Lunchtime Links 8.9.19
James Daunt of Waterstones (and the new CEO of Barnes & Noble) announced “a company-wide 4% bonus for Waterstones employees, following a "pretty good" financial year "driven above all by better book sales"
“The bonus comes three months after more than 9,000 Waterstones employees delivered a petition calling for the real living wage. At the time, Daunt said the chain could not afford to shell out for the real living wage, which stands at £10.55 an hour for the Greater London area and £9 an hour for the rest of the UK. The Bookseller understands that many of the booksellers who attended a two-hour meeting with Daunt to discuss the issue have since left the chain.” [The Bookseller]
“President Trump announced yesterday afternoon that he is prepared to impose 10% tariffs on $300 billion worth of goods.” It’s still unclear whether books will be excluded from this. [Publishers Weekly]
I wrote about how tariffs could impact the book publishing and bookselling businesses a few months ago, if you’re interested in revisiting that.
Presented without comment, except a little bit of a wail and gnashing of teeth:
“At its most extreme, Amazon Publishing is a triumph of vertical engineering: If a reader buys one of its titles on a Kindle, Amazon receives a cut both as publisher and as bookseller—not to mention whatever markup it made on the device in the first place, as well as the amortized value of having created more content to draw people into its various book-subscription offerings.”
The Amazon Publishing Juggernaut [The Atlantic]
On a lighter note…
“Polydactyl Typewriter wants work that will set the world on fire. We want work that devours the bloody afterbirth of the Beat Generation, then vomits it up on the tedium of modern literary fiction. We want to read your work and be driven to madness, clawing our shirts and crawling on our hands and knees into the sewers, where we will weep and reflect on your genius until we are killed by the filth that surrounds us. As long as it’s less than 500 words.”
How Dare You Submit to Our Literary Journal [The Belladonna]
And finally, some Friday afternoon inspiration from a total boss:
Journalist Wudan Yan charged her clients 20% late fees on past-due invoices. [Link here, h/t Where to Pitch newsletter]