Book Trends

Articles about trends in bookselling and the publishing industry.

5 Key Trends in Self-Publishing for 2014

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This post, by Carla King, originally appeared on PBS Mediashift on 1/7/14.

The advancement in self-publishing tools and technology is a lot to keep up with, so here’s a roundup of the news that I think mattered most to self-publishers in 2013 and will continue to shape the industry this year.

1. Ingram Spark Gives Amazon CreateSpace a Run for Its Money

Ingram Content Group finally launched Ingram Spark, the much-anticipated print-on-demand and e-book distribution service aimed at self-publishers. It’s a welcome alternative to their publisher services tool Lightning Source, and competes with Amazon’s CreateSpace. Spark offers one author dashboard to handle both e-book and print distribution, while Amazon forces authors to two different places (CreateSpace for POD, Kindle Direct Publishing for e-books). And, unlike CreateSpace, Spark also allows authors to set the 55% discount and returns programs that bookstores insist upon. Do note that Amazon, being the pushy gorilla it is, sometimes lists print books not produced by them as “Out of Stock.” So this author continues to use CreateSpace in conjunction with other services, just to make sure that doesn’t happen.

 

2. E-book Subscription Services Entice Readers to Buy in Bulk

 

Click here to read the full post on Mediashift.

 

For Major Publishers, Will Print No Longer Be the Norm?

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This post, by Rachel Deahl with additional reporting from Jim Milliot, originally appeared on Publishers Weekly on 10/25/13.

Format has been a long-simmering topic of debate in book publishing, and the question of when, and if, a title is published in hardcover, paperback, and/or digital has become even more pressing as bricks-and-mortar bookstores dwindle and e-book sales grow. The idea that any standard deal from a major publisher guarantees a print format release—which was previously a foregone conclusion—is something agents no longer take for granted, with some expressing concern that the big houses are starting to hedge on print editions in contracts.

While e-book-only agreements are nothing new—all large publishers have imprints that are exclusively dedicated to digital titles—a handful of agents, all of whom spoke to PW on the condition of anonymity, said they’re worried that contracts from print-first imprints will increasingly come with clauses indicating that the publisher makes no guarantee on format. The agents say this is a new twist to the standard way of doing business.

While sources acknowledged that contracts from print-first imprints (as opposed to e-only ones) featuring clauses that give the publisher the freedom to decide on format are not new, the feeling is that these clauses are the exception, not the rule. Recently, though, a handful of agents have expressed concerns about print imprints refusing to commit on this issue.

Most of the big five houses PW contacted declined to respond to inquiries on the matter, saying that they don’t comment on contract negotiations. While some agents said they fear that Random House (and, possibly, the larger merged entity of Penguin Random House) is preparing to add a clause to its boilerplate indicating that it doesn’t commit to a format, a spokesman for the publisher shot down this notion. Penguin Random House’s Stuart Applebaum told PW that no change has taken place: “The suggestion that Penguin Group (USA) LLC and Random House LLC are changing their standard boilerplate contracts so as to limit publishing formats is not correct. Each of our author contracts continue to be negotiated individually, and confidentially.”

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Publishers Weekly.

 

62 of the Top Writing Articles from 2013 (That Can Help You in 2014)

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This post, by Brian Klems, originally appeared on Writer’s Digest on 1/2/14.

Over the past year I posted articles on this blog that covered everything—from grammar to writing better characters to getting published and more. Here’s a cheat sheet linking to what I consider the 62 best articles that can help you reach your writing goals. I broke it down into categories, as you’ll see below. These articles can help you no matter what phase of the writing process you are in. My goal is to help you move your writing career forward, and, by making this easy-to-reference guide, you’ll have a chance to bookmark it and have a one-stop place to help you have a successful year of writing.

Here’s to your best year of writing yet! ~Brian

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Writer’s Digest. It includes links to 62 WD articles on everything from craft to marketing.

 

More Open For Indies? What I’d Like 2014 to Bring

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This post, by Dan Holloway, originally appeared on his blog on 12/27/13.

Happy festivities. In this season of round-ups and forward-looks, when Janus stalks the blogosphere, writers everywhere are musing and reflecting. And whilst I am happy to grinch along with the best of them, it seems churlish not to join in the speculation.

