Show me the future, the data, and the money!

 This column may lack a crystal ball, access to Amazon’s algorithms, and a six-figure deal, but it has prognostications and opinions from industry insiders, outside observers, and those with a foot in each camp.

 You’ll also find advice on pitching, an interview with an RWA-WF member, and a dose of tough love from Kristen Lamb.  Hope something or many things pique your interest.

 Future, Data, Money

Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s profile of Larry Kirshbaum, vice-president and publisher of Amazon Publishing, portrays him as a New York publishing industry insider who lost the good will of his peers when he joined Amazon to head an imprint aimed at attracting bestselling authors. The profile makes it clear Kirshbaum was interested in innovation and in e-books long before Amazon turned publisher and hints at the future Amazon envisions for publishing. 

In related Kirshbaum/Amazon news, Galley Cat reports that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s new New Harvest imprint will publish all Amazon Publishing’s New York-based imprint’s adult titles in print and distribute them in North America.

Writers love stories and collect anecdotes, but hard data also tells a story, and publishing industry consultant Mike Shatzkin wants more of it. Here’s a tidbit from Shatzkin’s post: Forrester Research’s survey of publishing executives predicts the trade business will become 50% digital in 2014, rather than 2015 as previously thought.

Writer Bob Mayer isn’t too polite to discuss money and best-seller lists. “The key to success in digital publishing is not the immediate success and the bestseller list.  It’s the long tail, a broad base of titles, and consistent sales over the years.  Where bestseller lists really count is on Amazon if you get on that first page for your genre.  That’s called discoverability.”

At The Business Rusch, writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch also talks money and lists. In particular, she’s bothered by the proliferation of bestseller lists and the potential for influencing them. “At a certain point, all of this list goosing and bestseller discussion becomes moot. It’s like grade inflation in school. If no one gets lower than a C, what’s an A worth? If everyone can be a bestseller, even if it’s just in one bookstore in the sub-sub-sub-subgenre list: romance/contemporary/nosex/noswearwords/nokissing/catsanddogslivingtogether, then what does the phrase “bestselling book” mean?”

Not only does women’s fiction writer Heather Wardell talk money, she shares sales numbers earned during her first month in the Amazon Select KDP program via the Writer Beware blog.

Food for Thought

Editor Alan Rinzler suggests authors perfect the old soft sell and vary pitches to suit different audiences.

Stuck in place? Spinning your wheels? Writer Chuck Wendig offers a kick in the pants and a to-do list.

RWA-WF’s own Rosemary Battista goes off to speak to a group of would-be writers and returns with renewed enthusiasm for her WIP.

Writer’s Digest’s Chuck Sambuchino issues a new agent alert for Erin Harris of Skolnick Literary. Harris is looking for “literary novels with compelling plots and international settings; literary thrillers and mysteries (She’d love to find the next Tana French!); noirs (especially starring headstrong female protagonists); and YA and middle grade novels that transport her to magical places.” Sambuchino also calls our attention to new agent Carrie Pestritto of Prospect Agency who hopes to find literary fiction, historical fiction, and mature YA.

In a post entitled “Never a Bride,” Sarah LaPolla, a literary agent with Curtis Brown Ltd. weighs in on a topic that recently proved popular on the RWA-WF loop: writer Jennifer Weiner’s refusal to accept gender bias among book reviewers. LaPolla admires Weiner’s opposition to male authors getting more coverage but offers the movie Bridesmaids as an example of female writers getting praise–for writing like men. “This week has shown that when it comes to women in media, whether book or film or otherwise, struggles to be considered equal are still very present. When are people going to learn that we want to praised for our talent, but not when that talent is “being equal to a man?”

Former bookseller Robert Gray considers books his friends, and he’s not alone.  In a Fresh Eyes Now essay, Gray quotes author Pico Ilyer, “The paradox of reading is that you draw closer to some other creature’s voice within you than to the people who surround you (with their surfaces) every day.”

