Tag Archives: Publishing

More on Agent Assisted Publishing

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Amazon offers a White Glove publishing service. In this program, your agent works directly with Amazon to publish your book.

I wrote not too long ago about agent-assisted publishing, and this is just another incarnation of the same process. You might end up walking this road if the traditional publishers reject your agent’s efforts to place your book. But again, you end up with the agent as your book’s advocate.

On this road, you don’t travel alone. That in and of itself can be a boost to your passion. The fact that it can also boost your career sweetens the deal.

Agent-Assisted Publishing: The Latest Shift in Traditional Book Publishing

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Lately the news has been covering quite a number of agent-assisted books that have sold well. Agent-assisted publishing might sound repetative…after all, doesn’t an agent get authors published with traditional houses?

Yes, and nowadays agents are doing more. If they are unable to place a client with a publisher, they might funnel that client into their own publishing unit. The agent doesn’t become the publisher; they simply help the author self-publish.

The benefits to this kind of self-publishing are many. Agents have long done much more for authors than simply sell their books. They are fantastic advocates with the media and (when appropriate) colleges or other organizations that might offer paid speaking engagements. The agents can often boost sales for the author in a way that the writer could not do himself through regular self-publishing methods.

Book Publisher Info

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Daw Books Inc accepts manuscripts directly from authors. They accept sci-fi and fantasy novels and prefer lengths of about 80,000 words.

New Self-Pub Book Market: Penguin’s Book Country

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Note: Penguin’s Book Country operates separately from their other self-pub arm Author Solutions.

Book Country allows self-published authors to sell their works through their website. There are the usual marketing packages authors find at many self-pub companies but there is one difference: authors keep 85% of the royalties. This is higher than both Amazon and B&N.

Amazon Dukes It Out with Overstock.com; Indie Booksellers Lose

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On Friday, Amazon began offering discounts that have never before been seen even on its own site. The move is supposedly a response to Overstock.com’s full frontal assault, which consists of discounting books to match or beat Amazon’s prices.

Dan Brown’s Inferno is now available on Amazon at a a 61% discount. And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini has a 58% discount. Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In is at a 64% discount. A whopping 64% discount is offered on The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.

There are signs, however, that even Amazon is not invincible in this battle. J.K. Rowling’s The Cuckoo’s Calling, written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, is discounted only 42%. That’s right in the usual discounting area of 40% to 50 percent. Amazon likely doesn’t want to discount something that is selling well regardless of price, and wants to keep the profits involved in that title.

Overstock.com’s shot across the bow of the mighty frigate Amazon is a long-overdue attempt to take some of the wind out of Amazon’s sails. The recent verdict against Apple has already spurred Amazon toward discounting books to eliminate the real competition that is left: the thousands of indie booksellers who together hold more clout among readers than any website ever will.

Unfortunately indies do not yet hold any kind of combined economic clout with publishers and so cannot discount books at the same rate. Thank goodness someone has noticed what’s going on in book publishing and has thrown the economic might of their company onto the battlefield.

What’s in a Subtitle? The Impact on Book Algorithms

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Titles are important. Any author can agree to that. But are subtitles as important, less so, or possibly more important?

One consideration is how subtitles impact algorithms that help readers find a book. Subtitles that seem unwieldy because they are so long can actually boost sales on websites.

A second consideration has been around for a while: a descriptive subtitle tells readers exactly what they’ll get from the book.

Finally, a subtitle can indicate the author’s voice (funny, academic, etc.) or tone (the emotional quality of the work). That can be attractive to readers and thus generate sales.

Subtitles are clearly not more important than titles…but they are equally important.

Publisher News: Disney Selling Hyperion’s List to Hachette Book Group

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The Hyperion adult trade publishing list is being sold to Hachette Book Group. Disney, which is the entity selling the Hyperion list, will now publish children’s and YA books as welll as books based on franchises from its Disney/ABC TV operations.

Keep track of these changes so you know which publisher to approach when you’re ready to send out your work.

Words of Hope from Book Agent Amy Rennert in Poets & Writers

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Agent Amy Rennert was quoted in Poets & Writers as saying:

“I predict that people will continue to write [books]. I do feel that there is a persistent and insatiable desire for long-form prose–that there is something about the experience of disappearing into a long piece of writing that has enormous appeal to enough people in the world to maintain the publishing industry through the foreseeable future.”

J.K. Rowling Revealed as Robert Galbraith: An Analysis

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Yet another famous author has taken the anonymous road to publishing. J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame has been revealed to be the author Robert Galbraith.

