This week's publishing news and industry blogs post covers 9/5-9/19.
Publishing News
Barnes and Noble experienced a glitch delaying payments to some Nook Press authors in late August, but the glitch has now been fixed and authors are in the process of being paid.
Amazon has introduced a new, upgraded suite of tablets. Amazon also gives Kindle Unlimited authors a bonus, $2.7 million in total, divided among the most popular KDP authors and titles.
Amazon also e-mails Kindle customers a notice of Apple's recent settlement in regards to damages in from the e-book price-fixing case (a "you may be entitled to a refund" notice). Receiving the payment obliges the customer to relinquish the right to sue individually, and customers must opt out by October 31; this is also the date by which customers who want checks instead of an account credit must declare the preference.
In the European Union, judges rule that European libraries can scan and digitize works within their own collections, but may only display the works at dedicated reading terminals (within their own facilities). The works may not printed or stored on USB or other digital storage methods, or otherwise distributed beyond the library itself, without permission from the rights holders and appropriate payment.
E-book platform BookShout begins offering deals to provide bulk orders of bestselling e-books to public radio and TV stations, for purposes such as promotional giveaways or for ordinary sale.
OverDrive, the platform many libraries use for e-book e-lending, seeks to introduce a change that requires new users of the app to register directly with OverDrive and not just the library. The ReadersFirst coalition of libraries protests this move.
For its latest call to action, Authors' United sends a letter to each of the ten board members at Amazon asking them to sway the company in the Hachette vs Amazon dispute. The letter is also published online for anyone to read.
Romance novelist Rachel Ann Nunes sues Tiffanie Rushton for plagiarizing. The suit charges Rushton with copying Nunes' work, but adding additional explicit scenes to the sweet romance ("sweet romance" in the romance industry means no sex is actually included in the novel; think anything from a G to a PG-13 rating, with Nunes leaning closer to G).
Canada's biggest fiction award, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, doubles its prize money.
Industry Blogs
Ellora's Cave, one of the original digital publishing pioneers, has been having trouble lately, including low sales, a few author reports of poor royalty payment schedules, and the resignation of the COO and managing editor. Victoria Strauss on Writer Beware details the issues and advises against submitting, at least until things get settled.
Agent Rachelle offers 13 tips on how to build a blog audience.
Professional editor Katherine Pickett explains how to find the right editor for you.
Agent Nephele Tempest posts some interesting writing links on 9/5 and 9/12. She also writes a post on how to write realistic dialogue.
Agent Janet Reid offers advice and answers questions. She gives the 5 most important things to know about when to personalize a query, such as you should include one if you had a positive interaction with the agent. If you have a book based off a film, how do you go about obtaining the rights? (Not likely to happen; they're more likely to hire someone to write their movie tie-ins, not go with an already written work by someone they didn't hire.) Is it useless to query in August? (No. Publishing doesn't shut down for query-readers in August, not anymore.)
More from Reid: If you have a long name, will you be forced to use a pen name? (Not likely.) If an unshopped manuscript had formerly had an agent, should it be mentioned, and when? (Depends on the agent; some say will yea, some will say nay. Don't open the query letter with that, though.) If you get requests from two agents and both seem good on the first look, what do you do? (If they're okay with it, ask if you can contact any clients and find out what they're like to work with.) Someone expressed interest at a conference, but you won't be ready for a few months yet: What to do? (Send a short e-mail 30 days before the 'due' date about how you're still working to keep in touch.) And an agency has some odd-sounding language about how authors submitting acknowledge that the agency might produce something similar. Is that bad? (No, it's just CYA on their part.)
Agent Kristin Nelson reminds us that if something sounds too good to be true, such as a 100% royalty rate, it probably is too good to be true. In the case Nelson describes, Blue Ash Publishing, she does some digging and finds the house isn't a publishing house but rather selling packages for self-publishers, and mostly at higher prices than you could find yourself.
On the Editor's Blog, "nothing" words--filler words that can be removed and strengthen your writing by their loss--include most cases of "thing" and "people." Not all cases, but the posts offer suggestions for how to avoid these words with they are just being fillers. Also, when should you include the words "The End" (or skip them) when submitting a manuscript?
Graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang gives advice on writing outside your culture and talks about why it's important to have diversity in literature.
Next week is Banned Books Week, and publishers are holding events to celebrate.
The New York Times plans to add twelve new best sellers lists for genres not previously covered, with yet more to come in 2015.
Personal Creations posts an infographic on how long it takes to read certain popular books (on average). Pride and Prejudice, for example, clocks in at 6.74 hours, Gone with the Wind 23.23 hours, and Frankenstein 3.85 hours.
DesignMantic gives the 10 commandments of logo design through an infographic.
A Pew Research study finds that 88% of Americans under 30 have read a book in the last year; Millennials are just as likely as older Americans to have used a library in the past year; that high schoolers (age 16-17) have different habits from college-aged (age 18-24, regardless of actual college attendance) and post-college (age 25-29); and lots of other interesting statistics.
