Hachette Head on Amazon, E-Books, Bookstores

Arnaud Nourry, Chairman and CEO of Hachette Livre discusses last year's impasse with Amazon and the future for print and e-books

We welcome Mr. Nourry's perspective. We need his candor directed to e-book EARNINGS: What is the breakdown? For retailers, publishers, and authors. The conversation still circles PRICING, just like five years ago. Publishers virtually admitted that author royalties subsidized their investments building infrastructure for the new business. E-opearations are now established and running. Can we start talking about the author's value and livelihood?

STORYTELLERS! Let's Review

Q  Why do you read a story?                               A  To find out what's going to happen. 

We read to see how a conflict will be resolved.
Conflict creates story. Without conflict, no story. This #1 Fundamental bears chewing over.
Therefore
It is critical to track the ebb and flow of conflict in your story. If you can't, you have a problem. Your story might lag, side-track, lack focus, wobble, crash and burn. Whatever, without clearly delineating conflict and resolution, your story cannot gel with full force, if it can at all.
Therefore
If you chart your plot, make Conflict your very first column. Authors might consider location or action or relationships as more important to keep straight. They are not, not until your story is organized into a plot where conflict bounces up and down, start to concluding resolution.

Now, any questions?

And Those Foreign Editions

They just keep on a-coming! This is Ryan Gebhart's 2014 debut (Candlewick, Joan Powers, editor). 

The declining Euro, of course, means it is advantageous to use U.S. currency when negotiating money terms.

Have We Carried On . . .

. . . about the outstanding launch of Ame Dyckman's WOLFIE THE BUNNY, illustrated by growingly beloved Zach OHora (Little, Brown, with Alvina Ling and Bethany Strout editing)  No? Get a load of this!

☆ Horn Book

☆ Publisher's Weekly

☆ Booklist

☆ School Library Journal

What's more, look what New York Media Works wrote about last week's 90-Second Newbery Film Festival at the New York Public Library

Ame Dyckman and Zachariah OHora’s 

“Wolfie the Bunny” steals the show!
(Of course the Newbery is not one of the awards we are hoping for, but still....)

AND

It was an Amazon Editor's Pick

AND

No less a personage than NYPL's Betsy Bird called it "the most charming picutrebook published so far this year" in ye ol' Huffington Post.
AND
Look for reviews this Sunday in The New York Times, U.S.A.Today, and The Chicago Tribune

IN SUM

Ready the confetti! We have a hit!

The Schneider Family Book Award!

THREE CHEERS 

W I N N E R !

MLK

Maybe because of police racism these past months— rather, attention to police racism these past months, today we are especially appreciative of Martin Luther King, a great American.

2 0 1 5

H A P P Y    N E  W   Y E A R 

to our peeps and pals!

Let's kick butt!— except not today. Today let's to acknowledge the greatness of MARTIN LUTHER KING.