#good e-reader

By Michael Kozlowski, published in Good E-Reader.

During October, Amazon will be celebrating great writing self-published via Kindle Direct Publishing and CreateSpace and audiobooks created via Audible’s Audiobook Creation Exchange. The celebration will include a dedicated Amazon landing page (www.amazon.com/poweredbyindie) and special features on the KDP social media pages.

Amazon is interested in hearing from you: what is your author story? Post about your life as an indie author on social media using the hashtag #poweredbyindie. Amazon will showcase a number of stories on their landing page. Amazon is going to be posting updates all month long on their various social media channels; such as Kindle Direct Publishing on Facebook & Twitter: @Amazon KDP.

If you want to save some money and discover new authors, Amazon is showcasing a number of indie titles on their main landing page. There will be a revolving list of new and notable e-books all month long.

Another good article by Mercy Pilkington writing for Good E-Reader.

Not too long ago, self-published authors were collectively admonished about the need to invest in their work. Hiring quality editors, proofreaders, cover designers, and formatters before attempting to sell a book was the constant mantra of industry experts. While some hapless writers continued to slap their Word docs up on Amazon and hope to snare a few readers, authors who took their careers seriously made the proper investments.

Around that time, a number of startups emerged, all billing themselves as eBay-like marketplaces for author services. Many of those startups have shuttered their virtual doors, while a few that produced meaningful connections between authors and publishing service providers have managed to thrive. But that hasn’t stopped newcomers to the game from trying to continually undercut the concept of paying for quality work.

“When I first began finding clients through online freelance postings, the self-publishing industry was a different place,” stated one editor who did not wished to be named. “Authors who had done their homework not only knew how much editing might cost, but they also knew enough to have sent their work to their writing group for critiques or even beta readers before declaring it ‘ready’ for editing. Now, I find new job postings almost daily requesting full edits of an 80,000-word book for $100.”

That’s one of the double-edged swords of self-publishing, of course. An indie author without a solid backlist and sales to go with it may not be able to invest thousands of dollars for a full suite of services, but that doesn’t change the income needs of those who are expected to do the work.

“I love spending time with other local authors, but conversations about finding editors and cover designers have become heartbreaking,” said Andrea Patten, award-winning author of The Inner Critic Advantage: Making Peace With the Noise in Your Head. “Poor quality isn’t good for any of us. If we don’t support talented, experienced editors and designers, all that will be left are those who are willing to be the lowest bidder.”

There are a handful of sites that serve as more than just an online “Help Wanted” board, of course. Those sites have managed to remain in business largely because they devote a lot of time and effort towards education about the publishing industry, while also ensuring that both the authors’ and the service providers’ needs are considered.

At the same time, there’s a roundabout way of looking at this problem: authors themselves are expected to work for free, so why not the publishing services providers?

“Charging $100 for editing services isn’t much different than selling a book for .99 cents. Authors are told to do that all the time,” explained M.L. Doyle, who writes about women in the military. “Free book promotions, giveaways, permanently free books as if a price less than a dollar is too much to expect for something you’ve slaved over for months. Unfortunately, supply and demand controls prices in the world of book publishing. There are millions of us out here trying to scrape a living together, and until you have a customer base that demands your work specifically, your prices have to be competitive.”

Ebook pricing, indie book pricing, and author services have all been the target of speculation for years, and it seems as though no permanent solution is coming soon. What is reasonably certain, though, is that startups who promise quick work for pennies on the dollar are sure to produce exactly those expected results.

Another good article from Good E-Reader. I had not known much about StreetLib before reading this piece by Michael Kozlowski.

StreetLib is an online self-publishing solution that is geared towards independent authors. When you register for an account you can upload your e-book use a free ISBN that they give you. There are a ton of distribution options, but Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Google Play and Tolino generate the most sales.