But first the important bit. Here is a present. Click the image below to download an exclusive pdf of SKIN BOOK, beautifully illustrated with 8 pictures from Veronika von Volkova’s stunning Grime Angels series.

SKIN BOOK pic-page0001

It’s been a fascinating year for self-publishers. At the start of the year I had just begun work on the Alliance of Independent Authors’ Open Up to Indies guidebook. At time of writing, that guidebook’s release is imminent. But the backdrop against which it will see the light of day has changed – if not beyond all recognition then at least significantly. This autumn, Crimefest announced that it will be welcoming self-published authors next year. The Author Lounge at this year’s London Book Fair included self-publishing luminaries like Mel Sherratt. The Folio Prize, launched as the serious literary alternative to Booker, opened its doors to self-publishers, self-publishing conferences started talking about writing as well as marketing. And the Guardian has been running a self-publishing showcase giving blog time to indies for several months now. We’ve even seen a major serious writing award for the originally self-published A Naked Singularity.

The door feels ajar.

Whether or not it is, now that’s another matter. For me personally, it’s been a year of as much frustration as liberation. I still feel like the amusing pet as often as I feel like the welcome family member. It is getting easier to write about self-publishing. But as a literary writer and poet it remains as hard as ever to get the things I self-publish actually written about. I get to talk about self-publishing more than ever. But about my self-published writing as little as ever. There is still much work to be done to get people talking about self-published books rather than about self-publishing: the phenomenon.

These are the things I’d like to see for self-publishing in 2014.

 

1. Slow writing and the death of the algorithm

The best marketing for your book is other books. Write more. Be prolific. The tipping point to success comes when you’ve written x number of books. More books breed more discoverability. These have become more than mantras of self-publishing, givens that every writer has to take on board.

And these truisms are poison. Roz Morris wrote a brilliant post earlier this year about the slow novel, about the fact that some genres such as literary fiction spill their words more slowly than others. And yes, I absolutely accept that some genres are more sales friendly than others. But sales are not the be all and end all, and should not be the guide for whether or not a book receives coverage or acclaim.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Dan Holloway’s blog.

 

The Good And Bad In Chaotic eBook Pricing

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This post, by Mike Masnick, originally appeared on Techdirt on 10/8/13.

For years we’ve discussed the ridiculousness of ebook pricing, where some publishers seem to think that sky high prices for ebooks (often higher than physical copies) make sense, despite the lack of printing, packaging, shipping and inventory costs. And, of course, we won’t even get into the question of the price fixing debacle. Art Brodsky recently wrote a fascinating piece over at Wired about how ebook pricing is an “abomination,” because it’s designed to price people out of reading. He points out that we should think more about ebooks like we think about apps, since that’s a much more direct comparison than “books.” And then he gets into a discussion of how publishers are going crazy with their library pricing:

Take the example of J.K. Rowling’s pseudonymous book, Cuckoo’s Calling. For the physical book, libraries would pay $14.40 from book distributor Baker & Taylor — close to the consumer price of $15.49 from Barnes & Noble and of $15.19 from Amazon. But even though the ebook will cost consumers $6.50 on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, libraries would pay $78 (through library ebook distributors Overdrive and 3M) for the same thing.

Somehow the “e” in ebooks changes the pricing game, and drastically. How else does one explain libraries paying a $0.79 to $1.09 difference for a physical book to paying a difference of $71.50 just because it’s the electronic version? It’s not like being digital makes a difference for when and how they can lend it out.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Techdirt.

 

Amazon Turns the World of Web Serials on its Head

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This post, by PJ Kaiser, originally appeared on Tuesday Serial on 9/13/12.

When it comes to publishing serial stories, writers have faced a conundrum. There are very few online formats that lend themselves to publishing installments. Smashwards specifically disallows unfinished works, and Amazon and Barnes & Noble force the publisher to package each installment separately unless it’s a completed work. This means each episode / installment has its own price, its own cover, its own description, its own reviews. The reviews make it a particularly sticky issue because if the first installment has glowing reviews, those reviews don’t show up automatically on the seventeenth installment. Readers have to go to some trouble to track it all down.

