16. Levi
Johnston gets contract for book about Palins
Levi Johnsto
n,
the father of Bristol Palin’s baby Tripp, has scored a book deal with a
small Simon and Schuster imprint.
Both parents were barely 18 and unmarried when their son was born, and for a
few months the relationship seemed to go well, but fell on harder times,
much of which Johnston claims was due to Sarah Palin’s influence.
It was announced earlier this year that Bristol and Johnston would try again
to rekindle their love, announcing their engagement to the surprise of the
former half-term governor, who published a statement saying she was mostly
confused, but warily supportive of her daughter’s actions, but the
relationship again fell through weeks later.
Touchstone Publishing, a division of Simon and Schuster, will publish
Johnston’s memoir, titled Deer in Headlights: My Life in Sarah Palin’s
Crosshairs. A press release from the publisher quoted Johnston as saying
“I want to tell the truth about my close relationship with the Palins … my
sense of Sarah, and my perplexing fall from grace - how I feel and what I’ve
learned. I’m doing this for me, for my boy Tripp and for the country.” Oh,
really?
17. Self-publishing: Few Smashwords authors make $50K per year
Morgan James Publishing, says it doesn’t charge to publish your book
- and also claims to pay generous royalties. However, they require all
authors to take a $5,000 marketing course from them before they’ll publish
your book. But you get 10 copies of your book - for free! … For the last
year or so, we’ve been publishing examples of authors like Amanda Hocking
making it big by self-publishing series of books for the Kindle. Before
you rush to to that novel that’s been collecting dust in your desk drawer
onto the Kindle platform, please note these words of caution. The
overwhelming number of self-publishing digital authors end up in the same
place as their print counterparts: oblivion. “We have less than 50 people
who are making more than $50,000 per year. We have a lot who don’t sell a
single book,” says Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords.com, a Web site popular
with self-publishers. “When I load all our numbers on a spreadsheet, it’s
the typical power curve,” he says. “On the left, there’s a skinny area of
the chart where people are knocking it out of the park. And then we have a
very, very long tail off to the right, where some titles sell very few at
all.” … So why is digital publishing becoming so popular with
self-published authors? Because royalties paid for e-books range from 35
to 70 percent, compared to 15 percent or so on paperback and hardcover
titles. In addition, self-published writers don’t have to pay an agent
(typically another 15 percent bite out of their profits). Self-published
writers can take home about $2 on a $2.99 ebook - nearly double what they
would earn on a $12.95 traditionally published paperback.
18. Self-published romance writer boosts quarterly revenue to $116,000
Neely Tucker of the Washington Post (May 6-7, 2011) relates the
self-published success story of romance novelist Nyree Belleville of
Sonoma, Calif.
Belleville was dropped by her publisher when her 12 spicy romances didn’t
sell strongly enough. Her top novel, penned under the name Bella Andre,
earned $21,000 - but the others didn't do nearly as well.
One of the publishers of the 36-year-old wife and mother in 2010 gave her
back the rights to her first two novels.
She decided to self-publish one of those, Authors in Ecstasy, on
Amazon’s Kindle e-reader to see what would happen.
A few weeks later, she checked her account. She had sold 161 copies. She’d
made $281.
She put her other reverted rights book online and figured out how to place
both on other e-readers - the Nook, the Sony Reader, the iPad, Kobo. The
next month, her royalties jumped to $474. She self-published a new e-book in
July 2010. She made $3,539.
She got the rights to two more old novels, then hurriedly wrote another
e-novel, Game for Love, about a bad-boy pro football player and his
unexpected marriage. She put that online on Dec. 15, 2010.
Her earnings for that month were $19,315.
In January and February of this year, she e-published a trilogy of
young-adult novels she’d written years earlier. She called the first one
Seattle Girl and chose a new author name, Lucy Kevin, to distinguish it
from the sexually explicit books written under her Andre pen name.
In the first quarter of this year, she sold 56,008 ebooks, producing income
of $116,264.
19. Self-published books by Joe Konrath net $78,000 in six weeks
The success story of Chicago novelist Joe Konrath is also noted in the
Washington Post article by Neely Tucker.
Konrath writes thrillers named after popular cocktails under the pen name
J.A. Konrath, and horror novels under the pen name Jack Kilborn.
We noted in an article about him last month in the Southern Review
that he was so busy writing and self-publishing that he had stopped giving
publicity interviews, preferring to concentrate on making money.
