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May 15, 2013, 8:25 a.m.
LINK: www.nytimes.com  ➚   |   Posted by: Joshua Benton   |   May 15, 2013

Julie Bosman reporting for the Times:

In a year that was monopolized by the “Fifty Shades” erotic novels and their various knockoffs, e-book sales in fiction rose 42 percent over the year before, to $1.8 billion. Growth in nonfiction e-book sales was smaller, a 22 percent increase, to $484.2 million. E-book sales in the children’s and young-adult categories increased 117 percent, to $469.2 million.

The survey revealed that e-books now account for 20 percent of publishers’ revenues, up from 15 percent in 2011. Publishers’ net revenues in 2012 were $15 billion, up from $14 billion in 2011, while unit sales of trade books increased 8 percent, to $2.3 billion.

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Lessons learned in The Building of Lost Causes
“The skills we developed while facing down the fossil fuel industry — persistence through trolling campaigns, converting readers one by one, turning an upstart publication into essential reading — these aren’t just about journalism. They’re about how to keep building when everything around you feels like it’s crumbling.”
Publishers find the AI era not all that lucrative
“Welcome, surely. Lucrative, in a sense. Game changer? Hardly.”
Embrace the barbell
“It’s time to abandon middling stories and go very short or very long.”