5 Things to Consider Before Self-Publishing Your Book. Each platform offers different services and a variety of pricing options, so you should check out each site to see which matches your budget and tastes. 2. Additional Expenses In addition to each platform's base costs (if applicable), you'll need to prepare yourself for other expenses. For example, it's recommended (and necessary, if you're interested in distribution) that you buy your own International Standard Book Number (ISBN), the unique numeric code that acts as an identifier for your book. One ISBN will cost you around $99. Want help with editing, design, marketing and other services to get your book in tip-top shape? 3. You'll need to figure out what your ideal distribution channel is, which essentially means how you want your book to be distributed and where.
CreateSpace calls it "expanded distribution," and Lulu calls it "globalREACH distribution. " 4. Marketing your book is closely tied to distribution. 5. Check to see what your platform's commission is. Amazon Publishing Acquires Family-Owned Book Publisher. Amazon's publishing division has acquired Avalon Books for an undisclosed sum, both companies announced shortly after the market close Monday. The acquisition gives Amazon the rights to publish 3,000 backlist books primarily in the romance, mystery and western genres, none of which are yet available as digital editions.
Holly Jacobs, Carolyn Hughey and Carolyn Brown are among the imprint's better-known authors. Amazon has been aggressively expanding its roster of original titles since Laurence Kirshbaum, previously the former CEO of Time Warner’s book division and founder of a small but well-known literary agency, was named publisher last year. He has, among other things, launched several imprints composed primarily of original works from established genre authors during his tenure. Avalon Books is a 62-year-old, family-owned company. Image courtesy of Flickr, 24oranges.nl. Do E-Book Owners Read More Books? [INFOGRAPHIC] U.S. consumers with an e-reader or tablet are more likely to read and buy books than those without an e-book compatible tech device, a new infographic suggests.
An infographic released by Infographic Labs cites a Pew study finding that those who read paper books average 15 books each year, while e-book readers read about 24. As for which tech devices are most popular, the infographic shows that Amazon's Kindle Fire is the bestselling e-reader-capable device, followed by Barnes & Noble's Nook and Sony's eBook reader. However, the Kindle Fire trails significantly behind the iPad, which takes 68% of the tablet market share compared to the Kindle Fire's four percent. For those of you who own an e-reading device: Are you reading more books because of it?
Image via Infographic Labs. Amazon & Google Getting Impatient With Book Publishers. All is not well in the e-book market. Amazon and Google have each scaled back some e-book programs in the past week because business was weaker than expected. Both e-book sellers are having trouble doing business with publishers. Amazon has pulled more than 4,000 books from its e-shelves after publishers wouldn't budge for lower prices. Google is cutting off partners in its e-book affiliates program because sales referrals are too low to be worthwhile. What's going on here? Meanwhile, Amazon's profits are sagging, and Google Books trails far behind in terms of sales. Amazon is not shy about its efforts to get authors comfortable with self-publishing of e-books. The author and the reader are hamstrung by the presence of not just one but two middlemen.
Inevitably, it will. It's getting amazingly easy for authors to publish their own books, and Amazon, Apple and Google are all working on ways to let authors expand the idea of the e-book itself. From Publishers Weekly: Do you read e-books? Amazon's knock-off problem (35 Shades of Grey, anyone?) By Stephen Gandel, senior editor FORTUNE – Perhaps it should be called Spamazon. Until recently, if you had typed "Steve Jobs Isaac" into the online retailer's search box, the first choice that popped up wasn't the best selling book by Walter Isaacson, but instead one with the same name and a similarly sounding author, Isaac Worthington.
The book appears to be selling, even though Amazon's one reviewer gives it a single star and calls it a "poorly produced pamphlet. " Presumably, Worthington's book is based on exclusive interviews with Jeve Stobs. There are a number of books on Amazon with similar titles to much more popular ones. And if you want to buy bestseller Thinking, Fast and Slow on Amazon, be careful where you click.
MORE: Meet Barnes & Noble's new Nook It's perhaps more shocking that Amazon (AMZN) not only sells the books, it's also helping their authors create them. "It's the book equivalent of spam," says lawyer Eric Rayman, a former attorney for Simon & Schuster. BookType Lets You Self-Publish Books for Kindle or Any Other Platform (Including Print) In case you hadn't heard, there's a bit of revolution underway in the way books are published. Whether they're printed or laid out in pixels and read on screens, authors are increasingly able to publish them on their own, using a growing selection of self-publishing software and websites.
