Richard Russo

America’s Authors Guild has just shared an open letter from its current co-Vice President, novelist Richard Russo, coming out against Amazon’s offer of 100 percent ebook royalties to Hachette authors while the Amazon/Hachette dispute continues. The letter attracted a prompt response from Amazon, who wrote as follows (here courtesy of Publishers Weekly): Our offer is […]

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The primary mission of the Authors Guild has always been the defense of the writing life. While it may be true that there are new opportunities and platforms for writers in the digital age, only the willfully blind refuse to acknowledge that authorship is imperiled on many fronts. True, not all writers are equally impacted. Some authors still make fortunes through traditional publishing, and genre writers (both traditionally published and independently published) appear to be doing better than writers of nonfiction and "literary" mid-list fiction. 

Can you believe those...those...those...sons of bitches at Amazon? After launching almost 20 years ago and making virtually every book-new, used, dead-tree, electronic, audio, and I'm guessing any day now, olfactory-available to everyone in America at good-to-great prices, the company's true character now stands revealed. It's not pretty, folks. Despite a huge market share, Amazon apparentlystill wants books, especially the e-books that everyone agrees are the future of the medium, to be cheaper than what publishers and big-name authors want you to pay for them.

Quick-To-Market Ebooks Now Norm, Not Exception (Forbes) What made ["Linsanity"] by sportswriter Alan Goldsher from digital publishing house and platform Vook so shocking was that it took less than six days to write (72 hours), produce (36 hours) and publish (less than 24 hours). * * * Richard Russo Gives E-Publishing A Try (NPR) Richard Russo, the [...]

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Report: Penguin to Cease Windowing Library Titles (Digital Book World) UK Government Releases New Report on Library Lending (Good e-Reader) Battle Lines Drawn in HarperCollins/Open Road eBook Suit (Publisher’s Weekly) License Restrictions: A Fool’s Errand (Nature.com) Kindle Daily Deals: Nate in Venice by Richard Russo (and 3 others)  

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Caleb Mason thinks he’s got something different. His company, Publerati, founded in June of this year, publishes exclusively original literary fiction, exclusively in ebook format.

With five books already published and five more slated to come out in the next few months, Mason is currently crowing about an author he’s just signed: “I’m really excited that Ellen Cooney wants to come with us. She’s the first author I’ve signed who’s been published by a big publisher. The book she submitted is so wonderful, I can’t understand why anyone would pass it up!” Cooney, who has been represented by Sterling Lord Literistic and published by Random House and others, has signed on with Publerati for her next novel titled Thanksgiving.