Nate Hoffelder

COVID-19 has claimed one more elderly victim.

Reed Expo, the parent company of BookExpoAmerica, NY ComicCon, and other trade shows, has announced that they are killing BookExpo, BookCon, and UnBound.

Dear BookExpo attendees,

We hope when you read this email that you and your loved ones are safe and healthy.

During the past eight months, the impact of COVID-19 has been felt in both our personal lives and the way we do business. It has forced all of us to navigate a new landscape, and sadly forced all of us to say goodbye to many beloved businesses. At the same time, we have seen glimmers of hope and ingenuity, as Bookstores, Retailers, Librarians, and Educators find new and creative ways to serve their communities.

COVID-19 forced us to cancel our in-person BookExpo, BookCon, and UnBound 2020 events. While we missed not seeing old friends and colleagues in person, there was no doubt that this was the correct choice. BookExpo Online brought us together virtually to celebrate our love of books and remind us that there are other, new ways to gather to support the stories and community we hold dear.

As we look toward 2021, we are all wondering what the world will look like. As Event Director, I am tasked with the challenge of how and when to gather the industry together in a manner that is productive, cost effective, and safe. Together with the management team, we have reached the conclusion that planning an in-person event for 2021 is unfortunately not possible based on the current environment.

The COVID-19 pandemic arrived at a time in the life cycle of BookExpo where we were already examining restructuring our events to best meet our community’s needs. The Trade industry has evolved so much in the past decade, and it has long been apparent that BookExpo needs to reflect those changes.

What does that mean for the future? It means we need to pause, review, and rebuild. The BookExpo, BookCon, and UnBound events in their prior iterations will retire and will not take place in 2021. It is our intention that the shows will re-emerge in the future in a format that delivers better value to our customers with a blend of in-person and virtual offerings. These new events will be built upon the tremendous successes and learnings of the past year’s virtual initiatives. We will no longer be limited by geolocation and we will be able to connect this industry through multiple touch points throughout the year.

The thing about BEA is that it was half-dead already. As Reed said in their statement, the trade show had long since stopped being relevant. I had not attended since the year before the show was held in Chicago, and I was only planning to go this year so I could spend a week in NYC as a vacation. (I did have a plan for networking with publishers, but the vacation was the deciding factor.)

If you live within driving distance of a major metro area, the odds are very good that there already was a event you could go to which filled the same needs as BEA. (Between DC, Richmond, and Maryland, I am blessed with around 50 such events.)

Really, the only reason BEA was big was that book publishing industry was concentrated in NYC.

But given how the industry has been decentralizing over the past 15 years (thanks to the internet, there’s no reason to pay for expensive real estate or operating costs any more) it was only a matter of time before BEA lost all relevance.

The death of this trade show was really only a matter of time.

P.S. If it does come back, I would bet that we will see it revived as smaller local trade shows and conferences – you know, events you could go to in the middle of your work day, and not as a business trip.

image by Military Truck Guy via Flickr

The hot news in the publishing world today is that one of the world’s largest media conglomerates just got a little bigger.

Bertelsmann, the parent company of Penguin Random House, is buying Simon & Schuster for just over $2 billion USD.

Bertelsmann, the international media, services, and education company, is further expanding its global content businesses with the acquisition of the publishing house Simon & Schuster. Bertelsmann’s global trade book publishing group, Penguin Random House, is purchasing the book publishing business from the media company ViacomCBS for $2.175 billion. Simon & Schuster strengthens Bertelsmann’s footprint globally, and particular in the U.S., its second-largest market. Simon & Schuster employs around 1,500 people worldwide and generated revenues of $814 million in 2019. It publishes works from well-known authors and public figures including Hillary Clinton, John Irving, Stephen King, and Bob Woodward. The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to close during 2021. Bertelsmann will pay the purchase price in cash from existing liquid funds. Simon & Schuster will continue to be managed as a separate publishing unit under the Penguin Random House umbrella. Jonathan Karp, President & CEO of Simon & Schuster, and Dennis Eulau, COO and CFO, will continue at the helm of the publishing house.

I know that most will frame this story in terms of the Big 5 becoming the Big 4, but I don’t think that is really an accurate description.

The thing about the Big 5 is that they aren’t really that big. There are many larger or comparable-sized publishing companies, including US publishers such as Scholastic and HMH. Also, all of the remaining "Big 5" are actually part of larger international publishing conglomerates. Hachette belongs to Legardere, PRH and S&S are part of Bertelmann, Macmillan belongs to Holtzbrink, and HarperCollins belongs to Newscorp.

