Leaving aside any debate about the rights and wrongs of the US-China trade dispute and tariffs being imposed by both sides, the dispute has brought to the fore the unhealthy reliance of US publishers on China – or more specifically of US publishers that have their books printed in China. An estimated 150 million Bibles Read More …
In an ill-considered move aimed at protecting the domestic publishing industry, the Indian government has imposed a 5% tax on imported paper books. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the new duties on Friday (domestic print books remain zero-rated) to a dismayed audience of publishers and publishing stakeholders. The tax on uncoated and lightweight paper was Read More …
With a name like Boldwood Books one really wouldn’t expect anything less than a bold launch of a new publishing operation, and that’s exactly what Amanda Ridout has delivered. While many bigger publishers have chosen to window releases, eschew the benefits of POD, downplay ebooks and carry on with archaic territorial restrictions, Amanda Ridout’s Boldwood Books Read More …
There’s not much to go on here, but also no real surprise. Amazon claimed 50% of online book sales in France in 2018, according to a report by Kantor World Panel. According to the report Amazon was by far the largest online retailer in the country, and its biggest showing was in the books sector, Read More …
When StreetLib launched The New Publishing Standard in September 2017 we made clear the function of the journal was to stimulate debate about the much-neglected global book markets. It was not a StreetLib promotional tool, and not a vehicle to advocate digital at the expense of traditional formats. But occasionally StreetLib becomes part of the Read More …
NPD Bookscan has reported 2018 print sales at 707.4 million, the highest since 2010. Michelle Obama’s Becoming played a big role in that, and of course in previous years it’s been JK Rowling. Nice to know, in this era of diversity in publishing, that women authors are keeping the industry afloat. Over at Publishers Lunch Read More …
Given The New Publishing Standard only launched in September 2017, 2018 is is our first full calendar year, and our first opportunity to look back on the year and select the outstanding publishing stories, publishing people and publishing industry journals of 2018. Needless to say, being TNPS we were looking at the stories, people and Read More …
For a paper-importing country like India, rising paper prices pose a more serious challenge in coming years than online price discounting and the rise of ebooks. As Indian publishers strive to find and retain readers in a price-sensitive market so these challenges mount. Some, it seems, prefer the ostrich approach to dealing with arising problems: Read More …
Amazon is also a major customer – and many of those books in the Amazon packaging are coming to you straight from Gardners. That will be news to many indie authors reading this, as will the news that Gardners handles ebooks. Head over to ALLi for the tour. At which point just to Read More …
German ebook distributor Bookwire has for over a year now been offering POD distribution in Spanish Latin America via PodiPrint, and has now taken the step of introducing the service at home in Europe. Bookwire has contracted with Amazon’s Kindle Enterprise Publishing to offer Bookwire titles as paperbacks in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The deal Read More …
The Hot Sheet is a publishing industry news-sheet for authors, produced every two weeks by Porter Anderson and Jane Friedman, and reviewed here every other Sunday (when possible) as one of the best bi-weekly industry overviews available to authors. We’re not interested in delivering breaking news, but perspective on stories that are likely to retain meaning for your Read More …
Tucked away in the heart of Italy, the Mediterranean to the west, the Adriatic to the east, Venice to the north, Rome to the south, lies Florence, a city that has had key roles in the arts since before the Renaissance and right up to the modern day, with its central role in Dan Brown’s Read More …
As reported here yesterday, a CreateSpace self-published title made it through to the shortlist for the prestigious French literary award the Prix Renaudot. Amazon’s CreateSpace goes out with a bang – cracks shortlist for prestigious French literary award Today comes news some French bookstore owners are now boycotting not just the CreateSpace title but the Read More …
Here’s a summary of TNPS posts from the past seven days. UK’s Bradford Lit Fest and USA’s Washington National Book Fest see record attendance Sharjah Publishing City sponsors Nigerian literature award Ireland: “A buoyant time for publishing. One of today’s most vibrant book markets.” Sweden-based Arabic-language audiobook firm Kitab Sawti attracts new investment Peru exempts Read More …
CreateSpace is on its final legs as Amazon completes its absorption into KDP Print this month, but it goes out with a bang, not a whimper. By the final of the Prix Renaudot in November CreateSpace will be history, but it might just also make history. When Actualitté posted the shortlist for the Prix Renaudot Read More …
The Bookseller reports today that British and international smaller publishers are finding many UK bookstores raising the barrier to getting coveted shelf-space. Bigger chains in particular appear reluctant to risk shelf-space for debut authors with no track record, or for titles from “ethnic” authors or with “diverse” content. London-based publisher of African writing, Cassava Republic, Read More …
“Audiobooks are the future, not ebooks,” said Penguin Random House CEO Markus Dohle last week at Spain’s Forum Edita at the Barcelona School of Management of the Pompeu Fabra University. Talking about book publishing in general, Dohle said, The sector is experiencing the best moment of the last fifty years … and maybe of the last five Read More …
The printing industry in Poland is prospering. The problem does not lie in low reading rates but in payment deadlines and the financial condition of publishers. So runs a headline in Poland’s Investor this week in a post that conveniently leaves ebooks out of the equation as it addresses the fate of Poland’s book printers. Nearly Read More …
It’s now several months since the January 2018 Author Earnings Report arrived. You can still find some of it on the Author Earnings site. But only some of it. Because within hours of the report going live Data Guy was redacting information, and soon after removing entire sections of the report as anger rose in Read More …
It would be impossible to try cover even a fraction of the publishing news that lands on my e-desk each day, but there’s so much happening in our industry that passes unnoticed. So here’s a selection of some of the best publishing stories from the past 48 hours or so. Apologies if some are behind Read More …
