Publishing (and e-publishing)
• Book publishing
• Publishing trends
• Publishing skills, specialties
• Publishing legal battles
• Publishing commentators
• The Art of Publishing (Paris Review)
(eBook publishing services)
• Ebook Formats and Formatting
• Ebook Subscription Services
• Ebooks vs. print
• Digital libraries
• Taking advantage of the boom in audiobooks
(including how audiobooks are distributed)
Audio rights
• Distributing audiobooks
• Finding good audiobooks to listen to
• Competing for ears: audiobooks and podcasts
• Current issues with audiobooks
• Mike Shatzkin on Changes in Publishing
• Authors and the New World of
ePublishing and Self-Publishing (digital publishing)
E-book rights, developments, conflicts, and struggles for market
Blogs and podcasts about the book business
• Publishing and Bookseller Organizations and Resources
• Courses on Book Publishing, Editing, and Proofreading
• Tools of Change for Publishing Conference (O'Reilly TOC)
See also
Standard parts of a book
Selling your book to libraries, bookstores, schools
Self-publishing and print on demand (POD)
Self-Publishing 101
Book design and production
Hybrid publishing
Printers and printing
Book distribution and fulfillment
What are CIPs and PCIPs, ISBNs and ISSNs, ISNIs, LCCNs and PCNs, BISAC, WorldCat, barcodes, etc., and does every product need one or need listing?
How, when, and where to register copyright
Children's Book Publishing
Contract terms for books
Small Presses
Self-Publishing and Print on Demand
Academic publishing and university presses
E-book Readers rights
DRM and Book Piracy
Predatory publishers of open access books--and how to avoid them
Authors Guild vs. Authors Alliance
Book publishing (traditional)
The big picture
• Running a big publishing house is not as much fun as it used to be (Mike Shatzkin, Idea Logical, 2-6-23) The Big Five publishing companies (Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Hachette) now account for the lion’s share of the commercial publishing business, but they can't grow organically anymore.
The commercial publishers — and every title they issue — have a lot more competition from other new titles hitting at the same time than they ever did before as they compete with self-published and entity-published books and instead of with 500,000 new books a year they compete with millions of books, many of them print-on-demand.
A smaller percentage of books are purchased in retail locations now and more of them are bought online, so traditional publishers aren't in control of the book pipeline anymore.
There is gold in publishers' backlists, but it's harder to market a new book. Although prospects look rough for book publishers, however, they are great for readers, who have easier access to all the books ever published. Shatzkin sees the big picture clearly.
See also his articles The end of the general trade publishing concept (10-19-20) and
End of General Trade Publishing Houses: Death or Rebirth in a Niche-by-Niche World (5-31-07).
• The Key Book Publishing Paths: 2022-2023 (Jane Friedman's excellent chart, from The Hot Sheet). Should you self-publish or traditionally publish? This infographic and the information associated with it will help you determine the best choice for you and your project. Six categories analyzed:
Traditional (Advance-Based) Publishing
Big Five Houses
Other Traditional
Not Advance-Based
Small Presses
Indie or Self-Publishing
Assisted and Hybrid
Indie/DIY
Social (serialization, fan fiction, social media and blogs, Patreon/patronage)
The Hot Sheet publishes industry news and analysis geared to authors, sent by email every two weeks (a good investment at $59 a year). Should you self-publish or traditionally publish? This infographic will help you determine the best choice for you and your project.
• "If you need to bring a checkbook to the meeting, the publisher is not a traditional publisher." ~ Milton Trachtenburg
• Penguin Random House underscores copyright protection in AI rebuff (Matilda Battersby,The Bookseller, 10-18-24) "The world’s biggest trade publisher has changed the wording on its copyright pages to help protect authors’ intellectual property from being used to train large language models (LLMs) and other artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Penguin Random House (PRH) has amended its copyright wording across all imprints... “No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems”, and will be included in all new titles and any backlist titles that are reprinted....
Anna Ganley of The Society of Authors said, among other things: “In addition to this change, we now hope to see changes in publishing contracts too, and proper safeguards to be added, as we believe it is equally important that publishers guarantee to creators that their consent will be sought before the publisher uses—or allows the use of—generative AI in association with the production of the work—for example, for purposes of narrating, translating, images, cover design—and before the publisher grants any access to, or use of, the work by an AI system.”
• Penguin Random House, AI, and writers' rights (Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic, 10-19-24) "You can't train an AI with our books" isn't the same thing as "We won't train an AI with YOUR book."
• Is Publishing About Art or Commerce? (Katy Waldman, New Yorker, 8-16-22) The antitrust trial to block the merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster has riveted the industry—and raised larger questions about the business of books. Those who work in book publishing have answered the ineffable and not especially remunerative call to cultivate literature. Maybe their lens—luck, passion, the wind, the stars—is the right one. Maybe money doesn’t always rule the day.... If nothing else, the trial has laid bare the prodigious labor, on the part of agents and editors and booksellers, it takes to shepherd a book to life....
In September of 2021, Dohle promised not to shutter any imprints should the deal go through, but the merger is likely to have an adverse effect on employees. In 2013, when Penguin fused with Random House, a wave of editors, marketers, and publicists lost their jobs, and midlist contracts shrivelled. It feels naïve to hope that the sale of Simon & Schuster, whether to Penguin Random House or to another buyer, will bring a different result."
---A Trial Put Publishing’s Inner Workings on Display. What Did We Learn? (Elizabeth A. Harris, Alexandra Alter and Adam Bednar, NY Times, 8-19-22) The book world can be opaque to outsiders. A case offered an unusual glimpse into it, revealing curiosities about the business and details about book deals. No one — not even the top executives in publishing — has figured out the mix of factors that can guarantee a best seller. During their testimony, Penguin Random House executives said that just 35 percent of books the company publishes are profitable. Among the titles that make money, a very small sliver — just 4 percent — account for 60 percent of those profits. “That’s how risky our business is,” Mr. Dohle said. “It’s the books that you don’t pay a lot for [like “Where the Crawdads Sing”] and become runaway best sellers.”
---No one buys books (Elle Griffin, Elysian, 4-22-24) Everything we learned about the publishing industry from Penguin vs. DOJ.
---No, Most Books Don't Sell Only a Dozen Copies (Lincoln Michel, Counter Craft, 9-4-22) Why publishing statistics are so confusing.
---The Books Merger That’s About Amazon (On Tech With Shira Ovide newsletter) How to defend against Amazon’s book selling monopoly? Penguin Random House argued that a book publishing monopoly could be the solution. Book publishers want to become bigger and stronger partly to have more leverage over Amazon.
---Will the Biggest Publisher in the United States Get Even Bigger? The Biden administration is suing to block Penguin Random House from buying Simon & Schuster. A United States District Court will decide if the sale can proceed.
---DOJ-PRH Antitrust Trial: A Roundtable Discussion (Jane Friedman moderates, with panel of experts) The government's case focuses on "anticipated topselling books" (ATB), defined by the government of books earning advances $250,000 or higher, showing how advances would go down for this sector of the market. For a copy of the rough transcript, click here: https://bit.ly/JF_DOJ-PRH
• Michael Castleman The Untold Story of Books: A Writer's History of Publishing “Castleman presents a sweeping 600-year chronicle of the book business… a rousing account… [with] fascinating detours… Bibliophiles will be enthralled.” ~ Publishers Weekly
• Commonly Used Terms in Book Publishing (Bookjobs.com)
• They Made a Difference: 25 Book Business Change Makers (Michael Coffey, with Claire Kirch, Andrew Albanese, and Shannon Maughan, PW, 4-19-22) Short descriptions of 25 seriously consequential individuals whose mark on the publishing industry is indelible.
• 12 Publishing Industry Truths Readers & Writers Should Know According to Jane Friedman, publishing industry expert. (rachel krantz, 8-29-22) For example: The majority of books don’t earn out. The average advance is pretty damn low. To start earning royalties, you have to sell A LOT of copies.…98% of books sell under 5,000 copies. Most of the publishers’ revenues come from backlist titles. Etc., with details.
• When Is It Smart to Submit Your Work to a University Press? (You’d Be Surprised!) (Joni B. Cole on Jane Friedman's blog, 9-28-22) Not all university presses publish trade projects, but those that do are a natural home for books with regional settings or topics, or books with national appeal that don’t fit the mold of a traditional big house. And when we talk about trade books we’re talking about books written for a general audience, books you’d commonly find in bookstores, public libraries, and online vendors (versus scholarly or academic books whose topics and writing style focus on classroom adoption, university libraries, and researcher use).
• Why You Should Consider a University Press for Your Book (Adam Rosen on Jane Friedman's blog, 4-5-22) University presses are not just for scholars, and some might be ideal if you have a small platform, a big idea, and strong writing skills.
• The Book Wholesaling World Is Consolidating Too (Judith Rosen, PW, 4-19-22) Today only two trade wholesalers of size remain, both family businesses: Ingram Content Group, which had sales of more than $2 billion in 2020, and its much smaller counterpart, Bookazine. The decline in wholesalers, who serve as middlemen between publishers and bookstores, followed a steep decline in the number of independent bookstores.
• Why Don’t Publishers Play Moneyball? (Mark A. Herschberg, Cognosco Media, 8-2-22) Data driven modeling has impacted a variety of industries; why hasn’t publishing embraced the trend? Why do they depend on instinct, however well-informed?
• Small Press Distributors Survive Through Transformation (Julie Schaper, Publishers Weekly, 4-19-22) Part of the PW series on the last 25+ years of traditional publishing. In the 1990s, Barnes & Noble expanded its superstore model, heedless of the existential threat to independent booksellers, and Borders also expanded, "another threat to small stores, along with Musicland. Still, it was true that superstores, with their colossal square footage, wanted to have a wide range of titles. It seemed like a thrilling opportunity to sell more books, but the downside could be heavy returns that often came back in giant boxes called gaylords, leaving us and our publishers with more 'hurts' than sellable books. "There was also a new online book company called Amazon....In 2005 Ingram launched a distribution company with an eye to integrating POD and e-book services....In 2007 the Amazon Kindle was released and became the most popular e-reader in the world. The industry jumped on board and sales of e-books grew....The independent bookstores that survived had been through every kind of challenge, and those that remained were tested and resilient....a new indie commerce site called Bookshop.com offered an opportunity for bookstore sales on the web that weren’t connected to Amazon."
• The 9 Biggest Myths About Nonfiction Trade Publishing, Debunked (Summer Brennan, A Writer's Notebook, 4-19-22) What really happens when you "get a book deal," publish your first book, and go on tour to promote it? It may not be what you've always imagined! Says one writer-friend: "My experience perfectly; uni presses are even worse." (And things appear not to have changed much over the decades.)
• Two must-read articles for book authors, by Binyamin Appelbaum and Mike Shatzkin: Monopoly’s Bad Cousin (Binyamin Appelbaum, Opinion, NY Times, 11-15-21) An interesting analysis that authors should pay attention to. The Justice Department's suit to prevent Penguin Random House from buying the rival book publisher Simon & Schuster "is the most interesting antitrust action in a long time," writes Appelbaum. "In pursuing the case, the Biden administration is attempting to break out of a cage that has constrained antitrust enforcement since the 1980s....The Penguin case is a landmark because this time, the government says it is intervening to protect workers — the people who write books. See also:
• Doubts about the Department of Justice’s objection to the PRH acquisition of S&S (Mike Shatzkin, The Shatzkin Files, Idea Logical Co., 11-16-21) This fascinating summary of how deep and basic changes in the publishing industry affect authors follows on Appelbaum's analysis (see above), that "the anti-trust action is meant to protect “producers”; the authors who have had five potential bidders for their biggest projects and would now only have four.. After a mini-history of the book business in the 20th century, with Tom McCormack of St. Martin's Press as a smarter businessman than most of the other publishers, Shatzkin explains that Amazon's arrival on the scene in 1995, and the arrival of books-on-demand capabilities, disrupted publishing. "Now the book not only didn’t need to be on a retail shelf, it didn’t even need to be printed for a sale to occur online today that could be fulfilled with a book dispatched tomorrow. So now the principal skill sets that delivered competitive advantage to big publishers — controlling distribution to the shelf space that had been pretty much the sole source of book sales and being able to manage inventory from manufacture to warehousing to delivery — were largely mooted. A guy in his living room with a book on his computer could compete for online sales with the big boys."
'With book publishers focusing all their upfront money and sales efforts on a few super-successful authors, "all authors but the biggest find it harder and harder to get a deal at all and more and more of them resort to some self-publishing solution...In fact, one sophisticated publishing observer remarked recently that the Big Four or Big Five will probably soon start lowering their standard royalties for everybody else because book contracts are harder and harder to get and the biggest authors have no stake in maintaining the standard royalties that don’t affect their commercial arrangement anyway."
See also Kristine Kathryn Rusch: 'For about a decade now, companies like PRH and S&S denied that indie writers in any way contributed to the publishing industry. “Flotsam and jetsam” were some of the words floated around about indie publishing; “garbage” was another. Now, though? Now that they need us? We’re part of their defense.' Meanwhile, where was DOJ a few mega-mergers ago?
• COVID-19 and Book Publishing: Impacts and Insights For 2021 (Library Journal InfoDocument, 1-5-2021) This report looks at each segment individually, as well as specific analyses of bookstores and libraries. But a major value of the report is the extent to which it looks beyond industry sources, to consider the broader economic and social picture that surrounds book publishing, heading in 2021. With chapters on the economy as a whole, on retail, and on the entertainment industries, the report steps outside book publishing and looks back in from multiple perspectives. Examples from the report of external impacts on the immediate and future prospects for book publishing:
The potential effects of mall closings on chain bookstore sales;
The growing role of nontraditional booksellers (e.g., Walmart and Target, also re-energized in their online efforts by the dramatic shift to online retail);
Disruption in higher education proving a boon to college publishers’ digital sales, and the likely boost to direct-to-consumer channels from increased homeschooling and educational materials purchased by parents of K-12 students;
The threat to library budgets from state and local government revenue shortfalls; and indicators in digital entertainment of the growing importance of integrating social connection in media products.
You can download the full report. See also Thoughts about what Covid and 2020 mean for book publishing (Mike Shatzkin,1-7-2021) Besides helpful commentary on the report, gems like: "Since the center of gravity has shifted away from bookstores, a domain publishers 'controlled' and which shielded them from competition from books that had no powerful publisher, it has become increasingly difficult for publishers to make new books “work”.
• Pocket Guide to Publishing: 100 Things Authors Should Know by John L Koehler and Joe Coccaro. The practical details, by men who know.
• Book Wars: The Digital Revolution in Publishing by John B. Thompson.The print-on-paper book has proven to be a remarkably resilient cultural form, but the digital revolution has transformed the industry in other ways, spawning new players which now wield unprecedented power and giving rise to an array of new publishing forms. Most important of all, it has transformed the broader information and communication environment, creating new challenges and new opportunities for publishers as they seek to redefine their role in the digital age.
• The Publishing Ecosystem in the Digital Era: On John B. Thompson’s “Book Wars” 'With its vast market reach and unprecedented access to customer data, Amazon has made itself indispensable to publishers, who rely on it both to drive sales (often at painfully deep discounts) and to connect with readers. For many of us, if a book’s not available on Amazon, it might as well not exist.
“Given Amazon’s dominant position as a retailer of both print and ebooks and its large stock of information capital, publishers increasingly find themselves locked in a Faustian pact with their largest customer,” Thompson writes....Does Amazon care about books? Not in the way that publishers, authors, and readers do, but that doesn’t change the power dynamic. Amazon derives its power from market share, yes, but also from what Thompson calls “information capital” — namely the data it collects about its customers. That gives it an enormous advantage over publishers, whose traditional business approach prioritizes creative content and relationships with authors and booksellers.'
• Don’t Let Amazon Get Any Bigger (Stacy Mitchell, Opinion, NY Times, 10-8-2020) A damning congressional report about Big Tech helps make the case to break up Jeff Bezos’ empire. "While the report concludes that Apple, Facebook and Google are also abusing their monopoly power, its findings about Amazon deserve our special attention. Through its marketplace, cloud division and voice interface, Amazon functions as essential infrastructure for an astonishing array of companies and industries. This gives it an extraordinary view into the activities of other businesses and an unparalleled ability to manipulate markets to its own advantage."
• Penguin Random House Parent to Buy Simon & Schuster From ViacomCBS (Benjamin Mullin and Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg. Wall Street Journal, 11-25-2020) A $2 billion-plus deal would consolidate largest and third-largest book publishers in the U.S. 'Robert Thomson, chief executive of News Corp, which owns HarperCollins Publishers, said the deal would harm distributors, retailers, authors and readers. “There is clearly no market logic to a bid of that size—only anti-market logic,” he said in a statement. “Bertelsmann is not just buying a book publisher, but buying market dominance as a book behemoth.” News Corp also owns The Wall Street Journal.'
• Apple is reducing the cut it takes from most news publishers' subscriptions(Joshua Benton, NiemanLab, 11-18-2020) Instead of taking 30% of new subscribers’ payments, it’ll take 15%. This is welcome, but also a reminder of how little control publishers have over the terms they get from tech giants. This standard is why, for example, Amazon doesn’t sell ebooks inside the Kindle app and instead forces customers to purchase directly through the Amazon website. "At issue, really, was whether or not Apple’s 30% tax on everything flowing through its payment system was an abuse of its monopoly over installing software on iPhones and iPads. (The same, roughly speaking, applies to Google’s control of its Android app store.) The two tech giants were suddenly under increased pressure — from developers, regulators, and potentially courts — to seem less, er, extractive."
• The end of the general trade publishing concept (Mike Shatzkin, Idea Logical, 10-19-2020) Building on what Joe Esposito wrote (see next entry), Mike writes: "As big author advances are curtailed by consolidation (Penguin Random House won’t have to pay as much to authors when they are competing against one or two other big publishers rather than four), authors will find it possible and profitable to put their work in play without a big publisher....The books will still be there. All the ones from the past will still be available and there will be a steady flow of new ones every day. What will be different is that most of the books sold won’t go through bookstores, and diminishing shares of the book sales will go to “frontlist” rather than “backlist” or to “commercial publishers” rather than self-publishers, upstarts, or not-publishers doing books anyway. In any case, “general trade” is not a term that is likely to make much sense to anybody ten years from now."
• The 360° Competitor (Joseph Esposito, Scholarly Kitchen, 10-5-2020) Why is a big publisher like Bertelsmann (owner of Penguin Random House) interested in buying another big publisher, Simon & Schuster? Esposito "says a deal like this fends off Amazon and puts pressure on other partners (including authors), allowing it to shore up its margins. He writes, 'Publishers have succeeded over the past two decades in reaping 100 percent of the efficiencies from digital media and workflows and shared none of that with authors. This will continue.'” (360° competitors include, or are beginning to include, Amazon, Elsevier, Netflix ("which operates on the Amazon Web Services cloud platform even as it competes with Amazon in video streaming"), and, aspiring to 360° status, Ingram, "which runs much of the back office of the book publishing industry behind the scenes, but Ingram itself is bounded by Amazon, which takes an unsentimental view of its partners." (H/T The Hot Sheet)
• Fact Checking Is the Core of Nonfiction Writing. Why Do So Many Publishers Refuse to Do It? (Emma Copley Eisenberg, Esquire, 8-26-2020) Emma Copley Eisenberg discusses the dangers of authors being forced to hire their own fact-checker out of pocket. If they do so at all.
• Printer Jam: Serious Supply Issues Disrupt the Book Industry’s Fall 2020 Season (Alexandra Alter, NY Times, 8-27-2020) Capacity issues at the two largest printing companies are among the factors creating havoc for authors and publishers.
• Houghton Mifflin Harcourt lays off more than 500 employees (Jim Milliot, Publishers Weekly, 10-1-2020) "With educational publishers continuing efforts to come to grips with the shift from print-based to digital learning at schools nationwide, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced today that it has implemented a restructuring plan that will eliminate about 22% of its workforce and cut annual expenditures by $95 million to $100 million."
• Traditional Publishing Enjoys Its Best Sales in a Decade—Despite Supply Chain Problems (Jane Friedman, 9-21-2020)Book publishing faces a very tight printing market at the same time that sales have increased to levels not seen for ten years.
• Inside the Book Industry's Battle to Stay Afloat During the COVID-19 Crisis (Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire, 5-13-2020) Authors, readers, booksellers, and publishers have become more tightly-knit than ever to outlast a global pandemic. Zoom has flourished.
• The Power of Retail (Book Expo 2019) (Alex Mutter, ShelfAwareness, 6-5-19) The reason that we're interested in bricks-and-mortar stores is because they create A) experience, B) impulse and C) gifting at a completely different level than our online partners create it," said Dominique Raccah, publisher and CEO of Sourcebooks, at a BookExpo panel entitled The Power of Retail: Making Books, Authors and Building Community.Raccah pointed out that "making an author" is still something that happens in physical stores, and added that in all the data she's seen, the most surprising result has been that YA remains a category that is about 75% physical. McIntosh said that according to PRH's own research, what millennial parents value is an in-person, trusted shopping experience, and they recognize the value in a physical objects. At the same time, Mantel said, B&N is particularly encouraged about Gen Z, the demographic group younger than millennials, who are typically "way more inclined" to shop in a physical environment. And Teicher noted that compared to Western Europe, the U.S. is actually significantly "under-bookstored." He said: "We're absolutely confident that there is an opportunity for the physical book market--for the physical bookstore business--to grow."
• The Time of Their Lives: The Golden Age of Great American Book Publishers, Their Editors and Authors by Al Silverman. See Times review: One for the Books (Bruce Jay Friedman, 9-13-08) "...a wonderful book, filled with anecdotal treasures. It could have been written only by a “bookman,” someone with printer’s ink in his blood and bones."
• The Top Departments of a Publishing House (Valerie Peterson, The Balance, 1-21-19) Scroll down for links to other useful articles about life and work in a publishing house (firm).
• Life Cycle of a Book and Life Cycle of a Book in Translation (Publishing Trendsetter) Excellent infographics, which you can download.
In alphabetical order, by title:
• Advice for Writers & Publishers (Midwest Book Review)
• Amazon share grows and big publishers make more money (Mike Shatzkin, Shatzkin Files, 2-26-19) "So as the business shifts to Amazon, and it certainly looks from the outside like they are half or more of many publishers' business, it shifts from lower-margin accounts and publishers make more money. And because the big publishers have the lion's share of the high-profile books, they are effectively insulated from being cut off in a trading dispute. It is likely that there is a growing gap between what the larger publishers get as a percentage of the retail price of their books and what smaller publishers can get from Amazon. That drives another component of current publisher economics: the growing consolidation of distribution under the major houses and Ingram....It is true these days that with IngramSpark capabilities available to anybody, which can include sales force help to place books throughout the retail network, that an author who really wants to spend serious money and attention can self-publish his/her way to broader distribution. But they certainly couldn't do it with the effectiveness of a major house, at least not right off the bat."
• Articles about the book business (article archive, Independent Book Publishers Association, IBPA) Members get access to the full archive, which is helpful for indie publishers.
• Authors' income from book publishing
---Book sales boom but authors report shrinking incomes (Danuta Kean, The Guardian, 7-18-18) Despite UK publishers' record-breaking £5.7 billion in sales for 2017, authors' earnings are down, and publishers are not necessarily seeing higher profits. Overpaying celebrity authors and underpaying those who write for a living is one part of the problem. "Authors are being sacrificed for 'wish-upon-a-star celebrity' publishing." Others accuse Amazon "of using its power to keep book prices artificially low, which had undermined authors' incomes." See also Publishers are paying writers a pittance, say bestselling authors (Danuta Kean, The Guardian, 6-27-18)
• Incomes in book publishing. The PW Publishing Industry Salary Survey, 2019 (Jim Milliot, PW, 11-15-19) "The pay gap between men and women closed by $7,000 in 2018 compared to 2017, but that reduction was due to a decline in the median compensation for men in 2018 compared to 2017 (compensation fell from $87,000 to $80,000), while median pay for women held even at $60,000."
• The backlist
---How Much Is the Backlist Worth? (Richard Russo, Authors Guild, 2-2-17) The backlist (books that are not current publications but are still for sale) is at the heart of any indie bookstore's success. Deep backlist titles remain the bedrock of the publishing industry. "Cheap e-books and e-readers undermined print books' platforms for a time, and other forms of digital storytelling that didn't even exist two decades ago have provided additional stiff competition. Advances are down in part because publishers, many of whom are owned by larger entities, are increasingly pressured to be as profitable as the division of the parent company that sells refrigerators or cereal. I was lucky indeed to have made my reputation before all this happened...Every new book a writer publishes breathes new life into his backlist. (Winning awards has a similar effect, as does a film or television series based on something you've written.) This year I published a novel called ---Everybody's Fool, a sequel to Nobody's Fool, that came out twenty-three years earlier, and for many months during the spring and summer, Nobody's sold almost as many copies as Everybody's
---Jason Epstein: "Since I joined the publishing business as an editorial assistant in 1951, I have been obsessed with the preservation and distribution of backlist, for I understood from the beginning two important truths about our business: the first is that publishing is not really a business at all, at least not a very good business. If it's money that you want to make, go into a real business and take your chances. The second truth is that publishing is a vocation, a secular priesthood, for publishers are caretakers of our collective memory, indispensable servants to those other caretakers, poets, storytellers, librarians, teachers and scholars. The cultivation of backlist is not only our business but our moral responsibility." ~ "Backlist Maestro: Mr. Epstein's Dream Machine" (reprinted here) an excellent article about the changing nature of publishing and the ideal possibilities of print-on-demand publishing, in the Winter 2009 Authors Guild Bulletin, excerpted from a speech given at the 2008 Hong Kong Book Fair. Among other things, Epstein launched the first "trade paperback" line, Anchor Books, at Doubleday--when he'd been working in publishing only six months.
• Backmatter (Leanpub podcasts and transcripts) Publishing industry professionals talk about their careers and their particular areas of interest and expertise in the world of book publishing.
Big Data and Books, Part 1: What is the future of digital publishing (Kaitneese.com interview with Kas Thomas, 11-24-14). How smart phones have affected book publishing, why more books are read on Androids now, with their open source coding, but why Apple (with its proprietary software) may be positioned to lead changes in the industry; how Amazon and Goodreads lead in discovery (if I liked this book, what other books am I likely to enjoy) and how the big six publishers (don't) deal with Amazon's near-monopoly as a bookseller. More briefly: The future of digital publishing, Part 2 (interview with Tom Chalmers, managing director of IPR License, "which allows people around the world to post and discover literary rights on a global, instant access scale." Amazon is "a great product seller," with whom publishers must work to maximize sales without giving away "more than they should." In this seven-part series, Neese also interviews Christian Taranto, Brian O'Leary, Seth Delton, etc.
• Blogs about the book business (links to blogs by agents, editors, and publishing experts)
The Book Business: What Everyone Needs to Know by Mike Shatzkin. Fans of The Shatzkin Files will want to read this.
• Book Contract Basics (Valerie Peterson, The Balance, 1-21-19). Book contract clauses, explained.
• The Book P&L: How Publishers Make Decisions About What to Publish (Jane Friedman, 7-8-15) P&L. Profit and loss, a publisher’s basic decision-making tool for determining whether a book makes financial sense to publish. It’s a mixture of the predictable (such as manufacturing costs) and the unpredictable (namely, sales).While no author should ask her publisher to see her book’s P&L, understanding the principles of a P&L can help you better appreciate what financial pressures publishers are under, how a book can quickly become a financial liability if the first print run doesn’t sell through, and why advances might look low to you, but high to a publisher.
• Book Publishers Go Back to Basics (Zeke Turner with Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, Wall Street Journal, 10-16-17) If you don't subscribe, you may not be able to read it on WSJ, but after a while they often license it to other newspapers, so you might find it available online elsewhere. As consumer e-book sales fall, publishers look to find new footing with old ground—and faster pipelines. "After a decade of technological upheaval and lackluster growth, executives at the top four U.S. consumer book publishers say they are done relying on newfangled formats to boost growth.It has been nearly 10 years since Amazon.com Inc. introduced its Kindle e-book reader amid the financial crisis, destabilizing publishers and challenging their well-honed business models. Now, e-book sales are on the decline, making up a fraction of publishers' revenue, and traditional book sales are rising....The shift is a surprise reversal for an industry that experts just a decade ago predicted was facing radical change, if not a slow death, because of digitization and changing reading habits. Instead, e-book sales in the U.S. were down about 17% last year, according to the AAP industry group, while printed book revenue rose 4.5%....And after years "spent taking pennies out of the cost of making a book," the company is raising the quality of its print editions again...."Simon & Schuster's Ms. Reidy said a young generation of internet natives has been turning to print books—a trend she noticed when her company signed a deal with Rupi Kaur, a poet based on Instagram, to sell and distribute her work in the U.S. Her young fans "don't want the e-book at all. They want the physical object," Ms. Reidy said. "They want to own something that is connected to the person they like online and, number two, because they can share it."
Book publishing and bookselling history
Bookstores, chains, and trends toward big and small stores. I'm sure others are covering this topic, but I find Mike Shatzkin's analysis and predictions about what's going on in book publishing and bookselling both compelling and scary:
• Jason Epstein on Publishing's Past, Present and Future (Originally delivered as a speech at the Hong Kong Book Fair in 2008, and published in the Winter 2009 Authors Guild Bulletin as “Backlist Maestro: Mr. Epstein’s Dream Machine”)
• The Coming Editorial Crisis. HarperCollins chief Bob Miller tells Media Bistro about economic variables shaping publishing industry and prospects of "more work for fewer people" ahead, with YouTube video of his comments.
• Why Publishing Is So White (Rachel Deahl, PW, 3-11-16) A deep dive into hiring practices across the industry shows that publishers care about diversity, but many haven't taken effective steps to bring about lasting change
The Democratization of Publishing (Chip Rossetti, Publishing Perspectives, 5-20-15)
Publishing is returning to its pre-industrial models in which everyone was a creator and is transforming into a network where emotions matter most, says Richard Nash. "It's hard to see large amounts of revenue coming from digital downloads," he says. "But what I think you'll start to see is different ways in which the book artifact, the physical item, increases in value and becomes more expensive. Just as you see with certain kinds of clothing, designed objects, and organic foods today."
"Scholars have pointed to the importance of publishing — a.k.a. 'print capitalism' — to the emergence of nationalism in Europe, and to the dissemination of new political and cultural ideas.
"Retail was invented in bookstores. Booksellers were the first retailers — in the sense that items on the shelves were available to be browsed, rather than something you had to go in and ask for, or ask them to make for you individually."
The emotional connection between an experience and a consumer gains in importance: "I look at how much more people spend on vacations now, or on their willingness to spend money on a T-shirt because it's a souvenir of a concert they attended."
Disruption in the book publishing business (with a fiction focus)
• The Current State of Disruption (Planning for 2019 Part 1) (Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Business Musings, 12-26-18) Her year-end review. "The disruption in traditional publishing has gone on for nearly two decades now. It began before the Kindle made self-publishing easy by giving writers an easily accessible audience. Traditional publishing became ripe for disruption in the 1990s when the old distribution model collapsed" from hundreds of regional distributors to about five." Then came "the loss of bookstores in small towns, the rise of the bestseller only in chain bookstores." When the crisis leveled out "the publishers...continued to push for huge sellers rather than grow newer books....When the Kindle came around and disrupted publishing, both writers and readers were ready for something new....the blockbuster indie sellers," Then audiobooks went digital, became popular with commuters, and much of that income went directly to authors (because publishers didn't have audio rights). (At bottom of page are links to previous year's year-end business musings.)
• An incumbent's guide to digital disruption (Chris Bradley and Clayton O'Toole, McKinsey Quarterly, McKinsey&Company, May 2016) Business strategy in a digital age. The four stages of disruption: Detectable, Clear, Inevitable, New Normal.
• What's the Matter with Fiction Sales? (Jim Milliot & Rachel Deahl, PW, 10-36-18) "Creating authors who can draw readers via name recognition alone is crucial to selling novels....the author is the most important factor in a person's decision to buy a novel....publishers must invest to develop brand name authors who can command premium-price loyalty....Though the ability of blockbuster series to move a wide array of fiction has long been a reality in the children's market, that only recently became the case in adult fiction..."Maybe," mused Pegasus Books deputy publisher Jessica Case, "the itch people have for addictive story telling has been scratched to a large degree by TV series binge watching instead of books in recent years."
Finally, The Decoupling and Debundling of Content and Distribution (Jon Steinberg, LinkedIn, 8-30-13). Interesting piece on the blurring lines between television and movies into just "stories" that need to be made available to consumers however they want them. Says Kevin Spacey, "Give people what they want. When they want it. In the form they want it in. At a reasonable price. And they'll more likely pay for it rather than steal it."
• StatShot Annual Publisher Survey Puts 2017 Estimated U.S. Revenue at $26.2 Billion (Porter Anderson, Publishing Perspectives, 7-23-18) The largest yearly U.S. publishing survey shows that publishers' revenues have been essentially flat in the past five years. Audiobooks, adult nonfiction, and children's/YA were the only areas of clear growth. Particularly interesting, though, is that publishers' sales to physical retailers were equal to their sales to online retailers.
• Frontmatter (Leanpub podcasts and transcripts) Authors talk about their careers and their areas of expertise, making it a general interest podcast covering everything authors write books about, from startups to biology to software development and the future of labor.
• General Setup of a Publishing House (PDF, Ask the Insiders Your Publishing Questions, New Jersey Romance Writers, 2012)
• Heard On the Web (archive, links to aticles by BoSacks, Precision Media Group, on both book and magazine publishing)
• The Hot Sheet (Jane Friedman and Porter Anderson's really interesting and up-to-date newsletter about the publishing industry--for authors)
• How a Book Gets Published, Explained Step by Step (Valerie Peterson, The Balance, 12-31-18)
• Why Authors Walk Away From Good, Big 5 Publishers (Harry Bingham on Jane Friedman's blog, 4-12-18) Do read the comments. Bingham has watched the publishing industry evolve through at least four different eras:
1) Price discounting was still modest and publishers still had marketing cash to spend on actual marketing.
2) Still pre-Amazon, pre-ebook.Retailers, more assertive, slash prices and publishers' cash (once been used to attract consumers) was now going straight to bookshops to compensate them for the pain of all that discounting.
3) Dawn of Bezos and e-books, marketed through Amazon and Apple. Publishers feared traditional retail would go extinct. But "The huge margins they made on ebooks more than made up for the loss of print revenues. The equally huge margins they made on their backlist ebook titles made up for the struggles of the frontliners....Amazon provided both the threat (the rise of the ebook) and the solution (those giant margins)....Amazon is only marginally profitable, while the publishers are making a fortune. (And, yes, literary agents know how much money publishers are making, but they still haven’t managed to reverse the long decline in author incomes. No sign of that changing.)." "We had a paradox—emblematic of that third era in publishing—where a book could have (a) great reviews, (b) a good author-publisher relationship, (c) excellent production quality, (d) strong ebook sales, yet (e) be a print failure."
4) Independent self-publishing takes off and becomes a viable alternative. Authors with successful series, dissatisfied with publishing house, become hybrid authors—both traditionally and self-published.
• Why I Left My Mighty Agency and New York Publishers (for now) (Claire Cook on Jane Friedman's blog, 7-30-14, with many comments). An example of Bingham's Stage 4 (see previous entry): Authors get rights to backlist reverted, with legal assistance from Novelists, Inc. (NINC), especially after "revenue grabbing" from long-time literary agent (handling sub-rights) and Amazon. One day "agent informed me that in order to continue to be represented by this mighty agency, I would have to turn over 15% of the proceeds of my about-to-be self-published book to said agency. Not only that, but I would have to publish it exclusively through Amazon, because the agency had a system in place with Amazon where I could check a box and their 15% would go straight to them, no muss, no fuss." "I consider myself a hybrid author, both traditionally and self-published. If the right traditional publishing offer comes along, especially one that would get my paper books into bookstores in a more widespread way than I can on my own, I’d absolutely work with a traditional publisher again. As Guy Kawasaki, the former chief evangelist of Apple, said about his own hybrid author career, “I’m not for sale, but I am absolutely for rent.”
• How Hollywood Gets the Publishing Industry Wrong (Sloane Crosley, NY Times, 1-1-19) "Despite decades of sending emissaries back and forth from coast to coast, swapping mediums, one side looking for money, the other for legitimacy, we remain strangers to our cousins in storytelling."
• How Small Presses Are Welcoming More Women Into Publishing (Aaron Calvin, Pacific Standard, 12-14-16) Dorothy, YesYes Books, and Graywolf Press have made it their mission to publish more women — and reform an industry that more often celebrates the achievements of men.
• How Staying Small Helps New Directions Publish Great Books (Maria Bustillos, New Yorker, 2-16-16) A highly improbable structure and the rare ability to recognize and take a chance on literary talent that may be slow to catch keeps this wonderful independent publisher focused on the long haul--the books that will last, including some that "depart from the more comfortable conventions of modern fiction." An exception to most of the trends dominating book publishing today, led by an exceptional woman: Barbara Epler.
• How to Evaluate Small Publishers—Plus Digital-Only Presses and Hybrids (Jane Friedman, 6-25-18) Does the publisher produce the best-quality book possible? Proactively sell the book into accounts (bookstores, libraries, anyplace books are sold or available)? Market and publicize the book to the trade (booksellers, librarians, professional book reviewers)? Market and publicize the book to readers (direct marketing)? Well worth reading. "With a clear view of the business, you can learn how to identify whether a small press offers an advantage to you over self-publishing."
• No-inventory publishing changes everything for everybody and nobody will escape making adjustments (The Shatzkin Files, 10-7-13) Much to think about here. For example: "Should a library that uses its copy of an ebook to satisfy many readers pay more than an ebook reader who has practical (and contractual) barriers to sharing? (Random House is trying this.) While some authors are asking themselves whether publishers are essential for them anymore, which makes sense, doesn’t it also make sense for publishers to be thinking hard about how the digital revolution might change their relationship with libraries?"
• The Ins and Outs of Publishing and Self-Publishing (Mark Herschberg, Cognosco Media) Links to info on book proposals, literary agents, self-publishing (process, timing, costs), editing (sourcing, types, beta readers), book covers (frontcover, color, backcover), book title, book interior (components, layout, typesetting, indexing), physical book (printing, size, paper, binding), audio (production, reading), e-book (formats, process) marketing (pre-orders, pricing and margins, metadata, best seller lists, Amazon description, website, podcasts, local, book launch, press releases, general, selling e-books), reviews, legal (contracts, copyright, liability), distribution, publishing company, financials (advance & royalties, tax) data, miscellaneous. A good one-page list of links. Same or similar material linked to on Writers and Editors website, in more detail.
• 42 Publishers for New Authors (Emily Harstone, Authors Publish) No legitimate established presses specifically look for unpublished authors. The presses on this list were chosen because they have published a number of debut books before. Also, they do not require literary agents. You can submit to these publishers directly.
How Book Publishing Has Changed Since 1984. A look back at an age of old retail and indie bookstores, before computers, celebrity memoirs, and megachains came to dominate the literary world (Peter Osnos, The Atlantic, 4-12-11). Coming next: "Good Reviews Are No Longer Enough."
---The iPad, the Kindle, and the future of the book business. . Can the iPad topple the Kindle, and save the book business? (Ken Auletta, The New Yorker, 4-26-10)
--- Technology, curation, and why the era of big bookstores is coming to an end (Mike Shatzkin, Shatzkin Files, 6-7-11, who provided the following links as well--read him first!). Here's a later entry: Going where the customers are might be an alternative to selling direct (Shatzkin, 8-9-12)
--- Ebooks are making me recall the history of mass-market publishing (Shatzkin Files 3-13-11)
--- On Chronicling The End of the Chain Bookstore Era (Sarah Weinman, Off on a Tangent 2-17-11)
--- Can the chains provide us with better small bookstores? (Shatzkin Files 11-8-09)
---Publishers Make a Plan: A ‘One Stop’ Book Site (Julie Bosman, NY Times, 5-6-11, on the formation of Bookish.com
---The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time by Keith Houston. “Keith Houston’s deft history of the object wraps entire civilizations into the telling, propelling us through the evolution of writing, printing, binding and illustration with gusto.” ~Nature
---Say goodbye to your local bookstore (Mike Boone, Montreal Gazette, 4-4-11, reporting on Shatzkin's predictions)
---Mike Shatzkin on Publishing's Priorities for 2011 (Edward Nawotka, Publishing Perspectives, 5-26-11). BEA Video of Mike Shatzkin discussing "the erosion of shelf space in bookstores, publishing innovation, English as a disruptive force overseas, and the two priorities publishers should be focused on over the next 6-12 months: price experimentation and improving rights databases"
---It will be hard to find a public library 15 years from now (Shatzkin, 4-8-11)
---Mike Shatzkin's Twitter feed
The Art of Publishing (Paris Review interviews)
• James Laughlin, The Art of Publishing No. 1, Part 1 (Interviewed by Richard Ziegfield, Fall 1983) See also Part 2 (Winter 1983) The poet and publisher who started New Directions.
• Barney Rosset, The Art of Publishing No. 2 (Interviewed by Ken Jordan, Winter 1997) Rosset deliberately set out to overturn repressive obscenity laws, publishing and defending these books, and others, in court.
• Robert Giroux, The Art of Publishing No. 3 (Interviewed by George Plimpton, Summer 2000) Robert Giroux has been described as an editor, a publisher, and a lifelong common reader—in short, a bookman.
New publishing skills, concepts specialties, and paths to success
• Print Is Dead, But Print's Skills Aren't (Carla Zanoni, executive emerging media editor at The Wall Street Journal, writing for Nieman Lab, Prediction for Journalism, 2016) “Trimming copy, optimizing graphics for smaller space, curating the day’s best content, and understanding the best typography to tell a story are as valuable when laying out print as when putting together a Snapchat Discover edition or tweet.”
Scroll down below any of the following pieces and find links to an odd assortment of intertesting pieces, only some of which are linked to here--best you go to their site and see the whole long list! Mark this site on your cellphone and scroll down to the links below each article for quick reading that could change the way you think.
• Adele and the death of click bait (Mark S. Luckie, Nieman Lab) Clickbait: stories several paragraphs long that could easily be one sentence; headlines that pose questions that aren’t answered in any meaningful way in the copy; uninspired lists of tweets culled by a social media producer eager to get an ounce of the zeitgeist traffic. “A hastily written article may net a few hundred or a few thousand clicks (if you’re lucky) — maybe more if it gains traction. But digital natives have wised up.”
• Distributed platforms will be your new home page (Cory Hike, Nieman Lab) “Publishers need a few things for this to be of real value: good analytics, monetization mechanisms, product development partners, and fresh ideas on how to create content that is native to the platforms.” "The distributed era is dawning. Apple News and Apple TV, Facebook Instant Articles, Google AMP, Twitter Moments, Snapchat Discover, 360º video and VR, over-the-top TV, chat apps — these are all products, platforms, and programs developed (ish — Google AMP is open source) by tech companies. What many of them have in common is that they’re developed for publishers or used by them to engage new audiences."
• Time to get serious about chat apps (Elise Hu, Nieman Lab, 2015) “For users, why worry of a more feudal Internet when you can send amazing stickers to select groups of friends? For publishers, you get a direct connection with an untapped audience, with your updates dinging on their phones.”
• Thank god for ad blocking (Celeste Lecompte) “The newsroom’s creativity over the past few years has been part of a radical reimagining of what journalism looks like. Revenue models need to undergo a similar transformation....
"Newsrooms now regularly produce interactive and data-driven stories, launch podcasts, and experiment with new, structured formats (like, say, Vox’s card stacks). Longform storytelling is in a serious golden age, email newsletters are better than ever, and short- and long-form video is booming. Distributed content has encouraged new ways of telling stories, too, with journalists crafting content for Snapchat Discover, building Twitter bots, Instagramming photo essays, and chatting with users about elections and disasters on WhatsApp. Given this flurry of creativity, it’s hard to see why these are hard times for journalism." But how to monetize, if ads don't fit into these new formats?
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• Journalists: Get thee to the comments (Gina Masullo Chen) "Journalists need to play the role of host at the digital party, setting a tone for these conversations, which are too important to ignore. In other words, let 2016 be the year we attack the problem of online incivility by fostering civil discourse — rather than by fighting to silence the uncivil. Undoubtedly many feel it’s out of the scope of their jobs or presents a conflict of interest — or that it’s just too time-consuming. We cannot afford that view any longer. A journalist’s job, at its very essence, is to explain to the public what’s going on. If the public is learning that through comments, journalists must be part of that discussion."
• The most exciting company in media sells a card game (Melody Kramer) “The Cards Against Humanity team is smart, they’re independent, they make money despite releasing their entire product online for free — and they’re building something much larger than a late night party game.”
• Spotlight shows the power of true teamwork (Marie Gilot, Nieman Lab) “Like The Avengers, but with FOIAgirl and Spreadsheetman.” With Spotlight winning Oscars (including Best Picture!), the myth of the one-man-band journalist is shown the door, and the age of the team is ushered in. Investigative teams make great marketing ploys (“Read this new story by our Team!”), great recruiting tools (“Come join our Team!”), and great management devices, elastic enough to lose some members and gain new ones.
• Nationals wake up to the opportunities in local media (Ted Williams, Nieman Lab, 2015) “Make no mistake, the financial rewards for building tomorrow’s Gannett, Lee, Tribune, and McClatchy are massive.” Everything from “What’s the most cost effective way for me to buy a local craft beer keg for my cookout?” to “Where should I send my daughter to kindergarten?” No Pulitzers, but plenty of neighbors saying “thank you.”
• The multiple faces of witnessing (Valerie Belair-Gagnon & Taylor Owen, Nieman Lab, 2015) “Footage gathered by ‘citizen camera witnesses’ and professional journalists will increasingly be used to promote greater connection to and understanding of events, and to ultimately decrease the distance between the lives and experiences of others.”
• Scaling down the hype in local news (Dylan Smith) “What we need is not more reporters and editors working for lumbering chain media, but instead more local news entrepreneurs who can bring together teams with business smarts, reporting chops, and deep community knowledge to kick ass, take names, and cash checks.
Scroll to the bottom of any of the stories above and find links to reporting on topics that grab your attention.
I had to contain myself not to list them all!
Publishing trends (including mergers)
'In trade publishing, the “customer” has historically been thought of as the major trade accounts. But in a market where now roughly 70 percent of book units are sold direct to the consumer through online channels, the individual book buyer is now the most important customer by far. This is a real sea change in the book market’s dynamics—and one that not only requires new ways of thinking about publishing priorities but new tools that help publishers understand this new customer better to become more effective at motivating the all-important “click” to browse and to hopefully buy.' [I've misplaced the credit--I suspect, The Hot Sheet]
• What Actually Sells a Book (Kathleen Schmidt, Publishing Confidential, 8-14-24) "Publishers set the tone for book sales.... The higher an advance is, the more attention a book will receive in-house." Well worth reading.
Authors: "You have control over building your platform, which is a direct line to your readers. If you squander it, you’re making a mistake."
• My First Novel Was a New York Times Bestseller. I’m Self-Publishing My Third Novel Today. (Cynthia Swanson on Jane Friedman's blog, 9-17-24) The comments are frank and eye-opening.
• A New Publisher Promises Authors ‘the Lion’s Share of the Profit’ (Elizabeth A. Harris, NY Times, 3-5-24) Authors Equity is tiny but has big industry names behind it. Its founders hope their profit-sharing approach and experience will entice authors. This is an experiment in traditional publishing, with no advance to authors but higher royalties--AFTER expenses are paid. The author is taking a bigger risk; whether authors will end up earning more money remains to be seen.
• No one buys books (Elle Griffin, Elysian Press, 4-22-24) Did you know that 96% of books sell less than 1,000 copies? The DOJ's lawyer collected data on 58,000 titles published in a year and discovered that 90 percent of them sold fewer than 2,000 copies and 50 percent sold less than a dozen copies. Two percent of all titles earn an advance over $250,000.
---No, Most Books Don't Sell Only a Dozen Copies (Lincoln Michel, Counter Craft, 9-4-22) Despite viral claims, Americans buy over a billion books a year. Why publishing statistics are so confusing. Read the article AND the comments.
---Americans are buying more books—but reading fewer of them than ever. What gives? (Emily Temple, Lit Hub, 1-12-22) The publishing industry is booming. According to Publishers Weekly, sales of print books rose 8.9% in 2021, selling 825.7 million units, up from 757.9 million in 2020. This is the second year in a row to see a similar sales jump; in 2020, sales were up 8.2% from 2019, in which 693.7 million units were sold.[Note: This was during the pandemic.]
