The acquisition of Simon & Schuster by Penguin Random House shows that the industry is headed toward a monopolistic singularity.
Links of the week November 23 2020 (48)
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:
30 November 2020
America's biggest, most powerful book publisher is about to get even bigger and more powerful. On Wednesday, a number of outlets reported that Penguin Random House had reached an agreement with ViacomCBS to purchase Simon & Schuster, the nation's third-largest publisher, for $2 billion. The resulting conglomerate would publish at least a third of all books sold in the United States, and transform Penguin Random House, already a superpower, into an industry-dominating behemoth, with potentially serious consequences for authors, publishing employees, and diversity of thought. That extraordinary level of concentration will dramatically lower competition in the publishing industry, likely leading to job cuts, lower advances for authors, and fewer non-blockbuster books being published by commercial publishers.
Following the announcement that Penguin Random House parent company Bertelsmann won the bidding war for Simon & Schuster with a $2.2 billion offer, members of the book business and related organizations have begun to weigh in.
In a statement on Wednesday, the Authors Guild laid out its opposition to the proposed deal. The sale "would mean that the combined publishing house would account for approximately 50% of all trade books published, creating a huge imbalance in the U.S. publishing industry," the Guild said. (Penguin Random House's global CEO, Markus Dohle, told PW that he believes PRH's publishing market share is about 14.2% and S&S's 4.2%, including self-publishing; others have estimated the combined companies' market share would amount to roughly one third of the U.S. book market.)
Among the Guild's concerns are a decrease in competition among publishing houses once the Big Five become the Big Four, which, the organization asserted in its statement, would mean that, for authors, "there would be fewer competing bidders for their manuscripts, which would inevitably drive down advances offered." In addition, "less competition would make it even more difficult for agents and authors to negotiate for better deals, or for the Authors Guild to help secure changes to standard publishing contracts -because authors, even best-selling ones, wouldn't have many options, making it harder to walk away," the statement read.
Small publishers, along with independent booksellers, have felt the brunt of the pandemic's impact on the book trade. Luckily, they've also led the way in demonstrating the enduring truth of Goethe's famous observation: "Fresh activity is the only means of overcoming adversity."
This was particularly in evidence at the recent Independent Publishers' Guild (IPG) Autumn Conference, where I gave a session in conversation with James Woollam (MD, David & Charles) about staying agile in the face of this year's many and varied challenges. The IPG's research revealed that more than 70% of independent publishers reported a decrease in print sales over the crisis, but over half saw an increase in digital sales and nearly all reported substantial changes - in many cases improvements - to working practices and to sales and marketing, changes that will benefit them long after a vaccine has returned us to something approaching normal.
U.S. book publishing's biggest trade show is being "retired," show organizer ReedPop announced today. BookExpo, along with BookCon and Unbound, will not be held in 2021 after being canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic.
ReedPop, the pop culture event-focused subdivision of Reed Exhibitions, said that, given the "continued uncertainty surrounding in-person events at this time," the company has decided "that the best way forward is to retire the current iteration of events as they explore new ways to meet the community's needs through a fusion of in-person and virtual events."
In order to try to hold the event earlier this year, Reed moved the date from its usual spot at New York City's Javits Center in late May to late July, but as the coronavirus continued to make larger meetings impossible, Reed cancelled the live conference and held six days of free virtual programming from May 26-31, the original dates of BookExpo and BookCon.
Event director Jenny Martin said that ReedPop is talking to publishers, booksellers, and other partners to investigate how to rebuild the events.
The late Andrea Levy, author of the award-winning Windrush novel Small Island, is to become the first writer of colour to have her pen join the Royal Society of LiteratureThis British site may seem rather formal (stated aim ‘to sustain and encourage all that is perceived as best whether traditional or experimental in English letters, and to strive for a Catholic appreciation of literature’), but has a lively series of lectures and discussions involving distinguished authors. Also administers literary prizes. http://www.rslit.org/index1.html's historic collection, which includes pens belonging to George Eliot and Lord Byron.
The eminent society, which was founded in 1820, periodically appoints new fellows deemed to have published works of "outstanding literary merit". Fellows are then invited to sign their names in the society's roll book, using the pen of a "historically influential" UK writer - either Charles Dickens (although his pen was retired in 2013), TS Eliot, Byron or George Eliot. Now, as the RSL sets out to champion the writers of colour with a series of new appointments and initiatives, it has added Levy to this list, alongside Wide Sargasso Sea author Jean Rhys.
