Archive for the 'Publishing News' Category
I couldn’t resist the wordplay for the title. Â In any event, it appears that authors really are unhappy with the announcement of Harlequin Horizons. I’ve heard that some published authors are asking for the RWA board to examine whether Harlequin should be a recognized publisher.
Essentially it appears that Harlequin is lending its name to a self publishing venture that will be sourced by AuthorSolutions Inc. Â My guess is that Harlequin will use this to monitor sales and move authors who are selling well from Horizons to one of its print/digital lines. Â HarperCollins UK does this with Authonomy but it isn’t a profit making venture, yet.
As I see it authors have three basic complaints:
- dilution of house brand
- possibility of unsuspecting authors spending money on the chance of getting the notice of Harlequin.
- the choice of POD partnership.
Dilution of House Brand
This one is the most understandable to me. Â Harlequin Horizon books are labeled with the Harlequin brand (although we don’t know what the badging will look like). Â If a number of works in circulation carry the Harlequin brand and the quality declines, one assumes that the Harlequin name brand also declines.
Authors also refer to this as a loss of prestige (which …
Romantic Times is blogging about Carina Press. The blogger, Nicole, says that the manufacturer limitations is what has prevented her from adopting ebooks. What Nicole is talking about, however, seems to be limitations by the publisher and not the manufacturer:
I know that one of the reasons I have resisted a Kindle or a Nook is because of the limitations put on it by the manufacturer. I want something that allows me to upload and read any document I so chose, regardless of origin. I also want to be able to manage my own electronic products, move them around if so desired.
Stephenie Meyer is burnt out on vampires and her next book is likely to be a follow up to her adult novel, The Host and maybe a fantasy book. Sounds like she doesn’t have anything written. Maybe look for Meyer in 2010 or 2011?
Publishers’ Weekly has an article entitled “Romancing the Recession” and it talks about the vibrancy of the romance genre. Paranormal leads the pack with historicals selling strong but what is surprising (but encouraging for me) is the rise of the contemporary. Long time readers will …
Over at Library Job Postings, there is a gallery of repeated images on covers. Oh, the dangers of using stock photography. Via SmartBitches.
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Gawker mocks Newscorp in its fight against Google. Murdoch plans to stick it to Google by selling his content to Bing, the Microsoft search engine. It reminds me of publishers. They don’t want to have Amazon in control of their pricing, but they seem more than happy to get into bed with Google.
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How costly will it become for vendors and retailers to provide free wifi? Motion Picture lobbying group, the MPAA, got a town’s free wifi network shut down after discovering a possible, not yet confirmed, illegal download. Barnes and Noble, Borders, McDonald’s and the like are easy targets for piraters not wanting their illegal activities to be traced back to their home networks. Google, by the way, is giving free wifi away at airports this christmas.
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PW looks at Amazon’s Vine program. This is where Amazon sends out a monthly email with all the products vendors are offering for review. It’s not just books. …
Today Harlequin is announcing the creation of Carina Press, a digital only epress from Harlequin. Â On a personal front, this news is exciting because Angela James is a friend of mine and will be the Executive Editor of this new line. Â On a reader front, I think this move signals how important the digital space is becoming.
You can read all about Carina Press at its website: Carinapress.com. Â The plan is to launch in Spring/Summer 2010. Â Carina Press will release DRM FREE!!! ebooks on a weekly basis. Â The books will be available for sale at Carina Press and through other etailers. Â Carina will be publishing steampunk, sci fi, futuristic fantasy, multi cultural books – “if readers are blogging about a genre with passion and interest, we’ll publish it.” Â A whole list of genres can be seen here including thrillers, mysteries and erotica in addition to romance.
The Press will consider nearly any length of novels including short stories, genre novels between 50,000 and 100,000 and “complex narratives” of over 100,000. Â In short, it seems like Carina Press has few restrictions for authors in terms of genre, length or subject …
Welcome to the November Promotional Thread for Authors. What’s this you say? I read quite a few blogs outside the romance blogosphere and many of the big ones have a daily open thread where the commenters drive the bus.
The rules for Author Promo Night Open Thread are as follows:
- The book has to be released in that month (i.e., anything released during the last week of October would be a November release)
- You can post for yourself or you can have a friend post for you if the idea of posting about your book paralyzes you .
- No self published authors unless you write romance. No, I am not a POD hater, I am just thinking about the manageability of the thread.
- Think about the readership. I.e., does your non fiction book about psoriasis really fit?
- This one is more of a guideline than a rule, but be smart about your comment because if it is just a link to your website and the title of your book, I doubt you are going to get any interest.
