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Court blocks PRH acquisition of S&S 

Bertelsmann, the parent company of Penguin Random House (PRH), will appeal a ruling by a US federal court blocking its proposed acquisition of Simon & Schuster (S&S).

In a two-page order, judge Florence Pan found: ‘the United States has shown that the effect of [the proposed merger] may be substantially to lessen competition in the market for the U.S. publishing rights to anticipated top-selling books,’ reports Publishers Weekly. ‘Accordingly, judgment shall be entered in favor of the Plaintiff and the merger shall be enjoined.’

Pan’s full 80-page written decision blocking the acquisition was published a week after the decision was revealed, and after confidential redactions were made. Pan found the Department of Justice (DoJ) had ‘properly defined a relevant market—focused on publishing rights for anticipated top-selling books—that encompasses 70 percent of the advances that publishers pay to authors’. DoJ attorneys had defined ‘anticipated top selling books’ as those with advances over $250,000. Pan dismissed PRH and S&S’s arguments that the government’s focus on books with advances over $250,000 was incorrect on both the facts and the law.

Bertelsmann CEO Thomas Rabe said: ‘We do not share the court’s assessment any more than we previously shared the Department of Justice’s position. Both are based on incorrect basic assumptions, including an inaccurate definition of the market. A merger would be good for competition. We remain convinced that Bertelsmann and Penguin Random House would be the best creative home for Simon & Schuster—with a wide variety of publishers that could operate independently under one umbrella. We will be filing a motion to appeal with the DC Court of Appeals.’

As previously reported by Books+Publishing, in 2020 Bertelsmann announced its plans to acquire S&S from media company ViacomCBS for US$2.175 billion (A$2.95b). It expected the deal to settle in 2021. However, the US Department of Justice sued to block the acquisition, alleging the move would ‘enable Penguin Random House, which is already the largest book publisher in the world, to exert outsized influence over which books are published in the United States and how much authors are paid for their work’.

The merger has previously been cleared in the UK by the Competition and Markets Authority.

Pham wins Heyman Mentorship Award unpublished manuscript award; other awards news

Kim Pham is the winner of the 2022 Heyman Mentorship Award for her novel manuscript ‘Bird Hands Beaver a Fishmint Bouquet’.

Set in the suburbs of Western Sydney, the book is described by the publisher as ‘a comical coming-of-age story with an unsettling twist’, and by the author as ‘if The Breakfast Club was directed by Bong Joon Ho’. The novel follows 13-year-old Bridget Bui, who has only one goal this year: to ace Australia’s KRAPLAN tests and claim her rightful place as star pupil. Maybe then her parents will love her.

The Heyman Mentorship Award is for a writer over 26 years of age from a background of social or economic disadvantage, writing full-length prose ‘which engages in some way with issues of class and economic disadvantage’. It offers the winner a year of mentoring by Heyman and a full editorial report from Catherine Milne at HarperCollins, with the publisher holding the first option to publish the work.

The award received over 40 applications in its third year. ‘I wish it were possible to offer more than one award—there are many stories which will stay with me,’ Heyman said. For more information about the award see Heyman’s website.

Also announced in the past month were shortlists for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, the Dymocks Book of the Year and Australian Political Book of the Year Award, while longlists were also announced for the Tasmanian Literary Awards.

To stay up to date with all the latest awards news, subscribe to Books+Publishing here.

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Independent Publishing Conference program announced

The program for the 2022 Small Press Network (SPN) annual Independent Publishing Conference, which runs from 24–26 November, has been announced.

The conference, which is now in its 11th year, will run as a hybrid event taking place in person at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne and streamed simultaneously online.

Following the Thursday research day and Friday industry day, the program on Saturday, 26 November is devoted to practical workshop sessions hosted by industry experts. Topics for the workshops include audiobook production, publishing timelines, metadata, non-bookshop sales, rights and global trends, writers festivals, social media, ebooks, contracts, reviewing and more.

‘After running the conference entirely online for two years we are very much looking forward to welcoming our colleagues from across the industry back to the Wheeler Centre,’ said SPN general manager Tim Coronel. ‘But we also recognise the advantages of online access, so we’ll be making full use of the available technology so that participants can join us from anywhere.’

