Sunita, writing at Dear Author, posits, in a well-argued and considered post, that the increasing lack of reliable information about the quality of books available to potential purchasers is creating a “market full of lemons”.
Self-publishing for $500
In Nick Thacker’s latest “self-publishing answers” podcast, he explains how he would go about producing an entire, full-length book with professional edits and cover art, plus interior formatting and marketing on a $500 budget.
The Empire Strikes Back: but is it doomed?
Brian O’Leary with another incisive dissection of the ongoing “spat” between self-publishing and traditional publishing: “Right now, publishers are walking away from what is arguably the single largest experiment in the history of publishing. Independent authors are electing to sidestep the supply chain, publish without identifiers, and test new forms and new platforms that look nothing like a book. If they aren’t the farm team, they are a window into what the future might look like.”
Book Rights And Licensing: An International Overview For Authors
Joanna Penn and Tom Chalmers of IPR tell you what you need to know about selling your books around the world: The fact is that many indie authors don’t just own a potentially valuable book, they own the rights to their work and these can be licensed to produce the same book, in English, into different territories around the world – whether US, Australia or India. And rights can also be licensed for the book to be published and translated into different languages – French, Spanish, German and, back to India – Hindi, Marathi, and many more besides.
The Fallacy, and the Truth, of “Big Publishing”
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?
New AuthorEarnings report for Barnes & Noble
Hugh Howey’s new report on Barnes & Noble is now up on AuthorEarnings. The figures are based on the top 5,400 of Barnes & Noble’s top genre fiction eBooks, so they obviously do not include every self-published author in the Nook store, but it does indicate that, collectively, they are becoming a very powerful force in publishing.
Common Ground in the Debate of Self vs. Traditional Publishing
Jack W Perry finds some things that those on either side of the debate between traditional and self-publishing can agree upon
How self-publishers can sell film and TV rights
In the wake of the economic crash and rapid developments in publishing technology, both the film and book industries have been adapting to significant changes in the way they tell stories. A measure of the way things have changed is that self-published authors are now being considered for page-to-screen adaptations, something that publishers and studios had not previously envisaged.
Amazon talks about self-publishing and the advent of the eBook
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.
Publishing: We’re All On the Same Side
Ramez Naam wants to build bridges between the traditional and self-publishing “factions”: It’s a truism that authors don’t really compete with one another. We mostly compete with people not reading, with them sitting on the couch, or watching television, or simply not knowing of anything good to read. I trust that most of the authors I know are supporters of other writers as a class, and that we want to see more people make the leap from “I have a book!” to “People are reading my book!” and even “I’m making a living off of people reading my book(s)!” as we did at one point (or may be in the process of doing).