Digital publishing is dominating the news this summer, and I’m starting with a long but brilliant post by Randy Ingermanson on The Future of Publishing. Well worth your time reading.
According to Reuters, “The slow rise of electronic books is paving the way for more safe-bet fiction blockbusters and serial-type books, at least in the short term.”
The digital age has come to libraries but there might be copyright problems.
“Libraries are expanding e-book offerings with out-of-print editions, part of a broader effort to expand borrowing privileges in the Internet Age that could challenge traditional ideas about copyright.”
Agent Andrew Wylie fighting for e-rights for his authors.
“We will take our 700 clients, see what rights are not allocated to publishers, and establish a company on their behalf to license those e-book rights directly to someone like Google, Amazon.com or Apple. It would be another business, set up on parallel tracks to the frontlist book business,” Wylie said.
Borders has jumped into the digital pool. Its e-bookstore went live on July 7th. They want to be a significant player in the e-book sector.
If you don’t have an e-reader and would like to read an e-book, writer Susannah Fraser gives advice on ways to do it.
Thinking of putting one of your old books for sale as an e-book? Or a new one? Zoe Winters talks about why you need to be on Smashwords. Julie Ortolon talks about How to Publish on Smashwords. Natasha Fondren has a series of guides on formatting for Smashwords. Smashwords also has its own guide.
James Patterson is the first fiction writer to sell more than 1 million ebooks. J.A. Konrath has sold more than 100,000, and feels good about it.
Small Stores see Google as an Alley in E-Book Market
“As a wholesaler, Google will play a role similar to that of offline distributors like Ingram Book and Baker & Taylor, which buy books from publishers and resell them to bookstores. Those companies generally keep a single-digit percentage of each sale, and Mr. Turvey said Google would operate along similar lines.
Independent bookstores seem to believe that Google is more interested in working through them than being a direct retailer. In fact, they are banking on it.”
For the non-digital industry news, Jeannie Ruesch of Will Design for Chocolate blogged on Romance University about what a published author needs on her website. These tips are great for the non-published writer too.
Dean Wesley Smith has a fascinating Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing post, titled Writers Need to be Taken Care Of.
Publishers are turning to book bloggers to reach readers.
“Women’s fiction that maybe wouldn’t be covered by traditional book sections is being blogged about, talked about,” says Jennifer Hart, vice president and associate publisher at HarperCollins for its paperback imprints. “There are books blogs for every niche of publishing — from literary and commercial fiction to young adult, to sci-fi, to cookbooks. This offers publishers an incredible opportunity — we can reach the audience for all of our books, no matter the genre.”
Literary Agent Isabel Atherton is looking for commercial women’s fiction.
“Original, unusual and commercial: those are my top three words.”
If you write witty women’s fiction, you might try kt literary.
Agent Taylor Martindale is actively looking for women’s fiction.
A few agents, such as Holly Root and Jessica Faust, are closed to queries until fall. If you’re sending queries, check out their websites/blogs, etc. to see if they’re accepting or not.
Thanks for the shout out!
[...] link is The Women’s Fiction Chapter of RWA. They discuss Industry News: 7/16/10 and have links you can follow of other authors suggestions for the future of publishing. Of [...]
Thanks so much for collecting all of these valuable links for us, Edie! It’s so helpful to have a resource like this.
Edie, this is fabulous. I can always count on you to inspire me and get me out of the doldrums. Thanks for keeping on with this work for our chapter.