Tag: ebook publishing

Indie News Beat: Which Perspective Would You Like with 2014?

As another New Year kicks off, it’s worth taking a look around at what’s being said about this crazy industry we call publishing. For many of us, it’s the data that matters: the most popular sites for readers, the titles they’re buying, which genres are ‘hot’ (and is there a snowball’s chance in hell we could bang out 50k words before that genre goes cold?). However much we may dislike marketing our books, we need to decide where they should be, what the ideal price point is, and many more variables which could see a few more copies downloaded.

So what might this year hold? If you can make it through the hyperbole, a good place to start is Ten Bold Predictions for 2014. Yes, last year was the best ever, except that now the price of eBooks is “plummeting”. Good news for readers, but if the mainstreams are finally bringing eBook prices down to what Independent Authors have been selling them at for a while, where does that leave the latter? Another telltale factoid is that “ebook revenue has tapered off”, which also supports the suggestion that mainstreams now understand they’ve milked the eBook market as much as they can. The problem for Independent Authors is that it removes a fundamental selling point: that our ebooks were cheaper.

An interesting perspective, and much useful information, is to be had in this article by Paul Jarvis. He describes his own experiences with using Indie sites to sell his books, and talks about publishing a book on Amazon as though it were a bit of a chore: “It took 12 hours [for his book to be on sale] which isn’t bad… Basically, there’s a lot of waiting for Amazon…” I found Jarvis’s use of Indie sites to sell his books to be a refreshing change, given that in my experience, Amazon is the number one place where a book has to be available. Continue reading “Indie News Beat: Which Perspective Would You Like with 2014?”

Getting the Most out of Smashwords

Smashwords LogoSmashwords is sort of an enigma. Loved by many, hated by many, and yet still many more who just don’t know what the heck to do with it. And what in god’s name is a meatgrinder, right? Well, despite all the hiccups people have, I’ve been finding Smashwords to be quite awesome lately. Let me tell you why. Continue reading “Getting the Most out of Smashwords”

Agents – who’d have ’em?

John Barlow
Author John Barlow

There’s been some interesting discussion about literary agents recently, not least following the letter from the AAR to the DoP, which got a good old fashioned mauling from Joe Konrath.

For a decade I had a New York literary agent. I recently switched to a London-based agency, although having decided to give indie publishing a try I have yet to produce anything that she might actually sell, and clearly this puts us both in an awkward position.

The question for indie writers, given the current state of the literary market, is how exactly an agent might fit into your plans. Do you need an agent at all? Let’s be clear: Joe Konrath has not sacked his agent, and Barry Eisler is married to his. The role of agents might be changing, but I don’t think they’re going away any time soon. Continue reading “Agents – who’d have ’em?”