If you’re reluctant to face a blank page or find yourself staring at one for a couple of hours, there’s something going on beyond a MIA muse. Writer and social-media expert Kristen Lamb advises writers to use our best tools—words–to name the emotion that freezes us and confess our real problem (Fear, anyone?) in order to free ourselves for the future we want.

May we use our words this week–and may our writing find friends.

This installment of Industry News tackles the Year of the Dragon thanks to social-media expert Kristen Lamb and her Kung Fu Writing post and dragon-beating tips.

It’s never been easy to get a book published, but digital-book expert Mike Shatzkin argues that it used to be easier for publishers to turn a profit. Nowadays, more titles + fewer bookstores = publishers wary to acquire new books. (Cue fire shooting from the dragon’s mouth.) At the same time, backlists offer publishers income without acquisition costs. (Let camera pan over dragon’s shimmery, shiny scales.)  

Speaking of backlists, media professor Jane Friedman investigates whether an author holds e-rights to her traditionally published books.  

Hyperion CEO Ellen Archer says publishers’ business model is broken. Her fixes? She favors trimming advances and foresees a shift to e-books. “Don’t trap yourself in the ‘book’ book.’ It’s wonderful and it’s been wonderful for many years, but the years of printing too many books and taking them back…it’s not really a great business model and we have an opportunity to create a better business model.” Read the whole interview to learn her take on other publishing matters, including whether or not writers should blog.

Stephen Page, chief executive of Great Britain’s Faber & Faber publishers, doesn’t see the industry as broken but believes the current period in publishing and the move toward digital books will bring change as sweeping as that of the eighteenth century, when a monopoly on granting copyrights ended and laws and formats changed. Scroll down through the article to find the skills he believes publishers must have to excel in today’s environment.

E-book pricing is a trial-and-error game, reports author Ruth Harris.  She tries and errs for research purposes and interviews other writers about their pricing strategies. (Thanks to Gene Lempp for the link. )

Dear Author‘s Jane offers generally optimistic predictions for publishing in 2012. There be no dragons here. (Wait for the article to come up.)

Money appears to be flowing toward writers participating in Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing Select program. Carolyn McCray, a writer of paranormal romance novels, historical thrillers and mysteries, reportedly earned $8,250 from the KDP Select fund in December.

Librarian Nancy Pearl, of Book Lust blog fame, has teamed with Amazon to resurrect some of Pearl’s favorite but now out-of-print books. Six titles a year will be offered in print, audio-book and e-book form.

Literary agent news:

Agent Rachelle Gardner has moved to Books & Such Literary Agency, where she’ll represent “fiction of interest to women” geared to either the general or Christian markets.

At Bookends Literary Agency, Lauren Ruth seeks literary-leaning women’s fiction and more.

Kristin Nelson, of Nelson Literary Agency, believes it’s important to specify in a contract the initial format of a book. That way, she ensures that her clients will be published in both hardcover and/or paperback and digital formats. 

May you vanquish all dragons foolish enough to block your path this week. Happy writing.

Happy New Year!

I’ve organized this longer-than-usual post to optimize its usefulness. One section is dubbed “Last Year in Publishing,” another is “The Year Ahead,” and a third, in a shameless rip-off of Oprah, is “Your Best Writing Self.”  You’ll find information about traditional and  indie publishing, links to insiders and to those proud to call themselves outsiders, marketing tips, and new-agent news. In other words, there’s something for everyone.

 Last Year in Publishing

 At paidContent, Laura Hazard Owens summarizes 2011 with numbers. Did you know twenty percent of book sales at Random House and Hachette were digital? 

Here’s another number to crunch: Amazon announced it sold roughly one million Kindle devices per week in December.

Booksellers had a merrier-than-expected holiday season, reports Publishers Weekly. Anecdotal evidence suggests Borders’ closing and the “buy local” trend buoyed sales at brick-and-mortar stores.

This story sheds light on the preceding item. In Michigan, booksellers react to the end of Borders with tactics aimed to lure and hold customers.

