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  I ndependent Publishing: Where Next?   One of the free sessions I attended at this year’s Melbourne Writers Festival was a discussion by three of Australia’s largest independent publishers about the current state and future of the publishing industry. The participants were Michael Heyward from Text, Chris Falk from Black Inc and Henry Rosenbloom from Scribe. The discussion was moderated by Sophie Cunningham who is a writer, but was a publisher with Allen and Unwin for a decade. There seemed to be some underlying tension between Heyward and Rosenbloom. The session was conducted at the Wheeler Centre. Scribe publishes about 60 books a year, mainly serious non-fiction. Text publishes about 80 books a year with half of them authored by Australians.   Forty people work for Text, seven of whom are editors. Black Inc is distributed by Penguin.   One Successful Book   The publishers stressed how one successful book can make all the difference to ...

I went to the second weekend of the Melbourne Writer’s Festival. I am still not sure about its relatively new venue of Federation Square. It seems so sparse and sterile when compared to the crush of buzzing crowds at the Malthouse complex.   I had a good time though. I was entertained as I was informed about writing, publishing and the future of the planet. Once again, the free sessions proved just as good or better than the paid sessions. So if you’re a broke writer in Melbourne I suggest you have a look at the guide for the free sessions when next year’s festival comes around. As there didn’t appear to be any science-fiction authors at this year’s festival, I choose sessions on subject matter, not on the authors. But I was in for a surprise when I attended a session titled License to Thrill .  License to Thrill. The blurb in The Age for this session said:  Best selling writers Lauren Beukes (The Shining Girls) and Terry Hayes (I am a ...

I recently read an article in The Age that said the sales of ebooks were increasing, but the value of ebook sales had not increased. This suggests either the prices of ebooks are dropping or the price customers are buying ebooks for is decreasing. So I thought it was once more time to have a look at the prices of the top 100 Kindle ebooks. On August 22, at approximately 3pm Australian time, the graph above shows the prices of the top 100 Kindle ebooks. The best selling prices were obviously 0.99 cents, $1.99 and $4.99 with about half as many priced at $2.99 and $3.99.   The number of ebooks priced at 99cents decreased to 16, continuing a downward trend that began at the end of 2013.   The number of ebooks in the top 100 at $1.99 continues to increase, reaching its highest number in all the surveys.    Only seven were $2.99. After making a comeback over recent surveys, the number priced at $2.99 has dropped to its lowest on record. The gurus who sa...