Book Trends

Articles about trends in bookselling and the publishing industry.

7 Things the Most-Highlighted Kindle Passages Tell Us About American Readers

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This post by Jospeh Stromberg originally appeared on Vox on 5/30/14.

Conventionally, the most common way of gauging the most popular books in America has been looking at the New York Times’ bestsellers list.

But as we shift from reading on paper to screens, there’s an interesting new option: Amazon’s lists of the most-highlighted passages and most-highlighted books on Kindles around the world.

When you read on a Kindle, you can highlight passages, the same way you might highlight text in a physical book. The passages you highlight are all collected in one place, accessible either on the reader or a computer.

But Amazon also collects data on what its readers highlight most. The resulting most-highlighted lists are a fascinating record of reading as a whole.

There are some limitations to the data: it’s only for people who read on Kindles, and use them for highlighting. The data is extremely heavily skewed towards American readers (Amazon isn’t saying whether they include international data, but it looks like they don’t). And some books don’t lend themselves to highlighting quite as much, which is why many of even Amazon’s bestsellers don’t appear on the lists.

But it’s also true that some books get bought and end up on bestseller lists, but aren’t actually read — whereas these lists are a terrific record of what we might nowadays call reader engagement. They reveal not just what books are read, but what part of books are read — and even tell us a little about what people are thinking about as they do their highlighting.

Here are seven things the lists tell us about Americans reading today.

 

Click here to read the full post on Vox.

 

Writer Victory!—Yearning, Empathy, & How Political Correctness is Killing Diversity in Literature

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This post by Kristen Lamb originally appeared on her blog on 6/4/14.

After deviating last week, today we tackle the final letter in our Writer Acrostic. Thus far, we’ve covered: V is for Voluntarily Submit. Anticipate trials and challenges and understand there is far more strength in bending than breaking. I was for Identify Problem Areas. We can’t fix what we fail to acknowledge. Our profession hinges on us writing better today than we did yesterday. C was for Change Your Mind. We can only achieve what we can first conceive. Make your mind and set it and keep it set.

T was for Turn Over our Future. When we let go of things we can’t control, we’re far more powerful to drive and direct that which we can. R was for Remember Writers are Magicians. This isn’t a hobby or “playtime.” Our society is only as evolved as the artists who drive the change. Show me a country without writers and I’ll show you a country doomed.

Y stands for Yearning. Natural talent has very little to do with being a great writer or a successful writer. We have to want the dream. I can teach you guys structure, technique, POV, etc. but I can’t do the work for you. You have to want it.

Over Memorial Day, Hubby and I watched Lone Survivor. There was a really neat quote in the intro: “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing. Moderation is for cowards.”

 

A Writer’s Work is Never Done

Unless I’m sleeping, I’m always on the job. Even then, y’all should be privy to some of my dreams. Since my fiction involves a lot of complex science, it’s not uncommon for me to bolt up in the middle of the night with an A-HA! I make a joke that I do my best work while sleeping.

One of the reasons I tell writers NOT to start a writing blog is that teaching writing and writing are two completely different skill sets. Writers are not necessarily good teachers. In fact, I will go so far as to say some of the most brilliant authors I’ve ever met were dreadful teachers.

I remember being at Thrillerfest and one of the mega-authors (who I won’t name) had somehow been coaxed into teaching a class. This was a writer I…worshipped. BRILLIANT man.

I battled for a spot right in the center so I could take notes and learn all I could. The poor author, though? I was waiting for him to chew off his own leg to escape. He kept saying things like, “Well, I don’t know how I do it. I just…do it.” *looks at watch* *looks for fire exit*

 

Click here to read the full post on Kristen Lamb’s blog.

 

Amazon vs Hachette and the Erosion of Author Solidarity

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This post by Mary W. Walters originally appeared on her The Militant Writer site on 6/7/14.

Writers need to remember that both sides are making more money from our talent than we ever can.

Like many other writers, I am caught in a sticky predicament when it comes to the battle between Amazon and the publisher Hachette, in that supporting what is growing into a cause célèbre for many traditionally published authors means diminishing our own work and reducing our (mostly paltry) incomes.

For those who have missed this story, Amazon has begun to delay the delivery of books by Hachette authors significantly, and to create impediments on searches for Hachette books on the Amazon site: apparently due to a dispute between the two companies over ebook pricing. (See the LA Times for details.) No less a celebrity than Stephen Colbert is now urging all of us to boycott Amazon in support of Hachette authors, of which he is one. The New York Times is outraged. So are many noted writers (Martin Gladwell and James Patterson are two, both also published by Hachette) and several writers’ organizations.

