In the publishing industry, adult non-fiction revenues are soaring above fiction revenues and have been widening the gap for the past five years. Adult non-fiction revenue totalled $6.18 billion across the publishing industry in 2017, while adult fiction revenues reached $4.3 billion, according to Penguin Random House, using data from Association of American PublishersThe national trade association of the American book publishing industry; AAP has more than 300 members, including most of the major commercial publishers in the United States, as well as smaller and non-profit publishers, university presses and scholarly societies (AAP), the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, and Bookscan.
Links of the week August 27 2018 (35)
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:
3 September 2018
One caveat should accompany these numbers before we start reporting the death of adult fiction, however: The numbers only account for traditionally published books, and any fiction or non-fiction from the not-insignificant indie self-publishing community is not included. As publishing expert Jane Friedman noted in a Twitter comment about the findings, "The market for fiction may not be shrinking overall, but it may be shrinking for traditional publishers if indie authors' cheaper titles look more attractive to avid fiction readers."
Book relaunches can take a variety of forms. If done right, they enhance your overall brand, as well as your book sales. Their first and foremost benefit is the new publication date. Having a new book opens up access to bloggers and media who might not have been available to you with an older book. Unless you've already been getting some interest in the book, books six months or older are harder to work with. You need to have a new book, or newer book, to capture more blogger and media attention.
Last year I met an author at a writers' conference who published a science fiction book about five years ago. The book was long, 400 pages, and he said nothing really happened with it. He told me, "If I had known then what I know now, my book could have done so much better." And I said, "Why not re-release it?"If your book needs another round of edits, your reviewers will likely tell you if it does! Editing may also involve adding content, changing some of the content to suit industry changes, or even updating pop culture references.
Whether you are writing fiction or nonfiction, these books can give you the equipment, the insights, and the courage you need to make your book the best it can be.
When it comes to writing well some things never change-at least not all that much. Take the revised edition of The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White for example. In 1918, Strunk, a Cornell University English Professor, wrote a 43-page style guide and called it The Elements of Style. He published it himself, for use in his classroom. His main point, "Make every word tell," or as he put it in his 13th elementary principle of composition-"Omit needless words." Fast forward to 1957, when one of his students, White, decided to do an article on Strunk and his passion for lucid prose in The New Yorker. White called Strunk's little book "a 43 page summation of the case for cleanliness, accuracy, and brevity in the use of English."
Audible UK grew its revenue by 45% last year to over £97m and posted its first operating profit to date of almost £2m. Meanwhile, market analyst Enders has predicted that "the market will continue its period of strong growth", with sale comfortably above £100m already, though it warned that there were "early signs of over-hype".
The growth of the audio market, which now represents 5% of the total trade market for books in the UK according to Nielsen, is "in no small part thanks to Audible", Enders' analysis said, because the company has opened up the market to people who don't usually buy books, such as young men.
However, it also dubbed Audible a "frenemy" for simultaneously "breathing new life" into the market and "putting publishers under pressure". It described its approach to bidding for audio rights and its investment in high-end productions as "aggressive", making it a player "more directly threatening to publishers in audio than Amazon publishing is in written books".
Plagiarism is always aspirational. In a wish to have someone else take their place, or supply their words, plagiarists generally steal something better than they might write themselves. In this way, though it may seem an anxiety about status or a nervousness about originality, plagiarism paradoxically displays privilege-the belief that I could've thought of it if I'd had enough time or desire.
Why, when they steal, do plagiarists take from popular material? Why not stick to the obscure? Or is it that we only catch those plagiarists who become popular themselves? Most plagiarism cases, as with other hoaxes, include what amount to clues planted almost expressly to be found.
After a "frantic" few days at the Beijing International Book Fair (BIBF) last week, UK publishers have reported a successful fair with their Chinese counterparts hungry for content, but also increasingly on the lookout for audio and film and TV rights.
The 25th edition of the BIBF (22nd to 26th August) was a record year with organisers saying the event had around 300,000 visitors-150,000 of those were publishing professionals, an increase of 30% on 2017.
Caroline Clarke, senior rights executive at Canongate, praised the "busy" nature of the fair and said there was a great deal of interest in titles from UK publishers.
Clarke said: "I had many requests for books which were inspiring and empowering, both in terms of non-fiction and fiction, as well as award-winning literary writers. There was also a big demand for audio rights as well as TV and film rights specifically for a Chinese adaptation."
Veteran literary agent Michael Sissons was born to make paint. The Hull-based family firm Sissons Brothers & Co had been doing just that since the 18th century, at one point making "Hall's Distemper" once regarded as the best paint in the British Empire. The Second World War ended all that. His father, grandfather and cousin were killed in the conflict and the paint factory was destroyed during the blitz of Hull.
Instead of paint, Sissons fell "by accident" into ink in 1959 under the wing of the then formidable literary agent Augustus Dudley Peters, whose own son was killed in the last week of the war. In 1973 Sissons inherited the agency A D Peters & Co from its founder. "I knew from day one that it suited me down to the ground," he says. "I have never looked at the notion of another job since that day. I have never wished to do anything else, and I can still scarcely believe my luck."
