ePublishing Week in Brief – May 27th to 31st, 2013
ePublishing Week in Brief – May 27th to 31st, 2013
Kobo: Self-Publishing Responsible for Low Average Ebook Price
The global average ebook price has dropped 8% year-over-year in the first quarter, according to Kobo ebook sales data presented by chief content officer Michael Tamblyn at the IDPF conference in New York.
Worldwide, ebook prices have been fluctuating between $7.00 and $9.00 dollars, with an average selling price lingering at $7.50, according to Kobo’s data. Digital Book World’s best-selling ebook data bears this out. This week, the average price of an ebook best-seller is $6.94, according to the DBW list.
Self-publishing is having a substantive effect on the average price of an ebook, not only because those titles tend to be low priced but also because of the large and growing volume of self-published ebooks on the market, said Tamblyn.
Since the launch of Kobo’s self-publishing service Writing Life, those authors comprise 10% of the company’s unit sales. Adding in self-published authors using other services that Kobo distributes, Tamblyn said that number jumps to 20% of unit sales.
IngramSpark Service Offers New, Simple Path to Publishing
Publish On DemandSM platform to launch in July.
“We wanted to make it easy for publishers to create an account and start uploading their content in just a few minutes.” Mark Ouimet, Vice President & General Manager, Ingram Publisher Services
New York, NY and Nashville, TN (PRWEB) May 30, 2013
Ingram Content Group Inc. today announced plans to launch its IngramSparkSM offering, a new Publish On DemandSM platform. The easy-to-use, online publishing tool provides independent publishers with simple, cost-effective access to Ingram’s global distribution network for print titles and e-book content.
“Through the IngramSpark platform, independent publishers will now have access to Ingram’s reach, enabling them to affordably print copies, distribute books to global retailers, make titles available to all major e-readers and connect with more customers worldwide,” said Mark Ouimet, Vice President & General Manager, Ingram Publisher Services. “We wanted to make it easy for publishers to create an account and start uploading their content in just a few minutes.”
The new platform builds on the comprehensive services that Ingram already offers to independent publishers. The platform, which is set to launch in July 2013, gives publishers the tools to manage their print books and e-books in one location. A cost-effective way to publish, it’s free to open an account. Print titles can be managed through an on-demand, low-risk inventory model, and e-book distribution will be available in August.
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/5/prweb10781971.htm
Simon & Schuster to Begin Publishing in Canada
S&S has been the only multinational publisher in Canada prohibited from publishing Canadian books by foreign ownership regulations created to protect indigenous cultural industries. Random House of Canada, Penguin Group Canada and HarperCollins Canada were all allowed to have Canadian publishing programs because they were in the country before the investment regulations were introduced. S&S expanded into Canada in 2002 when it acquired the Canadian distributor Distican, but it agreed to limit its operations in Canada to sales, marketing and distribution of its own products and distributed lines.
Self-Publishing Intelligence Report for May 2013
We spend a lot of time covering independent authors on GalleyCat, bringing news from the self-publishing world every week.
In an effort to consolidate our reporting, we will release a monthly Self-Publishing Intelligence Report that links to all of our resources for indie authors. Below, we’ve linked to our bestseller lists and the top news stories about this booming corner of the publishing industry.
Q&A: Tim J Cooke, author of ‘Defending Elton’, on self publishing and the changing relationship between authors and publishers
Devon-based Tim was formerly a legal executive and adviser to the BBC’s Eastenders. Since then he has dovetailed his career between advertising copywriting, freelance journalism, screenwriting and novels. He always wanted to publish a book, however learnt firsthand how competitive the industry is having been dropped by his publisher at the final stage. He therefore turned to Kindle Direct Publishing to self publish and has seen great success with his two novels ‘Defending Elton‘ and ‘Kiss and Tell‘.
What originally drew you towards the self-publishing route?
It was the frustration of waiting, seemingly forever, for replies from publishers via my agent. After a while I decided to publish both books direct via Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing [for ebooks] and Createspace [for paperbacks].
Had you any experience with major print publishers before finding success through Kindle?
Not directly. My experiences had all been with literary agents, who were approaching publishers on my behalf. I was fortunate to be taken on by two of London’s top agents, who both thought they could secure me a deal. Unfortunately though, it didn’t look like it was going to happen. What made it particularly tricky was that the credit crunch and financial crash had not long hit and in my agent’s words ‘it left publishers jittery’. Advances were being savagely cut or even totally withdrawn and this hit new authors more than most.
What do you consider the main benefit of Kindle Direct Publishing?
It gives you an opportunity to get your work ‘out there’ and to find an audience. I had two literary agents telling me my writing was worthy of publication and that I had excellent market potential. The trouble was the publishers weren’t prepared to take a risk. Like many other authors I’m sure Kindle Direct Publishing was the next logical step.
http://www.techdigest.tv/2013/05/qa_tim_j_cooke.html
Self-publishing has become a cult
I happily self-published my novella. But I want a traditional deal for my novel, and old friends call me a heathen
Ten years ago self-publishing was viewed as a fad rooted in vanity; only those who couldn’t hack it under the traditional system went the do-it-yourself route. With the advent of digital publishing, the paradigm has changed, self-publishing is a legitimate choice, master of your own destiny, blah blah blah, you’ve heard this story before.
What’s funny is, the adherents would have you believe that once you self-publish, the scales will fall from your eyes and you’ll recognize self-publishing as the One True Path. Traditional publishing will reveal itself to be a lost circle of Dante Alighieri’s Hell, full of damaged souls who want to enrich themselves off your work while destroying every shred of your creativity.
I call shenanigans: Last year I self-published a novella, and all it did was encourage me to get an agent and seek a traditional deal for my full-length novel. If indeed there are scales on my eyes, they are still firmly in place.
This is doubly true in the world of electronic publishing, where the stars’ stories are inherently interesting and sexy, meaning they’re even more disproportionately represented in our discussions of the economics of the arts.
http://boingboing.net/2013/05/29/survivorship-bias-and-electron.html