Ursula Mackenzie, President of the UK Publishers Association, outlined a strategy for stronger alliances between publishers and booksellers in a speech to the Booksellers' Association conference last week, reported on in Bookbrunch.
Links of the week September 24 2012 (39)
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:
1 October 2012
Predicting the future has always been a dangerous game, but I am willing to put my marker down for a hybrid world, with a mixed economy of physical and digital reading. Some recent statistics from the US are interesting - a year ago 70% of ebook consumers said they read exclusively in the digital format, while one year later that number has dropped by 10% to 60%. And ebook growth is slowing dramatically - in September 2011, growth was still 101% year on year, but by April 2012 it was only 37%. Even 50 Shades - originally a self-published ebook as we all know - has split equally between print and ebooks in the US.
With writers increasingly tempted to do everything for themselves, Tim Bates of Pollinger Ltd tells us why a literary agent is still a good thing to have.
In an unusual sign of publishers getting increasingly tough with authors who don't deliver, New York publisher Penguin filed lawsuits this week against several prominent writers who failed to deliver books for which they received hefty contractual advances.
A New York publisher this week filed lawsuits against several prominent writers who failed to deliver books for which they received hefty contractual advances, records show
In the days leading up to Curtis BrownSee Curtis Brown listing's Discovery Day at Foyles, Charing Cross Road, on Saturday (22 September), people kept asking me: why are you doing this? They said it so many times that it started to make me nervous...
In the days leading up to Curtis BrownSee Curtis Brown listing's Discovery Day at Foyles, Charing Cross Road, on Saturday (22 September), people kept asking me: why are you doing this? They said it so many times that it started to make me nervous...
30 September 2012
Richard Curtis says: 'Few subjects have elicited as much wild conjecture as the prices of e-books. Reading rabid allegations of price-gouging, one has to wonder what these critics know about manufacturing costs that we in the e-book industry don't.'
In a post last spring Jeremy Greenfield wrote: 'Publishers are making a killing on e-books because they cost nothing to produce, distribute and sell and are almost 100% pure profit. At least, that's what many consumers think.'
24 September 2012
Take two industries trying to adapt to the digital era, music and publishing. One is packed with bright young ruthlessly ambitious people who have to be aware of the latest trends - the other is, well, publishing. So which is coping better? Publishing, believe it or not.
Nick Harkaway in Forbes on the ebook price war between Amazon and Sony and why this isn't the real problem, which is that publishers have ceded the most valuable ground to the retailers. They now need to strike up direct relationships with book buyers.
Bookstores of all stripes do promotions and giveaways all the time, and frequently publishers are fighting to be a part of those promotions. And whilst tight-fisted readers can already find more books than they can read in their entire lifetime, your average reader recognises a deal when they see one, knows that deals don't last, and knows that once the deal is over that prices are going to go back up. This is not a new concept, it's one that we see every day in every corner of the high street. The idea that this is going to result in the death of the indie bookshop seems like a nice slippery slope fallacy which reads well but makes no real sense.