From next month Amazon has decided to change how it pays authors for books enrolled in its Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. Previously Amazon paid authors based on whether a reader read more than 10% of a book, or what it referred to as a ‘qualified borrows’. Kindle Unlimited is a subscription service that allows readers to discover…
Amazon Announces First Batch of Kindle Scout Titles
In October last year Amazon invited submissions and readers for its Kindle Scout crowdsourcing program. The reader-powered publishing platform has amassed 29,000 reading ‘scouts’ in recent months and yesterday it announced the first batch of ten titles to be published on March 3rd. Authors with successful submissions received a five-year contract, a $1,500 advance and 50% digital royalties, marketing services…
Amazon Unlimited: Where to now, Columbus?
While the publishing industry is going into wind down this week for the holiday period, one news story caught my attention in recent days and for me hit the note 2014 is ending on. Amazon Unlimited Earlier this month TIPM published its final Publishing Service Index and I noted that Amazon KDP had slipped from its number…
Indie Insider: Pros Talk Publishing | Amazon KDP Video
Industry professionals share their thoughts about the evolution of independent publishing and why now is a great time to be an author. Mick Rooney – Publishing Consultant If you found this review or article helpful, but you’re still looking for a suitable self-publishing provider to fit your needs as an author, then I’m sure I…
European Self-Publishing Providers Need to Look Beyond Localisation
Publishing Perspectives this morning reports that German self-publishing platform, epubli, has expanded into the UK and English-speaking market. Epubli was originally founded in 2008 and is owned by the giant Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. The self-publishing platform allows works on a similar model to Lulu, Blurb and CreateSpace, only taking a share in author profits when a book…
Self Publishing Podcast #45 – The Death of Free Book Promotion on Big Blogs?
One of the biggest discussions in self-publishing this week has been the changes Amazon has made to its affiliate program and qualifying criteria for paying a commission to third-party websites advertising free books on Amazon. The recent changes may have a knock-on implication for self-publishing authors opting into the KDP Select program. Johnny B. Traunt…
The Meatgrinder and eBook Publishing
Mark Coker, the CEO and founder of Smashwords, calls it The Meatgrinder. So much so, he happily—and rightly—refers to Smashwords’ file-crunching e-book conversion application by the same name. It may be the bane of many self-published authors frustrations and late nights, but Coker never meant the process of loading a book file to an online…
Bowker USA Launch e-Book Conversion Service for Self-Publishers
Bowker USA has extended the services on offer at MyIdentifier.com to include e-book conversion for all major e-reader devices (yes, Amazon Kindle, too!). In a press release sent out yesterday, Bowker announced a new partnership with DCL (Data Conversion Library Inc) enabling it to offer an e-book conversion service through MyIdentifier.com as well as ISBN allocation.…
Publetariat Omnibus Edition 2008-2012 | Now Available
Publetariat is an online community, resource centre and news hub for indie authors and small press imprints. Publetariat’s founder April Hamilton is celebrating its first four years with the release of the Publetariat Omnibus 2008-2012 in an ebook Kindle edition. The ebook features the best of Publetariat’s contributed articles over the four years from many leading voices across the indie…
Guest Post: Why I Am Moving to Kindle Land | Melissa Miller
Cover via Amazon If you would have asked me a year ago whether or not I would consider purchasing an e-reader, I would have looked you in the eye with offense and answered you with a simple, “no.” A lot has changed, though, in the past few months that have made me rethink my opinion…