It is scarcely possible now to imagine the world Sissons entered 50 years earlier. "Publishing regarded itself as an occupation for gentlemen," usually of the titled variety, whereas agents were "universally regarded by publishers as very bad news," he says. Sissons helped set up the Association of Authors' AgentsThe association of UK agents. Their website (http://www.agentsassoc.co.uk/index.html) gives a Directory of Members and a code of practice, but no information about the agencies other than their names. The association refers visitors to the UK agent listings from The Writers' & Artists' Yearbook on the WritersServices site. in the 1970s, partly to help define what agents should be and how they should be regarded within the business. In contrast to publishers, he says: "I don't think we had a very clear view of what we were. We were definitely on the periphery of publishing activity and that irked me very much."
27 August 2018
Probably, the best advice I've ever come across from a writer on writing is Elmore Leonard's suggestion, "If it sounds like writing, rewrite it." Second best is Mark Twain's illustration of how to show, don't tell, followed by Margaret Atwood's close third, "Do back exercises. Pain is distracting."
For Hemingway, the secret to effective writing was to forget about the flowery prose of the literati and keep your writing simple, short, and clear. When he went to work for the Kansas City Star in 1917, he was given four rules for effective writing, and he stuck with them his whole life.
The media and entertainment industry has a long history of embracing disruptive innovations, from the printing press to the personal computer. But the rapid shift from physical to digital over the past decade or so has been truly revolutionary. In general, physical media has suffered a great deal. Printed newspapers and magazines have migrated to online versions, while DVDs and CDs have been supplanted by film- and music-streaming services.
But the oldest form of physical media is actually holding up quite well. According to PwC's Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2018-2022, the consumer market for physical, printed books is holding its own in an increasingly digital world (see "Print Presses On"). Between 2018 and 2022, sales of physical video games, home video, and music are expected to decline each year, in some instances by double-digit percentages. By contrast, sales of physical books are expected to grow modestly, by about 1 percent annually, every year. By 2022, PwC expects consumers around the world will spend US$50.3 billion on books in physical or audio (i.e., non-electronic) form, compared with $47.8 billion in 2017.
Are you curious about all of the changes going on at CreateSpace and seeing new offerings being announced at Kindle Direct Publishing? I have been, too.
I will admit that I have not paid as much attention to KDP Print as I should have. I have been happy with CreateSpace for my Amazon printing and distribution and just did not have the bandwidth to turn my attention to yet ANOTHER platform for my paperbacks. Knowing that CreateSpace could get my paperback on Amazon while IngramSpark/Lightning Source was handling the wholesalers/bookstores/libraries, I thought I had all my bases covered.
What Happened
Well, a few months ago, CreateSpace announced that it was discontinuing all author publishing services. Authors and publishers would no longer be able to use CreateSpace for editorial, lay out, design, or cover work. The staff in those departments was let go. This all happened SO quickly and the hue and cry from the self-publishing community was enormous. Yet, CreateSpace and Amazon moved ahead knowing that the profit margins on working with authors and micro-publishers on editorial and design elements were not in line with Amazon's business model or goals. Authors and micro-publishers are not big enough to keep a design and editorial division at CreateSpace viable. To stay profitable, a company would have to charge a LOT more than CreateSpace was charging.
Laini Taylor is the author of the Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy, as well as the National Book Award Finalist Lips Touch: Three Times and others. Take notes, because Taylor's sharing her writing tips.
I've wanted to be a writer since I was a small child, but I was 35 before I finished my first novel, because I have issues with perfectionism. It took me a long time to learn to finish what I start, and I've developed a lot of tools and tricks for keeping myself moving forward through a story when a big slice of my brain wants nothing so much as to stop and rewrite everything I've already written. It can be exhausting, but the upside is that I love to revise. The main thing I've learned is that we all have to learn to work with-and appreciate-the brain we've been given, and not waste time wishing things were easier
Dear Polly,
Recently, after years of being afraid to confront this reality, I accepted that I want to be a writer. Specifically, a YA novelist. I work full-time as a designer, but I've been diligently working on my manuscript every night for at least three months now, and am about 25 to 30 percent done.
Dear HSISMT?,
Believing that publishing a book will fix your life is a little bit like believing that success or love or a trip around the world will save you. It's the kind of escape fantasy that's entirely intellectual and theoretical, so it's difficult to test. Just as you won't know if you like skydiving until someone pushes you out of an airplane, you won't find out if publishing a book will bring you satisfaction until you're standing in front of your mom and two of her friends at a bookstore, reading your own words in a wavering voice.
Stephen King isn't the only author who's becoming more and more prevalent on the big and small screens. It was just announced that Ursula K. Le Guin's sci-fi novelette Nine Lives is getting a movie adaptation, adding to the growing pile of Le Guin works that are reportedly in the works.
The accomplished author sadly passed away in January, but her written works are living on-not only in the long-awaited documentary Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin, but also in several planned adaptations of her classic novels and shorter stories. Most of them aren't exactly in active production right now because these things take time, but let's hope for some updates soon. Here's a list of every TV and movie adaptation that might in store for Le Guin fans, as well as sci-fi and fantasy aficionados everywhere.
Recently, I've received a lot of questions from poets who would like to blog books of poetry. Since publishing books of poetry traditionally can prove very difficult (Sorry, if that news is a shock to you.), I think blogging a poetry book to build a large enough fan base for your work via a blog is actually quite a phenomenal idea. You also can self-publish it.
How would you go about doing this. Oh, so simply, really. Here are the steps:
- Write a poem.
- Post it on your blog.
- Tell everyone you know you did so (via social networks).
Pretty, simple, huh?