There are over 200,000 titles from 15,000 authors and 1,500 publishers. The average indie is earning $35,000 per year. The markets that Streetlib finds that are most successful are mainly outside the United States, such as  Italy, France, Germany, Spain, UK, Mexico, Canada and India.

There are dozens of companies that offer self-publishing solutions to authors, but what makes StreetLib different? CEO Giacomo D’Angelo explained;  “With StreetLib they can use different services, from production tools to distribution and sales, all of them being integrated in the same platform, some of them completely free (like StreetLib Write, a sophisticated editor online). And with StreetLib they’ll find yet more services. What we are building a swiss knife for book professionals. Also, author and publishers can use StreetLib to widen their market, because we provide +50 retailers in many different markets. Books can travel the world in no time, reaching everyone regardless of their religion, race or location. By the end of the decade, six billion people will be reading eBooks on their smartphone, and StreetLib is building the best technology to make it happen.”

I asked Giacomo to tell me something that nobody knows about his company and he stated “I want authors and booklovers to know about our ecommerce platform that enables them to sell books online. It’s called StreetLib Sell, and allows them to create their very own professional bookstore with ease. Everybody can sell their own books or any from our catalog of over 200,000 titles. If they don’t want an entire store, they can also create a book or author’s page, or simply add a widget to their website or blog.

A very interesting interview from Good E-Reader by editor Michael Koslowski. 

Kobo Writing Life is the self-publishing arm of Kobo and it launched in 2012. The e-books that authors submit are stacked side by side with titles from major publishers. 

Mark Lefebvre the Director of Self-Publishing & Author Relations sat down with Good e-Reader to give a status update and to let authors know some of the exciting things that are happening.

Many new authors are not familiar with the Kobo ecosystem and what Writing Life can do for them. Mark gave the lowdown on what the platform can do for indies.  “In a nutshell, KWL offers you a place to publish your eBook for free to Kobo’s catalog. You get to keep 70% for any title priced $2.99 or higher. There’s no CAP on that 70%, which means authors who want to do great value box sets of multiple copies of their books, can offer their readers a good deal without having to give up on margin. (Kindle drops the royalties to 35% if you price above $9.99).”

“Also, via Kobo Writing Life, you’re not dealing with a faceless corporation. Yes, we have automated tasks and efficiencies so that authors can easily DIY their way all through the publishing process. But if authors need to contact a real human, they can. We’ve re-launched with a new ticketing system that has allowed us to be more efficient than ever before and offer more personalized responses to authors concerns. We also have a new community and forum where authors can easily find answers to popular questions.”

This article appears in Good E-Reader, written by Michael Kozlowski, the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about electronic readers and technology for the last four years.

Findaway Voices is a new self-publishing platform for audiobooks that is launching on July 18th 2017.  The main premise of this new service is to connect authors with narrators and once the title is completed they are distributed into 170 different countries and various subscription services, libraries and audiobook retailers.

There are not many options to create an audiobook these days. The Audiobook Creation Exchange by Audible is the most popular, but they are only available to authors living in Canada, US and United Kingdom. Authors Republic is another viable business, but they do not have much of a footprint and the platform is rarely promoted.

Findaway has developed their platform to work directly with authors. An author with an existing e-book can register with Findaway and tell them a little about their title. Findaway will need to know what the genre is and what type of narrator the author is looking for. This can be anything from “a female witch with a British accent” or “a male who speaks french and does impressions.” Findaway will then take your book and have five different narrators send them samples and a financial quote. The samples range in production values from a home setup to a proper studio. Once a narrator is selected the author will make a small deposit via credit card or Paypal and then the remaining balance once the product is completed.

Unlike other companies operating in the self-publishing space for audiobooks, Findaway is working directly with the authors. There is no marketplace where you browse narrators and send them a message. Findaway is basically a concierge service for audiobook production, they take care of everything.