• The Future of Book Publishing – 2024 and Beyond (Andrew Rhomberg, LinkedIn, 1-1-24) Ten major trends - in alphabetical order - that are shaping book publishing: AI, Amazon, audiobooks, consolidation,cost pressures, globalization, luxury objects, scale and size, streaming, TikTok. TikTok "shows what impact AI can have on book discoverability and the market place as a whole.
"TikTok is also one of the major drivers of English-language editions in foreign markets. The movie industry used to roll out new releases at different times in different markets, but piracy and social media resulted in releases becoming increasingly synchronised across the globe and the same is very much happening to the book industry, too, and TikTok is one of the major, major forces behind this trend."
• The Top 10 Publishing Trends for 2024 (Clayton Noblit, Written Word Media, 1-3-24) Read about them:
1. Quality Becomes More Important Than Ever
2. Authors Build Their Brands and Communities
3. Promo Stacking Becomes The Standard
4. Artificial Intelligence Is Embraced for Book Marketing
5. The TikTok Ad Market Matures
6. Copyright and Fraud Protection Become More Important
7. Authors Refocus On the Long Game
8. Subscription Models Gain Popularity
9. Controversy Continues on Social Media
10. Publishing Continues to See Consolidation
• How book publishing has changed in recent decades and the puzzling question of what comes next (Mike Shatzkin, The Shatzkin Files, 6-19-22) The digital transition has made it relatively simple for any company based anywhere to sell their books everywhere. In this global marketplace, two companies have emerged as indispensible: Amazon and Ingram. Every publishing strategy should start with Amazon and Ingram (Shatzkin, 6-26-21)"In an online-sales-dominant marketplace, Amazon is fully half the market. (Kindle is way more than half the ebook market.) And in a world that is otherwise very much splintered and which historically required that publishers sell rights to local players all over the world to reach customers outside each company’s home market, Ingram offers a suite of tools to reach the rest of it...while the ebook market share is considerably less than half of the total book sales for the vast majority of titles, the ebook marketing space is of outsized importance because it can also generate print sales. Consumers who discover a book through a BookBub newsletter sometimes buy the book.
"Recent data I’ve seen says that the big mass merchants like Wal-mart and Target are beginning to take online print book share away from Amazon. Once you know this, it is easy to understand why. Ingram enables those stores (actually, any store) to offer a competitive selection of books. As Amazon fulfills its vision of being “The Everything Store”, it competes directly with those mass merchants. Why would a customer buying sheets or shoes at one of them go to another for a book purchase?"
• Paying authors more might be the best economics for publishers in the long run (Mike Shatzkin, Idea Logical Co., 12-12-11). Shatzkin is publisher-centric, and he writes: "Making deals with authors is the publishers’ price of admission to the game....Declared royalty rates that are closer to what Amazon can offer are critical for publishers to turn around a PR war for new authors that they have been losing. ...Pay authors more so you can pay retailers less. There will be a direct connection between the two."
• Blogs, newsletters, and podcasts about the book business
• Paper Shortages: What’s Behind the Problem and What Can We Do? Lou Caron (What They Think, 3-30-22) takes an in-depth look at the paper shortage the printing industry is currently facing, tracing its origins in pre-pandemic trends (interesting analysis), and looking ahead to the possible end game. Supplement that with the Midland Paper Company's update on on current market conditions for book manufacturing (in Powerpoint, March 2022) with clear graphs on driver shortages, fuel prices, container shipping costs, etc. The Bookseller reports "Soaring supply chain costs mean more print-on-demand volume in the UK." (subscription required, H/T Jane Friedman).
• The great book shortage of 2021, explained (Constance Grady, Vox, 10-6-21) Demand for books is way up this year. Supplies are way, way down. Why?
• What Snoop Dogg’s Success Says About the Book Industry (Alexandra Alter and Elizabeth A. Harris, NY Times, 4-18-21) The rapper's two-year-old cookbook “From Crook to Cook” sold 205,000 copies in 2020, nearly twice as many as it had sold in 2019. Despite what seemed like insurmountable challenges during the pandemic — with bookstores closed, literary events canceled and publication dates postponed — people kept buying books. But they shopped mostly online, where book discovery is different. "Often, they see whatever a search or algorithm delivers, or find themselves steered toward titles that retailers push because they are already selling well." So backlist titles flourished and "about 98 percent of the books that publishers released in 2020 sold fewer than 5,000 copies."
Will the shifts brought on by the pandemic, favoring online retailers over bookstores and established authors over new ones, change publishing forever? About book-buying online: "Unlike the serendipitous sense of discovery that comes with browsing a bookstore, people tend to search by author or subject matter when they shop online, limiting the titles they see. Often, they see whatever a search or algorithm delivers, or find themselves steered toward titles that retailers push because they are already selling well. As a result, many of the new books that were released in 2020 languished, as panicked retailers focused on brand-name authors and readers gravitated toward the most popular titles." That links to Best Sellers Sell the Best Because They’re Best Sellers (Alexandra Alter, NY Times, 9-19-20) "Publishing is becoming a winner-take-all game. Nobody dominates it like Madeline McIntosh and Penguin Random House."
• The 10 Awful Truths about Book Publishing (Steven Piersanti, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 6-29-20) Followed by Strategies for Responding to the Awful Truths.
#2 Events/immersion experiences replace traditional publicity in moving the needle.
#7: Front-load the main ideas in books and keep books short.
• The Heart of the Matter: Exploring Heartland Publishing 2021 (Claire Kirch, Publishers Weekly, 11-19-21) The publishing scene in the Twin Cities and Chicago and the spillover into Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
• COVID-19 and Book Publishing: Impacts and Insights for 2021 (Springer)
• “Enterprise self-publishing” is coming: the third great disruption of book publishing since the 1990s (Mike Shatzkin, Idealog, 6-22-21) "The book business is in the early stages of its third great disruption in the past quarter century. The first two both changed the shape of the industry and created winners and losers across the entire value chain: touching every step from how authors got money to how readers got books. Significant institutional players were lost in both prior disruptions, and all the ones who remained had to change their models and practices significantly....
"The first big disruption — Amazon as a retailer — completely remade the retail network in less than two decades. The second — easily-enabled self-publishing — unleashed a tsunami of titles in competition with the ones delivered by the commercially-minded players. The combination has spawned two trends, neither of which has any end in sight.The first trend is that the sale of books is increasingly online. The second trend is that the share of all book sales that is delivered by “real” publishers is also shrinking. That has been true for the many years since authors were empowered by Amazon, and then by IngramSpark, to put their books into the marketplace effectively without working through a publisher. But if I’m right that every business with a marketing or business development or client relations budget will explore how books can help their business, what the authors have spawned will be dwarfed by what enterprise self-publishing will do in the coming decade....
"It is literally the case today that all you need to be a publisher is a manuscript and a checkbook to pay freelancers; all you need to be a book retailer (print and digital) is customers. Ingram can provide all the rest, mostly with transaction-based pricing, so there are no large up-front investments required."
• The Unbundling of Publishing (Brian Morrissey, The Rebooting, 4-21-21) Substack and unionization are a sign of what's to come.
• Book Wars by John B. Thompson. The story of the turbulent decades when the book publishing industry collided with the great technological revolution of our time. A "sober consideration of what the digital age has meant to a print-centred business....a remarkable account of how and why one of the oldest forms of media has persisted through the challenges posed by digital disruption." "The print-on-paper book has proven to be a remarkably resilient cultural form, but the digital revolution has transformed the industry in other ways, spawning new players which now wield unprecedented power and giving rise to an array of new publishing forms. Most important of all, it has transformed the broader information and communication environment, creating new challenges and new opportunities for publishers as they seek to redefine their role in the digital age."--Bookshop.org
• How the Pandemic Is Affecting Book Publishing (Jane Friedman, 4-22-21) The shift to online sales has benefitted all publishers. Cader also recently pointed out that large publishers have been slowly losing market share due to the shift to online sales, which favors other publishers and self-published authors. The shift to online sales favors backlist titles. Audio sales and subscription services continue to grow. The report concludes that “the seismic change is in digital,” and that “from now on publishers must treat bookselling as digital-first, physical-second, with no further questions asked.”
• Behemoth, Amazon Rising: Power and Seduction in the Age of Amazon by Robin Gaster "explains how Amazon built five interlocking rings: logistics, Amazon Prime, the Amazon Marketplace, everyday low pricing, and constant innovation. The rings work together to create a moat too deep to scale around Amazon's retail empire. The rings work together to create a moat too deep to scale around Amazon’s retail empire."~Karl Woolfenden, Business Class News
"Gaster's dissection of Amazon's rise and domination is full of surprises and strategic insights. Anyone in business needs to understand how Amazon pivoted from survival tactics to competitive advantage to monopolistic power within two decades." ~Seth Goldman, co-founder of Honest Tea.
• At a Major Education Company, Freelancers Must Now Pay a Fee In Order to Get Paid (Hamilton Nolan, Labor, In These Times, 3-24-21) McGraw Hill is clawing back 2.2% of every invoice for processing, and a worker says it feels like “wage theft.”
• Why on Earth Is Someone Stealing Unpublished Book Manuscripts? (Elizabeth A. Harris and Nicole Perlroth, NY Times, 12-21-2020) A phishing scam with unclear motive or payoff is targeting authors, agents and editors big and small, baffling the publishing industry. This phishing exercise began at least three years ago, and has targeted authors, agents and publishers in places like Sweden, Taiwan, Israel and Italy. This year, the volume of these emails exploded in the United States, reaching even higher levels in the fall around the time of the Frankfurt Book Fair, which, like most everything else this year, was held online. The thefts have rattled some once-trusting literati and left publishing professionals unsure of whom they can trust.
• The Top Ten Publishing Trends Every Author Needs to Know In 2021 (Clayton Noblit, Written Word, 1-7-21) Trend #1: More traditional authors will move to the indie model.
Trend #2: More indie authors will collaborate or consolidate in collectives.
Trend #3: Authors will benefit from competition in the eBook marketplace between Amazon, Apple, and Google.
Trend #4: More platforms fighting for Audio supremacy will benefit savvy authors.
Trend #8: It will be a volatile year for paid advertising.
Trend #9: Email delivery and engagement will become a focus for authors.
Trend #10: Authors who write into series, and with big backlists, will win larger pieces of the pie.
• Against Conglomeration: Nonprofit Publishing and American Literature After 1980 (Dan Sinykin and Edwin Roland, Post45, 4-21-21) A long, interesting history of the 25-year period when nonprofit publishing split off from conglomerate publishing and gave rise to publishers such as Coffee House, Milkweed, and Graywolf. "Two different ways of structuring publishers' finances — conglomerate and nonprofit — created a split within literature, yielding two distinct modes of American writing after 1980. This essay characterizes the two modes, explains how the split between them happened, and illustrates the significance of this shift for the rise of multiculturalism.... What did publishers' unstable mix of motives portend for multiculturalism?"
• Why Are Americans Buying Far More Paper Books than eBooks in 2020? (David Crumm, Front Edge Publishing, 10-18-2020) Three reasons people prefer print books to ebooks: They feel good, they're simple to use (and to look things up), and they're visible symbols of our world. See also As E-book Sales Decline, Digital Fatigue Grows (Jim Milliott, PW, 1-17-16) Limitations of e-reading devices and “digital fatigue” are cited as causes of decline in sales of the format. (Of course, that was before the pandemic.)
• Best Sellers Sell the Best Because They’re Best Sellers (Alexandra Alter, NY Times, 9-19-2020) "In publishing, as in other industries, the pandemic has accelerated forces that were already at play, delivering several years’ worth of change in just a few months. The big houses aren’t competing just against one another; they’re vying for the public’s attention against TikTok, Netflix and Facebook. Penguin Random House has built what is probably the most sophisticated direct-to-consumer online marketing and data operation in the industry, with a proprietary research operation that tracks 100,000 book buyers across the country.
"This spring, the company upgraded its ability to sell books directly from its own website, bypassing bookstores, a move that could alienate big retail partners. When the coronavirus changed book-buying habits overnight, driving purchases almost entirely online, Penguin Random House was ready." Must reading.
• How Dead Is the Book Business? (Adam Davidson, NY Times Magazine, 11-13-12) When you see a merger between two giants in a declining industry, it can look like the financial version of a couple having a baby to save a marriage. At least that was my thought when Random House and Penguin, two of the world’s six largest publishers, announced that they were coming together last month. Ever since Amazon began ripping apart the book business, the largest houses have been looking for a way to fight back. If this merger is any indication, they have chosen an old-fashioned strategy: Size.
"There are two competing predictions about commerce in the digital age. One is that companies will get smaller and more disruptive as nimble entrepreneurs can take on giant corporations with little more than 3-D printers and Web sites. The other envisions a few massive companies — like Procter & Gamble, Apple and Nike — that design everything themselves, have it manufactured cheaply in Asia and use their e-commerce sites to gather information about their customers."
• Against Conglomeration: Nonprofit Publishing and American Literature After 1980 (Dan Sinykin and Edwin Roland, Post45, 4-21-21) In 2008, Zadie Smith imagined "Two Paths for the Novel." The next year, Mark McGurl published The Program Era, about how creative writing programs changed American literature.... The editors of n+1 responded by proposing that the two paths for the novel were MFA or NYC: creative writing programs or New York publishing....By missing corporate conglomeration, they miss the whole. The two paths paved by the period — which subsume and reorient realism or avant-garde, MFA or NYC — were commercial or nonprofit. 1980 marked the start of this era. Under tremendous financial pressure, commercial and nonprofit publishers split in their approaches to literariness. Writers of color, who make up a disproportionately small fraction of literary production, do not align easily along the intersecting axes of conglomeration and literariness. This literary order — organized around conglomeration, literariness, and diversity — lasted twenty-seven years, from 1980 to 2007. It ended with the financial crisis and the emergence of Amazon as a major player in publishing....In 2003, Graywolf broke from the indie distributor that connects small presses across the US to partner with Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. "It is a step away from the band of 'small presses' and into that virtually empty gap between us and the substantial independent/literary presses"...
• Concerns Over Anti-Author Bias in ALI’s Copyright Restatement (Authors Guild, 9-24-2020) "Last week, Chris Sprigman, the lead drafter of the American Law Institute’s (ALI) controversial Restatement of Copyright Law, wrote a series of tweets attacking authors for taking a stance against the Internet Archive’s practice of unauthorized digitization and lending of books, demonstrating a complete lack of understanding of the Constitutional foundations of copyright law and the supply side of the copyright system, which is premised on the ability of authors’ to be compensated for their work. Ordinarily, we would ignore ill-informed attempts like Sprigman’s to embarrass authors, but considering his role in leading the drafting of ALI’s Restatement of Copyright Law, we believe a more thorough response is in order.
"For those who don't know about the ALI's "Restatements", they are highly regarded definitive summaries of a particular body of law. Judges and lawyers use them as references for the black letter law on a particular area. They articulate the underlying principles the specific area of law (such as contract, torts, etc.) by surveying the common law—"the law developed and articulated by judges in the course of deciding specific cases" as ALI defines it. The ALI states that it "operates to give precision to use of legal terms, and make the law more uniform throughout the country."
"Sprigman's resistance to the comments of those who disagree with his view is even more alarming in light of his tweets attacking authors for wanting to defend their rights and defending the Internet Archive's assaults on copyright law and authors' rights. For years, Internet Archive has been digitizing books donated to it or on behalf of libraries without the permission of the authors or publishers of those books. Holding itself out as an online library, it makes these digital copies available to anyone throughout the world through its websites, claiming that because they made only a single copy of any book in their possession and that only one person can "take out" the digital file at a time, their practice approximates the operation of an actual library and therefore must be legal."
• Current Trends in Traditional Book Publishing: Fiction, Nonfiction and YA (Jane Friedman, 10-18-19) A once-over lightly on trends in book publishing, info published in her excellent Hot Sheet newsletter: Nonfiction still performing better than fiction (but Trump fatigue noted); top YA growth categories in 2019 are in nonfiction—history, sports, people, and places; psychological suspense still popular; current events being what they are, readers seeking escape combined with nostalgia, but surprising success with darker narratives ("Note that those on the panel said they group fiction and memoir together when describing qualities they look for in a story."); a great hook critical to marketing; importance of author having a "tribe"; graphic novels exploding . Really: read the whole article.
• Big changes in book publishing in the last ten years (Mike Shatzkin, Idea Logical, 7-23-19) For example, the arrival of the IPad and ubiquitous smartphones and tablets, pretty universal broadband, the growth of Amazon from less than a fifth of sales for most publishers to over half, through Ingram a full POD and distribution infrastructure available to anybody, audio ubiquitous...
• Audiobooks, Children's and YA Nonfiction Lead Publishing Revenue in 2018 (Kelly Jensen, Book Riot, 7-9-19) AAP reports on continued growth of audiobook and nonfiction consumption. "Revenue growth was highest for nonfiction books across both adult and children's/YA titles over the past five years, with children's and young adult nonfiction revenue growing nearly 39% since 2014. Books like Michelle Obama's Becoming led in adult nonfiction sales. In a media-saturated world, books are still popular--they just take different formats. "Audiobook sales are highest in the online market, though revenue is also up in physical stores....Audiobook listenership is driven by Millennials and Generation Z, who use the format to weave reading more seamlessly into their lives, be it during commutes, completing household chores, working out, and/or other tasks. Gen Z and Millennials make up 48% of audiobook listeners..." Podcasts are particularly popular for age groups 12-24 and 25-54.
• 7 Attention-Grabbing Publishing Trends That Will Define Books In 2019 (Scott Mathews, The Independent Publishing Magazine,2-7-19) For self-publishers and independent publishers. See also Top Ten Publishing Industry Trends Every Author Needs to Know in 2019 (Ricci, Written Word Media,1-3-19) Also slanted to independent publishing. Amazon trying to grow its AMS ads market to compete with Facebook; readers are fed up with typos etc. in self-published books; readers still flocking to audio, etc.
• Falling Fiction Sales -Why Is It Happening? – The Hot Sheet Reviewed (Mark Williams, TNPS: The View from the Beach, 11-18-18) The every-other-week review of news from The Hot Sheet (Porter Anderson and Jane Friedman's subscription only publishing industry news sheet for authors. "The big problem we have is that the fiction market, much more so than the wider book market, is so fragmented now, thanks to digital (by which I mean not just ebooks and audiobooks but online POD and most of all social media democratising the promotion of fiction titles), such that it seems like fewer people are reading fiction, but the reality is likely just the opposite." And Amazon's effect on the market (depressing book prices) may well be reducing author's income from book sales.
• Understanding the backlist (for everything, including books) (Seth Godin) “The backlist is the stuff you sell long after you’ve forgotten all the drama that went into making it.” "Successful backlist products have crossed the chasm and are selling to the mass market, the largest chunk of any market. These are people who don't buy a lot of books (or sneakers, or cereals) a year, but when they do buy one, they buy a popular one. And so, every year, year after year, millions of copies of Dr. Seuss books are sold. Not because they're new, but because that's what people buy.
"On the other hand, frontlist products, the new stuff, are bought by a smaller group, the early adopters, the people who like buying new books. These people are easier to reach, probably more fun to work with, but because they seek variety, they rarely all align and buy the same product."
• We Need to Talk About the Backlist (Thad McIlroy, The Future of Publishing, 5-23-21) A very long read (and a "must-read" if you're serious about selling books). Most discussions of the backlist only scratch the surface. McIlroy explores how the backlist is defined, its history, nature and, most importantly, what can be done to make the backlist shine. His focus is on nonfiction backlist titles.
• The First Half of 2018: Traditional Publishers Stand Strong with Nonfiction and Backlist (Jane Friedman, 7-9-18) Broadly, traditional print book sales continue to grow at about 2 to 3 percent per year, but growth is driven by nonfiction, backlist titles, and children's/YA. Fiction sales have been flat for several years now, with frontlist fiction down 5 percent due to a lack of big titles.
• What's Next? (Brian O'Learn, Magellan Media, date uncertain). Everyone's a publisher and content (and content marketing) come first; crowdfunding, big data, the internet as classroom, and high-value networks are important; the "means of production goes hyperlocal."
Amazon (and eBooks) vs. traditional book publishers and bookstores
• Who wins and loses from the Department of Justice suit against Big Publishers and Apple?
• Ideas About the Future of Book Publishing (Shatzkin Files, 2-7-13) Mike Shatzkin's vision of the future is "of books being sold mostly in stores that aren’t bookstores, enabled by VMI systems that largely don’t exist yet." With vendor-managed inventory (VMI), "the cost of negotiation — of conversation between a “buyer” and a “sales rep” — plummets." He writes: "the responsibility for getting the right books onto retail shelves is one that has always belonged to the retailer. That reality encouraged, even required, large book retailing operations: big independent stores and large chains could amortize that cost across far more sales than a small bookstore or a little book department in another retailer." VMI reduces those costs, and to predict sales uses data on past sales rather than a bookseller's instincts.
• Amazon.com and the future of book publishing (part 1)
• Amazon.com and the future of book publishing (part 2)
• Do Legacy Publishers Treat Authors Badly? (Joe Konrath, ANewbie's Guide to Publishing, 2-20-12). Yes, they do, says K0nrath, and he lists the ways, including: "Legacy publishers offer the author 17.5% royalties on ebooks, and keep 52.5% for themselves. Legacy publishers have full control over the title of the book. Legacy publishers have full control over the cover art." (By Legacy he means the big six: Random House, etc.)
• Publishing Scam Alerts (Authors Guild, 4-19-24) A long list, with descriptions. Do your homework: Be alert.
• Kindle Singles: A lifeline for the long short read (Kate Carraway, Globe and Mail, 2-18-12).
• The wild weekend of Amazon and Macmillan (Mike Shatzkin, The Shatzkin Files 1-31-10). Amazon briefly turns off Macmillan's buy buttons to pressure publishers not to go to agency pricing).
• The Amazon-Macmillan book saga heralds publishing's progress (Steven Pearlstein, WashPost, 2-3-10) "Last weekend, a noisy little melodrama in the book publishing world involving Amazon.com and Macmillan provided a wonderful case study of the radical transformation taking place all across the economy as a result of the digital revolution. Predictions of things to come.
• Montlake Romance Marks Tip of Amazon's Expansion Into Publishing (Rachel Deahl, PW 5-4-11)
• Amazon Starts Mystery Imprint Thomas & Mercer (PW 5-18-11)
• Amazon hires CEO Larry Kirshbaum to head up a new trade imprint (The Shatzkin Files 5-23-11). Writes Mike Shatzkin: "Five years ago we lived in a world where every book that mattered sold more copies at brick stores than it did online. Five years from now every book that matters will sell more copies online than it does in a brick store. The Amazon decision may mark the commercial turning point of that massive shift. (para) The edge in maximizing online sales revenues will go to the publisher that can manage online pricing and marketing most effectively. That not only means raising and lowering prices dynamically to get the most possible revenue, it might also mean experimenting with free sample sizes to see what delivers the best rate of conversion to a sale. It certainly also means having the best list of potential readers to alert to a book’s publication."
Publishing legal battles
• Penguin Random House (Wikipedia entry)
Along with Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins and Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Random House was considered one of the 'Big Five' English language publishers--after the July 2013 merger of Penguin Books and Random House. In April 2020 Bertelsmann announced the completion of its purchase of Penguin Random House. The New York Times reported that Penguin Random House planned to purchase Simon & Schuster from Paramount Global for $2.175 billion in November 2020, but the U.S. Department of Justice sued to stop the deal on antitrust grounds, a suit that eventually succeeded on October 31, 2022.
---***At Random (Christian Lorentzen, Harpers, March 2023) A long and fascinating article about the nature of book publishing, the business of books, and the merger that wasn’t (the Random/Simon and Schuster/Bertelsmann merger trial). For example:
---"The market, Read said, was already highly concentrated with the so-called Big Five (PRH, HarperCollins, S&S, Hachette, and Macmillan) controlling 90 percent of anticipated top-seller demand. No new competitor had emerged since the Seventies at the level of what was until 2013 the Big Six, and would now be, if the merger went through, the Big Four."
---"Big advances for authors without preexisting fame or a track record of sales resulted from a frenzy of industry buzz, and most of the time such passion did not pan out. Meanwhile, Cinderellas went from humble beginnings to big earnings, perhaps by catching the eye of Oprah Winfrey or Reese Witherspoon. Most of what happens is more banal; veteran authors generally receive advances in line with their sales records."
---"Petrocelli said that the figure Read cited—that 2 percent of books accounted for 70 percent of advances paid—didn't mean much because it wouldn't translate into 70 percent of sales."
---The "Justice Department lawyer John Read specified in his opening argument that consumers of books—also known as readers—were not the harmed party in this case. These consumers constitute the "downstream" market for publishers as sellers, the primary "upstream" market for publishers as buyers was the rights to manuscripts. The government's case was thus a defense against monopsony, being pursued on behalf of producers of manuscripts—also known as authors."
Hachette v. Internet Archive, 2023 (This major lawsuit has its own separate section, on another page of this website.)
• The planned Penguin Random House-Simon & Schuster merger has been struck down in court (Constance Grady, Vox, 11-1-22) Penguin Random House is officially not going to become Penguin Random Simon & Schuster. Under the new Biden administration, 'the DOJ filed suit against both Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, as well as parent companies Bertelsmann and ViacomCBS. The DOJ argued that "PRHS&S would form a monopsony — an unfair buying market that would drive down the money paid to authors. Such cases are historically rare....
PRH’s CEO Markus Dohle admits that he “never, never bought into that argument,” and that one of the “goals” of the post-merger PRHS&S would be to become an “exceptional partner” to Amazon.
"The government argued that with this combined market share, the proposed PRHS&S would be able to buy books from authors with minimal competition. It would be able to offer lower and lower advances, and authors would have no choice but to accept these lower offers.
"Judge Florence Pan’s verdict was hard to predict in this case, because there simply wasn’t much case law to cite. Historically, the US hasn’t prosecuted monopsony often. Instead, it has tended to treat antitrust law as a means of protecting consumers, not a means of protecting laborers."
• Is Publishing About Art or Commerce? (Katy Waldman, New Yorker, 8-16-22) The antitrust trial to block the merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster has riveted the industry—and raised larger questions about the business of books. Those who work in book publishing have answered the ineffable and not especially remunerative call to cultivate literature. Maybe their lens—luck, passion, the wind, the stars—is the right one. Maybe money doesn’t always rule the day.... If nothing else, the trial has laid bare the prodigious labor, on the part of agents and editors and booksellers, it takes to shepherd a book to life....
In September of 2021, Dohle promised not to shutter any imprints should the deal go through, but the merger is likely to have an adverse effect on employees. In 2013, when Penguin fused with Random House, a wave of editors, marketers, and publicists lost their jobs, and midlist contracts shrivelled. It feels naïve to hope that the sale of Simon & Schuster, whether to Penguin Random House or to another buyer, will bring a different result."
---A Trial Put Publishing’s Inner Workings on Display. What Did We Learn? (Elizabeth A. Harris, Alexandra Alter and Adam Bednar, NY Times, 8-19-22) No one — not even the top executives in publishing — has figured out the mix of factors that can guarantee a best seller. During their testimony, Penguin Random House executives said that just 35 percent of books the company publishes are profitable. Among the titles that make money, a very small sliver — just 4 percent — account for 60 percent of those profits. “That’s how risky our business is,” Mr. Dohle said. “It’s the books that you don’t pay a lot for [like “Where the Crawdads Sing”] and become runaway best sellers.”
---The Books Merger That’s About Amazon (On Tech With Shira Ovide newsletter) How to defend against Amazon’s book selling monopoly? Penguin Random House argued that a book publishing monopoly could be the solution. Book publishers want to become bigger and stronger partly to have more leverage over Amazon.
---Will the Biggest Publisher in the United States Get Even Bigger? The Biden administration is suing to block Penguin Random House from buying Simon & Schuster. A United States District Court will decide if the sale can proceed.
---DOJ-PRH Antitrust Trial: A Roundtable Discussion (Jane Friedman moderates, with panel of experts) The government's case focuses on "anticipated topselling books" (ATB), defined by the government of books earning advances $250,000 or higher, showing how advances would go down for this sector of the market. For a copy of the rough transcript, click here: https://bit.ly/JF_DOJ-PRH
• Why the DOJ v PRH Antitrust Trial Doesn’t Change the Game for Authors, Regardless of Outcome (Jane Friedman, 9-23-22) The big dogs will remain the big dogs.
• The biggest story in books (Kenneth Whyte, SHuSH, the official newsletter of The Sutherland House Inc., Week 1, 8-5-22) The Penguin Random House trial is ripping the lid off publishing. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, the world’s fattest book publisher, Penguin Random House (PRH), owned by Germany’s Bertelsmann SE, almost two years ago struck a deal to buy Simon & Schuster (S&S), America’s third fattest book publisher, from Paramount (formerly ViacomCBS) for $2.1 billion. The deal, which would create a globally dominant super-fat publisher, two-and-a-half-times the size of the next fattest firm, Rupert Murdoch’s HarperCollins, is subject to regulatory approvals in a variety of locations, including Canada and the UK, but it only collapses if blocked in the US.
Penguin Random House wants to buy S&S to keep it from falling into the hands of a competitor, especially Murdoch who would merge it with HarperCollins and compete on a relatively even footing with PRH. The $2.1 billion price tag is stupid for the assets PRH is getting but the avoidance of competition is priceless. See also Random House of the Living Dead (Shush, Week 2, 8-12-22).
• Penguin Random House to Buy Simon & Schuster (Alexandra Alter and Edmund Lee, NY Times, 11-25-2020) ViacomCBS agreed to sell the 96-year-old company in a deal that potentially creates a megapublisher. "Penguin Random House, the largest book publisher in the United States, is owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. Adding Simon & Schuster, the third largest publisher, would create a book behemoth, a combination that could trigger antitrust concerns....The sale of Simon & Schuster is part of a great unwinding taking place across the media industry as conglomerates cleave off or close down ancillary businesses. ViacomCBS, which also owns Paramount studios and Nickelodeon, has bet its future on streaming, and books won’t play a big role in that strategy."
Which is best: hardcover or paperback?
And who decides in which order, and how far apart, and whether they are both published?
• How the Humble Paperback Helped Win World War II (Jennifer Schuessler, NY Times, 10-06-23) "The Armed Services Editions, a series of specially designed pocket-size paperbacks, were introduced in the spring of 1943 [designed to fit in either the breast or pants pocket of a standard-issue uniform]. Over the next four years, roughly 120 million were printed, finding their way everywhere from the beaches of Normandy to German P.O.W. camps to remote Pacific islands. The program, one of the more heroic chapters in American publishing history, is the subject of “The Best-Read Army in the World,” an exhibition at the Grolier Club in Manhattan. The paperbacks were intended to help soldiers pass the time. But they were also meant to remind them what they were fighting for, and draw a sharp contrast between American ideals and Nazi book burnings."
• Why Are Books Published in Hardcover First? (Meghan Jones, Reader's Digest, 7-20-21) "Before the advent of mass production, print runs were limited, and books were hard-bound and expensive. Around the 1930s, that changed with the production of mass-produced paperback books, which corresponded with a huge surge of reading as a leisure activity around World War II. Paperback books were more affordable and cheaper to produce, and many smaller-name books were released only as paperbacks first." The hardcover has persisted because of its history; it "conveys a bit more legitimacy" than the paperback...a mark of quality…it shows booksellers and reviewers that this is a book worth paying attention to.” Hardcovers are bigger and easier to display. and people buy them, despite their higher cost.
• Why do publishers still issue hardbacks? (Philip Jones, Book Clinic, The Guardian, 2-26-18) The editor of the Bookseller explains why the hardback format will be with us for a while yet. "Size also matters: hardbacks are bigger than paperbacks, they take up more space in bookshops and are more visible – whether in window displays or on bookshop tables. They are "more eye-catching and easier to display on bookstore shelves." The hardback is the prop forward of the book world: it bashes its way through a crowded marketplace giving the book/author a foothold before the pacier paperback races through. Hardbacks are also more profitable for publishers: they will often sell at twice the price of their paperback equivalent but do not cost twice as much to produce. If a hardback becomes a bestseller, the publisher will often delay the paperback release even though that limits the book’s sales potential....A beautiful hardback is a joy, something to cherish, shelve and pass on, and readers are prepared to pay for that just as some people still prefer the cinema over television."
• How Publishers Determine When to Release Hardcover Books in Paperback (Katisha Smith, Book Riot, 6-20-21) "I prefer reading ebooks because I can easily highlight passages, make notes for reviews, and I always have a book on my phone wherever I go." The "most likely reason the hardcover of your new favorite read has yet to be available in paperback is the publisher is still reaping what they sowed....The business of book publishing incurs high fixed costs like author advances and expenses associated with editing, marketing, and distributing a book. Publishers need to recoup those costs and selling a hardcover book for $20–30 provides the necessary revenue. The longer the hardcover book is the only available buying option, the longer the opportunity to make more money.
"They are considered for literary awards more often than paperbacks because hardcover books show readers, booksellers, and critics this story is worth their time and attention. In fact, some literary editors will only review hardcover books....
"Although it depends on the publisher, the paperback release usually comes when sales for the hardcover book have subsided with the average time being six months to a year between the initial hardcover release and the paperback edition" which readers may purchase again because "it is more travel friendly." Smith explains why certain YA books—J.K.Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Angie Thomas's The Hate U Give, Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor and Park—defy the traditional standard wait before the paperback is released,
• Differences between paperback & hardcover (Subodh Sharma, Glad Readers) Hardcover (hardback, hard-bound, or casebound) books are "bound with hard and rigid protective covers and the pages are often strongly held together with stitches and staples." They cost more and are larger, heavier, and more durable than paperbacks (softcovers)—typically using better quality (acid-free) paper, producing thicker pages. A paperback is light, compact and easily transportable, able to be bent and stuffed into the corner of a bag. The hardcover may make a more impressive gift.
• Difference Between Hardcover and Paperback (DifferenceBetween.net) Paperbacks are usually held together by glue, but hardcover books are held together by three things; glue, stitches, and sometimes staples.The acid-free paper used in hardcover books "allows preservation of the ink and is ideal for books in use and preserving them for a long time. The pages in a good hardcover book are usually stitched together before being glued, stapled, or sewn to the book’s spine—often, if not usually, in sewn "signatures" (multiples of eight pages, from a large sheet of paper being folded and cut). Academic books, reference books, and commercial and bestseller books are usually hardcover.
• What Are the Standard Book Sizes in Publishing? (Reedsy) Trim size explained, including various decisions to be made in production
• Hardcover vs Paperback The Real Difference (video, Park Press Printers) Here you can see the many variations in production of a hardcover book.
• A Guide to the DAS Bookbinding YouTube Channel An excellent, long series of videos illustrating the many aspects of book binding. For those who have time for a serious look at how a book is made, with answers to questions you may not know enough to ask. What you need to know, for example, about the paper's grain.
Publishing commentators
The idea for this section and the original set of names (plus descriptions of some) came from Jane Friedman's excellent blog post The People in Publishing I Learn From (9-13-19), published the week she received the Publishing Commentator of the Year Award at Digital Book World. She'd listed most of the people I admired and some I didn't know about. Others will be added to the list (in alphabetical order here, by last name), and reading these people should help you understand how book publishing works -- and changes constantly.
• Margot Atwell (On the Books) Subscribe for "strong opinions at the intersection of money and publishing."
• Michael Cader (PublishersLunch)
• Michael Castleman The Untold Story of Books: A Writer's History of Publishing
• Amy Collins (New Shelves newsletter: "We get your books on their shelves")
• Jane Friedman, publisher of The Hot Sheet and Jane Friedman's blog
• David Gaughran (Let's Get Digital) @DavidGaughran
• Peter McCarthy (follow on Twitter, especially on data-driven marketing strategies and tools)
• Thad McIlroy (The Future of Publishing)
• Kate McKean on Agents and Books
• The Bestseller Experiment (podcasts)
• Joanna Penn (The Creative Penn)
• The Maven Game (David Moldawer)
• Publishing Trends (Market Partners International) Subscribe to see links to Top 5 Publishing Articles/Blog Posts of the Week.
• Kristine Kathryn Rusch (Business Musings)
• Bo Sacks
• Kathleen Schmidt (Publishing Confidential)
• Mike Shatzkin (The Shatzkin Files) Really good about the big picture.
• Writer Beware
• Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg (Wall Street Journal)
• The New Publishing Standard (Mark Willliams)
Taking advantage of the boom in audiobooks
(originally 'books on tape,' but CDs, digital downloads, Playaways, and podcasts are taking over the market.)
• Audio rights
• Audiobooks: What authors need to know
• How to produce audiobooks: who does what
• How to distribute audiobooks
• Finding good audiobooks to listen to
• How to listen (Audible, Chirp, or ?)
• Competing for ears: audiobooks and podcasts
• Current issues with audiobooks
See especially The trouble with Audible and Apple
Audio rights
• A Primer on Audio Rights (literary agent Liza Dawson) "Right now, audio publishers are acquiring audio rights aggressively. They want everything: bestsellers and romances and science fiction and mysteries and nonfiction and backlist and kid’s books. They are building audio empires and their advances can equal or surpass those of your print publishers." So be alert! Read attentively.
• "Remember that this is a marathon and not a sprint, especially when it comes to audiobooks. Hold on to your rights without exception, don't do "royalty shares" with audio. Pay for EVERYTHING out of your own pocket so you retain rights. The stuff you put out now will still be on sale 5-10-30 years down the road, and have the potential to earn you money that entire time."~Derek Slaton, on ALLi
• Securing Audiobook Rights: The Rights You Need to Bring Your Audiobook to Market (Matt Knight on Jane Friedman's blog, 12-7-20) "You, the author of creative work like your book, are automatically the owner of the copyright, which comes with a bundle of five exclusive rights—the exclusive right to reproduce, distribute, perform, display, or prepare derivative works. These rights, collectively or individually, are yours to sell, license, or assign, in any manner you see fit." Audiobooks are derivative works. (Other derivative works: abridgments, translations, dramatizations, and film adaptions. A good agent should know what the markets are for these derivative works.)
"If you are self-published, then chances are high you still own these rights. If you are traditionally published, you’ll need to read your contract. If your book isn’t on the publisher’s radar to become an audiobook, you can ask for those rights to be reverted. A rights reversion will allow you to oversee the process of creating an audiobook—either sell the audio rights to another company who can produce the audiobook or produce the audiobook yourself."
• Film and Audiobook Rights 101 (Jessica Kaye, Writer's Digest, 2-21-20) "To protect your work and expand its reach, understanding film, TV and audiobook rights is a must.... If your publisher acquired your audio rights, it’s their prerogative to publish the audiobook or license those rights to another publisher. If they don’t do either, see if they’ll revert the audio rights to you."
• Listening, closely... (Alice Lutyens, The Society of Authors, 1-5-18) Print publishers’ assumption that audio rights should be bundled with print is not directly beneficial to authors, argues Alice Lutyens, literary agent and audio manager at Curtis Brown. "Audio rights and ebook rights are not the same. Reading an ebook follows the same principle as reading a print book. Listening to an audiobook does not. I would say it is closer to listening to music than it is to reading a book: the words are being brought to us via a different medium, plus they have different distribution channels.
"We are watching the audiobook market change and expand beyond recognition. We must all be on our toes to keep up with this shape-shifter, which is moving more rapidly than any other sector of the book industry. This is a crucial time for us to turn our attention to the rights of authors, and to ensure, as agents, that we are doing the very best by them."
"Authors deserve a choice. They must not be pressured into relinquishing rights that are growing in value every year."
• Spotify's New Audiobook Tool Goes Live (Shannon Maughan, PW, 9-20-11) "Audio streaming subscription platform Spotify, best known for its dominant music and podcast services, has officially launched its audiobook business in the U.S.,,, To start, Spotify’s audiobooks hub will follow an a la carte business model, through which users purchase individual titles on a linked web page via credit card and save them to their Spotify library. Customers will be able to download audiobooks for offline listening, and the user interface provides speed control options, automatic bookmarking, and a rating feature....
"Spotify has been signaling a foray into audiobooks for a couple of years, most prominently with its acquisition of digital audiobook publisher and distributor Findaway, which was completed in June. Spotify’s inaugural audiobook catalog will include titles from the Findaway Voices self-publishing tool for independent audiobook creators and from the Findaway Publishing imprint, and will continue to do so moving forward."
• The Dollars and Sense of Audiobooks: What Indie Publishers Need to Know (Deborah L. Jacobs, 4-3-18) "At the top of the food chain is ACX, owned by Audible. It controls distribution by indies to Audible; lists those audiobooks alongside other formats on Amazon.com; and, until alternative arrangements are announced, remains indies’ only conduit to iTunes. Publishers can deal directly with ACX or go through an aggregator, like Findaway Voices or Author’s Republic, both of which distribute to more than a dozen additional outlets." That's just one point made in an article full of advice and information.
[Correction, however:] Author Wendy Ledger writes: "Findaway Voices also distributes to Apple Books (Apple’s new name for their audiobooks). If you go through Findaway, you actually receive a better royalty rate than through the ACX exclusive agreement." See Your Audiobook on Apple Books (Findaway). Wendy adds, "Findaway has the largest distribution network of any of the other audiobook companies." Scroll down here to see who they distribute through. Findaway audio-published Wendy's book The Loudest Meow. "At ACX, you split your royalties with your narrator and pay nothing up front. You have a seven-year exclusivity contract with that company. With Findaway Voices, you pay up front and retain all your rights. I have selected a narrator, and I have been really impressed by them." Check out Voices Plus, Findaway Voices' new optional distribution strategy.
• I've just discovered the Playaway format at our local library: a device the size of a card of decks (carry it in your pocket) but much lighter, containing a full book with good sound and easy navigation from chapter to chapter. I don't know how it works for author's share, etc.
• For the first time, Amazon has bought adaptation rights for its own books (Andrew Liptak, The Verge, 2-14-19) A first step to keeping IP in-house
How to distribute audiobooks
• Who to use for audiobook distribution (Maggie Lynch, blog post on Writers and Editors, 2-18-23) Maggie answers a question: I can produce an audiobook myself, but will any of the audiobook companies agree to distribute it, or must it be produced "in-house"?
• Audiobook Publishing and Distribution: Getting Started Guide for Authors (Jane Friedman, 2-26-2020) Everything authors need to know about the audiobook market, including retailers, distributors, and payments.
• Distributors and wholesalers used by members of the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), including audio distributors
• Guide to Audiobook Distributors (Scribe Media, 2022) Audible has the lion’s share of the audiobook market, but isn't necessarily the best or only place you should sell your book.
• Audiobook distributors to schools and libraries:
Hoopla ('Your public library at your fingertips')
Libby (The Library reading app, now part of Overdrive)
• Audiobook distributors to consumers:
• Best Audiobook Services & Publishing Companies for Self-Publishers (PublishDrive)
An excellent chart shows terms offered for the following audio-publishing companikes for self-publishers:
Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX) ACX distributes your audiobook to Audible.com, Amazon.com, and iTunes, the three leading retailers of audiobooks
Kobo
Overdrive (Libby) Serving libraries.
Gardners International wholesaler focused on U.K., Sweden, Poland, and Denmark markets
Audiobooks Second to Audible among subscription audio services, with a large podcast section
Scribd, a leading book subscription service
Gooble Play audiobooks (its app pre-installed on every Android device)
Findaway (Spotify) "One of the best audiobook distribution companies," distributing thru retail stores, libraries, everywhere.
But see: Outrage Over New Terms of Use at Findaway Voices Forces Change (Victoria Strauss, Writer Beware, 2-19-24)
Spotify World’s largest audio streaming platform
Publish Drive Self-publishing platform with a global reach
Others mentioned elsewhere:
iTunes Store
Learn Out Loud
Radio Classics (Sirius XM, the best selection of old-time radio)
Whispersync for Voice Switch between audiobook and your Kindle book. Sign up with an Amazon account.
• Voices.com #1 Marketplace For Voice Over
• Voices blog
• Royalties, Distribution, Promotion and More: Answers to Top Audiobook Post-Production Questions (Tara Parachuk, Voice Acting, Voices, 8-15-17)
• Voices.com's list of top audiobook publishers and distributors
See also
• Sell audiobooks online through Shopify (not to be confused with Spotify). Get the training, tools, and support you need to build the audiobook business you’ve always wanted.
---Shopify Discussions All things Shopify and commerce
One successful author told a writers discussion group that she is "selling audio directly to readers through my own Shopify site. The audio is delivered by Bookfunnel and it's pretty seamless. I'm waiting for my newest audio to go live and went ahead and put it on site, and it's fun seeing people buying it directly. This is something I intend focus on more in 2023. Primarily [I am doing this] because I think it's outrageous how poorly we are paid on audio--25% vs 70% on ebooks. So, I am loving 100% on my site. That said, this is in addition to having it everywhere. I am still a firm believer in choice and having books and audios available in many places."
• Spotify's New Audiobook Tool Goes Live (Shannon Maughan, PW, 9-20-22) Spotify will be offering audiobooks through contracts with major publishers and Findaway Books, heavily used by indie authors. It doesn't say how much authors will be compensated but purchasers will pay "a la carte" for individual titles.-MM
P.S. from one bestselling author: They are known for streaming more than for sales and it's unknown how this will be for authors.
• Distributing Audiobooks Wide (Anneliese Rennie, 20Books Vegas 2021 Day 1, 11-30-21) This 40-minute video is invaluable about the practicality of "going wide" rather than working exclusively with various platforms. Listen to Anneliese before you start the whole process.
• ACX: What’s the difference between exclusive distribution and non-exclusive distribution? (ACX) Exclusive distribution means that your audiobook will only be available on Audible’s channels, which currently include Audible, Amazon and iTunes. You are not permitted to distribute or sell your audiobook in any other format on any site or store outside of Amazon, Audible, and iTunes. Audiobooks published distributed exclusively earn a 40% royalty.
If you choose non-exclusive distribution, you are able to also sell and distribute your completed audiobook through other distributors, and on CD or other physical formats, wherever you choose. Non-exclusive projects may not be published as a Royalty Share project, and must be completed as a Pay-for-Production or uploaded directly to ACX. Audiobooks distributed non-exclusively through ACX earn a 25% royalty.
Audiobooks: What authors need to know
Including how audiobooks are sold and distributed
• ACX: What’s the difference between exclusive distribution and non-exclusive distribution? (ACX) Exclusive distribution means that your audiobook will only be available on Audible’s channels, which currently include Audible, Amazon and iTunes. You are not permitted to distribute or sell your audiobook in any other format on any site or store outside of Amazon, Audible, and iTunes. Audiobooks published and distributed exclusively earn a 40% royalty.
If you choose non-exclusive distribution, you are able to also sell and distribute your completed audiobook through other distributors, such as on CD or other physical formats wherever you choose. Non-exclusive projects may not be published as a Royalty Share project, and must be completed as a Pay-for-Production or uploaded directly to ACX. Audiobooks distributed non-exclusively through ACX earn a 25% royalty.
• Producing your own audiobook. One bestselling novelist shares her experience: You don't need a producer to produce the audio. Audio is super easy to coordinate. It can be as simple as posting your project on ACX (free to do) and then listening to auditions of narrators, then choosing one, and they will narrate and produce the audio for you. The more experienced the narrator, the more they are likely to do it all for you--arranging for the editing of the audio and all that is included in the per finished hour price. Typically you will pay a minimum of $250 per hour for an experienced narrator and the rule of thumb is 9-10k words per finished hour of audio. At that rate, a 90-to-100k-word book would be about 10 finished hours or $2500.
• Articles responding to frequently asked questions at Amazon's ACX Help Center
---When will I receive payment for my royalties and bounties?---Are bounties different from royalties?
---Will bounty earnings be paid by ACX with my monthly royalties?
---I want to dissolve my contract. Can this be done?
---Can I change my contract from exclusive to non-exclusive?
---How long will my narrated Audiobook be?
---What are the specifications for creating the cover art associated to my audiobook? How much will my Audiobook sell for in stores?
---Can I change the cover art for a book that is on sale?
• How Audiobook Authors and Narrators are Paid by Audible-ACX. We think. (Alliance of Independent Authors, 2-8-21) It appears that Audible's Great Listen Guarantee (GLG), a “free return or exchange” scheme, is nothing more than a disguised lending library cementing Audible’s monopy, and paying nothing to authors and narrators, intellectual rights holders and creators. As rights holders, many of us expected our upfront investment in audiobooks would lead to future profits. We further assumed our “royalty” to be based on the Audible retail selling price. That is not the case. Audible bases much of our earnings on what they call a “listener credit”.