Early excitement over Apple's new iBooks Author app quickly gave way to concerns over its restrictive licensing agreement, which Apple then clarified. For those disappointed in the current selection of self-publishing tools, there's a new option. BookType is a self-hosted, open source and collaborative authoring tool for e-books and print books. Think of it kind of like a Wordpress for books. The software has to be installed on a Unix system like Debian or Ubuntu, or it can be installed on a Mac OS X server.
Chapters and sections can be imported into the system or input directly into its WYSIWYG text editor. BookType's backend UI is pretty stripped-down. Top Indie Authors Earn Thousands in First Month of Kindle Lending. Amazon reports today that the Kindle E-Book Lending Library now offers over 75,000 books, boosted by the launch of the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select program for independent publishers. The KDP Select program launched in December, and Kindle customers borrowed 295,000 KDP Select titles that month. The top authors in the program earned thousands of dollars on top of their regular monthly sales. Amazon increased its monthly funding for KDP Select from $500,000 to $700,000 this month after the strong showing.
KDP authors earned $1.70 per borrow. The top 10 KDP Select authors saw a 30% increase from lending on top of the royalties they earned from sales of the same titles. Amazon's end-run around Big Publishing shows promise for authors. Amazon says that total sales of titles in the KDP Select lending program grew faster than KDP titles that aren't in the lending program, but they don't say how much.
The Kindle Lending Library itself launched on November 2. Do you have an e-reader? Top 10 Self-Published Writers Make 449% More Money Through Amazon Lending Library. Amazon released some strong revenue numbers Thursday around KDP Select, its lending library program for self-published authors. The data, released in effort to ward off uncertainty about the program, suggest that KDP Select is generating some serious revenue for some bestsellers, but offer few details about its benefits for the vast majority of participants.
KDP Select is a lending program that encourages self-published authors and publishers to make their work available exclusively in the Kindle Store for 90-day periods. It also makes their works freely available to borrow by Kindle users for at least five of those 90 days. Those who agree to both terms are eligible to take part in a $6 million annual royalty fund, which pays dividends based on each author's share of total borrows during that month. An author only earns revenue if one of his or her books is borrowed. Most promising was the sales boost many authors received as a consequence of adding their books to KDP Select. Y! Big Story: What an e-book might really cost, for all of us | Trending Now. iPad Just why are e-books so expensive, and should they be?
The knee-jerk answer to the second question is of course not. Does it make sense to pay a higher price for a digital title than for its print counterpart, especially after factoring in the cost of an e-book reader? (Tangential aside: Purchasing an e-book reader is believed to be a more environmentally sound choice than buying new books.) So, while most government action these days draws criticisms of busybody interference, the Department of Justice's price-fixing charges filed April 11 against Apple and "five of the six largest publishers in the United States" brought a sense of satisfaction for anyone who has seethed while downloading a pricier title.
Three publishers—HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group, and Simon & Schuster—settled to avoid the expense of a civil trial. Borders going out of business Whom to believe? Forget the merits of the case. Even iBookstore patrons could benefit in the short term. Apple publisher partnership. Publishers Hustle to Make E-Books More Immersive | Underwire. It was bound to happen. The record industry was forced to adapt when iTunes came along. Reluctant film studios made the jump to Netflix and other streaming services.
And now, with tablets selling at mind-boggling rates, book publishers are scrambling to figure out how to bring their ancient medium into the digital realm. All the usual fears about moving into the 21st century spook the book companies, just as they did when younger industries made the leap. “The conversation a year ago was, ‘Oh my god you’re going to kill my book sales’ and ‘You can’t release e-books simultaneously’ and ‘Don’t do an app, no one will buy my book if the app is $2.99!’” Said Lorena Jones, the publishing director behind Chronicle Books‘ digital initiatives, in an interview with Wired at the company’s San Francisco office. “The comfort zone is increasing. Regardless, booksellers must adapt, and so must authors of all stripes.
Independent Publishers Leading the Way “The feedback would go like this,” Havard said. Penguin and Random House owners agree joint venture. Penguin Books moves into self-publishing. 20 July 2012Last updated at 10:19 ET Penguin Books has bought one of the biggest self-publishing companies, ASI, for £116m The parent company of Penguin Books, Pearson, has bought one of the biggest self-publishing companies, Author Solutions Inc (ASI).
The $116m (£74m) deal is a big step by Penguin Books into the rapidly expanding self-publishing industry. Penguin said the deal gave it a leading position in a sector that has entered the mainstream in the past three years. But some have criticised the buy-out, with one authors' body saying it could threaten the rights of new writers. The growth of e-book readers and tablet computers has prompted a change in the route taken by authors, with increasing numbers choosing to bypass traditional publishers and release and market their own titles. Some 150,000 writers have published their work through ASI since it was established in 2007. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote End QuoteKate Pool The Society of Authors 'Misleading' Changing industry.