Last week I looked at the complex set of spreadsheets I use to track my ebook sales and gave a whoop of delight: I had just sold my two-millionth book, something I would never in my wildest dreams have considered possible just over four years ago, particularly as the vast majority of those sales were achieved through self-publishing. Initially my most ambitious target had been to sell a thousand copies.
Links of the week April 4 2016 (14)
Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world:
4 April 2016
It's been quite a journey, and all the more exciting for being so totally unexpected. There is no point denying that I became self-published because I wasn't able to interest an agent in my first book. I had originally written Only the Innocent for my own benefit and pleasure, but I was encouraged by family to give publishing a go. I contacted 12 literary agents, and they weren't all negative. At least two said they enjoyed the book, but it wasn't the type of story publishers were looking for.
Never judge a book by its cover. So the saying goes, yet consumers do it all the time. Every publisher and bookseller knows that covers sell books. But do consumers also form expectations from looking at the cover? Well, based on the results of some of the initial reader analytics data at Jellybooks, we think they do.
i. when presented with a choice of 20 titles or more to choose from, test readers were often guided by the visual cues the cover provided and not the synopsis of the book, which requires more time to read and absorb, and ii. covers shape reader expectations about the content within the book that feeds through into completion rates. The book cover is not just packaging, but a visual summary of the book itself that needs to be accurate.
There's no question that Klaus Humann, Publisher of Aladin Verlag, is passionate about children's books and about illustration in particular. His innate curiosity has led him on a surprising and successful career path. Starting in nonfiction adult publishing, then riding high on global success of the Harry Potter and Twilight series, Humann is now on the lookout for unique children's books and surprising illustrators.
"If I publish books that could be number one in a lookalike contest for other successful illustrators, that would bore me," he said, in an interview with Publishing Perspectives.
During his 15-year tenure there, Carlsen grew from 35 people to over 130 people. "We were not a big publishing house [when I started], but we became the largest children'ss book publisher in Germany through buying the rights to Harry Potter and then the Twilight series as well.
The transition from small to large company wasn't always easy, but it was a lot of fun." The quick success of the Harry Potter books put the small team under a lot of pressure to handle the growing workload that the international hit series demanded. "All in all, we sold roughly 33 million Harry Potter books and 10 million Stephenie Meyer books in Germany, recalls Humann.
Jason Aaron Baca is good-looking, not handsome like the Ryans (Gosling and Reynolds) or rugged like Daniel Craig, who is fetching in a tailored Tom Ford suit. But when Mr. Baca, 42, slipped on a pair of dark aviator glasses recently, he looked remarkably like Tom Cruise in "Top Gun."
He was dressed for work in a khaki military jumpsuit. And even though it was barely noon, he had already stopped by the gym to make sure his biceps and legs looked combat-strong. His assignment: To be a military helicopter pilot saved in a crash by a female rescuer with whom he once had a torrid affair. Now that they're reunited, their passions have flared.
Despite the perception that blockbusters like Fifty Shades of Grey drive sales, self-publishing has proved a boon for this particular genre. E-books make up nearly 40 percent of all purchases, according to the writers group. And there are categories for every reader's taste, among them, adventure, Christian, multicultural, L.G.B.T. and paranormal.
With increased government investments in education, India's literary rate has risen sharply over the last ten years.
A 2009 National Youth Readership Survey shows that three out of four Indian youths are now literate, while 25 percent of that population (that's 83 million people) are self-identified book readers. And by the end of this decade, the literacy level is expected to be 90 percent.
And while the unique features of India's demographics in terms of a growing population, especially of young people who are literate and educated, "presents tremendous opportunities for the growth and expansion of the publishing industry in all sectors," these opportunities are not without their challenges. Consider for example: India has 22 official languages, a figure which, combined with regional languages and dialects, climbs to more than 1,600. Adding to that is the fact that brick-and-mortar bookstores are now facing increased competition from online retailers, which are often, "attractive on both range and price to an increasingly mobile population."