• Audiobooks: Every Minute Counts (Karl Berglund, Digital Humanities, Public Books, 10-5-22) Audiobooks can no longer be seen as a niche market. Perhaps audiobooks are not primarily competing with print books and ebooks, but with podcasts and other audio media? If this is so, audiobooks could be regarded not as a threat to our book culture but, rather, as a defender. Berglund talks about the audio-reading patterns three types of audiobook readers. I call them repeaters, swappers, and superusers.
• When should you have an audiobook? (video, Tara Alemany, Emerald Lake Books Facebook page) Very practical advice, point by point. Does your book need an audiobook? When? Who should narrate (yourself or professional)? Who is on your team? (author, publisher, narrator, producer or sound engineer) How to create it. How much to budget (exclusive or non-exclusive with Audible--royalty 40% or 25%), Distribution (Audible doesn't go everywhere)
• Make More Money With an Audiobook (Amanda Nicholson, Authors Publish) How to, and why: Reach blind or partially sighted readers; reach readers who prefer audiobooks in gyms, on public transport or while driving; capture readers the way a great audio narrator can do.
Adds one bestselling novelist: "If you do your production through Findaway you will pay an additional premium on the narrator's fee--about 15% more than what you would pay if you did it through ACX. So, what many of us do is produce on ACX, choose the non-exclusive option, then simply download the audio files and send to Findaway or another distributor--like Author's Republic or Dreamscape. The lower rate of 25% applies only to Audible/Amazon.
"When you go through your distributor they can send it to Apple and many other places, including the library streamers like Overdrive/Libby and Hoopla. The audio market is growing outside of Audible. So even with the lower royalty rate--25% instead of 40%, you might end up making more by being available more places."
• AudioBooks and Exclusivity: A comparison of ACX and Findaway Voices (Mary Locke, Alliance of Independent Authors, 8-2-19) "As a pragmatist, I’ve always tried to determine what strategy will maximize the availability and visibility of my books, minimize the amount of time and money spent on production and marketing, and maintain the greatest flexibility so I can respond to changes in the industry.
• "ACX only allows your book to be sold at Audible, Amazon and Apple. Findaway Voices puts your audio book up at close to 40 audio book vendors, including ACX, Amazon and Apple. Findaway also allows you to pick your own selling price and now enables you to do special sales at Apple and Chirp." ~Paty Jager, in Authors Guild discussion.
• Slate is selling audiobooks that you can listen to through your podcast app (Ashley Carman, The Verge, 5-12-21) Including books from Penguin-Random House, Simon & Schuster, and HarperCollins. "The online magazine and podcast subscription seller is launching its own audiobook store today in partnership with multiple publishing companies. The store will list and sell popular titles but with the added benefit of making the audio accessible through listeners’ preferred podcast app instead of a separate audiobook-only platform."
• Storytel’s partnership with Spotify unlocks a back door to the Holy Grail that is the US audiobook market ( Mark Williams, The New Publishing Standard/TNPS, 5-24-21) "Unlimited digital books subscription in the US and other mature English-language markets is not a matter of if, but when. The longer there is no serious competitor to Audible, the stronger Amazon becomes. Storytel CEO Jonas Tellander has made clear Storytel intends to be in 40 markets by 2023, but that’s just 40 out of 200 or so prospective markets....Spotify’s goal to be the singular platform for all audio: music, podcasts, live conversations, and now via this partnership, audiobooks. By utilizing the Spotify Open Access Platform, Storytel will be able to deliver its premium audiobooks offering to their audience using Spotify’s best-in-class platform, all while retaining direct control over their relationship to their audience."
• Spotify exec says the company will begin testing audiobooks ‘very soon’ (Aisha Malik, TechCrunch, 9-8-22) They give you a good experience in podcasting and plan to do the same in audiobooks.
• Audiobooks Increase Their Market Share of Listening Hours, Even as Sales Growth Has Slowed (Jane Friedman, The Hot Sheet, 6-9-21) Increasingly, the difference between audiobooks and podcasts is purely about the business model. Audiobooks are generally sold through a subscription or à la carte purchase, while most podcasts are ad supported. However, major changes have been transforming the podcast arena, where Spotify and Apple now offer paid subscriptions. Cobb said, “I think we’re going to see those models come together a bit more.” But if those models do come together, does that mean we’re all eventually moving toward an unlimited, paid subscription model?
• Turning Your Book into an Audiobook Script (MK Williams, Findaway Voices blog, 5-14-21) Tips, to-dos, and steps to take to make sure the listener gets the best experience. For example, don’t ever assume that someone will know how to pronounce names, places, and niche terms the way that you would. What to do to help the person reading the script.
• The DIY Guide to Turn Your Book into an Audiobook (Derek Doepker on Dave Chesson's Kindlepreneur, 2018). Excellent quick explainer; listen, read, watch.
• Publishers have 'once in a generation' chance with audiobook and subscription strategy (Sian Bayley, The Bookseller, 5-12-21) 'Audiobooks have a “once in a generation” chance to reach new audiences but publishers must consider using streaming or subscriptions services for some titles before platforms such as Spotify get there first with content, industry experts have warned.'
• Audiobooks: Taking the World by Storm (Linda Lee, White Paper, Frankfurter Book Fair, October 2020) A look at the global market today, factors driving growth, consumer behavior, future trends.
• Cash in on the audiobook boom (Kerrie Flanagan, The Writer, 5-14-19) The audiobook market is on the rise. Here's what authors need to know before jumping in. A good brief survey of companies to know about and what to know about them (pros and cons) in terms of distribution and royalties, hiring a professional VO narrator, and whether they allow you to record in your own voice. She writes about
---Findaway Voices ("As for libraries, they have also recognized the popularity of audiobooks and have created a new “cost per checkout” model. (In the past, a librarian would purchase an audiobook for two to three times the retail price and then could circulate it forever. With the new model, authors get paid every time the audiobook is downloaded, regardless if the consumer ever opens it and listens to it.)"
---ListenUp Audiobooks; Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX, an Amazon platform that offers an indie audiobook service similar to that of self-publishing an ebook through Kindle Direct Publishing, KDP, and with a higher royalty rate if you are exclusive with ACX. You can narrate yourself or hire a professional narrator), and
---Going the indie route. Some professional narrators have a following of listeners so it might make sense to capitalize on their popularity, said Flanagan in an Authors Guild online discussion, and "With nonfiction people like to hear the author's voice."
• 5 Steps to Creating a Great Audiobook (Jay Swanson on Jane Friedman's blog, 2-4-16) The voice is the biggest indication to readers of what kind of story they’re about to hear. Practical details about voice, production, and releasing the audio.
• Audiobook Sales Jumped 24% in 2018 (Jim Milliot, PW, 7-17-19) Adults continued to be by far the biggest customers for audiobooks, accounting for just over 91% of revenue last year. The most popular audiobook genres in the U.S. last year were general fiction, mysteries/thrillers/suspense, and science fiction/fantasy, but "nonfiction audio sales have grown and represented 32.7% of unit sales in 2018, led by general nonfiction, history/biography/memoir, and self-help."
• The ears have it: The rise of audiobooks and podcasting (TMT Predictions 2020, Deloitte Insights, 12-9-19) The audiobook and podcasting markets are growing far faster than the overall media and entertainment market. What's so special about listening? See this interesting Deloitte chart: The audiobook and podcast markets, while relatively small, are poised to grow Shows relative market share in global media (2020) of (in descending order) TV (pay TV and advertising), video games, books, newspapers, subscription video on demand, magazines, movies, radio, live music, ad-supported video on demand, recorded music, audio books, eSports, podcasting. (Examples of subscription video on demand: Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, HBO Max and Hulu.) The audiobook and podcasting markets are growing far faster than the overall media and entertainment market. They appeal to a young, employed, and educated customer base.
• Audio Publishing's Digital Boom (Shannon Maughan, PW, 5-5-17) For audio publishers across the board, the growing popularity of digital downloads has sparked a sharp increase in title output and variety. Anthony Goff, senior v-p of content development and audio publisher at Hachette Book Group, says, “We’re constantly looking for new ways to get particularly younger audiences loving reading, loving listening.” He adds, “And, as we know about audio, once you get people excited about it, they are on board for life.”
•The Fastest-Growing Format in Publishing: Audiobooks (Jennifer Maloney, WSJ, 7-21-16) Smartphones and multitasking have stoked an explosion in audiobooks. Publishers, spotting a juggernaut, are expanding their offerings and enlisting star narrators.
• An Update On AI-Narrated Audiobooks [May 2022] (The Creative Penn, 5-20-22) Most content in written words is not available in audio format, primarily because it is expensive to produce, and many countries and languages don't have an established audiobook production ecosystem. Books narrated through artificial-intelligence (AI) are an important development, because many consumers would rather listen to audiobooks than read print books.
• Top 3 Ways to Burn MP3 to CD for Audiobooks (Iris Yan, EPubor, 11-29-18) For when your book is mostly streaming but you want a few CDs for awards submissions, etc.
• The Infinite Dial, Edison Research, 2020 Survey results of online audio market penetration in US and Canada (including audiobooks). Who is listening most to what on which audio channels and devices.
• How Indie Authors Can Sell More Audiobooks (YouTube audio, Will Dages, Findaway Voices, 9-24-19) Listen to his 30-minute talk from Self-Publishing Advice Conference, Digital Book World 2019. He recommends not going exclusive with Audible, which "operates only nine localized storefronts: US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, India, Australia, and Japan." You can earn 41% more. he says, by "going wide," making your book available also on Apple, Google, Kobo, and Findaway Voices, as well as BookBub, Chirp, and streaming subscription services such as Scribd and Storytel. Excellent overview, and strategies for pricing and other factors in earning more from audio sales.
• 16 Ways To Market Your Audiobook (Joanna Penn, Creative Penny, 4-22-2020) The Indie author and podcaster shares an excerpt from her recent guide on audiobooks. Listen to the podcast (YouTube). The book: Audio for Authors: Audiobooks, Podcasting, and Voice Technologies: Books for Writers, Book 11 by Joanna Penn.
• The Future of Audio 2019 (Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Business Musings, 12-25-19) "Audio is a growth market. With the digitization of audio, and the fact that we carry audio devices on our persons every day, the growth became exponential. Add to that the rise of home-specific devices like Google’s Alexa, and the myriad ways you can link your phone to your car or other devices like your iPad or your TV and you can go from home to car to work while listening to a book—without using one single device, without headphones, and without actually taking a break while listening to that book. That’s why podcasting has grown as well, and why companies like Spotify offer a podcast streaming option. People are listening more than ever, but like every disruption, the listening is not happening through a handful of curated products or through a particular provider."
• Exclusivity vs Publishing Wide for Ebooks, Print, and Audio with Joanna Penn (Creative Penn podcast, 5-6-19) Should you publish exclusively on Amazon or should you publish your books wide, making them available on every platform, in every country and every format possible?
• Understanding Audiobook Production: An Interview with Rich Miller (Kristen Tsetsi on Jane Friedman's blog, 2-12-19) How much input should an author have when it comes to the narrator's interpretation? When is feedback helpful, and when is it frustrating? What is a reasonable cost per finished hour of audio? An interview with Rich Miller.
• How to market e-books to libraries (Mark Coker, Smashwords, Smart Author Podcast). Ms. Jacobs says that many of the principles also apply for audiobooks.
• 7 Reasons to Narrate Your Own Audiobook (Joanna Penn, Creative Penn, 2-22-19) (2) The power of voice to build connection in a crowded market. (4) Create another intellectual property asset (and another stream of income) that you control.
• As Audiobook Market Grows, Narrators of Color Find Their Voice (Fabrice Robinet, NY Times, 6-3-2020) Publishers are increasingly seeking out audio talent that reflects the race and experience of the books’ authors and characters. But what constitutes a black, Latino, or Asian voice? While mainstream film and television actors often train with voice coaches to master specific accents or speech patterns, that isn’t the norm for audiobook narrators. Any given book may require them to read in multiple dialects.
• Netflix's Millarworld Film and TV Adaptations Highlight the Importance of Books (Adam Rowe, Forbes, 7-17-18) "Amazon's spoken audio entertainment business, Audible, revealed similarly creator-focused content development plans earlier this year: Popular non-fiction author Michael Lewis — whose books have sold north of 10 million copies — will be creating four audio original narratives for the company, with the first debuting at the end of this month. In this case, Audible's original content strategy retains the focus on owned [intellectual property] IP, while bypassing the step of publishing a print book."
• How to Self-Publish an Audiobook - Insights and Tips (Valerie Peterson, The Balance, 4-24-17) Joel Schwartzberg, the author of the well-reviewed and traditionally-published The 40-Year-Old Version: Humoirs of a Divorced Dad decided to self-publish the audiobook. In Q&A, he shares what he learned.
• The State of Indie Audiobooks (Ryan Joe, PW, 7-24-16) Self-published audio has also taken off, with the maturation of Audible’s Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX) and the rise of institutions catering to authors who want to self-publish their audiobooks. Self-publishing an audiobook means handling everything from hiring narrators and setting up distribution to production and editing. “One of the saddest things is when someone sends me a sample and says they know it’s great because they recorded it at a professional studio. And they may have, but it’s not a studio that knows how to do audiobooks,” says Jessica Kaye, who founded Big Happy Family, an audiobook distributor. Costs can run thousands of dollars, including the cost of the narrator, director, sound enginer, and producer--from $4000 to $6000, for one author quoted.
If you go exclusively with Amazon/ACX, the author's royalty is 40%; if you sell your audiobook more widely, the ACX royalty is 25%. If you go exclusive with ACS, you get 25 promo codes redeemable on Audible.com, which you can use to give "review copies" to potential reviewers. Also, says one sci-fi author, ACX has a good quality control system; it will sometimes ask narrators for "do-overs" on certain sections of the recorded book. The same author estimates there are roughly 9300 words per "finished hour" of recording, and you can expect to pay a minimum of $200 per finished hour, for an experienced narrator.
• ListenUp Audiobooks,one of ACX’s main competitors, also offers production and distribution for authors who self-publish audio books. "Based in Atlanta, ListenUp has 11 recording studios across the country and a pool of more than 150 narrators. It has produced audiobooks for all the major publishers. Cost for authors creating audiobooks depends on such details as the total word count and the number of narrators used. Authors can choose from among three narrators recommended by ListenUp."~The Biographer's Craft (Sept. 2019)
• Podcasts in China are a $7 billion industry (Jennifer Pak, Marketplace, 9-13-18) Mobile payment has made paid subscriptions to podcasts in China more popular in the U.S. than ad-driven podcasts. "Podcasts with subscription fees, interactive Q&A’s online with experts or celebrities and live-streaming lecture-sessions where the audience can participate and pay as they wish are what people in China refer to as the 'pay-for-knowledge' economy. It was estimated to be worth $7.3 billion last year, with the bulk of the revenues from paid podcasts... By comparison, the U.S. podcast industry mainly makes money through advertising. It reported ad revenues amounting to $314 million last year." What feeds the multibillion industry in China? A "desire for focused information that’s useful and relevant; the need to update skills constantly in China’s competitive job market; the ease of paying on a mobile phone; and FOMO — the fear of missing out." One popular title is professor Zheng Wei's "How to Make Your Voice More Attractive." White collar workers “may have worked in cities like Beijing for many years, but they still have accents from their villages and make fools of themselves in social settings,” Zheng said.
• Producing An Audiobook With Findaway Voices (Julia How from The Witcherley Book Company explains how she used Findaway Voices to produce audiobooks, on The Creative Penn blog, 7-18-18) An excellent analysis of the numbers you need to look at to figure out if doing audiobooks through Findaway Voices works for you and your book. I read that after hearing this from Wendy Ledger: "There are two main audiobook companies right now, Findaway Voices and ACX. ACX is affiliated with Amazon. At ACX, you split your royalties with your narrator and pay nothing up front. You have a seven-year exclusivity contract with that company. With Findaway Voices, you pay up front and retain all your rights. They have the largest distribution network of any audiobook company. I have selected a narrator, and I have been really impressed by them."
Wendy went on to say: "When you work with this company, you have narrator auditions. You can choose a sample for them to read (up to a certain word count), or the narrator will read an excerpt from the start of your book. I chose a four-cat fight scene where words are tossed around in rapid-fire fashion. The narrator I eventually selected tore into this moment with gusto and verve. Afterwards, I asked if she could change one of the voices. She had expressed Marmalade in a “Madame Poindexter” nasal style, and I told her that I imagined Marmalade's voice as reminiscent of Aunt Clara in Bewitched. I then sent her a YouTube clip of that character from that show. Well, my narrator is too young to understand that cultural reference, but she is extremely talented, and she did a variation on that voice that is just right. I am incredibly biased, but I think this book (The Loudest Meow: A Talking Cat Fantasy) is going to be something that you want to hear."
• Audiobook Company Comparison: ACX vs Findaway Voices (Julie Gilbert, 10-30-17) The plusses and minuses of working with one company or the other, from one writer's perspective.
• The Dollars and Sense of Audiobooks: What Indie Publishers Need to Know (Deborah L. Jacobs, 4-3-18) "The cost of creating an audiobook runs about $400 to $500 per “finished hour,” which includes both narration and editing. Multiply that by the length of time it will take a performer to read your book: about 9,300 words per hour at a steady clip. At that rate, an 80,000-word book would run about 8.5 hours and cost at least $3,400 to produce." As for sales channels, Amazon has dominated the market with Audible.com, but Findaway Voices has entered the market, ending the agreement that made Audible sole supplier of audiobooks to Apple's iTunes. Jacobs explains how indie publishers can navigate the options.
• 5 Ways to Market Your Audiobook Without Ads (Jessica Kaye on Jane Friedman's blog, 5-8-19) Check the list of bloggers and podcasts in the audio community.
• Marketing and Selling Audiobooks, Plus Producing and Distributing them through Findaway Voices (Will Dages from Findaway Voices, Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast, SFFMP 200, 9-25-18) Dages talks about producing, marketing, and selling audiobooks and some of the new options out there for indie authors. Findaway handles both production of audiobooks (by connecting you with narrators and producers) and distribution to many stores where you wouldn’t be able to upload direct. See also Audiobooks For Authors With Will Dages From Findaway Voices (Joanna Penn, 2-18-19) A big picture overview of player in the audiobook market, new developments in the library market, costs of production, Voices Share program, tips for marketing and selling audiobooks. Transcript.
• The Audio Boom Is Real, Global, and Just Getting Started (Andrew Albanese, reporting from the Frankfurt Book Fair, PW, 10-10-18) The digital audio format has been posting hefty double-digit market growth for years and in Scandinavia and elsewhere is benefiting from a massive smartphone market, and a large middle class that is used to the subscription model, thanks to Netflix and Amazon Prime.
• Words-to-be-read are losing ground to words-to-be-heard, a new stage of digital content evolution (Mike Shatzkin, Idea Logical, 6-14-18) "...words-to-be-read were, until some very recent moment, the cheapest and easiest form of content to deliver and distribute. Still pictures required film and processing. Audio and video required controlled (and often expensive) circumstances for recording and a variety of skills to deliver professional content. And beyond that, delivery by cassettes and CDs was expensive and also failed to reach large numbers of the potentially interested people.
“Words-to-be-read” must now become a content category, along with still images, video, and audio. Audio includes “words-to-be-heard”. We are in what must be the early stages of a reordering of primacy among these varieties of “content for delivery and consumption”, which is distinguished from “content for interaction”, or the world of “gamified content” along with who-knows-what-else....We get regular reminders that since the combination of multi-function smart phones and ubiquitous wifi connections, this is no longer the case. It is very much simpler and even cheaper to capture and distribute a still photo or a chunk of video or audio than it is to deliver “words-to-be-read”.
• Resolving My Cheater Shame: Listening to Books Instead of Reading Them (Kristen Tsetsi on Jane Friedman's blog, 8-6-18) "The writer in me is now grateful for the audio option less for sales potential than for the ability to reach others who 'desperately want to read, but no time, no time…' The book lover in me, though, is even more grateful for the audio option. In just eight months I’ve been able to “read” thirty-eight books I otherwise wouldn’t have." And for most readers, listening is also "reading" a book.
• The story of authors going WIDE with audiobooks (Findaway Voices' 2020 Headphone report) Audiobook authors want their books to find more listeners. To do that, they need to “Go WIDE.”
• Nearly one in five Americans now listen to audiobooks (Andrew Perrin, Pew Research Center, 3-8-18) "Print books remain the most popular format for reading, with 67% of Americans having read a print book in the past year. Overall, Americans read an average (mean) of 12 books per year, while the typical (median) American has read four books in the past 12 months.
• Want to Read Michael Lewis’s Next Work? You’ll Be Able to Listen to It First (Alexandra Alter, NY Times, 6-2-18) When Michael Lewis had an idea for a political narrative, he decided to test it out first as a 10,000-word magazine article, as he often does before committing to a yearslong project. This time, instead of publishing the story in Vanity Fair, he sold it to Audible, the audiobook publisher and retailer. “I’ve become Audible’s first magazine writer.” Lewis will publish four audio original stories with Audible, which reflects the recent trend of authors who bypass print and choose to release audiobooks instead.
• Publishers Embrace, and Ponder, Audiobooks' Rise (AP, NY Times, 6-3-18) "The book world gathered over the past week for BookExpo and the fan-based BookCon, which ended Sunday at the Jacob Javits center in Manhattan. The consensus, as it has been for the past few years, is of a stable overall market: Physical books rising; e-book sales soft; and audio, led by downloaded works, expanding by double digits. But as the audiobook market continues to boom, publishers find themselves both grateful and concerned."
• Audio Fiction Bestsellers (NY Times)
• Audio Nonfiction Bestsellers (NY Times)
• Amazon Children's Audiobook Bestsellers
• New York Times Debuts Monthly Audiobook Bestseller Lists (ABA, 3-7-18) Libro.fm, which partners with the American Booksellers Association to offer independent bookstores the opportunity for audiobook sales, reports to the New York Times on behalf of the more than 400 bookstores participating in the Libro.fm indie partner program.
• Audiobooks Turn More Readers Into Listeners as E-Books Slip (Alexandra Alter, NY Times, 9-23-16) E-book sales have fallen precipitously for months, in part because many publishers have raised their prices after negotiating with Amazon and gaining the ability to set their own prices.
Resources for audiobook consumers, publishers, authors
• The Fastest-Growing Format in Publishing: Audiobooks (Jennifer Maloney, WSJ, 7-21-16) Smartphones and multitasking have stoked an explosion in audiobooks. Publishers, spotting a juggernaut, are expanding their offerings and enlisting star narrators. In October 2014, Penguin Random House Audio "launched an app called Volumes, offering free sample chapters, audiobook recommendations and—for journalists, bloggers, sales reps and booksellers—access to advance copies."
• Audiobooks: Taking the World by Storm (PDF, Linda Lee, Frankfurter Buchmesse, Oct. 2020) The U.S. is largest market for audiobooks (market: $1.5 billion); China is the second largest market ($1.15 billion). Europe's audiomarket: $100 million.
• Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX) (Audible, part of Amazon, gets half of income from sales). Authors can narrate their own audiobook, or hire a narrator to read it (splitting their share of income or paying the narrator a fee). No other out-of-pocket expenses. Royalties paid monthly. Calling all authors, narrators, agents, publishers and studio pros: Here's how it works . And here is the book posting agreement.
• When Should Writers Narrate Their Own Work? (Seth Abramovitch, Audible Range, 8-17-17) It's one thing to be a gifted author, it's quite another to give life to those words in a way listeners will love. How often can an "authorrator" do both? Why most authors should leave it to actors.
• Straight to Audiobook: Authors Write Original Works Meant to Be Heard (Lynn Neary, All Things Considered, NPR, 3-9-15) Audiobooks really took off once it became possible to listen to them on a variety of devices. The narrator is key to the success of an audiobook. Audible, owned by Amazon, is starting to ask well-known writers to create original audio works.
• Why Indie Authors Should Make Audiobooks Part of their Self-Publishing Strategy (Kevin Tumlinson, ALLi, 6-22-17) Why? Another revenue source, revenue diversity, a broad new market, increased discoverability and credibility, less competition than for ebooks ("play in a shallower pool")
• The Talking Book, a nonprofit based in Asheville, North Carolina, offers production services for authors who choose to record independently published books at home, with technical support from them. Authors can get up to 75 percent of the royalties.
• Smashwords, Findaway Voices Team to Offer Audiobook Production, Distribution (Calvin Reid, Publishers Weekly, 3-22-18) The self-publishing platform Smashwords is partnering with Findaway Voices, to make it “more economically feasible for authors and publishers to invest in audiobook production for shorter books, or books that might carry lower prices.”
• Introducing the 2019 Headphone Report (Findaway Voice, 4-30-2020) Click on download for the fuller report. Introducing the 2019 Headphone Report: a year of audiobook data from self-published authors and small publishers, collected and analyzed by Findaway Voices. Fully 27% of authors distributing exclusively through Findaway Voices made at least double what they would have made going exclusive with ACX.
• Earn Money With Audiobooks (ACX's plug for its audio platform). Once an ACX audiobook is produced, approved by the Rights Holder, and delivered to ACX, "we provide powerful distribution of the audiobook through three retail industry leaders: Audible.com, Amazon.com, and iTunes." See ACX blog. It's the rights situation that's not explained clearly; who holds those rights, author or publisher? Check to be sure, as it varies book by book.
• FAQs for ACX (the basics, narrators, rights holders, books and creating title profiles, connect-audition-get found, offers, production, contracts and agreements, distribution, payments. The publisher does not automatically own audio rights. Who does? Check those book contracts.
• Learn about Whispersync for Voice and Immersion Reading "If your book has a Kindle book version, you can use ACX to produce a digital audiobook version of your book, and to make your book eligible for the new Whispersync for Voice functionality which allows customers to switch seamlessly between reading a Kindle book and listening to the corresponding, professionally narrated audiobook across devices without losing their place. Audiobooks will also be eligible for the new Immersion Reading feature, which allows customers with the new Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD devices to listen to a professionally narrated audiobook from Audible as the text of the corresponding eBook is highlighted on the screen. When customers buy your Kindle book, they will be able to purchase your Whispersync for Voice-ready Audible audiobook at a special limited time discounted price."
• Connect, Audition, Get Found (Become a narrator for ACX.)
• Getting Started in Audio Narration (podcast, Voice Over Experts, Voices.com)
• How to be a Voiceover Professional Or at Least Act Like One (Jim Staylor, Voiceover Pro) One of several practical handouts. The Screen Actors Guild session fee for voicing a television commercial is around $400. And other invaluable insights into a field anyone with a golden voice ought to read.
• How to Set Up a Home Studio For Voice-Over Work (YouTube) Brian Thon, professional voice-over artist and Such A Voice coach, teaches you how to set up your home studio for voice-over work with the proper recording and software equipment. (Do search and you'll find other articles along these lines.)
• How to Publish an Audiobook (brief overviews of various aspects of audiobook publishing, Voices.com). For example, under history: " January 1952, Barbara Cohen and Marianne Roney, sat down with Dylan Thomas in the bar of the Chelsea Hotel and persuaded him to record some of his poetry. Spoken word records were almost unheard of at the time." See also Expert articles, how-to's, and instructionals.
• Big Happy Audio Family (a digital audiobook distribution solution -- get your audiobooks to all the download sites, if you don't want to get them there yourself)
Finding good audio books to listen to
As readers/listeners, don't forget: Your local library is a GREAT source for audio books. Most libraries allow you to sign up and wait for your turn on the popular books.
• How to listen to audiobooks and where to get them: A beginner's guide (Catherine Renton and Barbara Booth, NBC News, Select, 2-10-20) As the audiobook industry flourishes, the number of ways you can listen to audiobooks is increasing, with apps for smartphones, iPads, desktops and Kindles from Amazon, Apple, Google Play Books, Kobo, Walmart Audiobooks, Libby by OverDrive (at the library), Audiobooks.com — everyone’s competing for a chunk of the thriving sector.
• Listen to the Best Books of the Decade (Marie, Goodreads blog, 10-22-18)
• The Best Audiobooks of All Time Might Actually Have You Hoping for a Traffic Jam (Megan Beauchamp, MyDomaine, 7-7-18)
• 101 Best Audiobooks of All Time (TheMission Podcasts, Medium, 4-9-18)
• AudioFile News and reviews. Find titles read by your favorite narrators, or that have received awards, etc.
• The most popular titles at Audible.com
• AudioFile Find your next great audio book. A magazine/website for those who love audio books, with reviews.
• Audio Publishers Association (APA), among other things, sponsor of the Audies (for best audiobooks and spoken word entertainment)
• Audie Winners (2001 on, along right -- recordings awarded best narration etc.--a good list from which to check out recordings from library)
• Guide to Audiobooks on MP3 Players (anythingbutipod 5-17-09)
• Audible Yahoo Group (consumer discussion group sponsored by Audible.com, but not limited to Audible titles)
• Books for Ears (see review archive
• Review of Audiobook Services
• Amazon bestsellers in Audible.com audiobooks
• 40 Of The Best Audiobooks for Your Road Trip and Beyond (Rachel Smalter Hall, Book Riot, 5-22-15)
• 8 Best Audiobooks Narrated by a Full Cast (Keith Rice, Signature, 5-29-18)
• 24 Audiobooks You Won't Be Able To Stop Listening To (Tabatha Leggett, BuzzFeed, 3-6-17)
• AudioFile: new releases
• 2018 Audie winners (the Oscars for audio-books, Audio Publishers Association)
• 2017 Audie winners and 2016 and and 2015 Audie nominees (there are different ways to find these titles!)
• 40 Of The Best Audiobooks for Your Road Trip and Beyond (Rachel Smalter Hall, BookRiot, 5-22-15)
• 101 Best Audiobooks of All Time (The Mission, Medium)
• The Best Book Database You’ve Never Heard Of (Abby Hargreaves, on The Patron Saint of Libraries, 7-30-18) Check out NoveList (matching readers with fiction books--a library database), NoveList Plus (fiction and nonfiction), and NoveList K–8 Plus caters to juvenile works "The secret to finding your next great read." See if your library has these databases.
https://www.ebscohost.com/novelist/our-products/novelist-plus
• The 50 best audiobooks of all time (Yvette Manes, Insider, 3-20-18)
• The Audiobook Narrator Hall of Fame (Audible)
• The 10 Greatest Audiobook Narrators: An Insomniac's Guide (Jake Flanagin, The Airship)
• The 35 best narrated Audiobooks (in ascending order) (Book Scrolling)
• How To Make An Audiobook: Publishing on ACX and Audiobook Marketing (Dave Chesson, Kindlepreneur.com) ACX-oriented, but a good outline of things to know about and consider. (Some authors suggest renting a radio station's recording room to do your recording.)
• Narrators (AudioFile)
The first "audio narrative" for many of us may have been Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf," which teachers often played for us in elementary school. Hear/watch it again on YouTube (Boris Karloff with the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, in the 1950s, the version I remember). Also available as a CD.
Current issues with audio books
#Audiblegate: The trouble with Audible and Apple
#audiblegate (The Equitable Rights Movement)
• Findaway Voices “Stealing” Rights From Authors and Narrators? (Keri-Rae Barnum, New Shelves, 2-6-23) Has Findaway Voices slipped a licensing agreement into their terms that automatically allows Apple to use audio files for A.I. training without compensating either the author or the voice artists? Worse yet, is this being done without the voice artists knowledge or permission?
• Tell Audible to Stop Charging Authors for Returns (Authors Guild, 11-20-2020) Audible must "end its practice of encouraging its monthly subscribers to return or exchange audiobooks they have purchased and deducting the earned royalties for those audiobooks from authors’ accounts. Audible is promoting this easy exchange policy as a benefit to increase its subscriber base, allowing listeners to purchase and listen to entire audiobooks and then return them for a refund or exchange them for a new book—all at the detriment of authors’ earnings. This is not an exchange policy, but an unauthorized audiobook rental arrangement supported by authors’ reversed royalties, and it must stop."
• 'It's a Crazy Issue' – The Bizarre World of Scam Audiobooks (Francis Blagburn, Vice, 4-21-21) "These junk books are a hangover from Amazon’s original marketing strategy for Audible, which accidentally incentivised the proliferation of twaddle. "On sites like Amazon, there are thousands of books seemingly written by bots – and sometimes they end up on Audible. These books are a result of Amazon’s strategy for building Audible’s audience; it offered 200 promotional codes to anyone who completed production on an audiobook, regardless of the content. Audible then paid out a royalty whenever a code was redeemed. 'It seemed like a win-win – and then the scammers showed up. According to self-publishing YouTuber Dale L. Roberts, “gurus” were making tens of thousands of dollars a month by gaming the promo codes.' (H/T The Hot Sheet, a great resource on the business of publishing.)
• Fair Deal for Rights Holders & Narrators (Private Facebook group "for authors & narrators to come together to persuade ACX & Audible to give us a fair deal on our audiobooks." Sign the Audible-gate petition. Are you an author, narrator, audiobook producer or reader concerned about Audible/ACX’s "Easy Return and Exchange” policy and its implications for creators? The Alliance of Independent Authors attempts to make the calculus plain. The breakeven point for the average book, when paying the narrator outright, is between 300 and 400 unit sales through Audible.
• Audiblegate Campaign: Fair Deal for Rights Holders (ALLi) n October 2020, a reporting error on the Amazon’s audiobook self-publishing platform ACX revealed some worrying indications about how Amazon Audible’s “easy exchange and return” program was funded. Under this program, audiobook listeners are encouraged to swap out a book once they’ve listened to it, at no cost. The glitch seemed to show that Audible had been secretly deducting the costs of this “returns” scheme from rights holders’ share of the revenue, not their own. If a book was “returned”, Audible deducted the money they had originally paid to the author, publisher or narrator–even though the listener had fully consumed and enjoyed the book.....In December 2020, a public letter hosted by the US Authors’ Guild was endorsed by 13,000+ authors, and a wide coalition of international author, narrator, and producer organizations. This led to discussions between Audible and the Authors’ Guild, the Society of Authors UK, and ALLi, pushing for more transparent, fair, and equitable terms.
• Authors v Audible "The War of Words" The Amazon antitrust and anticompetitive tactics continue with Audible, who for years have shortchanged content providers worldwide and continue to do so by allowing readers to return an audiobook with no questions asked.
• Audiblegate: where we’re at and where we’re going. (Susan May, ALLi, 2-6-21) The first of a series of posts about the campaign known to self-publishing authors as #AudibleGate."When authors asked for their returns data, ACX denied the requests again and again and again. Though isolated by the solitary nature of our business, authors for the first time united against an Amazon company in joining a small Facebook group: Fair Deal for Rights Holders and Narrators (FDRHN). Within weeks, the small band grew to thousands of tenacious, outraged authors, narrators and rights holders.
• Self-publishing News: Findaway Voices Reaches out to Disgruntled ACX Authors (Part 2.) ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway takes a close look at the Findaway Voices’ offer of a royalty bonus to authors leaving ACX exclusivity. Follow ALLi's interesting blogpostsand podcasts.=
• Authors Guild Statement on Audible and ACX Updated Terms (1-22-21) "Since October 2020, when a technical glitch revealed irregularities in accounting for ACX authors at Audible, the Authors Guild, the Society of Authors, and the Alliance of Independent Authors, with the support of a group of independently published authors, have been engaged in a collaborative campaign to improve authors' terms and conditions on the platform.
"The incident exposed practices and policies that conflicted with ACX authors’ interests on multiple levels. At the heart of this was a lack of transparency around the implications for authors of key contract terms and in opaque accounting practices which make it impossible for any author to get a true picture of how their income is being calculated.
That letter calls on Audible to:
---provide full and complete accounting of returns made pursuant to this policy since it was first implemented;
---limit the time period of returns and exchanges that could be deducted from royalty counts from 365 days to a reasonable period, such as 48 hours, and allow only “true returns” (e.g., where less than 25% of the book has been read) to be deducted from royalty accounts;
---show the total number of unit purchases and returns on the author dashboards, not just the “net sales” already adjusted for any returns; and
---take action against abuse of the “return and exchange” terms by listeners.
ABILITY TO TERMINATE AUDIBLE DISTRIBUTION. Umair Kazi of the Authors Guild: "As of Feb 1 2021, Audible allows its ACX rights holders to terminate contracts after 90 days. Since last year, the Guild has been engaged in a campaign to get Audible to make its terms of service fairer and more transparent; as part of this campaign we urged Audible to relax its term requirements and exclusivity, which they did. Per the new terms, ACX rights holders can terminate their contracts with Audible any time after 90 days. However, if the rights holder uses an ACX producer, then they have to get the producer's written consent before terminating. Rights holders can also make their books non-exclusive after 90 days."
ABILITY TO SWITCH FROM EXCLUSIVITY TO NON-EXCLUSIVITY. "Audible will allow ACX rights holders in the DIY or Pay-for-Production programs to switch from exclusive to non-exclusive distribution for titles than have been on sale for at least 90 days. This does not apply to titles in the Royalty Share or Royalty Share Plus programs (where an Audible producer was used)."
• How Audiobook Authors And Narrators Are Paid By Audible-ACX. We Think. (Colleen Cross, Self-Publishing Advice, ALli Campaigns, 2-8-21) This is the second in a series of posts about the campaign known to self-publishing authors as #AudibleGate. Must reading.
• We Need to Talk About Audible (Cory Doctorow, Publishers Weekly, 9-18-2020) "Using technology to lock in your customers is great if you're the dominant player, writes bestselling author Cory Doctorow—it's terrible for everyone else. In reality, the only entity Audible DRM serves to protect is Audible. And the thing Audible DRM protects the company from is competition. Because every audiobook licensed through Audible increases the switching costs for customers who might take their business to a more publisher-friendly platform. And every dollar a customer spends with Audible is a dollar they have to surrender if they decide to switch platforms."
BEFORE THAT: "In 2007, as Apple's iTunes was cementing its dominance over digital music distribution, Amazon tried something bold. It launched the Amazon MP3 store, where all the music was DRM-free. It even used the slogan: 'DRM: Don't Restrict Me.'" Apple had competition--on music. Then Amazon bought Audible, promised to remove DRM, but never did.
• Copyright: US Publishers Succeed in ‘Audible Captions’ Case (Porter Anderson, Publishing Perspectives, 2-6-2020) '[T]he Association of American Publishers has succeeded in stopping Audible [owned by Amazon] from generating its “Captions” feature on publishers’ audiobooks without those publishers’ express permission....What the publishers association’s new permanent injunction certifies is that capabilities generally referred to as instances of artificial intelligence, or AI, cannot be applied to the intellectual property of the American book publishing industry without prior and transparent agreement of rights holders.' At least for audiobooks produced by a publisher-member of the AAP.
• Audible Pauses Captions Roll-Out After Publisher Lawsuit (Mark Chandler, The Bookseller, 9-12-19) “Audible is limiting the roll-out of its Captions speech-to-text feature to just works in the public domain after seven publishers filed a copyright lawsuit.”
• Authors Guild Protests Audible’s New Caption Feature (7-18-19) Audible states that its new “Audible Captions” feature will only display “small amounts of machine-generated text,” but existing ACX and Audible agreements do not grant Audible the right to create text versions of audio books, whether delivered as a full book or in segments. Nor is there an exception to the copyright law that would permit Audible to do this.
• Storytel’s subscription royalties rose 6.4% in Q2. But is $0.20 per hour enough to keep publishers happy? Does the subscription model have a future? (Mark Williams, The New Publishing Standard, 7-20-19) "At the start of this year Storytel changed its remuneration model for publishers, from a fixed payment per unit consumed to a rate per hour of consumption. Under the old model Storytel paid publishers between $1.81-$2.13 per book consumed, which disproportionately rewarded shorter works and penalized longer ones. It’s a debate we are all familiar with from Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited, where indie authors and small presses get paid by the page read. As always there are winners and losers. Kindle Unlimited authors milking (some would say scamming) the system with a twenty-page book were getting the same payment as a regular author with a 250 page book. Or a 500 page book."
Ebook basics (how to) and beyond
• How to Publish an Ebook: Resources for Authors (Jane Friedman, 3-15-17) Creating basic ebook files, choosing your ebook retailers and distributors, giveaways and discounts, getting reviews, Facebook strategies, advertising, publicity and other monetary investments in publishing, book-length guides on self-publishing, finding freelance help, sites that cover self-publishing and ebook publishing).
• ALLi Watchdog: Amazon vs Apple (2-5-15) How do the two stack up against each other?
• The Authors Guild Guide to Self-Publishing (covers both print and e-publishing). For AG members only and one of many reasons it's worth joining the Guild.
• Want to borrow that e-book from the library? Sorry, Amazon won’t let you. (Geoffrey A. Fowler, Washington Post, 3-10-21) Amazon's monopoly is stopping public libraries from lending e-books and audiobooks from Mindy Kaling, Dean Koontz, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Trevor Noah, Andy Weir, Michael Pollan and a whole lot more.
• Is Amazon's ebook return policy ruining authors' careers? (Jonny Walfisz, EuroNews.Culture, 2-4-22) Authors are up in arms over the "new" trend of readers returning fully-read books for credit. There's even a petition to get Amazon to change its return policy. (H/T Nate Hoffelder) Go here to sign the petition.
• There’s No Need to Change Amazon’s Kindle eBook Return Policy (The Digital Reader, 4-3-13) A lot of authors are bothered by readers who appear to be gaming the system (buying, reading, and returning multiple books), but if a customer buys and returns too many ebooks, Amazon will put a block on their account and not allow any more Kindle ebooks to be returned. In other words, serial returners are not really a problem. (But ask authors whose royalty statements reflect differently.)
• Change Amazon Return Policies for Completed E-books: Protect Authors from Theft! (Change.org) There has been a huge upswing in author’s ebooks being returned to Amazon AFTER they have been read. Authors are not being paid accurately. This is one of many complaints authors are voicing about Amazon policies on ebooks. "If you want to borrow books go to Kindle Unlimited or your library."
• What Do Authors Earn from Digital Lending at Libraries? (Jane Friedman, 9-30-21, updated 7-18-23)
"Ebook and audiobook prices and restrictions have increased over time, making it more expensive for libraries to circulate digital materials."
"Traditionally published authors are paid when their books sell to libraries regardless of format, usually at the same royalty rate that’s paid out for a retail sale. However, library unit sales may not be known to authors, as they’re often mixed in with retail sales on royalty statements. Complicating matters, what the consumer pays and what the library pays for an ebook may not be the same. Digital licenses can be as much as six times the consumer price and they expire....
Jane provides a clear chart of who gets what $ under four scenarios, and generally the author seems to get 25% of net, and publisher 70% or 50%. Libraries collectively spend about $1.5 billion each year on their collections.
"One of the most interesting things about the panel with Rasenberger and Dye was the simultaneous chat happening amongst librarians. One attitude—expressed by more than one participant—was that if authors aren’t earning enough from library lending, perhaps they need better contracts with their publishers."
• The Surprisingly Big Business of Library E-books (Daniel A. Gross, New Yorker, 9-2-21) Increasingly, books are something that libraries do not own but borrow from the corporations that do. "The sudden shift to e-books had enormous practical and financial implications, not only for OverDrive but for public libraries across the country. Libraries can buy print books in bulk from any seller that they choose, and, thanks to a legal principle called the first-sale doctrine, they have the right to lend those books to any number of readers free of charge. But the first-sale doctrine does not apply to digital content. For the most part, publishers do not sell their e-books or audiobooks to libraries—they sell digital distribution rights to third-party venders, such as OverDrive, and people like Steve Potash sell lending rights to libraries....The high prices of e-book rights could become untenable for libraries in the long run, according to several librarians and advocates I spoke to—libraries, venders, and publishers will probably need to negotiate a new way forward. " [Not to mention that authors do not get a fair share of the income from e-book sales.-PM]
• Hold On, eBooks Cost HOW Much? The Inconvenient Truth About Library eCollections (Jennie Rothschild, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, 9-6-20) Ebooks for libraries are really, really, really expensive. And then we don’t even get to keep them. Librarians pay wholesale for print books that can remain in circulation for literal decades, but ebooks are very different in terms of access and in terms of cost. (She interprets the numbers.)
On the same topic, Maryland Gives Up on Its Library E-book Law (Andrew Albanese, PW, 4-11-22) First introduced in January 2021, the Maryland law required any publisher offering to license "an electronic literary product" to consumers in the state to also offer to license the content to public libraries "on reasonable terms" that would enable library users to have access. The law emerged after a decade of tension in the digital library market, with libraries long complaining of unsustainable, non-negotiated high prices and restrictions. The Association of American Publishers filed suit, arguing that the Maryland law infringed on the exclusive rights granted to publishers and authors under copyright. The judge concluded: "Striking the balance between the critical functions of libraries and the importance of preserving the exclusive rights of copyright holders, however, is squarely in the province of Congress and not this Court or a state legislature." (A mere snippet. Do read the article.) See also Court Blocks Maryland’s Library E-book Law (PW, 2-16-22)
• Amazon withholds its ebooks from libraries because it prefers you pay it instead (Nick Statt, The Verge, 3-10-21) Amazon’s publishing arm has refused to sell digital books to libraries....Amazon is again setting its own terms and using its dominance as a major US bookseller and publisher to break from industry norms. But instead of lowering prices for customers, which arguably won Amazon public favor in its antitrust fight against Apple and the major book publishers a decade ago, the company is withholding books from libraries.
• Book Smarts podcast (Joshua Tallent) In the first episode, Tallent, an expert in ebook development and digital publishing, discusses the similarities between the state of the publishing industry and the story of the Oakland A’s baseball team as told in the movie Moneyball. Competition is fierce, and solid data practices can be the key factor between success and failure.
• Define 'Reasonable': Can Maryland's New E-book Law Help Change the Marketplace? (Andrew Albanese, Publishers Weekly, 8-13-21) the Maryland Library Association (MLA) praised state legislators for recently passing a new law that seeks to ensure library patrons can have access to e-books that are available to consumers in the state. But does the law also give Maryland libraries a little leverage to change the existing terms under which e-books are licensed libraries?
"The legislators in Maryland who introduced this legislation believed that the existing pricing models were unreasonable where publishers charged libraries three or five times as much as they were charging consumers for only a two-year license," says Jonathan Band, a longtime legal advisor to the library community who has consulted with Maryland librarians on the law. "They believed that kind of multiple could only be justified for a perpetual license."
"An electronic book that might cost an individual $9.99 to $14.99 will typically cost libraries $55 to $65 for a two year license," wrote Maryland representative Kathleen Dumais, one of the bill's sponsors, in written testimony, which also included a table comparing consumer and library price points for e-books. When it takes effect in January, 2022, the Maryland law (known as SB432) will require any publisher offering to license "an electronic literary product" to consumers in the state to also offer to license the content to public libraries "on reasonable terms."
• Tennessee, Missouri Introduce Library E-book Bills; Illinois Bill Advances (Andrew Albanese, PW, 2-11-22) Despite continued opposition from the Association of American Publishers, a library e-book bill recently introduced in Illinois has unanimously passed out of the Committee on Consumer Protection and is now headed to the General Assembly. Library e-book bills are now pending in five state legislatures, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Illinois, Tennessee, and Missouri, and such bills have already passed unanimously in Maryland and New York. Defenders of the laws insist the measures provide for oversight of potentially unfair or discriminatory license terms
• Half of Net Proceeds Is the Fair Royalty Rate for E-Books (Authors Guild) 'Traditionally, the author-publisher partnership was an equal one. Authors earned around 50% of their books’ profits. That equal split is reflected in the traditional hardcover royalty of 15% of list (cover price, that is, not the much lower wholesale price), and in the 50-50 split of publishers’ earnings from selling paperback, book club, or reprint rights. Authors generally received an even larger share than the publisher for non-print rights (such as stage and screen rights) and foreign rights. But today’s standard contracts give authors just 25% of the publisher’s “net receipts” (more or less what the publisher collects from a book sale) for e-book royalties.'
• A New Twist in Ebook Library Licensing Fees (Authors Guild, 6-21-19) A would-be symbiotic relationship between ebook publishers and libraries has been unsettled in recent months by publishers seeking to renegotiate the terms. The modifications to ebook lending taken by three of the Big Five publishers over the past year suggest that there will be no returning to perpetual ownership anytime soon. Between Hachette-style metering and Tor-style windows, libraries may come to accept a metered license model as the more acceptable option.
• Paths to Getting Your Content on Kindle (Amazon) An overview of what's available through Amazon.
• A Beginner’s Guide to Amazon Pre-Orders (Penny Sansevieri on Jane Friedman's blog, 12-2-2020) Ebook pre-orders can be a great tool for KDP authors, but it might not be right for everyone—especially those without an established audience. By the author of How to Sell Books by the Truckload on Amazon.
