Welcome back to another episode of the Self-Publishing Roundtable.
The weekly self-publishing news podcast, for indie authors, by indie authors.
We have some housekeeping news to take care of first and it’s big, so you won’t want to miss the beginning of the show. Be there at 7 PM PST / 10 PM EST to catch it.
We have less new stories this week, but hopefully we will be able to dig into them a bit deeper.
| A Library That Has No Books | shared by Crissy Moss |
“Patrons can check out eBooks, audiobooks, and software training databases, as well as eReaders. The library also hosts computer classes and patrons can use laptops, tablets, and desktops at the branch.”
Would you miss the books? Would you use such a library more than a paper-filled one? Let us know in the comments.
| 50% of Wattpad Content Written On Handhelds | shared by Crissy Moss |
The old saying of you can write anywhere you want, is now more accurate than ever.
From the Wattpad press release:
“Last year, more than 53 million connections were made on Wattpad and these connections sparked over 300 million messages, comments and votes. The Wattpad community spent 87 million minutes each day reading and sharing stories from their phones and tablets last year. Readers also created more than 4.4 million story covers and YouTube trailers to support their favorite stories and writers on Wattpad.”
| Wattpad & Smashwords Report Record View Surges | shared by Crissy Moss |
And they are both expecting even more in 2014! Check out the post for more details.
| Can Zola Compete With Amazon? | shared by Wade Finnegan |
Jeremy Greenfield discusses that article over on Forbes.
Zola has purchased Bookish. A site created by three big publishers. They have been touted for their excellent discovery engine. This is part of the the reason Zola has purchased them. They also hope to use things like e-book exclusivity (the article quotes The Time Traveller’s Wife as one) to convince people to shift over.
The article then goes on to talk about Amazon’s uber market share, the fact that B&N, Apple and Kobo struggle to push them.
I doubt this move will make any difference to the ongoing global book takeover of Amazon.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments.
| BookBub Blind Testing | shared by Trish McCallan |
This was an interesting blog post by Bookbub. They did some testing by showing one group of readers a particular cover, blurb and then a different group a different one, and then they measured the ratio of clicks. For example they found that if they mentioned a significant number of five star customer reviews the book got a lot more clicks, than the same book without the reviews being mentioned. They also found that a large volume of customer reviews had a higher click ratio than mentioning a single professional review. Lots of interesting data in this post.
They have another article on free books here, addressing some concerns about their pricing, plus their unwillingness to release data on their lists.
| The Darker Side of Subscription Services | shared by Trish McCallan |
This article takes takes a slightly deeper/darker look at these new sprung subscription services like Oyster and Scrib that we have covered a lot on the show.
One of the things it says is that these services are using different pitches for different audiences. Like with readers they are promising an all you can eat buffet at a low rate. What they aren’t telling them is the buffet is VERY limited and that their reading habits are being mined and shared with publishers and authors.
Authors are being told they will be making a large sum per book and that their audience’s reading habits will be made known to them. What they don’t tell authors is that most will sell maybe one book a month and the data they are collecting is virtually useless since it is being collected from such a small subset of readers. They also bring up the question of how this will affect traditional authors if publishers use any of this flawed data to make their buying or editing decisions. Traditional authors, btw, don’t get to see this data on their books. The publishers get the data.
What do you think about this? Let us know in the comments.
| Self-Pub Author Chosen To Co-Author Big Thriller Series | shared by Trish McCallan |
Self published thriller author Russell Blake, has been chosen to co author thriller series with Clive Cussler and his publisher. Russell was chosen for his speed or writing and self-publishing success. They will both have their name on the title due this fall.
From the article:
“The hours and miles are paying off. Mr. Blake discovered that one way to sell a lot of books is to write a lot of books. He says he has sold more than 435,000 copies of his books, at around $5 to $6 each, and under Amazon’s self-publishing program, he keeps 70%.”
Can you see more of this happening? Big publishers teaming up uber indies with mid-range or best selling traditional authors?
I personally can. The business sense, author connection and speed of production of indies is a bonus. Team that up with the power of a trad publishing house and their authors and we could see some interesting results.
Would you take such a deal? Why? Let us know in the comments.
