Unbound Stories

Matt Blind’s contention, writing in Nate Hoffelder’s The Digital Reader is that so-called “Big” publishing is a mere sideshow for their corporate overlords who make most of their money in other media (film, TV) and that, although Amazon should get some credit for encouraging new talent, they are ultimately the same. What next for publishing then?

Jon P Fine, Director of Author & Publishing Relations, Amazon, talks about self-publishing: I often get asked, ‘What’s the future of publishing?’ Most of the time, I tell people that if I say anything to predict the future of publishing, they should ignore me because who knows? The one thing I do believe is that, from an author perspective, the opportunities are just growing, there’s a proliferation of options. That means all publishers are going to have to think about serving authors more effectively than they have.

Corey Doctorow, writing at Boing Boing: There are ways to improve the odds for indie authors — a plurality of payment systems, lots of different search- and recommendation services, more companies providing services to authors. These, of course, are exactly the sort of thing that extremist copyright proposals like SOPA and the TPP work against: by making the companies that serve authors and their audiences bear the liability for infringement, we shrink the number of companies that supply authors and ensure that only big players like Amazon, Paypal, Apple and Google can occupy those niches.

Amazon’s Kindle Select exclusivity is “bad for authors”, says Jane Litte of Dear Author, but is there any alternative available right now?

Amazon has added “twenty-five subcategories for historial fiction and literary fiction has sixteen (see the left-hand sidebar). On top of that, they have added additional filters for the Popularity list (left-hand sidebar, scroll down), where readers can segregate books based on time period,” says David Gaughran.

This means self-publishing authors have more chances of getting their eBooks discovered in these categories than before, catching up with the quicker-off-the-mark romance and erotica genres.