publishing

The Shirley Jackson Awards finalists have just been announced and PS Publishing and Tor take top spots with four nominations each. The awards, established for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic will be presented on Sunday, July 20th 2008.

Discussion on why we need another award and the list of nominees are found here.

Publishers and authors can still produce books that will differ from the Amazon edition and be desired in the marketplace. The Amazon POD editions will be the mass market paperbacks of the new publishing era. There will remain a healthy market for other editions. The publishers can capitalize on this by offering their own editions that might include extra material much like the movie studios do.

First Look offers readers the opportunity to read and review HarperCollins books prior to publication. Reviewers for each book are selected in random drawings. A minimum of 10 advanced reading copies of each book offered will be distributed to chosen readers along with instructions for filing the review.

Postcards From Yo Momma, a website that runs user-submitted e-mails and chat transcripts from real moms, is being turned into a hardcover work of literature by the people at Hyperion, publishing next April.

No details on the $$$, but rumor has it it’s a “comfortable sum.”

Getting published isn't just about writing a good story--it's also about how you market your story. Inside are some tips on how to get prospective publishers to consider your writing.

A new digital book-browsing tool is to make the full works of about 500 authors, including Sebastian Faulks and Jacqueline Wilson, available to read and search online. Launched today at the London Book Fair, the application by the publisher Random House will eventually be expanded to include as many as 5,000 books by the end of the year.

Sounds like a good deal for readers.

HarperCollins’s announcement last week that Bob Miller is leaving Hyperion to launch a “publishing studio” at Harper that will use a new economic model reignited debate in the industry. If publishers move away from traditional advance/royalty deals with authors in favor of profit-sharing agreements, can authors make more or less money?

Philip M. Parker has written over 200,000 books, and all of them have turned a profit. How does he do it? With the magic of computers.

Most of the titles so far are textbooks generated by scripts searching the Internet for information on the subject, but plans are already in hand for a series of romance novels and volumes of poetry.

Some might consider this cheating.

When a stroke felled publisher Jim Baen at age 62 and left Baen Books leaderless in June 2006, speculation ran wild about the future of the renowned independent science fiction and fantasy press. Though Jim Baen’s absence is keenly felt, his legacy and company have proved sturdy even without his direct guidance.

It seems the much derided Kindle is doing something right, if only by increasing e-book awareness. Publishers report a rise in the double digits for e-book sales since the launch of the Kindle. Could it be that this reader actually is the answer to the e-book’s woes? Does it mark the beginning of a continuing trend in e-book popularity?