16 August 2011
At the Publishers Weekly news blog, seven writers – Clyde Edgerton, Alix Ohlin, Clancy Martin, Jonathan Evison, Sam Lipsyte, Duane Swierczyski, and yours truly – share summer music stories and lists. Mine is all about the year 1983, which I am starting to think was the most significant year of my life.
8 March 2011
I know the title of this post sounds like something from a trade magazine. I actually am a self-proclaimed un-expert on this issue, but I’m trying to get up to speed. According to Publisher’s Weekly (a week or so ago – see, I know, I’m behind), Random House was the last of the big publishing houses to switch to the agency model of e-book pricing:
In the agency model, publishers set the price and designate an agent—in this case the bookseller—who will sell the book and receive the 30% commission. Adopting the model for e-books tends to mean e-book prices will rise, something both publishers and independent retailers applaud. Publishers believe low e-book prices devalue their books and cannibalize hardcover sales. Under the agency model once a price has been set it cannot be changed or discounted by the retailer and independent e-book retailers believe the higher prices of the agency model allow them to compete with big e-book vendors.
What I’m not clear on is why Random House took so long, what were they weighing in terms of the downside of the agency model. I know it’s great for consumers if e-books cost $1.99; but it’s not good for book sales, and thus not good for authors. Some things (this author believes) are worth paying for, and if we value them, we’ll hopefully be willing to do so.
5 January 2010
From Publisher’s Weekly, hot off the press!
“…elegant debut novel… Switching deftly between different characters’ points of view, Chung portrays with precision and grace each character’s struggle to find his or her place in the family and in the world.”
14 November 2009
I know little about book fairs, but the ones we hear about tend to take place in Western Europe. Reminds me a little of when I was in the film world, and the most-attended film festivals by Americans were Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, etc. Mostly because of the expense of getting to African and Asian festivals, which was often prohibitive — though I think there was also a sense of going with the “brand names,” wanting not to waste time.
But it’s nice to hear about a book fair in a far-flung (from us) part of the world. The Sharjah World Book Fair, which takes place just outside of Dubai, opened on Wednesday. Here’s a blurb from Publisher’s Weekly, and here’s the Sharjah World Book Fair’s web site.
3 June 2009
BookExpo America wrapped up on Monday, and I’m still catching up on all the “alert” updates I received from Publisher’s Weekly over the weekend. Some highlights that caught my eye:
“There are fabulous novels by William Trevor [Love and Summer, Viking, Sept.], A.S. Byatt [The Children’s Book, Knopf, Oct.] Margaret Atwood [The Year of the Flood, Doubleday/Talese, Sept.] and Dan Chaon [Await Your Reply, Ballantine, Aug.],” said Sheryl Cotleur, buying director from Book Passage in Corte Madera, Calif. “It’s as if all these authors jumped forward just when the publishing industry needed them. There’s also Paul Auster [Invisible, Holt, Oct.], Nicholson Baker [The Anthologist, Simon & Schuster, Sept.], Jeannette Walls [Half-Broke Horses, Scribner, Oct.] and Barbara Kingsolver [The Lacuna, Harper, Nov.]. For nonfiction, forthcoming are Malcolm Gladwell [What the Dog Saw, Little, Brown, Oct.], Rebecca Solnit (A Paradise Built in Hell, Viking, Aug.] and Diane Ackerman [Dawn Light, Norton, Sept.]. I was going through the catalogues just flipping out—not only who’s publishing but the quality. We couldn’t need it more.”
The Nicholson Baker and William Trevor are both going on my list for sure; Barbara Kingsolver, too.
Sherman Alexie, the National Book Award-winning author of “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” said he refused to allow his novels to be made available in digital form. He called the expensive reading devices “elitist” and declared that when he saw a woman sitting on the plane with a Kindle on his flight to New York, “I wanted to hit her.”
Yikes.
So far e-books represent 1 to 3 percent of total book sales. But they make up the fastest growing part of the industry, and publishers, authors and booksellers have no idea just how big they will become and how they might affect profits and reading habits in the future. NY Times article by Mokoto Rich
I’m thankful for this simple summary on e-books by Rich, who humbly confesses that, at this point, nobody knows.
