The week in publishing (January 9 through January 15)
Posted By Sue Collier on January 15, 2012
Here’s some of the latest in industry news and views:
From Good E Reader: What Does It Mean for Aggregator Companies if Apple Launches Their Self-Publishing Program?
We broke the news last week that Apple is in development of a self-publishing program and many leading websites such as Media Bistro, Paidcontent, and tons of others. The essence of our writeup was that Apple will be holding an event at the end of the month where they are expected to take the wraps off of their self-publishing program for iBooks. This may benefit indie authors that want to submit directly to the service and not be forcibly relegated to doing business with various Aggregators. What does it mean for these companies if Apple starts their own program?
From Publisher’s Victims: The Top 10 Book Marketing Lies Ever Told
As a book publishing company, we harp constantly about book marketing and how important it is for authors to market their books. More often than not, we get these explanations, excuses, reasons, etc. why authors won’t or can’t market their own books. When we ask authors where they come up with these things, we often hear, “Oh it’s what we’ve been told for years,” or “Honey! That advice is all over the internet.”
From Melville House Books: McNally Jackson’s bestselling book is … a fee?
The New York bookseller McNally Jackson here posts a fascinating list of its bestselling titles of 2011, but there’s one big surprise: the bestselling thing in the store isn’t a book from a publisher large or small, nor is it a book at all: it’s the set-up fee the store charges customers who want to self-publish a book on McNally’s Espresso Book Machine.
From The Idea Logical Company: Some things that were true about publishing for decades aren’t true anymore
Back when my father, Leonard Shatzkin, was active with significant publishers — the quarter century following World War II — he observed that very few books actually took in less cash than they required. That is not to say that publishers saw most books as “profitable”. Indeed, they didn’t. They placed an overhead charge of 25% or 30% or more on each book so most looked unprofitable. But that didn’t change the fact that the cash expended to publish just about every book was less than the cash it brought back in.
From GalleyCat: Study: Kids Like eBooks Better Than Print
Do you think that this generation of kids will still read print books when they grow up? According to a new report from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, little kids already prefer to eBooks to print books.
From Publishing Perspectives: Repurposing Blogs as Books for ‘Immediacy’
Undeterred by lean and shaky times, British-born journalist, writer and editor Helena Cobban recently founded Just World Books in the US where she has lived for 30-odd years. Following her son’s advice to look into print-on-demand (POD) publishing, Cobban was able to launch her company without any heavy financial commitments. Just World’s focus is on the Middle East (but not only) as Cobban has extensive experience in the region. Her idea for content was to “curate” people’s blogs on current international affairs that she had enjoyed reading over the years and transform them into books. POD publishing enables her to give readers “immediacy” on pertinent international themes.
From Book Making: Bullshit, high prices and stupidity at InstantPublisher.com
According to its website, “InstantPublisher.com is the short run book publisher division of Fundcraft Publishing Company, the world’s largest personalized cookbook publisher. Fundcraft started as a small publishing house in eastern Kansas in the early 30′s specializing in short-run custom cookbooks for groups and organizations across the country. Today, Fundcraft ships millions of personalized cookbooks each year to every state.”
From Self Publishing Review: 20 Economical Book Marketing Techniques
Learn how to get your book publicity campaign moving despite the current economic recession by trying these practically economical methods of book marketing.
From Reuters: 16 year-old makes $6200 in Dec from her e-books on Amazon
Amazon.com said on Thursday that its new Kindle Owners’ Lending Library was off to a strong start, but the largest Internet retailer may have buried the lead.
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