May 6 2012
Last week, Laura Hazard Owen of Paid Content tabulated that about 500,000 digital copies of Harry Potter have been sold since their release on March 27, 2012. Harry Potter series have reportedly sold 450 million copies in print. Despite those record breaking print sales prior to the official digital release and that there were illegal digital [...]
Apr 29 2012
In the past two weeks, we’ve seen two publishers engage in some experimental changes in the way they sell digital books. Sourcebooks launched a DRM free subscription site and TOR/FORGE announced it would be selling DRM free digital books beginning this summer. Traditional publishers have been quietly moving toward digital first programs for a couple [...]
Apr 2 2012
News On Friday, Reuters reported that Apple and five of the Big 6 publishers are moving toward settlement. My guess is that either Random House is arguing that it wasn;t involved in any collusive activity as it’s decision to move toward Agency came far later and based on market influence rather than any collusion or [...]
Mar 8 2012
The last few days have been frustrating for dear author readers and the crew here at Dear Author and it is mostly my fault. For the past year, I have tried to manage a self hosting option but I don’t know a thing about Apache and shell access and what not. Every time we had [...]
Feb 9 2012
In the UK, romance checkouts at the library are being overtaken by crime fiction titles. Does that mean that the interest in romance books is declining? Melville House wonders if, instead, readers are going digital. But while this story is being billed as romance vs. crime fiction, it seems like there could be a digital [...]
Jan 20 2012
Apple made it’s education announcement yesterday introducing iBooks 2 which allows you to view books made with iBooks Author. iBooks Author has been described as “Garage Band” for books. Essentially it is a purportedly easy to use tool to create interactive books rich with multimedia such as audio, video, and animations that will be well [...]
Jan 1 2012
The following are my bold and not so bold predictions for publishing in 2012. My boldest prediction will be that Amazon will buy Goodreads in 2012. The most unlikely to happen prediction is Number 10. What are your predictions for 2012? 1. More authors will self publish than in 2011. I suspect that nearly [...]
Dec 13 2011
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 [...]
Dec 4 2011
I’m concerned that publishers have a deep disconnect with readers. This shouldn’t be a surprise given that readers aren’t the customer of publishers, but recent events really highlight this. I have wavered on posting this article because on the one hand, do I really care what happens to publishers? Won’t I be able to find [...]
Oct 16 2011
This story broke late last week. Unfortunately, there have been low level rumors about Aspen Mountain Press for a few months but no concrete details. One of the principals broke her silence and admitted that AMP is a mess. What we discovered when we took over was a nightmare: Hundreds of emails in all the [...]
Sep 21 2011
I’m reposting these deals in case someone missed them yesterday. Halfway to the Grave with Bonus Material: A Night Huntress Novel for $1.99 * Amazon | nook | Kobo Cassie Palmer Series: Touch the Dark, Claimed by Shadow, Embrace the Night and Curse the Dawn in one bundle by Karen Chance for $7.51 – Amazon | [...]
Sep 11 2011
A couple of days ago, I received an email with a press release announcing a joint venture of sorts to bring a Publishing Seal of Approval to digital books. The seal will be called QED and it is owned by Digital Book World, a division of F&W Media. Barnes & Noble, Sony, and Kobo [...]
Sep 8 2011
Michael Hart of Project Gutenberg has passed away. I don’t think that Hart’s contribution to learning can ever be overestimated. He pioneered digital publishing and brought over a hundred thousand of out of print, public domain works to the reading public regardless of learning ability, economic status, or, in many cases, geographic location. From Wikipedia: [...]
Jul 3 2011
Here is my list of things I learned from RWA 2011: Harlequin and Sourcebooks are really interested in what the reader has to say in all areas of the publishing process from the cover, titles, and content to how the stories are sold. They use their blogs, facebook and twitter accounts, and customer service emails [...]
Jun 29 2011
In January 15, 2011, Bella Andre (http://www.bellaandre.com/) launched a new title under the name Lucy Kevin. Lucy Kevin had no cross pollination with Bella Andre name and was unknown before the release. “Falling Fast” shot up to #4 on the BN Bestseller list and Andre sold 25,000 copies of the title in one month. Her [...]
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