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” […]
eNews
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 […]
BISG Issues Policy Recommendations On Digital Books and ISBNs
After almost two years of work, the Book Industry Study Group has issued a policy statement of recommended best practices in assigning ISBNs to ebooks and other digital products, “in order to reduce both confusion in the marketplace, and the possibility of errors.” In general, the focus is on three main factors in deciding how many ISBNs to use: content, format, and usage rights. Substantial content variations–like enhancements–create a work that should have its own unique ISBN. They also recommend one ISBN for each file format. So EPUB, Mobi and PDF versions should have separate ISBNs as well. Finally, they […]
Price Check In Aisle Amazon (A One-Day Offer)
In other Amazon news, there’s much consternation over the company’s one-day promotion to encourage people to use their mobile Price Check app. To be clear, the promotion does not apply to books–just to toys, electronics, sporting goods, music and DVDs. The offer, good for Saturday, December 10 only, provides a 5 percent discount (capped at a maximum of $5) on up to three qualifying times. Users must run the latest version of Amazon’s price checking app, and enable the geo-location feature. More broadly, however, Amazon wants to encourage shoppers to “submit” local price data to the etailer, presumably to sharpen […]
eNews: Thomas Allen Offer Digital Shorts Through Indie Websites; Judy Blume Classics in Digital Format; and More
Thomas Allen and Cormorant Books have partnered for a new digital short story initiative called cStories, ePub files that can be bought through independent booksellers’ websites for $1.99. Transcontinental Media will manage downloads and digital warehousing, taking a 10 percent share of revenues. (Thomas Allen & Cormorant will take 50 percent, while 40 per cent will go to booksellers.) “This is our way of helping independent booksellers be involved in digital retailing,” Thomas Allen marketing manager David Glover told Quill & Quire. “We know if people begin to read these stories, they’ll want more.” In other eNews, Penguin Children’s is […]