Industry Tidbits

From Linda S:

With the tremendous success of ebooks and the closure of many bookstores around the country, everyone in the publishing industry has had some new challenges to face. For those of us who have been in the industry for twenty or thirty years, the changes might be harder to get our minds around. Things simply aren't the way they used to be, from submitting your work, to selling it, to marketing it. It's a whole new way of doing business and things are changing so rapidly it can be rather daunting for those of us used to doing things the old way. But there's a lot of information out there if you can find the time to weed through it. Here's an article and a site that has a lot of good information and might be of interest to both new and seasoned writers. "Five Big Publishing Stories of 2011" at Digital World.

From Carol:

In Sky Magazine for January, there was a short piece on self-publishing. According to “By the Numbers: Self Publishing,” $1500 is the average cost for an author to self-publish hardcover, soft cover, Kindle and Nook versions of a book. The cost of most self-published e-books is between 99 cents and $2.99. One young adult sci-fi writer earned $2 million from self-publishing before signing a contract with a major publishing house. At one time, three self-published books appeared simultaneously on the New York Times top 35 best selling fiction titles. Lulu.com has published 1.1 million authors. Self-publishing companies used to offer 25% of profits to their authors. That figure has risen to 70%.