She is quoted as having said, “I had hoped to keep this secret a little longer, because being Robert Galbraith has been such a liberating experience,” she said in a statement. “It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation, and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name.”

The media, and perhaps some readers who are themselves authors, are wondering if this wasn’t a publicity stunt. After all, getting attention is a concern even for the biggest authors, especially after an author switches genres as Rowling did.

From the author’s side, there is of course the concern that all her works will be judged against the Potter series. Since she has moved into writing for adults and has already released one novel as her own for older readers, it might be an attempt by Rowling to get real feedback on her efforts.

From the publisher’s side, however, the “debut” novel was released on April 30 of this year. The revelation happened very near the end of the 90 day cycle that every book is subject to…if something isn’t selling well by the end of that time, bookstores often remove it from their shelves. Since the leak to the media happened at the end of this cycle when Galbraith’s novel would be returned to the publisher, it might have been a planned leak intended to keep the book on the shelves.

In the end, the effort has actually achieved both. Rowling has been able to step aside fully from her wizard roots with this work, and the leak has saved the publisher from having to eat the losses associated with a novel that until the revelation sold only about 1,500 copies in Britain.

Complaints about Crimson Romance

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Crimson is a subscription publisher…they offer readers unlimited downloads of e-books for a monthly fee.

Different publishers have been experimenting with this process, and for some, it works out well.

Authors at Crimson Romance are complaining about payment terms and how the publisher rates them against their entire stable of authors. Read more here at Writer Beware.

The Penguin Random House Merger

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Well, it’s happened again.

Two of the top publishers have merged forces. The new Penguin Random House is now the dominant publisher in America…and since American publishing is the top of all nations, that makes it the biggest in the world.

The combined companies control over 25% of the book business. One of their top priorities is to “crack the code of discoverability,” to figure out how to put more books in front of more buyers in a market that has seen fewer brick-and-mortar stores every year.

One consultant said that they could use their large list to create digital subscriptions, like an e-book of the month club.

Harlan Coben noted that every author is worried that fewer houses mean fewer opportunities to get books published. He also said that the business is changing so rapidly that any predictions made now will likely fall flat.

How to Determine if a Manuscript is Publishable

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Considering how much change has come to publishing in the past few years, determining whether a manuscript is publishable is important. Authors want to know what their chances are before they invest a lot of time, effort or money in creating new drafts, revising and rewriting current drafts, editing to the final stage, or creating book proposals and query letters.

The two most important things to consider when asking whether a manuscript is publishable are:

1. Quality

2. Marketability

Quality issues for fiction encompass the writing level (voice, use of structural elements, etc.) and storytelling skill. For nonfiction, quality includes the writing level and how the content is presented.

Marketability is an issue that can trend across timelines ranging from a few months to a decade or more. It includes areas outside publishing as much as what is being published now and what is scheduled for publication over the next two years. And since those same issues affect self-publishers (although in different ways), authors who are committed to that path often have the same question about whether their manuscript is publishable.

Authors can access twenty years of experience across a broad range of categories and genres by having their work read by Writer’s Resource. The service that determines if a manuscript is publishable…and if not, to guide the author along the steps to be taken to make it publishable…is a baseline review. The review usually takes 2 to 2.5 weeks to complete and costs $425. The nominal investment can safeguard authors from spending much more on editing or other services that will not pay off in the long run.

Words of Hope

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Eric Simonoff of William Morris Endeavor, says of publishing:

“What I see is an industry in which we want nothing more than to discover an amazing voice. Who wouldn’t? If you actually have a great book, it matters who sends it out, because you want someone who understand the business, who has the best possible relationships, and who can negotiate the right deal for you as a client. But your book will get discovered regardless. It might just be a question of when.”

Publisher Accepting Submissions

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Shambhala has been one of the better known niche publishers for years. They put out about 100 titles per year, mostly nonfiction related to Buddhism, yoga, mindfulness, creativity, martial arts, natural health, and green living. They ask authors to submit a book proposal.

Additional Income for Authors: Libraries?

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In the UK, the government pays authors whenever a book they’ve written is checked out of the library. Right now, e-books are not included in that payment system.

Several countries are also moving to support their book industries by providing loans and grants to bookstores, publishers and other book sellers from their governments. They value literature so highly they’re willing to back their beliefs with cash.

In America, no such vehicle exists to enhance an author’s income or support the industry. Do you feel the government should pay authors a nominal amount whenever a book is checked out? Do you think the industry should be bailed out or otherwise supported with cash from the government?