Around the Word: Global e-Book Publishing Trends

By now we all know that the nature of traditional publishing is being revolutionized by technology, as the e-book industry continues to gain strength and force. And the dynamics of e-book publishing are also changing, given the advent of an increasingly globalized playing field. So what's going on in the international e-book marketplace? We're glad you asked.

Source: Digital Media Diet

The explosion of the e-book industry in the United States and the United Kingdom is expected to replicate itself the world over, especially in continental Europe, Brazil, Russia, and China. With the facilitation of free exchange of goods, services, and information per the World Trade Organization, a lot of the barriers to entry for accessing international readership has diminished. The dominant e-book retailers in the US and the UK—Amazon, Google, Apple, and Sony—have also localized their presence in diverse countries, from the Nordic region all the way to the Far East.

However, despite some developments, there is a lot of uncertainty with regards to the health of the overseas e-book industry. Here are some key facts, figures, and trends that highlight the challenges and opportunities of e-book retailing on a global scale.

o Regulatory Frameworks

In most countries around the world, printed books are viewed as goods, while e-books are considered services. Governments charge a value-added tax on distribution, raising the average price of the e-book even though there are no printing costs involved.

In France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, and Slovenia, the VAT on e-books is up to 20 percent. In some cases, a lesser VAT is charged on printed books as well. However, in some countries, such as Brazil, no VAT is charged on books, digital or otherwise.

Naturally, a higher VAT on e-books limits widespread digitization in publishing, and, consequently, the market share of e-books is as low as 1–2 percent. In the U.S., where there is no price regulation on either printed or e-books, the market share of e-books is as much as 6 percent.

o Cultural Attitude 

In most of continental Europe, there is a strong attachment to printed books because of their historic or cultural value. These countries also tend to be extremely protective of the literature produced by local authors. In France, for example, global e-book retailers like Amazon and Google do not have as much of a presence as local publishing authorities.

In Germany, almost 80 percent of people say they don’t want to read from a screen. Although people are becoming accustomed to book titles being published in various formats, print books remain the priority of the German publishing industry.

So while the scope of digital publishing gradually increases, English editions of texts are becoming more available, but not to the complete exclusion of local print publishing.

o Pricing Strategies

In most of continental Europe, publishers calculate e-book prices based on fixed rates, so strategies are not competitive or dependent on the market forces of supply and demand.

In general, in Germany, France, and Italy, print books are the most important factor affecting the price of e-books (at a discounted rate of approximately 20 percent).

o Future Projections 

In these noted emerging e-book markets, while the prospects for growth are increasing, the rate of such increase is staggering. There are still lots of barriers to entry with respect to e-book publishing, especially in English, in most continental European countries. The high taxation on e-books, as well as language and cultural barriers, further discourages publishers from offering them as a viable alternative format.

The international publishing landscape is becoming more complex, with differentiated patterns of growth and development despite the overall move towards global integration. The bullish nature of e-book publishing in the U.S. and the U.K. has not yet become an international phenomenon, either economically or demographically speaking.

According to Publisher’s Weekly, even in 2015: “Emerging e-book markets outside of the U.S. and the U.K. are all estimated to currently represent at best 1 percent of the overall book market, making projections of future dynamics of growth extremely difficult.”

For more detailed information on this topic, please click here.

Around the Word

Is Your E-Book a Fake? Knock-offs aren't just for fashion, and Amazon has become the Chinatown of e-book fakes. The online retailer's not just selling them—most of the offenders are products of Amazon's self-publishing imprint CreateSpace. If you're looking for Walter Issacson's bestselling bio of Steve jobs, make sure you don't get fooled by Steve Jobs by Issac Worthington. Beware of Fast and Slow Thinking by Karl Daniels, which strikes uncomfortably close to the real-deal Thinking Fast and Slow by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. When searching for Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, one top result is I Am the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The solitary review for that book notes: "this is almost certainly copyright infringement. the author chose a popular book title, added 'i am' to the beginning, and calls it legitimate. of course, anyone who is looking for these things should know better." Technically speaking, titles of books aren't copyrighted, but the legal line here is definitely blurry.

