Many of you spent the last couple of weeks guesting or hosting and eating turkey, ham, or tofurkey, and working desperately on NaNoWriMo in your free moments. So here's a link digest of the latest publishing news and industry blogs for 11/20-12/4/2015.Publishing News
Penguin Random House decides on the final, unified terms for library e-books, going with the Random House terms for the merged company.
The Supreme Court has given an extension for the DOJ to file opposition to Apple's petition to have the e-book price-fixing case reviewed. Meanwhile, the Authors Guild, ABA, and Barnes and Noble file a brief in support of Apple's petition.
Industry Blogs
On QueryTracker, tips on surviving the submission process.
Agent Janet Reid answers questions and gives advice. Your first line of an effective query should be a viable answer for the question "Have you read any good books lately?" Make sure you clean up your web presence before querying. Do agents consider a writer's age before signing? (Reid doesn't; but if you're worried, just don't mention your age in the query.) Why doesn't your memoir, filled with everything someone in your situation would need to survive, sell? (Agents look for memoirs that will help those not in your situation, too, in order to have enough of a market.)
More from Reid: No matter how frustrated you are with the query process, you still should follow the guidelines. If you've got one manuscript submitted to an agent, and have meanwhile finished another and gotten into top-notch shape, can you query the second? (Yes, and do.) How long do you have to submit after a pitch? (Better good but late than messy and early.)
Author Jamie Gold has been participating in an Indie Publishing Paths series. Here's her latest, which looks at the things indie authors should consider when pricing their books. (First post was back in August, which I completely missed at the time, on setting goals.)
On BookEnds, agent Jessica Faust explains that no, not all editing and feedback is good, and it's okay to not follow every little bit. And she explains why using Track Changes in edits is useful. (We use it my dayjob as a copyeditor all the time, and yeah, it saves people's sanity.)
Agent Nephele Tempest posts some writing links for Friday 11/20 and 11/28.
Author Kristine Kathryn Rusch in her Business Musings posts talks about why "writing to a market" isn't really a thing for the indie market, and why it's a thing in traditional publishing in the first place. She also shares some of her thoughts on the international markets.
What other major publishing news have you encountered in the past two weeks?
Thank you for doing the research. The inside baseball from Kristine Kathryn Rusch was especially illuminating.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I find a lot of Rusch's business posts are really thought-provoking, looking at the industry from a different perspective than many of the traditional publishing info sources while being very business savvy.
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