The Big 5 (now the Big 4) are run as parts of a larger whole, and referring to them in terms of their relative size in the US market is misleading at best.

Or at least, it is misleading to those outside the industry. If you are in the book publishing industry you’re going to notice a change in everything from reduced competition for new books to lower fees paid to service providers to the size of booth at book fairs (publisher booths have been getting smaller for years now, and this will probably accelerate the trend).

This deal is bad news for everyone except Bertelsmann’s stockholders.

image by ActuaLitté via Flickr

2020 was a strange year, for obvious reasons.

Many of us spent a lot of 2020 in lockdown, either trying to keep up with work or looking for a new job.

Some turned to streaming services such as Netflix (for example, I subscribed to Disney Plus so I could finally watch The Mandalorian, only to discover the writing was terrible). Others spent their time learning new skills, while many took this an opportunity to dive into new books and read more.

How did COVID-19 change our reading habits? Which countries read the most this year? And what books were we reading?

Here are a few of the highlights from the infographic.

• India reads more than any other country, followed by Thailand and China.
• Printed books continue to drive more revenue than eBooks or audiobooks. However, physical books sales did dip because of COVID-19 (not surprisingly).
• Romance is our genre of choice, with one-third of all mass market fiction books being romance novels.
• 35% of the world read more due to COVID-19.

Check out the infographic below to learn more about world reading habits in a year like no other.

For a number of years now Amazon has been making series pages for Kindle ebooks. One of their bots would identify all of the books in a particular series, and then list them all on the same page so that a reader could buy all of the books at once, paying retail.

I can’t find my first post on the topic, but I always thought this idea was a good one because it aligned with how I buy ebooks (when I find a new favorite author, I buy their backlist).

And now Amazon has given authors the option of creating series pages on their own. A couple days ago they published an announcement in the KDP support forums:

You can now publish and update eBook and Paperback series detail pages automatically through KDP. With the launch of series in KDP, you can:

1. Create a new series: For any titles in your KDP account, create an ordered or unordered series to help readers on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de find all the books in your series on a single page.  Learn more.
2. View and organize your series: Navigate from a series title on your Bookshelf to view and manage books in your series. Review series details and titles to ensure the information is up-to-date for readers. Learn more.
3. Edit an existing series to control how it appears to readers: Adjust description. In addition, add, remove, re-order or change whether your titles are main or related content. Learn more.

If you already had an eBook series detail page available on Amazon.com, we’ve added that series in your KDP account. You can view existing series in your account by visiting your KDP Bookshelf and checking the box on the bookshelf for "View titles in series".  If you don’t see your series in your account, you can create a new series by following the steps here.

Not all features are available in every marketplace. Series that contain paperback and pre-order books are available on Amazon.com, but not Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de. We’re working to add more series features in the future. For more information on KDP series, click here.

Does anyone know how long this feature has been available?

The code in the related help page suggests Amazon launched it at least a few months ago, but I don’t know exactly when it launched,

I wasn’t going to touch this story because I thought at first that the claim was an exaggeration or misinterpretation, but I was wrong.

If you’ve been listening to the author grapevine over the past few weeks, you may have heard authors griping about Audible’s return policy. While you can usually find someone griping about something, no matter the topic, this time authors have a valid complaint.

Amazon’s audiobook subsidiary is actively promoting exchanges to potential subscribers.

What do I mean by "actively"?

Well, when I checked into renewing my Audible subscription, I saw that Audible wants me to know that if I reactivate my monthly subscription, I will be able to exchange any audiobook I am not happy with:

Also, when I visited Audible’s Memberships Benefits page, I was shown this:

And if you visit the Audible page on Amazon.com, you will see this:

While I think Amazon’s liberal return policy is a great idea because it reassures readers that they don’t have to worry about wasting money on crappy content, I share authors' concern about actively promoting returns. I beleive that promoting this as a "feature" attracts serial returnees – people who will consistently return every audiobook they get.

This does not hurt Amazon, but it does hurt authors and publishers. Amazon isn’t refunding the credit that their customer bought, which means they get to keep the money (this is why it’s considered an "exchange" rather than a "return"). At the same time, however, Amazon is also taking money away from authors each time a subscriber makes an "exchange" of an audiobook which authors paid to produce.

No wonder they’re pissed.

When I reported several months ago that Amazon had shut down the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library, several commenters argued I was wrong because they knew a loophole (find a book which is in Kindle Unlimited, and then borrow it using KOLL).