The most compelling reason to publish your audiobook with Findaway is their network of partners. They are the largest audiobook distributor in the world. They deal with Apple iTunes, Audible, Audiobooks.com, Baker & Taylor, Nook Audiobooks, Overdrive, Scribd, Tunein and dozens of others. Once an audiobook is opted into all of these platforms a dashboard will inform the author whenever a sale is made. Some of the sales are produced in real time, while others have their own reporting schedule.  Royalties are dependant on the company who is selling the book, there really isn’t an industry standard.

Obviously Findaway Voices was developed to focus on self-published and indie authors, but they have also will appeal towards boutique and smaller publishing houses who want to create audiobooks of their frontlist and backlist titles. In cases like this, Findaway gives them a dedicated account manager who will make the process easy and affordable and take care of the rest. I seriously doubt anyone looking to digitize 140 titles at once will have time to vet all of the narrators and find the best ones, Findaway will do this for them.

I think Findaway Voices will be really good for narrators. There is a manual approval process and since they just unveiled this new system, they will be looking for capable people. If you have acting, radio or podcasting experience and have content you can send them so they can checkout your voice, this will likely get you approved. They will also help advise students who are taking voice or acting lessons on how they can improve and get involved in narrating audiobooks, along with recommendations of equipment they will need to do DIY. This includes a mixing board, sound card, condenser microphone and accessories.

You can self-publish directly with Findaway Voices or you can do it via Draft2digital, who has partnered with Findaway. There are many indie authors that already do business with Draft2digital, so it makes sense to keep them on the platform and do audio content.

By Mercy Pilkington writing in Good e-Reader

It’s been twenty-two years since Jeff Bezos hung out the shingle on Amazon, and twelve years since his company unleashed the Kindle on the world. It was only three years later that the retail and publishing giant launched a platform that truly changed publishing, for better or for worse.

From 2007 to 2017, a mind-blowing pace for evolution, much has changed about book buying, publishing, and even the methods of writing. We can thank Bezos and friends for a lot of the original innovation, but many other companies had a major hand in shaping the current state of books, names like Sourcebooks, Wattpad, and Bibliocrunch just to name a few. Some of the industry’s big names employed similar maneuvers in an effort–too often in vain–to keep up and compete, while others looked around at what was still lacking in the industry and produced their own innovative models.

But ten years after the first truly large-scale, viable self-publishing model took off, how far have we really come? A lot of big names in the world of indie publishing and bookselling closed their doors this year. Self-published books are still kept at arm’s length by a lot of book-related entities. Libraries and bookstores are still the Holy Grail for authors without a major backer. A recent HuffPo piece entitled, “Self-Publishing: An Insult To The Written Word,” was published only five days ago by a “real” author, one who has now apologized for her ignorance amid death threats and ratings trashing of her books.

Big news for comix fans. From Good E-Reader by Michael Kozlowski.

Marvel has created a new system for people who want to create their own comics in conjunction with TapTap. This self-publishing solution is called Marvel: Create Your Own and it allows creators to mess around with established characters, select a background and write in text via speech bubbles. All content is submitted to the new Marvel community and will be available online for anyone to read.

There are a few caveats for using this service; such as content that could frighten or upset young children or the parents of young children or is political in nature. Users will have their accounts flagged if they have any foul language or anything to do with sex.

I think it is very interesting that Marvel is creating their own fanfiction community. This sort of thing is really big business and will creators a chance to have Gwenpool battle it out against Carnage or the Punisher having an intelligent debate on the Kree Empire with Captain Marvel.

Marvel: Create Your Own isn’t yet available to the public, but you can sign up for alerts about its release date now and look forward to making your own Marvel comics some time next year.

Everything’s coming up 13” e-readers

Checking back in on Michael Kozlowski’s IndieGoGo campaign for a 13.3” Android e-ink reader, which we’ve made note of a few times here, we see that it’s currently raised nearly $106,000—about 2 1/2 times its initial goal of $42,000. 131 people so far have chipped in for the $699 e-reader or the $729 package including the e-reader and accessories, and it still has 12 days left to run.

This is…