• Fourteen Tips to Increase E-Book Sales (Peter Hildick-Smith, BookBusiness, 11-1-10) Among them: Focus on your intended
audience. Create an irresistible title
and cover; then test it. Target niche online
communities. Play to your author's strengths. Give readers a sample. Make sure that those who are most likely to respond to a given book's topic or story have every chance to discover and read it.
• “Automated ebook marketing by Open Road; can anybody else do it?” (Mike Shatzkin, Idea Logical, 9-12-22) Open Road is managing digital marketing for more than 40,000 backlist titles, which include those they had signed up for themselves during their early life when grabbing ebook titles not covered by then-current contracts fueled their growth, plus a larger number that have come in the past few years from publishers using their Ignition marketing service.
• How to market e-books to libraries (Mark Coker, Smashwords, Smart Author Podcast). Excellent practical advice.
• Does library ebook lending hurt book sales? Tor Books experiment reveals answers, may lead to new ebook lending terms (Jason Sanborn, Patreon, 7-2-19) For the experiment Tor prohibited ebook sales to libraries until four months after a book’s release. After that date libraries could purchase the Tor ebooks. The results were surprising.
• eBooks Best Practices--How to Produce and Sell eBooks: SPAN’s Tips and Best Practice (Larkin Flora, The Association of Publishers for Special Sales, 1-19-11)
•The Slow Death of the American Author (author and lawyer Scott Turow, president of the Authors Guild, NY Times Opinion pages, 4-7-13) The new, global electronic marketplace is rapidly depleting authors' income streams. In March 2013, the Supreme Court decided to allow the importation and resale of foreign editions of American works, which are often cheaper (so royalties are lower). E-books are much less expensive for publishers to produce, but instead of using the savings to be more generous to authors, the six major publishing houses all rigidly insist on clauses limiting e-book royalties to 25 percent of net receipts--roughly half of a traditional hardcover royalty. Authors: Hold out for 50 percent!
• How to Make, Market and Sell Ebooks - All for FREE by Jason Matthews
• The Next 10 Ebook Trends to Watch For (Jennifer Lynch, Author Marketing Experts)
• Ebooks seem like ‘Netflix for libraries,’ but they’re a drain on budgets (Bob Fernandez, Philly.com,1-17-19) 'Last year, 28 percent of the Free Library of Philadelphia's total circulation of more than five million books came from ebooks and other digital content....As popularity soars, publishers and content providers have adopted “metered access” and per-checkout models for ebooks and other content....A so-called perpetual ebook license for libraries could be four or five times the cost of either the printed book or the digital copies sold to consumers. And these are only some of the latest clashes over digital licensing as publishers seek to squeeze more profits out of their content as the world moves away from ink and paper....Publishers also sell ebooks on licensing deals that aren’t metered but priced significantly higher than print editions. This is called a perpetual license. Librarians refer to them as “pretend it’s print.”' A bestseller like The Woman in the Window may cost $16.40 on Amazon, but at the Free Library it costs $1.04 per ebook checkout but only 16 cents per print book checkout.
• Marketing Your E-Book (archives, Penny Sansevierei, Author Marketing Experts) Simple Quickstart Guide to Bookbub Ads for Authors, 5 Ways to Sell More Books with Your Eyes Closed, How to Price Your E-Book for More Consistent Sales, Increase Your Book Sales with Smart eBook Stacking!, How Indie Authors Can Sell More Books with a Bookbub Deal, Book Marketing Strategy: How to Discount Yourself into Higher Revenue, and more.
• Seven basic – but important – questions about eBooks (Steven Spatz, Book Baby blog, 10-28-16) BookBaby publishing specialists field dozens of questions about eBooks every day, and any question, no matter how basic, deserves a good answer. 1. What is an eBook? 2. How do people buy and read eBooks? 3. How do I turn my book into an eBook? 4. What kind of books can be eBooks? 5. Will my eBook read and look just like my printed book? 5. Will my eBook read and look just like my printed book? 7. What do I need to do to get started on my eBook?
As Amy Collins' explained in her brilliant Real Fast Library Marketing webinar (I heard the free two-hour version), there are "two different ways to make money with ebooks in libraries. You can sell your ebook outright to Overdrive. You can go through third-party aggregators like Smashbooks, Smart2Digital, or Bookbaby to get into Overdrive and Overdrive will sell your ebook to the library at a much higher rate than what someone would pay buying the book from Amazon." If I put an ebook on Amazon, you may be able to go on Amazon and download the book onto your Kindle for $5.99 or $9.99.
"But Overdrive will sell it to a library that will lend it out one person at a time. And Overdrive will sell that book for $30. Because libraries buy the book and lend it out over and over again, Overdrive sells it a higher price. Libraries also often take the option of licensing the ebook; they might license it for $19.99, and that license will be for a year. At the end of the year, if the book was in big demand, they will re-up for another year. But even if they buy it outright they buy it at three times the price they would pay at Amazon.
If you self-publish, you can apply to Overdrive and if they think they will sell enough copies they will accept you." Why talk about selling ebooks to libraries? Because libraries are hot! There are over 2400 independent bookstores in the United States, but there are 12,000 public libraries--including 9500 physical permanent public library branches. And the rule of print-on-demand keeping you out of libraries is out now. If you have a well-edited book, a library will buy POD.
Ebooks' share of income for publishers rose quickly, says Amy. It is leveling off, if not declining now -- not because sales are down (they are up) but because ebook prices are down, for publishers. Books you read from beginning to end, particularly fiction, especially genre fiction, top the list of ebook bestsellers. (Subscribe to BookBub for a daily email about free and discounted bestselling books). Print is still the preferred format for books with illustrations, or books you skip around in (such as cookbooks).
• How to Identify the Best eBook Conversion Services (Mike Harman, Digital Publishing, KitaBoo, 3-12-19) Checklist to select the best ePublishing /digital publishing platform.
• Step-by-Step Conversion Guide (Amalthia)
• Publishing e-books and e-articles (Dennis Meredith, NASW, 9-24-11) Helpful and links to other helpful resources.
• 10 Questions to Ask Before Committing to Any E-Publishing Service (Jane Friedman, Writing, reading, and publishing in the digital age). Start by reading her articles on all aspects of e-publishing.
• The Authors Guild Guide to E-Publishing, an exclusive Authors Guild ebook
• I Was a Digital Best Seller! (Tony Horwitz, NY Times Opinion page, 6-19-14) A cautionary tale from someone who "succeeded" in ebook format.
• The Best E-Publishing Resources (Jane Friedman's excellent site)
• Ebooks change the game for both backlist and export (Mike Shatzkin, Shatzkin Files, 10-6-15) He contends: Ebooks can really enable increases in sales of the backlist and will really enable sales outside the publisher’s home territory. Just having ebooks for sale around the globe can bring markets to a customer’s door, wherever the book originated. Two of the biggest drivers of ebook sales are discovery in response to search and the amplified effect of existing sales momentum in bestseller lists and retailer recommendations. ('People who bought this, bought that.) ...Those that sell develop sales momentum; those that don’t remain hidden and buried. Read this whole piece; it's full of useful insights.
• The Secret You Need to Know About Ebooks (BookBub) Sign up for BookBub to get a daily email that alerts readers to free and deeply discounted ebooks that are available for a limited time.
• Resources for writers on the road to Indie Epublishing (The Writers Guide to Epublishing)
• A Tax Cheat Sheet for Kindle eBook Self-Publishing (Turbotax, with hat/tip to Katie)
• Piers Anthony's survey of electronic publishers. Anthony, author of the successful Xanth series, publishes and updates a listing and reviews of electronic publishers. See the long list of publishers and another list of related services.
• Use the Preditors and Editors list of book publishers and distributors, listing many small presses and telling you which ones to avoid, and why.
• How Self-Published Authors Can Distribute to Libraries (Porter Anderson on Jane Friedman's blog, 7-2-15). This guest post from Porter Anderson explains the terms of a new program—a partnership between Library Journal and BiblioBoard—to help distribute self-published ebooks into the library market. "Some authors and industry people have spoken out against the SELF-e program because it does not pay authors, despite charging libraries for the ebooks provided. If you’re seeking an alternative service that does pay self-pub authors, then take a look at ebooksareforever."
• Writing between the lines (James McGrath Morris, Type A, Pasatiempo, 7-25-14) "Unlike with a paper book, underlining an e-book is not necessarily a private activity. Many readers opening an e-book on their Kindle, Nook, Kobo, or iPad are unaware that their behavior may be tracked." And another point: "For years, researchers have studied the underlining and marginalia of historically significant figures, using the pencil marks to draw conclusions about the marker. They worry now that e-book collections — existing only as computer codes — won’t be preserved like book collections of the past."
• Ebooks can tell which novels you didn't finish (Alison Flood, The Guardian, 12-10-14) Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch put down prematurely by 55% of ebook readers, with self-published star Casey Kelleher holding most attention with her self-published thriller Rotten to the Core, which didn't even make it to the bestseller list.
• ABI’s Four Fundamentals to Understanding eBooks
• Which ebook reading format works with which reader? (handy chart from Lisa Angeletti). See also E-Book Formats and Formatting
• Nitty Gritty on Updating E-Books (Joel Friedlander, IBPA, July 2015)
• Top eBook Publishers and eBook Publishing Services (John Kremer's directory of eBook formatting and translation services)
• Sarah White, a random sampling of factoids from her MFA residency in Toronto
---"In January I visited the HQ of Kobo, the largest e-book platform outside the US (Kobo is to the rest of the world what Kindle is in the States) and attended a presentation on their eBook sales.
---"85% of Kobo sales are in the genre of “romance” and 50% of that is in “Active romance” — a euphemism for erotica. (The biggest demographic of digital readers is women 50+, who buy 1.3 books a month.) So QZ can poke fun at “women reading erotica on their phones” but it’s a thing, and it’s here to stay.
---"This has been so profitable that Kobo is able to subsidize other writing genres, including offering emerging writers substantial financial prizes ($10,000). (“emerging” means what they’ve published is drawing readership on the Kobo platform.) Kobo does no vetting or promoting of books—marketing is purely done by reader recommendations to one another. Kobo only scans for unacceptable content such as depiction of animal or child abuse.
---"Audio-books are the fastest-growing segment in book publishing, and Latin America is the fastest-growing market for e-books."
--Thanks for letting me share here, Sarah!
• How to self-publish an ebook (David Carnoy, CNET exec. editor, 6-1-12).
• Self-publishing a book: 25 things you need to know (David Carnoy, CNEt, 6-13-12)
• 10 Questions to Ask Before Committing to Any E-Publishing Service (Jane Friedman, Writing, reading, and publishing in the digital age, 2-10-12). Be sure you know the answers to these questions!
• A journalist's guide to eBook publishing, part 1 (Robert Niles, Online Journalism Review 7-19-11). See also part 2
and part 3
• How Writers Can Turn Their Archives into eBooks (Carl Zimmer, The Atlantic, 10-14-10). Excellent idea!
• 7 Reasons You’re Not Selling Many Ebooks (Lindsay Buroker, 5-16-11)
• E-publishing 101: How to Get Started (Lindsay Buroker, 8-8-11)
• Harlequin Fail (Ann Voss Peterson, on JA Konrath's blog, 5-8-12). Be sure to read this before you sign with Harlequin. Followed up by Harlequin Fail Part 2. ""While most of my books are sold in the US, many are sold under lower royalty rates in other countries. In this particular contract, some foreign rights and – ALL e-book royalties – are figured in a way that artificially reduces net by licensing the book to a “related licensee,” in other words, a company owned by Harlequin itself." Summed up in Did Harlequin Publishing Deceive Their Authors? (Doris-Maria Heilmann, Savvy Writers & e-Book online, 7-21-12).
• Self Publishing In Print: Why I Have Returned o Printing My Books (Joanna Penn, who writes fiction, 1-27-13) . She had earlier posted this: Print Books: The New Vanity Publishing? (Joanna Penn, on The Book Designer, 2-3-12)
• It’s a Long Article. It’s a Short Book. No, It’s a Byliner E-Book. (John Tayman, Nieman Reports). Byliner published Jon Krakauer's "Three Cups of Deceit" (an exposé of Greg Mortensen's Three Cups of Tea) at 22,000 words, some of which were written, edited, checked up to an hour before publication and based on reporting he'd finished that day. ‘Our idea was to create a new way for writers to be able to tell stories at what had always been considered a financially awkward length.’
• E-singles, e-shorts, long-form journalism, and "read later" bookmarking systems (Narrative Nonfiction section, Writers and Editors website)
• The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens (Ferris Jabr, Scientific American, 4-11-13). E-readers and tablets are becoming more popular as such technologies improve, but research suggests that reading on paper still boasts unique advantages.
• How Publishers Can Get Alt Text Right (Bill Kasdorf, PW, 11-19-21) 'If the EPUB files have images. Images need what is known as “alt text”: image descriptions that convey to a blind or other visually disabled reader through text what the image conveys visually to a sighted reader. Those are overlooked in most books (with the exception of recently published books for higher education, where the requirement for accessibility has become an imperative). Most alt text is missing or wrong.' Advice about the art of image description. Thanks, Mr. Kasdorf, for explaining something I didn't know existed (and I'll bet I'm not the only one).
• EPUB file: What It Is & How to Open One
(Tim Fisher, About.com). An ePub file is an Open Publication Structure eBook file.
• EBW Knowledge Base . Electric Book Works explains basics. Start with the ABCs .
• Going from InDesign to Ebook (Colleen Cunningham, eBook designer, Digital Book World) InDesign is the most commonly used book design software)
• Comparison of e-book formats (Wikipedia and very helpful)
• Step-by-Step Conversion Guide to Epub or mobipocket
• How to Proofread on a Kindle (Beyond Paper Editing, Editor's Tips for Editors, 2-12-13)
• Carolyn McCray's practical wisdom about marketing and selling ebooks (Digital World Library), including such articles as Are Kindle Owner’s Lending Library (KOLL) Borrows Cannibalizing Your Book Sales? Part 1 (Expert Publishing Blog, 3-1-12) and
Are KOLL Loans Cannibalizing Your Sales: Part Two . See also Gaining Traction in the Amazon Ebook Marketplace and Best Practices For Amazon Ebook Sales (3-15-11)
• Libraries And E-Lending: The 'Wild West' Of Digital Licensing? (NPR Staff, All Things Considered, 12-27-12). Brian Kenney, director of the White Plains (NY) Public Library tells Audie Cornish that only two of publishing's Big Six publishers license their e-books to libraries. Harper Collins licenses 26 circulations of one book, after which the library has to pay an additional fee (typically $25 to $35). New titles from Random House cost up to $100 to license. Simon & Schuster licenses no ebooks to libraries. Publishers and librarians need to work together to figure out, how can we sustain readers? How can both publishers and libraries thrive?
• In a video on and in her Real Fast Library Marketing webinar
• How to self-publish an ebook . CNET executive editor David Carnoy, on CNET (7-27-10, and updated), covers the basics, surveying options with Kindle Direct, Smashwords, BookBaby, Barnes & Noble's PubIt, Lulu, Booktango, iBooks Author, print-on-demand operations (such as CreateSpace, iUniverse, Xlibris, AuthorHouse), and Scribd.
• How to Publish Your Own Amazon Kindle Ebook (Tony Bradley, PCWorld, 8-8-11)
• A next-generation digital book (Mike Matas's six-minute TED talk with illustrations shows us the future!)
• Digital Textbooks Go Straight From Scientists to Students (Dave Mosher, Wired, 1-26-12). When his marine science textbook was rejected by electronic textbook publishers, David Johnston hired students to create FLOW, open source software to publish the multimedia book himself. (Read the story!)
• Trying to explain publishing, or understand it, often remains a great challenge (Mike Shatzkin, 10-31-12, on how the world of justice does not understand the essence of book publishing--comparing the Bobbs Merrill decisions a century ago to what's going on now, and publishers' ever-diminishing margin)
• Ebook Publisher Power Rankings: Random and Penguin on Top (Jeremy Greenfield, Digital Book World, 11-5-12)
• Things to think about as the digital book revolution gains global steam (The Shatzkin Files, 8-27-12)
• The ebook marketplace could definitely confuse the average consumer (Mike Shatzkin, Shatzkin Files 9-17-11)
• Self-Publishing Ebooks (Writers and Editors links)
• Journalist's e-book scoop is a surprising success(Joanna Cabot, TeleRead, 8-12-12). Paula Todd’s 14,000 word e-book sold between 65,000 and 70,000 copies and generated about $200,000 in revenue--far more than she would have made selling it as a magazine piece. Certain factors contributed to its success.
• Sign Up for “Saner, More Humane Digital Publishing” (Amanda DeMarco, Publishing Perspectives, 6-27-12). Nick Disabato the founder of the Publication Standards Project, an organization that aims “to advocate a saner, more humane digital publishing landscape,” promoting standardization, access and ease of use. DeMarco summarizes the key problems the project is trying to get the industry to address, including an end to DRM, more standardization, and better terms for libraries.
• Publication Standards Part 1: The Fragmented Present by Nick Disabato (A List Apart, 5-22-12), and Publication Standards Part 2: A Standard Future. One section in Part 2 "Self-Publishing and Its Discontents" provides an excellent summary of possibilities and problems.
• University of Chicago Press Partners with Oxford University Press on E-book Platform (Andrew Albanese, PW, 8-8-12). The University of California Press is also signed up to OUP's ebook platform, University Press Scholarship Online (UPSO). PW reports: "UPSO is part of a growing field of university press-driven competitors in the digital monograph field, including efforts by Cambridge University Press, the University Press E-Book Consortium (which merged with Project Muse Editions last year), and, an e-book effort by JSTOR, an extension of the popular non-profit e-journal platform."
• Your E-Book Is Reading You (Alexander Alter, WSJ, 7-19-12--later it may be behind a paywall). Digital readers are yielding useful data about readers. "Barnes & Noble has determined, through analyzing Nook data, that nonfiction books tend to be read in fits and starts, while novels are generally read straight through, and that nonfiction books, particularly long ones, tend to get dropped earlier. Science-fiction, romance and crime-fiction fans often read more books more quickly than readers of literary fiction do, and finish most of the books they start. Readers of literary fiction quit books more often and tend skip around between books. "
• Does Pew study prove ebooks in libraries are safe for publishers? (The Shatzkin Files, 6-22-12)
• Amazon Cracks Down on Some E-Book ‘Publishers’ by David Streitfeld (NY Times 8-12-11). Fly-by-night e-book publishers lifting Wikipedia or other copy will be kicked off Kindle. And not all e-books contain the full text, so be wary with free or cheap editions (read comments).
• How to become an e-book sensation. Seriously. (Beverly Akerman, Globe & Mail 4-27-12). "This is a story about the end of the gatekeeper. About the movement spreading throughout media....It’s about the reading public – the great unwashed, the hoi polloi – no longer letting tastemakers decide what’s worth reading. It’s about the masses seizing the means of publication."
• Are Apps The Future of Book Publishing? (Alex Knapp, Forbes 3-30-12)
• Can E-Books Succeed Without Amazon? (Barbara E. Hernandez, PBS's MediaShift: Your Guide to the Digital Media Revolution, 5-3-12). Mark Coker, creator of Smashwords, doesn't like the KDP Select program because he questions its fairness. "It's using self-published authors as pawns as a broader campaign to wage war against retail competitors," he said. 'If it wasn't for the exclusivity requirement, I would be a big supporter of KDP Select.'" Competitors to Amazon discussed in this story (do read what Hernandez writes):Smashwords, BookBaby, Hyperink
• The ebook marketplace is a long way from settled (The Shatzkin Files 5-7-12). Will the big publishers give up Digital Rights Management (DRM)??? Maybe so.
• Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success (Mark Coker, Smashwords)
• Apple reveals new service for authors to sell their books directly in the iBookstore (David W. Martin, MacLife, 5-26-10)
• The Apple iBookstore and You (SPANNet.org). Learn about the pros and cons of publishing with Apple here.
• Ebooks & Ebook Readers (Joel Friedlander, The Book Designer, several articles)
• Multimedia E-books: Immersive or Subversive? (Dennis Meredith, Research Explainer, 4-15-12)
• Publish Your Own Ebooks, with articles such as Several Options for Designing Ebook Covers (Gary McLaren, 10-25-11)
• Authors catch fire with self-published e-books .Carol Memmott, USA Today, 2-11, reports that young Amanda Hocking's self-published (digitally) young-adult paranormal novels are selling hundreds of thousands of copies through online bookstores. "Hocking credits her success to aggressive self-promotion on her blog, Facebook and Twitter, word of mouth and writing in a popular genre — her books star trolls, vampires and zombies." But she's not the only such success in self-publishing.
• Beyond the Book (Mark Glaser, Special Series, MediaShift: Your Guide to the Digital Revolution 10-24-11)
• Comparison of e-book readers (Wikipedia's very useful chart, with items such as "can be used to borrow books from libraries"!) -- a good shopper's guide.
• Digital Textbooks Go Straight From Scientists to Students (Dave Mosher, Wired.com, 1-26-12)
• Do enhanced ebooks create a comeback trail for packagers? (Mike Shatzkin, The Shatzkin Files, 2-20-10)
• e-Book Cover Design Awards (Joel Friedlander's monthly awards, and articles)
• How to Sign an E-Book (Women of Mystery, 6-4-11). Audio not great, but you can see him do it.
• Ebook growth explosive; serious disruptions around the corner (Mike Shatzkin, whose many excellent blogs on eBooks are linked to below)
• E-book Guide Update: Keeping Up with a Bullet Train (Research Explainer, KDP Select 2-2-12)
• ePub Author Question – What Are the Parts of an ePub File?ePub Author Question – What Are the Parts of an ePub File? (Mark Harmon, ePub and eBook help, with lots of detailed articles on technical aspects of self-e-publishing)
• eBook Discovery and Sampling Skyrocketing at Public Libraries (OverDrive 1-19-12).
• e-Books Best Practices: How to Produce and Sell eBooks (Larkin Flora, SPANnet.org, on SPAN's tips and best practices)
• E-book rights, developments, conflicts, and struggles for market (Writers and Editors site)
• How the e-book landscape is becoming a walled garden (Mathew Ingram, GigaOm, 2-29-12)
• Letter from Scott Turow: Grim News (Authors Guild blog, 3-9-12).
• Joe Konrath and Barry Eisler's response to Scott Turow (this is pretty interesting)
• Scott Turow on why we should fear Amazon (Laura Miller, Salon.com 3-13-12)
• Presumed Inane (J Konrath's response to Scott Turow on fearing Amazon
• The Economics of Self-Publishing an Ebook (Simon Owens, on ebook fiction, The Next Web Media, 3-7-11)
• EReaders for 2011 (another comparison, more simply laid out than Wikipedia's but not as complete)
• Getting the Skinny on e-Publishing Chynna Laird, Wow! The E-Publishing Revolution)
• How and Where to Publish an eBook (AgentQuery)
• How do I get my book into the Apple iBookstore? (Scott Flora, SPAN)
• How the Long Tail Cripples Bonus Content/Multimedia (Seth Godin, The Domino Project, paidContent,org, 12-27-11)
• Who decides what gets sold in the bookstore? (Seth Godin, The Domino Project 2-2012). "We’re heading to a world where there are just a handful of influential bookstores (Amazon, Apple, Nook…) and one by one, the principles of open access are disappearing. Apple, apparently, won’t carry an ebook that contains a link to buy a hardcover book from Amazon."
• How to make and sell your first ebook in 10 easy steps (Avi Solomon 7-26-11)
• How to Publish an eBook on Amazon's Kindle Store (AgentQuery)
• In a Digital Future, Textbooks Are History (Tamar Lewin, NY Times, 8-8-09)
• Why Your Printed Book Isn’t an E-Book (Yet) (Carol Saller, The Subversive Copy Editor, 2-11-12). While novelists take for granted that their new books will appear in all the electronic formats simultaneously with print publication, for scholars there are no such assurances. Why?
• John Locke on his self-publishing e-book supersuccess. Guest-posting on J.A. Konrath's blog A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, Locke, who has six titles on Amazon's Top 100 list for Kindle sales, explains (in the Q&A) that his success is based on niche marketing, the formula for which is:
1. Identify your target audience
2. Find out where they live
3. Shove your book down their throats.
Read both his post and the Q&A, where he and others agree that it costs about $1000 to have someone cover design and format your e-book (plus the cost of any art work).
• A journalist's guide to eBook publishing, Part 1 (Robert Niles, Online Journalism Review, 7-19-11). See also Part 2 and Part 3
• Making a Book—Digital and Print—From Scratch (Elizabeth Castro, Nieman Reports). By building a book in modules—rather than constructing it as a complete “bible”—I can gain flexibility, respond easily to the rapid pace of changes, and be happier than if I have to rewrite my entire book.’
• Making Book on eBooks (excellent links to material on ebooks for science writers, for a course taught by Tabitha Powledge and Carl Zimmer, with notes by Tammy, ScienceOnline 2012)
• The Newbie's Guide to Publishing (free PDF, by J.A. Konrath, with section on Ebooks). See any of his blogs, but maybe start with Eisler & Konrath Vs. Hachette
• 3 Great Typeface Combinations You Can Use in Your Book (Joel Friedlander, The Book Designer, 2-19-10)
• E-books: Not so fast! (Bryan Rosner on what publishers have to fear, IBPA)
• * The once and future e-book: on reading in the digital age (John Siracusa, ars technica -- check out the comments after reading the article)
• P.D.A. in the Library (Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed, 10-28-11). Patron-Driven Acquisition, a model of e-book licensing that aims to relieve library purchasing agents from spending thousands on books nobody will end up reading. Good story on how libraries are rethinking their inventories and patron needs.
• Searching for the formula to deliver illustrated books as ebooks (Shatzkin Files, 11-13-11)
• $72,000 in E-Books in a Week – 8 Lessons I Learned (Darren Rowse, on ProBlogger, who sold 4800 e-books in a week)
• The Real Trouble With E-Books (Jeremy Lott, Splice Today 2-3-12). Fahrenheit 451 and the future of publishing. Ray "Bradbury has for some time insisted that Fahrenheit 451 has been misunderstood. It is not chiefly a book about censorship, he says, but what happens to a society that ceases to care deeply about books. He worries that our obsession with 'screens' will undermine the book. Logically, that doesn't have to be the case. But the fact that his publisher was willing to take a huge bestseller out of print if it couldn't offer an e-version of same should give us reason for concern."
eBook Basics and Beyond
• E-book Guide Update: Keeping Up with a Bullet Train (Research Explainer, KDP Select 2-2-12)
• eBook Discovery and Sampling Skyrocketing at Public Libraries (OverDrive 1-19-12).
• Learning the Inner Workings of an E-Book File (Elizabeth Castro, Nieman Reports Winter 2011)
• Making Book on eBooks (excellent links to material on ebooks for science writers, for a course taught by Tabitha Powledge and Carl Zimmer, with notes by Tammy, ScienceOnline 2012)
• A journalist's guide to eBook publishing, Part 1 (Robert Niles, Online Journalism Review, 7-19-11). See also Part 2 and Part 3
• Beyond the Book (Mark Glaser, Special Series, MediaShift: Your Guide to the Digital Revolution 10-24-11)
• E-books at libraries are a huge hit, leading to long waits, reader hacks and worried publishers (Heather Kelly, WaPo, 11-26-19) While there are technically an infinite number of copies of digital files, e-books differ from hard copies when it comes to libraries.
• The Economics of Self-Publishing an Ebook (Simon Owens, on ebook fiction, The Next Web Media, 3-7-11)
• Print book retailing economics and ebook retailing economics have almost nothing in common (Mike Shatzkin, 10-7-14)
The New Harper Collins (Jim Milliot, PW, 6-7-13). Report on a HC presentation to industry analysts. See especially the chart showing the economics of a hardcover vs an ebook.
• How the Long Tail Cripples Bonus Content/Multimedia (Seth Godin, The Domino Project, paidContent,org, 12-27-11)
• How to make and sell your first ebook in 10 easy steps (Avi Solomon 7-26-11)
• The Newbie's Guide to Publishing (free PDF, by J.A. Konrath, with section on Ebooks). See any of his blogs, but maybe start with Eisler & Konrath Vs. Hachette
• Making a Book—Digital and Print—From Scratch (Elizabeth Castro, Nieman Reports). By building a book in modules—rather than constructing it as a complete “bible”—I can gain flexibility, respond easily to the rapid pace of changes, and be happier than if I have to rewrite my entire book.’
• ABI’s Four Fundamentals to Understanding eBooks
• Ebook basics for authors (part 1: formatting); Part 2: DRM, or copy protection; and Part 3: Trends, Q&A
• How and Where to Publish an eBook (AgentQuery)
• How to Create an EPUB file -- Mac or PC Users (AgentQuery)
• How to Publish an eBook on Amazon's Kindle Store (AgentQuery)
• How to Convert Your Manuscript to a Kindle eBook (for PC Users) (AgentQuery)
• Comparison of e-book readers (Wikipedia's very useful chart, with items such as "can be used to borrow books from libraries"!) -- a good shopper's guide.
• EReaders for 2011 (another comparison, more simply laid out than Wikipedia's but not as complete)
• Searching for the formula to deliver illustrated books as ebooks (Shatzkin Files, 11-13-11)
• Amazon Cracks Down on Some E-Book ‘Publishers’ by David Streitfeld (NY Times 8-12-11). Fly-by-night e-book publishers lifting Wikipedia or other copy will be kicked off Kindle. And not all e-books contain the full text, so be wary with free or cheap editions (read comments).
• Amazon introduces new Kindle eBook format and makes a major misstep (Guido Henkel 10-21-11). Old Kindles won't support new format! Confusion and extra work and expense for e-book producers.
• e-Books Best Practices: How to Produce and Sell eBooks (Larkin Flora, SPANnet.org, on SPAN's tips and best practices)
• EBook Conversion Services Directory, an invaluable directory courtesy of book designer Joel Friedlander (Marin Bookworks), which you can sort by providers or by format you want to produce.
• Top eBook Publishers and eBook Publishing Services (directory of eBook formatting and translation services)
• E-books: Not so fast! (Bryan Rosner on what publishers have to fear, IBPA)
• Ebook growth explosive; serious disruptions around the corner (Mike Shatzkin, whose many excellent blogs on eBooks are linked to below)
• Before Choosing an E-Book, Pondering the Format (in which to deliver it), Peter Wayner, NY Times 9-24-09
• Take pride in your eBook formatting (Guido Henkel's
• Formatting Kindle (eBook Architects, who have a list of e-book blogs)
• Kindle Formatting: The complete guide (a sample--Joshua Tallent)
• Kindle Boards Writers' Cafe (discussion board to help authors of e-books promote their books)
• Amazon's Digital Text Platform (DTP) (Kindle Direct Publishing)
• Indie Author Guide to Publishing for the Kindle (April L. Hamilton)
• Apple iBookstore Now Open Directly to Independent Publishers
• Apple reveals new service for authors to sell their books directly in the iBookstore (David W. Martin, MacLife, 5-26-10)
• How do I get my book into the Apple iBookstore? (Scott Flora, SPAN)
• Smashwords (your ebook, your way--a digital self-publishing platform and online bookstore)
• How to Publish and Distribute Your Ebook with Smashwords!
• P.D.A. in the Library (Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed, 10-28-11). Patron-Driven Acquisition, a model of e-book licensing that aims to relieve library purchasing agents from spending thousands on books nobody will end up reading. Good story on how libraries are rethinking their inventories and patron needs.
• Smashwords FAQs, Smashwords Style Guide (by Mark Coker), and Smashwords Marketing Guide (also Coker).
• What's wrong with Smashwords? (Bradley Flora, SPAN)
• Q&A: Smashwords Founder Mark Coker Predicts Drop in eBook Prices (with Devon Glenn, dBookNewser, 1-31-11)
• In a Digital Future, Textbooks Are History (Tamar Lewin, NY Times, 8-8-09)
• $72,000 in E-Books in a Week – 8 Lessons I Learned (Darren Rowse, on ProBlogger, who sold 4800 e-books in a week)
• * The once and future e-book: on reading in the digital age (John Siracusa, ars technica -- check out the comments after reading the article)
• The eBook Wars: The Price Battle (1). Rich Aden, on his An American Editor blog, writes about what happens to the quality of books when accountants call for outsourcing at prices so low that a well-edited book is unlikely.
• Authors catch fire with self-published e-books .Carol Memmott, USA Today, 2-11, reports that young Amanda Hocking's self-published (digitally) young-adult paranormal novels are selling hundreds of thousands of copies through online bookstores. "Hocking credits her success to aggressive self-promotion on her blog, Facebook and Twitter, word of mouth and writing in a popular genre — her books star trolls, vampires and zombies." But she's not the only such success in self-publishing.
• John Locke on his self-publishing e-book supersuccess. Guest-posting on J.A. Konrath's blog A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, Locke, who has six titles on Amazon's Top 100 list for Kindle sales, explains (in the Q&A) that his success is based on niche marketing, the formula for which is:
1. Identify your target audience
2. Find out where they live
3. Shove your book down their throats.
Read both his post and the Q&A, where he and others agree that it costs about $1000 to have someone cover design and format your e-book (plus the cost of any art work).
• Do enhanced ebooks create a comeback trail for packagers? (Mike Shatzkin, The Shatzkin Files, 2-20-10)
• E-book rights, developments, conflicts, and struggles for market (Writers and Editors site)
Competing for ears: audiobooks and podcasts
"Listening to voices is different from looking at a screen because it's easier to multitask." ~ Heather Kelly
• The ears have it: The rise of audiobooks and podcasting Deloitte, TMT Predictions 2020, 12-9-19) "Audiobooks and podcasts are outgrowing their “niche” status to emerge as substantive markets in their own right." (Check the growth chart) Audiobook pricing models come in two basic forms: The consumer either purchases audiobooks outright, or streams them through a monthly subscription service such as Audible, Scribd, or Kobo. Podcasts, on the other hand, have multiple revenue streams: advertising and sponsorships, subscriptions, events, merchandise, content marketing, contracts for branded podcasts, and individual listener donations. Of these, advertising and sponsorships are by far the largest...
The upshot: So long as people can listen to thousands of hours of high-quality podcasts essentially for free, profit-motivated podcasters will have a hard time getting listeners to actually pay for content."
• Listen Notes (a podcast search engine)
---Podchaser (a database and search engine of podcasts)
---5 podcast search engines Listen Notes, Podsearch, Podchaser, Goodpods, YouTube.
• Pivot to … Something? The Blurry Future of Podcasting (J. Clara Chan, Hollywood Reporter, 3-1-23) Creators and executives, gathering at the Hot Pod Summit, mulled over monetization and new formats as the market matures: "This industry has changed every year for the last 10 years, so if we're only going to cater to the now, then where are we?"
“Everybody’s scared to call a podcast an audiobook and an audiobook a podcast. But if you really squint, it’s harder to differentiate — and that is only accelerating over the course of the next few years,” Zicherman said at the summit, noting that Spotify was seeking to target the “casual listener” with its audiobooks offering.
But the audiobooks debate paled in comparison to the trend du jour: how video can be incorporated into audio creators’ workflow and boost business for executives. A growing number of listeners — 46 percent, per a January survey from Morning Consult — prefer to watch their podcasts and see YouTube as the preferred platform to do so, over rivals like Apple Podcasts and Spotify."
• The Difference Between a Podcast and an Audiobook Recording (The Shanman, Podcast Training & Development, 10-11-18) "When you think of podcasting, you think of a radio show where the host is on the microphone, speaking his or her mind to the world. This delivery style really is more casual and requires a sense of mental agility that is more conversational so the listener can understand the message....The storytelling podcast that I have listened to usually contain actors, actresses and a narrator. These podcast are recorded carefully and edited very carefully....[Contrast this with] Narrations for audio books are wildly professional and take a lot of time."
• Why the New Statesman turns a long-read feature into a podcast every week (Esther Kezia Thorpe, Digital Content Next, 11-10-22) Following the success of its existing shows The New Statesman Podcast and World Review, news publisher the New Statesman launched its third podcast in April of 2022. Both The New Statesman Podcast and World Review doubled their listenership since the creation of an in-house audio team in 2021. Each week, one of the publication’s feature articles is read out loud on Audio Long Reads, then published as a podcast that is about half an hour long. Many publishers have experimented with audio versions of their articles, but fewer of them have taken the next step and published them as podcasts. To be considered suitable for a podcast, it has to be a strong story that will engage a listener for an extended period of time. It also has to "be evergreen, because we want this to be a catalogue of things that people can come back to." Production values are important for the Audio Long Reads podcast.
• YouTube Offers Up to $300,000 to Get Podcasters to Make Videos (Ashley Carman, Bloomberg,3-4-22) Simon Owens predicts: "YouTube will become the #2 platform for podcast consumption behind Spotify within the next two years."
• A Deep Dive into the Convergence of Audiobooks and Podcasts (Jeff Umbro, The Podglomerate, via LinkedIn, 7-23-20) Awesome overview, analysis, and hints about things to come.
• Hot Pod News Nicholas Quah runs this thing (Stories, analysis, and opinions on podcasting and the new audio industry. One version free, the other (Hot Pod Insider) paid.
• Podcasting, Audiobooks, and the Third Thing Podcasts and Audiobooks are crossing the streams of spoken word content - what else is possible? Also: more on listener surveys! How podcasts and audiobooks differ, and where they might meet. An executive at Edison Research discusses the convergence of the formats and what each industry has to learn from the other. (H/T Jane Friedman)
• The Booming Business of Kids’ Podcasting: “It Has Absolutely Exploded” (J Clara Chan, Hollywood Reporter, 3-8-22) Why studios, streamers and audio platforms are doubling down on children's programming. H/T Simon Owens
• Apple Introduces Kid-Friendly Podcast Experience (Natalie Jarvey, Hollywood Reporter, 3-8-21) Common Sense Media will help the tech company curate podcast collections for kids and families.
• New York Times to Buy Production Company Behind ‘Serial’ Podcast (Rachel Abrams, NY Times, 7-22-2020) The Times, capitalizing on the success of its “Daily” podcast, continues an expansion into audio journalism, purchasing Serial Productions, the company behind “Serial” and "S-Town."
• Audiobooks are no longer exempt from the broader shifts in the podcast world (Nicholas Quah, Nieman Lab, 6-18-19)
• Audio vs text: the rise of podcasts & audiobooks (Richard MacManus, Cybercultural, 9-26-19) Podcasts and audiobooks in 2019 were on a bull run in the content market, whereas blogs, print books and ebooks continued their bearish tendencies. The audiobook version of Malcolm Gladwell's book, Talking to Strangers, "was outselling the hard cover after the first week on sale.... Gladwell changed how he wrote his latest book, plus he modernised the format of the audiobook version to make it sound more like a podcast. These changes were inspired by his experience producing and hosting the Revisionist History podcast, which he started in 2016."
• From podcasts to Clubhouse, audio is filling more of our time. For some families, that’s a problem. (Heather Kelly, WaPo, 3-15-21_ Audio content can connect people to strangers and make them feel less alone, but it’s possible to listen too much.
•Highlights of Bookwire’s ‘All About Audio’: Podcasts, Audiobooks (Porter Anderson, Publishing Perspectives, 6-25-20) Taking both audiobooks and podcasting together, the Bookwire ‘All About Audio’ program was a multifaceted tour of the issues with a final message to publishers: Streaming is inevitable. Taking both audiobooks and podcasting together, the Bookwire ‘All About Audio’ program was a multifaceted tour of the issues with a final message to publishers: Streaming is inevitable.
• Audm (Audmass) Audm lets you download stories to your queue, so you can listen when you’re not connected to WiFi or your cell network. Ad messages: Download longform stories to listen to later, "award-winning narrators," distinguished authors and publications. Goes for high end listeners.
• Surrounded by Big Tech, Small Podcast Shops Swim With Sharks (Reggie Ugwu, NY Times, 3-4-22) There are many narrative podcast shops whose entire business models revolve around pitching their shows to the major tech platforms and Hollywood studios. Independent companies like Prologue Projects, Campside Media and Rococo Punch try different strategies in a market roiled by Silicon Valley and Hollywood. H/T Simon Owens.
Ebook Prices and Pricing, Price Wars, Price Fixing, Royalties
plus subscription models, Amazon's return policy,
and a proposed Maryland eBook Law
Authors' struggle to fight mandated lower e-book prices for sales to libraries:
• Michelle Lerner's summary of key points in an article about the law, a recently proposed Maryland eBook Law:
---Some states are trying to pass state laws that would force publishers to sell any existing ebooks to libraries at prices that may be below what they want to sell them for.
---According to one court, and the IBPA's lawyers, these laws/bills violate the federal copyright law that protects authors' intellectual property. When Congress passes a law under their authority to regulate interstate commerce, like the federal copyright protection law, a principle called "preemption" applies, i.e. federal law overrides any state law that contradicts it.
---A few states seem to be trying to pass these bills anyway, even though the MD statute they're based on was struck down.
---If the laws passed and were not struck down, it might require publishers (including small presses and self-published authors) to sell ebooks to libraries at low prices set by the state and for libraries to lend them out as much as they want, thereby reducing authors' and presses' revenues. For very small presses and self-published authors, this might make writing financially unsustainable. It might also make some authors or presses just not create ebooks to begin with.
~Michelle wrote this for an Authors Guild discussion group. The AG has been actively fighting these state laws.
• Update: Authors Guild Statement on AAP’s Win in Maryland Ebook Licensing Case (Authors Guild, 6-14-22) On June 13, 2022, the court issued a final ruling in AAP’s lawsuit against the state of Maryland’s mandatory ebook licensing law, declaring it “unconstitutional and unenforceable” on grounds that it violated the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The Association of American Publishers (AAP) won an injunction to block the state of Maryland’s e-book licensing law in court. The court found that publishers and other copyright holders would suffer irreparable harm if the law was allowed to go into effect, as it would force them to not license electronic products at all in order to avoid the law’s overreach or face steep civil penalties. Said Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger. “We have opposed similar laws across the country on the same grounds, including one in New York that Governor Hochul vetoed in December because of the constitutional defects. These laws purport to solve a non-existent problem—that libraries have insufficient access to e-books. They harm self-published authors, in particular, who may not have access to library e-book and audiobook platforms.” Contains link to full opinion.
• IBPA Position Statement on Proposed eBook Laws and Their Impact on Independent Publishers (Adeline Lui, Independent Book Publishers Association, 3-16-23) The Independent Book Publishers Association released a position statement in support of the federal court’s block on the Maryland eBook Law, which would have violated the copyright protection of authors’ and publishers’ work, and negatively impacted the ability of independent publishers to profitably manage their business. This legislation was adjudicated, found in violation of the United States Copyright Act, and ultimately struck down.Unfortunately, several similar pieces of legislation are currently being circulated in several states.
"The American Association of Publishers (AAP) filed a lawsuit in Federal Court in Maryland challenging the constitutionality of the Maryland law and IBPA declared its full support for their legal challenge. The law was ultimately struck down in the case of AAP v. Frosh. The Maryland law and other related proposals are promoted as consumer protection statutes. However, a closer analysis reveals an alarming attack on the rights of authors and publishers guaranteed under the United States Copyright Act and the United States Constitution by imposing on publishers a state-dictated licensing scheme. The Maryland eBook Law stated its purpose as “requiring a publisher who offers to license an electronic literary product to the public also to offer to license the electronic literary product to public libraries in the State on “reasonable terms” that would enable public libraries to provide library users with access to the electronic literary product.”
"By print model, the MLA proposes a scheme to calculate eBook pricing based on a lending equivalent using the average number of loans of a typical print book before a replacement copy is required as a basis for pricing. For the state to impose such a model would stifle innovation, prohibit publishers from adapting their business models to the demands of technological innovation and places an undue financial burden on publishers to adhere to this model. It is important to emphasize again that this law applies to all publishers, big and small, including author-publishers.
• The Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) weighs in on legislation to regulate eBooks being considered in various states. (IBPA, 3-13-23) The Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) weighs in on legislation to regulate eBooks being considered in various states. The Maryland Library Association (MLA) in their July 27, 2021, press release about the legislation stated, “Maryland’s public libraries are committed to making sure that all members of our community have equitable access to library resources. A closer review of the actors who are propelling this legislation reveals motivations aimed at supporting the corporate interests of Big Tech at the expense of content creators, publishers, small business owners, and ultimately, the libraries this legislation is supposedly meant to protect....
"The driving force behind these legislative proposals is an organization funded by Big Tech, known as Library Futures. For many years, Big Tech, which is comprised of the most dominant companies in the technology industry, has pursued an agenda to attempt to undermine Copyright Law for their own purposes, with the goal of making all content freely available on the internet....
"To compensate for state budget concerns, instead of providing libraries with additional funding, the state, using such legislation, could compel terms only advantageous to the state and its interests, placing the legal and financial burden on individual publishers....The Maryland law and other related proposals are promoted as consumer protection statutes. However, a closer analysis reveals an alarming attack on the rights of authors and publishers guaranteed under the United States Copyright Act and the United States Constitution by imposing on publishers a state-dictated licensing scheme."
• Amazon Is Changing Its Ebook Return Policy in Major Breakthrough for Authors (Authors Guild, 9-22-22) After discussions with authors group, Amazon announces plans to change its ebook return policy to restrict automatic returns to purchases where no more than 10 percent of the book has been read.
• Authors are protesting Amazon's e-book policy that allows users to read and return (Deanna Schwartz, NPR, 6-26-22) When an Amazon customer returns an e-book, royalties originally paid to the author at the time of purchase are deducted from their earnings balance. Authors can end up with negative balances when customers return books after the author has already been paid by Kindle Direct Publishing. E-books are also the only digital products Amazon allows customers to return.
• Library eBook Licensing Bill Vetoed by Governor Kathy Hochul (Authors Guild, 12-30-21) The Authors Guild applauds today’s veto by New York Governor Kathy Hochul of Bill 5837-B, the library eBook licensing bill, which would have forced book authors, publishers, and other copyright owners to involuntarily grant licenses to New York public libraries for their digital works on terms decided by the state of New York. [A much lower $.] Federal copyright law grants authors exclusive rights to determine how and to whom they provide access to their works and on what terms.
• The Great Ebook Pricing Question (David Gaughran, 4-3-21) Start here. Price is the value we, as self-publishers, attach to the product. Value is the worth the consumer places on it. Is your goal to maximize income? build audience? boost borrows? This piece may help you think through your pricing strategy.
• eBook Pricing Strategies to Sell More Books and Maximize Author Earnings (Chloe Kizer, Written Word) How to price your book for maximum copies sold. How to price for maximum earnings. Have your cake and eat it too? Kindle Unlimited's role in author earnings. With a poor cover design and no reviews, your sales will probably be minimal.
• Self-Publishers Are Saving The Publishing Industry (David Gaughran, 5-29-21) Big publishers, consolidated into five entities, raised the price of books far beyond the rate of inflation, driving away readers and strangling the market. Big publishers have maintained high ebook prices through outright collusion. Fighting to keep ebooks even higher priced than their artificially-inflated paperback prices, online retailers like Amazon, iTunes, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo threatened to kill the publishing industry again. In the midst of the Great Recession, independent authors offered their books at prices first established in the Great Depression or even lower. It's the modern day publishing industry that is out of line with those historical prices. If indies have killed anything, it’s the publishing industry’s idea that books need to cost as much as they do.
• Authors are protesting Amazon's e-book policy that allows users to read and return (Deanna Schwartz, NPR, 6-27-22) Lisa Kessler, a paranormal romance author, logged into Kindle Direct Publishing to check her earnings and found a negative earnings balance. Amazon's current return policy for e-books allows customers to "cancel an accidental book order within seven days." But, for some readers, seven days is more than enough time to finish a book and return it after reading, effectively treating Amazon like a library. When an Amazon customer returns an e-book, royalties originally paid to the author at the time of purchase are deducted from their earnings balance. Kessler said prior to Amazon's "read and return" trend, she would normally have one or two book returns a month, something she attributed to genuine accidental purchases. Now, she sees entire series of hers being returned. If you object to this, you might want to sign the petition for Amazon to change its return policies for e-books completely read.
• ‘It comes down to price gouging’: Brock Library call for equity on ebooks (Moya Dillon, Brock Citizen, Durham Region, 4-12-22) Canadian librarians are calling out publishers for price gouging.
• Ebooks Are an Abomination (Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, 9-14-21) If you hate them, it's not your fault. What's to love -- and hate -- about ebooks. A brief history of publishing.
• After COVID boom, ebook aggregators face questions about library licensing from Congress (Makena Kelly, The Verge, 11-18-21) They’re questioning Overdrive, the company behind the Libby app. “Many libraries face financial and practical challenges in making e-books available to their patrons, which jeopardizes their ability to fulfill their mission,” the lawmakers wrote. “It is our understanding that these difficulties arise because e-books are typically offered under more expensive and limited licensing agreements, unlike print books that libraries can typically purchase, own, and lend on their own terms.”