Roz Morris recently wrote an insightful post about her somewhat frustrating experiencing publishing her novel “My Memories of a Future Life” in installments on Amazon. She recapped her issues and lamented the fact that Amazon and other publishers didn’t easily allow for the publishing of a serial in installments.

Just after she had published her post, however, Amazon made an announcement which has the potential to revolutionize the publishing of serial stories. You’ll see at the bottom of her post, she included an addendum about Amazon’s announcement.

For full details of Amazon’s announcement, you’ll want to check out this press release from the Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch. The upshot of this is that Amazon now has a new format specifically for serials which will allow readers to pay one flat fee and receive all installments of the story: past, present and future. It keeps reviews in one place and doesn’t clog up the reader’s kindle with multiple entries for the same story.

At the moment, Kindle Serials do not appear to be a self-publishing platform, although it does appear to bypass the role of the agent. Amazon’s submission guidelines provide no indication of how serials are evaluated, how many might be considered for publishing or any specifics. We hope that over time that will become more clear and of course we also hope that the platform becomes a self-publishing option.

As writers, publishers and everybody else try to figure out how Kindle Serials will work, there’s a lot of buzz about it on social media and the interwebs.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Tuesday Serial.

 

Amazon Makes Life Easier For Authors of Historical & Literary Fiction

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This post, by David Gaughran, originally appeared on his website on 10/22/13.

There are lots of reasons why self-publishing success stories tend to concentrate around writers of “genre” fiction, but it’s a mistake to assume that success is impossible if you write literary fiction or historical fiction (which tends to get lumped in with literary fiction, even though it’s just another genre… like literary fiction!).

The first is demographics: romance and erotica readers were the first to switch to digital, followed by mystery and thriller fans, leading to the success stories of Amanda Hocking, Joe Konrath, and John Locke.

I remember SF/F authors complaining (back in 2011) that their readers hadn’t switched to e-books yet, casting jealous eyes at the outsized romance audience. But as readers did move across, we saw people like David Dalglish and BV Larson breaking out, and the rest of “genre” fiction soon followed.

The rise of “genre” self-publishing was also aided by the mistreatment of the midlist by large publishers: falling advances, worsening terms, and the shifting of the marketing burden onto the author’s shoulders. With bigger names jumping ship and striking out on their own, the increasing selection of quality self-published books at very low prices (and often exclusively available as e-books) acted as a strong pull factor for readers of genre fiction to switch to digital.

Non-fiction has been slower to go digital for a few reasons. First, technical limitations of e-book formats and the devices themselves have made the digitization of anything other than straight narrative text troublesome – even the minor technical challenge posed by something like footnotes has yet to be resolved in a satisfactory way.

On top of that, non-fiction authors tend to be treated a little better by publishers, especially in terms of advances – so there’s less of a push factor encouraging authors to self-publish. This means less big name authors dragging print readers to digital with low prices and digital exclusivity, and, thus, a smaller reader pool for non-fiction self-publishers.

The case of historical fiction and literary fiction is a little different. Weak digital sales from large publishers, and the relative lack of self-publishing success in these genres, has led some to worry about the future. But I think something else is going on here.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on David Gaughran’s site. dfaf

 

Kindle Singles and the Future of Ebooks

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This post, by Joe Wikert, originally appeared on his Digital Content Strategies blog on 10/21/13.

“Compelling ideas expressed at their natural length.” That’s Amazon’s tagline for their popular Kindle Singles program. And while Singles hasn’t exactly been a major industry disruptor I believe it lays the foundation for some of the bigger, bolder initiatives Amazon is planning for the future. I also believe it’s a model that will become much more common over time.

The formula looks like this:

1.End the practice of artificially puffing up content

The greatest aspect of Kindle Singles is, of course, their short length. The first one I read was a Single about media and I remember thinking how a typical business book editor would have asked the author to turn this 30-page gem into a bloated 300-page mess. It happens all the time and it’s a function of both physical shelf presence and perceived value. In the ebook world there’s suddenly no physical bookshelf an individual title has to have a spine presence on. Now we just need to stop equating “shorter” with “cheaper”…more on that in a moment.

