First Books
If you print out this coupon and bring it to Borders or WaldenBooks, you’ll get 10% off your total. (PS am I the only person who didn’t know Borders and Waldenbooks were affiliated?) Even better, 10% of your purchase will go to First Books.
Top Five Publishers Make $4.8 Billion
The five largest US publishers (aka the “Big Five” — Random House, HarperCollins, Penguin Group, Simon & Schuster and Time Warner Trade Books) raked in $4.8 billion in revenue in 2004.
Random House, of course, was the country’s largest publisher last year, with U.S. sales of about $1.33 billion, roughly flat with 2003. HarperCollins and Penguin usually run neck and neck for the country’s second largest publisher. In 2004, HC, with a big assist from Zondervan and The Purpose-Driven Life, edged ahead of Penguin. HC had North American sales of approximately $965 million last year, with North America accounting for about 73% of HC’s worldwide sales. Penguin, which received a boost of $40 million from its Penguin Press, Gotham and Razorbill imprints in 2004, had estimated sales in the U.S. of $900 million last year.
To compare: 63,000 small publishers (’everyone else,’ I’m guessing) generated revenue of $14 billion.
[Source: Publishers Weekly, via KeepMedia]
For One More Day Starbucks
Starbucks will start offering reading material along with their beverages. One of the first to be added will be For One More Day by author Mitch Albom. The large coffee seller has been offering music and movies for a time and would like to branch out into novels very soon.
The coffee chain Starbucks has been offering The Little Engine That Could but they never really advertised the fact until now.
Getting Published, part 8
So now it’s a waiting game. My agent is currently submitting my proposal and clips to the major publishing houses I would never have dreamed of approaching on my own (…as nearly all of them refuse to touch unagented submissions). She’s promised to send all of their responses directly to me as soon as she gets them.
In the meanwhile, I’ve been reading a lot of blogs by *other* literary agents, just to get a feel for how they operate and what they think about various things. Here’s a sampling:
Rachel Vater’s blog
BookEnds blog
(Jessica Faust, Jacky Sach, Kim Lionetti)
The Knight Agency blog
(Deidre Knight, Judson Knight, Elaine Spencer, Julie Ramsey, Nephele Tempest, Pamela Harty)
I too have a blog: Nancy’s Baby Names. The book I’m writing is a baby name book with a twist, so the blog (and its increasing traffic! yay!) will give me two things: first, a platform, and second, an easy way to market my book. If you’re a writer, I definitely recommend staking out some virtual territory and filling it with words. 