Stephen Covey's Legacy of Leadership Lit. Last week, author and father of the thought-leadership genre Stephen Covey passed away from injuries he suffered in a bike accident in April. Covey's seminal works—including 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness, and First Things First—have sold millions of copies and influenced some of the biggest names in corporate America. It's arguable that 7 Habits was responsible for catapulting thought-leadership books from a niche market to a mainstream genre, as well as making a "book as badge" the new must-have for high-powered business gurus. So the next time you land a high-paying job editing (or ghostwriting) a "big idea" piece for the latest whiz-kid CEO, thank Covey for paving the way. 

Big Brother Is Reading You. Or, rather, he's reading your Kindle, according to the Wall Street Journal. E-books, which have officially outsold "analog" books this year, are the newest frontier of consumer data mining. Until now, publishers have been mostly in the dark about what happens after a book leaves the store, but no longer. Whether you download a book but don't read it, start a book and don't finish it, or tear through an entire series in a matter of days, that information is now available to those who most want to know. Some publishers are excited about the opportunity to hone their offerings according to market forces, like finding the perfect length for an e-book or coming up with a formula for ideal content, but others fear that a data-driven marketplace will have a homogenizing effect, not to mention potential privacy pitfalls. What do you think? Can boiling the book business down to an algorithm be good for the marketplace and the marketplace of ideas? Or does having the publishing industry reading over your shoulder give you a case of the digital willies?


Scalia Rules on Crimes Against Grammar. What do liberal lawyer Bryan Garner and conservative SCOTUS Justice Antonin Scalia have in common? According to this New Yorker piece, they're both SNOOTS set on righting the wrongs legal writing exacts on the English language. The two men, who bonded during a lunch meeting at which Scalia gushed over David Foster Wallace's essay "Tense Present," have collaborated on two books about the role of grammar and persuasion in legal writing. Although they disagree about politics—and the acceptability of contractions (which, according to Scalia, are “intellectually abominable, but commercially reasonable”)—they were able to withstand an exacting collaboration that produced 216 drafts before finalizing their second book, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts. While their partnership has begun to shine a light on the issue, Garner is well aware that it'll be an uphill battle to raise the, er, bar when it comes to legal writing. “Word for word," he said, "lawyers are the most highly paid professional writers in the world. But the literary tradition in the profession is probably the worst."

Around The Word

The accidental ghostwriter. It has been revealed that an anonymous article posted in one of the journals edited by Charles Dickens about the rights of the working class was written by the man himself. The article, published in 1863 in the weekly magazine All the Year Round, was analyzed by Dickens Journals Online, which is working on digitizing all of the critic’s works. They were given the mystery article and a list of six writers, ultimately deciding that the writing was most similar to Dickens’ himself.

It’s the end of libraries as we know it, but the computers feel fine. Along with the whole of Dickens’ work being digitized, there are many other initiatives to digitize literary archives, for preservation’s sake. Stalin’s personal collection has started to be scanned by the Yale University Press, and the University of Texas began a collaboration years ago to preserve documents and testimonies from the Rwandan genocide, along with various other historical moments. Insert clichéd "those who do not remember history" quote here.

The words behind the man. From June 8 until September 23, the Morgan Library and Museum will host “Churchill: The Power of Words,” an exhibit devoted to words, letters, and speeches from the wartime leader. Over sixty documents, including doctors' notes, postcards, and family letters, will show insight into Churchill’s thought process. The exhibit even includes an old report card, describing Churchill as “a constant trouble to everybody.” 


All Mom left me was her diamond tennis bracelet and her 50 Shades of Grey e-book. Over at NPR, Amanda Katz asks the question, “Will your children inherit your e-books?” With the entire industry converting for the digital age, what will happen to the dear tradition of classic books being passed from generation to generation? Will we soon bequeath only our Amazon account password to our grandkids? And will the change make priceless physical books even more priceless? Let us know in the comments what you think will happen with your generational bookshelf.

Around the Word

Gravity's Rainbow Gets a Digital Facelift. Penguin is getting set to release Thomas Pynchon's complete works as ebooks. It seems the author, who has resisted going digital up to this point, was shown the writing on the wall (or the posts on his FB page). Editor-in-Chief Ann Godoff points out that it boils down to business: ''I think he wants to have more readers... Every writer wants to have as many readers as they can possibly get. But I don’t think this will change his public profile." Pynchon himself may be as "analog" as ever, but his catalog is definitely getting a sexy new-media marketing makeover.