"It's a statement of intent from the RSL to commit to diversity, and there's no way greater than to feel the very ink, the blood of your ancestors, of your legacy coming through as you write, if you're a writer of colour - but hopefully for anybody," said poet Daljit Nagra, who was also announced as the new chair of the RSL.
Much has changed in the fantasy genre in recent decades, but the word ‘fantasy' still conjures images of dragons, castles, sword-wielding heroes and premodern wildernesses brimming with magic. Major media phenomena such as Harry Potter and Game of Thrones have helped to make medievalist fantasy mainstream, and if you look in the kids' section of nearly any kind of store today you'll see sanitised versions of the magical Middle Ages packaged for youth of every age. How did fantasy set in pseudo-medieval, roughly British worlds achieve such a cultural status? Ironically, the modern form of this wildly popular genre, so often associated with escapism and childishness, took root in one of the most elite spaces in the academic world.
The heart of fantasy literature grows out of the fiction and scholarly legacy of two University of Oxford medievalists: J R R Tolkien and C S Lewis. It is well known that Tolkien and Lewis were friends and colleagues who belonged to a writing group called the Inklings where they shared drafts of their poetry and fiction at Oxford. There they workshopped what would become Tolkien's Middle-earth books, beginning with the children's novel The Hobbit (1937), and followed in the 1950s with The Lord of the Rings and Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia series, which was explicitly aimed at children. Tolkien's influence on fantasy is so important that in the 1990s the American scholar Brian Attebery defined the genre 'not by boundaries but by a centre'": Tolkien's Middle-earth.
Most of us write the first draft of our memoir chronologically, setting down what happened in order, or thematically, thinking of what happened and expanding from that time, place, or feeling. Both are terrific ways to generate a first draft.
But memoir is a rare country. Making the map of personal experience, writing the guide that says, This was five stars and everyone should do it. Don't waste your time on that, is not unlike rappelling. The more control you have, the less compelling it becomes. Or, a memoir as straight guidebook-detached, evaluative, arranged by area or chronology-is a dry thing.
Still, the writer must never lose the rope entirely. The ramblings of a diary are indecipherable, plotless, sans perspective. Only your little sister wants to break the lock and read that.
Structure is easier in a "quest" memoir. Climbing a mountain, beating cancer, and overcoming addiction tend to have turning-point decisions and physical setbacks that map easily.
In a "quiet" memoir, personal growth must be presented as dramatic action. You treat your permanent change as a dramatic goal you didn't know you were working toward. "I'm worth more than I thought I was" is a dark goal. The Character of You moves toward change blindly, but You the Writer knows when you got there. The author can see the pattern and invest moments with deeper meaning than they may have had at the time.
Stephen Aucutt, formerly contracts manager at Hodder & Stoughton, draws on his thirty years experience to provide a contracts checklist when agreeing terms with trade publishers.
Ensure that any and all terms and conditions agreed before issue of the contract have been included accurately. Pay particular attention to any terms or conditions which have the effect of altering what was agreed pre-contract, e.g. a royalty of 10% of retail price on hardcover trade sales agreed but, contract contains several provisions which provide for a different royalty to be paid under certain circumstances.
Make sure the parties to the contract are correct. Author name should be the legal name, not a pseudonym and if the author trades as a limited company, the limited company name should be the contracting party; there are potential tax issues if this is not correct. Publisher's name should be a registered company/corporation (not the name of an imprint) and if the name of the publisher is merely a trading name, e.g. Jane Book and Joe Editor trading as Bestselling Books, contract must be with Jane Book and Joe Editor, trading as Bestselling Books. Addresses of both parties should be stated and preferably the trading address of the publisher, not just a registered office address.
YOU KNOW HOW, when you roll into a small town for the first time, in search of a slice of pie and a decent cup of coffee, you inevitably uncover a byzantine and nefarious criminal conspiracy, perhaps concerning Russian spies and Nazis? And your sense of justice and your MMA-style fighting skills demand that you stick around long enough to expose the evildoers, protect the innocent, and kick a whole lot of ass?
OK, that probably hasn't happened to you more than once. But it happens to Jack Reacher all the time. Lee Child's ex-military drifter-hero is framed for murder in a small Georgia town in the first book of the best-selling series, 1997's Killing Floor, and he goes on to find trouble with a capital T in sleepy flyover hamlets across America-"tiny polite dots" on the map, as 2019's Blue Moon has it-in eleven of the subsequent novels, including The Sentinel(Delacorte Press, $29), the first to be cowritten with the author's brother, Andrew Child, who will take over the series after this installment.
In a history-making triumph for its Canadian author and publisher, A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path: Animal Metaphors in Eastern Indonesian Society has won the 42nd annual The Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year.
