FutureBook

So there’s been another spat reminiscent of the Stephen Leather equivalent at Harrogate last year. This time involving US self-pubber Barry Eisler.

Apparently agents and publishers don’t like being told they risk being redundant. Quite a few people have commented on this—at considerable length—so I’ll keep this brief. Read more »

So, RIP the Agency Model. You won’t be missed. What is simply staggering is that publishers thought they could rewrite the laws of capitalism by trying to set the price of a product that they were not actually selling. Read more »

This is an old, old publishing parlour game and one that certainly hasn't got any easier in the last five years.

However,this weeks report by Bowker is the best bit of news the chain will have had for a while. 45% of undecided purchases, i.e. where the buyer did not know what they wanted to read, were made as a result of bookshops.  Read more »

There can be a certain hilarious magnificence to denial – the huge popularity of the Bruno Ganz Downfall meme is ample testament to that. Read more »

Great to see Iain Dale sticking it to the retailers. The reality is though that small publishers have been railing against WH Smith (among others) for years and years. For a small publisher a large order can represent a cash flow nightmare - a risk they have to take, but to see those books come back, months later in unopened boxes is more than dispiriting, it is a real threat to the health of their business. Read more »

The news of Conville Walsh’s effective acquisition by Curtis Brown invites a number of responses. Not least is the reflection that we live in a time of giants. Read more »

Back in the nineteen sixties when publishing was still the tweed jacket and pipe sort of business that it is still often portrayed as being; the tawdry process of making money was regarded with some suspicion. It was a life style choice for academics manqué attracted by the combination of long lunches and the publishing of low selling literary works untainted by popularity. Read more »

So, hot on the news that 15% of the ebook bestseller lists are self published authors comes this piece about Touching the Void author Joe Simpson leaving his publisher (and agent) over the issue of e-book royalty rates. Read more »

Who’d be an editor? What can be the best job in publishing has become something like the opposite of that for many, many reasons – so many it is hard to know where to start, but here are my top 5.

1. Everyone else does your job. Read more »

Absolutely hilarious to see Amazon tying itself into knots over the sock puppetry issue. I blogged recently about Amazon’s silence on the subject and this would seem to be a classic example of how a secretive, arrogant, unaccountable and monolithic organisation mishandles its PR. Read more »