Publishing
. . . Special editionTuesdays with
StoryWriting friends . . .
The book biz is not the only segment of publishing that has run on hard times. Magazines are closing shop. Those that are continuing to publish are seeing their ad sales income drop like the proverbial rock. Advertising pages for March will be down 26 percent from a year ago, says Steven Cohn, editor in chief of Media Industry Newsletter.
"I doubt if the Great Depression was as bad," Cohn said. He’s been covering the magazine industry for 22 years. "Until we see indicators of people going back to stores and restaurants being crowded, this is going to continue. People have to start spending money for this to change."
For the first quarter, the total number of magazine ad pages came in at 26,167, a 22-percent drop from the same period a year ago.
Hit hardest? Music magazines. March ad pages dropped 63percent at Blender and 64 percent at Vibe, Cohn said. Vibe Media Group cut its flagship publication from 12 issues a year to 10. It will also cut the number of copies it prints by a quarter.
Muscle magazines Flex and Muscle & Fitness went against the trend. Flex’s ad pages rose 33 percent and Muscle & Fitness 25 percent. Ad pages for Reader’s Digest are up 2 percent.
The Write News ( http://writenews.com/ ) follows the print industry,
primarily magazines and newspapers. If you want to keep up, this is a good site
to read.
Newspapers in trouble . . .
The latest, Philadelphia Newspapers – the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News – filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Sunday. The publications aren’t closing. The bankruptcy gives Philadelphia Newspapers court protection from its creditors while it reorganizes.
Others that have filed for Chapter 11 include the Journal Register Company (publishes 20 daily newspapers), the Tribune Company (publishes the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times), and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune Company.
For more, click on this link to read the Reuters story:
http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSTRE51M1M720090223?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews&pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=10452
If you are a business junkie and thrive on numbers, also read the Bloomberg
story. Here’s the link:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aY33Ly.1UsnA&refer=us
Free books, e-books, that is . .
.
If you like romance novels, you’ll love this. Harlequin, celebrating its 60th anniversary, wants to give you free downloads of 16 titles. Retail value, $60. To get ’em, go to http://www.harlequincelebrates.com/
Richard Bonnycastle launched Harlequin in Winnipeg, Canada, in 1949. In the
early years, the company published American and British paperbacks, ranging from
mysteries and Westerns to classics and cookbooks. Harlequin brought out its
first romance fiction in 1957. By 1964, it was all romance, all the
time.
A book you can get only if you have a Kindle .
. .
TWS alumus Jeff Franz called attention to this news that he doesn’t like – he’s a bookseller at B&N Westside. Amazon announced on February 9 that it will bring you Stephen King’s new novella, UR, exclusively on its e-reader, the Kindle. You and I won’t be able to buy the book in paper anywhere.
Here’s the story excerpted from a fuller version on King’s promotion site:
Since his first novel was published in 1974, Stephen King has stretched the boundaries of the storyteller as a writer who constantly redefines his readers’ experience by working in various genres and formats.
Whether in an epic horror novel, like The Stand, a serial-novel like The Green Mile, or a novella like Shawshank Redemption, King is able to deliver a reading experience like no one else can. As quickly as a spider spins its web, King reminds us why he’s the master of the novella – a format which one might have thought was fast disappearing.
In UR, King examines the future of the written word. Following a nasty break-up, college English instructor Wesley Smith can’t seem to get his ex-girlfriend’s parting shot out of his head: "Why can’t you just read off the computer like the rest of us?" Egged on by her question and piqued by a student’s suggestion, Smith places an order for Amazon.com’s Kindle eReader. The device that arrives in a box stamped with the smile logo – via one-day delivery that he hadn’t requested – unlocks a literary world that even the most avid of book lovers could never imagine.
If you’ve got a Kindle, you can get the book. Price: $2.99. Download time:
less than a minute. Here’s the link to the Kindle Store:
http://www.amazon.com/kindle-store-ebooks-newspapers-blogs/b?ie=UTF8&node=133141011
More on e-books . . .
Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri, will go totally
to electronic textbooks in the fall. The college gives every incoming student a
laptop. Five hundred students now download their textbooks and read them on
their screens, and all will come fall. The move is a money-saver. Electronic
textbooks cost about half that of the printed versions. Nationwide, says a
spokesman for the National Association of College Bookstores, 18 percent of
college students buy e-textbooks. For more, click here to bring up NPR’s
story:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99961163
Feedback . . .
From honorary TWS member Pam Harris, a communications prof at Western
Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina: Thanks for
the newsy and comprehensive update on Waldenbooks [in last week’s special
edition]. I’m sorry to see them go and am deeply concerned about the trouble
Borders finds itself in. This does not bode well for the printed page. But it’s
survived many challenges and predictions of demise.
More Borders bad news . . .
Borders continues to chop staff at its Ann Arbor, Michigan, headquarters.
Here’s the history of layoffs:
July 2006: 90 cut
May 2008: 5 vice
presidents and 3 directors offed
June 2008: 275 whacked (20 percent of the
corporate workforce)
February 3, 2009: six vice presidents and 10 directors
gone
Last week (February 19): 136 out the door with their last paychecks
At one time, the company employed more than 1,000 people at the company’s HQ.
Jerry