More than half of respondents to The Bookseller's survey on advances and royalties revealed problems, with some describing decade-long delays due to "financial terrorism", and some reporting a reliance on loans, hardship grants, and foodbanks.
Links of the week September 2 2024 (36)
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:
9 September 2024
One author, with 15 years' experience, revealed the "delays now are the worst I've ever known" while another described chasing £30,000. Overall many expressed frustration with the lack of transparency and accountability from publishers and literary agencies.
Across 262 respondents, 52% (137 people) reported issues with receiving advances or royalties with the average delay of over a year though many reported several years delay or even stretching back decades.
Of those who had experienced issues with payment, around 18% (48 people) experienced problems with both advances and royalties, 17% (45) only with advances with around the same number (44) experiencing problems only with royalties. 48% reported no problems at all and there were some notable examples of good practice.
An author shares the emotional impact of late royalty payments.
I've taken my publisher to Small Claims Court. It seems drastic, but increasingly, the only means left to pursue the royalties that were due to me. When I signed my contract eight years ago, excited that my debut novel was finally going to become a book, I had no idea that this could happen: that legal documents can be ignored, that publishers who wax enthusiastic about your writing can also offer such blatant disregard to paying royalties on time.
And yet, eight years on, I feel naïve for even thinking that publishers can be trusted.
This doesn't, of course, apply to all publishers. But your first published book, the one you have poured your heart and soul into, is a momentous one for any writer, and your experience of it leaves a lasting impact on your future outlook as an author.
In my case, the second half of my (low, four-figure) advance for my debut was paid six months late, after significant chasing. None of my royalties have ever been paid on time. And I have in my inbox a single email chain running for 18 months, wherein the managing director of my publishing house promises to pay my royalties "next week" and then conveniently forgets, until he's reminded again.
After rising costs and sluggish sales cut into profits at HarperCollins, Lagardère Publishing, and Penguin Random House in the first half of 2023, operating margins have bounced back for all three in the first six months of 2024. Lagardère and HarperCollins in particular had marked improvements, with profits soaring on modest sales increases.
Notably, all three publishers have engaged in extensive restructuring efforts that have included job cuts, though those efforts now seem to be largely completed. At HarperCollins, sales were up 6% and profits jumped 54% in the first half of 2024, after what CEO Brian Murray called a "transformative" 12-month period. In an interview last month, Murray told PW the reorganization at HC was in response to a changed postpandemic marketplace.
Lagardère Publishing, home to Hachette Livre, created what it called "a new English-language management structure" at the end of 2023, which in essence formed one management team to oversee both Hachette Book Group and Hachette UK under David Shelley. In addition to reducing executive salaries, the reorganization involved major changes to Little, Brown and the HBG sales team and also included the further integration of Work-
man Publishing-a process that had been delayed per an agreement to retain Workman staff for a three-year period following HBG's acquisition of the publisher in 2021.So far, the changes appear to be effective. HBG reported a 5% growth in sales, with profits skyrocketing 74% in the first half of 2024.
In a swift decision, a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals has unanimously affirmed a March 2023 lower court decision finding the Internet Archive's program to scan and lend print library books is copyright infringement. In an emphatic 64-page decision, released on September 4, the court rejected the Internet Archive's fair use defense, as well as the novel protocol known as "controlled digital lending" on which the Archive's scanning and lending is based.
"This appeal presents the following question: Is it ‘fair use' for a nonprofit organization to scan copyright-protected print books in their entirety, and distribute those digital copies online, in full, for free, subject to a one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio between its print copies and the digital copies it makes available at any given time, all without authorization from the copyright-holding publishers or authors? Applying the relevant provisions of the Copyright Act as well as binding Supreme Court and Second Circuit precedent, we conclude the answer is no," the decision states.
Black Crow Books, the new horror-dedicated publisher launching next year, is reportedly off to a strong start as its co-directors say they have already received an "insane" number of submissions, despite announcing the new press only last month.
