In April 2017, Netflix reported having over 98 million subscribersworldwide, including more than 50 million in the United States. Deezer currently has 16 million monthly active users, and 6 million paid subscribers as of 29th Jan 2017. In June 2017, Spotify reported to have over 140 million monthly active users, with over 50 million paying subscribers. Subscription services are well and truly here to…
Seven Films About Writers That Will Motivate You – Amelia Dermott | Guest Post
Every single writer has moments where they don’t feel like much of a writer at all. It isn’t always easy to sit down in front of your manuscript and let loose into a creative frenzy. Sometimes, you need to step away for a little while in order to come back with a fresh perspective. Try…
Reading and Writing for Pleasure: June 2017 | Douglas Burcham
Douglas writes a follow up to his post in February 2017 in his Writing and Reading for Pleasure series with a reflective post on recent activity. Reading One Thursday I did not go shopping for short stories. My intention is to spend some time on looking at the latest fashions on book cover design…
Fifty Shades and the Martian Self-Publishing Marketing Secrets – Zachary Jarvis | Guest Post
When people think of an eBook success story, they tend to think about Fifty Shades of Grey. It was an eBook that was released by a small Australian company that also did print on demand and became a worldwide phenomenon. The Writer’s Coffee Shop didn’t have a big marketing budget, and so the legend that…
Amazon Introduces Charts: A Bestseller List for What People are Really Reading and Buying
Press release SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–May 18, 2017– (NASDAQ:AMZN)—Amazon today launched Amazon Charts, a reimagined weekly bestseller list that shares which books are being read the most and which books have sold the most across all formats each week. The Top 20 Most Read is the first ever bestseller list to measure the books millions of Amazon.com customers are…
The Brutal Truth Why You are a Bad Writer – Olivia Ryan | Guest Post
The majority of people don’t even perceive writing on a very conscious level. That’s because it seems so normal, so natural. They know how to do to it because they’ve been thought how to do it, and now they just…have it. Writing is created by language, and language is learned during our youngest years of…
Publishing Service Index: May 2017 (Notes Included)
This is the PUBLISHING SERVICE INDEX for May 2017. Our last index was released in February 2017. Originally I compiled the index, month-to-month, but I found the work involved to update almost 90 companies and service providers was not being compensated by enough changes on the index over a short period of weeks. Indeed, some months the changes…
Oklahoma Attorney General Ends Tate Publishing Empire with Arrests and Charges
State authorities on Thursday derailed Tate Publishing and Enterprises’ plan to resume operating their author services company. Richard Tate, the firm’s founder, and his son Ryan Tate, its CEO, were arrested Thursday morning and held on eight felony charges and one misdemeanor charge filed by Oklahoma’s attorney general, Mike Hunter’s office, that accuses them of embezzlement, extortion and…
How Long Should My Book Be? We Analyzed 272 #1 Bestsellers to Find Out – Tucker Max | Guest Post
A lot has been written in recent years about the average readers’ shrinking attention span. We all know that the non-stop news cycle and round-the-clock social media have sped up our consumption habits. But do these same habits translate to books? We decided to find out. We gathered a list of every New York Times…
Amazon Publishing Launches New Author and Agent Portal
Today, May 2nd, Amazon launched APub.com, described as a gateway for royalty statements, authors and agents will also be able to get real-time access to sales and book-lending data and feedback from readers across Amazon’s websites and services. APub.com is your gateway to real-time sales data, monthly royalty statements, and feedback from readers for all of…