Category Archives: Publishers

Sobol contest winners to get book deals

Posted on December 8, 2006 by Keren

Got an unpublished manuscript lying around? Win the Sobel Award, and you receive an impressive $100,000 – as well as bagging an advance of up to $100k from Simon and Schuster.

A division of Simon & Schuster has agreed to publish the top three winners of the Sobol Award, offering advances of up to $100,000 for a controversial new literary contest for agentless writers that also includes a $100,000 first prize.

Announced in September, the Sobol Award offers $100,000 for the best unreleased, agentless novel, with prizes of $25,000 and $10,000 for the runners-up and $1,000 each to seven others.

The award was created by Sobol Literary Enterprises, a for-profit venture started by technology entrepreneur Gur Shomron, as “a venue to discover talented, unknown fiction writers and help them get the recognition they deserve.”

But it might have its disadvantages:

Numerous questions have been raised about the prize, especially its $85 entry fee and stipulation that Sobol officials would serve as literary representatives of the winners; industry policy prohibits agents from charging money to read manuscripts. Sobol has said the fees are necessary to cover administrative costs.

The contest deadline was originally Dec. 31, but Sobol’s executive vice president of contest management, Sue Pollock, acknowledged that response has been slower than expected and that the date had been pushed back to March 31, 2007.

Link to the Yahoo News article

Posted in Articles, Awards, Contests, Publishers |

Podiobooks giving even more to authors

Posted on December 5, 2006 by Keren

Podiobooks, a donation-supported publisher of free serialized audiobooks, just increased the percentage authors get of the donations that the site receives to 75%.  (In other words, authors get 75%, the site gets 25% for maintenance costs – as opposed to the 50%/50% arrangement at the site before.

This is a terrific time to check out the Podiobooks website.  There are 80 titles available, some from the public domain, others from authors such as Mur Lafferty, Patrick McLean and Tracy Hickman – mainly science fiction and fantasy, but with a healthy assortment of other genres as well.  Be sure to make a donation if you can afford one – it’s for a good cause.
Link to the news blog post (via BoingBoing), link to the Podiobooks website.

Posted in Authors, E-books, Publishers, Self-publishing, Websites |

Bookworld launches Small Press website; free book with every order

Posted on December 3, 2006 by Keren

In an effort to draw attention to the small presses that it distributes, Sarasota, Fla.–based Bookworld launched smallpresscentral.com earlier this month. Consumers can purchase books from any of Bookworld’s 180 clients, which include one-book houses like Nutrition Times Press as well as larger houses for which Bookworld distributes Spanish-language titles.

“Small publishers aren’t getting enough attention,” Bookworld Companies chairman Ronald Ted Smith said. “I would love to find a way to spotlight more of them.” As part of that effort, smallpresscentral.com, which links to Bookworld.com’s shopping cart, is offering a free book with every order from a selected group of titles.

Link to the Publishers Weekly article, link to the Small Press Central site.

Posted in Articles, Booksellers, Publishers, Websites |

Cory Doctorow on giving away your novel

Posted on December 2, 2006 by Keren

Award-winning sf author and well-known blogger Cory Doctorow writes about how giving away free ebooks of his books through the internet helped increase his sales.

It’s good business for me, too. This “market research” of giving away e-books sells printed books. What’s more, having my books more widely read opens many other opportunities for me to earn a living from activities around my writing, such as the Fulbright Chair I got at USC this year, this high-paying article in Forbes, speaking engagements and other opportunities to teach, write and license my work for translation and adaptation. My fans’ tireless evangelism for my work doesn’t just sell books–it sells me.

The golden age of hundreds of writers who lived off of nothing but their royalties is bunkum. Throughout history, writers have relied on day jobs, teaching, grants, inheritances, translation, licensing and other varied sources to make ends meet. The Internet not only sells more books for me, it also gives me more opportunities to earn my keep through writing-related activities.

Link to the Forbes article (via BoingBoing)

Posted in Articles, Authors, E-books, Publishers, Reading, Resources, Science fiction/fantasy, Self-publishing, Technology, Websites |

Riverdeep to purchase Houghton Mifflin

Posted on November 30, 2006 by Keren

Houghton Mifflin confirmed this morning that it is being acquired by the Irish-based software publisher Riverdeep. Reports have been circulating for about a month that a purchase was in the works. Under the structure of the deal, a newly formed company, HM Rivergroup, will acquire both HM and Riverdeep, forming a new company that will be named Houghton Mifflin Riverdeep Group. HM Rivergroup is paying $1.75 billion in cash for HM and will assume $1.61 billion in debt. The three equity groups that own HM bought the publisher from Vivendi in December 2002 for $1.7 billion.