Jamie-Lee Nardone, publisher and co-director, will helm the new independent alongside Matt Holland, founder of special-edition publisher and online bookshop The Broken Binding. "I don't think we could do it without each other," Nardone told The Bookseller.
Last year, the horror genre recorded its biggest year since accurate records began, with a 54% year-on-year increase in value reported by Nielsen BookScan. Submissions in the genre have also been on the rise. Black Crow Books is a response to the "booming" genre and Nardone's desire to "open" the genre "up to everyone". She continued: "I think there is a need [in the industry] for people who really understand the genre, to know what they're looking at."
Nardone, who has "always been a massive horror fan", is looking to publish titles "that might get overlooked or explore something that isn't trendy". She added: "We're not going to be ticking boxes." Unlike some larger publishers, she said, the smaller independent will have the agility, "the freedom and the expertise to work on passion projects that might get overlooked by bigger publishers".
TikTok meets Tolkien: how the Folio Society attracted gen Z readers
Founded in 1947, the Folio Society was once a membership club known for publishing classic tomes and history books, with a customer base of predominantly %u201Cold white men%u201D, according to its boss. Now, however, more than half the people who buy its books are aged between 25 and 44, and it is selling more sci-fi and fantasy titles, boosted by BookTok and growing gen Z interest in %u201Cartisanal%u201D editions. The publisher, which produces illustrated editions with elaborate covers, has seen sales soar 55% since 2017-18. Joanna Reynolds, chief executive since 2016, said: %u201CWe%u2019ve completely changed the sort of books that we sell. We developed fantasy, sci-fi and more children%u2019s. Particularly the fantasy and sci-fi have made a massive difference to us. Game of Thrones was literally a gamechanger %u2026 It made so much money for us.%u201D
From the world's first pots to Cool Japan
When I was asked to write The Shortest History of Japan, it seemed the perfect opportunity to pull together all my love and knowledge of the country. It's more than 45 years since I first went to Japan, and I've been immersing myself in Japanese culture ever since. Noh and Kabuki, Japanese literature, Japanese art - all have a glorious and subtle flavour of their own.
Every book I've written touches on Japanese history. My first book, On the Narrow Road to the Deep North, told the story of my journey in the footsteps of the haiku poet Basho, who travelled Japan in the 17th century, and of Yoshitsune, whose path Basho was following. The Brothers was a saga covering the last hundred years of Japanese history. Geisha gave me a different perspective. Then came four novels, all set in the middle of the 19th century.
With The Shortest History, the first question was where to begin - with the mythical creation of Japan, with the Palaeolithic J%u014Dmon hunter gatherers, or in historic rather than prehistoric Japan? For me there was no question. The J'Dmon were the world's first potters, a little known fact that deserved to be pointed up, and their pots were stunningly beautiful; you can see them in the British Museum.
After 14 novels into my career as an author, here are my tips for surviving the rollercoaster ride.
It's a difficult market, we're told. Authors who've been published multiple times, who've made bestseller lists and been Richard & Judy picks, are finding it hard to get a new deal. I know several experienced authors who are currently out of contract, and I've read in online author groups that editors are taking up to six months to respond to submissions. How do we authors hold our nerve while waiting for news? And how do we deal with rejection?
When I'm asked to offer advice to those seeking to get a first novel published, the first thing I say is "Toughen up". You'll need an emotional hazmat suit to survive the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune on the ride from wannabe author to debut to possibly making a career out of writing. If you think once you get a book deal you've got it made, and that sales will grow with each book, you couldn't be more wrong. This happens for literally no authors at all, ever.
Forensic anthropologist turned author Clea Koff on how her work has inspired her debut novel, Silent Evidence
Clea Koff is a forensic anthropologist turned author, known for her 2005 memoir Bone Woman. She has worked in areas of war crimes, and has run an agency dedicated to finding missing people. Her debut novel, Silent Evidence (Avon), is inspired by her work. It begins the Jayne and Steelie series, which follows two forensic anthropologists who make profiles of missing persons to match them with unidentified bodies.
