Publishing world

By many measures, 2020 was an unusual year in publishing, and that extended to Publishers WeeklyInternational news website of book publishing and bookselling including business news, reviews, bestseller lists, commentaries http://www.publishersweekly.com/'s bestsellers lists. In a rare occurrence, the Big Five publishers' hold over the adult hardcover and paperback bestsellers lists declined in 2020 compared to 2019, with independent publishers gaining ground.

From Michael Hansen's perspective, the textbook industry is having a Spotify moment.

The chief executive of Cengage, a leading publisher, brought up the music streaming service on an investor call last month, in reference to a question about the future of physical textbooks.  Read more

More than 250 authors, editors, agents, professors and others in the American literary community signed an open letter this week opposing any publisher that signs book deals with President Donald Trump or members of his administration.

At 8 p.m. on March 22, the capital of the American book publishing business all but shut down. Two days earlier, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York had announced stay-at-home orders that would temporarily shutter all in-person businesses throughout the state that were not deemed essential-bookstores, libraries, and publishers among them-in order to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.  Read more

A new interactive article from the New York Times examines just how white the publishing industry actually is. And despite the number of high-profile books from non-white authors in recent years, the demographic data is bleak: according to their data, 95 percent of published authors are white.