2.Attention spans are shrinking

Face it. With very few exceptions you’re probably thrilled to read all this short-form content that didn’t exist 10 years ago. Blogs, no matter what they’re called, are very popular. Then came Twitter with its 140-character bursts of information. Let’s also not forget about all the other terrific short-form content services like Byliner that we’ve grown to love. Shortened content is also why The Week is such a popular magazine. Kindle Singles is just tapping into our desire to find the Cliff’s Notes on everything so that we can quickly read it and move on.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Digital Content Strategies.

 

Providing Rich Reading For Time Poor Readers

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This post, by Martyn Daniels, originally appeared on the Brave New World blog on 10/23/13.

How do we get people reading again or introduce them to reading?

We have to accept that reading is different in that it stimulates thinking and imagery that is often served up on a plate with other media. After all, you don’t have to imagine what someone looks like when they are stood as large as life in front of you on a screen.

We have seen many charity and government-backed initiatives and ones driven by the industry itself but the bottom line is that at best they are treading water and at worst losing the battle. We may all cheer from the battlements when books are donated and given away free to folk but if this is not succeeding we have to ask whether the focus and process is correct and what we have to do to really engage and make a difference.

The YouTube age is impacting not just the young but the older generations. We are becoming more and more visual and increasingly time poor. Giving someone a book is not addressing the problem and merely compounding it. We have to create the thirst and feed the habit not just give someone War and Peace and expect a convert. The studies don’t lie. The latest from the National Literacy Trust study of 34,910 young people, claimed nearly a third of children between eight and 16 say they read no text-based media at all in their daily leisure time and that the number of children who read outside school has fallen by 25% since 2005.

Many thought that children’s reading was migrating from print to digital, but in reality their consumption of information is moving away from reading or writing text. Their attitude to reading have also become more negative over time. This was reflected in 21.5% of young people agreeing with the statement, “I would be embarrassed if my friends saw me read,” up from 16.6% on the 2010 study.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on the Brave New World blog.

 

Authors Guild's Scott Turow: The Supreme Court, Google, Ebooks, Libraries & Amazon Are All Destroying Authors

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This post, by Mike Masnick, originally appeared on TechDirt on 4/8/13.

from the old-man-yells-at-cloud dept
We’ve written more than a few times about Scott Turow, a brilliant author, but an absolute disaster as the Luddite-driven head of the Authors’ Guild. During his tenure, he’s done a disservice to authors around the globe by basically attacking everything new and modern — despite any opportunities it might provide — and talked up the importance of going back to physical books and bookstores. He’s an often uninformed champion of a past that never really existed and which has no place in modern society. He once claimed that Shakespeare wouldn’t have been successful under today’s copyright law because of piracy, ignoring the fact that copyright law didn’t even exist in the age of Shakespeare. His anti-ebook rants are just kind of wacky.

However, in his latest NY Times op-ed, he’s basically thrown all of his cluelessness together in a rambling mishmash of “and another thing”, combined with his desire to get those nutty technology kids off his lawn. For the few thousand members of the Authors Guild, it’s time you found someone who was actually a visionary to lead, rather than a technology-hating reactionary pining for a mythical time in the past.

First up, a confused reaction to the Supreme Court’s protection of first sale rights in Kirtsaeng.

LAST month, the Supreme Court decided to allow the importation and resale of foreign editions of American works, which are often cheaper than domestic editions. Until now, courts have forbidden such activity as a violation of copyright. Not only does this ruling open the gates to a surge in cheap imports, but since they will be sold in a secondary market, authors won’t get royalties.

First of all, no, this was not a “change” in US law. Courts had not forbidden this particular situation in the past, because the specifics of this hadn’t really been tested in the past other than a few recent cases with somewhat different fact patterns. The point of the Supreme Court’s ruling was to reinforce what most people already believed the law to be: if you buy a book, you have the right to resell it.

As for the “surge” in cheap imports, let’s wait and see. It might impact markets like textbooks, which are artificially inflated, but for regular books? It seems like a huge stretch to think that it would be cost effective to ship in foreign books just for resale. And, of course, secondary markets have existed for ages, and studies have shown that they actually help authors because it makes it less risky to buy a new book, since people know they can resell it. Turow admits that secondary markets have always existed, but then jumps to what this is all “really” about in his mind:

This may sound like a minor problem; authors already contend with an enormous domestic market for secondhand books. But it is the latest example of how the global electronic marketplace is rapidly depleting authors’ income streams. It seems almost every player — publishers, search engines, libraries, pirates and even some scholars — is vying for position at authors’ expense.

