Now is your best chance to find my books, Troll Song and Forgotten Legends, available for 50% off at Smashwords as part of their 2023 End of Year Sale! Find my book and many more at https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos/
Book sales are slumping and if you're not a celebrity author, your publisher won't do much to promote your work. For The Walrus, Tajjia Isen writes about how "the finicky labour of trying to bottle hype is largely offloaded onto writers," and how all this affects the kind of titles publishers acquire, and the books readers end up buying.
A spotlight on a great indie publisher based in West Yorkshire via The Publishing Post | “In contrast to the corporate and conglomerate nature of publishing today, Bluemoose publishes stories that engage and inspire, rather than books that rely on celebrity names to attract readers.”
On the #enshitification of #academic#publishing. Where scientists burn the candle at both ends, paying to read and publish their work, in what is the ultimate grift.
Europe & the rest of the world are good at #publishing works from around the world. Only 3% of US books are translations. Ilan Stavans of Amherst College wanted to rectify this imbalance. His Restless Books, founded in New York around a decade ago, has brought out c. 150 books by 120 authors from 40 countries.
Dean Street Press is a great independent publisher who are ‘ devoted to producing, uncovering, and revitalizing good books’. Their authors include Stella Gibbons, Brian Flynn and D E Stevenson. This month it’s Dean Street December and I fancy reading a new author to me, Patricia Wentworth, who wrote mystery novels in the mid 20th century. I’ve been having fun looking through their website this morning trying to decide which one to read first #bookstodon#publishing@bookstodon https://www.deanstreetpress.co.uk/pages/author_page/33
Boundary Road by Ami Rao is going straight on my TBR list - a book set on a London bus, with all the possible drama that will likely involve and the glimpses of life outside the window - looks like it’ll be a Kindle read for me as it’s from a very small publisher called Everything with Words #bookstodon#blind#publishing@bookstodon https://www.everythingwithwords.com/books/boundary-road/
Updated my sensitivity reading page. Because of newly ongoing harassment towards authenticity/sensitivity readers, I stopped cataloging published books I've consulted on. Shame because they were fantastic books! I work with trad publishers but am open to indie as well. https://robertkingett.com/reading/#Publishing@books@bookstodon
Can someone legitimately explain why Colleen Hoover's books are classified as romance? From a genre point of view? I get it that she will make publishers money no matter what so they go outside the lines on her books but They don't end on an HFN or HEA. If this is an attempt at growing the genre or something something growing up something, I now know why I just could never get into her as a romance author. Suspense/thriller writer? Yes. Romance? Not my style. I actually like the HFN's and HEAs and actually don't want it to become harder to find those books. #Romance#RomanceLandia@romancelandia#Publishing
Have seen some talk about people boycotting the Big 5 publishers. Because they own so much, I personally don't know how possible that is. But there's a good article out about some indie publishers which may help - https://bookriot.com/best-indie-publishing-companies/
New study: "Our results show that Chinese PhD student significant pressures to publish in order to obtain their degree, with papers indexed in the Science Citation Index [#SCI] often a mandatory requirement for students to obtain their degree. Moreover, it is found that first authorship is also mandatory." https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-023-04854-8
Creatives: Would you like to better understand why writers & authors (+ musicians and artists) are being squeezed? The impact Amazon has had on the publishing industry, the chequered history of DRM, the dirt on copyright? How about 'how news got broken', 'why streaming doesn't pay' & what people in the creative industries can actually do about the current state of affairs? Highly recommend Choke Point Capitalism (by Rebecca Giblin & Cory Doctorow) as a read. Please ask your local library to get it in too so more people can have access.
@romancelandia
Found via @tuphlos on twitter, this piece has some blood pressure-raising bits; the most important is the assumption that changing the covers of genre romances of different heat levels/sexual content, changes the actual content.
"oh, these books that are no longer coded erotic romance are actually good stories/writing/characters, but I couldn't have known unless they had acceptable covers" is a thing said there.
Checking into the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) Self-publishing Conference #SelfPubCon this weekend for top tips to inform myself and help support my lovely indie authors!
You can too: it's completely free, replays are available for three days 👇
"Scammers have sent messages posing as Hachette Book Group (HBG) representatives to trick people into believing they are interviewing and hiring job candidates or contracting freelance work on HBG’s behalf. These emails, which sometimes use HBG’s logo or include fake employment letters, are often sent from email addresses that closely resemble HBG’s."
"Scammers purporting to be literary agents have contacted authors to make fraudulent contract offers under HBG’s name. They often promise a large advance, falsely claim that HBG has expressed interest in publishing the author’s manuscript, pretend to be working with HBG editors or other employees, and create fake publishing agreements or letters of interest they claim to be negotiating with HBG."