SEPTEMBER Bob Miller, President of HarperStudio, shared some pertinent views in September on the future of publishing with PublishingPerspectives.com on how he saw the need for the relationship between publisher and author to become more of a partnership of commitment. [...]"I believe that publishers and authors should be equal partners, sharing profits fifty-fifty, as we are doing in all of our deals at HarperStudio. The author brings their creative work to this partnership, and their commitment to do everything in their power to help their book succeed. The publisher brings their financial risk (under our model, the publisher puts up the publishing costs, including the advance to the author, from which the author can decide to help the marketing effort if they’d like, or not),... Similar posts

We really have reached a time to find a way forward in publishing to deal with the existance of self-publishing and paid-publishing services. The debate is quickly becoming entrenched in morals, standpoints, labels and some very foolish rhetoric. “MWA does not object to Harlequin operating a pay-to-publish program or other for-pay services. The problem is HOW those pay-to-publish programs and other for-pay services are integrated into Harlequin's traditional publishing business.” MWA Statement. Really? What an Intriguing statement. The MWA seem to suggest there is a way for Harlequin to integrate paid-publishing into their traditional business that might be somehow acceptable to MWA’s guidelines. Yet, if you read carefully through all the arguments on all sides (traditionally... Similar posts

The decision this week by American trade publisher Thomas Nelson to launch their own imprint offering authors self-publishing packages has certainly captured the blogosphere, if not the whole of the publishing industry. Add to this the intriguing caveat that Author Solutions will run the design, print and distribution end of WestBow Press for Thomas Nelson. It has raised a number of questions beyond just the business strategy of a reputable trade publisher working with one of the world's largest self-publishing services, Author Solutions Inc. It was an odd move by Thomas Nelson to choose to use an already existing imprint of theirs. WestBow Press, let us not forget, had been operating happily and successfully as a fiction imprint of Thomas Nelson for a few years until 2006. Then, for... Similar posts

Thomas Nelson was originally founded as a Scottish bookseller in Edinburgh in 1798. The company began selling second-hand religious books but quickly developed the Thomas Nelson publishing imprint. Throughout the nineteenth century it continued to publish both religious and non-religious books until close to the turn of the century when non-religious books accounted for 94% of published material. The American division of Thomas Nelson began in 1854 in New York and by the 1870s was one of the city's most important firms. In 2000, the UK wing of Thomas Nelson was acquired by Wolters Kluwer and became part of the educational imprint Nelson Thornes. The American wing remains a large independent publisher based in Nashville, Tennessee and it is currently the sixth largest American trade... Similar posts