DA reserves the right to delete the post if it promotes objectionable content (i.e., no daddy/daughter incest recommends are going to be allowed. Sorry.)
That’s it. Post away.  (Please …
Sydney Morning Herald has a nice article about romance in conjunction with Beyond Heaving Bosoms, a guide to romance written by SB Sarah and SD Candy.
So thank Eros for two Americans, Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan, who dreamed up Mavis for their book Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels. It’s an unashamed celebration of their great passion, and they make no apology for it. “There’s nothing like a beautifully executed romance novel or the afterglow upon finishing an especially good one,” they write.
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Wall Street Journal op ed piece scoffs at the FTC regulations that are pointed at bloggers arguing that mainstream journalists receive so much swag that the office closets are groaning under the weight.
The specter of freebies has long haunted journalism. In the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, Hollywood columnist Louella Parsons was famous for her swag intake. Come Christmas Eve she would “unwrap an avalanche of gifts” from Tinseltown royalty, according to screenwriter Anita Loos. “Two secretaries used to stand with notebooks to keep score so that Louella could remember the next day who had sent what.” Those notes weren’t taken to help her make proper disclosures to her readers.
Eric Felton, …
I spoke with Richard Cleland this morning. I shared with him my concerns. I think that the enforcement of the rules are still in the developmental stage. Cleland reiterated what he told other blogs that this is the educational period. I don’t see the FTC regulations being revised, but apparently there is some room for crafting guidelines for enforcement.
I suggested a warning and opportunity to cure and Cleland liked that idea. He said that they have used it in the past in the health product field except they are called advisory letters.
I asked about the issue of the fines. Cleland stated that this is something the AP took out of context. The FTC has no ability to levy fines. A charge must be made and taken to an administrative law judge and a cease and desist is requested and provided if the FTC fulfills its burden. If the C&D is ignored, then a civil penalty can be requested for up to $11,000.00. The full explanation of enforcement and penalties for all FTC violations can be read here.
No case would be brought in federal court unless it involved a very serious …
The new academic organization, International Association for the Study of Popular Romance, is up and running and doing some exciting things:
1. The Members’ Forum on the IASPR website is a standing messageboard where IASPR members (and non-members) can interact, sharing news of and discussions about popular romance studies. Anyone can register as a member of the board but members of IASPR will have access to a members only section of the forum.
2. IASPR has a Cafe Press store where you can buy shirts, mugs, and pins with our logo as well as fun slogans like “Romance Readers Make Better Scholars,” “Romance: Think About It,” “In UR bodice, analyzin UR literachur,” and many more.
3. A few IASPR Officers and members will be at the annual conference of the Romance Writers of America in Washington D.C. next week at various events:
- President Sarah Frantz, Vice-President Pamela Regis, and NYT best-selling author Sabrina Jeffries will be presenting “If you like the Classics; Or, How to recommend romance to Literature Snobs in your library” at the Librarians’ Day on June 15, 2009.
- Sarah, Pam, and IASPR member, Jessica Lyn Van Slooten, will be presenting on “The Wit, Wisdom, and Writing Advice of Jennifer
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Amazon has filed for another patent to insert advertisements into ebooks and print on demand books. The patent is 21 pages long and has a number of descriptions about how the advertisements will be inserted including in the margins and in full pages throughout the book.
The consumer will be offered the choice of paying full price for the book or accepting ads to reduce the price of the book.
The ads will be based on both the content of the book, metadata for the book, and user profile information that is either freely given by the user or mined from the users’ past purchases.
For example, if the customer has a history of interest in travel as indicated by the associated user profile, the advertisement component may include, in the printed content, advertisements related to travel, even though such advertisement may not be directly relevant to the requested content.
Depending on the agreement with publishers, Amazon could conceivably roll out advertising for ebooks right away with POD ad supported books coming soon. Â Still to be resolved would be whether publishers and content creators a) have any right to control the ads (to some degree it seems that they would not) and b) …
There are a few very interesting (and some long) pieces on the current publishing business model and the way that it will need to adapt and change in order to survive.
From a reader at Information Week, Barnes and Noble’s eBookstore aka Fictionwise + eReader will match the prices offered at Amazon. Â Now if Fictionwise could only get its act in gear and offer the books that are released this week in a timely fashion. Â Hard to get excited about good prices when significant books are missing from the ebookstore.
Here is the info I got from them in their weekly email yesterday.
- All new eBooks are $9.95 or less.
- No eBook over $12.95. They aren’t moving all ebooks to $9.95 or less, only newly published ones. Cutting to $12.95 is a substantial cut for many older books though.
