It’s time to start looking at what a lot of people have been talking about this week: bestselling self-published author Hugh Howey’s “Author Earnings” website and “report.” In case you have not read it (or read about it), Howey joined up with a programmer and they crawled some of Amazon’s genre bestseller lists for a brief period. Based on that and Howey’s own experiential deductions about correlations between Amazon “sales rank” and actual unit sales for his own books, they came up with elaborate (and unsupportable) — but provocative — declarations about yearly sales and authors earnings via Kindle sales. […]
Archives for February 2014
Briefs: Penguin India Defends Withdrawal; The Bookseller Drops Author Solutions Ads; and more
Penguin India issued a statement earlier today regarding its decision to pull Wendy Doniger’s THE HINDUS from sale in that country after a settlement that ended a four-year court battle. “Penguin Books India believes, and has always believed, in every individual’s right to freedom of thought and expression, a right explicitly codified in the Indian Constitution. This commitment informs Penguin’s approach to publishing in every territory of the world, and we have never been shy about testing that commitment in court when appropriate.” But, the company said, they have “the same obligation as any other organization to respect the laws […]
People, Etc.
At Simon & Schuster Children’s, Teresa Ronquillo has been promoted to marketing coordinator. Novelist and spoken-word artist Maggie Estep, 50, died Wednesday in Albany two days after suffering a heart attack in her Hudson, NY home. Estep was most recently the author of ALICE FANTASTIC (2009) and earlier, a trio of crime novels set in and around New York City published between 2003 and 2006, as well as two works of fiction based on her spoken-word poems. In the UK, Waterstones announced shortlists for their three children’s book prizes, to be awarded April 3 (honoring picture books; fiction for children 5 […]
Etc. People: Lawson, Schiffrin, and More
Some interesting, if more offbeat than usual, “people” stories: Vanity Fair executive literary editor Wayne Lawson is well-known to many in book publishing, both for his editorial skills and his mentoring of talented people. Lawson is retiring, and VF “bids farewell to a cherished editor.” The late Andre Schiffrin’s daughter Anya has written a piece for Reuters about the compassionate, humane and also very inexpensive cancer and end-of-life care her father received in France, which incorporates a remembrance of his final days. “Every time I sit on hold now with the billing department of my New York doctors and insurance […]
Simon & Schuster Finishes with Record Profits
Simon & Schuster reported fourth quarter sales of $225 million, up $10 million from a year ago, helping the publisher to finish the year with sales rising $19 million, at $809 million in all. Parent company CBS said in their announcement that year-end results “reflect growth in print book sales.” Once again, margins rose more than sales, and S&S had record profits for the year. Fourth quarter OIBDA was $37 million for the quarter, compared to $31 million a year ago. For the full year, OIBDA of $113 million was up $24 million, and operating income of $106 million was […]
Forthcoming: Dobbs, King, Palacio and Munro
Stephen King announced the publication of his novel REVIVAL in the US and the UK on November 11, 2014. In the same month, Knopf says they will issue recent Nobel Prize-winner Alice Munro’s FAMILY FURNISHINGS: Selected Stories, 1995-2014, this November (will include stories from her last 6 books). Random House Children’s in the US and UK will publish R.J. Palacio‘s 365 DAYS OF WONDER: Mr. Browne’s Book of Precepts, a companion book to her bestselling debut WONDER, on August 26, 2014 in hardcover with a first printing of 350,000 copies. (Palacio will also write an ebook original story, THE JULIAN CHAPTER, set […]