• Billion-Dollar Book Companies Like Follett and EBSCO Are Ripping Off Public Schools (Maria Bustillos, New Republic, 12-22-2020) Instead of buying permanent print copies, some schools sign contracts for digital access that involve continual payments.These publishers have always overcharged for books. Now they’re demanding obscene costs for e-books, instead of selling them permanent print copies. The Diary of Anne Frank, for example, costs $27 per student for a 12-month subscription. By locking school districts into contracts that turn them into captive consumers, corporate tech providers are draining public education budgets that don’t have a penny to spare.
• Publishers worry as ebooks fly off libraries’ virtual shelves (Ars Technica and Wired, 10-3-2020) During the pandemic, "the surging popularity of library ebooks also has heightened longstanding tensions between publishers, who fear that digital borrowing eats into their sales, and public librarians, who are trying to serve their communities during a once-in-a-generation crisis....Readers can browse, download, join waiting lists for, and return digital library books from the comfort of their home, and the books are automatically removed from their devices at the end of the lending period." But "Libraries typically pay between $20 and $65 per copy—an industry average of $40, according to one recent survey—compared with the $15 an individual might pay to buy the same ebook online....Instead of owning an ebook copy forever, librarians must decide at the end of the licensing term whether to renew."
• University staff in UK urge probe into e-book pricing 'scandal' (Russell Hotten, BBC News, 11-13-2020) More than 2,500 UK university staff have called for an investigation into the "scandal" of excessive pricing of academic e-books. Examples: "an economics book that costs £44 for a print copy but is £423 for a single e-book user and £500 for three users. An employment law book costs £50 for a hard copy, but is £1,600 for three users of the digital version.In another case, a book on working in childcare is listed at £30 for a hard copy but online costs £1,045 for unlimited access for a year....Prices have been rising for some time, but the University of Gloucestershire librarian said there were reports of increases during lockdown, when access to libraries and bookshops was restricted and getting course material difficult."
• Half of Net Proceeds Is the Fair Royalty Rate for E-Books (Authors Guild, Fair Contract Initiative) See Checking In on the Digital Royalty Debate (Rachel Deahl, PW, 12-6-13) "By finding ways to keep their top authors in-house without raising the e-book royalty rate above 25%, the big houses have, in effect, killed the debate. And this comes at a time when most publishers’ profits have improved because of e-books. Richard Curtis, a literary agent and founder of the e-book publisher E-Reads, repeated an oft-said refrain when he noted that “the 25% [e-book royalty] rate has been the chief cause of publishers’ return to prosperity.” (That greed is also part of the reason more and more authors are commissioning ebooks through other means.) Argue for 50%, not 25%, on ebook royalties. Note that some authors get less than 15% royalty on ebooks. You MUST read your contract and negotiate before signing.
• E-Book Royalty Math: The House Always Wins (Authors Guild, 2-3-11) E-book royalty rates for major trade publishers have coalesced at 25% of the publisher’s receipts, contrary to longstanding tradition in trade book publishing, in which authors and publishers effectively split the net proceeds of book sales 50/50 (that's how the industry arrived at the standard hardcover royalty rate of 15% of list price). So the big publishers generally do significantly better on e-book sales than they do on hardcover sales but authors do worse. AG shows the math for several titles. If your ebook sales are going to be significant, think twice about accepting that royalty rate, particularly compared with self-publishing your ebook on Amazon! These numbers show highway robbery on the part of publishers.
• Resale of Ebooks Ruled Illegal in E.U. (Nicholas Clee, PW, 9-12-19) "In a move that will be welcome news to publishers and other rights holders, advocate general Maciej Szpunar has ruled sites such as Tom Kabinet that sell second-hand ebooks "unlawful under EU law....Zoey Forbes, technology, media and entertainment associate at law firm Harbottle & Lewis, said: ‘Rightsholders of digital works protected by copyright, such as ebooks, music downloads, films and games, will welcome the advocate general’s Opinion that the resale of ebooks is unlawful under E.U. law. The opinion also acknowledges the risks to rightsholders that may arise from a second-hand market for ebooks, including cannibalisation of the primary market and the increased risk of piracy."
• Macmillan Announces New Library Lending Terms for Ebooks (Authors Guild, 7-26-19) "In response to the well-recognized impact of library e-lending on book sales, Macmillan Publishers is now changing the terms on which it sells ebooks to libraries....Last year, Macmillan tested a “windowing” system by which frontlist books weren’t made available for library e-lending until 16 weeks after the book’s release. It is now adopting a new system to protect the value of new releases while still respecting and supporting the needs of libraries....Although the American Library Association has objected to this new program, we believe that Macmillan has attempted to fairly address the concerns of the libraries and balance them with those of authors and others in the book industry."
• A New Twist in Ebook Library Licensing Fees (Authors Guild news, 6-21-19) Hachette announced in June 2019 that it would begin licensing its ebooks to libraries for two-year terms instead of in perpetuity. The first-time licensing fee would be lower than what libraries had been paying for perpetual licenses, with libraries having the option to renew once the two years are up. With the “perpetual ownership” model, a library pays a flat, one-time fee to the publisher for access to an ebook, which the library can then lend out for as long as it wishes. Other publishers have instead licensed ebooks to libraries for a limited period of time or a limited number of loans. The fees for the perpetual licenses are of course much higher, which libraries have criticized over the years. Publishers and the library associations have been in discussions about how to best accommodate the loss of sales due to library ebooks and also many libraries’ inability to pay high prices for as many ebooks as they would like to acquire.
• Controlled Digital Lending Is Neither Controlled Nor Legal (Authors Guild, 1-8-19) “Controlled Digital Lending” or “CDL” is a recently invented legal theory that allows libraries to justify the scanning (or obtaining of scans) of print books and e-lending those digital copies to users without obtaining authorization from the copyright owners. The CDL concept is based on a faulty legal argument that has already been rejected by the U.S. courts.
• Penguin Random House Changes Library E-book Lending Terms (Andrew Albanese, PW, 9-4-18) 'As of October 1, 2018, PRH is moving from a perpetual access model (where libraries pay a higher price but retain access to the e-book forever) to a metered model (with lower prices on e-books that expire after two years). In a letter to library customers, PRH v-p Skip Dye said the change was made after listening to librarians' feedback....“Most librarians are telling us they would rather pay lower prices across our frontlists and backlists, in exchange for a copy that expires after a given time period."...In addition, PRH announced that the publisher will be creating a program exclusively for academic libraries, under which they will be able to purchase perpetual access copies, although at “a significantly higher price” than public library copies.'
• To Free or Not to Free: Giving Away Your Ebook (David Kudler on The Book Designer blog, 4-19-18) "In those days, Amazon and the other retailers didn’t differentiate between the rankings of free books and those that people had to pay for. For this reason, the bestseller lists on their sites were full of free books — either temporarily or permanently free (aka permafree). That gave the purveyors of those books a HUGE amount of visibility....The freebie boost also helped your author ranking, making all of your other ebooks easier to discover as well....About five or six years back, they created separate bestseller lists for free and paid books, so if you switched back and forth, you lost all of the momentum immediately — indeed, your book hadn’t been for sale for a while and so its ranking would have dropped while it was being given away."
• Reader Magnets: Get readers to come to you by Nick Stephenson. ("If you have offered your book through Amazon’s KDPSelect/KindleUnlimited subscription program, one of the few remaining benefits is the opportunity to give your book away up to five days per 90-day term.
• Author Earnings (Hugh Howey). These pieces are worth skimming if only to see the relative proportions of sales of various forms of publication, including various forms of fiction ebooks.
---The Amazon 7K Report (2-14)
---The Amazon 50K Report (2-14)
---The B&N Report
---The Print vs. Digital Report
---The Amazon 85K Report (5-14)
---The Tenured vs. Debut Report
But take a look also at the following comments about the shortcomings in Howey's data, in a world where Amazon and traditional publishers keep real figures a secret.
• Hugh Howey calls for author earnings revolution (Alison Flood, The Guardian 2-14-14) Author calls for publishers to concentrate more on readers and writers, after releasing data which claims to reveal the strength of self-publishing in genre fiction.
• eBook pricing resembles three dimensional chess (Mike Shatzkin, The Shatzkin File, 9-6-16) "An unpleasant underlying reality seems inescapable: revenues for publishers and authors will be going down on a per-unit basis. This can most simply be attributed to the oldest law there is: the law of supply and demand. Digital change means a lot more book titles are available to any consumer to choose from at any time. Demand can’t possibly rise as fast and, in fact, based on competition from other media through devices people carry with them every day, might even fall (if it hasn’t already). So publishers are facing one set of challenges with their high ebook prices; they’ll create another set if they lower them. But, unfortunately, lower them they almost certainly must. With more data, we may learn that developing new authors absolutely requires it, particularly in fiction." And he suggests a new pricing routine.
• Pirated ebooks threaten the future of book series (Alison Flood, The Guardian, 11-6-17) With 4 million or 17% of all online ebooks being pirated, novelists including Maggie Stiefvater and Samantha Shannon say theft by fans puts their books at risk. 'We're told to be grateful we even have readers.' Stiefvater had seen fans sharing pdfs online and was “intent on proving that piracy had affected the Raven Cycle”. Fantasy novelist Tom Pollock said that readers needed to be “aware of the consequences of pirating … In an economy based on market signals, the signal being sent if people pirate rather than buy or borrow is: ‘Nobody wants this’.” Maggie Stiefvater and Samantha Shannon talk about how their fans downloading pirated ebooks discourages authors from writing and defeats the creation of precisely those books that fans want to read. H/T Authors Guild
• Authors Guild Files Brief Affirming Benefits of Competitive E-book Economy (Authors Guild, 12-2-15) The brief asks the Supreme Court to review a decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in U.S. v. Apple, which found that Apple violated antitrust law by coordinating with major U.S. book publishers to influence the price of e-books. After a 20-day trial in summer 2013, the trial court found that Apple colluded with the publishers to drive the price of e-books above the $9.99 favored by Amazon. The Second Circuit upheld that decision. Today’s filing continues the Authors Guild’s efforts to ensure that the nation’s book markets aren’t controlled by a single dominant player.
• Why E-content Prices Will Erode Even Further (Joe Wikert, BookBusiness, 7-7-14) Makes a darned good argument, alas.
• Further Thoughts of a Novice E-Reader (Verlyn Klinkenborg, NY Times, Opinion, 5-29-10) "...most of the books I’ve ever read have come from lending libraries....The entire impulse behind Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iBooks assumes that you cannot read a book unless you own it first — and only you can read it unless you want to pass on your device."
• Self-published ebooks: the surprising data from Amazon (Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing, 2-13-14) Top 2500 Amazon genre bestsellers by format (mystery/thriller/suspense, science fiction & fantasy, & romance)
• Do Hugh Howey’s AuthorEarnings Add Up? (Porter Anderson, Publishing Perspectives, 2-18-14) Doctorow sums up Howie's message: "authors should not assume that there’s always more money to be made in traditional contracts."
• Comparing self-publishing to being published is tricky and most of the data you need to do it right is not available (Mike Shatzkin, Shatzkin Files, 2-13-14) Among data not included in Howey's analysis, writes Shatzkin:
1. Author revenue from print sales.
2. Getting an advance before publication versus having costs before publication.
3. Unearned advances and their impact on author earnings.
4. Getting paid for doing the work of publishing which goes beyond authoring.
5. Current indie successes where the author name or even the book itself was “made” by traditional publishers.
6. Rights deals.
7. How well Amazon data “maps” to what happens elsewhere. Is it really projectable?
8. The apparent reality: flow of authors is self- to traditionally-published, not the other way around.
9. Publishers can raise royalty rates (or lower prices) when it becomes compelling to do so.
• The Plot Twist: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far From Dead (Alexandra Alter, Media, NY Times, 9-22-15) "While analysts once predicted that e-books would overtake print by 2015, digital sales have instead slowed sharply. Now, there are signs that some e-book adopters are returning to print, or becoming hybrid readers, who juggle devices and paper." As summarized in the Authors Guild Bulletin, Fall 2015: "Just why e-book sales have cooled is a matter of opinion. The article's author, Alexandra Alter, and the several hundred readers who weighed in on the subject online offered a wide range of possible explanations: e-book prices have risen; e-reading devices have yet to be perfected; print books are preferable for gifts; children's books and picture books remain almost entirely on paper; e-books cannot be resold or given away; readers may be shifting to cheap or free self-published titles (the AAP's figures do not include self-published book sales)."
• No, E-Book Sales Have Not Slipped and the Publishing Industry Knows it (Howard Lovy, Foreword Reviews blog, ) "... buried within the New York Times story that heralded the blessed new numbers is the admission that they decided not to count the largest portion of the e-book business: indie self-published work. 'It is also possible that a growing number of people are still buying and reading e-books, just not from traditional publishers'..."
• Book wars: A monopolist vs. the cartel (Steve Pearlstein, Business, Washington Post 6-7-14). Attention writers: an excellent analysis. "In business terms, what is about to play out is the next round in a long-running battle between a manufacturing cartel (the publishers) and a monopoly retailer (Amazon) for control of the value chain that links book writers and their readers. In most respects, it is similar to the battles in other parts of the news and entertainment sector where digital technology has also upset the old order but a new order has yet to emerge." "...authors from time to time have offered to take a smaller advance in exchange for a royalty rate higher than the 15 percent industry standard. Such offers, however, are routinely and universally rejected."
Missing from this excellent piece online is a HarperCollins chart (see following piece by Jim Milliot): "Authors makes about $1.60 less from a typical e-book sale than a hardcover sale, while the publishing house is left with $2.20 more in gross profit (that’s the money used to pay for editing, marketing and general overhead, as well as profit for investors)....In other words, while the work done by author and publisher is exactly the same for a printed book or an e-book, what they are paid for that work is significantly different."
The New Harper Collins (Jim Milliot, PW, 6-7-13). Report on a HC presentation to industry analysts. See especially the chart showing the economics of a hardcover vs an ebook.
• Ten Things You May Not Know About Ebook Prices (Rachel Willmer, TechCrunch, 1-15-14) Prices in the $9-10 range earn more revenue than books priced $2 to $3.
• U.S. Judge Rules Apple Colluded on E-Books ( Chad Bray, Joe Palazzolo and Ian Sherr, WSJ, 7-10-13). Apple Inc. colluded with five major U.S. publishers to drive up the prices of e-books, a federal judge ruled. Prosecutors argued that Apple used publishers' dissatisfaction with Amazon's aggressive e-book discounting to shoehorn itself into the digital-book market when it launched the iPad in 2010.
• Did Apple Fix E-Book Prices for the Greater Good? (Vauhini Vara, New Yorker, 12-16-14) "According to recent case law, price-fixing schemes designated as horizontal (that is, coördinated among competitors) violate antitrust law, no matter the parties’ intentions or the effects on the market. But “vertical” price-fixing (between a retailer and a manufacturer) may not be a violation, depending on such factors as the companies’ motives and the outcomes of their actions." One judge "asked a lawyer for the Justice Department how Apple and the publishers 'could have broken Amazon’s monopoly of the e-book market without violating antitrust laws.'"
• Why do e-books cost so much? (Stacy Johnson, Christian Science Monitor, 1-12-13). It's not because costs are higher. "The lion’s share of the retail price of a book, whether in digital or physical form, is going to the publisher.... the power has never been with the artist, or the consumer. It’s been with the distributor. ... In the case of books, the publisher. But thanks to the Internet, that’s changing now.... The publishing industry – the gatekeeper between writers and readers – is collapsing under its own weight. I no longer need to surrender up to 90 percent of the price of a book to the publisher."
• Amazon vs Book Publishers (check out all the articles on Amazon's fight with book publishers, particularly over ebook prices--and who loses mainly? Writers and readers.)
• Little Sign of a Predicted E-Book Price War (David Streitfeld, NY Times, 12-23-12). After the Justice Department sued five major publishers and Apple on e-book price-fixing charges, many felt the prices of e-books would plunge--but they didn't. Amazon, which led the price wars in the first place (aiming to grab market share), has not lowered its prices, and the growth in sales has leveled off. (Streitfeld makes many interesting points.)
• Rethinking what's happening with ebook prices (Shatzkin Files, 9-13-12). As always, read the comments, too.
• Ebook price drops begin — and Apple is discounting, too (Laura Hazard Owen, PaidContent, 9-11-12) Just a few days after the approval of the DOJ’s ebook settlement, HarperCollins has entered into new contracts with ebook retailers, and they’re already discounting its titles. What kinds of deals will you get?
• Everything you need to know about the e-book lawsuit in one post (Laura Owen, Gigaom.com, 4-11-12) 4/18-12: After weeks of buildup, the Department of Justice sued Apple and five book publishers on Wednesday, April 11 and accused them of conspiring to set e-book prices. At the heart of the issue: "Agency pricing is at the heart of the lawsuits but the legality of the model itself does not appear to be in question. Agency pricing allows book publishers to set the prices of their e-books, while the retailer (the “agent”) takes a commission. Under the agency model, the publisher is the only party that can discount e-books, and an e-book’s price must be the same across all retailers (i.e., an e-book can’t go on sale at just one retailer). The agency model is different from the wholesale model, in which publishers set a book’s suggested retail price and retailers can discount the books to any price they want." Links to several articles about this lawsuit and issue.
• Digital Book World lets us look at ebook bestsellers by price, and things are revealed (The Shatzkin Files, 8-20-12)
• The eBook Wars: The Price Battle (I) 1-9-10). Rich Aden, on his An American Editor blog, writes about what happens to the quality of books when accountants call for outsourcing at prices so low that a well-edited book is unlikely.
• How to price ebooks (Pat McNees, roundup of pieces on the subject, Writers & Editors, 8-14-13)
• The eBook Wars: The Price Battle (Rich Adin, An American Editor 1-9-10). Consumers reading sloppily, hastily edited ebooks are definitely going to be annoyed with high prices. Deal with the quality problems, folks.
The problem with Kindle Unlimited
and the hassle over Amazon's ebook return policy
• Amazon Is Changing Its Ebook Return Policy in Major Breakthrough for Authors (Authors Guild, 9-22-22) After discussions with authors group, Amazon announces plans to change its ebook return policy to restrict automatic returns to purchases where no more than 10 percent of the book has been read.
• Authors are protesting Amazon's e-book policy that allows users to read and return (Deanna Schwartz, NPR, 6-26-22) When an Amazon customer returns an e-book, royalties originally paid to the author at the time of purchase are deducted from their earnings balance. Authors can end up with negative balances when customers return books after the author has already been paid by Kindle Direct Publishing. E-books are also the only digital products Amazon allows customers to return.
• Kindle Unlimited Royalty Pool Will Be Paid Per Page Starting July 1, 2015 (Authors Guild) "Starting July 1, Amazon will pay royalties to its indie authors based on the number of pages users actually read, rather than the number of times the book is “borrowed....The royalty adjustment comes almost a year after Amazon launched Kindle Unlimited, an e-book subscription service where readers pay $9.99 a month for access to hundreds of thousands of titles, most of which are self-published by members of Amazon’s KDP Select program." "...a sad reminder that traditional publishers—whose unsavory contract terms we’re focusing on as part of our Fair Contract Initiative—aren’t the only ones who offer writers take-it-or-leave-it publishing contracts."
As one novelist has explained, KU has 70% of the e-book market because many readers are happy to spend only $10 a month to read all the e-books (or parts of e-books) they want--and having that broad subscription allows them to take chances on new authors--which is also great for debut authors. (Until you read the fine print. Keep reading.)
• One writer pulled his books from KU not only because of the paltry page-read payout, but because he wanted his books to be available at their local library. "I practically grew up in libraries, and not being able to put my books there without violating the exclusivity clause chafed at me. To go into KU or not is each author's decision, but for me, going wide was absolutely the best call."
See also Six Takeaways from the Authors Guild 2018 Author Income Survey (1-5-19) "Authors who self-publish with KDP Select and receive the marketing benefits that come with it, such as the ability to offer free books for five days, are required to take part in Kindle Unlimited (KU) and accept payments from the pool for reads through KU. KDP Direct authors get a royalty of only 35% if they price their books above $9.99 (compared to 70% for books priced $2.99–9.99), contributing to authors’ losses and giving Amazon a windfall on books that are expensive to produce."
As one novelist reported: "Yes, lamentably KU is part of the Netflix et al "all you can eat for one price buffet" for content approach. KU generally produces about 1/4 the profit of an ebook sale. And of course major publishers will not put their content there, so it's mostly populated by indies. Problem these days is that there are no new readers, just plenty of new books flooding the market, and Amazon is sadly the major platform for sales. I have a few titles in KU just as a means for introduction…but it's not a major revenue generator, more of a marketing tool."
And as another novelist observed: "Many readers don't know this but Amazon's Kindle Unlimited program doesn't pay authors by the book, only by "page turn"-and a measly .0035 cents per page turn at that." (And that income comes as a percentage from a pool of works by indie authors, not from a specified $ per page.)
Plus, from the spring/2015 issue of the Authors Guild Bulletin: "Kindle Unlimited is a subscription service for which readers pay a monthly fee to have unlimited access to over 700,000 ebooks. ...While traditionally published authors whose books are part of KU are paid for an e-book sale as soon as a reader has accessed more than 10 percent of a book, indie authors are paid out of a royalty pool that is split among all self-published authors." (Emphasis added.)
• KDP Select vs. "Going Wide" — Which Option is Right For You? (Reedsy, 2-27-19) "Of all the big decisions you have to make in your journey as a self-publishing author, one of the biggest is whether or not to enroll your ebook in Amazon's KDP Select: a program which offers authors bonus incentives in exchange for granting Amazon exclusivity." What is Kindle Direct Publishing? What is KDP Select? Pros of KDP Select (going exclusive) and cons (going wide).
• Is Amazon's Kindle Select Bad for Indie Authors? (This discussion on Goodreads raises lots of important points and provides links to many helpful articles. Among points made: Amazon is a few steps away from totally dominating the market (this is both pro and con--that's where the market is, but you are also helping them in their power grab). Publishing exclusively on Kindle Select means you rule out other parts of the market. "They have a $500,000 pot, and all participating authors will share. That means the best selling authors will take their share, and everyone else divvies up the rest. You can't earn more unless the best sellers earn less because the size of the pot remains unchanged." If you remove your book from other distribution channels, you lose your ranking there, etc.
"Amazon Prime members (the people who are paying to borrow books in the KDP Select program) are limited to one "borrowed" book per month. What kind of lending library is that?" And so on.
• Seduced by the Dark Side--Amazon Select (Diana Layne, Five Scribes blog). Layne reports on the numbers after she posted one of her two novels on Amazon Select. " I don’t look at it as giving my books away for free, but rather investing in promotion to reach a worldwide audience....by keeping the price at $2.99 for a while, I’m hoping to lure more readers into taking a chance on an unknown author." (LOVE that background photo.)
• Make Money From Kindle Self-Publishing: Four-Step System To Triple Your Income From Nonfiction Books by Sally Miller
• What Every Indie Author Needs to Know About E-Books (Alex Palmer, PW, 10-28-16) A quick guide to the evolving e-book industry. "It has never been easier to publish your own e-book. The wealth of tools, platforms, and services available to self-publishers continues to grow and be refined for an ever-broader reach and greater efficiency. But with so many good options, it is also more important than ever for authors to choose carefully how best to position themselves for the greatest chance of engaging the largest possible audience." • Book Bub (great deals in ebooks). See The Secret You Need to Know About Ebooks (The Book Insider). Sign up for your favorite genres, and daily receive an email linking you to heavily discounted (and occasionally, for a day, free) ebooks. • KDP Kids "Create and sell beautiful Kindle books to millions of readers worldwide." For children's books. • iBooks Author Create books for the Apple iBookstore (only). • Blurb ebooks. Blurb can also help you create Blurb print books • Book Creator (iPad app for illustrated books, including children's books) • 12 things to know about iBooks and iBooks Store (Piotr Kowalczyk, Ebook Friendly, 12-9-16) "In 2011, Apple updated the conditions of how app developers earned money via in-app purchases. The competing ebookstores were forced to remove the store links from their iOS apps. Since that time, when you wanted to buy the full version of the Kindle book from a link at the end of a free sample, you had to go to the Amazon website, find that book, buy it, return to the Kindle app, and refresh the content. How convenient. So, if you had used Kindle on your Android smartphone before, and has recently switched to the iPhone, don’t get disappointed with the Kindle for iOS. The app is crippled not because Amazon doesn’t care about iOS users, but because Apple “cares” to bring as many as possible to the iBooks Store." This article is worth reading to get the big picture, whatever app or smartphone you use. • A Self-Publisher's Companion: Expert Advice for Authors Who Want to Publish by Joel Friedlander, TheBookDesigner.com. Sample: On the dichotomy between loving books, print and typography and embracing digital publishing. Joel is still a print book junkie but explains the benefits of ebooks. Currently ebooks are primitive compared to print, but the tools will improve and ebook design will improve. Ebooks are basic text packaging right now, but they will be beautiful in the future. It is complicated at the moment – formats are confusing and ugly. We are in the Betamax vs VHS era but the industry will move on. A standard format will enable us to then be able to experiment with making them look better. • The Way We Read Now (Dwight Garner, NY Times book critic, on the pros and cons, for book readers, of smartphones, e-readers, and the iPad). • Changing Formats: From Scroll to Codex to eBooks (by Jack Lyon, on An American Editor, 2-25-15) The fascinating story about what (and how recent) a page is and how it is changing, with links to important practical information for those of us producing ebooks. • Resource list for a workshop on "Making Book with Ebooks" that Carl Zimmer, Deborah Blum, and Tabitha M. Powledge did for the National Association of Science Writers. Their advice: "Caveat emptor-- i.e., read the fine print"). • Closing the Gap Between University Presses and Libraries (Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed, 10-18-18) "Two leading university presses are changing the way they sell their digital collections to libraries -- cutting out the middlemen. Will others follow suit? ...MIT Press and the University of Michigan Press have both announced plans to start selling their ebook collections directly to libraries by creating their own distribution platforms. The publishers previously did not have a mechanism for selling to institutions directly. Instead, access to ebooks was largely brokered through third-party acquisition services such as EBSCO, ProQuest, OverDrive, Project Muse and JSTOR." • eBook Readers (Claude Kerno, Jan. 2012) Helpful even 2 yrs later. • Field Guide to Fixed Layout for Ebooks (download, from Book Industry Study Group) • Resources: Going from InDesign to Ebook (free ebook by Colleen Cunningham, Digital Book World) • Typography in Kindle? Yes, we can (David Bergsland, guest blog on The Book Designer, 6-8-12) Good explanations of tech terms. • Amazon Kindle (in various versions: Kindle, Kindle Touch, Kindle Keyboard, and coming soon, Kindle Fire (with more than books--including movies). Both an ebook reading device and a platform, readable on other readers--but with proprietary software)_. Disconcerting feature: Kindle keeping track of your highlighting. See Introduction to the Amazon Kindle (YouTube). Late 2011: Amazon moving its format to HTML 5--to compete with Apple. • Kindle Direct Publishing (self-publish your eBooks in the Kindle store, but read the fine print on those 70% royalties, which may prove to be only 30%, depending...) • Why I Cancelled My Kindle Unlimited Subscription (Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed, 3-11-15) "The selection on Kindle Unlimited is shockingly bad....The mistake that Amazon seems to be making is that they structure the Kindle Unlimited program at the low-end of the book buying market." • Apple iPad (for reading Apple's iBooks -- a tablet computer with more functionality than Kindle but smaller selection of titles). Ian Paul's PCWorld review 4-2-10: Apple iPad's iBooks vs Amazon's Kindle • Barnes & Noble Nook (Android operating system and affordable; 3G and WiFi connectivity makes downloading ebooks and lending them to friends easy) • Book Baby • CreateSpace • Google ebook store (launched Dec. 7, 2010 -- expected to offer a large selection of public domain and professional and scientific books) • Kobo eReader(good for basics; no bells and whistles) • Kobo Writing Life (launching early summer 2012, to compete with Kindle Direct, for self-publishing eBooks to the Kobo market) • Lulu • Sony Reader (weakest device and store, says Mike Shatzkin, who in early August 2010 describes the pros and cons of the first ebook devices and platforms. No Internet capabilities; ebooks downloaded to your computer through USB cable and transferred to device.) Shatzkin describes • Blio (Baker & Taylor and the National Federation of the Blind added sound and video and tools to bring free reading to the sight-impaired--capable of handling heavily illustrated books, to be offered by Toshiba, using Microsoft’s XPS platform) • Copia (a social e-Reading experience, with social networking built "into the content consumption platform"--and allows epub files using Adobe DRM to move painlessly into their platform, no matter where ebook was purchased) Alex e-Reader (dual-screen, Android-powered) Some review sites for e-readers: • E-book reader review (top 10, helpful chart of features) • cNet reviews of E-Book readers (editors' and users ratings) • Ebooks & Ebook Readers (Joel Friedlander's roundup on The Book Designer) • engadget • The Shatzkin Report (Mike Shatzkin, always engaging) • ebrary (provides e-books and technology to libraries) (Still gathering information for this part.) • The Dark Ages of E-Books. BenClemens, on Blurb.com, writes that "Reading devices like the Kindle, Nook, and iPad all have separate bookstores and book formats, and their makers (and other companies) are trying to create readers ‘locked in’ to their device and bookstores....none of these formats have the prospect of being around to be read on future readers." He also posts a review of the latest e-book readers as of January 2011 Check out Next.blurb.com on the Future of the Book. • Apple Forces e-Tailers to Remove In-App Links. Does Apple's heavy-handed approach on eReader apps remind anyone of the Beta/VHS wars? "In response to Apple beginning to enforce new iOS4 app design guidelines that prohibit in-app links that allow consumers to bypass the Apple purchasing system, retailers are scrambling to let consumers know that they can still read their e-books on their Apple devices and alternative ways to buy e-books. Kobo, for one, announced plans to develop its own HTML5 eReading Web app that will allow consumers to shop, browse and share content outside of the Apple purchasing system by using their web browser. B&N also plans to release updated versions of its Nook and Nook Kids for iPad apps. Other content retailers are expected to follow suit. Beginning this week, links to e-book stores in Amazon's Kindle app and those in apps by such e-book retailers as Kobo, Blio, B&N and Google eBooks have all been removed. In fact B&N's Nook and Nook Kids for iPads apps have been removed form the App store." (Calvin Reid PW, 7-26-11) |
EBook Formats and Formatting
and Style GuidesSome of the earlier posts here my be out of date. Stick with the first two entries and you'll be okay. Eventually I will prune the out of date posts.
Start here:
• How to Format a Book (Dave Chesson, Kindlepreneur) Free online, and invaluable. Or buy the book. Knowing how to format a book for publication is crucial to your success as an author. He breaks it down into steps/chapters.
• How to Turn a Microsoft Word Document Into an Ebook (EPUB)(Jane Friedman with help fro Dave Chesson, 4-13-21) Word doesn't export to EPUB, but you can still produce an editable file quickly, without buying software or using a "meatgrinder" conversion. "Amazon offers Kindle Create to help you design and format ebook files using Word, but there’s one huge caveat: They will create ebook files that work on Kindle, but they will not be EPUB files. That means that the files you prepare using Amazon’s tools will not work at other retailer or distribution sites."
• Check your ebook formatting as KDP warns of new ‘file ingestion’ requirements (Roger Packer, 10-9-2020)
• Choosing an eBook format – reflowable or fixed-layout? (eBookPartnership) With the standard format, used for most novels and many nonfiction books, the reader can adjust font type and size and still have the text reflow to suit the device on which text is being read (e.g., smartphone or laptop). Fixed format may be better for nonfiction books with illustrations, charts, and photos, for cookbooks and coffee table books, and for highly illustrated children's books. An important explanation.
• Amazon Kindles now support EPUB books (sort of), but MOBI and AZW support is ending in 2022 (Brad Linder Liliputing, 4-30-22) The Kindle Personal Documents service lets you send TXT, HTML, DOC, PDF, HTML or image files to a Kindle device or app for free, as well as DRM-free eBooks in supported formats. They’ll then be converted to a Kindle-readable format. Up until recently, one of the most popular eBook formats was not supported, but now you can finally send EPUB files to a Kindle. As of April 30, 2022, these are the file formats you can email to your Send to Kindle address to add an item to your Kindle Personal Documents library:
MOBI (.AZW, .MOBI)
Microsoft Word (.DOC, .DOCX)
HTML (.HTML, .HTM)
RTF (.RTF)
Text (.TXT)
JPEG (.JPEG, .JPG)
GIF (.GIF)
PNG (.PNG)
BMP (.BMP)
PDF (.PDF)
EPUB (.EPUB)
Note that if you're sending an EPUB, PDF, MOBI, or AZW file, it will have to be DRM-free. Some eBook sellers will offer some or all titles without DRM, which is software designed to restrict your ability to make copies of eBooks or other content.
• E-Books Get a Makeover (Jennifer Maloney, WSJ, 6-26-15) E-readers rejoice: Amazon and Google are rolling out new fonts (Bookerly and Literata) designed not only to look better on screen but to make reading easier on the eye.
• How to Turn a Microsoft Word Document Into an Ebook (EPUB) (Jane Friedman, 8-7-17). See also How to Publish an Ebook: Resources for Authors
• Smashwords Style Guide (for e-books)
• How to make an eBook (Kindle, ePub, Smashwords) (DIY Book Formats)
• Notjohn's Guide to Kindle Publishing 2016: Ten Steps To Formatting Your E-Book for Sale on Amazon (Or Anywhere Else) by N.J. Notjohn
• Ebook basics for authors (part 1: formatting); Part 2: DRM, or copy protection; and Part 3: Trends, Q&A This was from a while ago. Many discussions have gone on since then about whether or not to keep using DRM and not everyone will be doing so.
• Publishing & Marketing Tips > Amazon DRM - yes or no? (Goodreads Authors/Readers Discussion)
• Should publishers abolish DRM and trust HTML? (Smashwords, 12-1-09)
• Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines
• The DRM Debate (R.D.Pruden, The Writer's Mill, 9-15-12) "All of the major publishing houses insist on DRM, while self published authors are split on the issue. Mike Coker, founder and president of Smashwords refers to DRM as an infection, and Smashwords does not offer the option to it’s clients. Mr. Coker has published an article on the subject on the Smashwords Blog."
• Which ebook reading format works with which reader? (quicky chart from Lisa Angeletti).
• Top eBook Publishers and eBook Publishing Services (John Kremer's directory of eBook formatting and translation services)
• Publlishing Your Ebooks (52 Novels) a broad "how to" for Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and Smashwords
• How to self-publish an ebook (David Carnoy, CNET exec. editor, 6-1-12).
• Self-publishing a book: 25 things you need to know (David Carnoy, CNEt, 6-13-12)
• 10 Questions to Ask Before Committing to Any E-Publishing Service (Jane Friedman, Writing, reading, and publishing in the digital age, 2-10-12). Be sure you know the answers to these questions!
• FAQ about ebooks from 52 Novels
• How Writers Can Turn Their Archives into eBooks (Carl Zimmer, The Atlantic, 10-14-10). Excellent idea!
• Before Choosing an E-Book, Pondering the Format in which to deliver it, Peter Wayner, NY Times 9-24-09
• Learning the Inner Workings of an E-Book File (Elizabeth Castro, Nieman Reports Winter 2011)
• EBook Conversion Services Directory, an invaluable directory courtesy of book designer Joel Friedlander (Marin Bookworks), which you can sort by providers or by format you want to produce.
• Why NOT To Use Cut-Rate ePub Conversion Service (ePub and eBookHelp.com)
• Free eBook Formatting & Marketing Guides for Writers (Jason Boog's helpful links, GalleyCat, 1-24-13)
• How to Convert Your Manuscript to a Kindle eBook (for PC Users) (AgentQuery)
• How to Create an EPUB file -- Mac or PC Users (AgentQuery)
• Take pride in your eBook formatting (Guido Henkel)
Kindle
• Formatting Kindle (eBook Architects, who have a list of e-book blogs)
• Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines (PDF, AmazonKindle, How to make books available for the Kindle platform)
• CJ's Easy as Pie Kindle Tutorials
• Kindle Formatting: The complete guide (a sample--Joshua Tallent). Here's Kindle Formatting . Bottom line: Kindle uses mobi files; others use EPub. Get the big picture on how to format for various types of readers so you convert files in the most efficient manner.
• How to Publish Your Own Amazon Kindle Ebook (David Bradley, PC World, 8-8-11) Basic stuff: "The Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing service--which I'll focus on for this article--can work with .doc, .docx, .rtf, .pdf, .epub, .txt, .zip, .mobi, or .prc files. Amazon recommends creating and editing your content in Microsoft Word."
• Kindle Boards Writers' Cafe (discussion board to help authors of e-books promote their books)
• Amazon's Digital Text Platform (DTP) (Kindle Direct Publishing)
• Amazon introduces new Kindle eBook format and makes a major misstep (Guido Henkel 10-21-11). Old Kindles won't support new format! Confusion and extra work and expense for e-book producers.
• Indie Author Guide to Publishing for the Kindle (April L. Hamilton)
All the rest
• Apple iBookstore Now Open Directly to Independent Publishers
• Creating ePub Files with Apple’s Pages program
• EPUB Straight to the Point: Creating ebooks for the Apple iPad and other ereaders (Elizabeth Castro's book)
• PubIt! Barnes & Noble's Support & Resources Page
• Kobo writing life FAQ for writers (PDF)
• Calibre FAQ page. Calibre is an eBook management system that works with most formats, but not Kindle.
• Getting Started with Calibre (eBookReader.com)
• Academic eBook platforms (Center for Research Libraries)
Smashwords
• Smashwords (your ebook, your way--a digital self-publishing platform and online bookstore). Smashwords support FAQs answers lots of questions.
• Convert MS Word docs to e-books for free (Dennis O'Reilly, CNET, 7-3-12). "The Smashwords e-book-publishing service transforms Word's DOC files into the EPUB, MOBI, and other e-book formats, but only if you shun text boxes, tables, and other common formatting elements in the file, as the handy Smashwords guide explains."
• How to Publish and Distribute Your Ebook with Smashwords! (Smashwords
• What's wrong with Smashwords? (Bradley Flora, SPAN)
• Smashwords FAQs, Smashwords Style Guide (by Mark Coker, provides guidance for “major ebook retailers such as the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and Diesel”) and Smashwords Marketing Guide (also Coker).
• Q&A: Smashwords Founder Mark Coker Predicts Drop in eBook Prices (with Devon Glenn, dBookNewser, 1-31-11)
• Apple's Biggest (Unknown) Supplier of E-Books (J.J. Colao, Forbes, 6-7-12). "Smashwords, a 14-person company in Los Gatos, Calif., Coker gives authors free self-publishing software that converts Word documents into e-book files—and lets them set the price. Through distribution partnerships those e-books line the shelves of digital bookstores run by Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony and Kobo. No deal yet with Amazon."
Ebook subscription services
• Publishers Change Ebook and Audiobook Models; Libraries Look for Answers (Matt Enis, Library Journal, 7-17-19) 'Within the past month, Hachette Book Group replaced its perpetual licensing model for libraries with a two-year ebook and digital audiobook lending model. Simon & Schuster eliminated perpetual licensing on digital audiobooks and replaced it with two-year licensing, announced per-circ pricing for select ebook titles, and made additional changes to its library ebook model. And audiobook provider Blackstone Publishing announced a new 90-day embargo on sales to libraries, leading to a boycott. “Most libraries are frustrated by these changes, but I would rather we continue to work with publishers to find a sustainable model, rather than have them potentially exit the digital library market entirely.’”'
• Ebook Services Are Bringing Unhinged Conspiracy Books into Public Libraries (Claire Woodcock, Motherboard, 4-20-22) Librarians say Holocaust deniers, antivaxxers, and other conspiracy theorists are being featured in the catalogs of a popular ebook lending service. For years, the digital media service Hoopla has given library patrons access to ebooks, movies, and audiobooks through bulk subscriptions sold to public libraries. But more recently, librarians have started calling for transparency into the company’s practices after realizing its digital ebook collection contains countless low-quality titles promoting far-right conspiracy theories, COVID disinformation, LGBTQ+ conversion therapy, and Holocaust denial.
• Oyster (unlimited ebook, $9.95 a month), does not include all publishers
• Scribd (read unlimited books for $8.99 a month), does not include all publishers
• Entitle (formerly eReatah)
• Safari (streaming the best video courses and books). B2B, not B2C, says Mike Shatzkin, is an expensive professional tool subscribed to by a business or govt entity for which personal use may be considered an employee benefit.
• Not all books and not all subscription services are created equal (Mike Shatzkin, Idea Logical, 6-11-14). Shatzkin makes distinction between "immersive narratives" (read from start to finish) and "chunkable" books ("the ones that are least likely to be read from start-to-finish and most likely to be useful in bits and pieces").
• Are Ebook Subscription Services Worth It? (Thorin Klosowski, Lifehacker, 1-21-14). What you pay for Oyster, Scribd, and Entitle, and what you get, or don't get). As a reader, you can do more with the Amazon Kindle app, and Amazon offers a bigger selection, but these three are fine at displaying text on a page.
• Why I Cancelled My Kindle Unlimited Subscription (Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed, 3-11-15) While Amazon promises 700,000 e-books (and thousands of audiobooks), almost none of these books were ones I actually want to read. The selection on Kindle Unlimited is shockingly bad. Amazon seems to have been completely unable to persuade authors or publishers to join the program.
• The unit of appreciation and the unit of sale (Mike Shatzkin, Idea Logical, 9-26-10). More on the difference between immersive reading and chunkable copy: "When you get beyond fiction and certain components of non-fiction (memoir, biography, some history and science), the books aren’t read cover to cover either. You usually use (what we now call) chunks of travel books, gardening books, cookbooks, computer books, crafts books. Even in the bookstore environment, sales of these books are suffering because a more granular offering is available online."
• Subscription services for ebooks progress to becoming a real experiment (Mike Shatzkin, Shatzkin Files, 5-27-14) It is by no means "a slam dunk that ebooks must go where Spotify has taken digital music and Netflix has taken the digital distribution of TV and movies, but it looks more likely today than it did six months ago....The core of subscription economics is to pay less to the content supplier than they earn other ways to give you some headroom to create a value proposition for consumers. That’s how Spotify and Netflix work. That’s how Book-of-the-Month Club works."
• Subscription Ebook Services Scribd, Oyster and Entitle Duke It Out For Early Dominance (Jeremy Greenfield, Forbes, 12-19-13)
• Russian Ebook Subscription Service Bookmate Raises $3 Million in Series A Funding (DBW, 5-23-14)
Ebooks vs. print
• 3 reasons why I still read books in print instead of digitally (Ozan Varol, Ladders, 1-15-19) "Print books are my refuge. They open the world by shutting out everything else." And other reasons.
• Are ebooks dying or thriving? The answer is yes (Thu-Huong Ha, Quartz, 5-13-18) "Ebooks are doing just fine: Americans consume hundreds of millions of them a year. But many of their authors are writing and publishing books, and finding massive audiences, without being actively tracked by the publishing industry. In fact, the company through which they publish and distribute their books, a tech behemoth disguised as a benevolent, content-agnostic retailer, is the only entity with any real idea of what’s going on in publishing as a whole. Amazon’s power over self-publishing, a shadow industry running outside the traditional publishing houses and imprints, is insidiously invisible....over the past seven years, self-published books—predominantly sold as ebooks–have offered a rare avenue through which writers can make a living just from writing, as opposed to speaking, teaching, and/or consulting. By cutting out publishers, writers sidestep print and distribution costs, increase their revenue, and are beholden to readers and algorithms, not critics, editors, marketers, or sales people. ..Self-published authors price their books lower than traditionally published ebooks, but authors can make up to 70% in royalties from Amazon; that’s double, even triple, the royalties they could make with a publisher."
• J.D. Salinger, E-Book Holdout, Joins the Digital Revolution (Alexandra Alter, NY Times, 8-11-19) “I’ve spent my whole life protecting him and not talking about him,” Matt Salinger said of his famously secretive father. But that is changing as he works to keep “The Catcher in the Rye” and other J.D. Salinger works alive in the digital age.He has explored "the possibility of releasing audiobook editions but said his father abhorred the idea of his books being performed or interpreted in any way in another medium."
• What Are Publishers Happy About Missing Out on the Digital Revolution? (Caleb Mason, Book Business, 5-9-18) The percentage of U.S, adults who have not read a single book in the year measured was 8% in 1978 and has been hovering at 23 to 27% in recent years. Print book reading has been on the decline since about the time the Internet came on the scene. Publishers gave up easy profits when they chose to ignore the future of the ebook and hide in the print past. Pricing ebooks at $14.95 is no way to deal with a shrinking book market.
• Owning Print Books Feels Different From Owning E-Books (Ellen Duffer, Forbes, 5-28-18) Researchers found that the psychological experience of owning an e-book is different from that of owning a print book. Research participants "described being more emotionally attached to physical books, and said they use physical books to establish a sense of self and belonging," among other things.
• Why Kobo didn't focus only on the U.S., home turf of Amazon (David Israelson, Globe and Mail, 7-4-17) Kobo's e-books and e-readers have been competing directly with Amazon's Kindle and with Apple ever since Kobo was founded as an offshoot of Indigo Books and Music Inc. in 2009. Industry numbers are vague, but Kobo is widely considered number three. Kobo wisely chose, from a base in Canada, to focus sales on "countries outside the US where e-books had a chance to become a serious category: Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Asia." Romance is particularly big; online look for Kobo images of women reading erotica ("active romance") on their phones.
• How Kobo Promotions Helped Boost My Sales (Kobo Writing Life, 8-14-15)
• Reading ebooks on a phone – 5 ways to make the most of it (Piotr Kowalczyk, Ebook Friendly, 2-19-17)
• 'Ebooks are stupid', says head of one of world's biggest publishers (Alison Flood, The Guardian, 2-2-18) The chief executive of Hachette Livre, Arnaud Nourry, says the industry has had ‘one or two successes among a hundred failures’ and that ebooks have ‘no creativity.’ ‘According to figures from the Publishers Association, consumer ebook sales in the UK fell in 2015 and 2016, from a high in 2014. That was the year Hachette and Amazon came to blows over ebook pricing, with the publishing giant refusing to cede price control to the online bookseller. Nourry told Scroll.in that, after studying the “mistakes” of the music and video industries, he became convinced that publishers needed to keep control of prices. “This wasn’t just coming from thinking of our revenues. If you let the price of ebooks go down to say $2 or $3 in western markets, you are going to kill all infrastructure, you’re going to kill booksellers, you’re going to kill supermarkets, and you are going to kill the author’s revenues,” he said. “You have to defend the logic of your market against the interest of the big technology companies and their business models. The battle in 2014 was all about that. We had to do it.”’
• The latest mystery in publishing? That pulp is not dead. (Thomas Heath, WashPost, 2-16-18) Digital books peaked three years ago, at about 20 percent of sales, compared with about 80 percent for print and audible, said Jed Lyons, chief executive of Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group. Digital’s share has since declined to about 15 percent of sales.... The company sells so many hiking books that it employs two full-time mapmakers in house. But the real heart of the business lies in its list of textbook titles and its recurring revenue. “It’s like the insurance business — an annuity,” Lyons said....Lyons loves the digital business, even though it appears to be in decline. Those sales are highly profitable, with margins of 90 percent. “The only cost of goods is the author,” Lyons said.
E-book rights, developments, conflicts, pricing, and struggles for market
On Amazon's Kindle, Sony Reader, iPad, and more
Read what's here if your publisher is asking you to agree to new e-rights retroactively!)
Here are a few key places to learn what's going on in the eBook digital revolution:
Digital Book World. Check out the roundup of coverage of Digital Book World 2011.
TeleRead (news and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics), which has a good blo+g.
MobileRead (excellent forums "for mobile geeks seeking information and advice for keeping their gadgets happy").
Let me know what key sources I've overlooked.
• Is the e-book a dead format? (Simon Rowberry, The Bookseller, UK, 7-24-17) E-book sales in the UK in 2016 fell 17 percent, while sales of printed books rose 8 percent. Sales of audio books are also rising.
• On eBooks Being a Dead Format (Nate Hoffelder, editor, The Digital Reader, 7-24-17). Responding to Rowberry, he agrees with some of his conclusion, but not with his assumptions. "While an industry can refuse to supply the market with what the market wants, that industry cannot kill that want. And in the case of digital goods, it cannot prevent consumers from adopting the digital goods - they'll just turn to someone else to supply the content....n the case of book publishing, the legacy industry is being replaced by those who will supply either the (fiction) ebooks consumers want, or the (nonfiction) videos and other content that people are using to learn."
