I spend a lot of time at writers conferences trying to clarify the pros and cons among the different publishing paths and the growing number of services available to authors.

. . . .

1. Traditional publishing: where you query and submit to agents and editors in an effort to land a contract that pays an advance and royalties (and typically involves nationwide bookstore distribution).
2. Partnership publishing: one might consider this the evolution of traditional publishing, where authors are positioned more as partners, receive higher royalties, but usually no advance.
3. Fully-assisted publishing: the old “vanity” self-publishing model, where you write a check and get your book published without lifting a finger. I don’t recommend this, but it’s still a significant part of the self-publishing market, now dominated by Author Solutions.
4. Do-it-yourself (DIY) publishing with a distributor: while this applies to either print or e-books, today this usually involves e-publishing your work (to reduce financial risk and investment involved with print), and using a service provider or distributor to reach all possible online retailers—and/or to provide some level of assistance.
5. Do-it-yourself (DIY) direct publishing: when an author doesn’t put any middlemen between him and the retailer selling his books. Often, this option is combined with #4 above; for example, someone might sell direct through Amazon KDP, and complement it with distribution to all other retailers through Smashwords. This is possible because most distributors and online retailers of e-books work on a nonexclusive basis.

Link to the rest at Jane Friedman and thanks to Ant for the tip.

Click to Tweet/Email/Share This Post

Rainer Maria Rilke

Click to Tweet/Email/Share This Post

For this list, we didn’t just want book adaptations that were a critical/audience failure or a box office failure–we wanted both. That’s why the films you see below might not be the biggest money losers or the most panned; instead, they’re a combination of the most hated and most wasteful uses of celluloid out there. If none of these movies were made, over $913,000,000 would have been saved and approximately 4 billion viewing hours would have been saved.

. . . .

10. John Carter (2012)

Net Losses (inflation adjusted to 2012): $67,221,900

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 51%

Representative Review Quote: “There’s nothing to see, nothing to think about, nothing to care about, and nothing to feel, just emptiness. The emptiness is never filled over the course of 132 long, barren minutes.” -San Francisco Chronicle

Everyone was excited to call John Carter a flop before it even came out in 2012, and though it did tank, it lost less money than some of the other films on this list and it actually received so-so reviews. It’s hard to justify the $250 million dollar budget, and while it was trying to capture the same adventure feel of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, it ended up being compared to the worst aspects of Prince of Persia, The Phantom Menace, and Cowboys & Aliens. Yeah, I forgot about Cowboys & Aliens, too.

Link to the rest at Publishers Weekly and thanks to Eric for the tip.

Click to Tweet/Email/Share This Post

historiosophy, n.

The philosophical interpretation of the course of history and historical events; spec. historical interpretation based on a particular, esp. theological or metaphysical, view of the nature of historical knowledge. Also: an instance of this; a philosophy of history of this type.

Link to the rest at The Oxford English Dictionary

Click to Tweet/Email/Share This Post

A high-priced, new-release is again atop the ebook best-seller list. Dan Brown’s Inferno (Random House), a new release from the best-selling author of The Da Vinci Code, is selling more ebooks than any other title at $14.99, competing with $0.99 self-published ebooks and $4.99 classics.

While the No. 1 ebook on the best-seller list fits a familiar narrative when it comes to how book sales have been until very recently, the rest of the list follows a new paradigm. Five titles out of the top-25 are self-published. An American classic is at No. 2 at $4.99, coinciding with a movie release. And, perhaps most astounding of all, the average price of a best-selling ebook this week is $7.04, down slightly from last week’s average of $7.23, and up slightly from the all-time low of $6.58 from a few weeks ago.

The $7.00 price tag for a best-selling ebook doesn’t seem all that out of place these days but it’s just over half of what the average price for a best-selling ebook was a year ago.

. . . .

More important than the why for publishers is what does it mean for their businesses. One problem that low ebook prices present for publishers is that they create an unfavorable comparison with hardcover prices.

Link to the rest, including the ebook bestseller list, at Digital Book World

Passive Guy will note that, while Amazon has many bestseller lists, it does not release sales figures for ebooks. While the Digital Book World ebook bestseller information is useful and interesting, it lacks direct access to Amazon data.

Click to Tweet/Email/Share This Post

Don’t expect to see an e-book edition any time soon of Stephen King’s new novel, “Joyland,” which will be published next month.

Mr. King, an e-book pioneer, held on to the novel’s digital rights in hopes of spurring his fans to buy the print edition in bookstores. He said it is unclear when he will make the coming-of-age tale available digitally.

“I have no plans for a digital version,” Mr. King said. “Maybe at some point, but in the meantime, let people stir their sticks and go to an actual bookstore rather than a digital one.”

. . . .

It is unclear whether any other high-profile writers will follow Mr. King’s example. Paul Ingram, the buyer for the Prairie Lights bookstore in Iowa City, Iowa, said he’s hoping they will. He lamented that browsing for books in stores has given way to people purchasing from computers and mobile devices.

“I’d just as soon not have people buy their books while typing a thank-you note,” Mr. Ingram said. He said his store’s traffic has “fallen off some” in recent years due in part to “the ease of getting books other places.”

Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal (Link may expire) and thanks to Meryl for the tip.

Click to Tweet/Email/Share This Post

Waterstones has begun a company-wide consultation with around 560 management-level staff as it prepares for a restructure set to put more emphasis on traditional shop floor bookselling.

