According to the article below, “Fifty Shades of Grey” will be released in a hard cover print edition on Jan. 30.
E L James blockbuster bestselling Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy will be published by Doubleday in hardcover editions for the first time on January 29. Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, and Fifty Shades Freed will have a combined initial printing of 200,000 copies, and will be widely available in independent and chain bookstores, department and wholesale stores, as well as online.
“As interest in the Fifty Shades trilogy has grown, readers have been asking for hardcover editions of the books,” said Vintage/Anchor’s Anne Messitte, the acquiring publisher of the series. “These new hardcovers include unique production elements, making them the ultimate collector’s editions for readers of the trilogy and the perfect gift for Valentine’s Day.”
I remember being so excited about “Brokeback Mountain” when it was released as a stand alone short story in a tiny little print book. As a fan of short stories, writing and reading them, I’d always wondered what it would be like to see short stories published and sold that way. I’d never seen it before. And I haven’t seen a print edition like that since BM.
Thanks to digital publishing, we now have digital stand alone short stories, but still nothing in print. And for the publishers of FSoG to release a hard cover print edition of the EL James bestseller I have to wonder if it’s going to sell. At this point, I couldn’t begin to predict something like that. There may very well be people out there who will pay the price for the hard cover edition. God bless them. But it’s not something I would have invested money in. Unfortunately, we’ll probably never know how this works out because publishers go blank when they make mistakes…or they never admit mistakes in the first place. They just go blank; it’s an art.
I hope someone follows up on this; just out of curiosity I’d like to see if the hard cover print editions do as well as the paperback and digital editions. I loved FSoG. I was in a non-fiction book where I wrote an essay about FSoG. But I’m going to pass on the hard cover print edition. Not even for Valentines Day.
Matt Bomer at Inaugural; Oprah Not Going:
Hollywood is a fickle place, and it revolves around whatever is trending at the time. Four years ago those adorable political celebs couldn’t wait to jump onto the band wagon of the president’s inauguration so they could spread their happy little names as much as possible. This time, not so much.
I have to admit I was surprised that Oprah Winfrey won’t be attending. Especially since she helped put Obama in office when she first introduced him to the public on her TV show as an unknown who was promoting his non-fiction book. I caught that show the day it aired by accident. I had the flu at the time and there was nothing else on. My first instinct was to wonder why she would be promoting someone so unknown and I was disappointed because it wasn’t something more interesting. As events unfolded in years to come, I finally understood why she put him on her show. But more that that, no one worked more aggressively than Oprah, and used her own name, to support Obama. I would have thought his second term would have been even more important to her. And yet no show. Interesting.
In fact, it looks as if most of the biggest celebs won’t be there this time and I’m not all that surprised. The novelty has worn off and they’re off looking for the next best thing.
Not that Hollywood is abandoning the Commander in Chief: Among those who will be there for Obama, Part 2 are Presidential Inaugural Committee co-chairwoman Eva Longoria, Oscar-winning actress Viola Davis, “Bold and the Beautiful” producer Colleen Bell and BET CEO Debra Lee
So will “The Wire” veteran Wendell Pierce, Jessica Alba, Malin Akerman, “White Collar” actor Matt Bomer and political-consultant-to-the stars Donna Bojarsky.
Eva Longoria, from what I’ve read, was part of the inaugural committee, or something like that. And it’s nice to see Matt Bomer showing up, too. I know nothing about Bomer’s personal political beliefs, nor do I care. That’s his business. But I would assume they are beliefs that include most of my own, at least with regard to things like same sex marriage being legalized and equality for everyone, not just LGBT people. I do think that some celebs show up at these things because they really do care about issues that mean something to them. In other words, it’s not a popularity contest about who is on the A list or C list. And any presidential inauguration, no matter who is being sworn in, aside from politics or bias, is, in fact, history in the making.
The Digital Book World 2013 panels, “Sales Across Borders: Export” and “Sales Across Borders: Import” (back to back on Wednesday afternoon) were both concerned with the question of what new digital systems best allow books to travel across international boundaries—though their approaches were hardly two sides of one coin.
On the Export panel, there was more or less uniform agreement among the panelists (all of whom work for major US distributors) that successful digital export depends on three main components: globally integrated POD systems; platform agnosticism (referring here to a single system’s ability to distribute print or digital titles as needed), and good global partnerships with local etailers. In contrast, the Import panel focused on what made each panelist’s international ebook sales approach unique.
This is a complicated article, and it gets into digital sales on a level most of don’t really need to know about. But I did find it interesting because I get e-mails all the time from people all over the world who are reading my digital books. I have even received them from smaller countries where I tend to think people are forced to pirate e-books because they don’t have any choices. But for the most part, I know that people all over the world are reading my books. When it was first released, “Chase of a Lifetime” actually hit number one in gay/lesbian in the UK on Amazon UK. I never expected to see that because it was the first book I’d ever indie pubbed.
But the thing I find most interesting about this whole topic is that I saw a writer aggressively promoting the release of his/her book in a country in Europe as if this writer has just invented chilled vodka and I honestly didn’t understand the point behind it. I know there are issues that get complicated when it comes to e-books in other countries. But for the most part the bigger countries in Europe have access to a lot of the e-books we can get. At least I think they do. I know I didn’t do anything other than publish my book on Amazon UK to get it to readers in the UK. It wasn’t a complicated thing to do either. I’ve worked with German publishers in many capacities over the years and I’ve been in print books there, too. So why this author was carrying on about having a book released in another fairly large country passed me by. Maybe it’s not as easy for everyone else? I honestly don’t know. But this article is interesting in other ways, too. If you’re so inclined to read about the more technical aspects of publishing digital books check it out.