Konrath started self-publishing his books online at cut-rate prices in the
spring of 2009. That April, he made $700. By April 2010, he was making about
$4,000 for the month.
A screen shot of his Kindle account for a period ending in late April of
this year shows him netting $78,231.16 in six weeks.
One of the thrillers he wrote in 1999, titled The List, failed to
find a publisher. He self-published it in 2009, in print and digital
editions.
On March 24, the ebook was at No. 50 on the Kindle paid bestseller list,
selling at $2.99, with 28 days on the list.
On the same day, the same book was offered in paperback at $13.95 on
Amazon’s books page. It was ranked 102,526.
20. Marketing books: Only one book for sale in this bookstore
Andrew Kessler, an advertising agency creative director and author of
Martian Summer: Robot Arms, Cowboy Spacemen, and My 90 Days With the Phoenix
Mars Mission, has opened a bookstore in New York’s West Village.
His book is about a NASA mission to Mars. According to an article in the
New York Times by Elissa Gootman, it’s the only book for sale in the
store. Stacks of the book are exhibited in the store window. And yes, there
is separate shelving for “sale” items and “best-sellers” - but only
Kessler’s book is displayed on the special shelves or anywhere else in the
store.
21. How word of mouth made these books best-sellers
The old models for marketing books except for a handful of cases have fallen
to new marketing techniques.
More and more, it’s being said these days that there are only two ways to
generate sales of your book: write a good one, and then generate word of
mouth.
A classic case of a book becoming a best-seller through word of mouth is
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, a book about the little things
that make a difference in the marketplace.
When the book first appeared in 2000, it excited only modest comment. The
reviews were scattered and lukewarm.
It was not until Gladwell, a spellbinding speaker, went out on the road to
talk to professional groups across America that The Tipping Point
"tipped.”
In a practical sense, Gladwell created his own word of mouth.
To generate a surprise bestseller, either the author or the publisher needs
to create a community around the book and its author.
That’s what happened to two female-oriented books promoted by word-of-mouth,
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells and Eats,
Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss.
Ya-Ya Sisterhood
first popped up on a bestseller list in northern California. In the days
when such things were a novelty, it was a "book-group book.” Then readers
started to come to Wells' readings. They didn't just buy the book for
themselves - they bought it for their family and friends. Word about
Ya-Ya Sisterhood spread nationwide. Wells spent a year on book tour, and
sold millions of copies.
Eats, Shoots and Leaves,
a global bestseller, appealed to a much larger, but more informal community:
anyone who felt that the world is going to hell in a handcart and that, more
to the point, believed that all their fears could be illustrated by the
decline of English usage. Truss said her book was a "zero tolerance approach
to punctuation". But it wasn't really about grammar and punctuation, it was
about bourgeois fear. In this case, word of mouth equals the marriage of
enthusiasm and anxiety.
It helps if the word of mouth communicates to readers that a book will help
them achieve aspirations, nurture their beliefs or relieve their anxieties.
Word of mouth of this nature has promoted the inspirational titles The
Shack and 90 Minutes in Heaven into best-seller territory. That
alsoappears to be the case with the marketing success of Heaven Is for
Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back by
Lynn Vincent and Todd Burpo, the latter the evangelical pastor and father of
a 4-year-old who purportedly died, went to heaven, and was then summoned
back to Earth after talking with Jesus. The book is the story dictated by
the son, now 12 years old, to his father Todd.
22. Books about heaven, hell popular on Amazon.com best-seller list
On Easter Sunday, two of the top three books on Amazon.com’s Religion and
Spirituality best-seller list mapped the geography of the afterlife.
One was Heaven Is for Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip
to Heaven and Back, an account of a 4-year-old’s near-death experience
as dictated to his pastor father.
The other was Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every
Person Who Ever Lived, in which the evangelical preacher Rob Bell argues
that hell might not exist.
The publishing industry knows that large majorities of Americans believe in
God and heaven, miracles and prayer. But belief in hell lags well behind,
and the fear of damnation seems to have evaporated.
Near-death stories are reliable sellers: There’s another book about a
child’s return from paradise, The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven, just
a little further down the Amazon rankings. But you’ll search the best-seller
list in vain for The Investment Banker Who Came Back From Hell.
Doing away with hell, argues Russ Douthat, is a natural way for pastors and
theologians to make their God seem more humane.
