Scott Mactavish

From Publishers Weekly:

After a lengthy holdout, John Grisham is allowing his books to become available electronically. One of the most notable bestseller authors to withhold his titles from being converted into e-books, Grisham’s entire backlist–23 titles in all–is now available in the format. Grisham’s publisher, Random House, made the announcement this morning, noting that the prolific author has written one book per year since 1988, each of which has gone on to become a national bestseller. Grisham’s latest title is Ford County, which came out in November, and he has a forthcoming thriller due out in October.

John has been holding out for some time on principle; he believes digital downloads will hurt small bookstores.

For those of you who track such things, Publishers Weekly has a new set of deals listed here.

I find book deals fascinating, especially in the literary fiction and young adult categories.  These genres are driven by cultural trends, to wit:  zombies.  If you write tight zombie fiction for teens these days, get yourself an agent, pronto.  Vampires were recently hot thing, and still continue to generate sweet deals for new twists on a very old (and overplayed) theme.

What’s the next hot genre?  If I knew I wouldn’t tell you. Heh.

From GalleyCat:

Examining the year-end figures from Nielsen BookScan, Crain’s NY cautiously concluded that the bookselling business might not be as bad as the gloomy critics say.

The article began by noting the year’s declines. Compared to last year, “overall unit sales” fell by three percent and adult non-fiction plunged 7 percent–despite Sarah Palin’s blockbuster memoir. Nevertheless, adult fiction sales did not decline, and adult hardcover sales actually climbed by three percent.

Here’s more from the article: “‘Bottom line, it’s really pretty impressive,’ said Lorraine Shanley, a principal of consulting firm Market Partners International. ‘When you look at every other medium, and you look at books, and you see they held their own in one of the most difficult years we’ve had in a generation, that’s good news.’

Digital readers continue to gain traction, including Barnes and Noble’s proprietary rig.

Like the music and film industries, this is causing mayhem and panic among the publishing execs.  Soon (a few years) there will be no CDs, DVDs or other ‘hard’ entertainment products.  They’ll simply fade away like 8-track and Beta, and we’ll download our entertainment on demand.

But what about books?  Will there come a day when no brick/mortar bookstores exist?  I say no; books are tactile and Kindles are not.  We readers like the feel and smell of paper, and books need no power source.  However, the kids today are growing up with computer screens in their little faces, and may feel more in tune with books stored on Nooks as they grow older.  After all, we’re not reading from scrolls of papyrus. Things change.

The real fear in the offices upstairs lies not with the technology, but how it can be tamed and monetized.  As an author, I hope that figure it out.  And with huge money at stake, I believe they will.