I'm a forensic anthropologist, crime novelist and scaredy-cat. Yep, I'm the person watching that horror movie from behind their hands. When people have reacted in disbelief ("But this is your world!"), I've responded with something like, "But forensic scientists arrive after the slaughter." Or even: "You know the crime scene tape is already up when we get there, right?"
Most of the time, my profession is safe - barring biohazard - and I like it that way. (This sense of safety was challenged when I worked for the United Nations war crimes tribunals but we'll get to that.) In the United States, most forensic anthropologists work behind the closed doors of the medical examiner's office to determine the identity of the dead.
Sally Page's third novel, The Secrets of Flowers, tells the story of a trainee florist who begins to research the flowers on the Titanic
Could you tell us what The Secrets of Flowers is about, and what inspired it? The Secrets of Flowers is a floral story of recovery and discovery. It is inspired by my own love of flowers. I used to run a flower shop and ever since I was a little girl I have loved flowers. A year on from the death of her husband, Emma is trying to make sense of her loss, and she decides to take a new job in a garden centre as a trainee florist. There, she is persuaded by the owners, Betty and Les, to attend a talk Les is giving on the Titanic. As a result of this Emma becomes intrigued by whether there were flowers on board and if so, who was the florist. Her subsequent investigation draws in many others who help her, and not only does she discover that the Titanic was 'a ship full of flowers', but she finds her way to a new life. In the course of her research Emma experiences a feeling of connection with a stewardess on board, but she cannot understand why...
A day after the UK signed the first international treaty addressing the risks of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) has called on the UK government to go further and protect "creators" from a "mass violation of their rights".
The first legally binding international agreement on AI was signed by Lord Chancellor Shabana Mahmood on Thursday. The treaty, agreed by the Council of Europe, is designed to protect human rights, democracy and the rule of law from "potential threats" posed by AI.
Mahmood said: "Artificial Intelligence has the capacity to radically improve the responsiveness and effectiveness of public services and turbocharge economic growth. However, we must not let AI shape us-we must shape AI."
All 46 members of the Council of Europe are expected to sign the treaty with countries from outside it, including the United States of America and Australia, also invited to sign.
ALCS, a member organisation which works to ensure writers are fairly compensated and recently ran a survey on the impact AI might have on authors and copyright, welcomed the treaty but said it must be extended to cover the potential damage to livelihoods of creators.
I learned the language of computer programming in my 50s - here's what I discovered
One day in 2017 I had a realisation that seems obvious now but had the power to shock back then: almost everything I did was being mediated by computer code. And as the trickle of code into my world became a flood, that world seemed to be getting not better but worse in approximate proportion. I began to wonder why.
Two possibilities sprang immediately to mind. One was the people who wrote the code - coders - long depicted in pop culture as a clan of vaguely comic, Tolkien-worshipping misfits. Another was the uber-capitalist system within which many worked, exemplified by the profoundly weird Silicon Valley. Were one or both using code to recast the human environment as something more amenable to them?
There was also a third possibility, one I barely dared contemplate because the prospect of it was so appalling. What if there was something about the way we compute that was at odds with the way humans are? I'd never heard anyone suggest such a possibility, but in theory, at least, it was there. Slowly, it became clear that the only way to find out would be to climb inside the machine by learning to code myself.
Why authors in Zimbabwe are channelling Dickens by serialising their novels through the messaging app
Charles Dickens published most of his novels in monthly magazine instalments, but if he was around now he might do the same on WhatsApp.
The messaging app has "proven to be a boon" for authors in Zimbabwe as the country's traditional publishing industry "falters", said the Financial Mail. Aspiring writers are able to charge directly for their services by "leveraging" the app's popularity and turning it into "a go-to for avid readers".
Paying the rent
Kingston Dhewa is "one of the new crop" of authors in Zimbabwe selling novels to fans on WhatsApp, said Al Jazeera. The trend "really took off" during the Covid pandemic, when authors grew an audience with serialised stories, typically released "one chapter at a time".