 Writers Digest links to its eighteen most popular writing articles of 2011.

The Year Ahead

At The Shatzkin Files, digital-book expert Mike Shatzkin focuses on the important questions the publishing industry faces in 2012 and beyond. 

Author Bob Mayer, whose perspective is that of a writer traditionally published for twenty years and indie published for two, offers  ten predictions for 2012.

Joe Konrath tacks his 2012 writing/publishing resolutions to the bottom of resolution lists dating back to 2006. Scroll through the years to see the evolution in his thinking about traditional- versus self- publishing and other writing matters. 

We associate “friction” with politics and with rubbing two sticks together to make fire, but one publisher uses the word to explain why it won’t make its ebooks available to libraries for lending. “Selling one copy that could be lent out an infinite number of times with no friction is not a sustainable business model for us,” Maja Thomas, a senior vice president of the Hachettte Book Group, told Randall Stross of the New York Times.  

 Your Best Writer Self

Chuck Sambuchino alerts readers to two new literary agents, both of whom represent women’s fiction. Hannah Bowman joined Liza Dawson Associates and is looking for commercial fiction, especially science fiction and fantasy, women’s fiction, cozy mysteries, romance and young adult. Rachael Dugas signed with Talcott Notch Literary and seeks cookbooks and young adult, middle grade, and adult fiction in the contemporary, paranormal, women’s, and romance genres.

If writer Raymond Carver were alive today, would he tweet, blog, and post on Goodreads? Author Christopher Meeks asks the question and decides Carver would do what writers must do today: promote their books.

Writers Digest offers platform-building tips Raymond Carver would follow. Will you?

Some of us have sworn off New Year’s resolutions but acknowledge we have plenty of room for improvement. Author Chuck Wendig reminds us to help other writers.

Here’s another room-for-improvement link: make the most of your Facebook page. 

Media professor Jane Friedman links to the 2011 articles she believes offer the best advice for writers.

Thinking about indie publishing in 2012? Joanna Weiss, author of Milkshake, outlines her stage-by-stage journey. 

Critic and journalist-turned-consultant Porter Anderson, he of the distinctive voice and excellent connections, covers the publishing industry weekly via “Writing on the Ether.” (Uh oh, I may have linked myself out of a job.) 

May 2012 bring you success in writing and life. Big thanks to this chapter’s founders and the outgoing board.  Welcome to the new board.

Special thanks to the RWA-WF eleves who’ve been working behind the scenes on the chapter’s WordPress site.  I’m grateful for easy-to-embed hyperlinks.

Publishing-industry news accumulates as fast as snow in the Rockies. Some of it’s fresh powder, some is drizzle, and beware of black ice.

The New York Times gave booksellers a reason to be merry with this article about brisker-than-expected sales during the run-up to Christmas. The Times piece made up for the lump of coal provided by U.S. Census Bureau estimates that indicate book sales slipped by 6.6 percent in October. Despite the October slowdown, the Census Bureau reports book sales rose two percent for the first ten months of 2011.

Speaking of booksellers and book sales, the brouhaha over Amazon’s price-comparison app has quieted but hasn’t gone away. An article in Forbes suggests the online retailer bought itself ill will through its December 10 promotion offering discounts to consumers who used the app to scan prices of electronics, sporting goods, toys, music, and DVD’s at brick-and-mortar stores. The discounts, offered at a time when Amazon is not paying sales tax in many states, could backfire on the online retailer Forbes opines. Meanwhile, writer Richard Russo and others have this to say about Amazon’s price-comparison app: it’s not good business.

Need a sugar plum? Mike Shatzkin, founder and CEO of The Idea Logical Company and an expert in the digital-book industry, suggests publishers should pay authors a higher percentage of e-book royalties. Why? Such a move could make agency pricing easier to defend since a larger percentage of profits would flow toward writers. In addition, if a greater share of profits flowed toward writers, Amazon would find it harder to poach top performers.

