THE INDUSTRY Trending. George Lossius, CEO of Publishing Technology, a software and services provider, offers five trade publishing trends to watch for in 2013. Goliath, meet David. Starting February 1, Macmillan will distribute new e-books for Entangled Publishing. In addition, Macmillan’s St. Martin’s Press will partner with Entangled to print some of Entangled’s titles. Need [...]
Happy New Year! The year ahead promises ch-ch-changes for this chapter as well as the publishing industry. Let’s buckle up and enjoy the ride. Digital-book consultant Mike Shatzkin looks at the year ahead in e-books and sees five trends in trade publishing, including a continued slowdown in e-book sales and further consolidations among publishers. The [...]
As the year draws to a close, the crystal balls appear. We start with a round-up of publishing-related predictions: Jeremy Greenfield interviewed publishing insiders to compile ten predictions for e-books and digital publishing. For Forbes, Greenfield lists his three personal predictions for book publishing. Smashworks’ founder Mark Coker offers a whopping 21 predictions for publishing [...]
Last week, twenty children were gunned down in their elementary school, and publishing-industry news dropped to the last thing on our minds. While it’s hard to muster interest in comparisons of digital-book and print sales, it’s important to remember why we read and write stories: to make sense of the incomprehensible, share, comfort, and entertain. [...]
THE INDUSTRY Few authors give thanks for Simon & Schuster’s decision to team up with Author Solutions and form Archway Publishing, a separate house geared to self publishing. In Writing on the Ether, Porter Anderson collects reactions to the S&S announcement and links to posts about it, including those by Victoria Strauss and David Gaughran. [...]
THE INDUSTRY Agent and e-book publisher Richard Curtis rails against a practice he believes is crippling publishing: book returns. His post is an eye-opener because it was written in 1992. (I found the link at The Passive Guy‘s website) Last week, Industry News featured a post by agent Jim McCarthy that was critical of agents [...]
The Industry Don’t underestimate publishing says Peter Osnos in The Atlantic. “Publishing has shown itself to be more resilient and even more innovative than outsiders (and even many insiders) predicted.” The proposed Random House Penguin merger will usher in more mergers as industry players opt for strength in scale, a trend Osnos sees as positive. [...]
Next time someone complains that publishing moves slowly, point to the speed of the Penguin Random House merger. Dear Author‘s Jane Litte, a lawyer by training, provides a bullet-point list of the merger’s highlights. (Scroll down to find the merger item.) In London, agent Jonny Geller adopts a wait-and-see attitude. Will the merged entity deliver on [...]
Random Penguin? Penguin House? Merger discussions between Pearson and Bertelsmann, corporate parents, respectively, of Penguin and Random House, are underway. If Big Six becomes Big Five, they’ll be one less publisher competing for manuscripts, a development that could lead to lower advances for authors. The sheer size of a Random Penguin could, of course, [...]
If Industry News were drama-free, it would be about an industry other than publishing. Yes, there’s conflict in this post, but I think you’ll find less than usual, and the focus is on writers and issues of interest to us. E-book originals make sense in the digital age, but agent and publisher Richard Curtis wants writers [...]