Random House Children’s Books has acquired Figment, an online writing community for teens. Founded in 2010, the site has attracted more than 300,000 users. The site will remain open to titles from all publishers
USA Today recently looked at twenty years of bestselling books from their own lists. Here’s what they found.
Self-help titles were big during the first five years. Oddly, the magazine connects this trend to the fact that print copies were still king then. In actuality, though, ebooks were first taken up by individuals reading nonfiction.
J.K. Rowling shattered the myths about what young readers wanted to consume both in terms of content and length during the 1998-2008 era.
Since 2009, in part due to the availability of ebooks (and of course the enhanced ability of readers to locate fiction through algorithms), fiction has risen to all-time highs.
Long ago in a dreamy land far, far away, publishing was a “gentleman’s business.” Publishers, agents and authors respected each other because they were working together to reach readers.
Then publishers started to become corporatized, focused on the bottom line. Over the decades, authors ended up at the bottom of the barrel. The only advocates, it seemed, were their agents.
Nowadays, things are changing rapidly. Self-publishing and the advent of new digital platforms are shifting the way publishers do business. One of the things that suddenly has become more important is…you guessed it…authors.
Authors are the brand around which readers revolve. A host of recent conferences and book trade shows have hosted multiple sessions that focus on the writer.
It’s a great time to be an author!
Quite a bit of chatter is going around these days about how self-publishing is shaking up traditional publishers. In some ways it is a war between sides that are battling for attention from the same pool of readers. WIthout going into all the other elements, let’s remember one key fact:
Self-published titles represent 10% of the current market.
This means that a number of places where books traditionally are distributed–brick-and-mortar bookstores, big-box retailers, shopping clubs and the like–aren’t paying very much attention at all to self-published titles.
When considering your career, take all the details into account to find the best path for you and your work.
Chronos Books is seeking historical nonfiction and historical biography. They are looking for real history for real people; imaginative, easy-to-digest and accessible text. Topics cover ancient times to the Second World War, and should add to a reader’s understanding of people and events rather than reading like a textbook.
With a growth rate over 400% in the past 5 years, self-publishing is actually turning out to be a benefit for traditional publishers.
More publishers than ever before are signing authors who self-published their books. Indie authors have finally found their ways onto some of the top bestseller lists, which is eye-opening considering that many lists are compiled by newspapers that still refuse to review indie authors.
Nowadays, I tell clients that they can self-publish at the same time they are querying agents and publishers. If the self-published route doesn’t work out, no harm done. If they hit it big, though, they have even more appeal for traditional publishers to take a close look.
Bowker, the ISBN provider, found that the number of self-published books in 2012 rose 59% to over 390,000 titles. Ebooks have led the charge, although print books still accounted for about 60% of self-published titles.
The analysis also found that more than 80% of self-published titles came from just eight companies, including Smashwords and CreateSpace. Fiction is the most popular self-published genre followed by inspirational/spiritual works, books for children, and biographies.
At the Frankfurt Book Fair, Publisher’s Weekly encapsulated the event by saying “The self-publishing discussion is the only conversation we need to be having today.”
The Virginia Quarterly’s web editor backed that up.
Books on Demand pointed out that 60% of self-published authors see no difference between their efforts and those provided by traditional publishers. At the same time, 75% saw marketing as the biggest advantage offered by traditional publishers.
And that’s no small point. Self-published authors have to take very broad approaches to marketing to see what works for them at that moment in their selected category. Traditional publishers already know what works and are able to focus a team of individuals on those efforts.
VQR pointed out that the element connecting both groups is that they are both reaching out to readers. And that should be key for you no matter which publishing route you take.
Jennifer Brehl at HarperCollins’s William Morrow imprint bought North American rights to Tina Seskis’s novel, One Step Too Far. The amount hasn’t been revealed but is rumored to have been $500,000.
The book was originally published in April as a Kindle e-book that hit #1 on Amazon. Seskis, who grew up in New Hampshire and now lives in London, followed the e-book publication with a paperback release. The print edition then went on to hit the bestseller list of the British bookstore chain, W.H. Smith.
Willow Creed Press specializes in nature, outdoor and sporting books. Prospective authors should submit a chapter-by-chapter outline and sample chapters via mail.
Recently, news from Europe indicated that self-publishing is beginning to grow at rates similar to those seen in America’s early years of self-publishing. The reasons authors choose to go their own way is the same as here: more control, a faster path to publication, and more direct contact with their readers.
FOCUS magazine said that traditional publishers will have to get on board with this trend worldwide. Providing access to bookstores, it said, is the last area where the gatekeepers still function. If publishers want to survive, they are going to have to help all authors publish and distribute their books.
Do you think survival for traditional publishing houses will hinge on this in part or in whole? Why or why not?
Recently I posted on the discussions about bundling a free copy of ebooks into every print edition sold. Now Amazon has announced that they will be launching a program like that in October.
Called Kindle Matchbook, the offer is not going to be available on every title. Instead, they need to negotiate with individual publishers. They have predicted that 10,000 titles will be available on that program by its launch date.
Now, Amazon has already taken flack for merely predicting that 10K number. But by now, everyone should know that Amazon’s spin often turns out to be self-fulfilling. The real question is why now, and why Amazon?
Of course the idea is timely and readers love it, so it works. If it helps authors expand their reach, that is useful too. For now, though, the impact seems to be limited to well-known authors or well-known titles (even ones that are decades old). For Amazon, though, it’s a way to enhance their date collection. Depending on whether you abhor big data as an invasion of privacy or think big data on reading trends can be helpful, that might sound greatly overreaching or just plain great.
I’ve posted before on the importance of titles in terms of how they work with algorhythms on websites that sell books. Here’s a great article about some titles that failed due to how they strick potential readers.
The past weeks have seen so much chatter about Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s top dog, buying the Washington Post newspaper. On the shrill side, folks are claiming he’ll use the paper to cement Amazon’s position in the halls of the White House. The warm-and-fuzzy side points out that since Bezos (not Amazon) bought the paper, perhaps he’s interested in shoring up a venerable institution that serves the public good.
Of course it’s far too early to tell. But this purchase is part of a trend. Over the past months, many independently wealthy individuals have purchased some of the country’s top newspapers. Many of these purchases turn the newspapers private.
That’s a critical element. Whenever a company goes private, it is no longer chained by law to focus on shareholder profit. Newspapers have always been a true community service. Yes, they need to make money and yes, they carry advertisements. But the content has always been based on a specific set of interests. Even papers that put out national editions provide content that has a particular flavor for a particular subscriber base.
Considering this recent shift, newspapers might actually be on the mend.
Kensington Publishing is a major indie house. They produce hardcover, trade and paperback books and have several imprints under their primary company.
Writer's Resource/Sunspot Lit 