A small bit of information–Apple is expected to hold a press event in New York some time in January–has launched many columns of speculation. GoodeReader is confident that “sources close to the matter have told us that they intend on launching a new digital self-publishing platform to get peoples content into the iBookstore.” An unnamed TechCrunch source agrees that it “will focus on publishing and e-books.” Kara Swisher at AllThingsD simply says it will be “an important — but not large-scale — event to be held in New York at the end of this month that will focus on a […]
Direct publishing
Author News: Stockett, Ailes, Mina
Author of The Help Kathryn Stockett reports to CBS’s The Early Show on her new novel-in-progress. Originally due at the beginning of 2011, Stockett says “It’s not ready! But I’m working on it.” The new book “takes place during the Roaring ’20s in Oxford, Mississippi. … It’s about a group of women who have absolutely no marketable skills. We, as women of the 2000s, we go to college and prepare ourselves for the world. But these women did not, and the men fall away, so they have to find a different way to earn a living.” CBS Fox News head […]
Darcie Chan, Recluse No More
Last week the NYTBR featured Darcie Chan, author of the self-published success The Mill River Recluse, in the Inside the List column, where she noted “I would still love to have a book traditionally published, be it Recluse, my second novel (currently in progress) or a future work.” Now the WSJ has a long feature on her path to success, and continuing discussions with publishers via agent Laurie Liss at Sterling Lord Literistic. Unfortunately the article suffers from some NYT-esque pejoratives and errors of fact, so the account of publisher discussions is open to some interpretation. “A few major publishers” […]
More On the KDP Select Fund
We have an update related to our point yesterday that the cash pool Amazon is paying out to KDP authors who make their ebooks exclusive to Amazon and elect to make titles available for borrowing through the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library is determined at Amazon’s discretion. Spokesperson Sarah Gelman tells us that “KDP will announce each month’s Kindle Owners’ Lending Library fund amount by the 25th of the preceding month. The announcement will be emailed to participating authors and publishers and posted on the KDP website.” As Amazon now says on their site, in a FAQ about the program, “the […]
KDP Select, The $6 Million Fund For Kindle Direct Authors, Is Live
Amazon now made official what we reported was in the works last month: Authors who publish their work through Kindle Direct Publishing exclusively have the option of putting their titles into the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library, compensated through pro-rated shares of a fund “expected to be at least” $6 million for all of 2012 (beginning with $500,000 allocated for the month of December). Titles must be exclusive to the Kindle store for a minimum of 90 days (which is a reduction from the 180 days Amazon initially sought from some authors). If books are currently available through multiple retailers, authors […]
eNews: Smashwords Adds Management for Agents
Smashwords has adjusted their system to make it easier for literary agents to use the ebook distribution service. Their system now recognizes and allows agents to upload and manage clients’ titles as an authorized third party. (Up until now, the Smashwords paradigm made the uploader the “publisher,” a relationship that many agents did not want to accept.) In the new arrangement, agents can upload titles that will credit the author as the “publisher” and list the agency with an appropriate credit line in the metadata stream. Agents sign-up for a regular Smashwords account and then “upgrade” to Agent status. A […]