Thursday News, Amber Quill, Samhain, Penguin, and paper art
Amber Quill Closing – Emily Veinglory reports on the imminent closure of Amber Quill, which opened in 2002. According to a thread on Absolute Write, the digital publisher will be shutting its doors as of March 31, 2016, at which point all rights will revert back to authors. As Veinglory notes, their closure raises questions about “how many professional-level e-publishers will be left after a few more years, as the market becomes ever more crowded and correspondingly less profitable.” According to the Amber Quill website, all books need to be downloaded by March 31st, and all reward points used, because the website will shut down at the point of the Press’s closure. Questions or comments should be sent to [email protected] Erotic Romance
Regarding the previously reported changes at Samhain Publishing – Last week we reported on a few changes at Samhain, and Chris Brashear’s letter to authors has subsequently been posted in its entirety on Absolute Write. In addition to providing a detailed explanation of the changes reported by Jane last week, the letter also discusses changes to the publication schedule:
When we first started Samhain, I had originally planned to publish four or six books a month. This had to quickly change to weekly and increase the number because of the demand. We were in the boom cycle of this new business model. The boom is over and we’ve got to look at how the industry is unfolding now. Time to be more strategic. We are looking converting the latter half of 2016 to fewer weekly releases and to increase our ability focus more publicity on the individual titles and increase the sales for each new launch. This is plan is still being developed and not finalized. I have no hard-and-fast numbers to give you at this point.Companies can’t remain static and changes have to happen to keep up with an ever-evolving industry. We are all in the for the long haul and we’re working to push through this downturn, something that almost all industries go through, to get to the other side. – Samhain and Absolute Write
PRH sells Author Solutions – Author Solutions was acquired by Penguin’s parent company, Pearson, in 2012, a move that caused significant controversy and criticism, with critics referring to the service as unreasonably expensive “vanity publishing.” Now that Penguin has merged with Random House, the resulting conglomerate has reportedly sold Author Solutions to “an affiliate of Najafi Companies, an Arizona-based private investment firm,” for a whopping $116 million:
“Buying the key self-publishing platform was always a controversial move for a large publisher to make,” Helliwell said. “It looks like Bertelsmann doesn’t agree with Pearson’s original thinking; or self-publishing is not proving to be as significant a part of the market as was thought or feared at the time of purchase in 2012.”Analyst Sarah Simon at Berenberg Bank said that PRH most likely sold Authors Solutions because it was not a good fit for the company.”In brand terms if it’s been sold it was probably not getting a lot of management focus or investment.” she told The Bookseller. “So being cut free could imply it’ll have more room to do its own thing.” – The Bookseller
Gifted – Although this post is a few years old, its relevance is still clear. An anonymous artist left a series of astonishingly beautiful and delicate sculptures made from what appear to be book pages at Edinburgh museums and libraries. Ultimately collected and displayed at the Scottish Poetry Library, the sculptures, some of which contain notes, include a dragon, gloves, a teacup, gramophone, and “poetree,” among others. A stunning tribute to the importance of public spaces that promote reading and cultural literacy:
As the mystery deepened with each of the ten sculptures that gradually appeared, so has curiosity about the identity of the artist. All that is known to date is that she is a woman. With the announcement of this exhibition of her sculptures in the Scottish Poetry Library, she contributed via an anonymous email address her thoughts and motives, explaining that at the heart of the project is”a woman, who had been a girl, whose life would have been less rich had she been unable to wander freely into libraries, art galleries and museums. A woman who, now all grown, still wants access to these places and yes, wants them for her children …” – Pas Grand-Chose
I personally find it very interesting that the post to Amber Quill’s website didn’t seem to appear until after Trace Edward Zaber had finished setting up the WordPress site for his “author services” site which offers editing, e-book and print formatting, cover art, and other services to self-published authors or publishing houses . I’ve heard rumors as to what Amber Quill told their authors as to the reason for their closure – now I wonder if what I heard is correct or if it was a good sounding excuse to tell the authors while at least one of the PTBs at the company set up a new business to start before the old one was even closed.
Trace Edward Zaber’s company website is here: https://bythunder.wordpress.com/
His apparently recently acquired Facebook account, listed under his name, shows him as employed by it.
Is anyone else seeing chunks of randomly huge text in the news post?
@Cat G: yup. same for me.
@Cat G: Me too. I’m using Chrome on a Chromebook. I *think* it’s all the same font, but different sizes, some black, some grey.
I see large chunks of text too – from both my iPad and iPhone .
I’m also seeing the huge text.
@Cat G: Yup. Firefox on Win7.
I reformatted the post and it looks okay to me. Still wonky to everyone?
That’s better. Thanks Janet!
@Janet: Looks fine to me now, thank you.
Love the post about the little sculptures in Scotland- how charming!