Those of us who are caught in the middle of this firestorm are primarily established writers who have chosen to go the self-published route for some or all of our new or out-of-print titles, and to use Amazon as our publishing partner. Typically, we ourselves have had books published with traditional presses in the past, and as a result we have strong connections (e.g., through membership in writers’ organizations) and even long-term friendships with other authors who are still published only by established presses. These presses include not only Hachette but all publishers who could receive similar treatment from Amazon in future, which is most of them. Solidarity is at stake here, and in a pre-self-publishing world, we would have easily and strongly stood together. Now, over this issue and several others related to it, such strength in unity is impossible.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Militant Writer.

 

10 Things You Need To Know About Publishing FanFic on Amazon

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This post by Tara Maya originally appeared on her Tara Maya’s Tales site on 6/27/13.

Amazon is rocking the publishing world once again with a brand new kind of publishing: legal fan fic. Okay, there have been licensed novels before… Star Trek novels, Star Wars novels, movie novelizations… but this is far more accessible.

It’s called Kindle Worlds. Right now, there are only about twelve Worlds available to write in. Some biggies, like Harry Potter and Twilight, are not on the list. A few are television worlds, a few are author’s own worlds (such as Wool).

However, before you break out dancing and toss your Snape and Legolas slash romance/adventure into the ring, there are a few things you need to know about publishing fan fiction with Amazon.

 

1. This is not self-publishing, as with KDP.

Amazon’s self-publishing platform, KDP, allows authors to keep all rights to their own works. Amazon takes a cut of the royalties as a distributor, but Amazon is not the publisher. With Kindle Worlds, “All works accepted for Kindle Worlds will be published by Amazon Publishing.”

That said, this doesn’t seem intended to be as exclusive as the Singles program. Amazon wants your content, as long as it’s not something they will be sued over.

 

2. The steps seem pretty easy.

 

Click here to read the full post on Tara Maya’s Tales.

 

Smashwords and OverDrive to Bring 200,000+ Indie Ebooks to 20,000+ Public Libraries

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This post by Mark Coker originally appeared on the Smashwords blog on 5/20/14.

Imagine if your indie ebook was purchasable by thousands of public libraries around the globe. Now imagine no more.

Smashwords today announced an agreement to supply more than 200,000 titles to OverDrive, the world’s largest library ebook platform.

OverDrive powers the ebook procurement and checkout systems for 20,000 public libraries around the world, including 90% of US public libraries.

This agreement marks a watershed moment for indie authors, libraries and library patrons around the world.

It’s also a big deal for thousands of small independent presses around the globe who now have a convenient onramp into the OverDrive network.

Millions of library patrons will now have access to the amazing diversity and quality of the Smashwords catalog.

At a time when many large publishers are charging libraries high prices for ebooks (front list ebooks from Big 5 publishers can cost libraries $80, and even backlist ebooks can cost libraries $20-40), Smashwords authors and publishers are stepping in to supply thousands of affordably priced, library-friendly ebooks. Faced with the option of purchasing a single James Patterson novel for around $40.00, or ten thrillers from today’s most popular indie authors at $4.00 each, libraries now have exciting new options to build patron-pleasing ebook collections.

To help librarians streamline collection development, in the weeks ahead OverDrive and Smashwords will create curated buy-lists lists libraries can use to purchase the most popular indie authors and titles. Libraries will soon have the option, for example, to purchase the top 100 YA fantasy novels (approximate price: ~$400), or the top 1,000 most popular contemporary romances (~$4,000) or top 200 complete series across multiple categories (~$2,000), or the top 200 thrillers, mysteries, epic fantasies or memoirs. With most of our bestsellers priced priced at or under $4.00, you can do the math to appreciate how incredibly affordable these collections will be. We’re going to have fun slicing and dicing.

Our lists will measure title popularity by aggregating sales data from across the Smashwords distribution network. Indie authors: If you needed yet another reason to fully distribute all your titles to all retailers via the Smashwords distribution network, now you have it. Stand up and have your sales counted because we want to help libraries purchase the greatest diversity of high-quality ebooks across multiple genres and categories.

