Does self-publishing represent a threat to traditional publishers, or perhaps an opportunity? A number of people in the publishing industry seem dismissive of self-publishing writers or their numbers. But Philip Jones of FutureBook thinks that this is a mistake. He notes that readers who buy cheap self-published books will be spending time reading them that they might otherwise have spent reading more expensive works from traditional publishers. What strikes me most about indie writers, however, is not what they write, but how they publish it. Konrath may be a 'downmarket' writer for some, but he is...

The Authors Guild blog has an interesting piece looking at Amazon’s growth in light of a decline in antitrust enforcement. For background, it brings up the Bloomberg Businessweek story I covered the other day, it moves on to excerpt a piece in Harpers by Barry Lynn that compares Amazon to the current state of other monopolized markets, such as the chicken-raising industry: Mr. Lynn makes the case that Amazon’s dominance isn’t just a story of an industry disrupted by online commerce and digital upheaval, it’s about the abandoning of New Deal era protections of retailers in...

Publishers Weekly takes a long, interesting look at the question of library e-books and what they mean for both the publishing and library industries. To some librarians’ surprise, library e-books are proving extremely popular with patrons. "It's amazing," says Diane Eidelman, administrator for member services at the Suffolk Cooperative Library System, a consortium of over 50 libraries on New York's Long Island. "We just can't keep up with the e-book demand. We'll purchase an enormous amount of content, and within 24 hours it's all checked out." Indeed, the numbers tell the story....

I suppose it was inevitable. As self-e-publishing has drawn more and more attention, with relatively major-name authors deciding to forego pro-publishing and go it alone, and over 1/4 of the Amazon Top 100 list being made up of such books, now signs of an anti-pro-publishing “backlash” have popped up. Blogger switch11 at iReaderReview points out the “mistake” one popular self-publishing author made when he decided to sign up with Macmillan. There’s no other way to put it – Signing a book deal was a huge mistake. John Rector could have been a Top 100 Kindle...

In light of the official announcement of her seven-figure publishing contract, Amanda Hocking wrote a longer blog post going into complete detail about why she wanted the deal. She notes with more than a little irony: [It] is crazy that we live in a time that I have to justify taking a seven-figure a publishing deal with St. Martin's. Ten years ago, nobody would question this. Now everybody is. Her reasons boil down to getting her work out to readers who want to get her works from bookstores, readers have complained about the quality...

In an update on a story from a couple of days ago, the New York Times reports that self-publishing star Amanda Hocking has signed a four-book contract with St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of Macmillan. The Times reports that bidding eventually rose beyond $2 million, though St. Martin’s declined to reveal the exact figure. The first book in the 4-book “Watersong” series should be released in fall, 2012. Responding to the rumors on her blog a couple of days ago, Hocking explained that she wanted to be able to spend more of her time writing, and less...

On the blog of The Society for Scholarly Publishing, The Scholarly Kitchen, Rick Anderson has a pretty good summary of the HarperCollins library e-book uproar, in which HarperCollins imposed a 26-checkout limit before library e-books would have to be repurchased. Yesterday I was talking about the ways publishers are failing to connect with consumers, and this turns out to be another example: How has HarperCollins responded to the uproar? Awkwardly. In a remarkably tone-deaf “open letter to librarians” , HarperCollins explained that “our prior e-book policy for libraries dates back almost 10 years to a time...

It’s right around the one year anniversary of the week that Amazon removed Macmillan books’ buy buttons in its snit-fit over the implementation of agency pricing, resulting in a lot of authors losing a week’s worth of royalties. And just in time to mark the anniversary, an interesting tidbit of information pops up on eReads. Richard Curtis reports that in a cover letter attached to the latest Macmillan semi-annual royalty statements authors have received, Macmillan CEO John Sargent makes note of an interesting adjustment to author royalties. Feeling that authors shouldn’t have to suffer on account of a battle...

It’s the time of year when people and publications start making lists of things that happened during the rest of it, and Publishing Perspectives is kicking off a series on “the most dramatic events in publishing in 2010.” The first piece in the series is also posted at the website of its writer, publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin of IdeaLog. Shatzkin’s pick for the most dramatic publishing event of 2010 is the confrontation between Amazon and five of the big six publishers early this year over bringing an end to Amazon’s $9.99 e-book pricing scheme. Even in theory, Shatzkin writes,...

Charlie Stross has posted to his blog about the mysterious absence of one of his Merchant Princes series—not the first book or most recent one, but a middle book in the series—as an e-book. The problem, Stross explains, is that the missing book, The Merchant Wars, fell between two periods of Tor e-book activity. The first few volumes were issued during the ill-fated Tor Webscriptions experiment, which Tor’s parent company shut down after just a couple of days. The later volumes were issued after Tor started up again with e-books in 2008. But The Merchant Wars...

Publishers who insisted on agency pricing are starting to be hoist by their own petards—but unfortunately, authors and agents are being hoisted right up there with them. This is the message that a Wall Street Journal article Paul mentioned a few days ago (from another publication) brings us, and it’s one worthy of revisiting. As most of the comments on Paul’s post point out, this article has a number of problems—most notably that literary fiction as a genre has already been in trouble for some time now, and the lower per-unit income from e-books may just be another...

From the press release: Ingram Content Group Inc. and Macmillan today announced a new distribution services model that will integrate Ingram’s print on demand (POD) and fulfillment capability with Macmillan’s publishing program. Macmillan will use Ingram’s print on demand and physical distribution infrastructure to manage traditional inventory and POD for “”long tail” titles. Macmillan will continue to fully service its customer relationships from its primary warehouse in Virginia. “Macmillan recognizes that during these times of change in the publishing industry, the traditional methods of solving the logistics and print business challenges cannot remain the same,” said Peter Garabedian, Senior Vice President and...