As Anthony Esolen writes, in the introduction to his translation of Dante’s
Inferno, the idea of hell is crucial to Western humanism. It’s a way
of asserting that “things have meaning” - that earthly life is more than
just a series of unimportant events, and that “the use of one man’s free
will, at one moment, can mean life or death ... salvation or damnation.”
(Source: Ross Douthat, “The Case for Hell,” New York Times, April 24, 2011)
23. Milestones: Records, prizes and news of note in book publishing
A 500-year-old book worth $100,000 was discovered recently at an "Antiques
Roadshow-style fundraiser" in Sandy, Utah.
KST
U-TV
reported that the man who donated $2 to find out how much a book he had
inherited was worth learned the answer is more than $100,000. Said appraiser
Ken Sanders: "A gentleman walked in and said I've got a really important
book here and I'm sitting there rolling my eyes and thinking, 'yeah, sure
you do.' And then he opens it up and it's a Nuremberg Chronicle from 1494…
Outside of museums I've never seen one before in my life and I most
assuredly didn't expect to find this book in Sandy, Utah today." The owner
said he wanted to sell the book to a museum or library… The San
Francisco Chronicle reports that Amazon.com in 2010 paid its CEO Jeff
Bezos "a paltry salary of $81,840, but the cost of his security detail
came to $1.6 million for the year," a $100,000 drop from 2009.
24. Roth wins Man Booker International prize
Philip Roth has won the US$97,134 Man Booker International Prize, which is
presented once every two years to a living autho
r
for a body of work published either originally in English or widely
available in translation in the English language.
Roth will be honored at a formal dinner in London on June 28.
"For more than 50 years Philip Roth's books have stimulated, provoked and
amused an enormous, and still expanding, audience," said Rick Gekoski, chair
of the judging panel. "His imagination has not only recast our idea of
Jewish identity, it has also reanimated fiction, and not just American
fiction, generally. His career is remarkable in that he starts at such a
high level, and keeps getting better. In his 50s and 60s, when most
novelists are in decline, he wrote a string of novels of the highest,
enduring quality. Indeed, his most recent, Nemesis (2010), is as
fresh, memorable, and alive with feeling as anything he has written. …"
25. 1,200 romance writers attend annual RT Booklovers Convention
Some 1,200 women attended the 28th annual RT Booklovers Convention, in Los
Angeles in April. The annual event caters to the readers, writers, editors
and agents of romantic fiction.
According to the Business of Consumer Book Publishing 2010, the
romance genre saw 9,089 new titles and $1.36 billion in sales in 2009, the
last year for which hard numbers are available. This makes the romance genre
the single largest category in the consumer book market at 13.2 percent of
sales. By comparison, religious-inspirational books, the second-largest
category, rang up the $770 million in 2009 sales.
Of the two major annual gatherings, RT Booklovers (the RT stands for
Romantic Times, and the event is hosted by RT Book Reviews magazine)
is considered more of a "readers' convention" - as opposed to the Romance
Writers of America annual conclave, which is more narrowly tailored to
authors.
Among those offering advice to wannabe romance writers was author Kristen
Lamb, who said "There are only two ways to sell: the first is to write a
good book and the second is word of mouth. Today the author needs to do
three things to achieve that word of mouth - blog, Twitter and (use)
Facebook."
The prevailing new marketing device at the convention was a glossy
collectible trading card depicting a character from the novel or
bodice-ripping cover art on one side and a character close-up and details on
the back.
One of the examples depicted on a card at the convention dwepicted Kit
Frazier, 32, a character from Wicked Seduction by Jade Lee, with the
description: "Sandy hair, light freckling, has a way with animals," and best
line: "I must insist that you stop bleeding on the earl. It really isn't
done."
"This is the first convention that's had the trading cards," says author
Joanna Bourne as she laid down cards for two of her novels on a conference
room table - for The Forbidden Rose and The Black Hawk.
"We won't really know if they're a success until after the Romance Writers
(of America) convention in June, but when I can give these to people, it
helps make the characters transcend the book and feel all the more real."