Here are a couple additional stats to help you appreciate the massive scale of the OverDrive network:

 

Click here to read the full post on the Smashwords blog.

 

Save Our Stacks

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This post by Rebecca Schuman originally appeared on Slate on 5/12/14.

It’s not about the books. It’s about the books representing the last place on campus where intellectual contemplation thrives.

If a college library moves 170,000 of its books to storage, to make room for sumptuous new administrative offices—which is happening at Maine’s Colby College—does it still count as a library? Or, as an impassioned open letter from concerned faculty attests, is it no longer “a place for reflection and deep thought, research and scholarship,” but rather merely “a waiting room” sans books and a reference librarian, and surrounded by temples to the new gods of the American university?

The Colby administration argues that the renovations are there to help the students, providing them with more study space. The student newspaper is less convinced, headlining an op-ed “Sorry, Your New Library Still Sucks.”

The Colby case is but one example of a widespread move to re-appropriate library space in the age of digitization. From the University of Nebraska to the University of Edinburgh, from the University of Nevada–Las Vegas to Kent State, knowledge repositories the world over may soon have to change their names, because the liber will be increasingly hard to come by. In fact, the only major library to “resist” this trend—the New York Public Library—did so only reluctantly, and out of capitulation to a passionate, organized, grass-roots campaign.

 

Click here to read the full article on Slate.

 

May 2014 Author Earnings Report

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This post originally appeared on Author Earnings on 5/19/14.

Three months ago, we released our first full report on Amazon e-book sales and author earnings. Our goal was to look at unit sales and earnings by various publishing paths in order to help authors make informed decisions in this rapidly changing publishing environment. The results were eye-opening, but it was merely our first data point. Our long term goal has been to pull data every quarter to see if we can spot developing trends.

A quick recap on our methodology: Using a custom software spider, we can crawl every Amazon bestseller list and pull info from each book’s product page html. This data goes into a spreadsheet, which gives us the price, ranking, average review, and much more for every ranked e-book on Amazon. Using established ranking-to-sales data from numerous bestselling authors (including our own works), we are able to present author earnings by title and publishing type. As with our past reports, all the data has been anonymized and is available for download at the end of this report. And just like with past reports, any reasonable numbers entered for the power curve of the product rank-to-sales ratio reveals the same overall picture. That is, our conclusions are not dependent on our estimates but are borne out of the freely available data.

The exciting thing about pulling this data is that we have no idea what we’re going to find. Our conclusions since the last report might need rethinking. Our advice on what an author might want to do with a manuscript today could very well change as the publishing industry takes another swerve. My partner and I debated what we expected to see from this second round of data. We both predicted no more than a 2%-3% swing from any one publishing path to the other over such a short period of time. I wagered we’d see a 2% drop in self-publishing titles, offset by an increase in Amazon imprints, as the latter continues to snatch up high performing e-books and put more marketing muscle behind their own authors. My partner thought we’d see a 2% hike in self-publishing at the expense of traditional publishing. We bet a dollar on the outcome.

 

Click here to read the full post on Author Earnings.

 

Literary Criticism in the Era of the Clickbait Headline

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This post by Jason Diamond originally appeared on Flavorwire on 5/15/14.

This probably says more about the type of conversations I have when I’m not sitting behind a computer than anything, but I’ve spent plenty of time in bars debating whether book reviews are of any value to anybody, from the reading public to the author who might look to critics for notes on what to improve. (If you are that special kind of literary masochist, then good on you. Go on doing what you’re doing). As someone who writes about books, as well as the type of person who enjoys reading criticism — to the point where I’ll read books full of book reviews from decades ago — I’m always going to stick up for book reviews. I’m always going to want to read them, and I wouldn’t mind always writing them. Reviews are important. Without them, the literary balance is thrown off, and the bar can be lowered to astonishing levels.

The thing is, people really don’t talk about reviews all that much. They might read them, but for the most part, unless it’s some intense Michiko Kakutani takedown over at the Times, discussing reviews doesn’t really compare to talking about which Stark was killed on the latest episode of Game of Thrones in terms of culturally relevant conversation topics. I wish that wasn’t the case, but in this tweet-a-second world, book reviews have had to fight really hard to stay in the conversation, especially on the Internet, where an Amazon review can make any casual reader feel like they’re John Leonard.

 

Click here to read the full post on Flavorwire.

 

Read, Kids, Read

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This editorial by Frank Bruni originally appeared on The New York Times site on 5/12/14.