I still think my take was valid, while at the same time I would also agree they had a point. But in any case, the argument will soon be moot.

Amazon has quietly announced on the relevant KDP help page that KOLL is ending in just over two months.

We will no longer offer KOLL beginning January 4th, 2021. Customers may continue reading books they previously borrowed from KOLL. You will earn royalties for any KENP Read from these KOLL borrows.

In addition, KOLL will continue to display on your Historical and Payments reports.

Originally launched under the name Amazon Prime eBooks in late 2011, the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library was Amazon’s first foray into ebook subscriptions. It was only available to Kindle- and Fire tablet-owning Amazon Prime members in the US, but it was popular enough that it convinced Amazon to launch Kindle Unlimited not quite three years later.

And now the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library is going to be shut down.

That is not a huge loss, but it is deserving of a eulogy.

We would not have Kindle Unlimited with KOLL, and KU has been a boon to both readers and authors. Kindle Ulimited has launched multiple author careers while at the same time delivering great value for readers. It paid out over $300 million last year, making it one of the larger ebook retailers all on its own.

It has been over two weeks since hackers had their way with B&N’s servers, and the retailer still hasn’t fully recovered.

The hack, which has since been confirmed as a ransomware attack, originated in B&N’s corporate offices before spreading to their servers, store computers, and even the cash registers. All parts of B&N were affected, and while most functionality was restored within a few days, B&N’s Nook service is still only semi-functional.

And that includes the author side, as well as the reader. I got a comment last night from an author whose book launch has been delayed as a result of B&N’s server issues:

This is even effecting the authors back end of Barnes & Noble. Unfortunately my book was supposed to go live on the 22nd, we get vague updates about how the “dashboard is working” but they are “still working on other issues”….it’s not the 26th? oof. I know one other author who hasn’t had their book live since the hack day itself. every day authors can’t sell books after the pre-marketed publish date is a wasted sales day, every day is a missed book sold opportunity.

Over on the reader side, I can report first hand that my library of Nook ebooks is still mostly inaccessible. I have two Nook accounts, and the one with my thousands of Fictionwise purchases cannot be accessed via the B&N website and it is still not syncing with the Nook app on my Android smartphone. My second, test account can be accessed via the B&N website, but it’s also not syncing with the Nook app.

Just about the only thing that can be accessed from the Nook app are new purchases made in the app itself.

This could not happen at a worst time for B&N. We going into the holiday sales period during a time when ebook sales are increasing as a result of the pandemic. This would have been a great opportunity for B&N to reinvigorate ebook sales and start turning around its digital division, but instead this is looking more like another nail in Nook’s coffin.

image by jjbers via Flickr

So it turns out that my suspicions about B&N’s server issues over the weekend were in fact correct.  The retailer was hacked, and has confirmed that customer information, including email addresses and shipping info, was stolen.

Barnes & Noble sent out an email Wednesday night, informing customers about the hack, and denying that any credit card or financial info was compromised. (I have a couple reports from readers that suggest this is not true, so I am remaining skeptical at the moment.)

I have not received this email, but several readers have. I have included a copy at the end of this post. If you are a regular B&N customer, I strongly urge you to ask your credit card company place security checks on your cards just in case.

On a related note, B&N is still getting their systems back up and running again. In fact, the Nook servers are still down as of late Wednesday night.

Dear Barnes & Noble Customer,

It is with the greatest regret we inform you that we were made aware on October 10, 2020 that Barnes & Noble had been the victim of a cybersecurity attack, which resulted in unauthorized and unlawful access to certain Barnes & Noble corporate systems.

We write now out of the greatest caution to let you know how this may have exposed some of the information we hold of your personal details.

Firstly, to reassure you, there has been no compromise of payment card or other such financial data. These are encrypted and tokenized and not accessible. The systems impacted, however, did contain your email address and, if supplied by you, your billing and shipping address and telephone number. We currently have no evidence of the exposure of any of this data, but we cannot at this stage rule out the possibility. We give below answers to some frequently asked questions.

We take the security of our IT systems extremely seriously and regret sincerely that this incident has occurred. We know also that it is concerning and inconvenient to receive notices such as this. We greatly appreciate your understanding and thank you for being a Barnes & Noble customer.

Barnes & Noble
FAQ

1. Have my payment details been exposed?
No, your payment details have not been exposed. Barnes & Noble uses technology that encrypts all credit cards and at no time is there any unencrypted payment information in any Barnes & Noble system.

2. Could a transaction be made without my authorization?
No, no financial information was accessible. It is always encrypted and tokenized.

