Headline has signed a six-figure deal for seven books from crime author Colin Bateman.
The acquisition was made by Martin Fletcher, publisher-at-large at Headline, through Jonathan Lloyd at Curtis Brown for British Commonwealth rights and Europe to three new novels, including two in the bestselling Mystery Man series, and one in the Dan Starkey series, as well as four backlist titles.
An Australian university textbook rental outfit called Zookal has promised to deliver its wares by drone. Zookal has teamed with another Sydney startup, unmanned aerial vehicle outfit Flirtey, to deliver books.
Customers order books using their smartphone and once loaded Flirtey’s drone homes in on that device thanks to some GPS wizardry. Flirtey’s birds are hexacopters and can fly even if they lose one rotor.
I’ve never been to Ketchikan, Alaska, but I wouldn’t mind being there right now, contemplating the amazing vista of woods and mountains from the Ketchikan Public Library windows. I’d be happy to check out the reading room view from the Spartanburg County (S.C.) Public Libraries’ Middle Tyger branch, too, watching the river tumbling over rocks. These are just two of the beautiful library designs featured in our annual Library Design Showcase article.
via Dreamy Reading Rooms and More | American Libraries Magazine.
Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—from publishing reports to academic announcements to literary dispatches—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today’s stories:
Leo Tolstoy’s great-great-granddaughter, Fyokla Tolstaya, crowdsources volunteers to edit vast amounts of material now available online at the Leo Tolstoy State Museum. (New Yorker)
Let’s move to Iceland: According to the BBC, Iceland is experiencing a book boom, boasting a statistic that one in 10 of its residents will publish a book. The island nation has “more writers, more books published and more books read, per head, than anywhere else int he world.”
Each week in Bookends, two writers take on pressing and provocative questions about the world of books. This week, Jennifer Szalai and Mohsin Hamid challenge notions of what makes certain literature “great.”
via Where Is the Great American Novel by a Woman? – NYTimes.com.
Authors are increasingly opting to self-publish as a way to reach readers and sidestep potentially thorny relations with a publisher, industry players at the world’s biggest book fair said Thursday.
“People have always wanted to tell their story. A lot of barriers have fallen thanks to the explosion of social networks and new technologies,” said Florian Geuppert of French company Books on Demand.
via World’s biggest book fair explores self-publishing trend – Yahoo News.
Booktalk Nation hosts its first NY-LA video hangout with YA Authors Melissa de la Cruz, Kami Garcia, Michael Johnston, and Margaret Stohl. Next week: NYT Bestseller Wally Lamb Previews We Are Water.
“We’re embracing the Google in support of indie bookstores,” says Authors Guild Executive Director Paul Aiken.
via Authors Guild’s Booktalk Nation Goes Google-y and Bi-Coastal | The Authors Guild.
elf-publishing is growing quickly. In 2011, there were about 235,000 self-published titles in the U.S., and about 87,000 of them were e-books, according to a new report from Bowker, a book-industry-focused market-research firm.
While most self-published titles are still print books (some 63%), the e-book category is growing faster. E-book self-publishing production is up 129% since 2006, versus a gain of 33% for print over the same period.
A handful of larger players dominate the e-book self-publishing market, according to the report. Author Solutions (47,094 titles, now owned by Penguin) and Smashwords (40,608 titles) led the way but Lulu wasn’t far behind (38,005). Outside of these three and Amazon’s CreateSpace, which dominates the print side of self-publishing, no other company has more than 10% market-share.
Bowker: Nearly 250,000 Self-Published Books in U.S. in 2011, Growing Fast | Digital Book World.
Saskatoon readers are snapping up books by Canadian author Alice Munro after she became the first Canadian to capture the Nobel Prize for literature.”Her books are really selling. Customers have been very excited,” McNally Robinson general manager Helen MacPherson said.