Chick lit is a taboo term in publishing right now and even in its heyday, the sub genre took alot of heat for being substantiveless pap. Joanna Trollope blogged for the Guardian that the effortless entertainment of chick-lit is actually difficult to write.
The thing is, it’s hard to write good romantic fiction, [...]

Mobile Read has a couple of articles on the new debate of whether Amazon, rather than Barnes and Noble, should acquire Borders. William Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management says aye (and Pershing has a 10% stake in Boders Group Inc) and Rich Aristotle Munarriz of the Motley Fool says nay. From a [...]

Publishers’ Weekly has an article about how the publishing industry is releasing more political books such as the Scott McLellan, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, and the Douglas Feith, War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism, which purport to tell [...]

Usually when Amazon reviews are penned by the family members, it is done so with the intent to bolster star rankings but maybe the most effective Amazon reviews are ones that generate controversy which in turns stir booksales.
According to GalleyCat, Rachel Sontag wrote a memoir, House Rules, about growing up with an emotionally abusive father [...]

Jeff Bezos refuses to divulge how many Kindles Amazon has sold but he claims that the Kindle sales make up more than 6% of total Amazon book sales. In response to questions from Mossberg about why ebooks, Bezos talks about the value added component of ebooks such as dictionary lookup or change in font [...]

A number of industry insiders highlight young authors that might be tomorrow’s big stars in an article for SF Signal. While the article asks for the top 18 next big genre stars, it seems clear from the answers that the genre is the science fiction / fantasy one and not a broad overview of [...]

This week is headlined by Harlequin superstar Gena Showalter, and nine million vampire books.
I’m intrigued (mostly by the pricetag and the fact that this is the headline for the new line) This is big money, but they don’t specify how many more books are contracted. Still, Harlequin loves Showalter. Perhaps Gena should write some vampire [...]

While yearly sales are still up 1.3%, book sales in March have declined by 11%. Ebook sales were the biggest increases at 58.9% but still only a fraction of the billion dollar book industry at $4.4 million. Trade paperbacks (6.2%), Children’s YA paperbacks (9.1%) and Children’s YA hardcovers were up (2.4%). The [...]

I almost fell off my chair laughing this morning when I read that Brody Jenner, son of Bruce Jenner and former star of the show Hills, is going to be featured in his own realty TV show called Bromance. I’m not sure what marketing genius thought that title up.
To quote Inigo Montoya: [...]

Looking for a possible ebook reader? Apple unveiled its iPhone 2.0 today and it features almost DSL like download speeds (3G) and a price point of $199 for the 8 GB and $299 for the 16 GB. As I’ve mentioned before, the iPhone is my primary ebook reader. It’s something to think [...]

Update: The website has been updated and the publishing house is closing its doors after a little over 1 year in operation.
I’m not quite clear on all the details so I’ll just report what I’ve been emailedand what I can glean from message boards. Tiger Publications is a small print press. [...]

Sramana Mitra writes in a recent article that an Amazon Monopoly that eliminates the editors, agents, distributors, and everyone else that stands between Amazon and the customer (other than the author) can actually improve publishing and increase the monetary benefit to the author. The suggestion is that by eliminating the middleman, it frees up [...]

I heard yesterday that author Lynn Kurland made the New York Times bestseller list for the very first time with her latest release, With Every Breath. This is the first NYT appearance for Ms. Kurland after 12 years of publishing. Her first book, STARDUST OF YESTERDAY, was published in April of 1996. [...]

Jane Friedman has been the CEO of HarperCollins for over 10 years and has navigated them through record years of profit. She is, however, stepping down immediately with no plans announced for the future. The rumor of her departure was bandied about yesterday and HarperCollins was forced to issue a late press release [...]

This week features…a whole lotta nothing. Everyone was at BEA, so the list is short.
Count me in!
N.K. Jemisin’s THE HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS, combining the politics of George R. R. Martin with the magic of Neil Gaiman, to Devi Pillai of Orbit, in a good deal, at auction, in a three-book deal, for publication in Fall [...]

Tokyopop announced that it is spinning out the multimedia arm into a new company, Tokyopop Media LLC. TokyoPop Inc retains control of the publishing arm and will reduce the output to 200-225 titles per year to “allow for less cannibalization at retail.” With the change, 39 positions with Tokyopop are eliminated.
Is this a [...]

A total of 274 Borders employees were laid off, most of which were corporate employees in all departments except the buyer/planner group. According to the PW article, 156 positions at the Ann Arbor, MI, headquarters were eliminated and 118 positions at the distribution centers, field marketing organization and corporate sales division.
The loss of Borders [...]

From the Teach Me Tonight blog:
This is a Call For People, rather than a Call For Papers. It is time for an academic society for the study of popular romance fiction, with all the rights and privileges appertaining thereunto, like a journal and conferences. So we have decided to start one! “We” being myself, Eric [...]

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, campaigned hard on Friday on behalf of the Amazon e-reading device. Booksellers are becoming increasingly nervous about the rise of ebooks. According to the New York Times article, Amazon is selling many of its Kindle books below what it costs to buy the book from the publisher. [...]

Overstock.com is joining Amazon in suing New York state for its recently implemented tax law which would require online retailers who make sales to NY state residents to collect NY state taxes. Amazon filed suit in late April. Personally, I think tax strategies like this hurt the state more than help it because [...]

Ingram Digital is offering “to transition all participating Microsoft Live Search Books publishers into its Ingram Search and Discover platform at no cost, enabling publishers to continue making their content searchable and available to readers.”
Microsoft announced last week that it would be discontinuing its Live Search program. Microsoft scanned in, digitized, and indexed 750000 [...]

276,649 new titles and editions were printed in 2007 which is a 1% increase over the previous year. Print on Demand books increased from 21,936 titles to 134,773 titles per year. It’s no wonder that Amazon is flexing its market power with requiring POD authors and publishers to use its own POD service, [...]

For our UK readers, the 100 Years of Mills & Boon Centenary Exhibition opens on June 6th at the Manchester Central Library. According to the Manchester site,
The exhibition explores the evolution of 20th century social and sexual mores in Britain, alongside the development of the world’s leading romance publisher. You’ll also find a company [...]

update: this program is through DailyLit. You must sign up with Daily Lit to get the Harlequin book for free.
Harlequin will be offering Kate Walker’s new June Presents title, Spanish Billionaire, Innocent Wife, to their subscribers for free. Beginning June 1st, people can sign up and receive the entire book [...]

What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture by the third press secretary for George W. Bush will be released on June 2, 2008, but copies are popping up in stores. Politico bought a copy from a Washington bookstore and provided a review of it. Scott McClellan talks in his [...]