Riot New Media

Self-Published Books to Be Sold in Barnes & Noble

Barnes & Noble has been sort of slow to get in the self-publishing game, but they have an ace that other players don’t: a whole bunch of physical bookstores. In a bid to make themselves more attractive to self-published authors, B & N is going to make shelf space available to a limited number of self-published authors who have sold more than 500 ebooks of a title via Nook and submit a print copy for review. Now, this clearly would be interesting to the authors, but will customers be interested? I guess we’ll find out.

Book Vending Machines in “Book Deserts”

JetBlue held a competition to place a number of book vending machines that will give away free books to kids with limited access to books and Detroit came out the winner, with more than 48% of the vote. Aimed to serve kids in “book deserts,” the Soar with Reading program is a partnership with Random House and allows kids take as many books as they want. Interested in having next year’s round of book machines in your city? Voting is already open.

Amazon to De-emphasize Online Discounts

Deep discounting, especially in books, has been Amazon’s most enticing, and most controversial, strategy from day one. Now, Amazon seems to be interested in making discounts, or at least the prominence of discounts, less a part of what makes Amazon, well, Amazon. The familiar practice of showing the list price struck through and the Amazon price presented as a discount is already starting to go away for some products.

Why might Amazon do this? Two reasons. First and most practically, Amazon has gotten into trouble with claims of misleading discounts. Second, as Amazon reaches something like market saturation, they have the leverage to increase prices and make the Amazon shopping experience more about convenience, service, and selection than about cheap stuff.

The Best Books of 2016…So Far

We’ve crossed the half-way point for 2016, so it’s a good time to pause and take a look at how the year in books is shaping up. On the most recent edition of the Book Riot Podcast, Lisa Lucas, Executive Editor at the National Book Foundation, and Kevin Ngyuen, deputy editor at GQ, joined our own Rebecca Schinsky to talk about their favorite books of the year. If you like podcasts and books, I highly suggest you check it out.

This Week in Books is sponsored by Slade House by David Mitchell.

Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you’ll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won’t want to leave. Later, you’ll find that you can’t. Every nine years, the residents extend a unique invitation to someone. But what really goes on inside Slade House?. . . From David Mitchell, bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas, this intricately woven novel will enchant readers with a blend of mystery, realism and the supernatural.

Amazon Bringing Physical Bookstore to the Big Apple

To this point, Amazon’s handful of physical bookstores have been limited to the West Coast (California, Washington, and Oregon), but that is set to change by the end of next year. Amazon is opening a store in the heart of U.S. publishing: New York City. The store will be part of the Hudson Yards development in Manhattan, but not much else is known about it yet. One thing is for sure: expect to hear a lot of noise about this when it finally does open. The twist here is that physical bookstores are doing well enough and are valuable enough that Amazon is now fully in the game. Be careful what you wish for, eh?

The Curious Case of Gay Talese’s New Book

Gay Talese wrote an amazing magazine article about a voyeur who for decades spied on the customers of his hotel. The dynamite story now forms the center of a whole book, with just one little problem: it’s unclear what, if any of it, is true. Real estate records show that the owner didn’t actually own the hotel in all the years he said he did, and other discrepancies are now coming to light. And after initially disavowing the book after these revelations, Talese is now un-disavowing it. Every few years we get a reminder that most publishers don’t fact check most non-fiction books, and every few years we get these sort of disastrous messes.

Neil Gaiman’s New Book

In what sounds like a match made in Valhalla, Neil Gaiman’s next book will be a spin on Norse mythology. Gaiman was approached by Norton to do the book (give someone a raise for sheer pluck over there), and it will come out in early 2017. The exact nature of the book is a little sketchy: “an almost novelistic retelling of famous myths about the gods of Asgard.” I am not exactly sure how a book is almost something that has qualities of a novel, but I guess we are going to find out.

Hero of the Week

Tyler Fugett of Clarksville, Tennessee decided to spend his summer allowance buying books for a local prison. He got the idea after seeing his stepfather in and out of jail, and as of this writing has bought more than 100 books to donate. He is nine years old.

This Week in Books is sponsored today by Dreamjumper by Greg Grunberg and Lucas Turnbloom.

Ben’s dreams are all nightmares . . . And his nightmares are real!  He can also jump into other people’s dreams. So when his friends start falling victim to an evil dream-monster that prevents them from waking, Ben knows he has to help them. With help from a talking rabbit-companion who has a mysterious past, Ben might just be able to defeat the monster and save his friends . . . if he can figure out how to harness the power within him against his enemies. 

Find out more and start reading Dreamjumper here.