According to 2017 estimates released this summer by the 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, sales of adult fiction fell 16% between 2013 and 2017, from $5.21 billion to $4.38 billion. The numbers, though not a major worry, raise questions about the books the industry is publishing and what consumers want to read.
Links of the week October 22 2018 (43)
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:
29 October 2018
The most commonly shared view is that it has become extremely difficult to generate exposure for novels. Fiction, more than nonfiction, depends on readers discovering new books by browsing. Now, with the number of physical stores down from five years ago (despite a rise in ABA membership), publishers cannot rely on bricks-and-mortar stores providing customers with access to new books.
Nor can publishers depend on media outlets to make up for the gap left by the shrinking footprint of physical bookstores. Review space in mainstream media has been slashed, cutting off another possibility for readers to learn about new fiction.
The groundbreaking comics author has bequeathed his fantasy universe to a new generation of writers, who reveal their changes to his unconscious world
When Neil Gaiman announced in March that he would be returning to the world of Sandman, the comic that made his name back in the 1980s, fans were delighted.But the writers he chose to develop four new strands to the story of Morpheus - Simon Spurrier, Nalo Hopkinson, Dan Watters and Kat Howard - admit they were a little apprehensive.
"We all went into the project with an understandable amount of trepidation to colour the enthusiasm," says Spurrier, who has joined forces with the artist Bilquis Evely on The Dreaming, "imagining ourselves politely borrowing Neil's toys, respectfully spending a little time mucking about in his proverbial sandpit, but ultimately returning everything unmarked and unchanged."
Leslye Penelope says she found refuge in writing as a child: "Writing was always my way to make sense of the world. I was an extremely shy child, but I had this creative outlet where I could really run wild." The Maryland-based author's earliest influences included the classic work of Frances Hodgson Burnett and Jane Austen. She credits authors such as Octavia Butler, Virginia Hamilton, and Gloria Naylor with teaching her "about magical realism and infusing a sense of magic into a story."
"I received an email from an editor at St. Martin's Press, Monique Patterson," Penelope says. "She'd found my book online, and the cover and description had intrigued her enough to give it a read."
Initially, Patterson was interested in Penelope's future work. "I pitched her another series I had in mind, but she came back and told me that she was really interested in bringing Song of Blood & Stone to a wider audience," Penelope says. "It was an opportunity I couldn't turn down, and I'll be forever grateful to her for seeing something in my work that she thought more people might like."
You've got a great book idea, or maybe a completed manuscript, and are ready to get someone to represent it. Here are the steps to take that will ensure you have the best chance of catching the right agent's eye.
1. Prepare
Before you even begin to contact agents, you have to finish the book (or for most nonfiction book, the proposal and several sample chapters). Preparing a proposal is an entire article in itself, but the main point is to be sure you have the complete work on-hand so you can send to an agent the moment he or she expresses interest.
As one of the editors of the The Hot Sheet, produced in collaboration with journalist Porter Anderson, I regularly read and report on marketing trends that affect traditionally published and self-published writers. Today I'm sharing the most useful articles we've found and mentioned in our newsletter in 2018.
Social media marketing
How to avoid exhausting your social media followers. Publishing industry vet Amy Collins describes how you can drive away even loyal readers by talking too much about your own books - and she offers alternative strategies. Read at the Book Designer.
Walking the halls of the Frankfurt Book FairWorld's largest trade fair for books; held annually mid-October at Frankfurt Trade Fair, Germany; First three days exclusively for trade visitors; general public can attend last two. is always a mixed experience. The sheer size of the industry is daunting, as is the unbridled optimism of so many publishers that their stands will attract the business they need to survive. It's also a tad depressing to realize that most of the books on display will probably prove to be unprofitable.
On the other hand, the sheer abundance of creativity can lift the spirits. And of course the parties and the friendships make Frankfurt (even after 45 visits) unmissable.
This raises the question of how we measure financial success in publishing. Given all the problems, how is it that publishers rarely go broke? Even if they're losing money, invariably someone steps in to buy them. Of course the purchaser may be mad, but the big publishing acquirers are themselves still in business and by all accounts performing well.
So what is the trick and how do we measure commercial success? There seem to me to be five measures, all important but all with shortcomings.
Is translation a discipline or a cause? A catalogue sent to me by a small American publisher begins by naming all the translators of the foreign titles the company is offering, inviting the reader to thank and celebrate the people who have made the English versions of these books possible.
