In Publishing News This Week,
Just as I published last week’s blog, Amazon changed their eBook pricing tiers. Previously the 70% royalty model was capped at $9.99 but it has been increased to $12.99. Box sets, your hour has come!
The new lawsuit against Google is underway. At issue whether Google used books enrolled in Google Play and as part of search to train its AI, Gemini. Among the claims against Google is that they also used Google Scholar to download articles to make Gemini more responsive, weakening the market for research books and journals. This is a class action so expect more people to join in.
Publishers Weekly reports on the Careless People author taking Meta to court. At issue is whether the alleged gag order that stops the author from discussing her book, which highlighted abuse at the Meta offices, is justified or a violation of the first amendment rights. Publishers are watching this one as it will impact how much risk they might be up for. Macmillian, Sarah Wynn-Williams publisher, is doing a great job in supporting their author through this. The publicity over the case and book have helped sales as well.
Everybody dreams of winning the big prize. Multi millions in your pocket to do whatever you like. Fund a non profit literary endeavor, perhaps? A new fund is set up to do just that in the US, but how should the money really be spent? One publisher has opinions about fairness across the sector and what would be the best use of $50 million dollars.
We can but dream in NZ with all our funding slashed here.
One of the benefits in managing your own backlist is that you can re-release books that your traditional publisher has given up on. It doesn’t matter when a book is published. Every reader is a new reader. Doubleday has decided that they want to republish out of print books that are hard to find, in order to bring a new audience to the book.
Last week I wrote about the American Library Association’s conference. In the Alliance of Independent Authors ,news section Dan Holloway commented this week on the librarian’s plea to make metadata relevant. This is how they select books. Who knew metadata was so important to search?
Amy Chan spent $44.000 launching her book and only $3.00 was worth it. She wrote an article about it. Every author who read that article winced and so did the publicists. Kathleen Schmidt followed up with an article on meaningful exposure. These two articles show the expectations and reality divide in marketing books now. The marketing landscape has changed. What used to work does not anymore.
Dean Wesley Smith has been around the publishing world for decades and has a long view of the industry. Publishing is always changing, he says. Here he dives into the numbers and why authors and publishers must keep thinking of a wider discoverability model.
Julie Artz has a great primer on manuscript formats for writers. If you don’t know the standard presentation Julie shows you with examples across Scrivener, Word, Google Docs, and more.
Joanna Penn has an interesting interview with Jamie Ferguson on creating bundles and anthologies. How do you choose writers to join in anthologies? How do you keep track of submissions? If you are interested in dipping your toe in to boxsets, make sure you read the transcript.
Over on the Killzone blog Dale Ivan Smith is writing about Risk. Writers risk rejection with every submission but they submit anyway. They risk failure with every book launch, but they do it anyway. He has gathered different answers on what risk means to a creative. Are your characters risking anything?
In The Craft Section,
Point of View is a promise -Sarah Hamer- Bookmark
Why readers love flawed characters- Jenn Windrow
Why your story feels choppy- Tiffany Yates Martin
The Wow factor-James Scott Bell- Bookmark
Multiple POV’s and character empathy-K M Weiland - Bookmark
In The Marketing Section,
Ten tips for creating special editions- Indie Author Magazine- Bookmark
How to make your book irresistible- Video – Alliance of Independent Authors
How to optimize metadata- IngramSpark- Bookmark
10 ways authors can help each other with marketing- Sandra Beckwith- Bookmark
Lessons learned running a bookshop- Alliance of Independent Authors
To Finish,
Do you have the courage to switch things up? It is easy to just do same old same old in your writing and marketing. You know the drill. You know how much energy you need. Switching things up is a venture into the unknown. What if it doesn’t work?
Joanna Penn has written another of her deep dive articles. 7 tips for sustainable creativity. Here she pulls great advice from interviews with her guests about staying creative. She is switching things up by moving her podcast days. Change can unlock another outlook on your writing. It sparks new ideas, new directions. You never know what interesting opportunities await around the change corner.
Maureen
@craicer
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