Yes, that’s right. The Kirtsaeng decision isn’t just about first sale, it’s really about the evil “global electronic marketplace” sucking authors dry. Of course, Turow fails to mention that Kirtsaeng had next to nothing to do with the internet. Yes, Kirtsaeng ended up selling his books via eBay, but tons of books sell on eBay. That had no impact on the ruling at all. The issue in the ruling was about books legally purchased abroad, and Kirtsaeng did that without the internet — he just had friends and family back in Thailand buying books for him. To blame that on “the global electronic marketplace” is just completely random and wrong. It seems like the kind of thing someone says when they just want to blame technology for everything. Turow has his anti-technology hammer, but he’s got to stop seeing nails in absolutely everything.

 

Read the rest of the post on TechDirt.

Book Buying Trends

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[At] the end of the year [it’s] time for my wife, Barbara, to sum up our bookstore’s sales. There are some interesting results that I’d like to share with all of you.

First of all, the typical customers are in their forties and older. The younger people are, the less likely they are to buy books. Of course some younger people still do, but overall, the book buying populations tends to be older.

The preponderance of children’s book buyers are grandparents. The parents tend to buy electronics. One interesting factor is how many grandparents want to buy books they read when they were kids. Although a few are still in print, they don’t hold the interest of the younger population.

Another interesting fact: 55% of young adults books are bought by adults who prefer reading that genre. So many adults do not have enough time to read as much as they would like. They find young adult books are easy and quick reads with fast developing plots. They are easier to fit into their schedules.

My last article addressed the trends of ebooks, which are having a definite impact on shopping habits. Internet sales are also taking their toll. The current group of young readers, our potential future group of shoppers, are actually being given tablets or readers by their schools. There are some youngsters who have never read a printed book. This does not bode well for bookstores or major publishers.

One interesting trend has been major publishers who have insisted on charging as much for ebooks as they do for printed paperbacks. To me, that is simply greed, because it costs much less to publish an ebook than a printed version, especially since they are producing a printed version anyway. One device they have invented is the “Agency” model, where they dictate to bookstores a 30% rather than a standard 40% discount rate and no discounting the standard retail price. This has come under fire by the Federal Trade Commission in several court battles.

Yes, the book industry is in turmoil. The only easy prediction to make is that the ways to publish and market books will be changing drastically. It is my guess that the days of independent bookstores are numbered. Oh well, I’ve been trying to talk my wife into retiring for several years now.

 

This is a reprint from Bob Spear‘s Book Trends blog.

Latest Status of EBook Usage by Bob Spear

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[On 12/28/12] Publishers Weekly sent out the latest figures for ebook vs print book usage and readership in general between last year and this year based on a survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project:

Adult readers fell from 78% to 75%.

16 year old and up readers of ebooks rose from 16% to 23%.

Print book readers fell from 72% to 67%.

Owners of readers/tablets rose from 18% to 33%.

Library borrowers of ebooks rose from 3% to 5%.

Library users aware that ebooks are available to borrow rose from 24% to 31%.

We’re headed toward the inevitable future of ebooks. As the owner of an independent bookstore, this does not bode well for us. I am beginning to feel like I’m sitting in the middle of a buggy whip factory in 1900. All this points out the importance of self-publishing authors learning facility in turning their works into the ebook formats and environments. More than ever, authors must become self-promoting business people to get their products seen and accepted.

May 2013 become a successful year for you!

This is a reprint from Bob Spear’s Book Trends blog.

Publishers Behaving Badly, Part… I’ve Lost Count

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This post, by David Gaughran, originally appeared on his Let’s Get Digital site on 3/13/13.

There seems to be a view in certain self-congratulatory circles that publishers have finally got to grips with the digital revolution, that they have weathered the fiercest part of the storm, and that they are well-placed now not just to survive, but to thrive.

There are innumerable problems with that view, of course, but today I’d like to focus on one core truth of this brave new world that publishers have failed to grasp.