(Source: Adam Tschorn, Los Angeles Times, April 9, 2011; Lawrence K. Ho, Los
Angeles Times, April 6, 2011)
26. News of chicanery, dishonesty and tort-feasing in the book business
The J.R.R. Tolkien estate has settled a dispute with Stephen Hillard, author
of the upcoming book Mirkwood: A Novel About J.R.R. Tolkien, which
"features Tolkien as a character and includes a critical analysis of
Tolkien's books," the Hollywood Reporter writes, adding that the book "is
not only fiction, but also an exercise in 'literary criticism,' as it is
said to take issue with the lack of female characters in Tolkien's works." The Tolkien estate had
sent Hilliard a cease-and-desist letter threatening a lawsuit, but the
settlement permits the book, which the author is publishing with Amazon's
BookSurge/CreateSpace platform, to be released "with a modified reference to
Tolkien on the cover and will also include the disclaimer, 'This is a work
of fiction which is neither endorsed nor connected with The J.R.R. Tolkien
Estate or its publisher.'"
27. HuffPo blogger sues AOL for $105 million on behalf of unpaid posters
A longtime Huffington Post blogger has filed a lawsuit against the
site, its two co-founders and new owner AOL, seeking $105 million on behalf
of himself and 9,000 other unpaid bloggers.
The suit is being led by Jonathan Tasini, a journalist and union organizer,
who filed the complaint in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of
New York. Tasini is seeking class-action status for the case.
Tasini says Arianna Huffington personally invited him to blog for the
Huffington Post in 2005, shortly after the site launched. He
subsequently wrote 216 unpaid posts for the site, though he stopped blogging
after AOL agreed to buy it on Feb. 7.
AOL's $315 million Huffington Post purchase served as the catalyst
for the lawsuit. Tasini says HuffPo's 9,000 unpaid bloggers deserve a large
cut of the windfall.
"The value added by the content provided by (the unpaid bloggers) to
TheHuffingtonPost.com's price was at least $105 million, none of which was
shared," the legal complaint says.
Tasini himself goes much further in his comments about HuffPo and its
founder: "It's hard to find a bigger example of hypocrisy. Arianna has made
her name on standing up for the little guy - meanwhile, she is behaving
exactly like Goldman Sachs and all the robber barons."
HuffPo bloggers, Tasini says, "are merely slaves on Arianna's plantation. We
do all the work and she won't share a dime."
A Huffington Post spokesman said "the lawsuit is without merit."
He compared the site's unpaid bloggers with the "hundreds of people (who) go
on TV shows to promote their views and ideas." He also pointed out bloggers
can cross-post their work on other sites, and that the company does employ a
full-time, paid staff as well.
For all his vitriol, Tasini says the lawsuit wasn't his idea. Rather, it was
the brainchild of the two Kurzon Strauss lawyers who are now representing
him.
"Speaking for myself only, I'm looking to set some standard for blogging as
we move forward," Tasini says. "If we don't set standards now, we'll move
into a spot where creators can't make a living."
Tasini was the lead plaintiff in the landmark 2001 Supreme Court case New
York Times Co. vs. Tasini, which focused on publications' rights to license
freelancers' work for distribution through electronic databases like
LexisNexis. The case was decided in favor of the plaintiffs.
In the case against the Huffington Post, Tasini says he would be
willing to settle out of court "if Arianna suggested something fair."
(Source: Julianne Pepitone, CNN Money, April 12, 2011)
28. Georgia State University sued over e-reserves
A number of academic publishers are suing Georgia State University over its
e-reserve practices, Ars Technica reports.
E-reserves are electronic compilations of course material that professors
put together for students to download in circumstances where they would not
be using enough material to make it worthwhile for the students to buy
entire books.
Colleges tend to claim that e-reserves fall under fair use, whose doctrine
explicitly mentions making multiple copies of material for classroom use.
However, publishers hold that the extent of some of these course packs
crosses over into outright copyright infringement.
The outcome of the Georgia State University case could potentially have a
very far-reaching impact - e-reserves are widely used by all universities,
and precedents set by this case could affect all of them.
29. ‘Three Cups of Tea’ author Mortenson sued for fraud
While Montana's attorney general looks into Greg Mortenson's dealings with
his charity CAI, two state lawmakers - Rep. Michele Reinhart of Missoula and
Rep. Jean Price of Great Falls - filed suit in a Missoula Federal Court
against Mortenson, alleging fraud.
They claim they "purchased the book because of his heart-wrenching story
which he said was true," says their attorney, Alexander Blewett. "If people
had known all of this was fabricated, they would not have given the money."
The plaintiffs are seeking class-action status and have asked the judge to
create a "constructive trust" to be "administered by a court-appointed
charity that would direct it to schoolchildren in Afghanistan and Pakistan."
The suit includes a RICO racketeering claim because some of the donations
were made by mail. They are using that claim to seek triple damages.