“Riverdeep represents an excellent strategic fit with Houghton Mifflin, bringing its high-quality electronic courseware offerings to our core basal textbook and supplemental products business. This combination will differentiate us from our competitors and will enable us to participate as one of the leading players in the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. school education market,” said [Tony Lucki, chairman, president and CEO of HM]. The deal is expected to close before the end of 2006.

Link to the full Publishers Weekly article

Posted in Articles, Education, Publishers |

Small Press Book Fair to take place in NYC on Dec. 2-3

Posted on November 29, 2006 by Keren

Mark your calendar! The Nineteenth Annual Independent and Small Press Book Fair – December 2 & 3, 2006

December 2 & 3, Independent and Small Press Book Fair hosts over 100 top-notch presses & leading authors from Nation Books, PEN American & New York’s literary & political scene, including: Pamela Aidan, Dore Ashton, Amiri Baraka, Jennifer Baumgardner, Colin Channer, T. Cooper, Michael Cunningham, Luis Francia, Steve Freeman, Matthea Harvey, Caren Lissner, Joe Meno, Jonas Mekas, Mark Crispin Miller, Eileen Myles, Greg Palast, Rachel Pine, Peter Plate, Katha Pollitt, Eyal Press, Paul Robeson, Jr., Martha Southgate, David Levi Strauss, Anne Waldman and much more. Free Admission ($1 suggested donation). For a complete list of panels and events please click here. To register as an exhibitor please click here

For more information, see the Small Press Center website. (Via Publishers Weekly)

Posted in Authors, Booksellers, Events, Publishers |

HarperLuxe large-print line targets baby boomers

Posted on November 29, 2006 by Keren

HarperCollins is relaunching its line of large-print titles today with the debut of HarperLuxe. HC has redesigned the large-print titles to make them more appealing to readers, especially baby boomers, said publisher Liate Stehlik. “We want to move large-print titles beyond their traditional audience,” which typically has been the visually handicapped and older Americans, Stehlik said. “We want to give baby boomers and others a nicer reading experience.”The redesigned titles will have a 14-point font, slightly smaller than the 16-point used in traditional large-print books, and the leading will be the same size as traditional large print titles. The smaller font will be offset by a crisper design, Stehlik said.

Stehlik said she hopes to do about 100 titles annually under the HarperLuxe imprint, nearly triple the output in recent years. Fiction bestsellers will be a staple of the line, but the imprint will feature nonfiction titles and other works that might appeal to baby boomers, Stehlik said. “We won’t be doing Meg Cabot titles in large print,” she observed.

Read the full Publishers Weekly article here.

Posted in Booksellers, Newly Released Books, Publishers, Reading, Upcoming releases |

O.J. Simpson tells all – hypothetically speaking

Posted on November 20, 2006 by Keren

A wave of revulsion and open criticism, reaching a climax this weekend, has swept America in the wake of revelations that Simpson intends to capitalise on the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman with a book and TV ‘confession’ in a £1.8 million deal brokered by Murdoch-owned companies.

Link to the full Guardian Unlimited article

Posted in Articles, Authors, Book Release, Non-fiction, Publishers, Reading |

More Than a Million Invited to Write and Edit First Collaborative Book on Management Best Practices

Posted on November 16, 2006 by Aurel

Taking a page from Wikipedia, publishing giant Pearson, under its Wharton School Publishing imprint, has embarked on a new book publishing project with two innovative collaborators that could involve thousands, if not tens of thousands of authors and editors.

Full press release available here

Posted in Authors, Education, Non-fiction, Publishers, Upcoming releases |

Publisher's Look Beyond Traditional Markets

Posted on November 6, 2006 by Aurel

With book sales sagging — down 2.6 percent as of August over the same period last year, according to the Association of American Publishers — publishers are pushing their books into butcher shops, carwashes, cookware stores, cheese shops, even chi-chi clothing boutiques where high-end literary titles are used to amplify the elegant lifestyle they are attempting to project.

What began as a trickle of cookbooks in kitchen shops and do-it-yourself titles in hardware stores has become, in recent months, the fastest growing component in many major publishers’ retail strategies. (source: NY Times

Read the full article here

Posted in Articles, Booksellers, Publishers |