Uh-Oh

Authors Feel Pinch in Age of E-Books - WSJ.com: "When literary agent Sarah Yake shopped around Kirsten Kaschock's debut novel 'Sleight' this year, she thought it would be a shoo-in with New York's top publishers.

'Her project was one of the most exemplary in the last decade or so,' said Jed Rasula, who has taught in the English department at the University of Georgia since 2001. 'I certainly thought she'd find a New York publisher.'

But the major New York publishers passed on 'Sleight,' a novel about two sisters trained in a fictional art form. Coffee House Press in Minneapolis, a small independent publisher, now plans to publish the book, offering Ms. Kaschock an advance of about $3,500—a small fraction of the typical advances once paid by the major publishing houses.


The digital revolution is not only disrupting the traditional publishing model, but new and aspiring literary writers as well, who are less likely to gain attention from publishers or command the advances they once might have. WSJ's Jeffrey Trachtenberg discusses on digits.

It has always been tough for literary fiction writers to get their work published by the top publishing houses. But the digital revolution that is disrupting the economic model of the book industry is having an outsize impact on the careers of literary writers."

Link via Dwight Silverman's TechBlog.