Great book ideas start with the premise!!!

The very first step you should take when trying to figure out which book you should pursue first is to sit down and write out a premise of your book idea. The premise of your book is basically its thesis statement.

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“What are the important factors I should consider 
when I am developing my book idea?”
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The premise doesn’t have to be long. Start with 2-3 sentences. A good way to think about the premise is to imagine if you were at a lunch date with someone, and you told them you were writing a book. And then they turned to you and said, “What’s your book about?” THAT is your premise. 

A good premise lays a foundation for where your book is going to take readers. That central idea might answer a question, solve a mystery, or tell a story. The most important part is that it does something. 

The reverse is also true about the premise: if you’re having...

Amazon will be broken up by federal regulators…if the House Judiciary Committee has its way.

Amazon Busting

The Antitrust Subcommittee has set its sights on Big Tech (companies worth over $600 billion), including, of course, Amazon. A handful of bills were introduced in efforts to corral the Facebooks, Googles, and Amazons of the world. Of those, the most notable for the fine readers of this report would be the breaking up of Amazon’s vertical publishing monopoly. The legislation is targeting giant platforms that “leverage their control across multiple business lines…in ways that undermine free and fair competition.” What that could mean for Amazon’s present vertical in the publishing industry is the breaking up or spinning off of Audible, Brilliance Audio, Kindle, Kindle Direct Publishing (self-publishing), and their “Amazon Publishing'' imprint.

Additional measures under discussion include curbs on these platforms’ practices of...

At least we know what a lot of you have been doing – more of you than ever before…

Listening to Audiobooks

The Audio Publishers Association—yes, there is an association for everything—released its annual survey results and found another double-digit increase in audiobook sales in 2020. That’s up 12% from 2019, for a total of $1.3 billion in revenue. Audiobooks have been on a tear in recent years, so double-digit increases have been the norm. What was surprising is that the sector saw those increases in a year of reduced commuting!

In 2019, 43% of listeners surveyed said they listened mostly in their cars. By necessity, that number fell to 30% last year. But you all just switched to listening at home (55% of audiobook listeners, as compared to 43% the year prior).

The selection is probably helping, too. Last year, audiobook publishers produced 71,000 titles, up 39% over 2019. So, I guess the narrators and sound engineers weren’t spending their...

Are you letting distractions keep you from writing your book?

When it comes to writing books, there are a million things that are easier to do. Everything becomes a distraction and now that Summer is almost here there will be even more. Do you know what’s easier than writing your book? Talking about your book. Complaining about not having time to write your book...well, there might be as much time spent doing that as it would take to actually write the book.

That’s why we want to remind you of this tip to shake off distractions like Netflix or Disney+, etc.: “Butt in chair.” It’s that commitment to showing up that makes all the difference.

Listen, we have nothing against Netflix or Disney+; we have subscriptions, too!!! And maybe it’s not Netflix or Disney+, maybe it’s scrolling on Instagram or fantasy baseball. What’s your Netflix? What’s the thing that you do when you should be writing? Let’s replace it with “Butt...

Can you believe Q1 2021 is already behind us? Time flies when you’re having fun—i.e., selling lots of books!

Where Are They Gonna Put All that Money!?

SHOCKER: Amazon sets another sales record. For the quarter ending March 31, 2021, Amazon posted a massive year-over-year increase in revenue of 44%, or $108.5 billion, over Q1 2020. And profits more than doubled to $8.9 billion. The “online store”—what we all think of when we think of Amazon—saw revenue jump 44% to $36.6 billion, while the revenue from third-party sellers exploded—up 64% over Q1 2020. Yes, anyone can sell on Amazon, and clearly, a lot of people started to do just that when the pandemic hit—and they seem to be sticking with it (and why not). With no signs of slowing, Amazon is forecasting revenue increases of 24%-30% next quarter when compared to Q2 2020 when everyone was buying EVERYTHING on Amazon.  It's good to be the king.

The Rest of the Numbers

More than just...

Sorry, we are a week late here, as we have been exceedingly busy watching the NCAA Basketball Tournament.

