Yes, Virginia, there was a bright spot in this year of worry and waiting: VAT on ebooks
Each year, Hot Sheet brings you 130+ publishing-industry stories we think you’d like to know about. As is common across every industry, we like to pause at year end to reflect on the issues we covered and the patterns that emerged. Here we bring you the stories and trends that we continue to find relevant or important.
Digital subscription services. Whether brought to you by Amazon (Kindle Unlimited), Scribd, or Storytel, subscription-based consumption models for ebooks and digital audio have seen interesting growth and debate. During BookExpo 2018, we heard from HarperCollins as well as a smaller press that subscription services increase reader reach and revenue—and that the “sales opportunity is endless.” On the darker side of that equation, however, are Kindle Unlimited and the proprietary publishing programs that serve Amazon’s Prime members—programs that may be depressing fiction sales for traditional publishers. Be sure to read about Storytel in this issue for information about yet another facet of this growing marketplace.
Literary agent malfeasance. This year surfaced an unusual number of literary agents behaving badly; just this week, it was revealed that Donadio & Olson has filed for bankruptcy. It’s hard to say if these are just outlying cases or if we can expect more in the year ahead, but these incidents reinforce the need for authors to treat the agent relationship as any other business relationship: adjust course when it’s not working, and avoid becoming dependent on someone else to know your business.
Barnes & Noble woes. While the future of the US bookstore chain may not be of much importance to the average indie author, it’s top of mind for traditional publishers and authors. An industry without Barnes & Noble will change an author’s calculations about what an attractive publishing offer and contract looks like. In this post, industry analyst Mike Shatzkin explains why the survival of the chain is important to publishers. Everyone will be keeping an eye on a potential sale in 2019.
The effect(s) of Brexit. For book publishing, as some of London’s top agents told us this year (and as we heard again at London Book Fair), one of the biggest downsides for authors may be the loss of the UK’s exclusive sales rights for British-produced books in Europe. Keep in mind that up to 70 percent of the UK’s publishing revenue is estimated to come from exports. If American publishers gleefully flood the Continent with first-strike content, and if Brexit results in long delays on the docks at Cherbourg for books from the UK, you’re looking at a direly crippled UK books industry. March 29 is the next critical decision date for Brexit; it’s the date the UK is scheduled to leave the EU. It’s probably zero comfort to UK book folks that the number-one title on this year’s Christmas bestsellers list in the UK is Michelle Obama’s Becoming.
The diminishing BookExpo. The entire southern end of the vast show floor at the Jacob Javits Center in New York was empty of exhibitors this year at BookExpo. The rights-trading center was shunted to another spot in town (it’s to return to the Javits in 2019); the publishers obviously decided that the cost of exhibiting wasn’t worth as much as it used to be; and the show’s “reimagined” emphasis on booksellers failed to call forth the retail army. For trade authors proudly presented by their publishers, BookExpo can still be great. All others are watching a decades-old fixture of the American industry wither, even as the trade shows in other parts of the world flourish.
A shift in EU ebook taxes. We know you commit every word of The Hot Sheet to memory, so you’ll no doubt recall that, last year at this time, we followed up on an article from the prior year, indicating that the European Union still required its member countries to tax ebooks at often much higher rates (up to 20 percent) than print books (which are taxed between zero and 5 to 7 percent). Well, in the Some Things DO Get Better Department, this year, a nation may choose to tax ebooks at exactly the rate it taxes print—even at zero percent, if desired. The prior tax policy crazily classified ebooks as software.
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.