3. Was my email compromised?
No. Your email was not compromised as a result of this attack. However, it is possible that your email address was exposed and, as a result, you may receive unsolicited emails.

4. Was any personal information exposed due to the attack?
While we do not know if any personal information was exposed as a result of the attack, we do retain in the impacted systems your billing and shipping addresses, your email address and your telephone number if you have supplied these.

5. Do you retain any other information in the impacted systems?
Yes, we also retain your transaction history, meaning purchase information related to the books and other products that you have bought from us.

image by MikeKalasnik via Flickr 

Back in July Google started testing new royalty terms in the US, Canada, and Australia, and now they are expanding the terms to cover all markets. Google sent out an email on Tuesday, informing authors that they are now paying a 70% royalty of the retail price set by copyright holders in 60 plus countries.

I see from my post back in August (Google’s help pages concur) that you must accept a revised ToS to get the 70% royalty on ebooks.  If you don’t accept it then you will still get the 52% royalty. Also, ebooks sold in Play Books in other countries will still earn a 52% royalty.

This is a major move for Google; they are in effect matching the royalty terms of the other major ebook retailers, and are giving up the frankly wacky pricing policy. I wonder what took them so long?

According to Google, the 70% royalty is available in  Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Oman, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela.

Here is the email which an author forwarded to me (thanks, Phil!):

We are making several important changes that benefit our publishing partners.

We are updating the Terms of Service applicable to Google Play Books (ToS) in several ways. The ToS are an agreement that contain important terms affecting your rights when publishing your ebooks on Google Play Books.

We’re increasing your revenue split to 70% in 60+ countries as part of our continuing effort to improve your publisher experience. You will earn 70% of the list price on ebooks sold to customers in these 60+ countries regardless of the price of your ebook. You will continue to receive your current revenue split on sales in the remaining Google Play Books supported countries.

We will unilaterally follow the list price that you provide for an ebook on sales to customers in the United States and Canada. We reserve the right to discount if we see a lower price for the ebook available from another retailer.

We’ve updated the ToS to remove Google Asia Pacific Pte Limited, Google Commerce Limited, and Google Ireland Limited as parties to the ToS and we are adding a sublicense clause allowing Google LLC to sublicense to Google affiliates such as those mentioned above.

Thank you for being part of the Google Play Books publishing community.
The Google Play Books Team

Barnes & Noble is going through the mother of all system crashes right now.

Some time late Friday night or early Saturday morning the retailer’s entire IT backbone crashed, and it took almost all of the company’s functionality with it. Everything from the cash registers to the catalog lookup is down. Even the Nook platform is down.

Edit: A number of B&N employees have called me on this, and they are right when they said that I exaggerated. The systems were still functional, albeit severely crippled by what some reports described as a ransomware/trojan/virus.

What’s even worse is that it’s Tuesday morning, and everything is still borked. I just checked the B&N website, and while I can see the site I cannot log in, much less buy anything. I also cannot access any of the Nook features.

UPDATE: B&N’s systems are mostly back up around 3 pm eastern.

There are unconfirmed reports on Reddit that B&N has been attacked by a virus or other malware. Given that we are now on day four of this situation, it is more than likely that they are correct.

Second Update: Yep, they were hacked.

I would advise you to start combing through your credit card statements for B&N charges. If I shopped there I would contact the credit card companies so they could add security checks on my cards just in case a hacker did make off with credit card numbers.

As we recall from the Bowker hack in 2018, sometimes the first public evidence of a hack is bogus credit card charges.

Thanks, Steve!

Amazon just took another step towards complete dominance of the book market supply chain. The retailer could already handle everything from production to the retail sale, and now they are moving one step up the chain to also provide the tools that are used to format books as well.

I was just reading in the KDP newsletter that Kindle Create, Amazon’s tool for making Kindle project files, has been updated with support for POD books.

In addition to regular Kindle ebooks and the PDF-ish Kindle format, Kindle Create can now also create the files you would need to upload to create a print edition:

With the latest release of Kindle Create, you can now upload your Kindle Create file to KDP as both an eBook and paperback of any trim size, creating both digital and print versions of your book simultaneously!

Routine but challenging paperback tasks like margins, page numbers, left/right side page layouts, widow/orphan treatment, and table of contents creation are also handled automatically.

Ready to publish your next book? Or ready to publish one of your eBooks in paperback? Download the latest version of Kindle Create today and get started.

