Publishing News Roundup Series: Publishing Angst Uprises in the Book World
by Maureen Crisp • March 7, 2016 • Follow
Published in News • No comments
We are dealing with a lot of publishing angst this week.
PRH finally talked about author solutions and authors reactions to it. Victoria Strauss has also been expressing a lot of angst this week, with trying to contact author Steve Alten and not getting a response until Chuck Wendig wrote a blog about it. Her Twitter had even more angst about some suspicious contracting:
Handwringing
Yikes. Just read a pub contract w/ indefinite term that withholds 20% reserve _annually_ & doesn’t release it till book is OOP. Run away.— Victoria Strauss (@victoriastrauss) March 3, 2016
Tweet from Victoria this afternoon… scary.
This week was a turbulent one in the blogosphere. There was angst about the U.S elections, Angst about Author Solutions, Angst about Mike Shatzkin’s blog.
General Angst everywhere.
Phillip Jones of the Bookseller, finally got Andrew Phillips of Penguin Random House to talk about Author Solutions. Andrew laid out one side of the story where PRH thought Author Solutions was a good idea. ‘Unfortunately a few authors have disagreed.’
‘A few,’ spluttered the leading commenter’s. With class actions happening, every major writer organization’s complaints ignored and a long list of complaints from writers who have lost large sums of money there was an outpouring of disgust over the article. If you weren’t sure about Author Solutions and their imprints for big publishers this is required reading.
Staying on the subject of assisted publishing Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware tried to contact author Steve Alten. She was concerned about the look of his new publishing venture to help other authors, but had no success until Chuck Wendig wrote a blog about it. What is the definition of a vanity press? Chuck laid it out and then there was the response from Steve. The tennis match of eyeballs on the responses from each side played out all over social media.
Mike Shatzkin, publishing futurist, published a blog this week where he talked about changing his mind on what is happening with Agency and print sales. Porter wrote a piece discussing this. It is all very murky.
Has Amazon put one over the publishers by getting them to agree to Agency conditions where they set the prices? Have publishers’ tactic of inflating eBook prices until they were more expensive than buying a print copy helped print sales and booksellers or is it all an elaborate lie. Are adult Colouring In books skewing what is really happening in print sales?
If you wanted to try your hand at publishing a colouring in book Joanna Penn has a comprehensive interview with Meg Cowly on how to do it.
Novel Approach, a book review blog, discovered that Amazon has pulled all their reviews and they are legit. They can’t get them back and Amazon won’t talk to them.
We need some good news!
Susan Kaye Quinn breezed in with a great post on finding joy in our writing. This saved us from being overcome with despair.
In the Craft Section,
Why scripts are rejected– Becca Puglisi
In the Marketing Section,
To Finish,
Nosy Crow Publishers wrote about how they select books to publish. They are a nimble bunch in London. Top Agent Kristen Nelson wrote about her first year under the new request regime of asking for the first 10 pages up front. If the authors were sweating over the query letter- Kristen was finding that the first ten pages really showed if authors knew their craft. Angst in a good way over this blog.
Maureen
@craicer
@craicer
About Maureen Crisp
Maureen Crisp has been writing her weekly publishing roundups for over seven years. She is a traditionally published children's author as well as indie-published. She lives in New Zealand and is heading the team organising the 4th National Conference of Children's Writers and Illustrators. She is currently trying her hand at writing a children’s book series if she can drag herself away from forever tweaking her Mars novel or obsessing over space.