Amazon announced their retroactive payment pool for Kindle Unlimited authors for September, set at $15.9 million — up $100,000 from August — paying $0.00497397. As we noted last week, many of those authors have been very concerned about sudden drops in page reads (and some have reported notable declines in Amazon ebook sales as well). The complaints were significant enough that Amazon responded three times with official messages. The first acknowledged that “we uncovered one timing-based reporting issue affecting less than 0.2% of pages read which we fixed on 9/28.” A day later, they reported, “We regularly monitor pages-read systems for […]
Authors
Rumblings of Kindle Limitations for Self-Published Authors
The latest Author Earnings report is surprised to find declining sales of self-published books in their October survey, as traditional publishers registered small gains and Amazon Publishing continues its steady rise. In the measure that publishers follow — gross ebook dollar sales — AE found traditional publishers with about 65 percent of Kindle revenues, and Amazon Publishing at about 10 percent of sales. They put self-published authors at just under 20 percent of sales (down from 25 percent in the last two surveys earlier in 2016) and “uncategorized single-author publisher” sales at just above 5 percent. And those figures include […]
People, Etc.
Vicki Jaeger has joined Portable Press — part of ReaderLink’s Printers Row Publishing Group — as developmental editor. She was marketing manager at Mattel Consumer Products, and most recently a licensing consultant for entertainment and consumer products companies. At Donaghy Literary Group Valerie Noble has been promoted to senior agent. Amanda Ayers Barnett has joined the company as an agent (she has been a freelance book editor for New York Book Editors), and Alex Franks has joined as a junior agent. The Authors Guild announced that, for the first time since its founding in 1912, it is inviting “emerging writers” who have not yet published a book to join the […]
People, Etc.
Doug Jones has been promoted to the new position of svp, deputy publisher of the Harper group, reporting to Jonathan Burnham. In addition, he will serve as publisher of Harper Perennial and Harper Paperbacks. All marketing and publicity for the Harper imprints and lines will report to Jones, who has been svp, sales for HarperCollins. Senior vice president, associate publisher Kathy Schneider is leaving the company. Sarah Bedingfield has joined Levine Greenberg Rostan as an associate agent, working with Stephanie Rostan and building a clientele of literary and upmarket commercial fiction authors. She was previously an assistant editor at Crown and Hogarth. Claire Kelley has joined Roost […]
Donoghue, Thien Among Giller Prize Shortlist
Canada’s Giller Prize announced its six-book shortlist Monday morning: Mona Awad, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl (Penguin) Gary Barwin, Yiddish for Pirates (Random House Canada) Emma Donoghue, The Wonder (Little, Brown/HarperCollins Canada) Catherine Leroux, The Party Wall (Biblioasis) Madeleine Thien, Do Not Say We Have Nothing (Norton/Knopf Canada) Zoe Whittall, The Best Kind of People (House of Anansi) The winner will be named at a gala ceremony on November 7.
People
At Crown Children’s, Emily Easton has been promoted to vp, publisher. Marissa DeCuir has been promoted to president and partner at JKS Communications. Kurt Hettler has joined Ingram Academic Services as director of academic services. Previously he spent the past 25 years at Oxford University Press, most recently as director, publisher services. In addition, Peter Antone has joined Ingram as director of marketing, publisher services. Most recently he served as director of consumer marketing and sales at The Tennessean and Gannett-USA Today Network. Former Plume editorial director Rachel Bressler is now director of client relations for Ingram’s Perseus Distribution, reporting to […]