The output files are of course proprietary to Amazon, and cannot be uploaded elsewhere (this makes sense when you remember that Amazon’s goal is to dominate the market, not give you a more useful tool). This limits their value, but if you are going to be selling through Amazon anyway, this may have cut out an extra step in your production process.

Has anyone tried the new features?

Amazon

In addition to announcing a couple new ereaders yesterday, Onyx recently also filed FCC paperwork for three additional ereaders. All three are updates for existing models, but have not been formally announced.

Onyx has not embargoed any of the interesting details, but I cannot tell you anything at the moment because the FCC website isn’t cooperating. It took the longest time to download just the one set of external photos, and I do not have more time to spend on this.

What I do know is that the existing Poke 2, Nova 2, and Note 2 models run Android 9,0 and have 6″, 7.8″, and 10.3″ screens.  It is reasonable to assume that the new models will have the same size screens and run Android 10.

Here are the links; I hope you have better luck at viewing the attached files than I did.

Poke 3 (FCC)

Nova 3 (FCC)

Note 3 (FCC)

Audible sent out an email on Tuesday, informing authors and users that it was shutting down Audible Escape subscription service. (Thanks, Isobel!)

Here’s the email that was sent to authors:

Audible Escape (formerly known as the Audible Romance Package) will end on 1 November per an email from ACX.

Since November 1 2017, Audible Escape has provided avid romance fans with countless hours of entertainment and enjoyment, including your titles. We’ve learned s mych about what customers are looking for in an unlimited listening membership, inspiring new offerings and services that present members a diverse selection of titles across a mix of formats (such as audiobooks, podcasts, and Audible Originals) as well as lengths and genres.

As of 1 November, Audible will no longer offer the Audible Escape subscription. This means titles will be removed from subscribers' libraries on that date.

You will receive royalties for all Audible Escape listening of your titles, and qualifying creators will receive author/producer and title bonuses based on the full Q4 2020 bonus pool.

Launched in 2017 under the name Audible Romance, Audible Escape was the second audiobook Netflix-style subscription service launched by the Amazon subsidiary (the first launched in Japan in 2015).  The Audible Escape service was immensely loved by subscribers for the same reason it was disliked by authors: it give listeners access to an immense library romance audiobooks in exchange for a flat monthly fee.

As a result, the payment rate was abysmal, and if Audible ever addressed that issue, they did not ever mention it in public.

Audible Escape has essentially been replaced by Audible Plus, the $8 a month service that Audible launched last month. That service offers access to a diverse range of content, including podcasts, audiobooks, and Audible Originals, and it is available for free to Amazon Prime members and Audible subscribers on the Gold or Platinum plans.

I’ve just learned about an Amazon feature that, while not exactly new, is still relatively unknown and has not been officially launched.

I was browsing Dale Robert’s Facebook group today when someone mentioned Amazon Book Clubs. Kevin Maguire posted this screensnap while mentioning to him that the feature was new to him.

A little bit of Google sleuthing lead me to the relevant page on Amazon, but otherwise turned up little useful info (no one has reported on it yet). According to the FAQ linked at the bottom of the page, ABC is "a great way to help bring your discussions to life. Easily coordinate book selection, get notifications, and more, all in one place. Oh yeah, it’s also free. Because at Amazon, reading and discussing books is available for everyone." (The self-congratulatory tone makes me want to vomit, too.)

There are apparently several thousand book clubs on the platform already; most  are small and have only a handful of members, but the largest "featured" club had several thousand members.

It is hard to say just how many users have joined clubs, or how many clubs there are; there’s no single list, leaving you to search for clubs based on keywords. This is more or less privacy through obscurity, which sounds nice at first but will probably make it harder for potential members to find clubs they like.

On the plus side, Amazon does let you launch "private" book clubs where activity is shielded from public view, and is only visible to a club’s members and Amazon’s algorithms.

You have to be approved by an admin before you can join a private club, while a public club is open to all. That is quite a different definition of public and private from what FB uses. for its groups.

Speaking of which, its pretty clear that Amazon’s goal is to supplant FB groups as a discussion forum, and I hope they succeed. While I like the people I have met in FB groups, the platform itself is unpleasant to use. It was designed with data collection in mind, not user comfort, and Amazon could not possibly build something worse.

Edit: I have to take that back. A reader pointed out that the "book clubs" lack any sort of discussion or other group features. (I missed this at first because I simply assumed that something called a book club would have club-like features.) Since there’s no community or discussion features, I really do not know why Amazon launched this.

So what do you think of the new book clubs? Have you tried them yet?

How do they compare to the user groups on Goodreads?