The result means a first-ever win of the august literary prize by a Canadian author-the University of Alberta anthropologist Gregory Forth-while McGill-Queen's University Press now becomes the only Canadian publisher to grab the crown.
A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path showed a remarkably clean pair of paws to the rest of the field, notching up 49% of the public vote - 26 percentage points clear of second-place finisher, Introducing the Medieval Ass. Horace Bent, The Bookseller legendary diarist and The Diagram Prize administrator, said: "There has been little to shout about in a difficult year, but A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path is something to cherish, as long as you stay a good metre or two away and, perhaps, wear some stout wellies. Congratulations to Gregory Forth and McGill-Queen' s University Press: I am sure the champagne - or I guess something else - will certainly be flowing as they celebrate A Dog Pissing's hard-earned victory."
The author John Banville has revealed he 'despises the woke movement' and likened it to a religious cult.
The Irish novelist, who won the Booker Prize in 2005, said he would not win the coveted award today because he is a 'white, straight man.'
Speaking at the Hay Festival Winter Weekend, the 74-year old was asked about his chances at winning the Booker Prize today - which was won this year by Douglas Stuart, who has dual British and American citizenship.
Stuart's debut novel, 'Shuggie Bain' is an autobiographical account of growing up as the gay son of an alcoholic mother in 1980s Scotland. Asked if he could win the Booker today, Banville said: 'I would not like to be starting out now, certainly. It's very difficult.
'I despise this 'woke' movement. Why were they asleep for so long? The same injustices were going on. It's become a religious cult.
23 November 2020
Though there were four debuts on the Booker shortlist, it's been more than a decade since a debut won. And with two magisterial novels from established writers in Maaza Mengiste's The Shadow King and Tsitsi Dangarembga's This Mournable Body on the list, first-timer Douglas Stuart's success may come as a surprise. But it will be an immensely popular one, for readers have already taken Shuggie Bain to heart: it was the bestselling novel on this year's shortlist, and the favourite to win.
Stuart's tale of a Glaswegian childhood in the 1980s, blighted by parental addiction and the deprivation of Thatchers Britain, is a bolt from the blue: extraordinarily immersive, heartbreaking but never mawkish, a clear-eyed story of love and resilience in the most difficult of circumstances.
Last week, Douglas Stuart's Shuggie Bain was announced this year's Booker Prize winner. It's no small feat for any writer, but what makes this win so spectacular is the fact that Shuggie Bain is a debut novel. (It's only the fifth debut novel to win in the Booker's 51-year-old history.) During his brief speech at the virtual award ceremony, Douglas Stuart thanked his editor for being the only one to take a chance on him in New York City.
Peter Blackstock, a senior editor at Grove Atlantic, is no stranger to the Booker Prize. He also acquired last year's winner, Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other. (Not to mention Viet Thanh Nguyen's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Sympathizer, Akwaeke Emezi's Freshwater, Sayaka Murata's Convenience Store Woman, and a slew of other amazing titles.) What's his secret? In the midst of his celebrations, Blackstock graciously took the time to answer a few questions for us.
Espionage has been called the second oldest profession, and with good reason. Sun Tzu's The Art of War, a famous textbook on waging an effective war, devoted a great deal of significance to espionage and the creation of a secret spy network. All warfare is deception, he stated, and "Be subtle! Be subtle!" he intoned, and "use your spies for every kind of business." It was published in 510 BC.
The craft of espionage has fascinated people ever since stories were told, whether orally, on the printed page as journalism or fiction, or on a screen. The secrecy, manipulation, deception, and potential danger combine to produce an aura of romance and adventure to the enterprise.
Atwood combines metafiction, sex, feminism, death, and the end of the world in her latest poetic masterpiece, Dearly
Poems accumulate in longhand, wherever I may happen to be, and sooner or later I type them up and work on them. These were written from 2007 to August 2019. Graeme [Atwood's partner], to whom the book is dedicated, died in September.
Former U.S. President Barack Obama just published his memoir two days ago, and already it's on track to become the bestselling presidential memoir of all time. But how does it compare to other memoirs and other books?
Obama's fourth book, A Promised Land, was released on Tuesday, when it set a first-day sales record of almost 890,000 copies, which includes audiobooks, e-books and pre-orders. That marked the biggest 24-hour sales period for any book published by Penguin Random House, which has also published the Fifty Shades of Grey series and John Grisham's books.
It's not just a great debut. It puts him well ahead of first-day sales of memoirs by his two predecessors, George W. Bush (220,000) and Bill Clinton (400,000). And Obama's the bestselling author in the house, though not by much-his wife, Michelle, sold 725,000 for the first day of her memoir, Becoming.