As an uncle I’m inconsistent about too many things.

Birthdays, for example. My nephew Mark had one on Sunday, and I didn’t remember — and send a text — until 10 p.m., by which point he was asleep.

School productions, too. I saw my niece Bella in “Seussical: The Musical” but missed “The Wiz.” She played Toto, a feat of trans-species transmogrification that not even Meryl, with all of her accents, has pulled off.

But about books, I’m steady. Relentless. I’m incessantly asking my nephews and nieces what they’re reading and why they’re not reading more. I’m reliably hurling novels at them, and also at friends’ kids. I may well be responsible for 10 percent of all sales of “The Fault in Our Stars,” a teenage love story to be released as a movie next month. Never have I spent money with fewer regrets, because I believe in reading — not just in its power to transport but in its power to transform.

So I was crestfallen on Monday, when a new report by Common Sense Media came out. It showed that 30 years ago, only 8 percent of 13-year-olds and 9 percent of 17-year-olds said that they “hardly ever” or never read for pleasure. Today, 22 percent of 13-year-olds and 27 percent of 17-year-olds say that. Fewer than 20 percent of 17-year-olds now read for pleasure “almost every day.” Back in 1984, 31 percent did. What a marked and depressing change.

 

Click here to read the full editorial on The New York Times.

 

Memoir and Voice and Why You Need to Sharpen Up

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This post by Jane Mauret originally appeared on her About A Book blog on 5/10/14.

Whilst Frank McCourt [Angela’s Ashes] and Augusten Burroughs [Running With Scissors; A Wolf at the Table] survived accusations of inaccuracies in their memoirs, James Frey’s highly successful A Million Little Pieces, 2002 [featured on Oprah’s Book Club] did not help the genre when it was later revealed he made up 70 per cent.

However, the truly worst case was Sybil [1973], about a woman’s dissociative identity disorder and the most harrowing book I have ever read [aside from Dave Pelzer’s A Boy Called It, 1995]. In 2012 Debbie Nathan’s Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case demonstrated that Sybil was a money-making venture cooked up by the author, Flora Rheta Schreiber, Sybil [Shirley Mason] and her therapist, Dr Cornelia Wilbur.

So this history may have contributed to the sense right now that dysfunctional childhood memoir has had its day. However, some books have overcome this due to the voice the authors utilise. This was achieved as far back as 1985 with Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges are not the Only Fruit and more latterly by Haven Kimmel’s A Girl Named Zippy [2002] and Jeanette Walls’ The Glass Castle [2005].

The message is – even a total unknown can make headway with agents and publishers if they write with a captivating voice.

 

Click here to read the full post on About A Book.

 

Barnes & Noble's Last-Ditch Effort To Save Itself: Going Back To College

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This article by Phil Wahba originally appeared on The Huffington Post on 5/8/14.

NEW BRUNSWICK, New Jersey (Reuters) – Barnes & Noble Inc is turning to its college roots to boost its top line.

The U.S. bookseller, which opened in 1965 as a university bookstore in New York, wants a much bigger presence on college campuses, where students last year spent an average of $1,200 on textbooks and supplies, according to the College Board.

Barnes & Noble, now the second largest operator of college bookstores with 696 shops, plans to have about 1,000 locations within five years, Max Roberts, chief executive of the company’s college business, said in an exclusive interview at Rutgers University’s bookstore in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

It intends to do that by getting more schools to outsource their bookstore operations with the lure of nicer, higher-grossing stores and by poaching accounts from larger rival Follett Corp, which runs 940 stores.

Success isn’t a slam dunk: About 45 percent of U.S. colleges still run their own stores. And overall college store sales have stagnated in recent years at about $10 billion, according to the National Association of College Stores.

 

Click here to read the full article on The Huffington Post.

Will Barnes & Noble be gone by New Year's?

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This editorial by Michael Levin originally appeared on The Contra Costa Times News on 5/2/14.

If anyone gives you a Barnes & Noble gift card, be sure to cash it in by the end of the year.

This may be the last year that Barnes & Noble bookstores remain open.

It’s bad news for people who love books. It’s worse news for the next generation of readers, who may never experience buying a book in a bookstore.

B&N has been closing about 20 stores per year since 2012 and has said it will continue to do so for the next several years. But its financial position is bleak.

