Category Archives: publishing news

January 18, 2015 · 2:31 pm

Twenty-four things about publishing…

24 Things No One Tells You About Book Publishing

Ten years ago, my first novel Prep came out. Three novels later, here’s what I’ve learned about the publishing industry and writing since then.

by Curtis Sittenfeld

Writing is only part of the mystery.

Writing is only part of the mystery.

Source: http://www.buzzfeed.com/curtissittenfeld/things-no-one-ever-tells-you-about-the-publishing-industry?bffbbooks

  1. When it comes to fellow writers, don’t buy into the narcissism of small differences. In all their neurotic, competitive, smart, funny glory, other writers are your friends.
  2. Unless you’re Stephen King, or you’re standing inside your own publishing house, assume that nobody you meet has ever heard of you or your books. If they have, you can be pleasantly surprised.
  3. At a reading, 25 audience members and 20 chairs is better than 200 audience members and 600 chairs.
  4. There are very different ways people can ask a published writer for the same favor. Polite, succinct, and preemptively letting you off the hook is most effective.
  5. Blurbs achieve almost nothing, everyone in publishing knows it, and everyone in publishing hates them.
  6. But a really good blurb from the right person can, occasionally, make a book take off.
  7. When your book is on best-seller lists, people find you more amusing and respond to your emails faster.
  8. When your book isn’t on best-seller lists, your life is calmer and you have more time to write.
  9. The older you are when your first book is published, the less gratuitous resentment will be directed at you.
  10. The goal is not to be a media darling; the goal is to have a career.
  11. The farther you live from New York, the less preoccupied you’ll be with literary gossip. Like cayenne pepper, literary gossip is tastiest in small doses.
  12. Contrary to stereotype, most book publicists aren’t fast-talking, vapid manipulators; they’re usually warm, organized youngish women (yes, they are almost all women) who love to read.
  13. Female writers are asked more frequently about all of the following topics than male writers: whether their work is autobiographical; whether their characters are likable; whether their unlikable characters are unlikable on purpose or the writer didn’t realize what she was doing; how they manage to write after having children.

For the other eleven, go to: http://www.buzzfeed.com/curtissittenfeld/things-no-one-ever-tells-you-about-the-publishing-industry?bffbbooks

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October 18, 2014 · 4:11 pm

Brother, can you spare a change?

Anthony Horowitz to copy editor: “I’M NOT CHANGING THIS.”

The full article at: http://www.mhpbooks.com/anthony-horowitz-to-copyeditor-im-not-changing-this/

by Kirsten Reach

Nobody wants his conversation with a copy editor made public, but there’s a galley floating around from Harper at the moment that contains some accidental gems. Anthony Horowitz, author of a new Sherlock Holmes novel and the next James Bond novel, had a conversation in the margins of Moriarty that mistakenly made it into the advanced reader’s copies.

Sarah Lyall‘s report in The New York Times gives you a sense of her own reading experience as well as the dialogue between author and copy editor. What’s so brilliant about her telling is the way she manages to rationalize the notes at first, as some sort of meta-commentary:

“Moriarty’s” narrator, an American detective named Frederick Chase, is laying out the background to the story – how Holmes and Moriarty came to be at Reichenbach Falls and what is believed to have happened next. All of a sudden he switches to capitals. “NO NEED TO COMPLICATE THINGS HERE, I THINK,” the text announces. “WHAT I’VE WRITTEN IS BROADLY TRUE.”

Can the narrator be offering some meta-commentary on his own text? At first it seems so. But then it happens again. In a spot where Chase and a Scotland Yard inspector have found an important clue that seems to be an excerpt from a previous Holmes story written by Dr. Watson, things suddenly veer off-piste again. “IT MAKES NO SENSE FOR FREDERICK CHASE TO HAVE READ THE SIGN OF FOUR,” the text declares.

Of the six annotations, the highlight is one firm line from Horowitz: “I’M NOT CHANGING THIS.”

So what happened?

The rest of the story at: http://www.mhpbooks.com/anthony-horowitz-to-copyeditor-im-not-changing-this/

[Editor’s note: Thank you Ashlie for the link to this article.]

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July 27, 2014 · 1:37 pm

Big Publishing is the Problem | Hugh Howey

Big Publishing is the Problem | Hugh Howey.

A few weeks ago, I speculated that Hachette might be fighting Amazon for the power to price e-books where they saw fit, or what is known as Agency pricing. That speculation was confirmed this week in a slide from Hachette’s presentation to investors:

So, no more need to speculate over what this kerfuffle is about. Hachette is strong-arming Amazon and harming its authors because they want to dictate price to a retailer, something not done practically anywhere else in the goods market. It’s something US publishers don’t even do to brick and mortar booksellers. It’s just something they want to be able to do to Amazon.

The biggest problem with Hachette’s strategy is that Hachette knows absolutely nothing about retail pricing. That’s not their job. It’s not their area of expertise. They don’t sell enough product direct to consumers to understand what price will maximize their earnings. Amazon, B&N, Kobo, and Apple have that data, not Hachette.

Beyond their ignorance of pricing strategy, Hachette also has a strong bias toward print books. Their existing relationships with major brick and mortar retailers gets in the way of their e-book pricing. This has been confirmed by my own publishers, who have admitted privately that they would like to experiment with digital pricing but don’t want to upset print book retailers. This puts their pricing strategy at odds with their investors’ needs, their authors’ needs, even their own profitability. In sum, they are making irrational decisions with their pricing philosophy. Hachette is making the same mistake that many publishers make, which is to think that harming Amazon somehow helps themselves.

The same presentation by Hachette to investors stressed the importance of DRM and

The rest of the article at: http://www.hughhowey.com/big-publishing-is-the-problem/

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