firstwriter.com's database of book publishers includes details of 2,060 English language publishers that don't charge authors any fees for publishing their books. The database is continually updated: there have been 34 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
Amazon-owned Audible and a group of major book publishers settled a copyright lawsuit filed last year over a feature called Captions that transcribes audiobooks to text.
The settlement between Audible and the seven publishers that sued the company last year — Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Chronicle Books and Scholastic — is sealed. However, a proposed dismissal and injunction document filed last week says Audible is barred from “creating, generating, reproducing … written text derived from the audiobook versions of Publishers’ Works for any product or service created or offered by Audible,” unless it gets authorization first.
E-books have been on a multi-year decline for publishers. According to data collected by the Association of American Publishers, this trend held true in October, the most recent month with data available. Net trade e-book revenues for participating publishers decreased 8.9% that month when compared to October of 2018.
Downloaded audio, on the other hand, continues to see rapid growth. In October, net revenues in the category increased 15.1% over October of 2018. Regular double-digit increases have begun to inch the format closer to revenues on par with the ever-declining e-book category. While trade e-books remain 8.5% of publisher revenues, downloaded audio now sits at 5.3% (hardback books are 49% of net revenues, and paperbacks are 27%).
Every year, plenty of publishing pundits offer up advice on what sells, what doesn’t, and how an author can best climb the rankings themselves. And, every year, there’s really just one way to know for sure what works: Taking a deep dive into the most recent bestsellers and examining the data for insights into what titles people are actually buying.
The Guardian's John Dugdale has published a UK-centric list of the top 50 best-selling titles of 2019, and author Chris McCrudden has used the raw data available in that article to figure out a few more insights, which he shared in a Twitter thread on the topic.
So what books did the British public open their wallets for in 2019, and what can the data tell us about what might sell in 2020?
Here are the biggest insights and analysis that McCrudden came away with.
Lee Child has quit the Jack Reacher series and asked his brother to write them - so which other authors have done a similar thing?
The author of the best-selling Jack Reacher novels has revealed he is stepping aside and letting his brother write them.
After the move by Lee Child - whose real name is James Grant - Sky News takes a look at authors who have used other writers to take over their bestselling series.
Articles
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.
When Simon & Schuster announced in late February that it is canceling Milo Yiannopoulos’s book, Dangerous, many in the publishing industry reacted with a sigh of relief. The six-figure book deal that the right-wing provocateur landed at Threshold Editions, S&S’s conservative imprint, late last year caused a wave of criticism—from various factions of the media, the public, and the house’s own authors. And, though it’s still unclear what ultimately motivated the publisher to yank the book, the fervor that the alt-right bad boy’s deal caused put some on alert. Could other publishers be pressured into canceling books by controversial conservatives? Does the industry have a double standard for authors on the right? Does it matter?
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.
Traditional book publishers. They were once known as the titans of the book publishing industry. In the Baby Boomer era, self-publishing was an unknown concept. You needed a traditional publisher if you wanted the best chance to succeed with your book.
During that time, there was significantly less competition for publishers and authors, meaning more book sales for both parties.
Over time, traditional publishers (especially The Big 5) gradually started to exploit authors by offering lower royalties and seizing the author’s publishing rights.
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