This follows a decades-long period of expansion, moving into neighborhoods where privately-owned bookstores thrived, destroying those stores with cut-price best-sellers, and all but owning the book business.

Borders collapsed because of poor choices — weak locations, an overemphasis on music, and, worst of all, selling off its online bookstore to Amazon for $20 million in the 1990s. Chump change, by today’s standards.

So why is B&N on the ropes, if it has virtually no competition today from chains or privately owned bookstores?

 

Click here to read the full editorial on The Contra Costa Times News.

 

The Great E-book Pricing Question

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This post by David Gaughran originally appeared on his Let’s Get Visible site on 4/17/14.

There’s more guff written about pricing than almost anything else, resulting in an extremely confusing situation for new self-publishers. I often see them pricing too low or too high, and the decision is rarely made the right way, i.e. ascertaining their goals and pricing accordingly.

 

Price/value confusion

Before we get to the nuts-and-bolts, it’s time to slay a zombie meme. Much of the noise on this issue springs from conflating two concepts, namely price and value.

Authors often say something like, “My book is worth more than a coffee.” Or publishers might say, “A movie costs $10 and provides two hours of entertainment. Novels provide several times that and should cost more than $9.99.”

Price and value are two different things. From Wikipedia:

Economic value is not the same as market price. If a consumer is willing to buy a good, it implies that the customer places a higher value on the good than the market price.

The price is something we, as self-publishers, attach to the product. The value is the worth the consumer places on it (not the author or publisher). In simple terms, unless your price is lower than the value a reader places on your book, they won’t purchase.

Marketing isn’t simply about reaching consumers but also about convincing them to place a value on the product higher than the price-tag. The higher the price, the harder that job will be.

In other words, it’s a lot easier to sell a book at $2.99 than $9.99.

 

Doesn’t price influence value?

 

Click here to read the full post on Let’s Get Digital.

 

Q&A: IBPA Director Angela Bole on Self-Publishing and the Digital Future

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This post by Rich Bellis originally appeared on Digital Book World on 5/5/14.

Angela Bole assumed her role as executive director of the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) in July 2013, moving over from No. 2 in command at the Book Industry Study Group (BISG). As she rounds out her first year as the head of the largest publishing association in the U.S. with about 3,000 individual members, she took some time to speak with Digital Book World about her plans for IBPA and how independent presses, self-published authors and digital natives are all reshaping the marketplace.

 

Rich Bellis: What was it like transitioning from BISG, where you served as deputy executive director since 2009, and how were the first few months settling in at IBPA?

Angela Bole: It was a little bit of the best of both worlds. I had a lot of the same contacts coming over from a similar trade association in publishing, or at least a sister association. I still had a lot of the same people that I continue to work with, so that was really helpful.

But it’s a whole new market for me working with independent publishers and self-published authors, so there’s a learning curve as well. I’m still in the middle of it.

 

RB: What direction are you planning to take IBPA in order to continue to serve that market?

AB: IBPA has a long history. It’s been around for 30 years, and it’s one of the most trusted associations in publishing for independent publishers. It has a strong legacy, and that was really interesting to me coming in. Our focus now is just to strengthen the foundations even more: to look at the different programs that we’re running and make sure they’re relevant today—and they have been for many years—and to change some of them if we see that we need to do that to make sure they’re meeting our members’ needs.

Another thing that’s important to us right now is really understanding who our members are. So we launched a full-scale member survey in March, and we pulled results in that we’ll be analyzing this summer so we can start to tailor programs to different members’ needs.

 

RB: Without having done that yet, can you speculate on anything you’re likely to learn about the makeup of your membership?

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Digital Book World.

 

Wattpad Gets into the Digital Publishing Game

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This post by Michael Kozlowski originally appeared on goodereader on 5/2/14.

Wattpad has popularized the notion of serialized digital books on their website. Millions of readers and writers use the free service to hone their writing skills and develop a loyal following. The serialized approach is the most dominant on the platform with readers giving their feedback after every chapter. Wattpad is now getting into the publishing game with two of their most seminal stories.

Wattpad is using Amazon Createspace to make physical versions of the books available. This will give people the ability to buy printed versions of the books and allow the authors to do book signings. Wattpad is also distributing the books digitally with Amazon, iBooks and Kobo.

 

Click here to read the full post on goodereader.

Also see: Wattpad Raises $46M From OMERS Ventures And Others To Grow Its Social Publishing Network, from TechCrunch.