I said this morning that the announcement by the Wylie Agency to circumvent publishers and use the Amazon Kindle Store to publish e-books by their leading list of authors and the author estates they represent was highly significant. I said it may be the most important publishing news to happen this year. This evening, I’ll…
Ingram Digital May Stop eBook Availability until Agency Model in Place
Ingram Digital’s General Manager Andrew Weinstein has sent a letter to its client retailers informing them of the possibility that they will be forced to stop the availability of ebooks titles in their catalogue listing from publishers who intend implementing the agency model. From as early as April—of the largest New York publishers—Ingram Digital may…
The Authors Guild React to eBook Proposals By HarperCollins & Random House
The US Authors Guild has quickly responded to communications sent by publishers Random House and HarperCollins to their contracted authors about ebook royalties. The Authors Guild are advising authors that it may not be in their best interests to lock themselves into an ebook deal offering 25% royalty, particularly if the deal covers a period…
PublishAmerica Invite Themselves To Dinner At Random House
I don’t mention PublishAmerica here too often. There are many reasons why. Some of the reasons are contained in the articles and comments on the links, here and here. The Wikipaedia entry for PublishAmerica provides a better and less critical overview then they actually deserve. In a nutshell, I consider PublishAmerica the modern face of…
Still Trying To Beat The Slush Piles?
The Wall Street Journal took a look at the infamous slush pile in the publishing and film industry over the weekend. It makes for depressing reading but does highlight the trend of modern authors no longer even bothering to jump on the submission/literary agent bandwagon, and choosing instead to go straight to self-publishing. The article…
The Bookseller.com Talks to The UK’s Top Publishing CEO’s
Today in thebookseller.com, the CEO’s of the UK’s top publishing houses reflect on the current state of book publishing, the development and impact of digital books, and what their own predictions are in 2010 and beyond. This is part one of an interview thebookseller.com did with Peter Field of Penguin, Victoria Barnsley of HarperCollins and Gail Rebuck of…
When Is a Book Not a Book?
They say seeing is believing. It’s just that our instinct is also to check once, check twice, before we truly accept what we see before us. They say a millionaire passes at least one dollar bill dropped on the street every day. A pauper never misses one. Why? Because the pauper is always looking for…
Doubleday Sheds 10% of Staff
Recently on this site I have been reporting on the general downturn the global economy is having on the publishing world. Just a couple of weeks ago I reported on job losses at Lulu.com and unfortunately those losses continue as reported in the New York Times and many other news organisations. The NYT story is…