Literary agent Emmanuelle Morgen will join Stonesong on January 5, representing adult and children’s fiction, including women’s fiction and romance, historical fiction, and young adult fiction. Stonesong describes itself as a literary agency, book developer, and custom publisher.

Chuck Wendig suggests self-publishing is not for everyone. Being Chuck Wendig, he makes this suggestion in a much more colorful way.

GalleyCat reports what ereader owners know:  ebook prices vary.

Carina editor Angela James offers writers ten tips for using Twitter effectively.

Happy holidays, and I hope you find all the writing time you need at this busy time of the year.  Industry News will return January 1.

Another week, another controversial move by Amazon.com. 

 Yesterday, December 10, Amazon rewarded shoppers with a five percent discount (up to $5) if they used its price-comparison app to scan an item in a brick-and-mortar store but bought the same item from Amazon. Although books were not included in the discount offer, book sellers lashed out against the browsing-for-bucks tactic. Read more at http://bit.ly/tpYoEI

Booksellers’  frustration with the online retailer may have been fueled by a recent New York Times article about a survey that showed many Amazon book shoppers initially notice titles in brick-and-mortar bookstores:  http://nyti.ms/uMBI0t  In addition, many booksellers carry items that were eligible for Amazon’s one-day discount, such as toys, music, and DVDs.

American Booksellers Association CEO Oren Teicher didn’t mince words in an open letter to Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos. Here’s an excerpt: “We could call your $5 bounty to app-users a cheesy marketing move and leave it at that. In fact, it is the latest in a series of steps to expand your market at the expense of cities and towns nationwide, stripping them of their unique character and the financial wherewithal to pay for essential needs like schools, fire and police departments, and libraries.” Read Teicher’s entire letter at http://bit.ly/rTBUyz

Shelf Awareness Pro chronicled booksellers’ reactions (and the reaction of one published author) to the discount scheme at http://bit.ly/tQ6r1Z . Third Street Books in McMinnville, Oregon, for example, offered a discount of its own. “Our response is this: come to Third Street Books this Saturday, December 10th with proof that you have cancelled your account with Amazon (they send you a confirmation email), and we will give you 15% off your entire purchase, plus a $5 gift certificate to be used another day.”

Since books weren’t included in the discount-for-scanning plan. Laura Hazard Owen at paidContent.org, suggested it wasn’t worth the time and energy the publishing community put into its response. “Are some, maybe, a few people going to walk into their local—well, it can’t be a bookstore, but, okay, their mom-and-pop sporting-goods store—and scan stuff and then march out and buy it on Amazon? Probably, but those people are precisely the ones who didn’t support buy-local anyway.” Read more at http://bit.ly/rZaUZd

Amazon wasn’t the only behemoth to feel heat last week. The U.S. Department of Justice confirmed it is investigating whether there was improper collusion among Apple and publishers to prevent discounting of e-book prices. The U.S. investigation is similar to ones underway by European regulators and by some states’ attorney generals. http://on.wsj.com/t1iKdX 

Literary agent Kristin Nelson hasn’t noticed any slowdown in deals this December and has reason to believe her peers haven’t, either. Read more at http://bit.ly/v26KBG 

A lot of writers create blogs that do double-duty as websites, The strategy works as long as the writers blog regularly, says e-media professor Jane Friedman. However, writers who blog sporadically risk sites that appear abandoned. The solution? Create a “landing page.” Friedman offers step-by-step instructions for doing this with WordPress at http://bit.ly/vNZoIa

Struggling with the concept of author brand? Literary agent Chip MacGregor explains and simplifies it at http://bit.ly/tlX6og

Have a great week of writing.

Galley Cat reported on Amazon’s hardline reaction to Reader Views. Amazon banned the company, which is dedicated to reviewing books and author publicity, from posting reviews on Amazon that authors have paid for via Reader Views’ publicity services, and took down reviews already posted.

