This week in publishing (August 1 to August 7)
Posted By Sue Collier on August 8, 2011
Here’s some of what’s happening in publishing right now:
From Writer Beware Blogs: Solicitation Alerts: JustFiction! Edition and DIP Publishing House
When Writer Beware was founded in 1998, it was vanishingly rare for publishers (or agents) to contact aspiring writers to express interest in their work–so rare, in fact, that any sort of unsolicited publisher or agent contact was almost certain to be a scam or a pay-to-play arrangement.
From Publishers Weekly: Author Solutions Starts Million Dollar Film Fund
Author Solutions wants to start making movies. The company, which has over 145,000 self-published titles in its library, has started a film development fund with $1 million of seed money to acquire the film rights to books by its authors. The fund will be overseen by Marcus Chait, who currently runs Author Solutions’ film and new media department, and, through the fund, the company will identify books it thinks are ideal for adapting to the screen, acquire dramatic rights to those titles and then invest in developing a screenplay to ultimately sell to a production company.
From HUFFPOST Books: Why Authors Hate Social Networking and How to Promote Books Online, Anyway
Publishers, faced with shrinking book promotion budgets, are more excited than ever about telling authors to promote their own books online. By online book promotion, publishers often mean social networking. They use the phrases interchangeably. The reason publishers are particularly excited about online book promotion is that, in their opinion, they don’t have to get involved in it.
From Publishers Weekly: Hub City Bookshop Outstrips First Year Expectations
Spartanburg, S.C.’s Hub City Bookshop will celebrate its first birthday this month with excellent news, having exceeded sales expectations by 77%. “Our budget was for $90,000 in sales the first year, and we did more than $160,000,” said Betsy Teter, executive director of Hub City Writers Project, the non-profit literary organization that opened the store last summer. “That makes us a pretty small player when compared to the old-time successful indies. But for a small store in a struggling downtown, we are super happy with that. It confirmed for us that this is a viable business.”
From Publishing Talk: 10 Twitter Hashtags for Writers
Today is #WriterWednesday and also the second anniversary of #amwriting – which has got me thinking about hashtags. There are now many Twitter hashtags out there that are useful to help writers promote their work, connect with other writers, and – well – write. How do you use them, and which should you use?
From Publishers Weekly: Edwards and Henry Out at Borders
In a filing with the SEC today, Borders announced several management changes, including the termination of company president Mike Edwards and executive v-p and CFO Scott Henry late last week.
From GalleyCat: Self-Published Author Scores Four-Book Deal
British writer Louise Voss had a hard time selling her novel Catch Your Death to literary agents, so she decided to self publish her book in the Kindle UK Store. Hoping to attract readers to an unknown author, Voss priced the eBook at the low price of £0.95.
From HUFFPOST Books: Indie eBooks: The Gateway “Drug” to Traditional Publishing
Gone are the days when a writer had to spend hours hunched over a stack of query letters, only to have their hopes dashed months later with the arrival of an unsigned form letter.
From GalleyCat: What States Have Highest Concentrations of Librarians?
Earlier this summer, the Oxford University Press’ Social Explorer analyzed the evolution of the library profession through 120 years of census data. The report revealed that Vermont, Washington D.C., Rhode Island, Alabama, and New Hampshire have the highest concentrations of librarians in the country.
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