Books, comics, films, video games ... does it matter how children discover stories? Keeping an open mind is just one way to help get them hooked
The stories we encounter as children are the most important ones we ever read. They may not always be the most sophisticated or profound, but they are the ones we remember most deeply - and everything in the reading life that follows is built on them. GK Chesterton said that the children's story The Princess and the Goblin had "made a difference to my whole existence". Not everyone who reads The Very Hungry Caterpillar or Goodnight Moon goes on to read Gravity's Rainbow or Middlemarch; but everyone who reads Gravity's Rainbow started out reading children's stories. And they only carried on reading because they did so.
It is in childhood - first through nursery rhymes, then picture books - that children learn to delight in the way the sounds and rhythms of words can be made to bounce off one another for pleasure. And childhood reading is part of the formation of a moral imagination: reading helps us to imagine what it might be like to have agency, to act in the world; and what it might be like, indeed, to be somebody else. In reading, we find models for ourselves.
Some critics would say that the author profile is a shoddy replacement for actual book criticism and I would agree with them. Over the past decade or so we've seen space for book coverage at general media outlets decline overall, and straight reviews, unless they're absolutely vicious takedowns, notoriously don't tend to generate much traffic.
At first, books sections shunned the straight review in favor of more clickable fare, but now even the more camera-ready author profile is on the chopping block. I fear the day when newsy bullet points summarizing celebrity memoirs are the only book coverage available to the average newspaper or magazine reader.
NEW YORK (AP) - Barbara Kingsolver, this year's recipient of a National Book Award medal for literary achievement, remembers well the years she couldn't imagine receiving such honors.
"I just felt this continuous skepticism, not from readers but from critics and the gatekeepers. It was on two counts," Kingsolver, 69, said during a recent telephone interview. "One: Because I was a rural writer and I lived in a rural place. I'm not a New Yorker. I don't write about city things, so that's always sort of positioned me as an outsider. Two: I'm a woman, and, certainly 30 years ago that was a strike against the writer."
On Friday, the National Book Foundation announced that Kingsolver was the 37th winner of its medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (DCAL), which has previously been given to Toni Morrison,Philip Roth and Joan Didion among others. Kingsolver's novels, including "The Bean Trees," "The Poisonwood Bible" and "Animal Trees," have sold millions of copies and have touched upon social issues from immigration and drug abuse to the environment and income inequality.
The New Trend In Book Covers Is Old-Timey Animals
If you perused a bookstore's new fiction section anytime between 2019 and 2023, you probably saw a bunch of books festooned by indistinct, pastely swatches of color. A bunch of smart, incisive things have been written about the color blob trend over the course of its moment as the book cover trend du too many jours, and the template was so ubiquitously adhered to that you didn't even have to have read You Exist Too Much or The Vanishing Half to have understood its deal. Book cover design, like any other field of design, moves in waves. While the color blob was preceded by the two-dimensional color block meta and the headless woman fad, there are some particularities to note. Blobwave's rise was contemporaneous with that of algorithmic book-buying, both on Amazon and on social media, and as Print noted three years ago, color blob design represented a "'safe' route disproportionately taken in service of women of color and debut authors."
But this is not a story about the blob. This is about what comes next, a question to which I propose the following answer: old-timey animals.
More than 180 council-run libraries have either closed or been handed over to volunteer groups in the UK since 2016, BBC analysis has found.
More deprived communities were four times more likely to have lost a publicly-funded library in that time, while 2,000 jobs have also been lost.
The figures "laid bare the scale of the crisis facing public libraries", a body that supports the insitutions across the UK said.
A government spokesperson said it recognised "pressures" on library services and it was "committed to giving stability back to local councils".
Freedom of Information requests sent to every library authority in the UK and Arts Council England data show the country has lost one in 20 libraries since 2016, either by closing them completely or moving them over to volunteer-run groups.
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