Bowker

Noted in NPR's Thursday, November 21 report on the National Book Award winners was that "a visibly shocked (James) McBride accepted the fiction prize. Considered the clear underdog, he said he wouldn't have minded if any of the other finalists won because they 'are all fine writers.'"

McBride's novel The Good Lord Bird is about a young slave (delightfully named 'Little Onion') who joins the abolitionist John Brown in his anti-slavery mission.

Over the past few years, direct-to-consumer (D2C) sales have been top-of-mind for many in the publishing industry.  This approach has also been hotly debated, with some advocating for deeper consumer relationships through data, and others equating D2C with taking on Amazon in the retail space—a fight in which few, if any, would like to engage.

Romance and literary fiction have helped drive the number of US books self-published in hard copy up to 234,931, an increase of 59% compared to 2011. Research by the book data company Bowker, which counts all the ISBN numbers issued to self-published works, suggests that electronic titles bring the total for US self-publishing up to 391,000. This figure - which does not include titles published without an ISBN and may include some electronic editions of books also published in hard copy

Concrete data compiled by the book industry experts at Bowker will be released later this week, but are expected to demonstrate that not only is self-publishing continuing to grow in popularity, but also the the recent wave of self-publishing successes are actually fueling the traditional publishing industry as well.

At roughtype.com, Nicholas Carr continued his examination of the decline in ebook sales growth, a trend that started in 2012 and seems to be continuing this year. According to an Association of American Publishers report, e-book sales in the U.S. trade market for the first quarter of 2013 grew by just 5% over the same period in 2012. Meaning, according to Carr, "the explosive growth of the last few years has basically petered out, according to the APP numbers."

May 28, 2013 (New Providence, NJ) – ProQuest affiliate Bowker® is expanding the range of services available to users of MyIdentifiers.com by including a link to Digi-Rights® Direct, a patented suite of automated rights solutions and services for authors and publishers. This cloud-based service is designed to enable users to optimize their rights so that revenues are maximized and risks from copyright liability issues are minimized. The link to Digi-Rights Direct is part of Bowker’s larger program to identify high-quality providers of key services for authors and small publishers, connecting them through MyIdentifiers.com.

Watching C-Span’s Book TV the weekend of July 5, I picked up their May 30 interview with Scott Turow, President of the Author’s Guild. While he was pitching his forthcoming book, Identical, Peter Slen led him to revisit his NY Times OP Ed piece, “The Slow Death of the American Author.” Peter Slen, by the way, in the tradition of C-Span’s Brian Lamb, has got to be one of the smartest and most resourceful TV interviewers in the book world.

If you're doing what many Americans do this month, you're spending at least some of your time sitting on the beach reading a book. The "beach read" is an essential element of vacation planning, and we publishers work hard to get our books in those suitcases or on those not-quite-sand-proof ereaders. I suppose the quintessential beach read is a "trashy" novel, but for many it's just a good work of fiction, a compelling non-fiction read, or perhaps a trip back to the classics. Middlemarch, anyone?

Yesterday, we reported that self-published books now make up 20% of the genre ebook market in the UK. That figure was first announced on Tuesday by Steve Bohme, the research director of Bowker Market Research, at the literary consultancy conference, Writing in the Digital Age.

But, as the Guardian’s Alison Flood noted on Tuesday, self-published books also “came in for a slating” at the conference from Andrew Franklin, the founder and managing director of Profile Books. An excerpt of Franklin’s remarks, per Flood’s report, is below:

ProQuest affiliate Bowker® is expanding resources available to authors and small publishers on its MyIdentifiers.com website by teaming with Smith Publicity, widely recognized as one of the industry’s top book publicity agencies. Now, MyIdentifiers.com will include a link to Smith’s website where authors and publishers can take the first steps in exploring public relations programs that can effectively support their publishing efforts. The cooperation with Smith is part of Bowker’s larger program to help MyIdentifiers users succeed by connecting them to trusted providers of a range of essential services.