Publishing Industry | Otherwhere Gazette

Well, this is both good news and bad news for writers. Forbes has a report out today regarding the fact that e-book growth slowed to “only” 41% for 2012. They explain: According to the latest numbers from the Association of American Publishers, revenue for ebooks for some of the biggest categories grew by 41% in 2012. Ebooks now account for 23% of trade publishing revenues. In any other industry for any other business, this would be eye-popping growth. For the world of ebooks, it represents a significant slowdown from years past. The AAP has been tracking ebooks since 2002. That year, ebooks represented 0.05% of all trade publishing revenues. To get to the current 23% number, the biggest gains were made in 2009, 2010 and 2011, the years immediately following the 2007 launch of … Read entire article »

New book trailer — Wade Boss: Hybrid Hunter

9 January 2013 Comments Off

WADE BOSS BOOK TRAILER from Marcus MacGregor on Vimeo. … Read entire article »

Protecting Amazon from itself

3 January 2013 Comments Off

This is not an article against Amazon. While Amazon is a big company, and like all big companies it can do stupid things, in the twelve? Thirteen? Years, I’ve been a customer, I’ve found their customer service is exemplary and they really do bend over backwards to help the customer. As an indie publisher, I’m also more grateful than I can say for the chance to make some money on my back list. In a way this is a post to head off the inevitable conspiracy theories. But… But the one thing you can say about Amazon is that when they put their foot in it, they sink it into the entire bucket without hesitation. I still have libertarian minded friends who will not touch kindle because of the thing with 1984. I … Read entire article »

Baen Ebooks Kindles Relationship with Amazon

17 December 2012 Comments Off

Best-selling Baen Authors David Weber, John Ringo, Lois McMaster Bujold Available on Amazon.com for First Time in Ebook Format RIVERDALE, NEW YORK— Ebook pioneer Baen Books is making its ebooks available in the Kindle Store on Amazon for the first time beginning in mid to late December 2012. Science fiction and fantasy publisher Baen Books has sold its own ebooks for over fifteen years at Baen’s retail site, Baenebooks.com, where ebooks have always been downloadable totally free of digital rights restrictions. They will also be DRM-free in the Kindle Store. The move to third party distribution is new territory for Baen, which has built a name for itself in the ebook arena with an innovative e-Advanced Reading Copy program and limited time monthly discount bundles. These programs will continue, according to … Read entire article »

Amazon Making Their Own Movies & TV Shows

14 October 2012 Comments Off

No, the headline isn’t a mistake. They’re already a good self-publisher for books and e-books, now they’re ramping up to start producing their own movies and TV shows. Like rival movie provider Netflix Inc, Amazon is developing its own content to supplement movies and TV shows from Hollywood’s back catalog. Amazon pays an estimated $1 billion a year to stream programming from others over its Prime Instant Video service. Since late 2010, the company’s Hollywood studio, Amazon Studios, has let aspiring screenwriters and film makers upload thousands of scripts to its website. It has an exclusive, 45-day option to buy movie scripts for $200,000 and TV series for $55,000. It can also pay $10,000 to extend options for 18 months. Instead of green-lighting a feature-length film or TV pilot, Amazon first helps develop the … Read entire article »

When Diplomacy Fails: Chapter One

17 August 2012 Comments Off

Find here in the first chapter of Mad Mike Williamson’s new MilSF masterwork “When Diplomacy Fails.” (Editor’s note: We call it a masterwork because Mad Mike is armed, dangerous and perfectly capable of hurting us.) Alex Marlow acknowledged that he was one of the best bodyguards in the galaxy. “Best” was a relative term, but he and his team had managed to keep principals alive through battles, riots, poisonings with neural toxins and even nuclear attack. The company charged accordingly for their services, and they were paid concordantly. The company also covered the insurance, because no sane underwriter would take their odds. In a matter of days, they’d be guarding someone again. They took short-term, high-risk assignments that would cause any other company to shriek. Ripple Creek would take them, then … Read entire article »

Redshirt Yourself and Get ConSensual Free!

23 June 2012 Comments Off

In celebration of Consensual’s release Real Soon Now, I have a competition. Write a short – 2 paragraphs max – description of how you’d like to be redshirted in the Con vampire universe. Anything entered before midnight US Eastern Standard Time on Saturday 30th June will be eligible. The five suggestions that amuse me the most will be used in the next con Vampire book, and their creators will receive a free copy of ConSensual. The legal-ish stuff: sorry, but you can’t re-use anything unless you file the serial numbers off well enough that it’s not obvious where it started. No re-using any of my characters, either. If you’re one of the lucky soon-to-be-deceased, I reserve the right to mangle your name and description beyond recognition or not as the whim takes … Read entire article »

Now Die, Die, Die, Die, Die!*

12 May 2012 1 Remark

by Sarah Hoyt Yesterday night I didn’t know what to blog about. The problem looked even more complex when Amanda Green dropped Mad Genius Club** rotating Saturday blogship on my lap late last night. Fortunately the gods of fate are kind to me. And fortunately the publishing industry will never, ever, ever run out of teh stoopid for me to marvel at. So just as I was about to go to bed, a friend of mine gave me a link to The Passive Voice which made my blood boil and my mind become awed at the sheer amount of stupid in this field. The particular link was this. The background for this is the DOJ case against the big six publishers who are accused of collusion in pricing in the so called “agency pricing” that was … Read entire article »

The Business Rusch: Royalty Statement Update 2012 Kristine Kathryn Rusch

4 May 2012 Comments Off

Kris Rusch is having issues with malware attacks on her sites, and Sarah Hoyt found her post important enough to echo it at her blog and over at Mad Genius Club as well as forwarding it to me here. Over a year ago, I wrote a blog post about the fact that my e-book royalties from a couple of my traditional publishers looked wrong. Significantly wrong. After I posted that blog, dozens of writers contacted me with similar information. More disturbingly, some of these writers had evidence that their paper book royalties were also significantly wrong. Writers contacted their writers’ organizations. Agents got the news. Everyone in the industry, it seemed, read those blogs, and many of the writers/agents/organizations vowed to do something. And some of them did. I hoped to do an … Read entire article »

Langlois’ ‘Bad Radio’ proves indy publishing has arrived

9 March 2012 Comments Off

Michael Langlois’ debut novel is an interesting book. Part urban fantasy, part Corriea-esque homage to b-horror flicks, book one of the Emergent Earth is proof positive that just because it’s an independent book doesn’t mean it’s not as good as anything released by any of the so-called Big-Six publishers. And it is, it truly is, polished and well executed — Langlois has the craft down well. From the blurb for the book: Sixty years ago Abe Griffin saved the world and gained eternal youth. Or so he thought. Now, a man that Abe believed to be long dead is killing the surviving members of Abe’s old squad in order to reclaim the relics that they have kept hidden for decades. The relics form an ancient beacon that must never be used, in a ritual that must never … Read entire article »