• The Plot Twist: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far From Dead (Alexandra Alter, Media, NY Times, 9-22-15) "E-book subscription services, modeled on companies like Netflix and Pandora, have struggled to convert book lovers into digital binge readers, and some have shut down....The surprising resilience of print has provided a lift to many booksellers....Higher e-book prices may also be driving readers back to paper....It is also possible that a growing number of people are still buying and reading e-books, just not from traditional publishers....“Will the next generation want to read books on their smartphones, and will we see another burst come?”"
• Are books and the internet about to merge? (Damien Walter, The Guardian, 2-15-12) The difference between ebooks and the internet is minimal, and we should be glad the two are growing closer and closer.
• Here's a good explanation of the economics of publishers using "agency pricing" to sell ebooks: E-Book Prices Prop Up Print Siblings (Jeffrey A.Trachtenberg, Wall Street Journal, 9-12-11). Worried about Amazon's deep-discount pricing, the six major publishers adopted a new pricing model, known as "agency pricing," under which publishers set the price on a book (to keep prices high enough to make a profit) and retailers act as an agent on each sale, taking 30% and returning 70% to the publisher. Trachtenberg explains who gets what under different scenarios, and more. Read the graphic sidebar.
Here's another good explanation: What Is the Agency Model for Ebooks? Your Burning Questions Answered (S. Boyle, Publishing Trendsetter, 5-1-12). The differences between the wholesale model and the agency model--see the chart.
• More recently, see Mike Shatzkin (2-29-16) writes that although agency pricing "may have started six years ago as a way for publishers to control the prices of ebooks across the supply chain, so something they were 'imposing' on Amazon. But that turned around. It became a way for Amazon to guarantee that they would get a full margin on all agency publishers’ ebook sales (because publishers could lower the ebook price, but the stipulated agency percentage would not be affected). So, in the recent negotiations, the big publishers had no choice about sticking with agency. Amazon insisted that they stick with agency....As it was put to me by one observer, agency in 2010 was a strategy; by 2015 it was a surrender." He had been right to question whether agency pricing is a good thing for publishers. What he didn't know "is that most of the publishers have already figured that out but are helpless against a customer so powerful that it dictates the terms." He also explains that what had been reported as a mild recovery in print books sales could be explained by the phenomenon of huge sales of adult coloring books--which apparently don't make good ebooks.
• Six book publishing lessons from Open Road Media’s first three years (Laura Hazard Oswen, paidContent, 5-23-13). When Open Road Media launched in 2009, the idea of an all-digital publisher was still fairly new. Nearly four years later, it’s encountering more competition as publishers of all sizes hone their digital strategies. This is the lesson an author notices: "'... print publishers, for the better part of 10 years, have been trying to license back the digital rights to everything in their backlist.' One reason they don’t always succeed — allowing publishers like Rosetta and Open Road to get the rights instead — is that they almost always still only offer a 25 percent royalty (rather than a cut of the sales) and they are more focused on new titles than on the backlist." [emphasis added.] Among the six lessons learned: Video is Open Road's "special sauce" -- not book trailers, but video of the author. “The author is the brand. The title is not the brand.”
• Media Chiefs Form Venture to E-Publish (David Carr, NY Times, 9-18-12). As discussed by Mike Shatzkin: New publishing companies are starting that are much leaner than their established competitors (Shatzkin Files, 9-24-12). With changing models in book publishing, publishers will "offload everything except the functions that are absolutely core to publishing: editorial selection and development, rights management, and marketing." Of special interest to authors: Shatzkin's points are particularly of interest to authors: "We are getting closer to the day when all a publisher really will need to 'own' is the ability to acquire and develop good books and ways to reach the core audience for them persuasively and inexpensively. " (Those are paths authors can take, too.)
• Who wins and loses from DoJ's suit against Big Publishers and Apple? -- a roundup (with links) of stories and analysis about the Department of Justice's plan to sue five major publishers and Apple for colluding to raise the prices of electronic books (eBooks).
• EU investigating if publishers conspired with Apple on e-book pricing (Chris Foresman, Ars Technica 12-6-11)
• New Service for Authors Seeking to Self-Publish E-Books (Julie Bosman, NY Times 10-2-11). The new distribution and marketing service of The Perseus Books Group will allow authors to self-publish their own e-books. "The new service will give authors an alternative to other self-publishing services and a favorable revenue split that is unusual in the industry: 70 percent to the author and 30 percent to the distributor. Traditional publishers normally provide authors a royalty of about 25 percent for e-books.
"The service arrives as authors are increasingly looking for ways to circumvent the traditional publishing model, take advantage of the infinite shelf space of the e-book world and release their own work. That’s especially the case for reviving out-of-print books whose rights have reverted back to the author."
• True “do-it-yourself” publishing success stories will probably become rare (Mike Shatzkin, The Shatzkin Files, Idea Logical Company 11-6-11). "if a conventional publisher is providing the full range of services that our speakers said is needed to maximize sales: good covers, changing covers, dynamic pricing, constantly improved metadata, monitoring to catch glitch take-downs, as well as developmental editing, line-editing, copy-editing, and proofreading, the author wouldn’t be doing badly at all to get 35% of the consumer’s dollar for an ebook." (But publishers are doing less and less editing and proofing, and they don't seem to know any more about e-publishing and experiments with pricing than some authors do. And they expect authors to do most of the promotion.--PM)
• An aspect of the Amazon-Apple battle the tech world doesn’t care much about (Shatzkin Files 10-2-11)
• Will book publishers be able to maintain primacy as ebook publishers? (Shatzkin Files, 10-9-11). "Magazines and television networks and web sites are recognizing the reality that self-publishing ebooks is something they can do themselves without the complications (or revenue-sharing) that working with a publisher would require....can book publishers add enough value to the ebook publishing process to persuade another brand with content credibility, one that has direct contact with the vertical community that is the audience for their books, to do their ebooks through the publisher rather than directly?"
• The ebook marketplace could definitely confuse the average consumer (Shatzkin Files 9-17-11)
• Amazon in Talks to Launch Digital-Book Library Amazon.com Inc. is talking with book publishers about launching a Netflix Inc.-like service for digital books, in which customers would pay an annual fee to access a library of content. Some fear this would downgrade the value of the book business. (Stu Woo and Jeffrey Trachtenberg, WSJ 9-12-11)
• A few great Publisher vs Author vs eBook articles. (Switch11, iReaderReview, 7-17-10)
• Amazon Kindle for PC E-Book Software. "Amazon's Kindle family gained a new member today with the arrival of the free Amazon Kindle for PC reader app," writes Yardena Arar, of PC World, in a review of the new Kindle software for reading books on a computer (Washington Post, 11-12-09)
• Amazon lets publishers and writers disable Kindle 2's read-aloud feature (Alana Semuels, Business, Los Angeles Times 2-28-09: The Authors Guild objected to device's text-to-speech function, saying Amazon doesn't have the right to essentially turn e-books into audio books)
• Amazon Threatens Publishers as Apple Looms (Motoko Rich and Brad Stone, NYTimes, 3-17-10). Rumors swirl that Amazon could revoke the buy buttons for books by Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Penguin, or Hachette if the major publishers don't strike an eBook deal with the online bookseller. "The hardball approach comes less than two months after Amazon shocked the publishing world by removing the “buy” buttons from its site for thousands of printed books from Macmillan, one of the country’s six largest publishers, in a dispute over e-book pricing."
• Anatomy of a design car-crash, or why authors still need publishers. Simon Appleby, FUTUReBOOK 5-25-11, about the terrible covers put on on eBook versions of Catherine Cookson's novels--whether to blame agent Sonia Land for this is not clear)
Apple's 30%, the long tail and a future of serialized content (Seth Godin on how, if tablets are to "be more than game platforms," Apple needs to reward creators (not tax them 30%) and "create promotional channels so that curated great stuff (not merely things from big companies) has a chance to reach a mass audience").
Apple reveals new service for authors to sell their books directly in the iBookstore (David W. Martin, MacLife, 5-26-10). You no longer have to use a service like Smashwords to put your book in Apple's iBookstore.
Apple's disruption of the ebook market has nothing to do with the tablet (Mike Shatzkin on the implications of Apple's switch from the "wholesale" model to the "agency" model, putting control of ebook prices back in hands of major publishers)
As Library E-Books Live Long, Publisher Sets Expiration Date (Julie Bosman, NY Times, 3-14-11).Librarians feel gobsmacked by HarperCollins' 26-loans restriction on e-book use in libraries. E-books "are typically available to one user at a time, often for a seven- or 14-day period. But unlike print books, library users don’t have to show up at the library to pick them up — e-books can be downloaded from home, onto mobile devices, personal computers and e-readers, including Nooks, Sony Readers, laptops and smartphones. (Library e-books cannot be read on Amazon’s Kindle e-reader.) After the designated checkout period, the e-book automatically expires from the borrower’s account."
See also:
• What's up with publishers not selling ebooks to libraries? (Writers & Editors, 3-19, 12)
Authors Feel Pinch in Age of E-Books (Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, WSJ, 9-26-10)."The new economics of the e-book make the author's quandary painfully clear: A new $28 hardcover book returns half, or $14, to the publisher, and 15%, or $4.20, to the author. Under many e-book deals currently, a digital book sells for $12.99, returning 70%, or $9.09, to the publisher and typically 25% of that, or $2.27, to the author. The upshot: From an e-book sale, an author makes a little more than half what he or she makes from a hardcover sale....The Authors Guild and some literary agents are urging publishers to raise the author's share of e-books to as high as 50%, arguing that there is less overhead for a digital book. Thus far, publishers are resisting." (Listen to Marshall Crook on the history of the book.)
Authors Self-Publish E-Books:
• Rowling Conjures Up Harry Potter E-Books. Web Store for Digital 'Potter' Editions Promises to Open New Chapter for Industry (Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg and Paul Sonne, WSJ 6-23-11). "The move could inspire other authors, large and small, to pronounce themselves independent agents in hopes of tapping more lucrative paydays. Ms. Rowling refused for years to release her books in electronic format, retaining the digital rights for herself.
"While most other authors have already handed over their digital rights to their publishers—most recently, John Grisham—Ms. Rowling's deal could prompt them to self-publish when their deals come up for renewal or demand higher royalty rates than the 25% of net sales that most publishers offer today on digital editions....All seven Harry Potter novels will be available as e-books in multiple languages and will be device agnostic." Sign up at Pottermore to be notified when and how e-books will be available.
• Rowling (and her agent) leaves Christopher Little Agency (Charlotte Williams, The Bookseller 6-30-11).
Back to School: Rethinking the Textbook (Joseph Esposito, The Scholarly Kitchen 9-13-11)
Baker & Taylor has the next big thing in ebooks. Really! (Mike Shatzkin, Idealogical,12-8-09) and Ray Kurzweil Teams with Baker & Taylor on New eReader Software (Calvin Reid, PW, 10-15-09). Blio software can work on "any device with an operating system."
Bend me, shape me, any way you want me: Flexible display screens (The Economist, 1-22-09, reports that electronic screens as thin as paper are coming soon)
The big guys don’t see the fundamental problem, Mike Shatzkin, The Shatzkin Files 12-17-09. He says: "selling content as a publisher is a business that is going to just get harder and harder until it won’t really be much of a business anymore." He holds Publishers Marketplace as an example of a model that does work in this marketplace for eyeballs. "Publishers have always focused primarily on the content. Survival in the future will require focusing on the market." The answer: "In the digital age it will make much more economic sense for the owner of the audience to find the content rather than the way we’ve always done it, which is the other way around." Read this article!
Book publishers in denial on Amazon's e-book sales (Daniel Roberts, CNNMoney, 5-29-11)
Book Publishers Need to Wake Up and Smell the Disruption (Mathew Ingram, GigaOm, 3-1-11). "And evidence continues to accumulate that e-books aren’t just something established authors with an existing brand can make use of, but are also becoming a real alternative to traditional book contracts for emerging authors as well — all of which should serve as a massive wake-up call for publishers...." Publishers expect authors to believe 30% of e-book revenues is a fair deal, when authors making direct deals can get 70% of e-book revenues?
The Business Rusch. Fiction writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch (4-13-11) on inaccurate e-book royalty statements issued by the Big Six traditional publishers, and a follow-up column a week later: Royalty Statements Update (4-20-11)
Cader's analysis of the e-book price wars: Two blogs start their discussion by saying anyone who wants to be in the know about book publishing should pay $25 a month for a subscription to Michael Cader's Publishers Lunch Deluxe or at least subscribe to his free Publishers Lunch. They then relay his criticism of the NY Times piece on e-book pricing, E-Book Price Increase May Stir Readers’ Passions (Rich and Stone 2-10-10). In Notes from a lecture by Professor Cader(2-13-10), Mike Shatzkin quotes Cader as saying that Amazon (and Sony and Apple) are making their money from the sale of expensive e-readers (Kindle, $200) and Amazon is losing money on the $9.99 prices of bestsellers that that they are using as loss leaders to sell their reader. Moreover, they're not giving credit to the publishers who are making backlist titles of bestselling authors available free as e-books, in hopes of bringing new readership to those authors. Read Shatzkin on the subject, subscribe and read the original in Publishers Lunch, or check out Michael Cader's Masterclass (Dennis Loy Johnson's Moby Lives, a column about books and writers).
Can brick bookstores survive? Mike Shatzkin (The Shatzkin Files) on how eBooks are affecting retail operations:
• Why are you for killing bookstores? (2-4-10: "If you are for the most rapid possible adoption of ebooks, you are for killing bookstores faster....The book business has always been one with very low financial barriers to entry. Ebook publishing makes getting into the game even cheaper. It is also going to bring increased competition to book publishers from content-creators outside publishing. None of this is appealing if your power as a publisher is the ability to control shelf space and get fast reprints."
• Where will bookstores be five years from now? (7-11-10). Another analysis of "the see-saw relationship between ebook growth and bookstore survival. (When one goes up, the other goes down.)"
• Where do we lose the shelf space and how much do we lose? (8-8-10) Two questions about the impact of digital change on publishing are almost impossible to answer: "One is: how much of the sale of ebooks is incremental business and how much of it is cannibalization of prior print sales? The other is: what will be the fate of independent bookstores? The two are connected."
Can e-publishing overcome copyright concerns? by David Pogue (New York Times 5-22-08)
Data helps us understand ebook pricing impacts. Mike Shatzkin (Shatzkin Files, 6-15-11) on Dan Lubart's post explaining that "ranking" and "sales" are not the same thing -- that comparing sales of the 99-cent ebook with the $19.99 ebook is comparing apples and oranges. See Dan Lubart's post on eBook Market: Premium-price eBooks rebound from 'Sunshine' effect and Shatzkin's Amazon’s Sunshine Program is another wake-up call for the Big Six. Fascinating analyses of price effects in a fast-changing market. The bottom line: It would be foolish to follow Amazon's bargain-basement pricing model for premium books (as opposed to the type you buy o impulse in the supermarket checkout line, to borrow Mike Shatzkin's father's explanation).
The iPad, the Kindle, and the future of the book business. . Can the iPad topple the Kindle, and save the book business? (Ken Auletta, Publish or Perish, The New Yorker, 4-26-10). Responses: Erik Sherman, The New Yorker's Ken Auletta Needs a Calculator, not an E-Book Reader, and Mike Shatzkin, Ruminations on Returns
"Debut pricing" for ebooks: a better idea than withholding them (Mike Shatzkin, The Shatzkin Files, 8-23-09) and Debut pricing: my idea, great idea, unfortunately can’t work (Shatzkin's follow-up entry). In a follow-up story, also on ebook pricing, Shatzkin writes, about the race for market domination:"Epub is probably the publishers’ best defense against Amazon and the Kindle. With all other device manufacturers able to coalesce around a non-Amazon standard, we have a situation analogous to the VHS-Beta conflict of the 1980s and the Mac-Windows duke-out of the late 80s and early 90s. On one side, we have a standard that remains closed to enable “control” (Beta, Mac, Kindle.) On the other side, we have a wide-open standard to enable multi-player use (VHS, Windows, Epub.) In the two cases we know about because they are historical, the consensus was that the “loser” of the numbers race (Beta and Mac) provided a superior technological performance. Kindle does not seem to have even that element in its favor. Whether you use something larger that does e-ink (Kindle, Sony Reader) or something you’re carrying anyway that is backlit (the iPhone or any other smartphone) is a matter of personal preference. But does anybody doubt that a world full of hardware creators will soon make a device that is similar but demonstrably better than the Kindle?" Read this if you're trying to figure out which device to buy, or whether to wait.
Digital Books and Your Rights: A Checklist for Readers (Electronic Frontier Foundation white paper)
Digital Perception, thriller writer JA Konrath's entry on his blog, A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, makes a compelling case against publishers trying to raise the price of e-books: it will encourage more e-book piracy (which is easy). Elsewhere Konrath talks about the money he's making selling e-books of his old titles that NY book publishers didn't want. In June, his royalty rate went from 35% to 70%. Surely Amazon would have kept getting its 65% if it weren't under pressure to create more favorable terms--first from Sony and now, more effectively perhaps, from Apple.
Digital Reader Penetration Accelerates: Codex survey finds 21% of book buyers own an e-reading device (Jim Milliot, PW, 11-29-10)
Digital Text Platform (lets you upload and format your books for sale in Kindle Platform
The digital transition really IS harder for trade publishers than for other publishers (The Shatzkin Files 7-3-09)
Dual display e-book reader (story on NewScientist blog 6-25-08)
eBook Basics and Beyond (Writers and Editors site)
E-book complexity: good news for publishers (Mike Shatzkin, The Shatzkin Files, 6-3-09)
Ebook growth explosive; serious disruptions around the corner Mike Shatzkin, 8-12-09
eBookGuru(digital magazine devoted to eBooks)
E-Book Price Increase May Stir Readers’ Passions (Motoko Rich and Brad Stone, NY Times 2-10-10)
E-book readers are better, cheaper than ever (Consumer Reports' New Ratings, 10-14-10). For more info,check out CR's E-book reader buying advice
The e-book revolution favours the agile (but deep pockets help), Dan,The Casual Optimist (books, publishing, ideas)--like their quote: "The basis for optimism is sheer terror." ~Oscar Wilde
E-Book Royalty Math: The House Always Wins (2-3-11 -- be sure to read this and the next one), part of an advocacy series by the Authors Guild. See also How Apple Saved Barnes & Noble. Probably.(2-2-11), The Right Battle at the Right Time (2-2-11), and The E-Book Royalty Mess (2-11-11).
The E-Book Royalty Mess (Authors Guild 2-11-11). To mark the one-year anniversary of the Great Blackout, Amazon’s weeklong shut down of e-commerce for nearly all of Macmillan’s titles, AG sent out a series of alerts on the state of e-books, authorship, and publishing. The first installment (“How Apple Saved Barnes & Noble. Probably.”) discussed the outcome, of that battle, which introduced a modicum of competition into the distribution of e-books. The second, (“E-Book Royalty Math: The House Always Wins”) took up the long-simmering e-royalty debate, and showed that publishers generally do significantly better on e-book sales than on hardcover sales, while authors always do worse. This installment looks at the implications of that disparity (using as examples "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett, "Hell's corner" by David Baldacci, and "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand) and suggests "an interim solution to minimize the harm to authors: negotiate for an e-royalty floor tied to the prevailing print book royalty amount.... While this wouldn’t restore authors to full partnership status in the sale of their work, it would prevent them from being harmed as publishers try to maximize their revenues. This is only an interim solution, however. In the long run, authors will demand to be restored to full partnership, and someone will give them that status."
eBook sales comparisons to print aren’t always what they seem (Mike Shatzkin, 5-20-11). Comparing print shipments to the sales channels with ebook consumer sales is comparing apples to oranges. And "fluctuations in trade ordering behavior ...are also partly driven by the publishers’ collective decision about when to issue new books." Not to mention calculating returns.
Ebooks are making me recall the history of mass-market publishing Mike Shatzkin's fascinating history of how the mass-market paperback revolution affected book publishing compares that huge shift to what ebooks are doing now.
E-books: Not so fast! (Bryan Rosner on what publishers have to fear, IBPA)
The e-Book Test: Do Electronic Versions Deter Piracy? by David Pogue (New York Times, Personal Tech 6-19-08)
eBook vs. Hardcover: Beyond the Headlines (Guy LeCharles Gonzalez, Digital Book World, 7-20-10). His most interesting points (aside from Amazon massaging statistics): "For Amazon, it’s not about the device and never has been; the long game was always about leveraging their existing customer base and becoming the dominant seller of eBooks....eBooks fit perfectly into Amazon’s long tail strategy, and only Barnes & Noble comes close to having the kind of built-in advantage they do to capitalize on a CD/MP3-style digital transition as many readers re-purchase their favorites in eBook format from the path of least resistance: the retailer they currently buy their print books from, who already has their credit card information and the ability to make targeted recommendations based on their purchase history." And "A significant percentage of the eBooks Amazon offers for sale were NEVER published in hardcover format; many more are from independent publishers and authors taking advantage of the lower barriers to entry. The room to grow is exponential. Genres and niches that get limited shelf space in the brick and mortar book world are perfectly suited for the digital book world."
The ebook windowing controversy has subtext (Mike Shatzkin, 12-10-09). Shatzkin writes: "This is really about the agents and publishers trying to take control of ebook pricing, and value perception, back from Amazon." And this: "There are two important aspects of this that will play out later. One is that what the publishers can do to Amazon today, the authors can do to the publishers tomorrow. If the publishers could sell the ebooks of big books successfully from their sites, then the big authors could also sell them directly without a publisher. The other is that this is a 'last gasp' of a 'static product' publishing economy. Big moneymakers ten years from now won’t often come from just selling the same content over and over again, but will more often come from content that triggers a more extended interaction. The most future-oriented thinkers are already past this battle, although there’s still a lot of fighting left to be done."
ebrary (a content platform)
Fear the Kindle: Amazon's amazing e-book reader is bad news for the publishing industry (Farhad Manjoo, Slate, 2-26-09), admires the Kindle 2 but fears its implications: "Amazon's reader is a brilliant device that shanghais book buyers and the book industry into accepting a radically diminished marketplace for published works. If the Kindle succeeds on its current terms, and all signs suggest it'll be a blockbuster (thanks Oprah!), Amazon will make a bundle. But everyone else with a stake in a vibrant book industry — authors, publishers, libraries, chain bookstores, indie bookstores, and, not least, readers — stands to lose out." An honest look at the 800-pound gorilla that endangers the publishing industry: Amazon.com.
5 Reasons Why E-Books Aren't There Yet (John C. Abell, Epicenter, 6-3-11). Thoughtful and persuasive.
Flexible display screens: Bend me, shape me, any way you want me (The Economist, 1-22-09, reports that electronic screens as thin as paper are coming soon)
The once and future e-book: on reading in the digital age (John Siracusa, ars technica, 2-1-09 — check out the comments after reading the article)
From where I sit, you can’t actually “sell” an ebook. Customers are not really buying those eBooks, writes Mike Shatzkin; they're licensing them. When I buy a physical copy of a book, I can lend it to as many people as I want; I can't do that with an eBook, which is the clear sign that I've paid for a license to read, not a book. Publishers don't make that clear, and should. This has important implications for publishing contracts, where royalties are paid on numbers of books sold, at 15% tops. But licensing of subsidiary rights (e.g., to book clubs) traditionally involves a 50-50 split in income, with half to the author and half to the publisher.
Further Thoughts of a Novice E-Reader (Verlyn Klinkenborg, Editorial Notebook, NY Times 5-28-10). Among drawbacks of the e-book, as Klinkenborg sees them: ugliness of the fonts etc. (as opposed to the text), the system for showing where you are in a book, the fact that you may be reading an earlier, inferior version of a book, and the fact that most e-readers don't permit short-term borrowing (as of library books)--that you have to own the book to read it.
The Future of Digital Distribution and Ebook Marketing (Tim O'Reilly at the O'Reilly Tools o Change Conference 2010, on YouTube)
Google sides against Amazon in e-book format wars (Brennon Slattery, PCWorld, 8-27-09)
HarperCollins largely abandons audiobook CDs, bundles audio rights with digital (Chris Meadows, TeleRead, 2-8-11). "A Simon & Schuster rep pointed out that CDs still do not have to sell too many copies to turn a profit."
HarperCollins Responds to Library eBook Controversy (Jason Boog, GalleyCat, 3-1-11). The publisher decided that eBooks can only be checked out 26 times by library patrons until they expire, setting off protests and a call for library boycotts.
How e-Books Could Smarten Up Kids and Stretch Library Dollars: A National Plan (David Rothman, Teleread, for Huffington Post 10-22-09)
How much should an e-book cost? (Motoko Rich, "Steal this book, for $9.99," NYTimes, 5-16-09)
How the e-book landscape is becoming a walled garden (Mathew Ingram, Gigaom, 2-29-12). Apple’s decision to reject an e-book by Seth Godin because it contains hyperlinks to books in the Amazon store is just another example of how the oligopoly that controls the market for e-books is turning the landscape of reading into a walled garden.
How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write (Steven Johnson, Wall Street Journal, 4-20-09)
How will you win at ebook retailing? Mike Shatzkin comparing features of competing e-readers and wondering which will win out. Read this if you're shopping!
In a Digital Future, Textbooks Are History (Tamar Lewis, NYTimes, 8-8-09) Mind you, participants on one discussion list questioned that printing and shipping would add up to only 12.5 percent of costs--that figure, it was felt, was too low, especially with postage rates going up.
Industry Statistics: US Trade Wholesale Electronic Book Sales. Look at those sales take off!
Is This the Future of the Digital Book?
Are books too one-dimensional for readers in the digital age, as Vook's Bradley Inman tells Brad Stone (NY Times 8-4-09) Will readers be expecting video in their novels?
Kindle and the future of reading (Nicholson Baker, The New Yorker, 8-3-09)
Insights about the current state of the ebook market (Mike Shatzkin, 10-21-10, discussing the "agency model, wholesale model, and what is being called the 'hybrid' model, but which I would simply call 'a mess that won’t be sustained.'") Shatzkin discusses why publishers are fighting to keep ebook prices high and what publishers (and Amazon) can't say, and why the survival of bookstores is threatened.
The Kindle Swindle (Roy Blount Jr., Op Ed, NY Times, 2-24-09, on the Authors Guild's objections to the Kindle in terms of authors' rights)
Legal Battles Over E-Book Rights to Older Books (Motoko Rich, NYTimes, 12-15-09) on authors' and agents' claim that publishers don't own e-book rights to older backlist titles
**Math of Publishing Meets the E-Book (Motoko rich, NYTimes, 2-28-10, making the case for i-Pad e-book prices)
** Most dramatic publishing event of 2010? Introducing agency pricing! (The Shatzkin Files, 11-30-10). "Control of pricing shifted from the retailer, who could charge whatever it wanted in the wholesale scenario, to the publisher who required the same price across all consumer touchpoints under agency....Shift of pricing control meant shift of responsibility at the point of sale and that meant publishers were now responsible for sales taxes, not the retailer....Control of pricing immediately challenges publishers to get sophisticated, modern, and scientific at how they approach pricing." That's just one point in an interesting analysis of the big picture.
**The once and future e-book: on reading in the digital age (John Siracusa, ars technica -- check out the comments after reading the article
The other comparison: ebook royalties versus ebook self-publishing (Mike Shatzkin 8-30-10)
Pass the Gestalt, Please (Evan Schmittman, Black Plastic Glasses: Musings on Publishing and Life in the Digital Age, 7-15-10). "Ebooks aren’t a secondary or tertiary income stream for publishers like subsidiary rights; ebook income replaces hardcover and/or paperback income....Allowing each individual part, or right, to be disaggregated and auctioned to the highest bidder serves only those who make profit from short-term gain." (Either he doesn't understand what subsidiary rights are, or I don't; I believe paperback rights are subsidiary rights, and the paperback was also considered a threat to hardcover sales.)
Penguin CEO Adjusts to E-Books but Sees Room for the Old (Jeffrey, A. Trachtenberg, WSJ, 4-9-11, reports on his interview with Penguin CEO John Makinson. "There is a growing distinction between the book reader and the book owner. The book reader just wants the experience of reading the book, and that person is a natural digital consumer: Instead of a disposable mass market book, they buy a digital book. The book owner wants to give, share and shelve books. They love the experience. As we add value to the physical product, particularly the trade paperback and hardcover, the consumer will pay a little more for the better experience....There will always be a market for physical books, just as I think there will always be bookstores."
Pressure mounts over Apple's 30% subscription charge (BBC News, 2-18-11, on Apple insisting on one-third of the subscription income for readers who subscribe to newspapers via their iPhones and iPads).
The printed book's path to oblivion (Mike Shatzkin, 8-15-10)
Publishers and authors battle over digital (e-book) rights (Pat McNees, Writers and Editors blog post, 12-13-09)
Publishers Test What Prices iPad Market Will Bear (Ed Sutherland, Cult of Mac, 4-30-10)
Random House Claims Digital Rights to Past Books (Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, WSJ, 12-14-09)
Random House, HarperCollins Look to Lock In Low E-Book Royalty Rates: 5 Ways to Protect Yourself. Message to all authors from the Authors Guild. Be sure to read this one, if you have, or expect to have, any kind of book contract. Main points, in brief (but read the details):
1. Get the absolute right to renegotiate.
2. Negotiate for a royalty floor.
3. Double-check your reversion of rights clause.
4. Check your contract; you may control e-rights.
5. If you can't obtain adequate safeguards, you may want to bide your time.
Random House's Retroactive Rights Grab (an alert from the Authors Guild)
The royalty math: print, wholesale model, agency model (Mike Shatzkin, 8-26-10)
Scott Turow on Random House: Local Booksellers May Be the Big Winners. Joining the other major publishers in adopting the agency model may save brick-and-mortar bookstores, "many of which are now selling e-books but cannot afford to lose money on those sales, a fighting chance in the new print + digital landscape...Many readers will soon be able to support their local booksellers when they buy e-books, without paying a stiff price for their loyalty.
"Barnes & Noble benefitted more than anyone from publishers' adoption of the agency model. It still had to subsidize sales of many Random House titles to stay in the game with Amazon, but it didn't have to lose money on the sales of other titles. Barnes & Noble's share of the e-book market grew at a pace that surprised everyone in the industry and is now approaching 20%." Next step: "restoring the traditional division of proceeds between authors and publishers. Random House and other major publishers have a lot of work to do on that score."
Smashwords (your ebook, your way--a digital self-publishing platform and online bookstore)
Some Fear Google’s Power in Digital Books (Noam Cohen, New York Times, Link by Link, 2-1-09)
Stephen Covey's digital rights deal with Amazon startles New York publishers
TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home (a blog with news & views on e-books, libraries, publishing etc.—including recommended free reads)
Tools of Change (links to O'Reilly's annual conference exploring emerging trends in digital publishing)
The Trouble with E-Readers by David Pogue (Scientific American Nov 2010). Electronic books are still far too crude to replace ink and paper, writes Pogue. They're pricey, pages turn slowly, they're copy-protected so you can read them only on the technology for which you bought them (each company using a different protection scheme), you can't pass a book along to a friend when you've finished it (the way you could a printed book), and you're unlikely to be able to read it years hence, when technologies have changed.
The Very Rich Indie Writer. Eli James, on the Novelr blog (about reading, writing and publishing Internet fiction), lists monthly sales figures for Amanda Hocking and other Internet novelists, to show that you don't have to be traditionally published and don't have to be an A-list famous to sell a lot of e-books.
A Walk Through a Crop of Readers (Danielle Belopotosky, NY Times, Personal Tech, 2-25-09), compares Amazon’s Kindle 2 to Kindle 1 and the Sony Reader.
What does Amazon.com's rosy ebook news mean? (Carolyn Kellogg, Jacket Copy blog, L.A. Times, 7-29-10)
Why Some E-Books Cost More Than the Hardcover (Nathan Bransford's excellent history and explanation of the differences between the agency model and the wholesale model in e-book discounting and pricing.
Why We Can't Afford Not to Create a Well-Stocked National Digital Library System by David Rothman, founder of TeleRead, in The Atlantic (2-8-11)
Will Books Be Napsterized? (Randall Stross, Digital Domain, NYTimes 10-3-09)
Will eBooks Make Midlist Authors Extinct? (James McGrath Morris, Huffington Post, 6-9-10)
With Kindle, the Best Sellers Don’t Need to Sell (Motoko Rich, NY Times 1-22-2010, on why publishers are giving "sample" books of little-known authors away for free).
Yahoo News: All major publishers but one raising e-book prices. Random House is the last publisher sticking to traditional model for e-book sales; other major publishers switching to "agency model." Result: higher e-book prices. Christopher Null, 4-1-10). But see Mike Shatzkin's 'We’ve had “gradually”; get ready for “suddenly”: "When I examined the Random House tactic of staying out of the iBook store initially, I said it made sense but that it constituted a bet that iBooks sales wouldn’t be robust right out of the box. Now that sales results seem to have proven that conjecture (which I shared) wrong, I’d expect that Random House will join the other big publishers in moving to the Agency model to enable them to join the iBook offering.'
Finally, the Authors Guild, in The Right Battle at the Right Time, writes: "Macmillan's current fight with Amazon over e-book business models is a necessary one for the industry. The stakes are high, particularly for Macmillan authors. In a squabble over e-books, Amazon quickly and pre-emptively escalated matters by removing the buy buttons from all Macmillan titles (with some exceptions for scholarly and educational books), in all editions, including all physical book editions. Thousands of authors and titles are affected; hardest and most unfairly hit are authors with new books published by Macmillan that are in their prime sales period."
And Amazon is tough on its own behalf, not on readers' behalf. The Authors Guild again: "Amazon has a well-deserved reputation for playing hardball. When it doesn't get its way with publishers, Amazon tends to start removing "buy buttons" from the publisher's titles. It's a harsh tactic, by which Amazon uses its dominance of online bookselling to punish publishers who fail to fall in line with Amazon's business plans. Collateral damage in these scuffles, of course, are authors and readers. Authors lose their access to millions of readers who shop at Amazon; readers find some of their favorite authors' works unavailable. Generally, the ending is not a good one for the publisher or its authors -- Amazon's hold on the industry, controlling an estimated 75% of online trade book print sales in the U.S., is too strong for a publisher to withstand. The publisher caves, and yet more industry revenues are diverted to Amazon. This isn't good for those who care about books. Without a healthy ecosystem in publishing, one in which authors and publishers are fairly compensated for their work, the quality and variety of books available to readers will inevitably suffer."
AG links to a quick rundown on media reactions to the fight over control of e-book prices: Amazon Revealed: It Hates You, and It Hates Publishers (Kit Eaton, Fast Company, 2-1-10). Eaton adds: "It's clear the move was inspired by Apple's iPad and simultaneous iBooks launch event, which promises a fairer share, more favorable terms and conditions than Amazon, and higher price points." (Fast Company's pieces on the iPad include Peripherals: The Forgotten Killer Feature of the iPad and How the iPad Could Drive Up College Tuition .
The Shatzkin Files (on CHANGES IN BOOK PUBLISHING
and how publishing accommodates digital change)
Mike Shatzkin (as "Idea Logical") thinks about the big picture.
• Running a big publishing house is not as much fun as it used to be (Mike Shatzkin, Idea Logical, 2-6-23) The Big Five publishing companies (Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Hachette) now account for the lion’s share of the commercial publishing business, but they can't grow organically anymore. The commercial publishers — and every title they issue — have a lot more competition from other new titles hitting at the same time than they ever did before as they compete with self-published and entity-published books and instead of with 500,000 new books a year they compete with millions of books, many of them print-on-demand. A smaller percentage of books are purchased in retail locations now and more of them are bought online, so traditional publishers aren't in control of the book pipeline anymore. There is gold in publishers' backlists, but it's harder to market a new book. Although prospects look rough for book publishers, however, they are great for readers, who have easier access to all the books ever published. Shatzkin sees the big picture clearly. See also his articles The end of the general trade publishing concept (10-19-20) and End of General Trade Publishing Houses: Death or Rebirth in a Niche-by-Niche World (5-31-07).
• Why books are different and why enterprises will be discovering they should be issuing them (Shatzkin, 7-5-21) Enterprise-driven book publishing is likely to become the dominant provider of books over the next decade. What distinguishes it is book publishing as a function in support of other efforts, rather than as a stand-alone business intended to make money. Issuing content as a “book” confers status and publicity that would not attach to that same content if it weren’t “published” that way." Shatzkin's persuasive and interesting argument that books are no longer published or discovered the ways they used to be, so enterprises can take advantage of the format as easily as traditional publishers used to be able to. Of great interest to self-publishers and service contractors who support book publishing.
• “Enterprise self-publishing” is coming: the third great disruption of book publishing since the 1990s (Mike Shatzkin, 6-2021). Three disruptions have changed publishing’s structural and commercial landscape:
(1) Before 1995, publishing and retailing were the province of entities that did it in a businesslike way, usually for profit but always within an organizational structure dedicated to their publishing or retailing activity. Amazon changed that in the 1990s when they were able to sustain virtually profit-free retailing, employing two points of leverage which they uniquely discovered.
(2) Amazon’s Kindle, which galvanized authors' robust capability to publish themselves, which spawned the massive horde of independent self-publishing authors that has collectively crowd-sourced millions of titles.
(3) The infrastructure capabilities spawned by the past dozen years of author self-publishing are now industrial strength. "It is literally the case today that all you need to be a publisher is a manuscript and a checkbook to pay freelancers; all you need to be a book retailer (print and digital) is customers." That's just the highlights.
• The end of the general trade publishing concept (Mike Shatzkin, Idea Logical, 10-19-2020) Tom McCormack understood "that individual titles, let alone individual books sold, did not make profits and losses. Titles either contributed margin or they didn’t. The company made a profit or a loss....so the more books he published the more profit the company would make. So McCormack consciously kept increasing title output, generating positive margin on far more than 80 percent of the titles (he kept track) and, of course, further growing his backlist with some of those titles turning out to be persistent sellers....
"We’re in a different world today. The universe of possible titles now is about 18 million unique possibilities, or about 35 to 40 times more titles competing with each new book for attention and sales than existed three decades ago." And that's just to get you started.
Here's the article Mike refers to, a piece about a piece about why Penguin Random House would want to acquire Simon & Schuster: The 360° Competitor (Joe Esposito, The Scholarly Kitchen, 10-5-2020) "In the publishing world the principal entity in this category is Amazon; in STM publishing, the closest to this paradigm is Elsevier, though Elsevier has yet to recast its strategy in this direction....A 360° company is one whose strategy looks and reaches in all directions; unlike, say, Apple, it is not committed to totalitarian control of a walled garden or ecosystem. And while size and market dominance are a precondition of the 360° company, they are, as it were, merely the cost of admission, as the defining aspect of such an organization is that it operates as an industry nexus, where all participants, friends and rivals alike, are likely to pass through.-"
• Both the supply chain and book marketing are forever changed by Coronavirus (Mike Shatzkin, 7-12-2020) The big publishers, he contends, put all their marketing money in the big new books. They aren't as smart about marketing the backlist titles.
"Just before the world changed, about five months ago on February 18th, we wrote in this space about two initiatives that made sense for all publishers to employ to raise revenues and profits.
"One was Ingram's Guaranteed Availability Program (GAP), which connects their Lightning print-on-demand capability to their ability to ship within 24 hours, delivering just about any quantity of books to just about any account in the world. With just about any return address you want on the package. By mid-April, it was clear that the supply chain was already adjusting.
"The other was Open Road's "Ignition" marketing program, a highly automated way to sharply improve the performance of ebook titles. The tactics employed include metadata improvements, pricing adjustments, search-optimized discovery that brings in tens of thousands of new readers every day, 8 unique newsletters touching millions of consumers (about whom more and more is known every day), and an array of genre-specific websites that funnel readers to books they love. Building this capability involved many thousands of ebooks tracked across millions of consumers for more than five years."
• The supply chain for book publishing is being changed by Coronavirus too (Shatzkin, 4-19-2020) POD for "just in case" publishing may become the new normal. "The new Ingram-Lightning supply chain will undoubtedly be used in ways six months from now that were never considered six months ago. It is quite conceivable that setting up every new title at Lightning might become a standard routine, no matter how big or small the first printing is....About a quarter century after its invention, the POD tool that was conceived as a way to keep slow-selling titles from going out of print may become a standard industry tool to capitalize on sudden bursts of consumer discovery. And in the age of digital marketing, those bursts come every day."
• Short Life Lessons From Mike Shatzkin on a site called WorldClassPerformer.com. Delightful Q&A.
• Two pretty easy ways to add revenue that most publishers are missing (Shatzkin Files, 2-18-2020) There are two new opportunities to deliver profitable topline sales growth that publishers can’t get at without making some adjustments to their standard thinking about their business. One of these is 'to set up all titles with Ingram Lightning Source for what their Chairman John Ingram calls “just in case, rather than just in time” use of print-on-demand. (Think Kobe Bryant's death.) Books that are in Ingram’s digital database can be delivered by their wholesale arm to every account in the world tomorrow, whether or not there is presently any stock....The other is to put some of the thousands of titles every big publisher has that are virtually non-performing into Open Road’s “Ignition” program for ebooks. Open Road developed tools to move titles from virtually zero sales to really measurable ones, building mailing lists of identified customers through use of verticals (subject-specific targeting) and bargains (price-shopping consumers can really boost a title.)'
• 2020: Zero year thoughts about the changes in book publishing (Shatzkin Files, 1-7-2020) An excellent overview of major changes in book publishing. In 1990 each new book had to compete with maybe 500,000 books; today it's competing with perhaps 15 million books. Traditionally published books depended on the persuasiveness of the book sales force to get into bookstores; today there are fewer salespeople and fewer bookstores, and some books may sell in the hundreds, not the thousands or tens of thousands. Tom McCormack of St. Martin's Press showed that a firm could make more money if it published more titles to support overhead costs -- which were "mostly fixed, not variable" -- plus which strong and growing backlists strengthened the bottom line. And everything changed totally when Amazon came on the scene. A good explanation of what changed with what effect.
• 7 ways book publishing will change over the next few years (The Shatzkin Files, 10-8-19) Book sales will keep moving online and other big online retailers will be Amazon's biggest competitor, but Amazon will keep buying big-name authors; the cheap self-published (especially genre) fiction ebooks market will continue to operate separately from traditional fiction markets; "entity publishing" will similarly compete for the nonfiction market; big publishers will see reduced sales forces and warehouses, and will see an evergrowing share of their income from backlist sales; etc.
• One big change in book publishing is that it does not require you to have much of an organization to play anymore (The Shatzkin Files, 9-30-19) "What publishers do, over and over again, is the business of “content” and “markets”. Each book is unique content and is individually delivered to its own unique market. So publishers need to stick to content and markets that they understand in a contextual way. That is usually done by sticking to genres in fiction and topics or “audiences” for non-fiction. But people who live in any of many non-fiction “worlds” could well be as well-equipped as any publisher to grasp the content-and-market equations in those environments."
• “The Book Business” is my new book, co-authored with Robert Paris Riger (3-10-19) The book: The Book Business: What Everyone Needs to Know. "A concise, timely, and engaging overview of how books are conceived, planned, sold, and (sometimes) returned. The book offers well-formed perspectives on bookselling, the rise of digital books, the growth of online sales, and the future of book publishing. This book sets the table for anyone interested in how publishing works and how the industry may yet evolve."--Brian O'Leary, Executive Director, Book Industry Study Group
• Strategies to cut overheads in a shrinking book business make a lot of sense (7-13-17)
• The dominance of Amazon needs to be addressed but it is far more attributable to natural circumstances than it is anybody’s fault (Mike Shatzkin, The Shatzkin Files, 5-7-18)
• Imprint consolidation at big houses is a sign of changed times (Mike Shatzkin, 10-25-18) "As recently as 25 years ago, the potential titles available — in print and on a warehouse shelf ready to be ordered, or even to be backordered until a next printing — was numbered in the hundreds of thousands....Now Ingram has 16 million individual titles loaded in their Lightning Source database ready to be delivered as a bound book to you within 24 hours, if not sooner....over the past two decades, the title glut has hit home and even the biggest and most powerful publishers need to exercise restraint about what they try to publish profitably. Because they really can lose money publishing a book, which two decades ago was actually a rare occurrence in a major house unless they had wildly overpaid for the rights." Publishers have become "more 'audience centric'. They build topic- or genre-specific websites, apps, and — critically — email lists. The email lists of book purchasers are of increasing value, if the publisher can continue to feed it choices from which it will find things to buy."
• What we are seeing today is actually the second renaissance of indie bookselling, not the first (Shatzkin, 3-27-18) Fascinating history of how changing technology/ways-of-providing-information-on-stock has affected the success of indie bookstores (vs. big box stores).
• A changing book business: it all seems to be flowing downhill to Amazon (Mike Shatzkin, quoting Data Guy, Shatzkin Files, 1-22-18). Important overall, and brilliant at explaining what happened with agency pricing: When 'Amazon showed a willingness to sell ebooks for Kindle at prices below the costs publishers charged them, the big legacy publishers became alarmed. They could see no end to the switch to ebooks and it seemed logical to figure out a way to encourage competition across ebook ecosystems. Their solution, aided and abetted by the new Apple iBooks ecosystem that debuted in April of 2010, was to move from “wholesale” pricing, where the retailer controlled the ultimate price to the consumer, to “agency”, where the publisher was the seller to the consumer and controlled the price. The intermediary — the retailer — was just an “agent” without pricing power. This led to anti-trust action by the US government by which agency pricing was allowed, but only by newly negotiated agreements between each of the major publishers and their vendors, including Amazon. And the DOJ made sure that those agreements entitled the retail “agent” to discount from the publisher’s agency price, as long as the aggregated discounts to consumers didn’t exceed the retailers’ aggregate margin on those ebooks....And big publishers are left wondering whether they should be glad they got what they wished for. Let’s remember that those discounts from Amazon came from their share of the price; now with agency protocols, publishers can only discount ebooks by reducing their own take!...And the biggest publisher, Random House, because they made a tactical decision to eschew agency pricing when it started, was not sued when the other big publishers (including Penguin, which Random House subsequently acquired) were. Penguin Random House is now by far the biggest single trade publishing house, with a volume not far off what the other four deliver combined.' Shatzkin at his best.
• Deep in the Weeds of Publishing Economics (The Shatzkin Files, 3-1-17) Tom "McCormack is quite certain that the practice of measuring a book’s potential “contribution”, rather than creating an artificial P&L that incorporated an overhead percentage, was a primary driver of St. Martin’s title growth. And the title growth was the primary driver of the company’s growth, which was continuous, substantial, and has resulted in Macmillan being one of the Big Five publishers today."
Among interesting points made in this excellent piece is that in a way backlist is not more profitable to the publisher than frontlist titles: "since the publisher is more often keeping the author share on frontlist titles (which would not yet have “earned out” their advance against royalties), which means that, for a while, they keep a bigger share of the revenue. Visualize it this way. You have a choice of selling two $20 paperback books at a moment when you really need cash. You’ll get ten bucks for each one. But one is backlist and has “earned out”, so you’ll also owe the author a royalty of $1.50-$2. The other one is brand new, or maybe an old failure, but, in any case, the author advance will cover this sale. You keep the $1.50-$2. So, which is more 'profitable'?"
And: "Before the rise of indie publishing enabled by Amazon, it was much easier for the big houses with their big sales and distribution capabilities, to be sure they’d get thousands of copies out on just about every book they did. Now it happens — and it really didn’t back then — that even a big house can have frequent abject failures: books that don’t even recover their direct costs (even without a massive advance against royalties). That was a much rarer event in bygone decades.". (Read the Comments for some insiders' views of publishing economics.)
• “The romance market, which used to be huge in mass market, has pretty much dried up and gone to digital original. [And] it has put pressure on pricing of all ebooks…. Those are consumers who, if they wanted a book, they used to come to us, and now they go elsewhere.” ~Carolyn Reidy of Simon & Schuster, as quoted by Michael Cader, and then by Mike Shatzkin in Temperature Check from two US CEOs at Frankfurt 2017 (Idea Logical Company, 10-18-17)
• Stability in the book marketplace does not mean commercial publishers continue to maintain their share (Mike Shatzkin, Shatzkin Files, 12-12-17) WELL WORTH READING. "The world of commercial publishing — even factoring in the growth in juvie books and audio — is shrinking more slowly than it was a few years ago, but it is still shrinking....Kindle is taking market share from all the other ebook platforms (except possibly Apple iBooks, at the moment). Part of that is that Kindle has titles nobody else has, as some self-publishing entities just use the dominant platform and skip the rest. Part of that is that Kindle doesn’t just sell ebooks; it provides subscription access through Kindle Unlimited that in the aggregate logs a lot of eyeball hours. And almost no big publisher commercial content is included in Kindle Unlimited....Indie authors and Kindle Unlimited have made the biggest inroads....genre fiction [especially romance] is precisely the area where indie authors and Kindle Unlimited have made the biggest inroads....big publishers fought to keep their ebook prices high enough to slow down cannibalization of the print versions. It would be irresponsible of big publishers not to protect the brick-and-mortar stores that are stocking their print books speculatively and keeping the 20th century book publishing business model and supply chain alive.
