Weekly Roundup of Indie Publishing News and Stuff – 3 April 2016

Welcome to the Roundtable Roundup, our weekly podcast where we go back to our roots and have brought back the Roundtable aspect. Each Sunday (American time) we’ll invite a guest or two to join us live to discuss the latest news and views from the self-publishing and indie industry.

Science Fiction author Jamie Dodge joined Erica today to discuss the below topics:

Author should tear this plagiarist to shreds

Deborah Bladen had to put off publishing her new book, Torn–which was just published yesterday–due to a tricky situation. An ARC reader who had received an early version of Torn sold it to a third party who then started selling it on their website. It wasn’t hard for Bladen to discover who the culprit was as she had only handed out the one ARC at the time. Legal action has ensued but the result of this won’t be known for awhile.
See the full story so far:

When original content creators feel sorry for the plagiarist

Another plagiarism story, which happened last year, when the original co-authors discovered–through a tweet made by a fan–that their out of print crime books that they’d written 13 years ago were doing very well on Amazon. They were quite shocked and uncertain as to why an author had decided to publish their book–with name and point of view changes. They sat on it for a long time waiting to see if the second book she released in the series was also theirs. Lo and behold it was. They did some snooping and even contacted the author but ultimately did bugger all about it other than get Amazon to take down the books o.O
See the full story: http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-news/the-girl-who-stole-my-book-how-eilis-ohanlon-found-out-her-crime-novels-were-swiped-by-a-stranger-34561638.html

James Patterson presents…

James Patterson has decided he wants to capture audiences who don’t have much time in reading longer works and has partnered with Hachette to print what they’re calling ‘BookShots’ They plan to publish 21 of them this year and they’ll be shorter and cheaper than regular novels. Patterson will write or co-write most of the books, except for the romances which will be released as: James Patterson Presents.
See the full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/business/media/james-patterson-has-a-big-plan-for-small-books.html

Today an AI writes a novel, tomorrow… the world!

An AI co-author a short novel, cheekily titled: The Day A Computer Writes A Novel. The book made it past the first round of national literary prize in Japan called the Nikkei Hoshi Shinichi Literary Award. It was one of two entries they submitted for consideration. But that’s not all, out of 1,450 entries they received for the award, 11 of them were apparently written by non humans.
See the full story: http://futurism.com/this-ai-wrote-a-novel-and-the-work-passed-the-first-round-of-a-national-literary-award/
Additional info: The prize was established in 2013 to honour beloved and prolific Japanese Science Fiction author Hoshi Shinichi. In 2014, Hoshi’s daughter decided they would accept literature written by other nonhumans, such as robots, space aliens and animals, as long as they are written in Japanese. It’s meant as a joke in the spirit of Science Fiction.
Even more info: this includes a segment from the short novel–the English translation that is: http://www.mhpbooks.com/short-story-written-by-robot-doesnt-win-japanese-literary-award/

22% of eBooks sold in UK are self-pubbed… or are they?

According to Neilson self-publishing made up 22% of UK eBook sales in 2015, proof that self-pubbed eBooks are being found and read. However, this amount is probably much larger than even Neilson realise as they only track eBooks with ISBNs – so it’s probably a shit ton more 😛
See the full story: http://www.bustle.com/articles/150556-self-published-ebooks-made-up-22-percent-of-ebook-sales-in-2015

Colour me crazy!

The adult colouring book craze is crazy, with options from David Bowie to hipster beards and men in uniform–who are only half in said uniforms! And It’s no secret that adult colouring books helped prop up print sales over 2015.
This has, however, led to a shortage in coloured pencils. Faber Castell, the world’s largest manufacturer of wood pencils even admitted that they’ve started running extra shifts at their factories.
See the full story: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/netherlands/12199078/Colouring-in-craze-causes-pencil-shortages.html

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