Penguin Random House purchasing Simon & Schuster is not the gravest danger to the publishing business. The deal is transpiring in a larger context-and that context is Amazon.
On paper, this merger is deplorable and should be blocked. As book publishing consolidates, the author tends to lose-and, therefore, so does the life of the mind. With diminished competition to sign writers, the size of advances is likely to shrink, making it harder for authors to justify the time required to produce a lengthy work. In becoming a leviathan, the business becomes ever more corporate. Publishing may lose its sense of higher purpose. The bean counters who rule over sprawling businesses will tend to treat books as just another commodity. Publishers will grow hesitant to take risks on new authors and new ideas. Like the movie industry, they will prefer sequels and established stars. What's worse, a giant corporation starts to worry about the prospect of regulators messing with its well-being, a condition that tends to induce political caution in deciding which writers to publish.
Three days before I sat down to write this blog post, I finished reading Drama High by Michael Sokolove. I clutched the book to my heart, and thought, no one will ever see books like this again.
Then I mentally slapped myself. I had slipped into traditional writer think.
Drama High was published by Riverhead Books in 2014. Riverhead was once a literary imprint of Penguin Publishing, and got subsumed into the whole Penguin Random House merger. Imprints lose their identity in mergers like this, and Riverhead is no exception. I doubt the imprint would have published a book like this in 2019.
And it looks like some people in traditional publishing are finally beginning to understand that the changes they've been living through these past 20 years are permanent. The way Things Are Being Done has to change.
The article I mentioned above, by Mike Shatzkin, is startling for a couple of reasons. First, he's late to the party, but he has arrived. (And he's arrived with a business that will profit off clueless writers. There are ways to get the same services he provides for a lot less money. Just a warning, before you click on over.)
His point, that trade publishing is an outdated business model, is one I've been making for a decade now. Most indies understand this very, very well.
Covid-19 has greatly affected the publishing industry across all divisions and markets, and the marketing and publicity divisions of trade publishers have required particularly swift and frequent changes to their ways of doing business. In the opening panel of PubTech Connect 2020, which was copresented by PW and NYU School of Professional Studies Center for Publishing and was held virtually this year through Zoom on November 17, the topic of the hour was new marketing strategies.
The panel focused on how to capture consumer interest in a marketplace that has shifted to digital sales, the benefits of virtual events, the importance of fleshing out direct-to-consumer marketing, and how libraries are adapting to an emphasis on digital resources.
The word of the day was "nimble," and Fassler opened the discussion with an emphasis on adaptation in the marketplace. "We've learned a lot this year during a time of distraction and disruption," she said. "I think one of the biggest challenges has been how to conduct effective outreach when we're hampered by the way we used to do things, like galley mailings. I used to do a lot of creative partnership work at conferences, pitching our books and explaining how our products are aligned. It's been necessary to be creative even earlier."
Anand Limaye of Indian Printing Works in Mumbai is a book printer and publisher. Every year during the festival season, he is "super-duper busy" with Diwali Anks, the bumper-size magazines published in Marathi during Diwali, featuring literary writings and ads in equal measure. "This year, instead of 19 Diwali Anks, we have printed 11," Limaye said.
This is not too bad for Limaye's press, which has been operating a single shift in its Wadala and Bhiwandi factories since March. For Limaye and many others like him, the factories are running again post-lockdown. Printing equipment is the life-blood of any printing factory. These machines are expensive and need regular running and maintenance. That they were unable to do this during the lockdown was the biggest problem faced by printers when things came to a standstill.
Poets House, the poetry library in lower Manhattan founded in 1986, has suspended operations indefinitely, effective immediately, due to budgetary issues caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The library hopes to reopen late in 2021, provided that the pandemic "is under control" and that the organization "has reconfigured its operations," according to a press release.
"This is an unprecedented moment in Poets House history and, indeed, the world," Robert Kissane, chairman of the Poets House board, said in a statement. "The board took these measures in order to withstand what we all are facing and ensure that the organization and its collections survive."
Following the announcement that Poets House would suspend operations, a group of anonymous former employees released a counterstatement. The release argues that the organization's "unexpected closure follows months of staff-led organizing to hold management and the board accountable in light of frequent complaints of workplace discrimination, sexual harassment, and exploitative labor practices." In addition, the anonymous employees assert their belief that the closure and layoffs were "a direct, retaliatory response to our efforts to form a union at Poets House with UAW Local 2110 and to address discriminatory and exploitative practices at the institution."