As a special offer to Independent Publishing readers, the Small Press Network is offering 10% off Independent Publishing Conference tickets using the code IPNS10 at checkout. Tickets are available as one, two or three-day passes to the conference.

For details of the full program, see the SPN website.

Amazon changes Kindle returns policy after author complaints

Amazon will shorten the Kindle ebook returns window following complaints from authors.

Amazon’s current ebooks return policy allows readers to receive a full refund for up to 14 days, regardless of how much of the work they have read. The UK’s Society of Authors (SoA) and the Authors’ Guild in the US called on the retailer to change its returns policy following a viral TikTok trend involving users making videos about returning ebooks. The author societies’ calls were echoed by a Change.org petition, as authors don’t receive royalties on returned titles.

In an email to the SoA and Authors’ Guild on 21 September, Amazon vice president of books and Kindle content David Naggar said the company is planning to make ‘meaningful changes’. ‘Most notably, we will deactivate self-service returns for any book read past 10%, adding substantial friction to the process.’

The change will be applied across all platforms that support Kindle. Naggar said he hopes the changes will be implemented by the end of the year.

Linktree launches Book Links for authors, publishers

The social media landing page Linktree has introduced Book Links, a feature meant to help authors and publishers drive book sales and build a community of readers across their platforms.

When users add a Book Link to their Linktree, their followers and visitors can find their book listings at various retailers, helping publishers and authors drive traffic to where their title is for sale. Pro users can also add tokens to their Book Link if they’re involved with affiliate programs at Apple Books, Barnes & Noble and other retailers.

Linktree said Book Links ‘empowers authors to promote their newest release from pre-order status to publication day and beyond’, while publishers can share links to the latest BookTok viral sensation or the newest blockbuster release. ‘The feature connects followers and visitors to their next good read, and builds a community of book lovers,’ Linktree said.

Latest awards news

Adelaide teacher and writer Elisa Chenoweth won Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing’s 2022 Ampersand Prize for unpublished young adult and middle-grade manuscripts. Chenoweth was chosen from a shortlist of five. Hachette Australia revealed the six authors shortlisted for the 2022 Richell Prize for emerging writers ahead of the winners announcement on 3 November. Meanwhile, seven books are shortlisted for the 2022 SPN Book of the Year Award; the winner will be announced at an event held in partnership with the Wheeler Centre on 25 November. To stay up to date with all the latest awards news, subscribe to Books+Publishing here.

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From the archive: How do bookshops find out about self-published titles?

This article was first published by Independent Publishing in 2019.

For the past few months, Books+Publishing has been asking Australian book buyers—the people responsible for selecting which books are stocked on a bookshop’s shelves—how they find out about new books from self-published authors, as part of its ‘book buyer spotlight’ series.

So far, representatives from Big W, Readings, WHSmith, Harry Hartog and Berkelouw Books, and Dymocks have shared their behind-the-scenes insight:

Meredith Drake, Big W: ‘I get enquiries direct from small publishers and self-published authors, and many of the smaller publishers keep me up to date by email. It doesn’t matter where the book comes from as long as it answers a customer need.’

Angela Crocombe, Readings: ‘Self-published authors get in touch with us via our website or come into the store and if we think we can sell their book we take it on. We are just in the middle of a new initiative at the kids shop of having two months of promoting self-published authors by giving them a display in store and a feature window. It’s been quite successful.’

Ruth Ellis, WHSmith: ‘Most of the big publishing houses do a great job at giving their small agencies a balanced representation in our meetings, which is crucial to ensuring we have a diverse and interesting range of books for our customers. However, there are many smaller publishers and self-published authors who aren’t attached to a publishing house or distributor with a sales force. Usually I don’t find out about those books unless the author or publisher contacts me directly.’

Maxine Ryan, Harry Hartog and Berkelouw Books: ‘Self-published authors leave a copy of their book, if they have it already, with their contact details, and then a decision to stock is made.’

Imogen Neely, Dymocks: ‘We have communication from lots of wonderful self-published authors. Because we are a network of franchised stores, a lot of the time Dymocks stores will support local authors and will work directly with self-published authors to meet local demand. We also see smaller publishers a couple of times a year, so they highlight their big releases.’

