Nov 28 2012
Wednesday News: S&S offers AuthorSolutions Self Publishing Packages; Amazon sales in UK near $3 billion; Duolingo
Simon & Schuster Creates Self-Publishing Unit, Archway Publishing – Simon & Schuster is offering self publishing services under a company name of Archway. Archway is using a white label form of Authors Solution that powers the Harlequin Dell Arte self publishing program. Author Solutions was bought by Penguin earlier this year. Devu Gandhi of S&S Digital is managing the Archway-ASI relationship for S&S. Publishers Weekly
Fees to participate in Archway vary according to different packages, but in general have the following ranges: Fiction: $1,999 – $14,999; Nonfiction: $1,999 – $14,999; Business: $2,199 – $24,999; and Children’s: $1,599 – $8,499.
Amazon Forced to Disclose UK Sales – Due to the tax inquiry taking place in the UK, Amazon has released sales numbers. Amazon is headquartered in Luxembourg and the VAT on ebooks there is only 3%. The Bookseller
The VAT in the UK on ebooks is 20%. Amazon’s UK sales are as follows: The table shows that in 2011, Amazon¹s UK website generated £2.91bn in sales, paying £416m in UK VAT. Those sales were an increase of 23.3% from 2010, where it made £2.36bn in revenue, paying £262m in VAT. In 2009, Amazon made £1.87bn in sales and paid £172m in VAT.
Former OED editor covertly deleted thousand of words, book claims – Sarah Ogilvie, former editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, has claimed that Robert Burchfield who provided supplements between 1972 and 1986 deleted thousands of non Anglocentric words from the OED. According to Ogilvie, once a word made it into the OED, it was never removed. If a word became obsolete, it was marked with a dagger but not deleted. The OED says that it is evaluating any term which was deleted or removed from Burchfield supplements. The Guardian
Photo Essay: When a Kid’s Bedroom Isn’t a Room – We talk about the digital divide but it’s not always a real thing. This photo essay posted at Mother Jones is a collection of images of the bedroom of a child. The differences are stark and meaningful. Mother Jones
Duolingo | Learn Spanish, French, German, Portuguese and English for free – Learn a second language. For free. The program shows you an English phrase. You hover over the English words and it shows you the translated version. Then you type in the phrase you just learned on the next page. You can compete with your friends (kind of a words with friends thing?). The lessons also include pictures (to describe the word you are learning) along with sound so you can get the pronunciation correct.
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Nov 28, 2012 @ 05:00:21
Except S&S’s deal is actually more vanity than self-publishing.
You pay for everything, they control everything, and you have to split the money 50/50. How is that “self-publishing”? O_o
As for the photo essay — I was surprised by the level of poverty in the final one, esp. because it featured an American child. But I wasn’t surprised by the level of poverty in some of the other countries because I saw it when I went to Thailand for honeymoon. Though a lot of places we went to were “touristy” areas, there were signs of serious poverty.
Nov 28, 2012 @ 05:45:42
Am I allowed to laugh at Simon and Schuster’s desperation? Click that link and the first commenter on that article said it all.
Nov 28, 2012 @ 07:39:04
I linked through to the photo essay. According to a thread in the comments this photo essay is about 5 years old and consists of 20+ images. Also, the claim is that the photographer did not provide the biographical background info on the photos which makes me very suspicious of Mother Jones’ intent. Off to Google fu to see if I can find more info.
Nov 28, 2012 @ 07:39:10
Thanks for the link to the photo essay on kids’ bedrooms. Very thought provoking!
Nov 28, 2012 @ 08:23:49
I saw the ‘Where Children Sleep’ come across my twitter feed from Roger Ebert a few days ago. So I actually looked into it. It is actually a book of 56 total images. The book was designed as an empathy project directed to 9-13 year old so they can see how other kids their ages live around the world and to introduce them visually to the ideas of poverty v. privilege in a way that a parent saying “kids from China would love to have that pork chop. Now EAT!” wouldn’t necessarily resonate . But the photo essay was also supposed to speak to adults about human rights.
The images that Mother Jones show seem to be cherry picked to show the most despairing. But the whole essay is really quite wide ranging. There is one Japanese kid’s room that was so minimalist and serene I wanted to immediately go there and relax.
Nov 28, 2012 @ 08:41:46
Lisa, what are you implying? That Mother Jones created fake lives for the children pictured? That’s pretty ludicrous.
And what do you find suspicious about the fact that the book came out a few years ago and included more images? If you click through from the article to the photographer’s website you can see all of the photos. Not exactly hidden.
If seeing the truth about the lives of children around the world (including the USA) is disturbing, good. That’s the point. No conspiracy-theory required.
Nov 28, 2012 @ 08:53:49
re: online language learning
Okay, I am once again going to climb up on my soapbox and shout: CHECK YOUR LOCAL PUBLIC LIBRARY!
Many, many libraries (include my hometown and the one I work at) offer sophisticated online language courses, English as a second language, language courses specifically tailored for children, etc. etc. etc., absolutely free to anyone with a library card. Right now we are offering over eighty languages, from Afrikaans to Zulu.
I know that many libraries cannot afford these resources. But if yours does, your tax dollars are already paying for top quality resources; why waste your time with second-rate sites?
Nov 28, 2012 @ 09:14:40
Archway and Author Solutions are complete scams a la Publish America. Penguin and S&S should be ashamed of themselves. For what they’re charging, I can get everything done that they offer AND pay for developmental edits from someone like Sarah Frantz (1.5 cents a word) and copy edits from a pro ($35/hour).
Nov 28, 2012 @ 09:14:50
@Tina: That’s true but I think that even in the U.S. children make up at least 50% of the individuals living in poverty. I would guess that it is a pretty conservative world wide estimate.
Nov 28, 2012 @ 21:40:58
@Nadia Lee:
Your blog post about the S&S move should be required reading for all would be authors.
If they’re not providing editing or cover design, they’re providing nothing of value. Cost to me of self-pubbing a book? $60 for site hosting and $17 for domain registration (those costs are shared across all books of course), nothing for formatting or uploading, nothing for editing (sadly), and $5 for cover photos.
Even if you went for the most expensive editor I know of for the average length novel, you’d be looking at no more than $1000-$1500, and you’d get a lot more value from them than from this Simon & Schuster scam.
A fool and their money, etc, etc.
Dec 02, 2012 @ 16:49:23
Here’s a blog post from Andrew E. Kaufman on Simon & Schuster’s new self-publishing imprint. His numbers appear to be correct based on a quick look around the Archway site. It’s fairly horrifying.