In the News
- The ebook subscription service Scribd has been profitable for three months and continues to compete with Amazon. Scribd’s latest initiative is to offer magazines as part of the $8.99/month subscription fee—just after Amazon made magazines available for free to its Prime members. Read more at Nieman Lab.
- Adams Media has been acquired by a Big Five house. Adams Media, a trade publisher based in the Boston area, has been sold by its corporate parent, F+W Media, to Simon & Schuster. Adams has a backlist of more than 1,200 titles, mostly nonfiction, and also runs the fiction imprints Merit Press, Crimson Romance, and Tyrus Books. Read more in Publishers Weekly.
- Independent bookstores have a new way to sell audiobooks. Libro.fm provides a customizable online storefront for indies and offers a commission on each sale. A few dozen stores have already partnered with Libro.fm. Read more in Shelf Awareness.
- Booksellers face limits on freedom of expression in Hong Kong: PEN America reports extensively on five booksellers who disappeared during late 2015. Read more.
The Latest from Amazon
- Amazon advertising opens to all authors. If you sell ebooks via KDP, it’s now possible to buy advertising on Amazon’s site. Previously, that option was only available to those enrolled in KDP Select. Find out more at the Digital Reader.
- Kindle Unlimited launches in Australia. If you have self-published books enrolled in KDP Select, Australia now joins the list of countries where KU subscribers can read your books as part of the monthly fee. Other countries include the US, UK, Italy, Spain, Brazil, France, Mexico, Canada, Germany, India, and Japan. Here’s the official announcement.
- Amazon has changed third-party seller rules, making “penny” books no longer viable. Have you ever wondered how your book can be sold so cheaply on Amazon by resellers? Such sales will not be attractive any longer due to increased Amazon fees. This Reddit thread explains. Amazon has been making other changes to reduce illegal (or barely legal) third-party-seller activities.
- Amazon charges non-Prime members full price at its retail bookstores. If you didn’t already know, Amazon’s brick-and-mortar stores don’t list book prices, and one of the reasons is because pricing is variable. Read more at GeekWire.
- Amazon has launched a new app for children’s reading. Amazon Rapids offers illustrated short stories written in a unique chat style, one message at a time. Read more at Wired.
The Toolbox
- The holidays are coming. Do you have a book marketing campaign in place? The folks at Written Word Media offer an in-depth post with five holiday marketing trends. Read at their blog.
- What writers need to know about Patreon: If you want readers to donate to you monthly, learn how to increase your chances of success. GalleyCat offers a Q&A with a Patreon marketing manager.
- Confused by Snapchat? Here’s some specific advice from a writer and blogger on how authors can use it effectively. Read seven tips at BookMachine.
- How self-published authors can get their ebooks and print books into libraries: An indie author discusses your options. Read at MediaShift.
- Struggling to make your website or blog show up in organic search results? An experienced SEO expert discusses how to gain knowledge and insight into your ranking and how to fix any problems. Read at Moz.
- The Association of American University Presses has made a monograph costing tool freely available. A good tool for any small press. Download via AAUP.
Publishing Trends
- Graphic novel backlist sales are dismal. A bookseller opens up about the numbers: this year, 87 percent of graphic novels (amounting to 22,000 titles) have sold 999 or fewer copies nationwide through all sources that report to BookScan. Read more at the Beat.
- How a bestselling book was made in India: An author pursued Facebook-based advertising and got his employer to send around a mailer to all employees. Read more in Quartz.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.