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Lessons for social media: part two

RM Marketing Services director Rachael McDiarmid shares her advice on developing your social media strategy.

As we discussed in our recent article, social media is about starting a discussion. We shared three important lessons:

  1. Don’t leave it to the last minute to develop a digital and social media action plan
  2. If you don’t think you have enough content for social media to encourage engagement, then it’s not for you
  3. If you can’t define who your audience is then consider if it is really the best channel for you to be in.

You’ve worked through the article and have decided that yes, you’re interested in being on social media—it’s right for your book and for you as an author, and you’re ready to take the next step. Well done! But what exactly is that next step?

The first decision you should make is what social media channels are right for you, your author brand and your audience. Does your audience gravitate towards Facebook or Instagram? Are you more LinkedIn than Twitter? What combination of channels will help you reach your reader?

To help you decide the social media spaces you are most comfortable in, look at similar books and authors and what channels they are participating in, what content they produce and what engagement they are getting with readers. Always be thinking of your readers— who are they, what age group, where are they located, where do they get their information and entertainment from etc. Define your audience and look at what platforms they gravitate to.

Alternatively, look at each social media platform and do a word association—what comes to mind when you think of Instagram (‘visual’), LinkedIn (‘business’), Twitter (‘opinion’) and so forth. It will help you discover your own thoughts about each of them and where you are most comfortable. Twitter might be a good avenue to encourage opinions and debate on your book (mainly if you are publishing nonfiction) but a word of advice: when Twitter turns, it turns bad, so have a thick skin and be prepared! That said, one of the beauties of that platform is not necessarily for straight book (or self) promotion but rather to network and learn from other authors. ‘Writing Twitter’ is a lovely community and you can find your people there for support and guidance. I highly recommend it. It’s also quick for news and important information related to the publishing industry so follow the right people and you’ll learn a lot.

Explore the avenues so you can decide what will work for you. You don’t have to be in all at once!

The second consideration is the style of content you are going to produce. Are you going to produce content that is static or dynamic? Video content has more engagement than static and there has been a great explosion of content in this space. TikTok is the hottest place to be, but can you produce the right content for it or work with those that do? Stories, Reels, YouTube clips—if you’re not in this space you can be overwhelmed by it relatively quickly. There’s nothing wrong with static posts—flat images, which can be accompanied by good text and calls to action. Always think about the questions your reader will ask: is it available now, and if not, when will it be published? Where can I read more about the book? Where can I buy it? Incorporate the answers to these into your posts.

In our last post we presented a range of ideas to determine your goals for social media and book promotion. Let’s develop those ideas further with a quick brain dump.

  • Share artwork from books/illustrator profile
  • Author profile and bio—tell people about yourself
  • Behind the scenes video/photos
  • Photos from an event (author signings, talk, launch etc.)
  • Cover reveals
  • Photos of bookshop visits/instore displays featuring your book
  • Unique downloads for readers—sample chapters/Look Inside the Books
  • Endorsements for your book
  • How to’s/video showing how something was done or made
  • Celebrate and share industry news & awards content as part of the writing community
  • Share links/blog posts to your website to encourage visitors
  • Quote from book reviews
  • Quotes from the books—first sentences or favourite paragraphs
  • Shared content (book reviews, author and bookseller posts, readers with the book etc.)
  • Special offers/link to digital marketing campaigns
  • Trends/interests to your followers, or white papers if you’re in an academic or specialist field
  • Upsell other products and services you might have or offer.

The above is just a starting point. What else would you like to add to the list above? There’s plenty of content you can gather! You might want to steer away from everything about your own books and concentrate on something else within the industry to start building a following. The choice is yours.

In our next post we’ll look at the creative side of how to put it together and how to schedule content across the social media channels you’ve decided to participate in.

Remember, there is no right and wrong here but a final word of caution—if you go down the social media path, it’s a commitment. Give it your all and have some fun with it!

Rachael McDiarmid is the director of RM Marketing Services. You can contact RM Marketing Services for consulting and special project work via their website or email.

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