- All books on the New York Times Bestseller list are $9.95, whether it is new or has been there a while.
- 15% rewards on each purchase.
Via Publishers’ Weekly.
I thought this might be of interest to DA’s readership. The PC-compatible writing software, Liquid Story Binder, is on sale for 50% off today (June 30) only.
http://daily-deals.iconico.com/software/liquid-story-binder/
The Book Depository, a company that ships anywhere for no cost (I have no idea how they do this) is coming to the US. Next month, the North America specific site will launch. They plan to be competitive against US booksellers. I love the Book Depository for sending international prizes. It’s a very easy to navigate shopping site.
Perhaps Diane Pershing misread the temperature of the membership when she said that those who didn’t like what RWA is doing should leave because her comments have spurred those who do not want to leave the organization but would rather stay and change it. Others within publishing are beginning to notice.
Need more information? Check out ESPAN, the electronic publishing chapter of RWA (I know, it’s totally ironic) and the growing RWA for Change yahoo group.
University presses are facing closures and lack of funding in these difficult economic times. Michael Jensen, director of strategic Web communications for the National Academies Press urged university presses to rethink publication and scholarship:
Scholarship must be “de-linked from print publication,” such that books are “the exception” and no longer the norm for disseminating new scholarship. With colleges and universities unlikely to be providing major budget increases to libraries, the reality is that within a decade “we will be unlikely to be able to sell print books to to libraries at the prices we need to charge,” adding that “it’s crazy to think we can continue to do what we have been doing.”
Following this conference, the AAUP announced a partnership with IPublishCentral to make digital publishing available to membership academic presses.
In the meantime, the University of Virginia Press and University of Pennsylvania Press partner with Ingram Digital. The Indiana University Press went online last week.
Oh look, a print publisher runs out of money, stiffs its writers, and no one is certain the outcome. Inkwell Publishing Solutions was a book assembler hired by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and others to put textbooks together. Inkwell would hire freelance writers to provide content.
Inkwell has owes about 50 freelance writers, editors, page designers, and others. Some are owed $3100 and some are owed $10,000 or more. Inkwell blames HMH for non payment.
When asked for a comment, the president of Inkwell had this to say:
Ms. Cooke, who also is the company’s president, did not think the unpaid people from her factory warranted any attention.
“What business is this of yours?” she asked. “I’m not going to say anything about any of our clients.”
Pseudononymous writing has been part of our culture for as long as the written word existed. Text by “anonymous” existed even in Ancient Greece. A detective in Britain lost a suit wherein he tried to stop a newspaper from revealing his true identity. The blogger wrote about the local police department and won a prestigious reporting prize for political writing. Since his outing, the blogger deleted his blog and was subject to a written reprimand from his superiors.
My understanding is that British and US laws are very different on this subject but I doubt that even a US blogger could get an injunction to prevent a newspaper from revealing a blogger’s identity. There have been cases which prevent ISPs from giving up identifying information, however; and there is a long history of US caselaw supporting anonymous speech.
(Thanks to Anion the Evil for bringing this to my attention).
Coming on the heels of speculation that Kindle might be considering some kind of epub participation either by offering epubs or opening the Kindle up is the release of source code for the Kindle, Kindle 2, and the Kindle Dx. I think this points toward Kindle opening up its platform to accept other formats (and maybe not just epub). The source code can also lead to improvements like folders or some type of category management system that the Kindle currently lacks. (According to Courtney Milan in the comments, this is not the true developer code, only code that is released for GPL purposes)
In other Kindle news, Forner is estimating that Amazon is selling 600,000 Kindle books a week which translates, roughly, into a Kindle owner buying, on average, 1 book a week. Times has an article about Amazon taking over publishing which is something we’ve discussed here at Dear Author. (self pat on the back).
All articles via Teleread.org.
According to a survey of 7700 respondents, ReadingGroupGuides.com discoverd that at least half of the members are participating in online social book networks like Goodreads or Facebook and that only 15% read only paperbacks while 83% read both paperbacks and hardcovers. The Times, Oprah, talks shows are sources of information regarding books. 72% want a way to connect to other book club readers around the country. Via Publishers Weekly.
Marjorie Liu is releasing a special letter from the hero of Darkness Falls to his unborn daughter. The letter will be released in four parts. The first part is available for download at RomanticTimes.com; the second excerpt will be posted at www.tor.com on June 15th; the third excerpt will be posted on June 22nd at www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com; and the final installation will be on “select blogs and forums” as well as sites of major retailers.
