U.S. trade publishers earned a net sales revenue of $357.4 million from export sales in 2011, according to a new report from the Association of American Publishers (AAP). This was a 7.2 percent increase from $333.3 million the net sales revenue earned in 2010.

According to the report, about 90 percent of U.S. publishers export English-language print and/or eBooks to more than 200 countries worldwide. eBook sales abroad are growing even faster.

Check it out: “Total eBook net sales revenue for 2011 was $21.5 million, a gain of 332.6% over 2010; this represents 3.4 million eBook units sold in 2011, up 303.3 %. As comparison, print formats (Hardcover, Paperback and Mass Market Paperback) increased 2.3% to $335.9 million in 2011. In 2011, eBook sales grew 218.8% in Continental Europe, 1316.8% in the UK, 201.6% in Latin America and 636.8% in Africa.”

Create a social media strategy and learn from the biggest names in social media in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Jen Brown (TODAY.com), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

At a commencement address at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, author and comic book writer Neil Gaiman shared some “secret freelancer knowledge” that all kinds of writers, editors and freelance workers can use.

We’ve embedded a video of his speech above–it also contains the best advice he ever received, delivered by the great novelist Stephen King. Here is Gaiman’s secret freelancer knowledge:

You get work however you get work, but keep people keep working in a freelance world (and more and more of today’s world is freelance), because their work is good, because they are easy to get along with and because they deliver the work on time. And you don’t even need all three! Two out of three is fine. People will tolerate how unpleasant you are if your work is good and you deliver it on time. People will forgive the lateness of your work if it is good and they like you. And you don’t have to be as good as everyone else if you’re on time and it’s always a pleasure to hear from you.

Harlan Ellison will republish a long out of print collection of pulpy short stories with Kicks Books at the end of the month.

Pulling a Train was originally published in 1959 as Sex Gang, “a brown-paper wrapper collection of his men’s magazine stories” written under the name Paul Merchant. This early “juvenile delinquent fiction” is a quite different than the speculative fiction that built Ellison’s career. Check it out:

For the lively set, prepare to blast into orbit with blade-wielding ferocity as Ellison takes you into a cobblestone wilderness fraught with hate and violence, a street level cosmos where shadowy creatures are hard, and blunt, and malicious, and where hope hangs a shingle that reads, “GET LOST”. In the realm of 1950′s juvenile delinquent fiction, it was Ellison who dragged the unnamed genre from the gentle hands of the social workers into a filthy basement, where he worked it over, with great satisfaction, into an alternate universe of hate and pain. Ellison is the king of JD fiction. Of this, there can be no debate.

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As if readings weren’t stressful enough, these days authors have to remember to take photos and videos and post them on their social networking pages afterwards.

A new app called StoryMark aims to make it a little easier. The new iPhone app lets users record audio tracks to go with photos and then share them directly to social networks.

So if you’ve got a publicist, friend or even reader in the audience, get them to take some photos of you on stage and then record a section of your reading or Q&A along with one of the videos, press share and the marketing is done before you go to dinner. Check out AppNewser to find out more about the app.

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The American Booksellers Association has posted a very useful article explaining how self-published authors can sell their books at a few independent bookstores around the country. We’ve posted links to those helpful resources below, but you should read the whole article.

If your bookstore has an option for self-published authors, share a link in the comments section–we will update our article with more resources. Watermark Books and Cafe owner Sarah Bagby explained how self-published writers can add books at her Wichita, Kansas bookstore. Check it out:

“No questions asked, we’ll take five copies of a book on consignment,” said Bagby. The terms are 60/40, and the store keeps the books on the shelves for 90 days. “If they sell, we’ll get back to the author right away and reorder. If they don’t, the author needs to pick up their books.” … A second Watermark program offers tiered event options, which can cost from $50 to $500. Elements include a signing, newsletter inclusion, and front-of-store title placement, or a reading and signing, 100-postcard mailing to the author’s list, a four-color 11″ x 17″ poster hung in the store, and more. (Via Victoria Strauss)

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Hailey Leithauser has won the Poetry Foundation’s 2012 Emily Dickinson First Book Award. The 57-year-old poet has been writing off and on since the late 1970s. Since 2000, her work has been published in The Antioch Review, The Gettysburg Review, Pleiades, Best American Poetry, and Poetry.

The award, which is given only occasionally, was designed to give recognition to an American poet over the age of forty who has yet to publish a collection of poetry. Leithauser’s first book-length poetry manuscript, Swoop, comes out in October 2013 from Graywolf Press. As the award recipient, Leithauser wins $10,000 and will also be honored at the Pegasus Awards ceremony at the Poetry Foundation on Monday, June 11.

Jeff Shotts, poetry editor at Graywolf, describes Leithauser as “a risk-taker.” He says: “She is innovative—with spirited titles and musical outbursts—but also nods to poetic tradition with rhyming sonnets and other lyric techniques. I take delight in so many of these lines and stanzas. I am engaged, throughout, and admire her wide-ranging talent.”

In this episode of “Cubes,” we tour the worldwide headquarters of IPG Mediabrands, the media holding company responsible for $34 billion in global revenue from advertising agencies such as Universal McCann. IPG’s work includes the Geico Gecko and Volkswagen’s pint-sized Darth Vader.

The IPG headquarters is home to a cutting edge media lab full of “Minority Report”-esque marketing technology, and the office includes a high-tech workspace dubbed “the desk of the future” and a skyway stretching 10 stories above the street that was once used by the Gimbels department story, the building’s previous tenant.

For more mediabistroTV videos, check out our YouTube channel, and be sure to follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

Newbery Medal winner Jean Craighead George has passed away. She was ninety-two-years-old.

George (pictured, via) enjoyed a career in children’s book publishing that spanned more than six decades. She won the Newbery for Julie of the Wolves in 1973. Next year, Penguin Young Readers Group will posthumously publish The Eagles are Back (the final installment of a picture book trilogy) and Ice Whale (a young adult novel written in collaboration with her son, Craig George).

Here’s more from her biography: “In the 1940s she was a reporter for The Washington Post and a member of the White House Press Corps. After her children were born she returned to her love of nature and brought owls, robins, mink, sea gulls, tarantulas – 173 wild animals into their home and backyard. These became characters in her books and, although always free to go, they would stay with the family until the sun changed their behavior and they migrated or went off to seek partners of their own kind.”

As part of his campaign efforts, president Barack Obama was on The View, where he took a pop culture quiz. It turns out that the president has never heard of the top selling erotica book, 50 Shades of Grey.

When asked the question, “what is the controversial sex book that’s on millions of women’s bedside tables?” He says that he doesn’t know, but “I’ll ask Michelle when I get home.”

We’ve embedded the video above for you to see for yourself.

BookExpo America (BEA) arrives New York City’s Jacob Javits Center in early June.

To prep for the conference, 50 Shames of Earl Grey author Andrew Shaffer (a.k.a. EvilWylie) has compiled the “Ultimate BEA Party Guide,” collecting all the parties planned for the week. You can email the author to add your party.

Follow this link to explore Shaffer’s comprehensive list. Which parties will you attend? Besides the parties, what BEA panels are you excited about?