Publishing News
Barnes and Noble experienced a glitch delaying payments to some Nook Press authors in late August, but the glitch has now been fixed and authors are in the process of being paid.
Amazon has introduced a new, upgraded suite of tablets. Amazon also gives Kindle Unlimited authors a bonus, $2.7 million in total, divided among the most popular KDP authors and titles.
Amazon also e-mails Kindle customers a notice of Apple's recent settlement in regards to damages in from the e-book price-fixing case (a "you may be entitled to a refund" notice). Receiving the payment obliges the customer to relinquish the right to sue individually, and customers must opt out by October 31; this is also the date by which customers who want checks instead of an account credit must declare the preference.
In the European Union, judges rule that European libraries can scan and digitize works within their own collections, but may only display the works at dedicated reading terminals (within their own facilities). The works may not printed or stored on USB or other digital storage methods, or otherwise distributed beyond the library itself, without permission from the rights holders and appropriate payment.
E-book platform BookShout begins offering deals to provide bulk orders of bestselling e-books to public radio and TV stations, for purposes such as promotional giveaways or for ordinary sale.
OverDrive, the platform many libraries use for e-book e-lending, seeks to introduce a change that requires new users of the app to register directly with OverDrive and not just the library. The ReadersFirst coalition of libraries protests this move.
For its latest call to action, Authors' United sends a letter to each of the ten board members at Amazon asking them to sway the company in the Hachette vs Amazon dispute. The letter is also published online for anyone to read.
Romance novelist Rachel Ann Nunes sues Tiffanie Rushton for plagiarizing. The suit charges Rushton with copying Nunes' work, but adding additional explicit scenes to the sweet romance ("sweet romance" in the romance industry means no sex is actually included in the novel; think anything from a G to a PG-13 rating, with Nunes leaning closer to G).
Canada's biggest fiction award, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, doubles its prize money.
Industry Blogs
Ellora's Cave, one of the original digital publishing pioneers, has been having trouble lately, including low sales, a few author reports of poor royalty payment schedules, and the resignation of the COO and managing editor. Victoria Strauss on Writer Beware details the issues and advises against submitting, at least until things get settled.
Agent Rachelle offers 13 tips on how to build a blog audience.
Professional editor Katherine Pickett explains how to find the right editor for you.
Agent Nephele Tempest posts some interesting writing links on 9/5 and 9/12. She also writes a post on how to write realistic dialogue.
Agent Janet Reid offers advice and answers questions. She gives the 5 most important things to know about when to personalize a query, such as you should include one if you had a positive interaction with the agent. If you have a book based off a film, how do you go about obtaining the rights? (Not likely to happen; they're more likely to hire someone to write their movie tie-ins, not go with an already written work by someone they didn't hire.) Is it useless to query in August? (No. Publishing doesn't shut down for query-readers in August, not anymore.)
More from Reid: If you have a long name, will you be forced to use a pen name? (Not likely.) If an unshopped manuscript had formerly had an agent, should it be mentioned, and when? (Depends on the agent; some say will yea, some will say nay. Don't open the query letter with that, though.) If you get requests from two agents and both seem good on the first look, what do you do? (If they're okay with it, ask if you can contact any clients and find out what they're like to work with.) Someone expressed interest at a conference, but you won't be ready for a few months yet: What to do? (Send a short e-mail 30 days before the 'due' date about how you're still working to keep in touch.) And an agency has some odd-sounding language about how authors submitting acknowledge that the agency might produce something similar. Is that bad? (No, it's just CYA on their part.)
Agent Kristin Nelson reminds us that if something sounds too good to be true, such as a 100% royalty rate, it probably is too good to be true. In the case Nelson describes, Blue Ash Publishing, she does some digging and finds the house isn't a publishing house but rather selling packages for self-publishers, and mostly at higher prices than you could find yourself.
On the Editor's Blog, "nothing" words--filler words that can be removed and strengthen your writing by their loss--include most cases of "thing" and "people." Not all cases, but the posts offer suggestions for how to avoid these words with they are just being fillers. Also, when should you include the words "The End" (or skip them) when submitting a manuscript?
Graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang gives advice on writing outside your culture and talks about why it's important to have diversity in literature.
Next week is Banned Books Week, and publishers are holding events to celebrate.
The New York Times plans to add twelve new best sellers lists for genres not previously covered, with yet more to come in 2015.
Personal Creations posts an infographic on how long it takes to read certain popular books (on average). Pride and Prejudice, for example, clocks in at 6.74 hours, Gone with the Wind 23.23 hours, and Frankenstein 3.85 hours.
DesignMantic gives the 10 commandments of logo design through an infographic.
A Pew Research study finds that 88% of Americans under 30 have read a book in the last year; Millennials are just as likely as older Americans to have used a library in the past year; that high schoolers (age 16-17) have different habits from college-aged (age 18-24, regardless of actual college attendance) and post-college (age 25-29); and lots of other interesting statistics.
What other publishing news have you encountered in the past two weeks?
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