Freelancing on Film. UK film-goers are about to get a glimpse into the lives of its estimated 1.6 million freelancers. This year the "7 Days in June" film project, which brings together teams of filmmakers who shoot short films over the course of one week, will open a window into the all-too-solitary world of freelancing. The films will focus on themes like the role of freelancing in shaping the economy and what it's like to be a freelancer. The films will be released one by one, leading up to the UK's National Freelancer's Day on November 23rd.

If You Love It, Let It Go. We all have them, those go-to, buzzy modifiers that we rely on a little too heavily, often without even realizing it. Last week the"After Deadline" blog posted a piece about how we let those words worm their way into our writing in a sort of collective unconsciousness. It points out that a count from the previous week revealed dozens of uses of the word "signature" as a qualifier, i.e. "Mark Zuckerberg's 'signature' hoodie." Redundancy is one of the greatest enemies of good writing, and being conscious of our linguistic crutches is a great way to fight (and win) the battle. Cliche but true, the best advice is "if you love something, let it go." What are the words you need to set free?

Confronting the "r" word in Children's lit. For better or worse, some perennial favorites in the cannon of children's lit, like Babar and the Pippi Longstocking series, are downright cringe-worthy when it comes to race. In a recent article, author Stephen Marche explores the minefield of introducing his six-year-old son to classics, as well as more modern tails, that are full of questionable stereotypes. How do you confront the "n" word while reading Huckleberry Finn with your kid? Take a cue Michael Chabon and turn it into a "teachable moment"? Stick to the "sanitized" rewrites? Avoid the tough stuff all together? It's a question that's definitely worth exploring. 




 

Book Spotlight: The Insider's Guide to Book Publishing Success

We're very pleased to spotlight The Insider's Guide to Book Publishing, written by our friends at independent distributor Midpoint Trade Books: Eric Kampmann, Margot Atwell, and Sarah Lucie. Given the drastic shifts in the publishing industry in the past few years, this book could not be more timely. It is truer now than ever before that absolutely anyone can write and publish a book, yet the process remains daunting and opaque to most people outside the industry. This book will go a long way toward demystifying and illuminating the right steps to take on your publishing journey, helping prospective authors determine the best way to bring their books into the world. 


Gotham Ghostwriters spoke with Margot Atwell about the relevance of this book, the publishing industry today, and their new hybrid publishing division, Midpoint Plus.

Without revealing your secrets, can you give me a brief overview of what's covered in the book?
There are no secrets in the book, just straightforward information about publishing that we've learned from years (and, for Eric, decades) of experience in the publishing industry. It is divided into sections, each of which covers one aspect of publishing. "Publishing Overview" describes seven different publishing options for authors, from publishing with a major house to independent publishing with a distributor to an e-book-only launch. Other sections cover the manuscript, production, sales and distribution (two areas many authors know very little about), marketing and publicity, and finance. We also include case studies written by authors and industry professionals to show what a success story looks like from the inside, and how hard it is to make a book successful.

What do you think is the biggest challenge facing aspiring authors today?
Right now is a fantastic time to be an author, and options for publishing have proliferated to the point that whatever an author wants to do, he or she can do. There are so many different ways to publish a book, in e-book format or print. Tons of great writers who might have been overlooked by the major houses in the past can take their writing careers in their own hands and publish their own books, build their own markets, and see greater rewards than they would have under the traditional publishing model.

The greatest challenge facing authors is there is not enough information from reputable sources about how to make publishing decisions. Many authors decide to self-publish their books without knowing what it takes to do so, or what all the steps are. I see many authors looking to industry experts for help, and sometimes they find generous, knowledgeable people who can steer them in the right direction, while other times they find people who are much more interested in making money than in working with an author to find out what is right for his or her book. Authors can make unnecessary and costly investments in seminars that aren't helpful, cover designers who overcharge and under-deliver, or printing way too many copies of their book without any way to bring it to the market.

We wrote The Insider's Guide to Book Publishing Success to demystify the publishing process for people who have never seen it from the inside, and to arm them with the right questions to ask themselves and the people they might work with. We hope it will be a valuable tool for authors and new publishers.

Why was now the right time to bring this book out?
The industry is changing fast, and technology is allowing authors to publish their own books more easily and economically than ever before. At the same time, and probably because of that, self-publishing is losing the stigma it once had, and many more people are turning to self- and independent publishing. Even Book Expo America is acknowledging the massive rise in self-publishing with this weekend's UPublishU event at the Javits Center. We will be there giving away free copies of our book, so please stop by and say hi! We'll be at Booth #4345.