Namely, there are only two essential components to publishing in the digital era: the writer and the reader.

All of the old middlemen – agents, publishers, distributors, retailers – have to justify their cut, as the writer can now bypass them and go direct to readers. The only middlemen (IMO) currently making a compelling case for their cut are retailers. Self-publishers are more than happy to fork over 30% to Amazon to access their ever-expanding customer base.

Publishers seem determined to move in the opposite direction: making the proposition of publishing with them less attractive rather than more attractive, reducing advances, worsening contract terms, and treating writers as marks rather than partners – despite whatever guff accompanies the launch of their latest initiatives.

The recent actions of two of the largest trade publishers have drawn criticism from all across the writing community – not just self-publishers – and are thus not as easily dismissed as the rantings of a jaundiced indie zealot.

Let’s start with Random House; the rest can wait in line.

Digital-First Imprints Put Authors Last

By now, you have probably heard of the scandalous terms Random House offered authors via its new digital-first imprints – Hydra, Alibi, Flirt & Loveswept – before being forced to revise some of the terms in an embarrassing climb-down.

If you are already familiar with this part of the story, you can skip to Problems Still Remain below. For those who missed it, or want a quick refresher, here’s a recap.

The original terms offered by Random House were:

  1. No advance.
  2. Assignment of all rights and subsidiary rights for the lifetime of the copyright.
  3. No meaningful reversion clause, meaning you’ll never get any of these rights back – even the ones they don’t use – unless Random House deign to return them.
  4. A 50% net royalty rate. Which sounds okay until you realise that “net” doesn’t just mean what the publisher receives from the retailer, but that amount minus all the costs of publishing and promoting the book.

Watchdog group Author Beware broke the story, and a few days later John Scalzi eviscerated Random House in this excellent post. (The latter especially is worth reading.)

It should be obvious to all of you why you should never sign anything with terms like this. But just to hammer the point home, it combines the worst of both worlds: no print distribution (but you give up your print rights), no advance, you sign your rights away forever, and you have no reasonable means of getting them reverted at any point.

 

Read the rest of the post on Let’s Get Digital.

The Free Kindle Book Ride May Be Over

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This is a cross-posting from Publetariat founder and Editor In Chief April L. Hamilton’s Indie Author Blog.

Many authors have been taking advantage of the Amazon KDP Free Book promo option ever since KDP Select was rolled out, and many a bookish website and blog has sprung up specifically around promotion of free Kindle books.

All of that may be about to change, thanks to an Amazon Associates agreement revision that’s set to take effect March 1 of this year:


March 1, 2013 version
The following is added at the end of the sub-section:

“In addition, notwithstanding the advertising fee rates described on this page or anything to the contrary contained in this Operating Agreement, if we determine you are primarily promoting free Kindle eBooks (i.e., eBooks for which the customer purchase price is $0.00), YOU WILL NOT BE ELIGIBLE TO EARN ANY ADVERTISING FEES DURING ANY MONTH IN WHICH YOU MEET THE FOLLOWING CONDITIONS:
(a) 20,000 or more free Kindle eBooks are ordered and downloaded during Sessions attributed to your Special Links; and
(b) At least 80% of all Kindle eBooks ordered and downloaded during Sessions attributed to your Special Links are free Kindle eBooks.”

A Little Background On Amazon’s Associates Program

Amazon Associates program participants can provide a link to virtually any page or product on Amazon (including links to free Kindle books) with their Associate ID attached to it, and that ID piggybacks on most purchases the customer makes on the Amazon site during the same shopping session. So Associates have historically had an incentive to share ANY Amazon link, including links to free Kindle books.

If anything, links to free Kindle books have been very desirable for Associates program participants to use because shoppers’ resistance to clicking through on such links is low: the product in question is free, after all. But very often, once on the Amazon site, the customer will start browsing or will think of some other item they’ve been meaning to buy, and commissions for those purchases are paid to the Associate whose ID first brought the customer to Amazon.

Possible Chilling Effects of the Associates Policy Change

There are two factors to consider when trying to forecast possible outcomes of this change:

1. This new policy puts ALL of a given Associate account holder’s commissions at risk in any month where “sales” of free Kindle books from that Associate’s links are high.

