Welcome back to the Self-Publishing Roundtable.
The weekly self-publishing news podcast, for indie authors, by indie authors.
Once the show is ready to go live, we’ll edit this post to insert the video. Until then, these are the noteworthy news items we’ll be covering this episode.
Net neutrality and why is should matter to you. This has been in the news a lot lately and we’ll explain why recent developments should concern everyone. (shared by Crissy)
Preorders– Good or Bad? Preorders have long been a staple of traditional publishing and Indie authors were keen to use the service to their advantage. But more and more authors, after trying preorders, are abandoning them. We’ll talk about why. But this thread on the Kboards will give you a look at the major problem Indie authors are having with the preorder paradigm. (shared by Trish)
Brenna Aubrey and her amazing journey By now most of you have probably heard of Brenna Aubrey–the debut author who turned down a three book, $120,000 three book deal (from an auction no less) to self-publish her new adult debut At Any Price.
Brenna was called everything from a fool to a liar to a heroine. She inspired posts by Hugh Howey to Chuck Wendig Now Brenna shares her first month of sales and income. Prepare to be blown away. (shared by Trish)
A new study shows that two-thirds of the nation’s kids are reading digitally. 67% of U.S. children aged two-to-thirteen are now reading ebooks. That’s up from 54%, the number recorded in a similar study from last year. (shared by Wade)
Ingram Invests in Social Ebook Retail Start-up Librify
Taken directly from DBW “Founded in 2013, Librify is aimed at the book club market. Librify co-founder and CEO Joanna Stone describes the start-up as “Goodreads plus a book-of-the-month retail platform.” Stone will be using the money to continue to develop the Librify product, which hasn’t yet been launched, and to increase the size of its headcount, which sits at 20 right now, including an offshore team in India. The company plans on launching to the public this year. (shared by Wade)
There were several traditional authors this past week sharing their numbers and income. One of them was Lexi Revellian who writes for Harper Collins. Within hours her post had disappeared. (shared by Trish)
Hugh Howey and his agent Kristin Nelson reveal how they would run Harper Collins if they were put in charge.
The interesting thing here, is that almost everything they mention is already being done by Amazon Publishing, or at least Montlake Romance is doing it. (shared by Trish)
Hugh Howey’s look into the top selling Sci-Fi authors
in which he makes the discovery that half of the top ten are self-published. (shared by Trish)
Harper Collins teams up with Google Play to create a game that combines virtual reality with real world locations. The game is based off of a series of books written by James Frey. Google will be uploading clues to the game in YouTube videos, image searches and other ways. Additionally, Google Play has the exclusive rights to distribute the first 15 titles in the series.
Here’s a bit from the article:
In an announcement today, Niantic announced it has teamed up with publisher HarperCollins to create a location-based game for ENDGAME, a new book trilogy for young adults by bestselling authors James Frey (of A Million Little Pieces fame) and Nils Johnson-Shelton that has already been optioned by Twentieth Century Fox. Niantic will play a significant part in the interactive project, which is lovingly referred to as an “innovative omni-platform endeavor,” by developing a virtual-meets-real-world game that allows mobile users to solve virtual puzzles to advance parts of the story.
Late breaking story. 🙂
David Gaughran posted a report yesterday about a fake controversy regarding Hitler’s Mein Kampf, which a reporter had claimed was a digital bestseller. David Gaughran checked the book’s sales/rank through the KND tracker which reported less than stellar sales. But the really interesting thing is what happened in the comments. Like the reporter of the original article calling David a fraud and claiming no one could tell a book’s sales by its rank. O-O Some reporter this guy turned out to be. He doesn’t even know the basics about bestseller status. If you are looking for a good laugh check it out. 🙂
