In letters to authors and agents sent Monday afternoon Amazon Publishing said it will quicken the pace at which it pays out author royalties, moving from quarterly remittance to monthly payments, issued 60 days after the close of each month. The news was first reported by the WSJ and we’ve also seen a copy of the letter. In it, vp, Amazon Publishing Jeff Belle explains “in this digital age, we don’t see why authors should have to wait six months to be paid.” The new payment procedure will begin with January 2013 royalties, to be paid through on March 31. […]
How Publishing Works
Publishers: U. of Missouri Press to Close; Page Celebrates “Legacy”; Penguin Launches A Pintail
University of Missouri president Tim Wolfe apparently surprised staff with the announcement Thursday that the UM Press will close. Started in 1958, it currently publishes about 30 titles a year, and has issued approximately 2,000 books since its founding. Wolfe said they “take seriously our role to be good stewards of public funds, to use those funds to achieve our strategic priorities and re-evaluate those activities that are not central to our core mission.” The Press has been receiving a $400,000 annual subsidy. A phase out of operations will begin this July. “Ten employees will be affected,” the Columbia Daily […]
Malcolm Gladwell Celebrates The Editor As “King”
After an issues-focused morning at Wednesday’s AAP annual meeting in New York, the closing speaker, bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell said, “I took a look at the lineup and it’s pretty clear to me, I’m the party tape.” But what Gladwell provided, to substitute a different metaphor, was red meat to this roomful of publishers: Through a variety of anecdotes that had little to do with books, Gladwell suggested that the world needs great editors, and so does publishing. Along the way Gladwell–whose next book, about power, is coming from Little, Brown in 2013–provided heartfelt recommendations of two very different books. […]
Publishers Acknowledge Legislative and Educational Challenges
As this morning’s annual meeting of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) in New York underscored, in today’s complicated and changing times the organization has more legislative and policy issues on its hands than it has in some time. Association president Tom Allen emphasized how much has changed since he joined the organization in 2009. As many of the morning’s speakers underscored, “we have a lot to talk to our publics about.” Allen noted he is “struck by the fact that when you pick up a book…it’s very hard for members of the public to see the contribution made by […]
That Article
Until this morning’s mystifying Lauren Myracle news, people in publishing were shaking their heads in a variety of ways over today’s NYT piece on Amazon’s publishing efforts. The idea is that buying a celebrity memoir at auction and reissuing a self-published work for no advance changes the game, but it mostly proves that almost any article about Amazon gives a reporter a shot at the newspaper’s front page, even when it contains no actual news. Amazon’s Russ Grandinetti “said publishers were in love with their own demise” and commented, “It’s always the end of the world.” At least in the […]
Imprints: Night Shade Shuts Down Pugilist Press; Freehand Books Freezes Acquisitions
Night Shade Books has shut down its dark literary fiction imprint Pugilist Press, set to launch sometime this year, and the imprint’s editor-in-chief Juliet Ulman has left the company. Night Shade publisher Jason Williams said in an email that he shut the imprint down in order to concentrate on the company’s core business. “We started working on Pugilist at the beginning of 2010, when things were much more stable than they are now. In light of the current highly unpredictable and unstable publishing environment, launching a new imprint seems like poor reasoning. Especially a literary imprint, which is probably the […]