2. With this new policy, authors and Associate link / promo providers who used to have the common goal of maximizing click-throughs on free Kindle books are set in opposition to one another. The author still wants to maximize downloads during the free promo period, but the more free downloads are generated, the greater the risk that the Associate link provider will lose all of his commissions for the month.

In my opinion, this will be a pretty effective discouragement for many Associates to promote free Kindle books. Even if the bar for commission loss is set pretty high (both of the above-quoted conditions must be met for a given month’s commissions to be forfeited), the mere possibility of commission loss may steer many Associates away from continuing to promote free Kindle books.

What’s Amazon Up To?

This policy revision speaks to some business changes on Amazon’s end.

Amazon is surely aware that the free Kindle promo option has been a major driver in getting authors to sign up for their KDP Select program, but recent changes to Amazon’s book sales rank algorithm have drastically reduced the formerly positive effects of large numbers of free downloads. While a given book’s sales rank isn’t exactly penalized for free downloads, free downloads are no longer driving the kinds of sales rank leaps and bounds that drew authors to take advantage of free book promo periods in the first place.

Now add the disincentive for Associates to promote free books, and it definitely starts looking like Amazon is moving to discourage publishers and authors from offering their Kindle books for free.

Has Amazon Finally Turned On Indies, As So Many Predicted Would Happen?

Since the great majority of authors and publishers who have been willing to offer their Kindle books for free are indies, some may conclude this is some kind of long-planned attack from Amazon on indies in general, but I doubt it.

Sales rank algorithm changes levelled the sales rank playing field again to a great extent, but maybe sales rank integrity wasn’t all that was troubling Amazon. Maybe Amazon never anticipated how popular and widespread free book promotions would become, and how large a percentage of their monthly Kindle book “sales” in any given month would eventually come to consist of free downloads. Every free Kindle download represents a loss to Amazon, since Amazon is absorbing overhead costs to host and sell the book but isn’t earning any profit on it.

Given that Amazon only earns money on downloads of Kindle books people are actually paying for, I think the most obvious and simple answer is the correct one:

Amazon is tired of losing money on free book downloads.

But once the genie was out of the bottle and indies everywhere had made free downloads an entrenched part of best practices for any new Kindle book launch or promotion, nobody outside of Amazon or mainstream publishing was motivated to stop the runaway freight train of free Kindle books.

Even indie authors and publishers who don’t want to offer free promo periods have felt pressured to do so, since others who did offer their books for free have sometimes seen such great results.

You May Have To Start Making Money On Every Kindle Book Download, Whether You Like It Or Not

I can only speculate about the long-term impacts of this most recent policy change, but after thinking it over I’ve concluded that in the end, it’s probably a good thing. The change gives indies a good, solid business reason to move away from offering their Kindle books for free; what’s that old expression, about how a rising tide lifts all boats?

When the majority of us are selling our books at a price instead of giving them away, the majority of us will be making money on every download.

When free Kindle books become the exception instead of the rule, book buyers will stop ‘waiting till it’s free’ or even having an expectation that a given book should be free. I was never one of those who backed the ‘devaluation of books and literature’ argument, I’ve always thought that within reason, ethics and the law, any promotional tack that gets an indie author more exposure and sales is worth trying. Even so, I think the prevalence of free Kindle books has shaped—some might say distorted, or even dominated—the ebook market in ways that few predicted, and it has ultimately hurt indies overall more than it has helped most of us.

The former, nearly guaranteed sales rank boost one could expect from a free promo period is all but gone, thanks to algorithm changes. Yet many have continued to cling to the free promo gambit like a drowning man to a piece of driftwood, because it has worked for so many authors in the past.

In the face of the very daunting book launch and promo task, a free book promo was at least something an indie could do pretty easily to get his or her book in front of as many eyeballs as possible, and an easy “in” to book blogs and sites. Like I said before, a free product is an easy “sell”. And if most customers who were taking advantage of those free promo downloads were actually just book hoarders, collecting but never actually reading hundreds of free titles, well, most of us preferred not to think about it.

Amazon may be trying to force authors, publishers and book bloggers alike to stop offering and promoting free Kindle books, but in so doing they’re forcing us in the direction of more profit for everyone. It’s hard for me to see that as anything but a positive development.