What makes your team uniquely qualified to write this book?
Eric has forty years of book sales and distribution experience. He has worked with independent book publishers since 1981, and has owned and run Midpoint, a distributor for over 250 independent publishers, since 1996. He has seen many major changes in the publishing industry and can put the current shifts in a broader context.

I am the Publisher of Beaufort Books, an independent publisher distributed by Midpoint Trade Books, so I have much more of an editorial and marketing background. This helps round out the book and give readers a wider view of publishing. We also called on other publishing professionals to provide information for key sections, such as special sales and social media.

Tell me more about Midpoint Plus.
We created Midpoint Plus to fill a need that we started to see more and more. Frequently, great authors who are becoming first-time publishers will approach Midpoint Trade Books looking for distribution. However, the learning curve for a first-time publisher is enormous, and most often, these authors' books would fail because they had overlooked one (or more) important piece of the publishing puzzle. Midpoint Plus is a publishing services company that can assist, guide, and mentor new publishers. We can help with just one part of the process—like finding and working with a cover designer to achieve a great professional-looking cover, or developing and implementing a marketing plan—or we can help with the entire process, from manuscript development to getting the books on bookstore shelves and beyond. Our books get national distribution into bookstores, wholesalers, online retailers, and appropriate specialty accounts through Midpoint Trade Books, and we have a very sales-oriented vision, which sets us apart from many other book doctors, book shepherds, and consultants, most of whom have an editorial background and might not be able to provide such holistic assistance or access to sales and distribution.



Margot Atwell is the Publisher of Beaufort Books, an independent book publisher based in New York City, and Director of Midpoint Plus, a publishing services company founded in 2011. Before joining Beaufort Books in 2006, she worked at the Irene Skolnick Literary Agency. When she is not working on books, she plays Gotham Girls Roller Derby under the publishing-appropriate moniker Em Dash.

Guest Post: Everything You Wanted to Know about Publishing (But Were Afraid to Ask)

BY AMY ROGERS

This article originally ran on IndieReader. 

For most of the history of the printed book, there were two ways for an author to get her work in front of readers: traditional publishing and vanity press publishing.

That kind of limited choice is so last decade.

Traditional publishing still dominates the book business. After years of acquisitions and consolidation, traditional publishing now consists of only six very large publishing houses, each of which controls numerous imprints (in-house brands): Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, MacMillan, Penguin Group, Random House, and Simon & Schuster.

The way these publishers operate hasn’t changed much in a long time. Here’s a basic outline of how a trad pub deal typically works (for fiction):

• Author writes a novel
• Author finds a literary agent willing to represent the work.
• Literary agent puts the work on submission to specific acquisitions editors at specific publishers.
• Editor falls in love with the work and convinces other people at the publishing house that the publisher can make money selling this work.
• Author gets paid an advance against royalties; agent keeps a percentage as a fee; publisher turns the author’s manuscript into a saleable book. This includes editing, layout, cover design, publicity, distribution, and more.
• The book is published, first in hardcover, then in paperback one year later. Ebook publication and pricing varies.

Until recently, a novelist’s only option outside the trad pub system was to take the manuscript to a vanity publisher. The name itself suggests the contempt people in the business had for such companies. A vanity press would publish books “not good enough” for a real publisher, doing so only to satisfy the author’s “vanity.”

Unlike traditional publishing, the costs of vanity publishing are paid upfront by the author in cash; the author is the publisher’s customer. In traditional publishing, the costs are paid by the publisher and are recovered from the profits of selling books. Booksellers and readers are the publisher’s customers.

For most writers, vanity publishing was a costly indulgence. At great expense, they got to hold a paper copy of their book in their hands. But few, if any, other people heard about the book or read it.



Not vain, independent

Old-fashioned vanity publishing has been revolutionized by ebooks and print-on-demand technology. In fact, you hardly hear the term “vanity publishing” anymore. It’s been replaced by “indie publishing,” a label that encompasses an incredible variety of nontraditional publishing options.

