Writing and Publishing News

There’s always something new happening these days within the publishing industry&#8212new publishers on the scene, publishers and bookstores changing their way of operating and coming up with new programs for authors, price changes, policy changes and so forth.

HarperCollins, for example, is forming a co-op designed to take the place of the author advance. Instead of the coveted advance, authors will enter into a profit-sharing agreement. This new model is in the experimental stages. Let’s watch and see what happens.

Steve Riggio, CEO at Barnes and Noble is interested in finding a way to change the returns policy. Isn’t that good news? Who knew that even the booksellers find this an expensive and awkward practice?

Pat McCurdy-Crescimanno contacted me from Donohue Group, Inc. to say that the PCIP service will experience an increase starting July 1, 2008. P-CIP is the Publishers Cataloging-in-Publication information that Donohue, and others, apply to your book for library use. For their regular service (delivery within 2 weeks) it will cost $75. Rush service (delivery in 3 business days) is $100. Learn more at http://www.dgiin.com/pcipform.htm

Who is affected by these changes? Over 400,000 new and returning authors. Yes, the figures are out! According to Bowker, the number of books produced in 2007 was 411,422. And every one of these authors should care about what is going on in the publishing industry. How does a busy author stay informed? By tuning in to this blog; by reading the SPAWN Market Update, published on the first of each month in the member area of the SPAWN website: http://www.spawn.org. You must be a SPAWN member in order to access this informative, meaty newsletter each month AND the incredibly rich archives. Membership is $45/year. In the meantime, subscribe to SPAWN’s FREE newsletter.

You can also join IBPA (formerly PMA) and SPAN and study their monthly newsletters. And be sure to read my book&#8212which was designed to help authors and independent publishers navigate more successfully through the publishing process and beyond: The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book. http://www.matilijapress.com/rightway.html

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 21st, 2008 at 5:05 am and is filed under Publishing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.