Publishing Business

Articles and essays about the state of the industry.

Right Sizing Your Life

1 Comment / Publishing Business / By / February 14, 2021

Back in the old days before I was an author, I used to work on computer games, doing art and such. Someone I knew at the time wrote a great article called ‘right sizing your life’. A few of the discussions I’ve seen over the past few days brought the old essay to mind, so I thought I’d go over some of the salient points. The truth is, any independent, freelancing solo businessperson has to deal with similar situations and problems. And we can find similar solutions as well.   What Is “Right Sizing”? Our modern society has a tendency …

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Guest Post: Tara Maya with "Five Signs You Might Be A Writer"

Leave a Comment / Fun Stuff, Publishing Business / By / March 5, 2013

Hey folks! Tara Maya’s a fantasy novelist who belongs to the same online team/collective of writers that I do. She’s just released the sixth book in her ongoing series – an interesting epic fantasy with some remarkable twists. To celebrate the new book coming out, she’s taking the spotlight in here today. You can buy Blood and all her other books via Amazon and other ebook retailers. You can keep up with Tara and her writing via her blog, Twitter ] and Facebook. And here’s Tara: 5 Signs You Might Be a Writer 1. You read. A LOT. You read …

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Swimming in the Sea of Ebooks

Leave a Comment / My Writing, Publishing Business / By / June 4, 2012

There’s 1,410,714 ebooks on Amazon as of this writing. By this time next year, that will have gone up to over 2 million. By this time in five years, I expect it to be over five million. By this time in twenty years, I expect it to be…well, really, really, REALLY doggone high. 😉   Breakout vs. Slow Boil Guys, it’s important to understand something about writing: the one book breakout is RARE. It almost never happens. Of course, we see lots of them, so we think it’s the goal to shoot for. It’s not. Most writers who only produce …

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Solving Industry Problems: Digitally!

Leave a Comment / Publishing Business / By / May 24, 2012

Someone recently commented to me that publishing is in a state of crisis, and gave a list of various problems facing the industry. I looked at his list, and realized two things. First, he was right – publishing is facing a lot of problems. Second, that digital technology and distribution were on their way to solving many of those problems. The list of problems was very different from the ones we hear so often. Nothing about indie bookstores being in trouble, or bad contracts, or the other stuff. It was all meta-analysis of the industry as a whole, and therefore …

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Indies at UPublishU?

Leave a Comment / Publishing Business / By / May 17, 2012

This year at BEA (Book Expo America), a number of sponsors are working together to bring a special all-Sunday set of workshops and seminars. They’ve named the experience “UPublishU”, and it’s ALL about self publishing. For $99, it looks to me like it could be a fun and interesting experience. Here’s a link to the planned sessions for the day: http://www.bookexpoamerica.com/Concurrent-Events/DIY-Authors-Conference/#page=page-2 Highlights include a keynote address with Mark Coker (founder of Smashwords) as one of the speakers; a session on maximizing Kindle sales from the Amazon Director of Author and Publisher relations, Jon Fine; several sessions on social media and marketing …

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Publishers begin removing DRM from ebooks, smashing walls on Amazon "walled garden"

Leave a Comment / Publishing Business / By / April 25, 2012

At the London Book Fair, one of the major topics of discussion was publishers discussing cessation of DRM use on their ebooks. DRM – digital rights management – is the encryption added to digital media which prevents copying, conversion, and some other sorts of uses of the media. In some cases, it might force the use of a user key to use the media. In others, it locks the media to a specific device. For ebooks, generally it prevents copying, prevents use on other devices, and prevents conversion. All of the largest publishers used DRM as an anti-piracy measure – …

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"Oops, he did it again." Turow strikes twice.

Leave a Comment / Publishing Business / By / March 19, 2012

I am forced to wonder, after reading this latest interview with the noted president of the Author’s Guild, if the man has actually a) bought any books in the last decade, b) listened to any of the writers he is supposed to be supporting about what they’d actually like, or c) thought for fifteen seconds about what spills from his fingers onto a computer screen before pressing “send” on interview questions. Because frankly, what he wrote “don’t make no sense”. But here’s the article, so you can see the whole bit yourself. I hate to beat on the guy twice …

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Author's Guild: latest evidence of loss of a clue?

Leave a Comment / Publishing Business / By / May 16, 2019

The Author’s Guild blog has just posted a letter from Scott Turow titled “Grim News”. The post expounds upon how the DOJ’s recent announcement it intends to file suit against major publishers for conspiring to fix prices on books is a terrible thing for everyone, and basically defends the assorted publishers’ actions. Leaving aside the major issue of trying to excuse publishers taking allegedly illegal actions in the defense of their business model, let’s look at the rest of the issues a minute. Remember, his thoughts were sparked by the “Grim News” that the Department of Justice has just announced …

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Early Evaluation of KDP Select Program

Leave a Comment / Publishing Business / By / December 20, 2011

Wow. It’s been two months since I checked in with Amazon rankings, and saw how indies were doing. In October, my survey showed that while traditional presses still dominated the top 10 in most genres, indie published books owned over 50% of the top 200 Amazon ebooks in romance, fantasy, mystery, thriller, science fiction, and horror genres. It was an amazing coup for indies, at the time. Powerful movement to the top seats across the board in fiction. I went back last night to peek, and was floored by the results. Here’s the survey of the top 20 ebooks on …

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Mike Shatzkin asks: what can publishers offer in digital publishing? A response.

Leave a Comment / Publishing Business / By / May 16, 2019

Mike Shatzkin has just posted an excellent new article: “Will book publishers be able to retain primacy as ebook publishers?” Some snippets:   “… I think we’re going to see a US market that is 80% digital for narrative text reading in the pretty near future: could be as soon as two years from now but almost certainly within five … … Now here’s a fact which is documentable, and would be documented right here on a day when time wasn’t in such short supply: brands that are not publishing houses are directly publishing their own ebooks with increasing frequency. Magazines …

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