Staff were told last night (20th May) in an email communication from Waterstones managing director James Daunt that those holding the positions of branch manager, assistant manager, general manager and deputy manager will enter into a consultation before the company restructures and those roles are abolished. A new “bookshop manager” role will be created instead to encompass those positions, which will “call on different skills”, he said.

It is not clear how many members of staff will leave the company.

. . . .

The consultation move follows a restructure of the regional management level of Waterstones in February, which saw seven regional and divisional management roles made redundant as a new “leaner” structure was unveiled.

. . . .

“The context, however, is the current unforgiving bookselling environment. We may be running better bookshops, and running these in a very different manner to before, but we have yet to recognise this in our management structure. If we are to secure the future of Waterstones, we must take the difficult step to do so.”

Daunt also said its website offering to customers was “subject to fundamental review”, with work currently underway to revamp it.

Link to the rest at The Bookseller

Click to Tweet/Email/Share This Post

This past Thursday and Friday I attended the IBPA (Independent Book Publishers Association) Publishing University in Chicago.

. . . .

1)    “The flaws in the traditional publishing model are everywhere. It is not a viable model.”  This is one of my favorite quotes from Dominique Raccah, founder of Sourcebooks and one of the people busy reinventing the industry.  The telling part of the quote is in its context. Her presentation was not about the industry per se, and that quote was not taken from her presentation, but rather was a response to a question from an attendee who asked why, with all the opportunities available for authors today, she or anyone else should seek to publish traditionally. Raccah responded that she actually had no idea why anyone would want to do that if they are willing and able to take on the tasks necessary to make a book a success according to their own measures and expectations.

. . . .

5)    The Myth of Big 5 Marketing Support. So, this may sound strange coming from a publisher, but I’ve been on the other side as well and I know that, for many (most?) the idea that just because you got a nice advance and you’ve got a publicity team assigned to you, doesn’t mean you’re actually going to get real, sustained—or intelligent!—pr/marketing support. Dori Jones Yang, a successful historical fiction author, told the story about her agent’s response to all the marketing she was doing. The agent was thrilled at her success and said, “As soon as you hit it big, your publisher’s publicist is going to leap into action.”

. . . .

Ingram took the opportunity to formally announce Ingram Spark—a “new and improved” service designed for small publishers that will roll out later this year.  I learned that very small publishers (those with under 1 million in sales…uh, yeah, I fit in that group), makes up 20% of the publishing industry, and Ingram is perfectly positioned to serve that 20%.

As the largest wholesaler in the industry, Ingram serves over 200 ebook retailers in over 150 countries. They have 2500 partners, they handle 11 million titles through 3800 channels, and can output a different book every six seconds. But still they see room for significant growth catering to that 20%–as well as working with many of the major publishers who use their services (including O’Reily Media who just closed their last warehouse).   Ingram Spark will be much easier (according to the Ingram folks) to use than Lightning Source today. It will be “easy, quick, and free” and will provide one interface for POD and ebooks.

Link to the rest at Blank Slate Press and thanks to Lassal for the tip.

And this from Midwest Independent Publishers Association:

Ingram used the IBPA keynote luncheon on Saturday as the platform to introduce “Spark.” This new Ingram service was created to allow independent publishers to deal directly with Ingram in DISTRIBUTING print on demand (POD) books. The quoted costs for the POD service: 1.3 cents a page and 90 cents for the cover (no varnish or embossing). A $49 fee to set up a title is waived if you order 50 books. Ingram will make the books available throughout the US and 38 countries across the world. Spark is scheduled for launch on May 28. By August, Ingram will also offer e-book conversion and e-book DISTRIBUTION for Kindle, Apple, Kobo, Nook, and all LSI partners. Ingram plans to eventually offer the sale of ISBNs (as arranged through Bowker) and add marketing services.

Link to the rest at MIPA

Click to Tweet/Email/Share This Post

The secrets of good writing have been debated again and again and again. But “good writing” might, after all, be the wrong ideal to aim for. In About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, and Five Interviews, celebrated author and literary critic Samuel Delany . . . synthesizes his most valuable insights from thirty-five years of teaching creative writing. . . .

One his key observations is the crucial difference between “good writing” and “talented writing,” the former being largely the product of technique (and we know from H.P. Lovecraft that “no aspiring author should content himself with a mere acquisition of technical rules”), the other a matter of linguistic and aesthetic sensitivity:

Though they have things in common, good writing and talented writing are not the same.

[…]

If you start with a confused, unclear, and badly written story, and apply the rules of good writing to it, you can probably turn it into a simple, logical, clearly written story. It will still not be a good one. The major fault of eighty-five to ninety-five percent of all fiction is that it is banal and dull.

Now old stories can always be told with new language. You can even add new characters to them; you can use them to dramatize new ideas. But eventually even the new language, characters, and ideas lose their ability to invigorate.

Either in content or in style, in subject matter or in rhetorical approach, fiction that is too much like other fiction is bad by definition. However paradoxical it sounds, good writing as a set of strictures (that is, when the writing is good and nothing more) produces most bad fiction. On one level or another, the realization of this is finally what turns most writers away from writing.

Talented writing is, however, something else. You need talent to write fiction.

Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader’s mind — vividly, forcefully — that good writing, which stops with clarity and logic, doesn’t.

Link to the rest at Brain Pickings and thanks to Patricia for the tip.

Click to Tweet/Email/Share This Post

Franz Kafka

Click to Tweet/Email/Share This Post