Self-publishing:

This is an industry buzzword, but what does it mean? I find that many people are using the term “self-published” to broadly describe any book in any format that does not have the imprimatur of a Big Six publisher. But this fails to account for the various degrees of self-publishing and also the new nontraditional, professional indie publishing options out there. So let’s begin by breaking down what I consider to be types of self-publishing:

1. 100% pure self-pub: Writer handles every aspect of book production, possibly setting up her own small press. Writer is responsible for editing (probably the biggest handicap relative to trad pub), cover design, layout, and distribution.

Advantages of pure self-publishing:

• Total control of content, design, pricing
• Can do ebook only, print only, or both
• All profits (after retailer commission) go to author
• Fast, once you know how to do it. Write something today, publish it tomorrow.
• In dollar cost (not time cost), the cheapest way to self-publish

Disadvantages of pure self-publishing:

• To produce a professional product the first time requires an enormous investment of time and effort by the writer.
• If writer wants to hire help, finding trustworthy, competent editors, graphic artists, book printers, etc. is a challenge. And hiring help requires cash up front.
• Tough to sell the final product. Need a platform, and/or a really good publicist, and/or hundreds of hours of time to spend on promotion.

2. Assisted self-publishing: Writer hires a “general contractor” to manage many of the non-writing tasks. Assisted self-pub includes pay-up-front models (subsidy publishing) and royalty-sharing models.

2A: Subsidy publisher: Writer pays a company for a complete package of services to produce the manuscript as a paper and/or digital book. This is closest to what used to be called vanity publishing. Unlike old vanity publishing, subsidy publishing today is widely available, widely used, and has many competing companies providing services. Whereas a “vain” writer in the past had to cough up some serious dough to physically print some copies of his book, writers now can choose to publish in digital formats only, or to print copies of their books only after a sale has been made (print on demand). This makes it possible to “publish” paperbacks and sell them online without actually paying for the printing of a single copy out of pocket. Amazon’s inventory of such books is virtual. A copy is manufactured only when a customer buys the book. POD keeps authors’ upfront costs lower, though it makes their books more expensive for customers because the per-copy cost of producing a few books is higher than the cost in a large print run.

The big players in this market are CreateSpace (Amazon), AuthorHouse (which includes Xlibris and iUniverse), and Lulu. For ebook-only self-publishing, other influential players are Scribd, BookBaby, Smashwords, PubIt, and Kindle Direct. There are many, many smaller, independent outfits now providing packages of self-publishing services to authors for a fee. The big guys are not selective at all; they’ll print whatever words are given to them (barring anything that might get one of their executives arrested). Some of the smaller companies pick and choose their clients or screen the work. At times there is little distinction between these companies and small independent presses.

In my hometown of Sacramento, we now have a new self-publishing option courtesy of our public library. The I Street Press is an entire self-pub operation built around an Espresso machine, a kind of Xerox machine for books. You give it a formatted digital file of your book, and in about four minutes it spits out a fully formed, bound paperback book just like one you’d find in a store. At a cost of roughly $9 per copy (plus set-up fees), it’s comparably priced with other small-print-run publishing options.

2B: Assisted self-publishing: Royalty-sharing

Recently, several literary agencies and agents have started offering themselves as general contractors to get their clients’ work “self-published.” Typically the agents describe themselves as “consultants” but definitely not “publishers,” because a firestorm of controversy has flared around the potential conflicts of interest inherent in agents becoming publishers.

Literary agents are indeed well-placed to assemble teams of skilled editors and book designers in order to independently publish their clients’ backlist books, pieces too short for a traditional publisher, experimental works, or books rejected by the Big Six. Dystel & Goderich, Andrea Brown, and BookEnds are early leaders in this type of venture. The financing arrangements aren’t fixed, but generally the agents are not charging upfront fees. Instead they claim a perpetual commission from sales, just as they do with books sold to a traditional publisher.

2C: Assisted self-publishing: Boutique services

I predict we’ll soon see a number of insiders from the traditional publishing industry create teams to sell packages of professional-quality services directly to authors without becoming “publishers” per se. There is a market for this niche. A writer who wants to avoid the subsidy publisher minefield could put up the money to get a professional-quality book edit and design without having to find and hire each expert on his own. This luxury boutique approach to subsidy publishing would be attractive to any self-publishing writer with enough cash on hand—especially those who are leaving traditional publishing to go it alone. For one classy example, check out Verbitrage, a nontraditional publisher launched by industry insider (and author) J. E. Fishman. (Read Folio #5 of Fishman’s “Publishing Primacy” blog series for more details.)

