firstwriter.com's database of book publishers includes details of 1,987 English language publishers that don't charge authors any fees for publishing their books. The database is continually updated: there have been 24 listings added or updated in the last month. With over a dozen different ways to narrow your search you can find the right publisher for your book, fast.
News
Prometheus Books, which is nearing its 50th anniversary, has sold its two genre imprints to Start Publishing.
Founded in 1969 by the late Paul Kurtz in Amherst, N.Y. to publish provocative, progressive, and independent nonfiction, Prometheus expanded into fiction in 2005 with the launch of Pyr, which focuses on science fiction and fantasy novels. In 2011 it added the crime fiction imprint Seventh Street Books. Pyr has a backlist of 170 titles, while Seventh Street's backlist stands at about 90.
Publica is a new publishing platform that using blockchain and cryptocurrency technology to innovate how books are funded, distributed, bought, and read. For readers, libraries and institutions Publica offers “books without borders” via an ereader-wallet app for digital book ownership, which is portable to any device. For authors and publishers, it offers personalised online storefronts, designed to their own business models and at their own prices, with their book sales cryptographically protected by a global peer-to-peer blockchain network.
If the U.S. publishing business is mired in a slow-growth environment, you wouldn’t know it from the third-quarter results of four of the country’s largest trade houses. All three of the companies that reported sales as well as earnings saw profits grow at a faster rate than revenue, improving operating margins at the publishers.
Strong backlist sales were an important factor in boosting revenue and profits in the quarter, especially at HarperCollins. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) rose nearly 42% at the company compared to the third quarter of 2017, and Susan Panuccio, CFO of HC parent company News Corp, said this was largely due to strong backlist sales led by The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and The Hate U Give. Backlist sales contributed 55% of total revenue in the most recent quarter, Panuccio noted. Overall, sales were led by a better-than-expected performance in the U.S., she added.
Major publishers such as Simon and Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette and Penguin Random House have all reported that digital audiobooks continue to soar, while ebooks still generate meaningful revenue, although sales are soft.
HarperCollins recently stated that digital audiobook sales also had another great quarter, up 55% over the first period of fiscal 2018. The growth in audio offset soft e-book sales, resulting in a 12% increase in total digital sales in the quarter; ebook and digital audio represented 22% of total HC revenue in the period.
Articles
Signing a contract with even a brand-name traditional book publisher initially feels like a ticket to Nirvana. You may expect, for example, your new publisher to set you up with a big fat advance, a multi-city promotional tour, your very own personal PR rep and multiple copies of your book on every bookshelf in the nation (and Canada) for as long as you and your book shall live.
But to understand how book publishers really work, study this list of what I call the four great “myths” of traditional book publishing. Then, by all means, proceed to seek out a publisher if that’s your goal but do so with your eyes wide open. Your relationship with your publisher will run much smoother if you recognize its pitfalls as well as its glories.
Several years ago, as an aspiring novelist with stardust in my eyes, I used to spend most of my waking hours in Yahoo’s Books and Literature chatroom in the company of fellow aspiring writers. I clearly remember how one of the main topics of conversations used to be the number of rejection slips one had received on that particular day (or the previous week), agents/publishers who had requested a synopsis or proposal, and those who had just not bothered to respond. All of us were united by the looming sense of uncertainty, suspense, and the palpable realisation that the odds were firmly stacked against us.
Today, having spent more than seven years on the other side, first as a consultant and then an agent, I think many writers have wrong notions about rejections. While most books are rejected because of poor quality and incompetence (as they should be), there are several other factors that play a role in publishing decisions. And these affect “good” books too.
In April 2011, Marion Grace Woolley found her first publisher through firstwriter.com's database of publishers. A year later, she has published three books with two different publishers, both from our listings.
Not so long ago, writing and publishing your own book was just a pipe dream for many of us.
It wasn’t so much getting the words down on paper which was putting us off.
It was more the expense of either finding an agent and a publisher or paying through the nose to print dozens of copies yourself which might have ended up unsold and gathering dust in the garage.
But that is resoundingly no longer the case. Digital publishing and online booksellers such as Amazon have been an absolute game-changer.
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