Authors Guild

Apr 12 2013

Friday News: Waterstones to introduce subscription plan for shorts and serials; China’s bookshops move to second floor; ALA responds to Turow

Waterstones founder to launch Spotify-like service for books in 2013 – Waterstones is launching a digital service that SlashGear calls Spotify-like but instead seems like a modern day version of the lending library, only the content will be limited to short stories and serialized content. The program will be called “Read Petite” and the “service(…)

By • Publishing News • 1 • Tags: , ,

Feb 2 2012

Thursday News and Deals: Growing Number of Academics Unhappy with Elsevier

News Brenda Novak’s auction will take place from May 1st through the 31st. They are looking for donated prizes. I’m thinking of donating a 100 page critique but honestly I don’t know whether that would be something someone would want. I can’t offer an ad as I’m sold out for the year. What do you(…)

By • Book Deals, Publishing News • 31 • Tags: , , , ,

Tuesday Midday Links: News and Deals

Dec 13 2011

Tuesday Midday Links: News and Deals

I’m combining the posts for the news and the deals in one. The deals are at the end. First up is the news that Dan Lubart has been hired by HarperCollins as SVP of Sales Analytics according to Publishers Marketplace. I find this fascinating because Lubart’s firm, Iobyte, has been analyzing price data and list(…)

By • Book Deals, Publishing News • 54 • Tags: , , , , , ,

Tuesday Midday Links: Agents, the unseen gatekeeper to reading

Sep 13 2011

Tuesday Midday Links: Agents, the unseen gatekeeper to reading

Agents are far more powerful in publishing than many readers understand.  They are the ones negotiating contracts with the publishers and can doom or help an author.  They are the ones telling authors that x isn’t selling and y isn’t selling.  They are the unseen gatekeepers that rarely get mentioned.  But the fact is much(…)

By • Publishing News • 62 • Tags: , , ,

Feb 16 2010

Tuesday Midday Links: Crowd Based Patronage

This is a quite hilarious ad by Verizon mocking AT&T’s pathetic coverage (I am an AT&T customer via my move to the iPhone). Watch until the end. Guardian asks whether crowdsourcing author advances is legitimate. Deanna Zandt wanted to write a book on using social networking for social change and action, specializing in often marginalised(…)

By • Publishing News • 13 • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Sunday News Roundup: Free Books from All Romance eBooks

Dec 27 2009

Sunday News Roundup: Free Books from All Romance eBooks

I hope you are enjoying the holidays. We are taking a mini vacation this week (if you haven’t noticed the light schedule this past week) which means only one review a day and no opinions. Today we’ve got a link roundup and a review. We’ll be back to our regular schedule on January 2nd along(…)

By • Features, Publishing News • 21 • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Nov 14 2009

Google Book Settlement Take 2: Still Creating a Blackwater for Books

Google and the Plaintiffs (Authors’ Guild and representative authors and publishers) went back to the negotiating table to craft a new settlement agreement that would address the concerns of the Department of Justice and other critics.   The new settlement agreement was released yesterday. For Consumers There were quite a few positive changes.   To address the(…)

By • Ebooks, Letters of Opinion • 6 • Tags: , ,

Oct 14 2009

Wednesday Midday Links: JA Konrath Posts a Must Read Article and Dear Author Has Neat News

Last night, author and reader Nadia Lee, tweeted me a link to JA Konrath’s most recent blog post. It is incredibly illuminating and a must read for anyone interested in publishing and ebooks. Konrath has been experimenting with releasing his own fiction (mostly short stories) on the Kindle. He had shared his success earlier this(…)

By • Features, Publishing News • 12 • Tags: , , , , ,

Apr 26 2009

Weekly Tech Round Up

Michael Perry, editor of Inkling Books, wrote an editorial on why he officially objected to the Google Book Settlement. Meljean Brook, author of the Guardian series, wonders why Google couldn’t have asked for permission first before scanning and why Authors’ Guild is pursuing this settlement which requires authors to opt out. Epublishers Weekly has a(…)

By • Publishing News • 0 • Tags: , , , ,

Apr 9 2009

Maili’s Rant on the Author’s Guild Text to Speech Position

Earlier today I read this report Photos and Video From the National Federation of The Blind’s Kindle 2 Protest at the technology news blog, Gizmodo, about a street protest held by members of the National Federation of the Blind against the Author’s Guild. As Gizmodo reports: "Basically the story is this: the Author’s Guild raised(…)

By • Letters of Opinion • 25 • Tags: , , , ,

Apr 8 2009

Authors Guild Vies for Worst Publicity of 2009 (and other news)

Remember Authors’ Guild? You know, the entity that hauled Google into court so that it could create a settlement agreement granting Google a copyright monopoly that it hadn’t had previously so that AG could get a tiny piece of the Google pie?   Authors’ Guild, who allowed, as a part of the settlement terms that orphaned(…)

By • Features • 7 • Tags: , , ,

Apr 1 2009

Authors Guild Continues Overreaching. Claims Olfactory Rights Belong to Author

Authors Guild is determined to further alienate ebook readers with its latest cease and desist order. There is a new startup company called DuroSport that is hawking a “Smell of Book” product. I suppose it is to address those who fetishize the smell of books and can’t give up paper books for digital copies because(…)

By • Publishing News • 8 • Tags: , ,

Mar 1 2009

Why Amazon Was Wrong to Back Down from Authors’ Guild

Amazon unveiled Kindle 2.0 a few weeks ago and with it the announcement that the Kindle 2.0 would have the ability to convert the text to speech. This feature has been referred to as TTS. Almost immediately, Authors’ Guild voiced dissent over TTS. "They don’t have the right to read a book out loud," said(…)

By • Ebooks • 109 • Tags: , , ,

Feb 12 2009

Author’s Guild Tells Authors to Stay Out of the Ebook Game

AuthorsGuild  , an organization designed to promote the best interests of authors, are upset because the text to speech function offered by the Kindle 2.0 may infringe on the author’s derivative right to audio performances. “They don’t have the right to read a book out loud,” said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. “That’s(…)

By • Publishing News • 55 • Tags: , ,