"The under-reported media story of the 21st century is how well book publishers have adapted to their new world, better than their counterparts in any other print content business.
"Amazon is the most profitable account for just about every publisher. It moves half or more of the books, requires minimal staffing to cover, and has, by normal standards, very low returns. The challenge, of course, is that Amazon has no interest in being publishers’ most profitable account. Amazon does everything they can to claw back margin from publishers and always has a looming threat with their own publishing program, which at any time could reconsider the idea it abandoned a few years ago of going after big trade books outside the genres."
Commercial book publishing also has increasing challenges from institutional publishing: Five major newspapers have book publishing programs and many libraries do too. Newspapers see their audience as their readers; libraries see them as their patrons.
• Conferences are thermometers recording the level of fear about publishing changes (The Shatzkin Files, 12-7-16) "So, in 2016 publishers can literally reach most of the customers in the world through two intermediaries, Amazon and Ingram....And it is likely that books on display and selling in brick-and-mortar stores in the US and elsewhere actually stimulate sales at Amazon as well. But a publisher with no more organization than relationships with Amazon, Ingram, and a talented digital marketing team can publish successfully in today’s world."
• Newspaper publishers face very different and much more immediate threats than book publishers (Shatzkin, 11-15-16) "While I think the book business still has years of viability in front of it, I can’t see a way to sustain the periodicals.... Newspapers (and magazines) depend on advertising in their business model; book publishers don’t." (And digital advertising isn't worth much.) "Newspapers (and magazines) are aggregates of content while many books are themselves a single unit of content."
• The latest marketplace data would seem to say publishers are as strong as ever (Shatzkin, 10-18-16). For a while, self-published authors achieving bestsellerdom "was enabled by three big changes to the historical book publishing and distribution ecosystem. One was the rise of ebooks, which simplified the challenge of putting book content into distributable form and getting it into the hands of consumers. The second was the near-perfection of print on demand technology, which enabled even print books to be offered with neither a significant investment in inventory nor the need for a warehouse to store it. And the third was the increased concentration of sales at a single retailer, Amazon. Between print and digital editions, Amazon sells half or more of the units on many titles and, indeed, may be approaching half the retail sales overall for the US industry." Then he discusses a subsequent glut in the 'self-published authors' market, and what has happened historically when magazine and newspaper publishers decided to publish books. Bottom line: the self-published authors' share of sales is declining and traditional publishers' share is strengthening. (Pat: But the author's share per sale is still higher on self-published books.)
• The reality of publishing economics has changed for the big players (Shatzkin Files, 9-19-16). he writes that In the past "there were really only two ways a book could fail to recover its costs:
1. if the advance paid to the author was excessive, or
2. if the quantity of the first printing far exceeded the advance copy laydown.
In other words, books near the bottom of the list didn’t actually “lose” money; they just didn’t make much as long as the publisher avoided being too generous with the advance or overly optimistic about what they printed....With five thousand individuals [in many small outlets] making the decision about which books to take, even a small minority of the buyers could put a book into 500 or 1000 stores....But two big things have conspired to change that reality. The larger one is the consolidation of the retail trade. ...The other thing that has happened is that the houses are much better organized about which books they are “getting behind”. This has the beneficial effect of making sure the books seen to have the biggest potential get full distribution. But it also has the impact of reducing the chances that the “other” books will get full attention.... The agent who was confirming my sense of these things agreed that the big houses used to be able to count on a sale of 1500 or 2000 copies for just about any title they published. Now it is not uncommon for books to sell in the very low triple digits, even on a big publisher’s list."
• The sea change that comes with the latest iteration of the book ecosystem (More of his excellent take on publishing history, 6-6-16.) "The online book market is likely more than half of the total book market....Yes, the publisher can promote the book to somebody watching a related video or reading an email on a related subject. But it is also true that promotion for movies and emails from friends can interrupt a reader in the middle of a chapter if they’re reading online. This is probably changing the way people read books and might even change how they want their books edited and shaped. Publishers who pay attention will see those changes as they occur."
• On publishers accepting standardization (2-10-16). With funding from the Mellon Foundation, the University of North Carolina Press has "created a service offering through their Longleaf distribution platform that takes the design, pre-press, production, and distribution burden off the hands of university press and academic publishers so they can focus on what makes them distinctive: the books they choose to publish and the skill with which they edit them." Will this form of unbundling catch on, or will publishers maintain that every book is different--and should be?
• Things are calmer than they were in the book business, but change is a constant (5-25-16) "Among the shifts that have been taking place in publishing houses over the past decade is an increase in the head count dedicated to marketing and a decrease in head count dedicated to sales. This reflects the reduction in the number of bookstore accounts and the transfer of “discovery” from store shelves to digital search." And "Today a publisher that is really a literary agency or, before long if not already, a bank, an advertising agency, or a not-for-profit with a mission, can put a book or a list of its own into the book publishing arena with sales and distribution capabilities competitive with the biggest and most experienced publishers. So a revolution that began with Amazon enabling indie authors, starting about ten years ago, to reach a big percentage of the total book market through Kindle and CreateSpace, is being dramatically extended."
• Transformation of companies and the book industry itself are not just 21st century phenomena (Mike Shatzkin, Idea Logical, 1-27-16) After microfiche enabled "the growth of more effective wholesaling," Ingram's creation of Lightning Print, the idea of "print on demand" (POD) — "manufacturing a single copy of a book to order — became extraordinarily powerful when it was incorporated into the supply chain through the global supplier with the biggest network of bookstores and libraries."
• Second old publishing story: the first great book supply chain tech disruption (Mike Shatzkin, 3-7-09) How microfiche revolutionized ordering books from wholesalers in the early '70s--a major step toward changing the way book publishing worked....The ebook revolution dawned at about the same time."
• If the industry is changing, publishing house structures, processes, and budgets need to change too (Mike Shatzkin, 3-17-16) "One of the most compelling Data Guy insights shown in what he presented at DBW is the importance of “introductory” pricing for debut authors. What DG’s data strongly suggests is that the odds of a debut author breaking through are increased dramatically by having very-low ebook pricing. That’s quite a challenge for a conventional publisher who has a one-book-plus-option deal with a debut author....to adopt this as a strategy, publishers would have to sign all debut authors to contracts for two (or more) books, so the debut could be seen as a loss-leader with a later opportunity to cash in."
• There is very profitable revenue that the organizational structure of big publishers makes it hard for them to get (Mike Shatzkin, 1-14-16) Book publishers have few mechanisms in place to coordinate their marketing efforts with their authors' efforts and authors' efforts are increasingly important. Publishers have inadequate data systems about whether their books can be marketed outside the U.S.; Amazon and other online accounts have greater global reach. Publishers are not well set up to sell backlist titles and they should be, especially on titles with advances not earned out-- so publisher has "margin advantage" ("the house gets to keep the part of the sales dollar that would go to royalties"). They need to design workflows that take advantage of authors who are alive and marketing their own work. Smaller houses "have less bureaucracy keeping the author tethered to the editor relationship" so there is more flexibility about marketing, but they also have fewer resources and a smaller backlist.
• Book publishing lives in an environment shaped by larger forces and always has (Mike Shatzkin, 1-10-16) Part 1 is "must-read" history: (1) Long period when publishers focus on business-to-business marketing, especially to bookstores and libraries: Andrew Carnegie financed development of libraries. In the 1930s, publishers began authorizing "returns" of unsold books. After WWII: the paperback revolution. 1960s: shopping malls and mall bookstore chains. Late 1980s: destination superstores.
Game-changer (1995): Amazon, a disruptive innovator. Environment for marketing shaped by Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google. For Amazon, customer acquisition is key, a first step; investors enable underpricing. In the first couple of years of this century the buying habits of academics shifted away from store-shopping to buying from Amazon, which dominated both the book and the e-book business, having achieved that status by underpricing, even when it meant taking losses. It was in for the long game. "Publishers now live in a world where more than half the sales for most of them — the exceptions are those who are heavily into illustrated books and children’s books — occur online through varying combinations of print and ebooks." Where bookstores were once the path to "discovery" of new books, online is that path now.
And "where somebody buys something is not necessarily where they made the buying decision. If you’re an Amazon Prime subscriber getting free shipping on your books, you go to Amazon to buy regardless of where you learned about the book."
"Google Plus hasn’t turned out to be much of a social interaction platform, but an author’s profile there can have a big impact on how the author and his/her books rank for search. This has long been true but is not, even now, universally appreciated. In short, Google Plus author pages are nearly as important as Amazon author pages, a fact totally independent of the traffic either of them gets."
• What Oyster going down demonstrates is not mostly about the viability of ebook subscriptions (Mike Shatzkin, 9-23-15) "But the central point I’d take away from this is not that subscription failed, but that a pure book business play failed....Both publishing and book retailing will increasingly become complements to larger enterprises and decreasingly be stand-alone activities that business can dedicate themselves to for profit."
• Books as brands and the opportunities to sell book-branded merchandise (Shatzkin, 11-5-15)
• The publishing world is changing, but there is one big dog that has not yet barked (Mike Shatzkin, 8-5-15) "No major author of recurring bestsellers has stepped up to take charge of his or her own output. It is bound to happen someday, and if you’d asked me five years ago, I would have been sure it would have happened by now. Five years ago I would also have figured that one of the big publishers by 2025 would be a version of United Artists, several major authors organized to share an organization and create their own brand. There have been no signs of that yet either. Indie publishing is still growing and it seems that established publishing is at a standstill. But we’re still many years — most likely a decade or more — from any real changing of the guard."
• The Audience Information Sheet is more useful than the Title Information Sheet for marketers (and for publicity and sales too) (Mike Shatzkin, Shatzkin Files, 8-31-15) If the key objective is to get books "discovered," then "the key knowledge required is not so much what’s in the book as what search terms the most likely customers will use to ask the question or express the desire for which the book is the right answer or fit." What's important: "knowledge of the book’s audiences, where they are found online, and the language they use to discuss the book’s topic."
• Kids book publishers need to massage their data to understand where their books are really going (Shatzkin, 1-20-15) Unexpectedly interesting: 1) 80 percent of the sales of YA novels are made to adults for their own reading; 2) Why subscription model might be good for children's books: "Just about every parent would love to be able to hand a kid the tablet or phone they could read on and let them do their own 'shopping' for books. But they don’t want to give them the ability to spend money. Subscription is a simple answer for that." Problem for subscription services: the cost of acquiring content and sharing revenue with publisher (who shares with author).
• The support infrastructure for entities to publish is growing but the most important piece may not yet be provided (Shatzkin, 11-11-14) "When an entity commits to self-publishing, even one like a newspaper or a magazine that knows how to create the intellectual property, they suddenly need decision-making they’re not equipped to do, and it begins with “what” to publish.
• Print book retailing economics and ebook retailing economics have almost nothing in common "Comparing ebook retailing economics to print book retailing economics only tells us that physical retailers of print need a lot more to have a viable business. Dad also taught me is that the reason publishers give stores a discount off the publishers’ retail price — which should be the price a publisher would sell the book at if a member of the public came directly to them — is to give stores the margin they need to operate. ""The investment in inventory is the single biggest capital requirement for a bookstore."
• Amazon channels Orwell in its latest blast (8-9-14). Skip past the Amazon criticism and starting about para. 7 is an interesting and enlightening history of the paperback (which also puts Amazon's bully power in perspective).
• New data on the Long Tail impact suggests rethinking history and ideas about the future of publishing (6-25-14) "One further point about Long Tail sales. In the aggregate, they can be very significant. But for each individual title, they are trivial. So the real commercial benefits flow to the aggregators — Amazon and Lightning — and much less to the publishers or authors of the individual titles. "
• Wondering whether printed books will outlast printed money, or football 5-5-14)
• When an author should self-publish and how that might change (Mike Shatzkin, Shatzkin Files, 4-17-14)
• Comparing self-publishing to being published is tricky and most of the data you need to do it right is not available (Mike Shatzkin, Shatzkin Files, 2-13-14)
• No, Mike Shatzkin did NOT say that publishing is spiraling down the drain (11-21-13). "Amazon’s share is growing in relation to the rest of the market and more and more service offerings for editing and marketing are making it ever-easier for authors to entertain a non-publisher option. There is a very small but growing population of authors with lengthy backlists who have gotten their rights back, or secured their ebook rights alone, and are able to consider alternative paths to market." He then goes on to suggest how publishers must reposition themselves.
• Amazon might lose interest in total hegemony over the book business before they achieve it (11-5-13)
• Three points worth adding to the excellent account of the Amazon story in The Everything Store. (11-4-13)
• No-inventory publishing changes everything for everybody and nobody will escape making adjustments (The Shatzkin Files, 10-7-13) "In fact, nobody in the value chain in between the author and the reader of a book can be complacent about their position: not the agent or publisher or library, but also, quite obviously, not the bookstore, online or physical. The printer and warehouse operator must expect a shrinking share of the book business. No-inventory publishing, by lowering the barriers to entry for a written book of narrative text nearly to zero, is assuring that an ecosystem built around the reality that book inventory was the industry’s greatest cost will change profoundly." (Emphasis added.)
• Marketing will replace editorial as the driving force behind publishing houses (Shatzkin Files 9-4-13) "Fifty years ago, editors just picked the books and the sales department had to sell them. Thirty years ago, editors picked the books, but checked in with the sales departments about what they thought about them first. Ten years from now, marketing departments (or the marketing “function”) will be telling editors that the audiences the house can touch need or want a book on this subject or filling that need."
• Losing bookstores is a much bigger problem for publishers than it is for readers (Shatzkin Files, 8-14-13)
• End of General Trade Publishing Houses: Death or Rebirth in a Niche-by-Niche World, an early piece (5-31-07)
• 7 starter principles for digital book marketing learned from Peter McCarthy (8-12-13)
• Finding the right digital services is today’s challenge for publishers (8-8-13)
• The totality of the relationship is what matters (8-6-13), apropos the dustup between CBS and Time Warner's cable services, between Amazon and Macmillan). "One senior executive from a big publisher was recently expressing frustration at what it took to set up a functioning direct relationship with consumers, opining that publishers couldn’t sell ebooks profitably one-at-a-time. Only a subscription model of some kind could work. That’s likely to be true, but underscores again that there needs to be a relationship larger than individual transactions to enable individual transactions."
• Further ruminations about the complex notion of scale in publishing (Shatzkin, 5-23-13). Further fascinating analysis of the advantages traditional publishers are losing in this new digital world, and the advantages of publishing with a niche publisher that knows how to reach its market(as Hay House, does, for example, with mind-body-spirit titles).
• “Unbundling” in the book business: the fourth big trend (Mike Shatzkin, The Shatzkin Files, 3-13-13). "Until the turn of the 21st century, it was the exceptional author who had any kind of “platform” that could be employed for the book’s marketing: something like a TV show or newspaper column or fame achieved some other way that could be a springboard for promoting the book....What changed before the publishing business changed is that many of us have some sort of platform now, as in 'a way to reach an audience.'" Another interesting point for authors: "Narrative writing, particularly fiction, works as ebooks. The others don’t. That increasingly encourages publishers who depend primarily on narrative reading to stick to it and to not publish books of other kinds." But read the whole piece!
• The three forces that are shaping 21st century book publishing: scale, verticalization, and atomization (Shatzkin, 4-15-13).
• Atomization: publishing as a function rather than an industry (Shatzkin, 3-19-13) "The bottom line is that most people employed publishing books perhaps as soon as 10 years from now won’t be working for publishing companies....it is only print-in-stores that requires (or benefits from) a big publishing organization." And "Soon — in the next 5 or 10 years — every university (perhaps most departments within a university), every law firm and accounting firm and consulting firm, certainly every content creator in other media, as well as most manufacturers and retailers will become book publishers too."
• More on atomization: why the new publishers are coming (Shatzkin, 3-26-13) Includes a list of magazines and newspapers that are going into book publishing (often ebooks) and companies serving the first wave of fledgling publishers; "the aspirants so far have been content-generating companies."
• Full-service publishers are rethinking what they can offer (Shatzkin, 9-4-12)
• “Scale” is a theme everybody in publishing needs to be thinking about, so we’ve made it the focus of our next Publishers Launch Conference (Shatzkin, 5-8-13, about a conference scheduled for 5-29-13)
• How the ebook evolution might get started in other places (Shatzkin, 4-30-13)
• Vendor-managed inventory: why it is more important than ever (Shatzkin, 4-23-13)
• Paying authors more might be the best economics for publishers in the long run (Mike Shatzkin, 12-12-11). Shatzkin, who is publisher-centric, writes: "Making deals with authors is the publishers’ price of admission to the game....Declared royalty rates that are closer to what Amazon can offer are critical for publishers to turn around a PR war for new authors that they have been losing. ...Pay authors more so you can pay retailers less.There will be a direct connection between the two."
• Trying to explain publishing, or understand it, often remains a great challenge (Mike Shatzkin, 10-31-12, on how the world of justice does not understand the essence of book publishing--comparing the Bobbs Merrill decisions a century ago to what's going on now, and publishers' ever-diminishing margin.
• Rethinking book marketing and its organization in the big houses (Shatzkin, 12-17-12). "...it is much easier for marketers to build up data around a category of readers than it is around any single title.... as far as I can tell, no house is close to accepting the reality that the title-driven and pubdate-driven marketing techniques that we all grew up with will shortly have outlived their usefulness." Examples of audience-focused publishing (reaching audiences through subject-specific, not book-specific, channels):
~Jane Friedman and Open Books (backlist titles of strong authors)
~Chelsea Green (whose focus is “the politics and practice of sustainable living")
~Hay House (mind-body-spirit)
~Harlequin (romance)
• Things to think about as the digital book revolution gains global steam (The Shatzkin Files, 8-27-12)
• Ebook growth explosive; serious disruptions around the corner (Mike Shatzkin, 8-12-09). Was he right?
• The ebook marketplace could definitely confuse the average consumer (Mike Shatzkin, Shatzkin Files 9-17-11)
• Rethinking what's happening with ebook prices (Shatzkin Files, 9-13-12). As always, read the comments, too.
• Digital Book World lets us look at ebook bestsellers by price, and things are revealed (The Shatzkin Files, 8-20-12)
• Does Pew study prove ebooks in libraries are safe for publishers? (The Shatzkin Files, 6-22-12)
• The ebook marketplace is a long way from settled (The Shatzkin Files 5-7-12). Will the big publishers give up Digital Rights Management (DRM)??? Maybe so.
• Do enhanced ebooks create a comeback trail for packagers? (Mike Shatzkin, The Shatzkin Files, 2-20-10)
• Searching for the formula to deliver illustrated books as ebooks (Shatzkin Files, 11-13-11)
• Media Chiefs Form Venture to E-Publish (David Carr, NY Times, 9-18-12). As discussed by Mike Shatzkin: New publishing companies are starting that are much leaner than their established competitors (Shatzkin Files, 9-24-12). With changing models in book publishing, publishers will "offload everything except the functions that are absolutely core to publishing: editorial selection and development, rights management, and marketing." Of special interest to authors: Shatzkin's points are particularly of interest to authors: "We are getting closer to the day when all a publisher really will need to 'own' is the ability to acquire and develop good books and ways to reach the core audience for them persuasively and inexpensively. " (Those are paths authors can take, too.)
• True “do-it-yourself” publishing success stories will probably become rare (Mike Shatzkin, The Shatzkin Files, Idea Logical Company 11-6-11). "if a conventional publisher is providing the full range of services that our speakers said is needed to maximize sales: good covers, changing covers, dynamic pricing, constantly improved metadata, monitoring to catch glitch take-downs, as well as developmental editing, line-editing, copy-editing, and proofreading, the author wouldn’t be doing badly at all to get 35% of the consumer’s dollar for an ebook." (But publishers are doing less and less --and worse -- editing and proofing, and they don't seem to know any more about e-publishing and experiments with pricing than some authors do. And they expect authors to do most of the promotion.--PM)
• End of General Trade Publishing Houses: Death or Rebirth in a Niche-by-Niche World (Shatzkin, 5-31-07).
• See also and subscribe to:
• Book publishing (traditional)
• Publishing trends
• Publishing commentators
• Ebook Basics and Beyond
• Ebook Prices and Price Wars and Royalties (and free books?)
• Ebook Devices and Platforms
(eBook publishing services)
• Ebook Formats and Formatting
• Ebook Subscription Services
• Ebooks vs. print
• Digital libraries
• Audio books --who and how to's
• Finding good audiobooks to listen to
• Current issues with audiobooks
• Mike Shatzkin on Changes in Publishing
(he gets a category of his own)
Exploring emerging trends in digital publishing
• Authors and the New World of
ePublishing and Self-Publishing (digital publishing)
E-book rights, developments, conflicts, and struggles for market
• E-book Readers rights
DRM and Book Piracy
Blogs and podcasts about the book business
• Publishing and Bookseller Organizations and Resources
• Courses on Book Publishing, Editing, and Proofreading
• Tools of Change for Publishing Conference (O'Reilly TOC) (old, but with some interesting links)
You'll find more "how-to" links under
Children's Book Publishing
Self-Publishing and Print on Demand
Academic publishing and university presses
How to produce audiobooks
• Hear, hear! The explosion in audio books (CBS, Sunday Morning, 5-31-20) Julie Whelan, actor and award-winning audiobook narrator, Watch her tell how she does her work (she narrated Gone Girl) and discuss her novel Thank You for Listening (a romance novel she wrote and recorded). She says eating green apples helps her vocal quality; so does not eating dairy products on any recording day.
• Audiobook Publishing and Distribution: Getting Started Guide for Authors (Jane Friedman, 2-26-20) How to know if the investment is right for you, where to sell and distribute audiobooks, how the money works.
• How to Publish an Audiobook: Your Guide to Audiobook Production and Distribution (Ricci Wolman, Written Word Media, 4-24-20) Fairly detailed.
• The Ultimate Guide to Self-Publishing Audiobooks (AskALLi Team, Alliance of Independent Authors, 1-28-21)
• How to Break Into Narration (Scott Brick)An audiobook narrator shares his knowledge about creating a demo to crack the doorway into the world of narrating audiobooks.
• Audiobooks: Tips & Resources to Access a Fast-Growing Market (audio, Randye Kaye, Authors Guild Foundation, 11-5-20) Discusses the value of audiobooks, whether you should narrate the book yourself and the resources you would need to do so, and the options for finding and working with a professional narrator.
• Here's what I've learned from recording 25 of my own audiobooks. (M.L. Buchman, Findaway Voices, 12-12-18) An overview of what's involved, technically and otherwise. And two books on the subject:
---Narrated by the Author: How to Produce an Audiobook on a Budget by Renee Conoulty
---Storyteller: How to Be an Audio Book Narrator (audiobook by Lorelei King and Ali Muirden) Simple, straightforward advice from both sides of the microphone on becoming an audio book narrator - what it takes and how to do it!
• Thinking of recording your own audio book? Read Melanie Chartoff's account of reading her book Odd Woman Out (a blog post on this site). "It's less about having a good voice and more about maintaining peak interest and energy for many hours and days, discovering the text as if for the first time, so the reader will, too."
• Royalties, Distribution, Promotion and More: Answers to Top Audiobook Post-Production Questions (Tanya Chopp, Voices, 8-15-17) Do I have to pay audiobook narrators royalties? Do audiobook narrators also master the files? Who produces audiobook cover art? What are common promotion strategies. Plus, a list of the most active, highest volume producers, publishers and distributors of audiobooks. See also Voices' other practical articles.
• Synthetic Voices Want to Take Over Audiobooks (Tom Simonite, Wired,1-27-22) Publishers hope computer-generated voices can help them tap surging demand, but some fans—and Amazon—are resisting the robots.
• Audio tools and technology (elsewhere on Writers and Editors site)
• My Life Story, Someone Else’s Voice: Why I Won’t Be Narrating My Memoir’s Audiobook (James Tate Hill, Literary Hub, 8-3-21) A funny, moving coming-of-age memoir about becoming blind as a teenager.
• Tips on recording. Juni Fisher, an award-winning recording artist and author of the novel Girls from Centro, advises: 'You might want to print the pages up in a 14 or 16 font double spaced, so you can make notes (singers do this too).
'When we record songs, while we may do a full pass of a song (3 to 5 minutes of singing) it's rare that we use the first recording in its entirety. Recording can be done a few lines, a paragraph, a page at a time. Your recording engineer will get you in and out. The stops and starts will not be heard at all. If you make a small error, clap your hands to make a "mark" so you know where to go back, and keep going. When you get to the end of that paragraph or page, THEN go right back and fix the error, and move on. This way you will be in the same voice. (Tell the engineer ahead of time that you'll do this; they will have a signal they like.) They will be there to help you. Use your eyebrows when you read. (yep) and be a tad more enthusiastic than you think. If it's a bit more than you need, they will have you back off but if needs more energy, that's sometimes hard to pin down as the problem. We have a phrase in the music recording industry: "Nice, but do it now so I BELIEVE you."
'Plan to read a paragraph at a time. Take a small sip of room temp (never ever cold) water or warm water every couple of pages, or every few paragraphs if you feel the need. No dairy. NO SUGAR. Do not let anyone tell you that honey and lemon are good for your voice, they are not. Get a big bag of sugar free throat lozenges, just straight lozenges, no numbing qualities at all. Keep one on its paper on your stand in the studio, and pop it in your mouth any time you are not recording.
'The engineer will fix you up with a pop screen to soften lip noises and "Ps" and, when you sound check, use your lower register speaking voice. Let him or her come to YOU with the volume you need. You'll have headphones on to hear yourself. If that is disconcerting, to hear only in your headphones, slide one side off one ear so you hear in "real time." Five hours sounds long, but don't sweat it. I have done 2 three hour blocks of vocal track singing in a row, and then gone back in and done another three hours of harmony tracks. The key is to not punch your voice. Speak as you'd speak to someone you adore, sitting right next to you.'
• Business Musings: The Future of Audio 2019 Kristine Kathryn Rusch, from the perspective of the indie author.
• Do You Need to Copyright Your Audiobook? (Kane Dan, Naturally Voice, 7-10-20) Who owns the copyright in a sound recording? How do you register that copyright? What about the narrator and any music used? "In a sense, the audio book is a performance, just like an artist recording a song is a performance subject to mechanical rights," wrote author Gary Hermus is an Authors Guild discussion of audio rights.
• How to Calculate Your Audiobook Royalties (Findaway Voices, 5-17-18)
• Narrator of 133-hour audiobook proclaims boom in 'evolving art' (Matthew Weaver, The Guardian, 1-1-19) Edoardo Ballerini – who has recorded more than 250 titles – says audiobooks are an art form in their own right. His marathon recording of the English language version of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s acclaimed six-part book series, My Struggle was the most difficult job in a 23-year acting career that has included roles in The Sopranos and the film Dinner Rush.
• 5 Steps to Creating a Great Audiobook (Jay Swanson on Jane Friedman's blog, 2-4-16) The voice is the biggest indication to readers of what kind of story they’re about to hear. Practical details about voice, production, and releasing the audio. Production
• How to Make an Audiobook Step-by-Step [With Video] (Chandler Bolt, Self-Publishing School, 7-30-19)
• How To Make An Audiobook [An Independent Publisher’s Definitive Guide] (David Ciccarelli, Voices.com, 9-4-2020)
• How To Make An Audio Book: A Do-It-Yourself Guide (Bo Bennett, eBookIt, 7-13-16)
• How to Make an Audio Book (George Smolinski Kindlepreneur,
• Yes, You Can Record Your Own Audiobook. Here’s How. (Rob Dircks, Goldfinch Publishing, 3-27-15)
• How Do You Start an Audiobook Business? (Kane Dan, Naturally Voice, 5-28-20) and How to Launch an Audiobook Read these to understand the principles behind what you do and who you do it with.
How to handle audiobook credits, footnotes, and other publishing information
Do you follow the text edition?
• What should be recorded for the opening and closing credits? (ACX) Opening credits help listeners confirm what they are about to hear, and that they are listening to the start of the audiobook! Closing credits confirm to the listener they have reached the end. Lists minimum requirements for opening and closing credits.
• Three Reasons Why Audiobooks Shouldn't Always Follow the Text Version (Off the Beaten Shelf) Commonsense guidance, such as: Listeners gain much more value from the audiobook if the introduction is broken up to put each individual story's mini introduction before the story itself.
• How Should a Book Sound? And What About Footnotes? (Andrew Adam Newman, NY Times, 1-20-06) "For Mr. Runnette, who has recorded audiobooks for 15 years and won three Grammy Awards, this is the first time he has had to ponder what a footnote sounds like. But the industry increasingly has to address such vexing one-hand-clapping questions: What does an illustration sound like? Or a chart? A map? A photograph? A blank page?" Good overview of what to do with credits.
• Audiobook narration (YouTube video, Julie Broad of Book Launchers) Do you read the footnotes? When you narrate the audiobook do you talk about the images or just skip them? What about the copyright page?
• Accessible Audiobook Production: What to Record (Accessible Publishing Learning Network) Guidelines on what sections of a book should be recorded, and some discussion of approaches and options for footnotes/endnotes and image descriptions.
Finding good audio books to listen to
• 24 Audiobooks You Won't Be Able To Stop Listening To (Tabatha Leggett, BuzzFeed, 3-6-17)
• AudioFile: new releases
• 2018 Audie winners (the Oscars for audio-books, Audio Publishers Association)
• Erik Larson Has a Scary Story He’d Like You to Hear (Alexandra Alter, NY Times, 7-29-21) After years writing intricately researched historical nonfiction, he is now the author of a made-up tale about ghost-hunting that will only be sold as an audiobook. “It seemed like the perfect fit,” he said. “Ghost stories, I feel, are best listened to aloud.”
• 2017 Audie winners and 2016 and and 2015 Audie nominees (there are different ways to find these titles!)
• 40 Of The Best Audiobooks for Your Road Trip and Beyond (Rachel Smalter Hall, BookRiot, 5-22-15)
• 101 Best Audiobooks of All Time (The Mission, Medium,
• The 50 best audiobooks of all time (Yvette Manes, Insider, 3-20-18)
• The Audiobook Narrator Hall of Fame (Audible)
• The 10 Greatest Audiobook Narrators: An Insomniac's Guide (Jake Flanagin, The Airship)
• The 35 best narrated Audiobooks (in ascending order) (Book Scrolling)
• Narrators (AudioFile)
Authors and the New World of Digital Publishing• Reaching all our Readers: Making books that Everyone can readl (Katie Webb & Maribel Steel, Indie Author Fringe, Alliance of Independent Authors, 4-16-16) In a few easy steps you can open up your books to the millions of readers who can’t access texts in conventional formats because they are visually impaired or otherwise ‘print disabled’. • The BISG Quick Start Guide to Accessible Publishing (Book Industry Study Group) is now available for download (free). The groundbreaking document serves as the model for best practices in creating accessible digital content for those who live with disabilities. It offers both a succinct introduction to the basics of accessibility and the market advantages to publishers of adopting best practices for those who need to quickly come up to speed. • Production of Ebooks: 6 Ways to Make Your Self-published Ebook More Accessible to More Readers (including the print-disabled) (Debbie Young, Self Publishing Advice, Alliance of Independent Authors, AIA, 8-11-16) • When an author should self-publish and how that might change (Mike Shatzkin, Shatzkin Files, 4-17-14) • New data on the Long Tail impact suggests rethinking history and ideas about the future of publishing (6-25-14) "So far, the commercially successful self-published authors overwhelmingly, if not entirely, fall into two categories. There are authors who have reclaimed a backlist of previously published titles and self-published them. And there are authors of original genre fiction who write prolifically, putting many titles into the marketplace quickly. Successful self-publishing authors are often in both categories but very few are in neither. Those two categories are nearly 100% of the self-publishing success stories but a minority of the books from publishers." • At London Book Fair, Authors Encouraged to Think Like Entrepreneurs (Roger Tagholm, Publishing Perspectives, 4-18-13) • Publishing Basics: Navigating the Self-Publishing Minefield (Ron Pramschufer). Publishing Basics – A Guide for the Small Press and Independent Self-Publisher started as a print book; now it's a series of brief videos. Self-publishing has become a huge industry which has evolved into a virtual minefield. Today, that minefield dominates a strictly “Buyer Beware” market, dominated by a variety of sophisticated vanity press models, whose sole objective is to pluck the author’s charge card from their pocket, and charge useless unneeded services to that card until it reaches its limit. There is a fork in the road to self-publishing that comes very early in the process. This video edition of Publishing Basics is designed to help today’s author make educated choices and stay on the correct path leading to self-publishing success. The book is divided into eleven playlists on various aspects of the self-publishing process. Ron also runs a "self-publishing" company--"helping authors become publishers": SelfPublishing.com (Helping Authors Become Publishers). • How Much Does Self-Publishing a Book Cost? (indie fantasy author Lindsay Buroker, 11-29-12) • New Publisher Authors Trust: Themselves (Leslie Kaufman, Media & Advertising, NY times, 4-16-13). "David Mamet and other big authors choose to self-publish, as a way to assume more control over the way their books are promoted. "Then there is the money. While self-published authors get no advance, they typically receive 70 percent of sales." • The three forces that are shaping 21st century book publishing: scale, verticalization, and atomization (Mike Shatzkin, Idea Logical, 4-15-13) To get some sense of the big changes going on in publishing, scroll down on this article to the links to other Shatzkin articles and get yourself an education! • Is there gold in your backlist? Self-publish and find out! (Alan Rinzler, Forbes, 5-18-11). Authors of books that have gone out of print could be sitting on a gold mine--especially authors of bestselling fiction. Rinzler offers do-it-yourself tips. • A Book Is a Start-Up (Betsy Morais, New Yorker Page-Turner blog, 3-14-13)“We believe a writer is not necessarily a writer,” Sanders, the Net Minds C.E.O., said. “They are content containers.” • The Slow Death of the American Author (Scott Turow, president of the Authors Guild, NY Times Opinion pages, 4-7-13) The new, global electronic marketplace is rapidly depleting authors' income streams. In March 2013, the Supreme Court decided to allow the importation and resale of foreign editions of American works, which are often cheaper (so royalties are lower). E-books are much less expensive for publishers to produce, but instead of using the savings to be more generous to authors, the six major publishing houses all rigidly insist on clauses limiting e-book royalties to 25 percent of net receipts--roughly half of a traditional hardcover royalty. • Why Do Authors Choose Traditional Publishing or Self-Publishing? (Digital Book World and Writer's Digest, 2-6-13). DBW and WD surveyed 5,000 authors to answer this question. Top reasons in descending order: Wide distribution, distribution into bookstores, marketing support from a publisher, publisher prestige, managing the publishing process, editorial help, maintaining or losing creative control, avoiding the expense of self-publishing and distributing, and speed to market. Different factors influence the decisions of aspiring authors, traditionally published authors, self-published authors and hybrid authors (those who have done both). Read more on explanations of the survey results in the forthcoming publication What Authors Want: Understanding Authors in the Era of Self-Publishing ($295--yes, nearly $300--from Digital Book World and Writer's Digest). • Digital publishing and the loss of intimacy (François Joseph de Kermadec, TOC, 4-9-113). The cognitive overhead involved in reading a book has increased tremendously • Top novelists look to ebooks to challenge the rules of fiction (Vanessa Thorpe, The Observer, 3-9-13). Leading British authors drawn to experiment with the scope of interactive storytelling • The Publishing Pinch: Books Undergo an E-Upheaval (Kojo Nnamdi radio show discusses the e-book revolution, WAMU-FM, 11-23-11,with guests Richard Nash (founder of Cursor), Nancy Miller (editorial director, Bloomsbury USA), Madeline McIntosh (pres. of sales, operations and digital, Random House), Jeffrey Trachtenberg (Wall Street Journal), Paul Aiken (exec. director, Authors Guild). Today, though traditional publishing houses still drive much of the book industry, their hold on power is under threat -- ie., Book-selling powerhouse Amazon.com now works directly with authors and publishes books; self-publishing has grown easier and gained some respectability; and Print-on-Demand will soon be in your neighborhood. So what's the role and future of the publishing establishment? And what do shifts within the industry mean for readers and writers alike. (Here's the transcript. • Books That Are Never Done Being Written (Nicholas Carr, Wall Street Journal, 12-31-11). Digital text is ushering in an era of perpetual revision and updating, for better and for worse...as the words of books go from being stamped permanently on sheets of paper to being rendered temporarily on flickering screens. • My Amazon Kindle Single publishing experiment (Larry Dignan, ZDNet, 1-26-11). What you need to know about this new market for pieces that are 10,000 to 30,000 words. • The (almost) DIY Guide to eBook Publishing (Coral Russell, Alchemy of Scrawl, 5-31-11). For genre novelists. • How Writers Can Turn Their Archives into eBooks (Carl Zimmer, The Atlantic, 10-14-10). Zimmer tells how he turned a group of previously written pieces into the ebook Brain Cuttings. • Authors' rights in electronic publishing. Lynn Chu: Agent Unplugged, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett's informative interview with this principal of Writers' Representatives LLC, appears in the public part of the January 2010 issue of ASJA Monthly (the confidential section goes to members only). This is as helpful an analysis of what authors should know about their rights in the new electronic world as you are likely to read. It starts on pp. 6-7 of this PDF file,then jumps to p. 13. Print those pages out and highlight them! Her most valuable comments are on book publishers trying to becoming licensing agents for e-rights while taking a print publishers' share of income and without doing what a licensing agent ought to do, and since authors will very quickly learn how much they can do without the publishers, they are playing a dangerous game. Authors: there IS no standard on e-publishing terms, so do your homework. At a minimum, read this article. • Authors catch fire with self-published e-books .Carol Memmott, USA Today, 2-11, reports that young Amanda Hocking's self-published (digitally) young-adult paranormal novels are selling hundreds of thousands of copies through online bookstores. "Hocking credits her success to aggressive self-promotion on her blog, Facebook and Twitter, word of mouth and writing in a popular genre — her books star trolls, vampires and zombies." But she's not the only such success in self-publishing. • Novel rejected? There’s an e-book gold rush! (Neely Tucker, Washington Post, 5-6-11) • Don't Burn Your Books—Print Is Here to Stay (Nicholas Carr, Wall Street Journal, 1-5-13) The e-book had its moment, but sales are slowing. Readers still want to turn those crisp, bound pages • Time to rethink contracts, writes Trevor Dolby, in an opinion piece on BookBrunch. "Author advances are the original no-doc mortgages. They base their lending decision on nothing more than a feeling that the author is good for the money." So goes this poor-publishers-screwed-by-authors opinion piece, suggesting it's time to be less generous. If you want to save the industry, the last thing to do is add one more reason for writers to wonder if it makes sense to go the traditional publishing route. Trevor thinks it's time for a more equitable sharing of risks, as if taking a year or more of one's life to write a book is not a major risk. • Apple reveals new service for authors to sell their books directly in the iBookstore (David W. Martin, MacLife, 5-26-10) • The New Author Platform: What You Need to Know (Alan Rinzler's blog is full of stuff relevant to authors) • By Turning Authors into Speakers, Publishers Profit, Even in Recession (Karen Holt, Publishing Perspectives 8-26-09) • The End of Authorship by John Updike (NY Times Book Review essay, 6-25-06). Updike refers to another important essay: Scan This Book! by Kevin Kelly (NYTimes Magazine). • A Book Author Wonders How to Fight Piracy (Peter Wayner, Bits, NY Times, 5-14-09) • The Indie Author Guide (April L. Hamilton) • NovelR, Eli James's blog about reading, writing, and publishing Internet fiction • Susan’s Randoms: When First Books Don’t Top the Bestseller List (another author's lessons learned) • Time to Change: Authors'--and publishers'--shifting responsibilities. Jesse Kornbluth, in PW (11-23-09) writes: "Online book promotion requires more than a marketing assistant's willingness to drill down through 20 screens on Google. To be effective, it requires imagination, the out-of-the-box quality that in-the-box people like to think can be turned on at will. Not so." (It's worth reading the whole piece.) • The Truth About Print-on-Demand Publishing (Writers and Editors) • The Business Rusch: Surviving the Transition, Part 1 by fiction writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch. An interesting series about how writers might deal with the enormous changes rocking and reshaping the book publishing industry. It comes in four parts: ---The Business Rusch: Surviving the Transition, Part 1 ---Publishers (Surviving the Transition, Part 2) ---Agents (Surviving the Transition, Part 3 ---(Plan for the Future (Surviving the Transition Part 4). |
• A Poignant Response to Books Vs E-books, Courtesy of Will Schwalbe (Josh Hanagarne, World's Strongest Librarian, 11-26-13) Hanagarne quotes Schwalbe : “I was there with mom for the last two days, and then when she died, I looked around the room. I looked at the book shelf and slowly panned across, reading the titles on the spines. It was a lovely, heartbreaking, but uplifting and physical example of who she had been and the books she and I had loved together. And the love we had shared.” Then he smiled and said, “It gave me a comfort that I don’t know that I can ever get from a screen.”
• Want to Earn More as a Book Author? A Male Name Will Help (Elizabeth Segran, Fast Company, 4-23-18) In a groundbreaking study of more than two million books published in North America between 2002 and 2012, scholars found that books by women authors are priced 45% less than those of their male counterparts. The researchers, sociologist Dana Beth Weinberg and mathematician Adam Kapelner, both from Queens College-CUNY, say there is a lot more to the story than can be gleaned from this price gap alone.
• What’s Ahead in 2013–Predictions for the Future of Publishing and Authors of the Digital Age (Kristen Lamb). Two samples: "Traditional publishing is centered in the beating heart of Manhattan, which would be great if that wasn’t some of the priciest real estate in the world. NY publishing is carrying a crap load of overhead their competition doesn’t have. There are high rents, salaries, and electric bills all being 1) factored into the price of the book and 2) taken out of the author’s pocket. This wasn’t an issue so long as digital publishing was in its infancy and there were no other viable options for authors. Unfortunately for NY, now there are other options and these options are leaner, meaner, and faster. This means that consumers get good books cheaper and the writers get paid better (and faster). This all adds up for a WIN for authors and consumers, but NY is finding itself less and less competitive."
"NY apparently has been hesitant to enter the emerging market in self-publishing out of concern for their brand. That is a viable argument and I can definitely appreciate their reticence. But then Simon & Schuster partners with AUTHOR HOUSE? This company has a long history of ripping authors off, and it doesn’t look like much has changed."
• Women’s Presses & Publishers (WordMothers)
Ten trends shaping the future of publishing (Brian O'Learn, Magellan Media). Read his excellent blogs on magazine, book, and association publishing .
Paperback pioneers (Gayle Feldman, Futurebook, The Bookseller, 3-10-14). A look back at how the U.S. paperback industry developed.
Penguin Random House, the “Following Four,” and the Future of Competition (Edward Nawotka, Publishing Perspectives, 5-31-13)
Will Self-Publishing Counterbalance Trade Publishing Consolidation? (Edward Nawotka, Publishing Perspectives, 5-31-13)
Number of Publishers’ Branded Reader Communities Set to Explode (Jane Tappuni, Publishing Perspectives, 5-14-13). Because of "the decline in library purchases and the closing of bookstores over the last few years, publishers have devoted more of their marketing budget towards building a direct relationship with their customers. The creation of online communities has been central to this."
Are Apps The Future of Book Publishing? (Alex Knapp, Forbes 3-30-12)
Amazon. The dominance of Amazon needs to be addressed but it is far more attributable to natural circumstances than it is anybody’s fault (Mike Shatzkin, The Shatzkin Files, 5-7-18)
Lynn Chu: Agent Unplugged, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett's informative interview with this principal of Writers' Representatives LLC, appeared in the public part of the January 2010 issue of ASJA Monthly but is no longer online. . This was a helpful analysis of what authors should know about their rights in the new electronic world read. Her most valuable comments are on book publishers trying to becoming licensing agents for e-rights while taking a print publishers' share of income and without doing what a licensing agent ought to do, and since authors will very quickly learn how much they can do without the publishers, they are playing a dangerous game. Authors: there IS no standard on e-publishing terms, so do your homework.
Tools of Change for Publishing Conference
The O'Reilly Tools of Change Conference explored emerging trends in digital publishing. Final conference was in 2013, and many talks are still available--watch and listen to them while they're still available!
Tools of Change for Publishing Conference 2013 (watch speakers while this is still available on YouTube)
Tools of Change for Publishing Conference 2012 (videos of many talks)
Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, 2011
• Margaret Atwood's keynote address: "The Publishing Pie: An Author's View" (video--she's funny: A book is a mode of transmission of stuff from one brain into another brain." "An author is a primary source."
• O'Reilly interview with Margaret Atwood and PW's report on Atwood's talk
• What publishers can and should learn from "The Elements" Theodore Gray on true interactivity and apps vs. ebooks. (Gray spoke of three essential components for producing e-book titles: An author who can tell a good story; programmers, who can make that story something great; and producers, who can produce compelling video).
• Now What? Embracing New Models and Rethinking the Old…… (David "Skip" Prichard, of Ingram Content Group)
Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, 2010 (O'Reilly TOC Conference 2010)
• Round-up Day 1 (Mike Rankin)
• Round-up Day 2 (Mike Rankin)
Round-up Day 3 (Mike Rankin)
• TOC keynote talks online (playlist on YouTube)
• Peter Collingridge, "Enhancing the E-book"
• Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, 2009
Missed it? Click here for blip.tv Episodes Archive, linking to videos of interesting talks that may change your thinking about how to publish fiction and nonfiction in today's market. Titles you may find of particular interest:
• E-books: How Soon Is Now? (Peter Balis, Wiley)
• "Where Do You Go with 40,000 Readers? A Study in Online Community Building" (Ron Hogan interviewing science fiction novelist John Scalzi and Tor Book editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden)
• The Long Tail Needs Community
• Lessons from a Book's Simultaneous Publication in Print and on the Web (Stephen Smith, talking about the 2700-page ESV Study Bible, which went through first two printings in two months and has sold more than 150,000 copies)
• New Reading Habits, New Distribution Models
• "What Happens When Anyone Can Edit Your Book, Online?" (John Broughton, author of Wikipedia: The Missing Manual)
BEA: Why Small Publishing Will Save the World. Literary agent Janet Reid reports from Book Expo about the coming artistic revolution. She doesn't know what will turn things around--maybe an enhanced e-book--but it won't come from traditional book publishing, which is not set up to invent things. Writes Anthony, in Comments, "Essentially, what it boils down to is decentralization and just-in-time (JIT) content models based on nimble movers and shakers that can turn on a dime."
Book Distribution and Fulfillment
Wholesalers and distributors, explained• How Book Distribution and Fulfillment Function (BookPrinting.com) Distribution is the process of getting the book into the hands of readers. A useful chart showing the path of a book from printer to warehouse to (a) Expanded distribution o (b) Direct-to-consumer. Expanded distribution can go the brick-and-mortar path (from wholesalers and buyer to bookstores to readers, or online distribution to online sellers to readers)
• Book Distributors and Book Wholesalers: What's the Difference? (Don Leeper, Bookmobile, 3-7-16)
• Small Press Distribution: The Only Nonprofit Book Distributor Abruptly Closes (Jane Friedman, The Hot Sheet, 4-10-24) Linked to by permission. [I love this publication and you can get two sample issues free.]
"Two weeks ago, Small Press Distribution (SPD)—in business since 1969—announced its abrupt closure and end of operations. The news came as a shock to the hundreds of small presses who rely on it and had been shipping books to SPD for distribution up until its last days. SPD supported small publishers who don’t always qualify for commercial distribution."
And there's a long, interesting discussion of what this will mean. "What Will Take SPD’s Place in the Literary Community? Small presses must choose quickly from a number of distribution options; some urge forming distribution co-ops. Distribution for small presses is inherently challenging because distribution is all about economies of scale, and small presses are by their very nature more expensive to distribute...." Read the whole article for insights into small press distribution, and Jane refers you to more sources on the topic:
---Book Distribution Basic Explainer (Cassie Mannes Murray, Pine State Publicity, 7-26-23) on book distribution, Ingram, sales reps, booksellers, Topanga, and publishing.