Selling Yourself to the Book Industry

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My bookstore’s writers group has asked me to tell them what is needed to present themselves to agents and publishers. What I came up with for an answer was a sample of short bios and elevator synopsis for a fiction and a nonfiction book and a press release. Bios are like good resumes. They are written from the perspective of the agent’s or publisher’s needs, not the author’s.

Here are two samples:

Bio for Senior Citizens’ Self Defense (Nonfiction sample)

Bob Spear, a 67-year-old retired martial artist, holds an 8th Degree Black Belt in the Korean art of Hapkido. An American pioneer in this battlefield defense system, Bob was the first American to obtain a 3rd Degree Black Belt and Instructor’s Certification in Korea. He has trained over 11,000 students throughout the world and eight people are known to have been saved from death or serious injury by his instructions, videos, and books. Now a physically handicapped elder, he understands the concerns of older people and how there are still things they can do to protect themselves.

Bob is well known with a Twitter following of 3,907, a FaceBook following of several hundred, and a Book Trends Blog with 14,080 hits.

Bio for Quad Delta (Fiction sample)

Bob Spear, a Leavenworth, KS resident since 1981, is a retired Military Intelligence professional of twenty-five years. He has written 17 books, five of which are a series of mysteries set in Leavenworth, Kansas. He is Internationally known as a self defense author. Owner of a bookstore located in downtown Leavenworth, he has a keen interest in the underground complex beneath the downtown which provides the setting for his first mystery, Quad Delta.

Bob is well known with a Twitter following of 3,907, a FaceBook following of several hundred, and a Book Trends Blog with 14,080 hits.

Note: Note how the bios are written differently to support the books’ themes. Also, each mentions your platform size in social media.

Imagine walking onto an elevator and finding an agent riding with you. What do you do if he asks, “What’s your book about?” You are getting off at the 10th floor, so that’s how long you have to tell him. These are short explanations that you should have memorized.

Elevator Synopsis for Senior Citizens’ Self Defense (Nonfiction sample)

With a rising crime rate set against an expanding senior citizens’ population, what is an elder to do when suddenly faced with a violent confrontation? This DVD/Training Manual explains the dangers of the streets and the simplest, most effective ways to counter these threats which can be done by anyone, even the handicapped.

Elevator Synopsis for Quad Delta (Fiction sample)

A PTSD -suffering retired Military Intelligence Lieutenant Colonel, Enos Hobson, is dragged into the private investigation world when an old military friend asks him to save his mother and their family fortune from a diabolical Satan worshiping cult that hides its unholy chapel underneath the streets of Leavenworth, KS.

Finally, here is a sample press release. Remember to put the most important things up front.

Sample Press Release for Senior Citizens’ Self Defense

“Old Folks Can Be Deadly”

Local author and self defense trainer Bob Spear says the elderly can defend themselves. With a rising crime rate set against an expanding senior citizens’ population, what is an elder to do when suddenly faced with a violent confrontation? Spear’s DVD/Training Manual program, Senior Citizens’ Self Defense, explains the dangers of the streets and the simplest, most effective ways to counter these threats which can be done by anyone, even the handicapped.

Spear uses true stories to illustrate his program. One describes a confrontation an 83-year-old woman experienced in her rental-assistance apartment in Leavenworth with a night time intruder. He tells about how she used a screwdriver and her common sense to survive the ordeal. Spear says such illustrations are meant to entertain and give confidence to his readers and viewers that they are not helpless.

Bob Spear, a 67-year-old retired martial artist, holds an 8th Degree Black Belt in the Korean art of Hapkido. An American pioneer in this battlefield defense system, Bob was the first American to obtain a 3rd Degree Black Belt and Instructor’s Certification in Korea. He has trained over 11,000 students throughout the world and eight people are known to have been saved from death or serious injury by his instructions, videos, and books. Now a physically handicapped elder, he understands the concerns of older people and how there are still things they can do to protect themselves.

This timely training package is available at The Book Barn at 410 Delaware, Leavenworth, KS 66048.

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I hope you find these tools helpful. 

 

 

This is a cross-posting from Bob Spear‘s Book Trends Blog.