The Earnings of Self-Published Authors, University of Missouri Press Is Closing, and More

by Staff
5.25.12

Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—from publishing reports to academic announcements to literary dispatches—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today's stories:

While self-publishing may be on the rise, the Guardian reports on some interesting findings from a comprehensive survey of 1,007 self-published writers: Half of them earn less than $500.

Based on another industry study, the New York Daily News’ books blog, Pageviews, reveals that today’s writers feel less compelled to honor literary tradition. “Style has grown more and more concerned with its immediate precursors, and less and less with those more distant.”

University of Missouri Press is closing after more than fifty years. Despite staff cutback in 2009, the press, which has published over 2,000 books since its inception, had still been operating at a deficit. (Columbia Daily Tribune).

Flavorpill offers a roundup of the ten fictional characters people need to stop idolizing.

Jacket Copy announced sad news yesterday for the literary community—Kathi Kamen Goldmark, author of And My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You (Chronicle Books, 2002) and founding member of rock band the Rock Bottom Remainders, has succumbed to cancer. 

Today is Towel Day, held in honor of the late Douglas Adams, author, among other works, of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy published in 1979 and of the popular science-fiction television series Doctor Who. Fans of Adams celebrate the author and his literary legacy by donning a towel, “the most massively useful thing an insterstellar hitchhiker can have,” according to The Hitchhiker’s Guide.