- Amazon is cracking down harder than ever on paid reviews. Earlier this year, Amazon filed suit against websites that allow for the purchase of fake customer reviews, and those sites have since closed. Last week, Amazon made yet another move indicating they remain focused on eradicating this practice by filing suit against individuals who offer fake reviews through the online freelance marketplace Fiverr. As this TechCrunch article points out, Fiverr is not named in the lawsuit directly; in fact, they’ve collaborated with Amazon to remove users who violate their terms of service. So the environment is becoming very chilly indeed for anyone attempting to continue the practice as either buyer or seller.
- Smashwords, the leading ebook distributor for self-published authors, just announced a new distribution deal with Gardners. Gardners is the UK’s largest book wholesaler and serves 2,000 public libraries in the UK and 400 academic libraries in the UK, Europe, and the Middle East. Gardners also powers the online bookstore operations of 400 booksellers globally. Read more by Mark Coker at the Smashwords blog.
- Fewer people are reading print books—and fewer people are reading overall. The latest survey from Pew Research shows that the overall number of US book readers has dipped 7 percent since 2011. Print book readers specifically have fallen from 69 percent to 63 percent in the last year, while ebook readers have remained static. Read a summary of the full study at Pew’s website.
- Author Earnings recently published its first analysis of the non-Amazon ebook market. Its most interesting findings relate to the Apple iBookstore, which it considers the number-two ebook retailer in the US, with 10 to 12 percent of the ebook market. The analysis shows that about two-thirds of self-published ebooks reach Apple’s iBookstore through Smashwords, but ebooks that sell the best at Apple are those published directly to Apple by indie authors themselves. Read the full analysis at Author Earnings, but always remember that their figures are based on extrapolations, not hard data.
- We’re sorry to hear that the Life Sentence, an online publication devoted to crime fiction and noir, will fold on Oct. 23, after nearly a year of publication. Hurry over to their site to say goodbye and catch up on their latest articles.
- In honor of Star Trek’s fiftieth anniversary in 2016, Simon & Schuster is reviving its Star Trek: Strange New Worlds contest and anthology. However, the new iteration of the contest has met with some controversy due to its affiliation with Archway, which is Simon & Schuster’s self-publishing imprint run by Author Solutions. Find out more at the Digital Reader.
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.