Posted By Sue Collier on April 4, 2011

 Here’s some of what’s happening in publishing right now:

From Publishers Weekly: The Google settlement rejection—what comes next?

When it was introduced in 2008, the Google Book Settlement was hailed by its creators as historic. Now, it is history. On March 22, after more than two years of contentious debate, Judge Denny Chin rejected the controversial proposal on copyright and antitrust grounds. A status conference is set for April 25 in New York, and the parties are free (and some say likely) to appeal the decision, though at press time no appeal had been announced.

From Rachelle Gardner: What the fiction editor looks for, part I

For the next couple of days I’m going to point out some of the things an editor looks for when reading a manuscript. When you get a content edit (or “developmental edit”) on your novel, you may find these kinds of things pointed out for improvement.

From E-reads: Greek seaman runs aground on treacherous typos

A deliciously entertaining but instructive controversy has arisen over the review of The Greek Seaman, a self-published novel by an English writer named Jacqueline Howett.  A reviewer writing under the handle “BigAl” posted a critique describing the story as “compelling and interesting.” But he also slammed it for being rife with spelling and grammatical errors.  He gave the book two stars and complained “Reading shouldn’t be that hard.”

From Writer Beware: Why your self-publishing company probably didn’t cheat you

I often hear from writers who are convinced that they’re being cheated by their self-publishing services because they’ve been vigorously promoting their books, and yet their royalty checks are tiny. Often, these angry authors offer evidence: changing Amazon rankings, listings of their books with multiple online sellers, used copies for sale, friends’ reports of purchases.

From Salon: Author, sell thyself—What we stand to lose in a world where writing a great book isn’t good enough

Last week, the book world saw a particularly symmetrical bit of revolving door ballet as Amanda Hocking — who famously became a millionaire by selling a series of paranormal romance novels as self-published e-books — signed a contract with an old-fashioned publishing house, while the bestselling thriller author Barry Eisler walked away from a similar deal, preferring to self-publish his next book. Did I mention it was the same publisher (St. Martin’s Press) in both cases? Like I said: symmetrical.

From There Are No Rules: How to get reviews for self-published books

It’s never been a better time to be a self-published author, and there have never been more book reviewers available to the writer who decides to go indie.

Book reviewers help spread the message about your book by publishing a review to their own network. But if you’re new to publishing, you have to figure out how to get those book reviews that can bring you more readers.

From View From the Publishing Trenches: What to do about a negative review

A question on Twitter this morning prompted this post, although similar questions pop up in various forums from time to time.

No matter how great your book is, you may still get a negative review from somebody — sometimes just a little negative, sometimes downright nasty. Just remember, no book appeals to everybody and some people even seem to get a perverse kick out of trashing a book because one little thing really bugged them.

Categories: This week in publishing
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