In a follow up, Galley Cat queried reader reactions to paid reviews on Amazon, posting a mixed bag of responses, including a suggestion that Amazon’s ban is an attempt to comply with FTC “truth in advertising” rules regarding financial interest disclosures.

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) posted net sales figures for September 2011 noting changes from last year. Adult mass market paperback sales have declined 54%, while e-book sales have increased 100.9%

Here is Publishers Weekly with a slightly different but similar take on the AAP’s statistical reporting.

More evidence is racking up about the value of libraries to readers, authors AND publishers, even in the digital age.

This month Library Journal released the first issue of a quarterly publication called Patron Profiles. Based on surveys and data collected from library users across the country, the first issue—on libraries and e-book usage—indicates that libraries are a powerful economic engine for the book business.

“There are a lot of assumptions about what library users do,” said LJ executive editor Rebecca Miller. “We wanted to dispel the assumptions and fill in the gaps in data. We wanted to get a realistic picture of the digital transition, so we thought a national trending survey that reveals the media consumption of library users made great sense.”

Author Ann Patchett recently opened Parnassus Books, an independent bookstore in her native Nashville, when big box stores Borders and Davis-Kidd Booksellers closed, leaving the Tennessee city without a place to browse and buy books.

“We’ve all had the experience of going into a three-story Barnes & Noble and saying, ‘I didn’t really find anything I wanted to read.’ But you can go in to a small store with an intelligent staff …. [and] well-displayed, well-chosen books, and come out with five books that you’re dying to read. And that’s what we’re going to do.”

On Steven Pressfield’s site, Shawn Coyne weighs in on author/entrepreneur Seth Godin’s decision to end his successful publishing venture, the Domino Project.

Literary agent Rachelle Gardner advises authors to minimize the obstacles when trying to break into traditional publishing.

And for some writerly inspiration, at Writer Unboxed, Krissy Brady reviews Jonathan Fields’s book Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt Into Fuel for Brilliance.

This will be my last post as part of the Industry News Team of Kecia and Pat. I will be taking over duties as VP-Communications, while Pat will continue to bring you news and tips regarding the publishing industry of concern to RWA-WF members.

Have a great writing week everyone!

Kecia &

Your Industry News Team

Penguin Group (USA), via its Book Country subsidiary, now offers a menu of services for writers planning to self-publish. For fees ranging from about $99 to about $549, plus a share of sales revenue, Book Country will convert files, create covers, and handle other tasks. Read more at  http://goo.gl/jWVun and at http://on.wsj.com/sKqzGn

Danielle Poiesz, Book Country’s Editorial Coordinator, offers tips to ensure manuscripts are ready for publication at http://bit.ly/vZYD7a

Best-selling author Barry Eisler spoke to Grub Street about his decision to self-publish and his thoughts on the future of the publishing industry. Listen to him at  http://vimeo.com/32204698

Literary agent Jessica Faust offers a succinct definition of women’s fiction at http://bit.ly/rDXBRG

At Writer Unboxed, Therese Walsh interviews agent Katie Shea, who’s new to the Donald Maass Literary Agency and is looking for women’s fiction. Shea, too, has a definition of  the genre. Read more at http://bit.ly/sp54SZ

 The Authors Guild isn’t a fan of Amazon’s new Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. The Guild is concerned authors won’t be fairly compensated and has reservations about publishers’ right to include titles in KOLL.  For more information, go to http://bit.ly/vNUMF9 

Writer Beware‘s Victoria Strauss tackled the same issue at  http://bit.ly/sKadLg

According to Mike Shatzkin of  The Shatzkin Files, some publishing houses effectively bolster authors’ own marketing efforts. Traditional publisher Macmillan, for example, is sending out emails to tens of thousands of readers and, more importantly, tracking click-through rates. E-book publisher Open Road Integrated Media prides itself on its marketing plans, reaction time, and analytics. Read more here. http://bit.ly/uHqt2D

Happy Thanksgiving!

A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and…my new book. Publisher’s Weekly reports on Random House Canada’s testing of a new book tour model: rolling a book purchase into the cost of an event admission for guaranteed sales.

