firstwriter.com's database of publishers includes details of 2,799 English language publishers that don't charge authors any fees for publishing their books. The database is continually updated: there have been 33 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
Cork-based business book publisher, Oak Tree Press has been acquired by international publisher.
Active in both Belgium and Switzerland, Oak Tree's parent company, Cork Publishing Ltd has joined the Corporate Group, which now operates across three countries and five languages. The value of the transaction has not been disclosed.
The international publisher's catalogue extends to over 500 titles, the majority of which cover entrepreneurial domains including economics tax, law, contracts and business, while also offering accountancy and investment management software.
Editage, a scientific editing brand of CACTUS, has launched an advanced AI engine, Digital Editing, to help researchers make accurate, high-quality pre-submission language and technical edits for scientific manuscripts in less than five minutes.
Powered by PaperPal, the engine uses machine learning algorithms to identify language and technical errors in manuscripts and provides intuitive suggestions to help authors improve their submission quality.
The new tool is trained on 2.5 million editor hours and over three billion words of academic text to ensure that technical aspects of papers, like subject-specific terminology, units of measurement, and equations are edited accurately in less time.
B2B and specialist publisher Haymarket has acquired Bay Publishing Ltd, which runs Health and Safety International, HSME (Health and Safety Middle East), and AWE International, which covers “the impact of industry on the environment”.
Haymarket said the purchase meant that “Bay Publishing’s global client base will have the opportunity to source the leads they need to grow their businesses via Audience Labs’ ability to create tailored content, customised marketing, webinars and more”.
Haymarket media group chief executive Kevin Costello said: “Adding Bay to our portfolio couldn’t have come at a better time. It plays to our digital transformation strengths and Haymarket’s known audience model, plus we are experts in producing brands in multiple channels.
Filippo Bernardini was arrested by the F.B.I. last year. He is expected to enter his plea on Friday, ending a yearslong saga that captivated the industry.
The mystery captivated the book world: For years, someone impersonated authors and agents, editors and publishers, trying to steal unpublished book manuscripts from high profile authors like Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan and Ethan Hawke, but also from debut novelists and writers of more obscure works.
Now, a resolution to the yearslong scheme is near. On Friday, Filippo Bernardini is expected to plead guilty to wire fraud in front of a magistrate court judge in Manhattan, according to an email from the office of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York that was sent to victims on Tuesday.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Bernardini early last year, saying he had “impersonated, defrauded, and attempted to defraud, hundreds of individuals” over five or more years, gaining access to hundreds of unpublished manuscripts in the process.
Articles
When Hachette Book Group acquired Workman Publishing, HBG CEO Michael Pietsch observed that Workman was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, remaining independent trade publishers left in the U.S. Based on available data, a case could indeed be made that Workman was the largest of its kind. Which has raised a question in publishing circles: why are there so few independent publishers of size? There is a dearth of what can be called midsize publishers that fall between the Big Five and the many independent publishers with sales of $20 million or less.
The Houghton Mifflin Harcourt trade division, with 2020 sales of $192 million, was what could have been considered a mini-major before it was acquired by HarperCollins. The Scholastic trade group, with sales of $355 million in the fiscal year ended May 31, is a major player in the children’s trade market, but as part of a $1.3 billion publisher, it is clearly not independent. Other trade publishers that could be considered midsize that are also part of larger companies are Disney’s publishing division and Abrams, which is owned by the French company La Martinière Groupe, which was itself acquired by Media Participations.
I've fallen in love with printed books. Again. Especially those for children.
Twenty years into my book publishing career—which included marketing for trade book publishers and founding a children's imprint—I had the opportunity to go digital, move into the future, hang out with the cool guys, play games, do the bicoastal thing, and grow a ponytail.
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.
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