In Publishing News this week.
Last week I mentioned that Booktopia in Australia had found a buyer, this week Simon and Schuster (Australia) has been shopping and they have bought Affirm Press. They want to expand their markets in Australia and New Zealand apparently.
The numbers are in and PenguinRandomHouse has made some money. Publishers Weekly reports the good news. It might have something to do with all that restructuring they have been doing.
Apple Books has started laying off workers, GoodEReader reports. Apple haven’t really been focused on its book platform for a while. This may be a sign of the coming times.
Just when you thought all that crazy book censoring was happening in one very large western country the UK woke up to discover it’s happening in their school libraries too.
In contrast, there are schools wanting to embrace PRH’s Book Vending machines. PenguinRandomHouse has provided a book vending machine to showcase its Lit in Colour series. The machine is stocked with books written by diverse authors of colour.
Every few years some bright spark in publishing looks at the huge secondhand book market and wonders… How can I get a piece of that? Bookshop.org is the latest to try with secondhand books worth credits in the Bookshop.org store. But is anyone really going to send their books off?
Written Word Media have a detailed look at the new KDP author verification requirements and breaks down what is important. A must read if you publish on this platform.
On Jane Friedman’s popular blog, Amy Bernstein writes- What you can learn from a serial submitter to literary magazines. When you have assimilated all the good advice then hop over to curiosityneverkilledthewriter.com and look at the 67 submission opportunities for September.
The Alliance of Independent Authors has another in depth article- this one on creating nonfiction courses to complement your nonfiction book.
I’ve just finished reading a story that had some masterful backstory slid into it. Then I came across this great article from Lisa Hall Wilson explaining just how to do this kind of deep point of view backstory layering.
In The Craft Section,
How to strengthen a lean manuscript- Lisa Fellinger- Bookmark
Story structure as a fractal- September Fawkes- Bookmark
Should you abandon your novel- James Scott Bell
Steadfast arcs- September Fawkes
10 editing tips- C S Lakin- Bookmark
In The Marketing Section,
The matter of titles-Barbara Linn Probst- Bookmark
Comp titles- PenguinRandomhouse blog
Making your website friendlier- Debbie Burke- Bookmark
Getting into the Goodreads author program-podcast- Penny Sansevieri- Bookmark
To Finish,
Every few years around this time in the Northern Hemisphere news cycle the same click baity headline somehow gets recycled. Are Romance Novels Literature? The latest to ask this is Time- with its 50 best romances list. Mark Williams of the New Publishing Standard vents on this.
A literature novel can have a romance in it. (Test: If you took out the romance would it still stand as a novel?) Romance as a genre should have the romance as the driving force in the story. The question “Is (fill in your own genre) literature?” sets up an argument of snobbery with ‘literature’ seen as more highbrow.
Literature is a genre.
It is not a genre with huge sales compared to other genres. It has cemented itself into creative writing faculties across the world so that its authors can make a living.
You never see the headline – Are crime thrillers literature? It is always Romance that is picked on. Is it the covers? The perceived readership? The sales? The jealousy of the author paycheck, that makes this genre a target? Stop going for the tired old click bait headline. We should be encouraging and celebrating reading- regardless of genre. I wince every time a child tells me, apologetically that they read graphic novels as if it was some sort of shame.*
There is no shame in reading. We need all the readers we can get.
Maureen
@craicer
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*I tell them my favourite graphic novels and then we have a discussion on illustration styles and pictures as shorthand for setting.
pic Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
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