---Small Press Distribution: An Interview with Brent Cunningham (Adam Robinson, Real Pants, 7-15-15)
---Notebook: Unevenly Distributed (Ann Kjellberg, Book Post, 4-5-24)
---Small Press Distribution closes, leaving indie publishers reeling (Sophia Nguyen, Washington Post, 4-3-24)
---Small Press Distribution Clients Scramble to Find New Distributors (Jim Milliot and Nathalie op de Beeck, Publishers Weekly, 4-2-24)
---Presses Previously Distributed by SPD (CLMP, 4-29-24)
• How to Get Your Book Distributed: What Self-Published Authors Need to Know (Jane Friedman, 2-6-17) Part of her series on How to Self-Publish Your Book
• For Indie Publishers: When and Why to Work with a Trade Book Distributor (Joe Biel on Jane Friedman's blog, 8-14-18)
• How to Get Your Book Distributed: What Self-Published Authors Need to Know (Jane Friedman, 2-6-17) Part of her series on How to Self-Publish Your Book
• A wholesaler isn't necessarily a distributor, but a distributor could be a wholesaler. (Distributors and Wholesalers, Independent Book Publishers Association)
• List of Book Distributors and Wholesalers (Nonfiction Authors Association)
• List of Print Book Distributors (Reedsy)
• Distributors and Wholesalers (Independent Book Publishers Association)
• 25 Book Distributors to Help You Sell Your Book (Joana Regulacion, TCK Publishing)
• Top Independent Book Distributors (BookSpot)
Blads ("book layout and design") are booklet-sized previews of books, printed samples from a book to help sell it in advance of publication--showing basic publication information, cover artwork, sample pages showing layout and images.
• Bargain Hunting for Books, and Feeling Sheepish About It (David Streitfeld, NY Times, 12-27-08) On the rise of a network of amateurs selling books from their homes and, some would say, on the demise of publishing)
• Better Than Free (Kevin Kelly, The Technium) The internet is a copy machine. When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied: Immediacy, personalization, interpretation, authenticity, accessibility, embodiment, patronage, findability.
• Book design: a primer. Dick Margulis has some useful material on his website about book design, which, he emphasizes, is about more than the cover. There are six design modalities, he explains:
"Book design (the interior design framework and typography)
Composition (laying out the pages and setting the type)
Illustration (infographics, interior artwork, and images)
Cover illustration (which may involve original artwork or photography)
Cover graphic design (imagining and executing the front cover concept and type treatment)
Cover production (turning the graphic design concept into finished files acceptable to the printer and resulting in the finished look you expect).
Go here to read a sequence of clear, brief explanations of typography, the architecture of the page--especially the chapter opening, the color of the paper and ink, and font choice and spacing.
• Book Business (site full of interesting news, blog posts, on publishing as a business)
• Book Expo (the big annual conference of the American Booksellers Association)
Bookish.
• Bookish Goes Live (Jim Milliot, PW, 2-4-13). Hoping to make it easier for bookstores to survive, Bookish will make it easier for consumers to discover book. "Customers can type in as many as four books that they like and Bookish will find recommendations by “deconstructing” the book, Sun said, taking into account such things as editorial themes, reviews, editor insights and awards. “It an exercise in big data.".... As Bookish builds up more of a profile of a reader’s preferences (including book purchases) those will be added as well.
• Publishers Make a Plan: A ‘One Stop’ Book Site (Julie Bosman, NY Times, 5-6-11). Three publishers (Simon & Schuster, Penguin, and Hachette), frustrated that few book buyers visit their company sites, have created Bookish.com, hoping it will become a destination for readers the way Pitchfork.com is for music lovers and IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, and Netflix are for films -- where site visitors can read recommendations, reviews, and recommendations from other readers and can buy books from the site or other retailers. (The article doesn't mention Amazon.com. The Bookish staff will select books from 14 or more publishers.
• Mike Shatzkin puts this announcement in perspective in The old publishing value chain got twisted a bit last week (The Shatzkin Files, 5-3-11). "Bookish, which will be the 'new digital destination for readers"... promises to use content and software tools to promote discussion and discovery around books and to answer the reader’s question: 'what book should I read next?' ... Bookish is trying to straddle the same fence that Google, and, to a lesser extent, Kobo are: being an ally of existing retailers while selling direct to consumers itself. What they’re suggesting they’ll do is reminiscent of Copia and Goodreads and Library Thing...The hunch here is that if any one of these three big publishers had gone aggressively into direct sales, they would have risked serious retaliation from both of their two biggest customers: Amazon and Barnes & Noble."
BookMarket.com. John Kremer's excellent resources. Scroll down and find contact info on various lists of Book Publishers for Authors
• Business Book Editors and Publishers
• Children's Book Editors and Publishers
• Cookbook Editors and Publishers
• Health Book Editors and Publishers
• First Fiction and Debut Novel Editors and Publishers
• Christian, Spiritual, and Inspirational Book Editors and Publishers
• Reference, Humor, and Writing Editors and Publishers
• Sports Book Editors and Publishers
Book Production
• Making Books (wonderful b&w Encyclopedia Brittanica audio-visual explanation and illustration of how books were produced in 1947, from Prelinger Moving Image Archives))
• A brief history of book printing and binding (cj Madigan, Shoebox Stories, with great moving images on YouTube)
Book publishing and bookselling history
Bookstores, chains, and trends toward big and small stores. I'm sure others are covering this topic, but I find Mike Shatzkin's analysis and predictions about what's going on in book publishing and bookselling both compelling and scary:
• Jason Epstein on Publishing's Past, Present and Future (Originally delivered as a speech at the Hong Kong Book Fair in 2008, and published in the Winter 2009 Authors Guild Bulletin as “Backlist Maestro: Mr. Epstein’s Dream Machine”)
How Book Publishing Has Changed Since 1984. A look back at an age of old retail and indie bookstores, before computers, celebrity memoirs, and megachains came to dominate the literary world (Peter Osnos, The Atlantic, 4-12-11). Coming next: "Good Reviews Are No Longer Enough."
• The iPad, the Kindle, and the future of the book business. . Can the iPad topple the Kindle, and save the book business? (Ken Auletta, The New Yorker, 4-26-10)
• Technology, curation, and why the era of big bookstores is coming to an end (Mike Shatzkin, Shatzkin Files, 6-7-11, who provided the following links as well--read him first!). Here's a later entry: Going where the customers are might be an alternative to selling direct (Shatzkin, 8-9-12)
• Ebooks are making me recall the history of mass-market publishing (Shatzkin Files 3-13-11)
• On Chronicling The End of the Chain Bookstore Era (Sarah Weinman, Off on a Tangent 2-17-11)
• Can the chains provide us with better small bookstores? (Shatzkin Files 11-8-09)
• Publishers Make a Plan: A ‘One Stop’ Book Site (Julie Bosman, NY Times, 5-6-11, on the formation of Bookish.com
• The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time by Keith Houston. “Keith Houston’s deft history of the object wraps entire civilizations into the telling, propelling us through the evolution of writing, printing, binding and illustration with gusto.” ~Nature
• Say goodbye to your local bookstore (Mike Boone, Montreal Gazette, 4-4-11, reporting on Shatzkin's predictions)
• Mike Shatzkin on Publishing's Priorities for 2011 (Edward Nawotka, Publishing Perspectives, 5-26-11). BEA Video of Mike Shatzkin discussing "the erosion of shelf space in bookstores, publishing innovation, English as a disruptive force overseas, and the two priorities publishers should be focused on over the next 6-12 months: price experimentation and improving rights databases"
• It will be hard to find a public library 15 years from now (Shatzkin, 4-8-11)
And to keep up with it all (and not just with what he writes about:
• Mike Shatzkin's Twitter feed
Book Publishing 3.0, a video of Richard Eoin Nash's provocative half-hour talk on the future of book publishing. Nash's start-up, Cursor, is "a portfolio of niche social publishing communities, one of which will be called Red Lemonade." Combine Kinko's (which democratized copying) with Netflix (which brings in "if you liked this, you may also like this") and you go from "The 20th century was about sorting supply" to "the 21st century will be about sorting demand" and Oprah's book club. "The end is connection." He also speaks on Surrounding the Audience: Cursor and the Social Publishing Community, or, Apres Le Blockbuster, Le Niche.
Stepping back into time, another perspective on how things have changed:
• Horse-Riding Librarians Were the Great Depression’s Bookmobile (Eliza McGraw), Smithsonian, 6-21-17) During the Great Depression, a New Deal program brought books to Kentuckians living in remote areas.
• Whatever Happened To...The Traveling Library? (Alan Morrell, Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, 3-12-16) The bookmobile was a library on wheels that served first rural- and then all Rochester-area residents for decades. Rochester’s was the first bookmobile in New York state and the second in the country (after Dayton, Ohio). It all started locally in 1923.The number of bookmobiles in the U.S. peaked at more than 1,000 in the 1970s, although most of them are now gone. “For 80 years, bookmobiles …made their way in and around Rochester, often providing the only source of books for homebound, elderly, poor, rural and young readers.”
Break on Cost Of Textbooks Unlikely Before Last Bell, 2010 (Ylan Q. Mui and Susan Kinzie, WashPost, 8-20-08), followed up by letters to the editor.
The Business Rusch: Surviving the Transition, Part 1 by fiction writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch. An interesting series about how writers might deal with the enormous changes rocking and reshaping the book publishing industry. It comes in four parts:
• The Business Rusch: Surviving the Transition, Part 1
• Publishers (Surviving the Transition, Part 2)
• Agents (Surviving the Transition, Part 3
• (Plan for the Future (Surviving the Transition Part 4).
Changes in Book Publishing. If you're just beginning to sort out how new media and outlets are changing book publishing, there's no better place to start than with Mike Shatzkin's speeches or the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conferences (many talks from which you can listen to online).
The Charles Darwin Guide to Writing and Selling an Effective eBook (Pamela Wilson, Copyblogger). Some basic principles!
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Children's Books by Harold D. Underdown, 3rd edition--as reviewers put it, a cheatsheet to the very specialized separate world of children's and adolescents' book publishing
Contract terms for book publishing contracts (full section of links to everything from the Author's Guild's Improving Your Book Contract: Negotiation Tips for Nine Typical Clauses to 8 clauses an agent is likely to negotiate in a contract
Digital Self-Publishing Shakes Up Traditional Book Industry by Geoffrey A. Fowler and Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg (WSJ.com 6-3-10),or 'Vanity' Publishing Goes Digital. Among other points made in this important article: "The new formula makes digital self-publishing more lucrative for authors. 'Some people will be tempted by the 70% royalty at Amazon,' Mr. Nash says. "If they already have a loyal fan base, will they want 70% of $100,000 or 15% of $200,000 for a hardcover?"
The Digital Scholar: How Technology is Transforming Academic Practice by Martin Weller. Read an excerpt on the academic publishing business here.
DigitalBookWorld webcasts. Free and interesting panels and speakers, including
•SOCIAL MEDIA: Time Suck or Investment?
•Search 101: Practical SEO/SEM Tactics
• eBook 201: eBook Production Intensive WEBcasts (Joshua Tallent)
•Book Rights: Headed for a Borderless Future?
•The Truth About eBooks: Devices, Formats, Pirates (Oh, My!), and many more.
Digital Imaging Guidelines (guidelines prepared by the UPDIG Coalition, to establish photographic standards and practices for photographers, designers, printers, and image distributors). The guidelines cover Digital Asset Management, Color Profiling, Metadata, and Photography Workflow.
The Dog-Eared Paperback, Newly Endangered in an E-Book Age (Julie Bosman, NY Times 9-2-11).These are dark and stormy times for the mass-market paperback...“The people who used to wait to buy the mass-market paperback because of the price aren’t going to wait anymore,” says publisher Liate Stehlik.
Do enhanced ebooks create a comeback trail for packagers? (Mike Shatzkin, The Shatzkin Files, 2-20-10)
Does Free Pay? Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired and author of The Long Tail, thinks you should consider giving your book away. Jordan E. Rosenfeld on why he thinks so. (Writer's Digest, 11-3-08)
EBook Conversion Services Directory (listings by File Types for Conversion, alphabetically by service provider, and by Types/Format--but not evaluated)
eBook Economy (news about and resources for the digital publishing revolution). First quote on deck: "The ebook also allows authors to skip over other hurdles, including the very cold reality that most offline retailers won’t stock a self-published book on their shelves. Though online retailers like the Kindle and Nook stores can still give preferential treatment for major publishers, they’re able to provide a wide swath of inventory from the long tail." ~ Simon Owens, The economics of self-publishing an ebook, on The Next Web: Media
eBookNewser, (one of several Mediabistro blogs), which has blogged among other things about
• LinkedIn Groups for eBook Authors, Publishers & Readers"target="_blank">
• How To Convert PDFs to ePub or Kindle Files (Jason Boog, Calibre, 8-23-11)
The End by Boris Kachka (long story in New York, 9-14-08. The book business as we know it will not be living happily ever after.
The End of Authorship by John Updike (NY Times Book Review essay, 6-25-06). Updike refers to another important essay: Scan This Book! by Kevin Kelly (NYTimes Magazine).
Fact-checking.
• It’s a Fact: Mistakes Are Embarrassing the Publishing Industry (Alexandra Alter, NY Times, 9-22-19) "The release of Naomi Wolf’s book “Outrages” was postponed after questions emerged about her research. In an era plagued by deep fakes and online disinformation campaigns, we still tend to trust what we read in books. But should we? In the past year alone, errors in books by several high-profile authors — including Naomi Wolf, the former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson, the historian Jared Diamond, the behavioral scientist and “happiness expert” Paul Dolan and the journalist Michael Wolff — have ignited a debate over whether publishers should take more responsibility for the accuracy of their books.... While in the fallout of each accuracy scandal everyone asks where the fact checkers are, there isn’t broad agreement on who should be paying for what is a time-consuming, labor-intensive process in the low-margin publishing industry."
• The Fallen Status of Books: Hard Times for Hardcovers (Jack Schaefer, Slate, 9-9-10).
• ForeWord (reviews of good books, independently published)
• Free Your Mind (Steven Poole) On writers, ‘digital rights management’, and the internet
• From Contract To Bestseller In 60 Days ((James Boyce, Daily Kos, on Frances Beinecke's Clean Energy Common Sense)
• The Fry Chronicles MyFry, designed by the UK’s Stefanie Posavec, turns The Fry Chronicles into an interactive infographic of sorts, complete with tags, hyperlinks — the works. Stephen Fry (twitter address: @StephenFry), as Fast Company puts it, transforms how we read by producing the first book truly designed for the Internet (his memoirs).
• The future of publishing (E-publish or perish) (The Economist, 3-31-10).
Happy (75th) birthday to the paperback! (Read Street blog, Baltimore Sun, 7-29-10)
Is Print the New Vanity Press? (Mary Ellen Bates, EContent blog, Dec 2010). Seth Godin, a best-selling author of Permission Marketing : Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers, is leaving his traditional publisher and plans to distribute his content in several media,including audio books, apps, podcasts, and print on demand. In this young new market, "whether a book is published and distributed by a reputable print publisher or self-published in ebook form is not as important as whether or not the content is immediately available, is reasonably inexpensive, and meets a need," reports Bates.
Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing by Dean Wesley Smith (read it free online).
How Authors Really Make Money: The Rebirth of Seth Godin and Death of Traditional Publishing. Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, on the economics and practical realities of being published in print, in e-books, and through self-publishing (vs. traditional publishing). (No simple answers.) Listen to the realistic video. (Publishers are good at distribution and making good book covers.) Three books Ferriss recommends:
• The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout
• Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
• Author 101: Bestselling Book Publicity: The Insider's Guide to Promoting Your Book--and Yourself by Rick Frishman, Robyn Freedman Spizman, and Mark Steisel.
How Book Publishing Has Changed Since 1984. A look back at an age of old retail and indie bookstores, before computers, celebrity memoirs, and megachains came to dominate the literary world (Peter Osnos, The Atlantic, 4-12-11). Coming next: "Good Reviews Are No Longer Enough."
Inside the World of Local Books--A Bright Future (Steven Rosenbaum, Fast Change 2-21-11). He cites U.S. Book Sales Up in 2010 (Book Business, 2-24-11)
Interviews with editors (the Poets & Writers interviews with Agents and Editors)
• Agents & Editors: A Q&A With Editor Jonathan Karp by Jofie Ferrari-Adler (Nov/Dec 2009)
• A Q&A With Jonathan Galassi by Jofie Ferrari-Adler (July/Aug 2009)
• A Q&A With Four Young Editors by Jofie Ferrari-Adler (interviewing Richard Nash, Lee Boudreaux, Alexis Gargagliano, and Eric Chinski, March/April 2009)
• A Q&A With Editor Chuck Adams by Jofie Ferrari-Adler (Nov/Dec 2008)
• A Q&A With Editor Janet Silver by Jofie Ferrari-Adler (July/Aug 2008)
• A Q&A With Editor Pat Strachan by Jofie Ferrari-Adler (March/April 2008)
Konrath Ebooks Sales Top 100k (A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, 9-22-10). The good news on self-e-pubbed genre novels!
Metadata, about:
• Metadata Demystified: A Guide for Publishers (PDF, Amy Brand, Frank Daly, Barbara Meyers, Niso Press)
• Publishers Take Seat at Metadata Table with Giant Chair (Jennifer Zaino, Semantic Web, 3-1-10).
• Metadata is the new most important thing to know about (Mike Shatzkin, IdeaLogical, 6-8-10)
Literary Magazines, Publishers, and Organizations (excellent American Book Review links)
Losing the Secondary Business Can Kill You (Mike Shatzkin, 5-23-10, on the changing value chain: e.g., how in the past someone with money got "self-published" through a traditional publisher; changing role of independent bookstore)
Making Books by André Bernard (Wash Post 12-21-08). More end-of-2008 reflections on Harcourt's bad behavior and the possible end of [good] publishing.
Making Information Pay (Book Industry Study Group, 8th annual, 5-5-21). Click on "presentations now online" (top right) and download presentations (some of them mind-opening). As Madi Solomon says in one, "Content is no longer a scarcity, attention is." As Kasdorf says, "Metadata is the new lubricant."
Micropublishing
• How to get ahead in micro publishing Andrew tuck on the Zine revolution (The Independent, 3-26-95)
• Denton: "The Dream Of Micropublishing Is Dead!" (Nicholas Carlson, Business Insider 2-22-09)"... it's easier to get agency brand managers to spend their clients' money on one very popular Web destination than it is to convince them to spend the same amount on lots of niche sites."
• How Can New Niche Micropublishers Compete with Large Established Publishers? (Edward Nawotka, Publishing Perspectives 10-27-10). Having a topic with a "large enough" audience enables "scaling up": it can be converted into an active community. Intro to : My “Irish Story”: On Launching an Online Community and Micropublisher from Scratch (Eoin Purcell, Publishing Perspectives, 10-27-10)
• A warning to niche blogs (Nick Denton, founder of Gawker, on Valleywag)
• A note of encouragement to niche blogs (Ryan Block, 1-20-07)
• A Blog Mogul Turns Bearish on Blogs (David Carr on Nick Denton reorganizing his blogs, NY Times 7-3-06)
I have not continued adding stories on this topic....but google the terms and you'll find more stories.
Mining the Literary Middle Ground (Hernán Iglesias Illa, Publishing Perspectives, 8-5-11). Online start-ups Byliner and The Atavist have established a market for stories too long for magazines and too short for books (between 5,000 word magazine articles and 100,000 words books. Much of their income is from apps, not content.
The Open Refrigerator (Gerald Howard, The Millions, 2-23-16) As tweeted: Ego, insecurity, and irrational exuberance in the clubby world of New York publishing. An essay from the forthcoming anthology Literary Publishing in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Travis Kurowski, Wayne Miller, and Kevin Prufer
•Paradise Lost: The Three Great Sins Of Online Publishing (Andrew Boer, Publishing Insider 2-24-12). "By my count, there have been only three great sins by online publishers" (do read the article for the explanations):
---The concept of the banner ad
---Its failure to take a stand on user privacy and data
---Letting the author become the "brand" (the true publisher).
See more interesting stories from MediaPost/Online Publishing Insider.
• Periodic Table of Typefaces (Cam Wilde, Behance) Popular, Influential, and Notorious.
• PersonaNonData Michael Cairns' digital transformation and business strategy for content-centric companies and organizations. @Personanondata
• Pictorial Webster's (John Carrera, video showing a linotyper's labor of love in producing a reproduction of an old book--in other words, linotype printing in action)
• Podcasting Your Novel: Publishing's Next Wave? (Hector Florin, Time 1-31-09)
***• Preditors & Editors A noted guide to publishers and writing services for writers (particularly valued for its warnings about the bad guys)
• Print Books Are Target of Pirates on the Web (Motoko Rich, NY Times, 5-11-09)
• Printing industry circa 1947 (Jeremy Norman's HistoryofInformation.com) A vocational film about the printing industry, 1947, illustrates the opportunities and training available in printing, and shows hand typesetting, linotype, monotype, display, make-up and layout. Excellent as a basic explanation of how printing traditionally worked.
***• PublishersMarketplace. An online community and directory helping publishing professionals (including aspiring authors) find critical information about what's going on in publishing and with other publishing professionals (including literary agents). Driven in large part by Publishers Lunch, the most widely read daily dossier in publishing and known as “publishing’s essential daily read.” Publishers Marketplace is popular because of the 45,000 publishing professionals who read Publishers Lunch (the shorter, free version of its popular daily newsletter and weekly deal report) . Daily Lunch is e-mailed daily to qualified book trade professionals. Deal Lunch is e-mailed occasionally, sharing about 10 deal reports from the previous week (or roughly 5 percent of reported deals). For $25 per month, you can subscribe to Publishers Marketplace and receive the daily Publishers Lunch Deluxe newsletter plus all the benefits of membership: Deals, dealmakers, The Automat (Constant rolling headlines and links, and editorial highlights, from almost 150 publishing news sources, updated 24/7), Book Tracker (sales results), contacts, Who Represents (nearly 30,000 authors), publishers/imprints, and member pages.
---PublishersMarketplace blogs
***• Publishers Weekly (PW) (PW, the "the bible of the book business," key industry news and reviews, a weekly news magazine focused on the book publishing business. It is targeted at publishers, booksellers, librarians, literary agents, authors, and the media.
---PW Insider, Publishers Weekly Publishers Weekly editors chime in on the biggest stories and books of the week.
--- Publishers Weekly PW LitCast Conversations between Publishers Weekly editors and authors of new fiction and nonfiction books.
--- Publishers Weekly PW FaithCast A podcast featuring interviews with authors of new and upcoming religious books by the editors of Publishers Weekly Magazine.
• Publishing: The Revolutionary Future. Jason Epstein, NY Rev of Books, 3-11-2010, on "the inevitability of digitization as an unimaginably powerful, but infinitely fragile, enhancement of the worldwide literacy on which we all--readers and nonreaders--depend."
**Publishing Basics: Navigating the Self-Publishing Minefield (Ron Pramschufer). Publishing Basics – A Guide for the Small Press and Independent Self-Publisher started as a print book; now it's a series of brief videos. Self-publishing has become a huge industry that has evolved into a virtual minefield. Today, that minefield dominates a strictly “Buyer Beware” market, dominated by a variety of sophisticated vanity press models, whose sole objective is to pluck the author’s charge card from their pocket, and charge useless unneeded services to that card until it reaches it’s limit. There is a fork in the road to self-publishing that comes very early in the process. This video edition of Publishing Basics is designed to help today’s author make educated choices and stay on the correct path leading to self-publishing success. The book is divided into eleven playlists on various aspects of the self-publishing process. Ron also runs a "self-publishing" company--"helping authors become publisers": SelfPublishing.com (Helping Authors Become Publishers).
Publishing Careers blog (An online "informational interview" for college students, new graduates, and career changers interested in knowing what a job in publishing is like and how they can get one)
Publishing Is Weird (Publishing 101, with Helpful Digressions) , frank explanations for novices, from Jennie and friends, on This Crazy Industry, 10-23-06). In answering a question ("how can a self-published author get an agent to widen his market?", Jennie explains how the whole book publishing industry works. Where there is purple it's kind of hard to read: I recommend you copy the whole thing, paste it into a Word document, and read it there, if like me you can't read the heavy-purple areas. It's a good wrap-up on how things work, although the whole biz is changing and this may all change!
Publishing and bookseller organizations and resources
• The Big Five trade publishers are Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster.
• Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi, a nonprofit professional association for self-publishing writers--authors as entrepreneurs). Not to be confused with The Authors Guild, a major advocacy group for American writers (especially those traditionally published).
• American Booksellers Association (ABA, the national trade association for independent booksellers). Includes Indie Bound, a network supporting independent bookstores. Posts links to bookstore blogs.
• Association Media & Publishing (formerly SNAP) (serving association publishers, communications professionals and the media they create)
• Association of American Publishers (AAP, principal trade association of the book publishing industry)
• Association of University Presses (AUP)
• Association of Catholic Book Publishers (formerly Catholic Book Publishers Association)
• Association of Publishers for Special Sales (increasing members' revenue and profits from--and marketing to--non-bookstore buyers) Originally COSMEP, then SPAN, now APSS. An interesting history. See Bookselling University FAQ.
• Audio Publishers Association (APA), among other things, sponsor of the Audies (for best audiobooks and spoken word entertainment)
• Bookbuilders of Boston (people involved in book publishing and manufacturing throughout New England)
• Book Expo America (booksellers' annual conference)
• Book Industry Study Group (BISG, which suggests standards and best practices for the industry)
• BookLife PW's site for reviews of self-published books.
• Book Publishers' Professional Association (BPPA, Canada)
• The Bookseller Book publishing industry news. Launched Unbound, "a publishing platform that allows readers to choose what is published....Authors are required to pitch their idea to readers on the site, and have 50 days to attract support through readers pledging money to fund the publication of the work."
• BookWire (news and reviews)
• Christian Small Publishers Association (CSPA)
• Consortium Book Sales & Distribution (CBSD), contact info for a consortium of small, independent, and nonprofit publishers)
• Digital Book World started as a conference to address the radically changing commercial publishing environment; has evolved into a year-round platform for networking and educational resources for consumer publishing professionals and their partners — including agents, booksellers and technology. See slideshares of presentations and YouTube videos of various experts--watch, for example, Mike Shatzkin on the book business trifurcating.
• The Electronic Publishing Industry Collaborative (EPIC) (originally an authors' organization)
• Frankfurt Book Fair (a major venue and event for trading foreign and international rights face-to-face). See Frankfurt is still vast, but it seems to be getting smaller (Mike Shatzkin, 10-17-14)
• Freelance (discussion group for publishing industry freelancers in all lines of work, including editing, indexing, proofreading, writing, typesetting, design, research, other--moderated by Chuck Brandstater)
• FreelanceWritersEditors (forum for published professional freelance editors, mostly, and writers, not many posts, moderated by Ruth Thaler-Carter -- a breakoff group from Freelance)
• Guild of Book Workers (a national organization of bookbinders, book conservators and book artists -- hand book crafts)
• The Hot Sheet A publishing industry newsletter for authors delivered via email every other Wednesday—published by Jane Friedman. I love it.
• Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA, formerly PMA), whose helpful articles can be read online (only members have access to the full archive). See also the list of regional affiliates and specialty organizations. Member benefits include discounted rates on Lightning Source and IngramSpark, Ingram's print-on-demand and publish-on-demand services, and through the Net Galley book review program can share cbook galleys electronically and securely with 210,000 reviewers, media professionals, booksellers, librarians, bloggers, and other contacts. Nonmembers can subscribe to IBPA's Independent magazine here for $60.
• Independent Book Publishing Professionals Group (IBPPG, for "indie" publishing). Sponsor Next Generation Indie Book Awards
• Independent Mystery Booksellers Association (IMBA)
• Ind-e-Pubs (a chat list for independent e-publishers)
• Indie Booksellers Council. SPD, CLMP Organize Indie Bookseller Small Press Support (Calvin Reid, PW, 9-21-18) "Nonprofit small press distributor SPD is teaming with the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses, to organize the Indie Bookseller Council, a newly formed group of independent booksellers focused on boosting the support and sales of small press literary works."
• International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF, digital publishing's trade association)
• Literary Marketplace (LMP). Long THE guide to book publishing industry, stocked in many libraries; now owned by Information Today, Inc., online only, and not at all the same solid reference tool.
• MidAtlantic Book Publishers Association (MBPA)
• Music Publishers Association (MPA)
• National Association of Independent Publishers Representatives (NAIPR), whose useful links include:
---Directory of NAIPR Reps
---Directory of Groups
---NAIPR Frontlist Plus Universal. See Over 200 Publishers, Distributors Sign On to NAIPR's Frontlist Plus Universal (Judith Rosen, PW, 7-20-09)
• New Pages (online guide to independent book publishers and university presses)
• Online Publishers Association (OPA)
• Organizations and e-communities for publishers (Marion Gropen's links and descriptions)
• Outside the Book Highlighting editors of color, for community and progress. If nothing else, editors need to at least be aware of how nondominant Englishes operate, instead of labeling them as incorrect or acting as if they don’t exist.
• People of Color in Book Publishing. Read story about it in PW (12-12-17)
• PMA (now IBPA)
• Publishers home pages
• Publishers Lunch (the latest book deals, in two versions, one free, one by subscription). Paid members of PublishersMarketplace get the longer Publishers Lunch Deluxe newsletter.
• Publishers Lunch Job Board. See also Writers and Editors Job Banks and Publishing Marketplaces
• Publishers Weekly (PW) (book publishing's main source of news, reviews, data, bestseller lists, etc.) See also BookLife (for self-published books).
• Publishing Professionals Network (PPN, formerly Bookbuilders West, renamed to reflecgt the changing nature of long-form content publishing)
• Publish-L (a publishing email discussion list)
• PubWest (trade association of small- and medium-size book publishers, printers, editors, proofreaders, graphic designers, binderies, and related editorial and service companies)
• Small Publishers, Artists and Writers Network (SPAWN), now Writers and Publishers Network (WPN) provides information, resources and opportunities for anyone involved in or interested in publishing, whether they are an author, freelance writer, artist or own a publishing company.
• Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) (innovative people advancing scholarly communication -- partly through a delightfully informative blog, The Scholarly Kitchen: What's Hot & What's Cooking in Scholarly Publishing)
• Small Publishers Association of North America (SPAN, or SPANnet) is now the Association of Publishers in Special Sales (advancing the success of publishers in non-bookstore marketing)
• Society of Young Publishers (SYP) (London, Oxford, Scotland)
• Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA, principal trade association for the software and digital content industry)
• Specialized Information Publishers Association (SIPA, formerly Newsletter & Electronic Publishers Association) is the principal trade association for the software and digital content industry.
• Washington Book Publishers (WBP, DC-based association of professionals in book publishing)
• Women's Media Group. This nonprofit association of prominent women in media (drawn from book, magazine, and newspaper publishing; film, television, online and other digital media) meets, collaborates, informs and provides mutual support as well as mentoring young women interested in publishing careers.
• Women's National Book Association, Inc. (WNBA, bringing all kinds of book people together, from librarians and teachers to publishers and creators)
SEE ALSO
• Publishing Organizations in North America (Books A to Z) A comprehensive list of publishing organizations in N.A. (from the Academy of American Poets to the Multicultural Publishing & Educational Council to the Writers' Union of Canada).
• The Reality of a Times Bestseller (Lynn Viehl, Publetariat, 4-20-09 Lynn crunches the numbers on her novel, Twilight Fall, which debuted at #19 on The New York Times Bestseller List and went on to sell nearly 75,000 copies in its first 5 months of release. It will come as a shock to most aspiring authors that if you have a big advance and sell 75,000 copies of your book, you may still net $0 when you get your first royalty statement.
Remainders.
--- What are Remainders? (literary agent Rachelle Gardner, 2-8-11)
--- 'The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered' by Clive James. Listen to him read it.
--- JA Konrath experiences remainders
• Reusable cover art and historical novels. Sarah Johnson's site showing how certain art gets used and reused for covers on historical novels (and Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of Love, hardcover edition). Art directors: your secret is out!
• Rights databases and transaction costs are an issue in the slimmed-down world publishing must become, says Mike Shatzkin in Ever heard of Tata Consulting? Well, I hadn’t either…
• The Rise and Fall of the Music Industry (Terry Gross, Fresh Air, 1-14-09) Her interview with Rolling Stone's Steve Knopper about his book Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age.
• The Rise in Popularity of Printed Books Continues (The Printing Report, UK, 5-3-18) 2017 data released by NDP BookScan show a 1.9% increase in print book sales last year. NDP data shows book sales have risen every year since 2013. During this period print sales are up 10.8%. Figures from Statisa show that sales of e-book readers peaked in 2011 when they topped out at 23.2m units shipped globally. By 2016, sales had slipped to 7.1m units. "Writing in Inc. Glenn Leibowitz listed amongst his reasons for preferring print: physical books are more easily shared, physical books make more meaningful gifts, and reading print books sets a good example for my kids."
• A roadmap for the future: 6 suggestions for today’s publishers that many can’t follow (Mike Shatzkin, The Shatzkin Files 6-13-10). Shatzkin thinks ahead for the rest of us. In brief, he suggests that publishers have to change the way they do business, because digital delivery increases supply even more than it increases demand, so prices have to go down. So "getting from today (selling content) to tomorrow (selling audiences) depends on using today’s asset to build tomorrow’s." Doing this will require using "content as bait," monetizing "the eyeballs you own," not "the copyrights you own."
"Find multiple ways to engage your audience." Sell other people's e-books, not just your own. Serve your community. Readers don't care where the book comes from.
"...if you can appeal to a community, you have an opportunity to build a brand. Brands are shortcuts for consumers; they orient us as to what to expect in products or services, including social cred, quality, and price."
Smashwords (ebook publishing and distribution platform for ebook authors, publishers and readers), Smashwords FAQs, Smashwords Style Guide (by Mark Coker), and Smashwords Marketing Guide (also Coker).
Subject: Our Marketing Guide (Ellis Weiner's parody of publishers' current approach to marketing, New Yorker 10-19-09)
Scan This Book! by Kevin Kelly (NY Times Magazine, 5-14-06), thinking things through: Is the universal library now in reach? The case against Google. How digital technology has disrupted old business models. What happens when books connect? Will we still be able to read at the beach?
Scholarly Kitchen (what's hot and cooking in scholarly publishing)
Schools, beware the e-book bandwagon (Nicholas Carr, Dallas Morning News, in St. Petersburg Times 8-14-11). Among other interesting arguments: "Because we've come to take printed books for granted, we tend to overlook their enormous flexibility as reading instruments. It's easy to flip through the pages of a physical book, forward and backward. It's easy to jump quickly between widely separated sections, marking your place with your thumb or a stray bit of paper. You can write anywhere and in any form on any page of a book. You can keep many different books open simultaneously, dipping in and out of them to gather related information. And when you just want to read, the tranquility of a printed page provides a natural shield against distraction."
Self-Publishers Flourish as Writers Pay the Tab (by Motoko Rich, NY Times, 1-27-09)
Self-Publishing and Print-on-Demand (POD) Publishing (Writers and Editors site with helpful explanations of the differences between the two, the strengths and pitfalls of various options, the "truth about POD," and so forth.
Serious Thoughts About the Business (Mike Shatzkin on how publishing is getting smaller after always having been getting bigger)
The 7 Types of Book Publishing Companies (Valerie Peterson, The Balance, 4-9-19)
Shelf Awareness (daily enlightenment for the book trade)
• The 10 Awful Truths about Book Publishing (Steven Piersanti, President, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, refreshed regularly) Among strategies for responding to the awful truths: 2. Events/immersion experiences replace traditional publicity in moving the needle. 7. Front-load the main ideas in books and keep books short.
• The 10 Most Common Paper-Purchasing Mistakes (Bill Lufkin, expert on paper-buying, guest blogging on Dead Tree Editions, 12-13-09). Dead Tree Editions (things printed on paper) provides insights,, analysis, practical advice, and smart-aleck comments related to the production and distribution of publications such as magazines and catalogs in the United States
• 10 point guide to dodging publishing pitfalls (Times Higher Education, 3-6-14) Veteran academic authors share their hard-won tips. E.g., go first to a first-tier academic publisher, for the peer review. Geared to British reader, but invaluable advice if your book is geared to academic publishers. (Authors: Richard J. Evans, Tim Birkhead, Jos Boys, Barbara Graziosi, Martin McQuillan, Susan Bassnett, Alan Ryan, Cary Cooper.
• This really is the death knell for publishers (an angry Michael Jecks on writerlytwitterings blog, 9-28-11). When Amazon.com's ebook discounts get rock-bottom low, so do returns to publishers, and even more so to authors, who sense increasing rationale for self-publishing and selling their books and e-books.
• Ten Things You Didn't Know about Your Books by Adrian Johns (author of The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making)
• The Time of Their Lives: The Golden Age of Great American Book Publishers, Their Editors and Authors by Al Silverman. See Times review: One for the Books (Bruce Jay Friedman, 9-13-08) "...a wonderful book, filled with anecdotal treasures. It could have been written only by a “bookman,” someone with printer’s ink in his blood and bones."
• Time to Change: Authors'--and publishers'--shifting responsibilities. Jesse Kornbluth, in PW (11-23-09) writes: "Online book promotion requires more than a marketing assistant's willingness to drill down through 20 screens on Google. To be effective, it requires imagination, the out-of-the-box quality that in-the-box people like to think can be turned on at will. Not so." (It's worth reading the whole piece.)
Stay Ahead of the Shift: What Publishers Can Do to Flourish in a Community-Centric Web World. Mike Shatzkin (slideshow and transcript of talk at BookExpo America 5-28-09). And a follow-up blog: My advice is not always easy to follow, but sometimes it proves right anyway, in which he says no publishers are following his advice, "to switch from a model based on selling products to a model based on owning communities." Book clubs failed to make that conversion, settling for a "last man standing" attempt to squeeze "every last penny out of the old model." His other "alternative to my 'multi-niche development' suggestion is to convert from a rights-acquiring publisher to a service organization. HarperCollins seems to be at least exploring the development of that alternative."
Staying Ahead of the Shift - the Discussion, about Mike Shatzkin's presentation at BookExpo America, May 28th, 2009. Presented on Web-to-print content transformation (personalized books, annotation)
Time to rethink contracts, writes Trevor Dolby, in an opinion piece on BookBrunch. "Author advances are the original no-doc mortgages. They base their lending decision on nothing more than a feeling that the author is good for the money." So goes this poor-publishers-screwed-by-authors opinion piece, suggesting it's time to be less generous. If you want to save the industry, the last thing to do is add one more reason for writers to wonder if it makes sense to go the traditional publishing route. Trevor thinks it's time for a more equitable sharing of risks, as if taking a year or more of one's life to write a book is not a major risk.
Trade publishing isn’t one business and it needs more than one strategy. Mike Shatzkin, 10-15-10. We really have at least two trade publishing businesses at the moment, the big houses and everybody else....Any 'industry data' that doesn’t separate the bigs from the smalls has to be parsed very carefully or it could lead to wildly erroneous conclusions."
The Transformation of Academic Publishing (Peter Binfield, publisher of PLoS ONE, TED talk at Stanford, 10-5-11)
23 Tips for Adapting From a Print-Centric to a Cross-Platform World (free PDF download, a white paper from Publishing Executive)
Usability: Typefaces for Dyslexia. Why certain fonts -- including Myriad Pro, Lexia Readable, Tiresias (especially good for visual impairment), Verdana, Trebuchet MS, Arial, and Geneva. If you care about this audience, follow advice in the British Dyslexia Association's Friendly Style Guide and read Dyslexia.com's page on Accessibility.
What's going to happen in book publishing. "[A]ll of us, to function, must have a view of how we think things in publishing will change," writes the always-interesting Mike Shatzkin in Part 1 of What I Would Have Done in London, a long blog entry that would have been his talk if an Iceland volcano blowing hadn't cancelled his trip to the London Book Fair. That blog entry is a follow-up to his major Stay Ahead of The Shift blog essay. He starts with issues "coming right up" and continues with his view of the next 20 to 25 years.
From Part 1, which spells out how much change can take place in 20 years:
Those who stay ahead of the curve prosper. "Cambridge University Press, for example, had tens of thousands of old backlist titles set up for print-on-demand long before other publishers did and they reaped a harvest of sales and profits in the past decade as a result. Last year, Simon & Schuster shifted resources from field reps to telemarketers."
This whole series is worth reading. In Part 2 he predicts: 'I’d expect that 20 years from now, the “local” hard drive will be relatively unimportant: a relatively short-term “emergency” cache for the rare moments when you aren’t easily connected to the network (the internet.) Data — all data, including everything you think you “own” — will live in “the cloud.” '
Publishers and other media will no longer be defined by format. The price of content (what writers can make) will go down, but the value of community/audience will increase. "The idea of a general book publisher will have no meaning." In comments, he adds: "the brands that can sell verifying the truth will command revenue."
In Part 3 he talks about "the process of content as bait to attract eyeballs -- providing tools, features, and databases to monetize the community" as is done today with Michael Cader's PublishersMarketplace. He uses Oxford Bibliographies online as an example of harnessing academic expertise to deliver curated and constantly updated bibliographies by subject.
And here's What I Would Have Said in London, Part 4 (what will happen in the short term--the next few years). He notes that e-book sales for new narrative books are "already in high single or low double digit percentages of the total number of units the book sells." (I assume that's both fiction and nonfiction.) Worth reading the whole series, for gems such as this: "Authors will be more inclined to self-publish, particularly their out-of print backlist and any title a publisher doesn’t offer an advance reflecting high expectations. That means that, on average, desireable books will be harder and more expensive for publishers to sign. The pressure for publishers to give more than a 25% ebook royalty will intensify. There will be excess capacity throughout the print supply chain: printing, warehousing, and sales operations, and the price of distribution services on offer will go down because the overhead cost of maintaining it, as a percentage of the sales it supports, will have gone up for those with fixed operations."
Where things are going in book publishing, part 1, Mike Shatzkin's important "What I would have done in London (part 1)" blog entry, a follow-up to his major Stay Ahead of The Shift blog essay. Starts with things "coming right up" and continues with the view of the next 20 to 25 years. Essential reading for booksellers and buyers.
Women writers underrepresented in publishing
• Belarussian Writer Svetlana Alexievich Starts All-Women Publishing House (Moscow times, 1-14-2020)“Men, they are everywhere, and women’s works are rarely published,” the writer said.
• Women still need to fight for publishing deals and book prizes (Marion Wynne-Davies, The Conversation, 6-5-15) "I take double pleasure in the fact that Ali Smith has won this year’s Baileys Prize. First, because I deeply admire her books. And second, I find it extraordinarily satisfying that it is a book about the difficulties faced by female artists that has come up trumps in a women-only literary prize. It broadcasts the fact that we’ve far from solved gender problems in the arts."
• Whatever Happened to ____________? (Anonymous, Longreads, Jan. 2020) Envy over her success led her husband, also a writer, to become violent. She fights every day for her safety — and to avoid being relegated to obscurity like so many writers who are mothers. "I was forced to spend $200,000 on legal and related fees, approximately four times my annual income, to buy my own freedom. I’ve been driven into deep poverty, because I dared to sell a third book and outpaced my failed novelist of a husband."
• 50 Top Women in Book Publishing (Book Business, 5-1-09)
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Courses on Book Publishing, Editing, and Proofreading
• Champlain College Publishing Initiative (which came to my attention through this interesting blog entry: Everything Old Is New Again: The Return of the Live Event (about the changing level of students' comfort engaging in face-to-face journalism, among other things)
• Columbia Publishing Course (highly regarded summer publishing course, previously the Radcliffe Publishing Course). Cost: about $8,000 (see FAQs. Read E-Book Revolution Upends a Publishing Course (Julie Bosman, NY Times, 7-15-11) "The course, which begins every year in June, bills itself as the “shortest graduate school in the country,” where students can learn in six weeks what it would take them a year to learn in the real world. (The second half of the course is devoted to magazine publishing.) Legions of high-placed publishing executives have been through the course...This year’s 101 students were chosen from more than 475 applicants, the highest number in years, showing that they were not deterred by the $6,990 fee for tuition and room and board on the Columbia campus — or by the limitations of entry-level positions that pay around $30,000 a year ." [Fee plus room and board in 2018: $8,575].
• Editorial Boot Camp(various locations)
• Copyeditors' Knowledge Base KOK Edit's useful directory to places to get training and certification as an editor, copyeditor, or proofreader.
• EditCetera workshops (Berkeley, CA) and distance learning (including courses by mail).
• Editorial Freelancers Association (online courses)
• Editorial Practices certificate, The Graduate School (formerly USDA, Washington DC)
Certificate program, classroom training, online training
• EEI Communications Training (the publishing think tank, Washington DC area)
• NYU Summer Publishing Institute (book, magazine, and digital publishing) and NYU Continuing Education. See NYU’s Summer Publishing Institute Wraps its 40th Year (John Maher, PW, 7-20-18)
• Radcliffe Publishing Course (now at Columbia), which Jason Zinoman described in 1998 Ivory Tower (Salon.com)
• University of Chicago editing courses
• University of Denver (The Publishing Institute) (focus entirely on book publishing)
• Yale launches course for the magazine and book publishing industry (to fill the gap left by the closure of the renowned Stanford Professional Publishing Course (SPPC), which was offered from 1978 to 2009). First session offered in 2010, with subsequent sessions held annually, says Publishing Executive 4-12-10.
• Book publishing courses (Publishers Central list)
• Publishing University Online Sessions for Members (Independent Book Publishers Association, IBPA)
There's a struggle between publishers (wanting to control privacy and maximize sales) and readers (wanting privacy and fair treatment). Tony Levelle writes: "When I use my Kindle ebook reader Amazon tracks an incredible amount of information. - what books I buy - what books I browse - what pages I read - how long I spend reading each page - any notes or highlights I make and which page I made them on - what time I read the book - where I was when I read the book This information is shared freely with 'law enforcement, litigants, marketing, and marketing associates...' In short, just about anyone. As a reader, I'm not sure what to do about it, except to quit using a Kindle and switch to an open-source book reader." The Electronic Frontier Foundation provides useful information about various e-readers in E-Book Buyer's Guide to E-Book Privacy (December 2010 update, Electronic Frontier Foundation). See also • E-Reader Privacy Chart, 2012 edition . For various devices and sites ((Google Books, Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, Kobo, Sony, Overdrive, Indie Bound, Internet Archive, and Adobe Content Server), answers these questions: Can they keep track of searches for books? Can they monitor what you're reading and how you're reading it after purchase and link that information back to you? Can they do that when the e-book is obtained elsewhere? What compatibility does the device have with books not purchased from an associated eBook store? Do they keep a record of book purchases? Can they track book purchases or acquisitions made from other sources? With whom can they share the information collected in non-aggregated form? Do they have mechanisms for customers to access, correct, or delete the information? Can they share information outside the company without the customer's consent? • 5 reasons to liberate your ebooks from their DRM prison K. T. Bradford, Digital Trends, 8-21-13) 1: Leave the country, lose your ebooks. 2: Anger Amazon, lose your ebooks. 3: Own too many devices, lose your ebooks. 4: Switch to a different book store, lose your ebooks. 5: Bookstore shuts down, lose your ebooks. • How to remove ebook DRM with Calibre (Bennett Ring, TechRadar, 7-31-14) • Library Privacy Guidelines for E-book Lending and Digital Content Vendors (American Library Association) • Rousting the Book Pirates From Google (David Segal, The Haggler, Your Money, NY Times, 8-29-15) "Google is forever worried that the details of its inner workings will be used to game its algorithms and filters and secret sauces by an assortment of miscreants." About 18 months ago, Google Play started selling self-published e-books. Any author could post and sell his or her work on the site. But ...a wave of piracy was spotted by book publishers...It emerged that the pirated books were being uploaded by people using Google Play through its self-publishing channel." • No Sharing Allowed: Amazon and book publishers' stupid attempts to curtail e-book lending (Farhad Manjoo, Slate, 3-22-11) • Book piracy: Less DRM, more data. Brian O'Leary on why publishers should tackle book piracy with open minds and lots of data. (Jenn Webb, O'Reilly Radar,1-10-11) • DRM may not prevent piracy, but it might still protect sales (The Shatzkin Files) • What the powers-that-be think about DRM, and an explanation of the cloud (The Shatzkin Files) • Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution by Tim O'Reilly (P2P, 12-11-02), part of which is summed up nicely in Ebook Piracy is Up Because Ebook Demand is Up by Andrew Savikas (O'Reilly Radar, 5-12-09) • Digital rights management (Wikipedia offers a good explanation and tons of links if you want to read more) |