I go to a university seminar on translation whose program is headed with a quotation from Paul Auster: "Translators are the shadow heroes of literature, the often forgotten instruments... who have enabled us to understand that we all, from every part of the world, live in one world."
Meanwhile, someone directs me to a translators' online forum where a certain Tim Gutteridge, a British translator based in Spain, has suggested that criticizing a translation for plain errors is hardly a crime-language competence lies at the core of translation, does it not?-and is being scolded by colleagues who feel this is "unethical"; translators need support, not criticism. Reading the thread, it rather seems that they are policing him, and not vice versa. In any event, the issue is so keenly felt in the translation community these days that the editors of In Other Words, the twice-yearly publication of the British Centre for Literary Translation, have decided to dedicate a major article to the ethics of criticizing translations in their forthcoming January edition.
An academic treatise on dung, a how-to guide of acupuncture for horses and the first-ever German language entry are among the six books in the running for the 40th edition of The Bookseller's Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year.
The prize, founded by Trevor Bounford and the late Bruce Robinson of publishing solutions firm the Diagram Group, is the annual celebration of the book world's strangest and most perplexing titles. The Bookseller and its legendary diarist Horace Bent have been custodians of the prize since 1982.
The six books up for what Bent has called "the most prestigious literary gong Britain - nay the world - has ever known" are: Are Gay Men More Accurate in Detecting Deceits? (Open Dissertation Press); Call of Nature: The Secret Life of Dung (Pelagic Publishing); Equine Dry Needling (tredition); Jesus on Gardening (Onwards and Upwards); Joy of Waterboiling (Achse Verlag) and Why Sell Tacos in Africa? (Blue Ocean Marketing).
Tom Tivnan, The Bookseller managing editor and Diagram co-ordinator said that "2018 was a banner year for bat-guano crazy titles". He added: "It cheers me that 40 years on from when we started, the Diagram is more relevant than ever. Indeed, since we focus on what can be argued as the shallowest measure-a book's title-it is perfect for the superficial, Instagrammed times we live in."
22 October 2018
Writers work successfully in so many different ways, I never assume that what works for me is best for someone else. But if a common denominator exists among us, it might be attitude: the enterprise of writing a book has to feel like walking into a cathedral. It demands humility. The body of all written words already in print is vaulted and vast. You think you have something new to add to that? If so, it can only come from a position of respect: for the form, the process, and eventually for a reader's valuable attention.
To begin, give yourself permission to write a bad book. Writer's block is another name for writer's dread-the paralyzing fear that our work won't measure up. It doesn't matter how many books I've published, starting the next one always feels as daunting as the first. A day comes when I just have to make a deal with myself: write something anyway, even if it's awful. Nobody has to know. Maybe it never leaves this room! Just go. Bang out a draft.
We've all heard the good news. Self-publishing is going through the roof. In fact, self-publishing was up 59 percent in 2012. Up from what you might ask? According to a new study from Bowker, the ISBN agency, 246,921 titles were self-published in 2011 compared with the 391,768 titles published in 2012. And, if you go back to 2007 for a comparison, you will see a whopping 422 percent increase in the number of independently published books.
But what does this mean for you? It means that providing services for self-publishers has become big business, and, as with any new, unregulated industry, it can attract a lot of snake oil salesmen, frauds, and scammers. It is important for the client, that's you, to do a thorough check on any company that appeals to you before signing on or sending them a nickel.
Before becoming a writer in my 70s, I had several overlapping careers. I have been a journalist, lawyer, government regulator, stock exchange officer, international economic consultant, expert witness, and, most recently, law professor.
These publications were targeted at lawyers, academics, and financial people. When I reached my 70s, I decided it was time to break loose and write another kind of book, which would appeal to a broader readership. It was something close to my heart that I had been thinking about for many years.
Escape: a Jewish Scandinavian Family in the Second World War is the story of the escape of my mother's family from the Holocaust, against the historical background of how the Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes reacted to the Nazis' onslaught against the Jews. For me, doing the research and then setting it down as a comprehensible narrative was an exhilarating challenge. Getting it published was a different matter. After several rejections, I decided to self-publish. Luckily, I found a marvelous editor, who not only edited but helped me with every aspect of producing the book.
Despite being described by the chair of the Man Booker prize judges as "challenging", Anna Burns's story of sexual intimidation during the Troubles, Milkman, has proved a hit with readers, its sales soaring in the first days after winning the prize.
