Amazon.com, in its quest to be all things in book publishing, has now introduced its newest venture, Amazon Encore. This new Amazon entity takes self-published books that have been sold on Amazon, but which Encore deems have the potential for more sales, and republishes them for a wider audience. With this move, Amazon clearly enters the book publishing business. And since Amazon has a very good idea from analyzing its data about what readers like, they should be able to establish a very good track record for the books they choose to re-launch.

This news should be of great interest to authors. Last year, for the first time, more books were self-published in America than through traditional publishers.<< MORE >>

It’s the content, Stupid, to paraphrase a slogan. This week Carl Wolf wrote an article about Book Expo that he calls “Call It Gutenberg 2.0,” which focuses on what he perceived as the essential message of the trade show held in New York last week. (The article can be read at www.boston.com). Books will survive in various forms; whether print or digital, it is all about content.

Authors and publishers must begin to think of themselves as content producers, not print producers. When that central concept becomes the main impetus, everything changes, especially as it regards production, publishing, and distribution.<< MORE >>

Authors may not pay much attention to subsidiary rights when publishing a book or
signing an agreement for publication. But these rights are an important consideration.

Subsidiary rights are those that are derived from the work as it is originally published and distributed. Therefore the author or copyright holder of a paperback book would have the possibility of selling hardback rights and visa versa. Rights often relate to formats,
translations, book club, large print editions, film, and television. But rights may also be sold for serialization, first or second serial rights.<< MORE >>

Authors who are actively involved in self-publishing or subsidy publishing are naturally
best served by staying up to date on developments in the book industry that affect book
distribution. This week Ingram, the book wholesale giant, announced a reorganization
that consolidates the publishing industry subsidiaries of Ingram under one umbrella.

Ingram Digital is moving into Ingram Book Group, which already included Ingram Book
Group and Lightning Source. The purpose of this reorganization is to provide a one-stop
place for digital and print distribution needs and digital support services for publishers, libraries, and bookstores.<< MORE >>

A story appeared in this week’s “School Library Journal” with the headline “Lerner Publishing Celebrates 50 Years in the Kids Book Biz.” Today Lerner Publishing Group publishes 300 titles each year for children and young adult, but it all started when the founder, Harry Lerner wrote and self-published a guidebook five decades ago.

According to the article, in 1956 Lerner launched his publishing career by writing and publishing a guidebook on automobiles while he was a soldier stationed in Germany. After he returned to the States, Lerner switched his focus to publishing children’s books. The first year, 1959, he published four children’s books written by his sister-in-law. His efforts have evolved from an idea to a few books written by him and then relatives to an international presence in the world of publishing.<< MORE >>

Just today Bertelsmann, the huge transnational media conglomerate that owns Random House, the largest trade publishing company in the world, announced revenues were down for the first quarter and the company experienced a huge loss, even greater than the huge loss for the same quarter last year. And Church Publishing, the publishing arm of the Episcopal Church, declared it is suspending acquisitions because of the current market decline in general trade publishing. In stark contrast, this week’s article in the “Lexington Herald Leader” written by Scott Sloan is titled “Self-publishing Grows During Recession.”

In this article Sloan describes the experiences of two authors who have successfully published their works. He quotes Alice Pope of “Writer’s Digest” as saying,” self-publishing can be just as much the author experience as those picked up by major publishers because these days, it’s mostly up to the author to publicize the book and market it.” Victoria Cochrane writes, at BestSyndication.com, “Because many publishing houses have been known to edit and pare down individual style, self-publishing has become the preferred method of choice for many authors.”<< MORE >>

Because a group of authors have requested an extension, all who believe Google scanned portions of their work without permission have until September 7, 2009 to take final action regarding opting out or objecting to the terms of the Google Book Search settlement. The deadline, according to the settlement reached between Google and the Author’s Guild and several publishers and authors, originally set the deadline for opting
our or objecting to the terms of the settlement for May 5, 2009. But New York judge Denny Chin has granted the extension.<< MORE >>

Everyone agrees that the technology we know as the e-book has and will change the way
we read. In addition to the traditional hard copies of books, magazines, periodicals, and
collections, we enjoy the option of reading the content of those entities on computer
screens and on e-readers and even on cell phones. This makes accessibility and the speed
of accessibility much greater. As soon as we come upon a mention of a book or article,
we can link on the hypertext that is usually provided and come upon a way to scan or
download the material. We can easily interrupt what we are reading and move to
something new.<< MORE >>

St. Martin's Press is testing a "try before you buy" model for promoting the sale of their about to be released books. "Read It First" is an experiment in marketing the company is launching via e-mail to a growing number on its customer list. The idea is to build a list of subscribers who wish to "test read" books before they are published. And the way it works is that every day an e-mail containing an excerpt that would take about five minutes to read is sent to the subscriber. By the end of the week, the reader will have gone through the first chapter or two. The subscription is free, but to continue reading the book beyond the excerpts, the subscriber must buy the book. St. Martin's publishes about 700 books per year. This experiment is another example of the Long Tail concept I discussed previously in a post on this blog. St. Martin's is using this innovative approach to reach an increasing number of customers with products that meet their specific needs. Rather than trying to sell several million copies of a few titles through conventional methods such as bookstores, libraries, and book clubs, the publisher is trying to sell many copies of 700 titles to many individuals. << MORE >>

World Book and Copyright Day is April 23rd. The day strives to promote reading, publishing, and the protection of intellectual property rights throughout the world through the use of copyright. UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) is the originator of World Book and Copyright Day. UNESCO’s stated initiative for 2009 is to “explore the paramount function of books for the development of quality education and the link between publishing and human rights.” Beirut has been declared the World Book Capital 2009. It is a significant day for many reasons, and it should be noted that the fundamental concept of copyright protection remains of great importance to authors, perhaps now more than ever when access to content of books, articles, poems and essays has become so open and easy. << MORE >>