Conquering The Mountain

A couple of news items caught my eye this week in publishing. 
First, a shot across the Audible bows from the big four publishers over Audibles new speech to text captions on its audiobooks. Audible is claiming it's an AI message service. The publishers are saying it is equivalent to ebook publishing. So how does Amazon, who owns Audible see this? They tried something similar in 2009 and backed down from the publisher's wrath back then... but ten years on and who is the biggest player in town?

Last weekend I hosted a day-long mini-conference on publishing and one of the sessions I programmed was collaboration. This is becoming more of a thing in the Indie world and anything that encourages groups of people to work together must be a good thing... Publish Drive has just launched a new service that helps collaborators. Abacus. It splits the money at source and so one person doesn’t get lumbered with all the tricky maths on royalty payments to a group. 

Mike Shatzkin took a look at the last ten years of the book publishing industry and notes the major turning points on the way. Ipads... Borders... and the growth of Amazon from 5th in book sales to over 50% of the book sales.

While the publishing eyes focussed on the West it is wise to keep an eye out on the East. This is where The New Publishing Standard is so valuable. Who knew there was such a book hungry market out there... not the regular publishers. The latest figures out say that Nigeria has eclipsed Japan to be the 6th largest online nation. Paper books have always been the standard in Nigeria, I wonder what will happen when they find out they can read on their phones. TNPS is launching a new newsletter just looking at the rise of African readers. While they are doing that they are also examining the subscription model. They only see good things ahead for subscription. It’s all about discovery.

Jane Friedman has a guest post from David Woghan on why self-publishers should consider their own imprint. I like to use the term Indie publishers. If you are contracting editors, cover designers, proofreaders, etc then you are acting like a traditional publisher. You are managing the production process. Traditional Publishers outsource much of their editing and design work so you can find the exact same people that traditional publishers use.  Maybe you should be thinking about imprints a lot earlier on. David talks a lot about Bowker rules. 
(If you are in NZ you can get free ISBN’s and you should.)

Anne R Allen has a great post this week on the 8 reasons why your manuscripts are getting rejected. It is not personal. You may be guilty of presenting a manuscript with a few of these errors. 

In The Craft Section,

Why editing matters- WriterUnboxed

Letting your antagonist drive the plot- Writers Digest- Bookmark

Layering characters for believable fiction- Victoria Mixon- Bookmark

On Core Story- Donna Macmeans- Bookmark

3 reasons to use timestamps in your novel

5 popular tropes writers struggle with – Mythcreants- Bookmark

In The Marketing Section,

3 secrets to effective landing pages- Nate Hoffelder- Bookmark

2 great posts from Penny Sansevieri 10 Bookcover rules- and Securing Amazon Reviews- Bookmark

Custom books cards- Bookbrush- Bookmark

Booklaunch for maximum sales- Bookbub- Bookmark

To Finish

Elizabeth Spann Craig always brings a note of sanity to the publishing process. It must be because she is a cozy mystery writer. This week she has a great post on author overwhelm. What can you do when your To-Do List looks and feels like a mountain. How do you tackle the writing life then? Break it down. A mountain is only climbed one step at a time. 

Maureen
@craicer

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Pic: Flickr Creative Commons – Paxson Woelber