis media team analyzed the US Amazon’s 100 top-selling ebooks and found that 40 were self-published.
Macmillan Acquires the Self-Publishing Service Pronoun; Paid Features Are on the Way
In October 2015, we reported on the launch of Pronoun, a new self-publishing service for ebooks.
Romancing the Differences: “Multicultural,” “Diverse,” and Nielsen’s New RWA Summit
Questions of diversity in romance came into play last year at RWA’s conference, and the Nielsen program is designed to tackle them.
Building the “Self-Sustaining” Reader Community: Hal Elrod’s Facebook Strategy
Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing brings together five self-published writers for the company’s first KDP Business Author Roundtable.
On the List: Lab Girl
Lab Girl released earlier this spring and recently appeared on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list.
Closing Image: June 1, 2016
A recent BookExpo America presentation by Nielsen shows that ebook sales (for those with ISBNs) took off dramatically between 2010 and 2012
BEA’s Big Off-Year: When Spaciousness Is Not a Good Thing
Discussion of BEA’s 2016 move from New York City to Chicago.
The Author Factor at BEA: Trade Writers Up, Indies Down
Independent authors struggle for a meaningful presence at the 2016 BEA.
Profile: J.A. Konrath and Scott Turow
At a BEA panel on authorship, Joe Konrath and Scott Turow commented on reaching one’s audience.
On the Eve of BEA: More Author Heat on “an Orgy of Unproductiveness”
Persistent questions are surfacing about how major trade-show events roll on, year after year, with minimal author involvement.
Closing Image: May 4, 2016
Social Media Today reports, “Digital media usage has increased by 35 percent since 2013, driven entirely by mobile growth.”
AAP Stats Show Continuing Ebook Sales Decline for Traditional Publishers
The latest monthly sales report (December 2015) has been released from the Association of American Publishers
Another Significant Merger: Follett Acquires Baker & Taylor
On the heels of the Perseus acquisition by Ingram, yet another merger in US book distribution has been announced.
Not That We’d Ever Say We Told You So: Authors and Trade Shows
In our last issue, we wrote about the rocky relationship between authors and trade shows, major industry events that revolve around rights sales.
Smashing Words, Crunching Numbers: Coker’s 2016 Survey
Like Otis Chandler at Goodreads, Mark Coker at Smashwords enjoys compiling sales data every year and releasing highlights of his findings.
The Latest Celebrity-Driven Imprints (Plus Some Others)
Here are some of the latest new imprints to keep an eye on, including two celebrity-driven imprints.
Trade Shows and Authors: Another Year of Trying to Get Along
We’re again in the awkward season in which the industry tries to accommodate independent authors at events that were simply not created to include them.
Closing Image: April 6, 2016
The VIDA count for the New Yorker shows that, in 2015, women represented 33.8 percent of bylines in the magazine.
Profile: Nick Bostrom
Nick Bostrom is an Oxford philosophy professor and author who will give the opening keynote address at London Book Fair’s Quantum Conference on April 11.
Closing Image: March 23, 2016
A new Pew Research study shows growing interest in crowdfunded journalism projects. You can find much more detail
Reading Pattern Data: “Should We Tell Our Authors?”
One of the workshops at Digital Book World (DBW) focused on research that Jellybooks’ Andrew Rhomberg is conducting on consumer reading patterns.
How Busy Are Literary Agencies in the Self-Publishing Era? Very Busy
Nelson Literary Agency has an annual tradition we like of revealing statistics on its previous year’s activity.
A Smart but Difficult Path to More Author Profits: Selling Rights
One of the best services provided by ALLi is the explication for writers of business factors once understood only by publishers and agencies.
The Growing Pains of Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited
Prior to July 2015, authors were paid a fixed amount for each book borrowed and read; now authors are paid for each page read.
A Successful Independent Publisher Launches a Full-Service Publishing Arm
Diversion announced the creation of Radius Book Group, a full-service publishing solution that will help authors develop their books, then publish and distribute them through Ingram.