Monday Midday Links: HC Thriller Author Sells More E than P in First Week

Bookshops are installing the print on demand machines to better serve their customers. The cost of the POD machines are high – over $100,000. One Vancouver book shop has printed about 1500 books since March.

Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Mass., installed an Espresso machine with Xerox’s printer last September and prints about 1,000 books a month on it, says print-on-demand manager Bronwen Blaney.
The bookstore, which isn’t affiliated with the university, makes less profit on books it prints, because the cost to print and license the book is generally higher than the cost of buying an already printed book, says Ms. Blaney. But she says it’s worth it because the store is getting a sale it otherwise wouldn’t.

Thanks Kay.

****

Seth Godin announced last week that he would no longer be publishing the traditional way via advance and with a major print publishing. I’m not sure if that means he is going to self publish or pursue other avenues, but his announcement stirred up a lot of interest. Publishing Perspectives rounds up a number of reactions. Publishing professionals primarily view Godin as an outlier but at least one author feels self publishing and building one’s own market is a viable path to publishing.

****

Bowker has released its updated data on book buying behavior in the US.

*Women lead men in overall purchases, contributing 64 percent of sales. Even among detective and thriller genres, women top 60 percent of the sales. Fantasy titles are purchased evenly by men and women.
*Baby-boomers are the largest purchasing generation, making up 30 percent of sales. Their elders-’matures-’contribute 16 percent.

****

HarperCollins released some data which showed that ebook sales for the first week outpaced print sales for the lastest Laura Lippman novel.

Laura Lippman's thriller, "I'd Know You Anywhere," went on sale Aug. 17, and in its first five days sold 4,739 e-books and 4,000 physical hardcovers, said News Corp.'s HarperCollins Publishers.

"This is the first book of ours of any consequence that has sold more e-books than hardcovers in the first week," said Frank Albanese, a senior vice president at HarperCollins. "What we're seeing now is that if a book gets a good review, it gets a faster lift on the digital side than it does on the physical side because people who have e-readers can buy and read it immediately."

I think what surprised me the most was that with 4,000 physical hardcover sales, the Lippman novel made it to #16 on the NYT Bestseller List.

****

All About Romance interviewed some Dorchester authors regarding the move to digital, the layoff of Executive Editor, Leah Hultenschmidt and the authors’ future. Some will venture out on their own and others are hopeful that the move to digital first plus trade will be promising:

However, not all authors want to leave Dorchester or their imprints. Emily Bryan is pulling for Leisure to make it through a difficult time. "After all the wonderful careers they've launched and the fantastic books they've brought to the romance genre, I hope readers are too." Besides the e-book editions, Bryan has learned that Dorchester plans to release one of her backlist titles, Distracting the Duchess, in trade in early 2011, along with titles from Jennifer Ashley, Christie Craig, Colleen Thompson, and Joy Nash. According to Bryan, "the trade paper format will enable them to sell to accounts that don't accept mass market."