By Greg McQueen AARTHUS, DENMARK: The book 100 Stories for Haiti — a forthcoming charity anthology with proceeds going for Haitian earthquake relief — wouldn’t have been possible five years ago. As it happened, I posted an appeal for stories on the morning of Tuesday, January, 19. Just one week after the earthquake that left over 200,000 dead. The final …
Author Nick Flynn Finds an Unlikely Friend in Facebook
By Sharon Glassman How do you go out into the world to promote a book about “torture and babies?” For Nick Flynn, author of the recently published memoir The Ticking is the Bomb (WW Norton), the answer mirrors the author’s way of working. The PEN Award-winning author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City writes memoirs that limn personal tragedy in poetic prose. …
My Publisher, My Wing Man
By Franz Wisner Why stop at piddly promotions or insufficient inventory when you can blame your publisher for every setback in life? A cavity? The scoundrels diverted me from quality floss time. Bounced check? Sorry, Mr. Banker. I used publisher math. With my latest book, How the World Makes Love, I had a change of heart. My publisher gave me an assist …
Can the Mega-author Exist Without the Mega-bookstore?
By Edward Nawotka In our lead article today, Liz Bury writes about the launch of Mills & Boon India, prompted in part by the widespread use of English, globalized communications and the growth of India’s middle-class, which likes to shop in the new chain bookstores and supermarket-style outlets in India’s metro centers and their newly-built shopping malls. The shift has …
The Rise of “Cause” Publishing
By Gabriel Levinson Contrary to death knell hyperbole of many pundits, we are entering a publishing epoch. Cause publishing, a vital trend being set by the independents, holds the future of the printed word. But in order to reinvent its influence on society, the big houses must follow the lead of the independent scene. Now is the time to take risks, and the …
Is Amazon’s 70% Royalty on E-books Worth the Restrictions?
By Edward Nawotka Today’s lead story by Emily Williams questions the “exclusive” status of Amazon.com e-book deals with Paulo Coelho and Harvard Business Review Press. As she demonstrates, both Coelho and Harvard Business Review Press have offered e-book versions of their work for sometime, including titles that overlap with Amazon’s offerings. Of course, the news that these two well-known brands …
Competitors and Collaborators: The New Age in Agenting
Editorial by Jason Allen Ashlock NEW YORK: In December, five of the largest magazine publishers in the United States — Time Inc., NewsCorp, Conde Nast, Hearst, and Meredith Corp — announced a joint venture. In an effort to take control of their own fates, the five will become equal partners in developing a new e-reader for magazines. These longtime competitors …
Which Chinese Books Do You Want Translated?
By Edward Nawotka Today’s lead article discusses the launch of the Peony Literary Agency in Hong Kong and Beijing. The firm already represents a number of bestselling Chinese writers that have yet to attract a Western publisher, most notably, Han Han (he was deemed the sixth richest writer in China), but has yet to be translated. Another is the novel …
The Translation Gap: Why More Foreign Writers Aren’t Published in America
By Emily Williams NEW YORK: Parts one, two and three of my series on scouting looked at American efforts to sell American books overseas. Today, this fourth and final installment of the series looks at the other side of the equation and brings us to a question most scouts run into sooner or later, often posed by one of their …
Is the Cliche of the Culturally Insulated American a Myth?
By Edward Nawotka Today’s lead article by Emily Williams looks at the question of why so few foreign writers make it into print in the US. It’s by know become well known that approximately 3% of books published in the US are translations (and I would guess that number would be significantly smaller as soon as you factor in self-published …