3. Not self-pub: Small presses

The next level closer to a traditional publishing arrangement is publishing with a small press (any press that is not owned by the Big Six). University presses, regional presses, niche publishers, and many others fit in this category. It’s not uncommon for such companies to only publish a few titles per year. The key distinction that makes this “not self-pub” is that the publisher, not the author, pays the costs of getting the book out there.

Because the publisher is investing its own money in developing the book, small or indie presses accept titles with an eye on the bottom line. That means that unlike self-publishing, the author must provide a manuscript that is commercially viable. You can self-publish the alphabet written backwards, but you won’t get a small press to foot the bill. This gatekeeper role is common to all publishing models that put the publisher’s money at risk (as opposed to the author’s money), and it remains a defining distinction between self-pub and all other publishing models, indie or not.

It is also at the heart of the prestige question. If self-pub works get less respect, it’s because no objective third party has evaluated the works and decided that they are “worth” publishing. Gatekeeping can keep trash out of the publishing pipeline, but it also can sift too finely. Publishing value is determined not so much by the quality of the book as by its marketability. Celebrity-endorsed drivel will get published because it will sell, not because it’s good, and hundreds of quality first novels will get rejected because the publisher knows readers buy books by authors they’ve already heard of.

4. Digital-only full-service publishers

This category didn’t exist until a few years ago and it remains under the radar. Digital-only publishers operate like small presses but only release their titles in e-book formats. This keeps their costs lower and allows them to take on riskier projects—such as first novels—that may not sell enough copies to catch the attention of a Big Six imprint. My own publisher, Diversion Books, is a leader in this category. Diversion is selective and prefers agented manuscripts. Diversion provides all the services you’d expect from a small press. If a title breaks out, they can work with the author to produce paper books. If not, the author retains all rights to self-publish in paper. This creates an interesting situation. My science thriller Petroplague is currently on sale with two different covers and two different publishers. One cover is for the professional ebook released by Diversion and one is for the paper books I produced at my own expense with a subsidy publisher.

Indies Rule
This diversity of paths to publication is making indie publishing more accessible than ever. The challenge for writers today isn’t getting their book published, it’s choosing the right publishing process. Deciding which path to take demands that authors acknowledge their strengths (and weaknesses), assess their goals, check their bank balance, and calculate how much time they have. With this information, they can pursue the publishing option that’s best for them. There isn’t a right way or wrong way for everyone, as long as all ways lead to the same goal: getting our books in front of readers.

Amy Rogers is a Harvard-educated scientist who writes science-themed thrillers. Her debut novel Petroplague is about oil-eating bacteria contaminating the fuel supply of Los Angeles and paralyzing the city. She is a member of International Thrillers Writers Debut Class (2011–2012). At her website Science Thrillers, Amy reviews books that combine real science with entertainment. You can follow Amy on Twitter @ScienceThriller or on her Facebook fan page.

Around the Word

Curb your e-thusiasm: While there has been a lot of doom and gloom about the fate of brick-and-mortar bookstores, the New York Times found that independent bookstores are actually having a booming holiday season this year. While everyone was sure that the economic recession, aggressive Amazon tactics, and the popularity of e-books were destined to put a dent in sales, people seem to be walking into actual bookstores to purchase physical books at a pretty good clip. Are print books on your holiday shopping list?

Indiefficient: Though many book lovers will rejoice at the cheerful holiday outlook for independent bookstores, Slate columnist Farhad Manjoo doesn't think indie bookstores are necessarily worth saving. In a criticism of Richard Russo's NYT op-ed slamming Amazon for killing the bookshop around the corner, Manjoo argues that local bookstores are not all that "local" and are also massively inefficient. Buy two books on Amazon, he suggests, instead of one at a indie bookshop for the same price. Do you agree?

LinkedIn lexicon: You may consider yourself a motivated and efficient professional with dynamic communication skills, but unfortunately so does everyone else on the business networking site LinkedIn. The site recently released its list of the most overused professional buzzwords of 2011, with "creative" and "organizational" topping the list. What's on your personal list of annoying professional jargon?

