Consolidation continues among the big representation agencies, as WME announced Friday morning their acquisition of Washington, DC-based literary agency Ross Yoon Agency. Ross Yoon’s president Gail Ross and principal Howard Yoon will join WME as partners. The office becomes WME’s first physical location in the DC region. “Gail and Howard set the gold standard of nonfiction representation,” head of WME’s book department Jay Mandel said in the announcement. “They have impeccable taste, unparalleled editorial chops, and an admirable sense of purpose about the authors they represent. Ross Yoon is the perfect complement to our book business, with a brilliant client base […]
Trade Sales Fell 6.1 Percent In 2022, As Adult Fiction Rose to Become the Largest Segment
The AAP released their StatShot Annual Report for 2022 earlier than usual, once again providing a substantial collection of actual, directly-reported data, received from a modestly expanded pool of reporting publishers. Trade sales (starting with their default measure, which includes religious presses alongside trade) declined 6.1 percent to $9.33 billion—falling by $600 million—with 1.299 billion trade units sold in 2022, down 3.8 percent from 1.351 billion in 2021. (Religious presses alone comprised $697 million in 2022, compared to $747 million in 2021, making trade sales on their own $8.633 billion. And if you want to look at domestic sales alone, export […]
Agency News: Bernstein to Take Over for Bergholz
Agent Susan Bergholz at Susan Bergholz Literary Services will retire as of June 1 and transfer control of her agency to Stuart Bernstein Representation for Artists. A number of Bergholz’s authors, including Julia Alvarez and Sandra Cisneros, had already begun working with Bernstein on new projects in recent years, and now control of their backlists will follow. Separately, “A number of authors who already have new representation will transfer backlist to those agents or take control themselves.” Bernstein said in the announcement, “Meeting Susan Bergholz helped me plan the direction of my life and shape my approach to working with […]
ABA Continues to Add Members, With Slower Growth In Locations
The ABA reported through the AP that the booksellers’ organization added 173 members over the last year. The ABA now counts 2,185 bookstore members, operating 2,599 locations in all. Forty-six new stores added over the past year reported diverse ownership. That represents an increase of 175 members — yet they only grew by 52 locations. In calendar 2023, ABA ceo Allison Hill indicated book sales look to be “softer”, though the association added 56 member stores so far, and with 18 stores closing. Separately, the ABA itself released an interesting statistic about online sales volume conducted through their Indie Commerce […]
Those Fancy Large Language Models Were Trained On eBooks From Smashwords, Without Permission
With the avalanche of interest in generative AI and the large language models they are trained on, stories have resurfaced showing the process’s dirty roots. As shown in a 2021 working paper authored by Jack Bandy and Nicholas Vincent, OpenAI, Google’s BERT and variants, and many other foundational LLMs all have “documentation debt” to BookCorpus, “a popular text dataset for training large language models.” Compiled in 2014 by researchers at the University of Toronto and MIT, BookCorpus should have been called Stolen from Smashwords. The researchers apparently scraped posted, self-published ebooks posted by Smashwords that were being offered to read […]
Imprints: Open Road’s Re-Discovery Lit
Open Road has launched an imprint devoted to republishing out-of-print and reverted titles, Re-Discovery Lit. They expect to reissue about 200 titles a year, publishing primarily in ebook format, though titles will be available in print-on-demand editions as well. Mara Anastas, who is publisher of the imprint, says in the announcement, “Agents and writers everywhere have been excited to learn of this new opportunity for out-of-print and reverted works.” Authors on the list include Barbara Delinsky, Clifford D. Simak, Roger Angell, Alan Dean Foster, and Ronald Malfi. An agreement with Alloy Entertainment brings back series including Melinda Metz’s YA Fingerprints […]