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Philip Pullman

Oxfordshire Publishing Group [CONFERENCE]

Put 23rd June in your diaries! That is the day that the Oxfordshire Publishing Group will be holding the first of what it hopes will be an annual conference. The conference is open to publishers from around the UK and with a star-studded line-up is sure to appeal to a wide range of BookMachine fans.

The theme of the conference is the highly topical ‘Creating Value in an Age of Disruption’ and the keynote speakers will be coming to this subject from a range of perspectives.

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Snapshots

Announcing launch of Snapshots II [EVENT]

For the second year in a row, Publishing MA students at Kingston University have taken the best content from the BookMachine blog and used it to publish a collection of experiences and advice in print and digital format, in the form of a ‘blook’.

Snapshots II offers need-to-know information for professional publishers in the digital age. The book shares practical insights from those at the forefront of innovation; from traditional publishers to new industry players.

The launch of  Snapshots II will take place on Wednesday 29th April from 6.30pm in London.

Join us at the launch

Three of the contributors to Snapshots II will be discussing the theme of collaboration – how working together means working at our best. speakers include:

Tom Chalmers: a serial entrepreneur who has founded seven book industry companies, including Legend Press, which focuses on mainstream literary and commercial fiction. He tweets at @tom_chalmers.

Toby Hopkins: Senior Account Manager at Getty Images, one of the world’s leading creators and distributors of award-winning still imagery, video, music and multimedia products. He tweets at @picturebooktoby.

Laura Palmer Editorial Director and co-founder of Head of Zeus, an independent publishing house dedicated to new authors, great storytelling, and fabulous ideas. You can follow Head of Zeus’ tweets at @Hoz_Books.

Join us at the launch

We look forward to meeting you all there!

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ALCS report finds massive disparity in authors’ earnings

The Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society has published the results of its report into the money made by professional authors, and none of it will likely come as a surprise to the vast majority of writers forced to subsidise their work through a variety of endurable-to-menial day jobs. Based on research carried out by Queen Mary University of London, The Business of Being an Author: A Survey of Authors’ Earnings and Contracts finds that 58% of all the money earned by professional authors is earned by the top 10% of those authors, resulting in a massive inequality of wealth between that 10% and the remaining 90%.

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Jeremy Trevathan

5 Questions for Jeremy Trevathan, Publisher, Pan MacMillan

Jeremy Trevathan, Publisher, is responsible for the shape, direction and profitability of the adult publishing lists at Pan Macmillan in the UK. This includes Macmillan, Pan, Picador, Mantle, Sidgwick & Jackson, Boxtree, Bello and the recently launched Bluebird. His authors have included bestsellers including Ken Follett, Jeffrey Archer, Max Hastings, James Herbert, Wilbur Smith, Peter Hamilton, China Mieville and Roy Jenkins to name a few. He began his career working in the Production Departments of Oxford Univeristy Press and Penguin Books, before transferring to the Subsidiary Rights Department at Penguin. Stints at Time-Life Books and Reader’s Digest Books in editorial roles preceded his arrival at Pan Macmillan in the mid-1990s as Subsidiary Rights Director. In 2000 he became Publisher of Macmillan.

1. Since starting at Pan Macmillan in 2000, what market change would you say has had the biggest influence on publishing plans?

The biggest change in the market since I became a publisher at Pan Macmillan has been the ebook. Amazon’s emergence in the late 1990s led to the growth of this format in publishing in the UK. During the 1990s Amazon quickly made all physical books available to all readers, which was pretty transformational in itself. There was no more need to wait 2 weeks for the arrival of a backlist title from a retailer.

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Sam

A unique take on publishing: Sam Rennie interview

Sam Rennie founded Readership in 2014. Readership is a reader-generated publishing company where booklovers decide what is published. Here Stephanie Cox interviews Sam about the concept and the success of the company so far.

1. Please introduce us to Readership! How does it work?

Readership is a publishing company controlled by readers. We let them decide what we publish. But, more than that, our goal is to build a community that effectively becomes a company by the people and for the people. We want to be a publishing company that the reading world wants. We also want to let them have more control than the typical user may have with a company. Any changes to our website, what features to prioritise, what services should be added to the company, and so on. It seems like something that would sit naturally in the digital age, because modern technology lets users tell the world what they want, and even lets them help create it, which is obviously vastly different to the age before, where industries basically told their audiences “These are your choices.” etc.

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Cover design

Book Cover Design for Self-Published Authors

It’s a popular myth that the book cover is dead , but unless bricks and mortar bookstores and online cover thumbnails disappear, that simply isn’t true. In fact, a book’s cover is an integral part of the customer’s buying process because it acts as a signpost for the book’s contents. If your book has the right cover design, genre, intended age of reader and tone can all be communicated in a split second.

Most traditionally published authors have their book covers designed for them by their publishers but self-published authors have to do it all themselves and it’s a hard task. So, here are some top tips to help all you budding book cover designers out there!

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