Blewett says the suit is designed to elicit the truth from Mortenson: "We
welcome the opportunity to let Mr. Mortenson testify under oath to all these
things. To us, it seems overwhelmingly false and we will give him ample
opportunity to explain away all of the falsehoods."
The Central Asia Institute did not comment on the filing.
Mortenson's planned heart surgery has been postponed. His physician wrote, "Mortenson
is convalescing at home with CPAP, oxygen and bed rest, allowed no
electronics, and will undergo additional tests this week that will determine
when his condition will allow for a safe procedure to repair the hole in his
heart."
The CAI site addresses Mortenson's extensive use of private aircraft at the
charity's expense with an omnibus three-part excuse: "Number one, Greg's
schedule often presents difficult logistical scenarios that are nearly
impossible to accomplish with commercial airlines. Generally he has to fly
late at night to accommodate his hectic schedule, which in the past four
years put him in an average 126 cities per year, plus international travel
and overseas project visits. Number two is his health, which has been in
decline for the past 18 months. And number three is security. Greg has
received threats against his life, and commercial travel sometimes presents
over-exposure to threatening elements."
30. SEC probing Amazon over Texas sales tax, IRS seeking $1.5 billion
In a regulatory filing, Amazon said the Securities and Exchange Commission
is looking into its sales tax dispute with Texas.
Last September, Texas assessed $269 million from Amazon in uncollected sales
tax, interest and penalties for the four years running from December 2005 to
December 2009. Amazon has since threatened to pull its warehouse operations
out of Texas.
"In March 2011, the SEC staff notified us of an inquiry concerning this
assessment, and we are cooperating with the staff's inquiry," Amazon said.
Amazon also disclosed that the Internal Revenue Service recently sent
Notices of Proposed Adjustment for 2005 and 2006 relating to the company's
transfer pricing with its foreign subsidiaries. The IRS is proposing to
increase Amazon's U.S. taxable income, which would result in about $1.5
billion in additional federal tax expenses, plus interest, for seven years
beginning in 2005."
Amazon said it intends to "vigorously contest" the adjustments.
31. Chuckles: Finding humor amid the stacks and shelves
Too true to be funny?
The Onion cast its satiric gaze on author readings with a recent
article headlined "Author Promoting Book Gives It Her All Whether It's Just
3 People or a Crowd of 9 People." The Onion quotes its fictitious
author of a novel entitled A Lighthouse Keeper, as saying, "Sometimes
7:30 comes around and only three people are there, one of whom is my agent,"
Massey said. "Well, rather than go through with the whole presentation I'd
normally do for a group of six including my parents and a woman who appears
to be mentally ill, I can make the reading into more of an intimate
discussion where there's a lot more back-and-forth."… CBS has canceled
“$h*! My Dad Says.” Author Justin Halpern broke the news to his father
over the phone His father’s response: "Well, I liked it. It was kind of sh*tty
at first, but I thought it got a lot better. You know what show I like?
Cheers. That was a good show."
32. News from trade shows, book fairs and book festivals
The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, which was held on April 30 and May
1, drew 140,000 people to the campus of the University of Southern
California,
Jacket Copy reported. "We are thrilled to see our vision for moving the
festival to our new home downtown come together in a more robust way than we
even imagined when we first started discussing the idea with USC," said
Times publisher Eddy Hartenstein.
33. Major upcoming trade shows, book fairs and book festivals
May
May 23-26. BookExpo America, New York. www.bookexpoamerica.com
National Stationery Show, New York.
June
June 24-29. American Library Association, Washington, DC.
www.ala.org
June 27–30. ICRS - International Christian Retail Show, St. Louis, Mo
www.christianretailshow.com
Printers Row Book Fair, Chicago.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/about/events/printersrow
The Australian Booksellers Association's, Melbourne.
The International New Age Trade Show West
July
July 21-24. Comic-Con
International, San Diego, Calif. The grandfather of all comics shows, which
began in 1970, and capped its attendance at 125,000 three years ago.
Archives" hyperlink at the bottom of this page. The search engine for
the current edition and archives may be accessed by the button at the
bottom. The Southern Review is edited by Noel Griese. The
author of 17 books and numerous articles on various subjects, he has
been a newspaper reporter and editor and has taught English and
journalism at the Universities of Wisconsin and Georgia. Elected to
both Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi, he holds three degrees in
English and journalism.
