Rowling’s 6 mil a week
Forbes ran a list of the ten highest paid authors yesterday. To no surprise, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling came in at number one after collecting an astounding $300 million last year. Now, admittedly, my ciphering is pretty poor. But doesn’t that come out to $5.7 million a week? Geez. Rowling’s take was more than…
continue readingBlame it on the Bookkeeper
Having a hard time accepting that last rejection? Then stop hating the editors and blame it on the bookkeeper. Poets & Writers is reporting that a bookkeeper run amok was responsible for rejecting writers who submitted to Academy Chicago. According to the article, the issue came to light when the editors “noticed that their ‘big…
continue readingHow Can I Get a Gig Like This?
This has nothing to do with books, but I found this article infuriatingly eye catching. Seems Alan Fishman signed up to be the CEO of Washington Mutual three weeks ago, just prior to the bank’s collapse. His pay for that temp job? $19 million. “To be fair, Fishman wasn’t the one that took WaMu down…
continue readingJunk Bonds, Blue Chips, and Publishing
I learned about this great post from Ed last week and meant to share it with you and then just got swamped… Levi Asher makes a fantastic comparison of the similarities between banking and publishing. “Big hits like Da Vinci Code and Cold Mountain inspire book executives to take great risks on possible future successes,”…
continue readingLiterary Sales Figures and Success
As we’ve discussed in this space before, sales figures are one of the great mysteries of publishing. Unless you have a Neilsen BookScan account, you’re pretty much playing a guessing game about how much this person sold versus that person. Galley Cat points to this post by Moonrat on what, exactly, is a good sales…
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