The relaunch of a pivoted Vook/Booklr/Byliner under the new name Pronoun.com that was announced in May is now live, at least for “early access” authors. The company’s author terms are posted; they require exclusive distribution to Amazon, iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Google Play as a group while authors work with them, but promise to pay through all receipts, with no conversion, posting or distribution fees — plus one free ISBN. For now they capture a bit of a float — paying “sixty days after the end of each financial quarter,” while promising that “we’re moving to a monthly payment schedule very soon.” […]
Direct publishing
Scouting the Bad and the Very Bad in Kindle’s Reader-Powered Platform
Katy Waldman at Slate has a look at some of the featured titles in the recent Kindle Scout initiative, where readers are supposed to sample excerpts from unpublished manuscripts and recommend them for publication through Kindle Press. Her theme is: “This kind of writing is unabashed. It is breathtakingly, gloriously bad. And it raises a question: What do we mean when we talk about bad books?” In particular, Waldman writes, “I am not here to talk about the democratizing heroism of self-publishers and crowdsourcers. Or about the growing centrality of the consumer, who is able to customize her reading experience by […]
Malcolm X Estate to Self-Publish eBooks
The Malcolm X Estate will issue an ebook edition of The Autobiography of Malcolm X on their own in May, rather than work with longtime print publishing partner Ballantine, the AP reports. L. Londell McMillan, an attorney for the estate, notes that “Malcolm X was a fervent advocate for self-help, self-reliance and self-respect.” He added, “Today’s technology allows for innovative means to share content and add to it for educational, cultural and commercial purposes. Malcolm X did not grant all rights to a publisher in perpetuity. The works and rights of Malcolm X belong to his children and the community, not a […]
Digital: News from KU, Kobo, Scribd and Curtis Brown UK
Amazon has launched Kindle Unlimited in France and Brussels. Kobo is bringing “three-for-two” deals from the trade paperback tables to the ebookstore — starting with a promotion in the US with Hachette Book Group, good only through December 15. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is now participating in Scribd‘s ebook subscription service. (HMH is one of the few trade publishers actively participating in Kindle Unlimited as well.) Curtis Brown UK is launching another digital publishing initiative next March, called Studio 28, covered here by the Bookseller as if it’s the agency’s first run at such a venture. They expect to publish 12 […]
Today’s Amazon News: Kindle Scout, Pop-Up Stores, and More
Amazon officially went live with “Kindle Scout,” the service we already reported on that invites writers to submit manuscripts for review by readers and then Amazon Publishing editors, for consideration under a templated publishing deal. (The company has been referring to it as a “reader-powered” publishing program.) They are looking for submissions in the romance, mystery & thriller and sci-fi/fantasy genres. Accepted manuscripts will be published under a new Kindle Press banner. The publishing offer is a $1,500 advance and net royalties of 50 percent for a term of at least 5 years. Separately, Amazon confirms to GeekWire that the company […]
Seth Godin Direct — and In Print Only
Author, entrepreneur and “ruckus maker” Seth Godin has unveiled his latest experiment in a long line of efforts to publish directly: His new forthcoming book WHAT TO DO WHEN IT’S YOUR TURN [And it’s always your turn] is available online for discounted direct, pre-order through October 8, while Godin closes his first printing. The trade paperback “full-color book in magazine format” is positioned as “focusing on our invented battle with fear and our obligation to do work that matters.” Put a different way, he is “taking the most powerful, personal messages of [his] blog and recent books, mixing them with evocative photos and […]