Talk the talk: "Write like you talk" is a classic piece of writing advice, but would you really want to read something that sounds the way most people talk? Men With Pens blogger Taylor Lindstrom always took issue with this advice, until he reconsidered that maybe the problem wasn't with writing like you talk, but with not talking well enough. His advice: always think about your words, even in casual communication, and get in the habit of expressing yourself well all the time. "Write the way you talk," he writes, as long as "you can speak persuasively, eloquently, and clearly."

Around the Word

Publishing house of ill repute: What do you think of Amazon's reputation as a publisher? GalleyCat took a look at the retail giant's rep at their Publishing App Expo last week after an audience member asked if the publishing community looked down on Kindle authors. Though some consider collaborating with Amazon to be selling out, others see a great opportunity for exposure, since Amazon has the largest share of the e-book market.

The perfect platform: Finding the right angle or hook to sell your book can be tricky, but agent and blogger Rachelle Gardner has some tips on building the right platform for your work. Check out her post on ways to leverage your expertise into a strong selling stance for your nonfiction writing.

Bro books: A new online site selling books geared toward guys seems like the perfect solution for those who are stumped about what to get their brothers and boyfriends for the holidays. But the Man Cave pop-up bookstore has let some word nerds down by focusing on titles like How Do You Light a Fart? and Sweet 'Stache: 50 Badass Mustaches and the Faces Who Sport Them. For slightly more sophisticated titles for the manly man in your life, check out this article by the Utne Reader.

Viral visuals: Getting your content to "go viral" can be an elusive challenge, but ProBlogger has broken down the task with this fun infographic. Check out this visual guide to writing killer content, connecting across platforms, and encouraging sharing.

Around the Word

Self-pub skeptic: While there is a lot of enthusiasm for self-publishing as a "bright spot" in our changing media industry, not everyone is so convinced of its merits. Novelist and writer for The Millions Edan Lupecki gave her "Reasons Not to Self-Publish in 2011–2012: A List," highlighting several problems with self-pub enthusiasm, such as overlooking small presses, finding an audience, and signing yourself over to the all-mighty Amazon. Does Lupecki have a point? Or is she just a luddite?

Non-required readings: Author readings used to be the bread and butter of a book tour, but with shortening attentions spans and higher expectations for author engagement, many audiences aren't happy to sit through several chapters read aloud. The Wall Street Journal takes a look at the changing nature of the book tour, which now often includes extras like a lecture, presentation, interview, or panel discussion. Is this change for the best, or do you miss the old-fashioned readings?

WordPress to printing press: Social media guru Chris Brogan turned his attention to digital publishing this week, highlighting a new company called PressBooks. PressBooks lets authors create books using WordPress and format them for print, e-books, and tablets. Check out an interview on his site with the founder of PressBooks where they discuss the publishing e-volution.

Collapse of the E-uro? The European debt crisis and fragility of the Euro have been grabbing headlines for weeks, but Publishing Perspectives has taken a narrower view of Europe's economic woes: Would a collapse of the Euro slow European e-book adoption? The Euro is attractive for e-book distributors because it facilitates easier transactions and eliminates foreign exchange fees. Do you think the end of the Euro would also end the e-book?

Around the Word

Copycats: Inspired by the recent plagiarism scandal involving Brooklyn thriller novelist Q.R. Markham, Stuart Kelly at the Guardian takes a look at the history of plagiarism. In our constantly shifting new-media landscape, sometimes it can be hard to tell what is a mash-up and what is a copy. As Kelly points out, at least it was fans who detected Markham's misdeed and not a computer program -- showing that "real reading still exists."

Just the right recommendation: One inventive bookseller is combining the popularity of online shopping with the personal touches of a brick-and-mortar store. Roxanne Coady founded the website Just The Right Book, where subscribers can take quizzes, get personalized book recommendations from Coady's staff, and often earn coupons toward purchasing the books. Is this digital-analog combo the way of the future?

To link or not to link? One topic of hot debate in the e-book world is the pros and cons of including links. We've written about the anti-link position before, but now another author has weighed in on the side of links. David Meerman Scott tells GalleyCat, "It means you can check out the Twitter feed of the expert cited in the text. You can see the cool picture that was once worth 1,000 words." How do you feel about e-book links?

Literary locales: Looking for a vacation with some literary inspiration? National Geographic has picked the ten most literary places in the world. Although New York doesn't make the list, Portland, Oregon and Washington, D.C. are the two most literary cities in the U.S. Which city do you think has the most word nerds?