Already the second bestselling title on the shortlist before the prize was announced last Tuesday, Milkman racked up sales of 9,466 copies in the four days to Saturday, according to book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan, and now sits in ninth place in The Bookseller's Top 50, ahead of titles by Ian Rankin, Tina Turner and Joanna Trollope. The previous week, it had sold 963 copies, with around 5,000 copies sold altogether. Her publisher, Faber, has reprinted 120,000 copies since to meet demand, bringing the total number of copies of Milkman in print to 180,000.
Burns, who claimed benefits after finishing Milkman, thanks a Sussex housing charity and a food bank as well as the Department for Work and Pensions in the acknowledgments to Milkman. She ends with thanks to friends and strangers for the "many gifts and much assistance" she has received over the years. "I look forward to throwing one hell of a party one day to say thanks to them all, but not yet, as they would have to pay for it."
It is less than six months until the UK's official withdrawal from the EU at 11pm on 29 March 2019, yet the terms of the withdrawal agreement and the key principles of future relations are not agreed. While both parties are aiming to make significant progress at the EU summit this month, it is possible that an agreement will not be reached until November or December, or at all. Given the current state of flux, the legal implications of Brexit for both the UK and the international publishing industry are far from certain. Here, we offer some potential outcomes.
Copyright framework Brexit is likely to have a limited impact upon the copyright framework, as much copyright harmonisation is derived from international treaties (such as the Berne Convention and the WTO TRIPS - Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights - Agreement), which will be unaffected by Brexit. However, there are a number of existing EU copyright directives which provide important cross-border copyright mechanisms and exceptions. The UK government currently intends to take a "snapshot" of all EU law directly operative on 29 March 2019 for incorporation into UK law, which would capture these existing directives.
Most indie authors are at least somewhat familiar with Twitter. Ever since its launch in 2006, authors and readers have flocked to the site, finding its emphasis on brevity and hashtagging features conducive to engaging fans and sparking discussions about books with people all over the world.
But, aside from providing a prominent venue for book talk, Twitter, which boasts 317 million active monthly users, offers another benefit to indie authors: advertising. The social media network's easy-to-use and relatively inexpensive advertising platform can be a useful resource for self-published authors who want to spread the word about their books and expand their fan-bases.
Last year a rural village called Mphako in Malawi received books for the very first time from Book Aid InternationalSupplies much-needed books to developing countries, raising funds from publishers and general public; 'Reverse Book Club' is masterly idea-for just £5 ($10) month you can provide 48 books to go to where they're most needed. Representatives of the Book Aid team were there to join in the celebrations, and see the joy that every book sent by the charity brings.
Mphako is one of many places around the world where books are truly rare. Poverty is the norm, and schools are hugely over-crowded and under-resourced. I visited alongside representatives of the Gumbi Education Fund, a UK NGO which focuses on improving the lives of children through access to education and works in the region, to celebrate the opening of a new community library built by the fund. We provided a collection of brand new, carefully selected books for the library, including many children's books.
When we arrived, the new library was not difficult to spot, as it was surrounded by a crowd of children. As soon as the doors opened, the children's enthusiasm was irrepressible. They were entranced by the books - gathering together around the pages to look at pictures, talking excitedly to each other. A boy who was utterly transfixed by images of helicopters told me: "I have never seen so many colours. I have never seen pictures like these."
I stumbled upon my literary fairy godmother, Lynne Tillman, in college. During our first meeting I took a deep breath, puffed out my chest and said, "I want to be a writer."
Lynne, in the first gesture of what would become a many years long mentorship asked me, "Who have you read? And what are you reading?" I don't remember what books I offered up to her, but I do remember knowing that I hadn't read enough.
Lynne soon introduced me to masters of the craft of story that would blow my head up. Paley, Baldwin, Saunders, and on and on.
I had already been a voracious reader, but I had never read with direction or purpose the way I did after that first meeting. Part of the deal was that, in each meeting, I had to report to Lynne all of my noticings on the stories I'd read since we'd last spoken. This forced me to read closely, to flood the margins with my annotations. Now, my own debut collection is set to drop in October, and reading great fiction is the first and most important thing I tell my students about writing. Read well and widely. Read what you love. It is the core of your craft. Read and get lost; read and parse the sentences apart like a surgeon. Obsess, let go. Sink into and rise out of the words that make you feel. Everybody says this because it's true.