New News

I thought today I’d give you some quotes from the world of publishing news.

Here’s one on ebook sales that came out of New York via Marketwire:

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) reported last week that eBook sales represent the fastest growing segment of the industry while US book sales are in decline across all major book publishing markets.

eBook sales are skyrocketing as we head into 2009. Reported eBook sales figures for January 2009 alone grew by more than 170% over January 2008.

From an article on self-publishing in the Wall Street Journal, we have:

"We know that 411,000 new books were published with ISBN numbers in 2007, and a significant number of those were do-it-yourself authors."

Back in February, PaidContent.org had this to say about “crowd-sourcing”:

Author James Patterson has “crowd-sourced” his new book Airborne. Patterson, who has pumped out a number of best-selling crime novels, wrote only the first and last sections of the new 30-chapter novel; publishers Borders Australia and Random House held a contest to find 28 writers to pen the rest of it.

And, finally, this from an article in The New York Times about author Scott Turrow’s decision to switch hardcover publishers:

Gail Hochman, Mr. Turow’s agent, said splitting editions between two houses made it more difficult for an author to achieve the best possible financial arrangement. “We’re not unhappy with anything we’ve gotten, but it stretches the boundaries of the business,” she said. “Any publisher will acknowledge that if they are going to pay a significant advance for a significant author, they can make their money back and work harder on the book if they have two editions.”

That’s all the New News for today.