On Galley Cat, blogger and author Kristine Kathryn Rusch criticized this article, concerning author James Crawford‘s claim that he unfairly lost revenue for over 5000 of his Kindle books, for its lack of journalistic rigor. In her response post, Rusch sheds light on the problem of “free,” and the necessity of having a plan for promotions, offering up her own experiences with free and not free on Kindle and Nook.

Just in time for the holiday buying season, a BISG (Book Industry Study Group) poll shows increasing consumer comfort with e-readers, e-books, and wait times to get print books in e-format.

BookEnds Literary Agency blog offers Submission 101, a revamp of a previous post, but worth a read for those with a pending New Year’s resolution (right around the corner!) of seeing that book finished and out the door.

To clear up some recently circulating misconceptions—like, public library = pirate’s cove—Rachelle Gardner hosts guest blogger Kristin Laughtin for an explanation of why libraries are good for authors.

For those of you who just can’t get enough of these industry news discussions, Jane Friedman hosts Porter Anderson’s eye-popping publishing industry mashup on her site as the weekly Writing on the Ether post.

Heartpress.com is currently taking inputs for it’s Best Women’s Fiction list. The poll guidelines can be found here. What counts as Women’s Fiction (ruling out paranormal and thrillers)?

Our definition of Women’s Fiction is simple: a plausible story appealing more to women than men.

Romance is welcome, so get your votes in for your faves!

And finally, Steven Pressfield discusses that famous 10,000 hours to mastery of any art, and why all those hours should be their own reward…

Have a great writing week!

Your Industry News Team

The debut of Amazon’s Kindle Owners’ Lending Library caused a stir last week. The venture allows Amazon Prime members to check out up to one e-book a month for free with no due date. The first catch? The big six publishers aren’t participating in the program. Find the Wall Street Journal’s take here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204621904577014273003626952.html?mod=wsj_share_tweet Forbes also weighs in: http://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2011/11/03/will-amazons-lending-library-help-or-hurt-novelists-and-book-publishers/ The second catch? According to the LA Times, publishers that opted against participation in KOLL have found their titles among the venture’s offering. Find out more here: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/11/amazons-new-kindle-lending-program-causes-publishing-stir.html

Another recent Wall Street Journal article focused on haves and have-nots in the self-publishing arena. Predictably, authors with followings make more money than newbies. Nyree Belleville, writing as Bella Andre, reportedly earned half a million dollars in the past eighteen months while other self-pubbed authors have yet to recover the cost of putting their books up for sale. The keys to success seem to be pricing, promotion, and patience. Read more at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203554104577002230413747366.html

Literary agent Kristin Nelson offers a list of not-good-for-authors clauses in contracts. Read about “Unmodified competing works clauses” and weep for the writers hamstrung by them. Find more at http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2011/10/scarier-than-halloween.html

In the October 23 edition of Industry News, I linked to a pro-metrics (Klout score, number of Twitter followers, number of blog visitors) post by social-media expert Kristen Lamb. It’s here: http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/numbers-are-our-friend-writers-and-the-wild-world-of-metrics/ 

Days later, Ms. Lamb issued a more nuanced post reminding writers that platforms are meaningless unless they rest on good books. Find her second numbers post at  http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/the-dark-side-of-metrics-writer-friend-or-ticket-to-crazy-town/

An uptick in digital sales more than compensated for print declines and gave Simon & Schuster a 1% increase in revenue to $220 million while its Operating Income Before Depreciation & Amortization rose 19%, to $38 million in the third quarter of 2011. Read more at http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/financial-reporting/article/49388-simon–schuster-has-strong-third-quarter.html

The following isn’t industry news, but who doesn’t like pictures of books and cats?  http://nyulocal.com/on-campus/2011/11/02/kitty-porn-city-bookstores-with-cats/

Happy writing, and may you NaNo participants always find the right word and an extra ounce of energy.

We live in interesting times for publishing, and this post could have been three times as long. Happy reading.