HarperCollins Gets in the Game

HarperCollins and parent company, News Corp, are finally getting back on the court in the acquisitions game -- agreeing to purchase the trade book division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for $349 million in cash. After losing to Penguin Random House in last year’s back and forth action for Big 5 publisher Simon & Schuster, HC will now (pending regulatory approval) be taking hold of the trade publishing division of HMH that, with 2020 revenues of $191.7 million, was essentially the 6th largest US trade book publisher. HMH had been seeking to unload the business as part of its decision to focus on being an educational technology company for the K-12 market.

After closing out their June 30, 2020, fiscal year with sales of $1.67 billion and a blazing-fast start to fiscal ‘22 helped by a “historic quarter” ending December 31,...

Welcome back to our latest issue of the Yates & Yates Author Coaching monthly newsletter providing a brief update of the current state of the book publishing industry. As always, feel free to share.

“So long, Amazon.com,” said Jeff Bezos

Well, sort of. At least “so long” to the position of CEO. Founder, leading shareholder, and CEO, Jeff Bezos, announced he will step down from the chief executive role of the e-commerce giant at some point in the 3rd quarter of 2021. He won’t be going far. He will remain Chairman of the Board, as AWS head, Andy Jassy, takes over the day-to-day.

This announcement came alongside financial results bigger than a government stimulus package. In the clearest indication that pandemics aren’t bad for everyone, Amazon reported massive gains during the year of our collective discontent: Q4 sales were up 44% year-over-year, and total annual sales finished up 38%. As if it couldn’t get any rosier, Amazon’s net...

Welcome back to our latest issue of the Yates & Yates Author Coaching monthly newsletter providing a brief update of the current state of the book publishing industry. As always, feel free to share.

THANKS, OBAMA! (for 2.5 million unit sales)

With the final 2020 year-end numbers now in, it’s official: 2020 was AWESOME!! Who’s with me?!

Well, at least it was for the publishing industry…and our 44th President. The year that none of us saw coming – nor will we ever forget—has turned in a surprising, record-breaking performance for book sales. With NPD BookScan reporting an astounding 942 million combined units sold of print and ebooks, 2020 finished 9% above good ol’ 2019 and tallied the most book sales ever in a single year since BookScan started in 2004. Print sales were up 8.2%, at 751 million copies—the most since 2009 (one year before the true emergence of the ebook). Likewise, ebooks were at their highest level since 2015, up 12.9%...

Welcome back to our latest issue of the Yates & Yates Author Coaching monthly newsletter providing a brief update of the current state of the book publishing industry. As always, feel free to share with your friends, colleagues, or anyone else who might care.

IT COULD HAVE BEEN WORSE

Final 2020 year-end numbers won’t be out for a little while yet, but with the year that will be remembered in infamy finally behind us, the book market emerged as one of the economic sectors that came through relatively unscathed – in the aggregate (more on brick-and-mortar and employment numbers later). As of the week before Christmas, total print sales year-to-date were up 8.2% over 2019. If you’ve been following along at home, you’ve heard us say plenty of times that we all were quite fond of good ol’ 2019. It was a solid year for the publishing industry. To have bested 2019 in a year of such unprecedented calamity is down-right astonishing. It shows, anecdotally,...

Welcome back to our latest issue of the Yates & Yates Author Coaching monthly newsletter providing a brief update of the current state of the book publishing industry. As always, feel free to share with your friends, colleagues, or anyone else who might be interested.

THE 800 POUND GORILLA 1100-POUND PENGUIN 

For nearly all of 2020, ViacomCBS has been shopping its publishing arm, the storied publishing stalwart Simon & Schuster, with two suitors emerging in recent months: NewsCorp’s HarperCollins and Bertelsmann’s Penguin Random House (welcome to a world dominated by international media conglomerates). When the bidding stopped, Penguin Random House was on top at nearly $2.2 billion. Cue the antitrust allegations.

A combined PRHSS (no idea what they are going to call this behemoth) would be over $3 billion in annual US sales—nearly triple its nearest competitor, the aforementioned HC. PRH claims that its acquisition isn’t an antitrust problem,...