>From the Press Release:
New York, June 15, 2009 – If you haven’t heard of author Marjorie M. Liu yet, that’s about to change.  This summer, she’s on fire with a number of major new projects: she has the new Dark Wolverine series co-written with Daniel Way, and the special NYX: No Way Home collection, both from Marvel, coming out in June. This will be followed by the urban fantasy, Darkness Calls, on June 30 and The Fire King, a paranormal romance novel, on-sale at the end of July.
A group of elderly residents in West Bend Wisconsin have filed a suit to gain the right to burn Francesca Lia Block’s Baby Be-Bop. Baby Be-Bop is a young adult book featuring a protagonist dealing with his sexual identity. The suit also claims that the group has suffered emotional distress from being exposed to a book display at the library.
One suit filed to have the book removed has already been thrown out and this legal claim is likely to be rejected as well.
Via Guardian.
The subtext of every one of these types of posts is “If you can’t beat them, join them”. Scribd has become a haven for pirated content but given that it commands 50 million viewers per month, it has a market that is hard to ignore. Simon & Schuster is the most recent publisher to avail itself of the Scribd platform by making over 5,000 of its digital titles for perusal and ultimate sale on Scribd.
I think part of the strategy is to not only for publishers to expose themselves to Scribd’s audience but hopefully to reduce the possibility of Amazon becoming a dominating market force in digital publishing.
I linked to the Crain’s article because I thought this passage was particularly illuminating:
Ms. Pittis said that piracy is “probably pretty low in this country,” but worries about it more overseas, where millions of Scribd users live and where “there’s such a culture of piracy.” Asked to identify a book damaged commercially by piracy in another country, Pittis said she couldn’t, but added, “I don’t want a HarperCollins title to be the test case.”
Simon & Schuster’s prices are high. For example Seduce the Darkness by Gena Showalter has the …
ACE has partnered with Dabel Brothers to bring a second series of Patricia Briggs’ to the comic crowd. The Mercy Thompson series has already been adapted by Dabel Brothers (has anyone seen one?).
The Alpha and Omega series will debut in August as a four part comic series to be fully encapsulated in a graphic novel to be released in November.
California is having a terrible budget crisis. Â One of the ways Governor Schwarzenegger is attempting to reduce educational will be to eliminate purchase of print textbooks and require the use of electronic textbooks.
The pilot program will be launched next August. Â High school students will be provided an ebook reader to access the math and science textbooks.
Despite the fact that I am a big proponent of digital books, I don’t believe that there are devices out there that adequately meet a student’s need for learning. Â There is limited interactivity with the current devices. Â At best, you can highlight but annotation is difficult unless you have the very high end Iliad.
The good part of this plan is that by next August, there might be new digital readers including a tablet style netbook with a transreflective screen that mimics eink but also has the functionality of a computer. Â The bad part of this plan is that we just don’t know what the future holds for digital devices.
(Thanks Susanna Kearsley for the link)
According to the book sales monitored by the Association of American Publishers (AAP), domestic sales are down 4.1% for the year but up 3.3% from last April for a total of $494.9 million.
Down
- Adult Hardcover $95.7 million (-11.0%) – YTD decline 16.2%
- Adult Paperback $114.8 (-0.8%) – YTD decline 25.7%
- Adult Massmarket $51.0 (-4.0%) – YTD decline 10.2%
- Audio Book $9.5 million (-32.9%) – YTD decline 43.6%
- Religious Books $38.7 (-7.1%) – YTD decline 9.1%
- University Press Hardcover $5.0 million (-6.3%) – YTD decline 7.5%
- University Press Paperback $2.3 million (-12.4%) – YTD decline 7.8% El-Hi (elementary/high school) basal and supplemental K-12 category $154.8 million (-23.4%) – YTD decline 16.4%
Up
- E-books $12.1 (+228.3%) – YTD increase 154.8%. March sales were the first time that ebooks were a larger share of the market than audiobooks and this was reflected in April stats as well.
- Children’s/YA Hardcover $44.6 (+13.6%) – YTD increase 35.9%
- Children’s/YA Paperback $39.9 million (+0.9%) – YTD increase 2.0%
- Professional and Scholarly $46.3 million (+1.1%) – YTD decrease 8.9 %
- Higher Education $33.5 million (312.4%) – YTD increase 42.4%
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Open Threads at Dear Author. Want to know what new releases are out this month and what readers are excited about reading? Check out the threads below. 
We don’t like to censor comments nor do we endorse the comments of any poster. We do reserve the right to moderate comments but most of the time will not, believing, as Justice Brandeis did, that the greater good is in “more speech, not enforced silence.”