A recent New York Times article depicted Amazon as poised to go mano a mano with traditional publishers for manuscripts from big-name or top-selling  authors. Amazon Publishing, a new imprint headed by Laurence Kirschbaum, reportedly paid $800,000 for a memoir by Penny Marshall. “If you’re a bookstore, Amazon has been in competition with you for some time. If you’re a publisher, one day you wake up and Amazon is competing with you too. And if you’re an agent, Amazon may be stealing your lunch because it is offering authors the opportunity to publish directly and cut you out,” said literary agent and e-book publisher Richard Curtis. Read more at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/technology/amazon-rewrites-the-rules-of-book-publishing.html?_r=1&hp

The Times piece triggered many responses. Literary agent Brian DeFiore took the paper  to task for framing its story as a David-versus-Goliath tale while ignoring what could happen to traditional publishers if Amazon underprices its e-books to gain market share. See the full post at http://aardvarknow.us/2011/10/19/really-new-york-times/ (Thanks to Agency Gatekeeper at Getting Past the Gatekeeper for the link.)

Miriam Goderich of Dystel and Goderich Literary Management, had this to say about Amazon’s challenge to traditional publishing:  “If the model is broken or the times have changed and there’s a new model out there, then learn it, adapt your systems, and make it work for you.” For more, go to http://www.dystel.com/2011/10/moneyball-amazon-and-the-end-of-publishing-as-we-know-it/

At Lapham’s Quarterly, Ben Tarnoff suggested the future of publishing rests in its past. http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/roundtable/the-worst-business-in-the-world.php  (Thanks to Jane at Dear Reader for mentioning Tarnoff’s post.)

Meanwhile, Mike Shatzkin expounded on his earlier prediction that, within two-to-five years, e-books will make up eighty percent of text-only books published. Read more here: http://www.idealog.com/blog/is-an-80-ebook-world-for-straight-text-really-in-sight

E-book retailer Kobo adapted lightning fast to Amazon’s unveiling of the Kindle Fire e-reader. Later this month, Kobo will roll out Kobo Vox, a seven inch, full-color, multimedia digital reading device for $200. For details, go to http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/kobo-enters-color-tablet-market_b40608

Literary agent Rachelle Gardner advised authors to build their platforms by the numbers: Klout score, Number of Twitter followers, number of unique monthly blog visitors, and more. See http://www.rachellegardner.com/2011/10/author-marketing-platform/

If the above-mentioned post made your platform look rickety, don’t blame the publishing industry. As Gardner wrote a day later, “It is not the publishing industry that has created this society of ubiquitous electronics, Internet noise, YouTube, Nintendo-X-Box-Wii, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and the decline of reading.”  http://www.rachellegardner.com/2011/10/publishing-in-the-brave-new-world/

Social-media expert Kristen Lamb acknowledged that Ms. Gardner’s platform-numbers post “scared the bejeezus out of a lot of writers,” but Lamb contends numbers can be a writer’s best friend. “They can keep us accountable and can let us know where we are doing well and how we can improve.”  Hint: Lamb likes Klout’s ability to measure influence. See http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/numbers-are-our-friend-writers-and-the-wild-world-of-metrics/

And that’s not all folks. Literary agent Jessica Faust of Bookends LLC pointed out that writers of narrative non-fiction are expected to have platforms. Like Gardner, she emphasizes that platform = influence. “In other words, a platform means that thousands of people you don’t know know you and would buy your book because they know you.” Read more at http://bookendslitagency.blogspot.com/2011/10/what-is-platform.html

In January, 2012, Penguin Group’s Berkley and New American Library (NAL) divisions will debut an ebook imprint dubbed InterMix. Initially, the line will revive certain titles by Nora Roberts that have never been released as ebooks. Later, titles from Jayne Anne Krentz and Signet Regencies will be offered. Read more at http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/nora-roberts-ebooks-featured-in-new-digital-imprint_b40513

Have an interesting week.