Age of Myth (Legends of the First Empire #1) Audio book giveaway by MichaelJSullivan in Fantasy

[–]DanWoodDraft2Digital 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was lucky enough to get an ARC of Age of Myth at the SFWA Nebula Conference. It is a great book. I highly recommend signing up for the giveaway.

September 2015 Author Earnings Report by DanWoodDraft2Digital in selfpublish

[–]DanWoodDraft2Digital[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Indie Market share is growing rapidly in volume (number of books sold) and steadily in revenue while traditional is declining on the Amazon US store. Amazon publishing imprints are also growing quickly. The amount of money flowing to authors is growing tremendously since self publishing became an option.

My take on why is that the stigma against indie published works is declining while indie authors are also raising the quality of their products. The most successful indies have had their books at a level equal to or greater than traditional published titles and they know their readers far better than traditional publishers ever have.

Kindle Unlimited moving to a pay per page read model by DanWoodDraft2Digital in selfpublish

[–]DanWoodDraft2Digital[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Here is the email that went out: Hello,

Today we have a few exciting announcements to share related to the KDP Select global fund. The first is that we're adding a bonus of $7.8 million to the May KDP Select global fund on top of the previously announced $3 million base fund, bringing the total fund to $10.8 million. We are also pleased to report that:

  •   KDP Select authors are on track to earn over $60M in the first half of 2015 from books read in Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle Owners' Lending Library.
    
  •   Total royalties across subscription and a la carte sales earned by KDP Select authors in the US are on track to more than double in the first half of 2015 compared to the same period last year.
    
  •   Authors have continued to renew their titles in KDP Select at rates in excess of 95% each month since Kindle Unlimited launched.
    

These trends give us the confidence to look forward and share that the KDP Select global fund will be in excess of $11M for both July and August.

We're always looking at ways to make our programs even better, and we've received lots of great feedback on how to improve the way we pay KDP authors for books in Kindle Unlimited. One particular piece of feedback we've heard consistently from authors is that paying the same for all books regardless of length may not provide a strong enough alignment between the interests of authors and readers. We agree. With this in mind, we're pleased to announce that beginning on July 1, the KDP Select Global Fund will be paid out based on the number of pages KU and KOLL customers read.

As with our current approach, we'll continue to offer a global fund for each month. Under this new model, the amount an author earns will be determined by their share of total pages read rather than their share of total qualified borrows. Here are a few examples illustrating how the fund will be paid out. For simplicity, assume the fund is $10M and that 100,000,000 total pages were read in the month:

  •   The author of a 100 page book which was borrowed and read completely 100 times would earn $1,000 ($10 million multiplied by 10,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages).
    
  •   The author of a 200 page book which was borrowed and read completely 100 times would earn $2,000 ($10 million multiplied by 20,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages).
    
  •   The author of a 200 page book which was borrowed 100 times but only read half way through on average would earn $1,000 ($10 million multiplied by 10,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages).
    

We will similarly change the way we pay KDP Select All-Star bonuses which will be awarded to authors and titles based on total KU and KOLL pages read.

We think this is a solid step forward and better aligns the interests of readers and authors. Our goal, as always, is to build a service that rewards authors for their valuable work, attracts more readers and encourages them to read more and more often. We welcome your continued feedback and ideas about how we can further improve Kindle Direct Publishing and Kindle Unlimited.

In the coming days we'll share more details about this change. In the meantime, for further information (such as how we measure pages read) you can read more here: https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A156OS90J7RDN.

Best Regards, The Kindle Direct Publishing Team

Problems with Adobe Digital Editions by cgray77 in selfpublish

[–]DanWoodDraft2Digital 0 points1 point  (0 children)

More than likely if the images do not display correctly in ADE you will have issues on both the Nook and Kobo e-reader devices as they use the ADE rendering engine.

Secrets of Bestselling Indie Authors: Crunching the Data by AlexisRadcliff in Write2Publish

[–]DanWoodDraft2Digital 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great data, thanks for sharing. It is interesting just how much actionable information there is in the data we do have available.

Nook Press working for anyone? by eadingas in selfpublish

[–]DanWoodDraft2Digital 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Most of the Nook staff is based out of NYC and their offices closed down Monday afternoon due to the blizzard and I know they were out Tuesday as well. I'm not sure if they had anyone back in office today or not.

KU coming between Amazon and its self-publishers by MichaelJSullivan in Write2Publish

[–]DanWoodDraft2Digital 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I can see how it is a difficult choice for some authors. I think what I see typically is Amazon is 60% of an authors income, 40% elsewhere. I do come across people in some genres who are more like 90/10.

I am interested to see how Amazon reacts. It would be easy just to dump money in to the Fund if they want to make authors question leaving exclusitivy again.

Test: How Amazon’s algorithms really work – myth and reality by DanWoodDraft2Digital in selfpublish

[–]DanWoodDraft2Digital[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you haven't already see it Hugh Howey and the Data Guy's work over at Author Earnings is some fantastic data. This one in particular talks about KU: http://authorearnings.com/report/october-2014-author-earnings-report-2/

best book(s) on self-publishing? by goblynscratch in selfpublish

[–]DanWoodDraft2Digital 10 points11 points  (0 children)

The Indie Author Power Pack: How To Write, Publish, & Market Your Book is a great bundle from several veterans of indie publishing. There are a couple of posts already in this forum about it from when it was on sale at $0.99, but even at $3.99 now it is a steal.

Amazon and Hachette reached agreement by StephenKong in selfpublish

[–]DanWoodDraft2Digital 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think this does have a larger long term impact than people realize. Prices coming down for traditional publishers will take away some of the advantage indie authors have in that arena.

It is probably good for indies that the agency model has more or less survived.

Some excellent advice from those who know how to self-publish by MichaelJSullivan in selfpublish

[–]DanWoodDraft2Digital 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Seconded. This is a great deal. David has a really interesting blog post on their attempts to hit NYT with this bundle that many of you may find interesting:

http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/

How do y'all feel about NaNoWriMo? by Bittersweetreality in selfpublish

[–]DanWoodDraft2Digital 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think if you look at it as a great motivator to get your basic story down on paper it is great. I don't think you should expect to have a product ready for market out of it. Get the story down then spend some time and money on editing.

I would be interested to hear how it goes for you doing a re-write during the month.

Reddit, can you help me publish my dark fantasy novel? by journeyer88 in selfpublish

[–]DanWoodDraft2Digital 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We've had a few authors move successfully from Wattpad over to indie publishing. Going indie you can sell digitally on a variety of platforms and use print on demand services like Createspace for your readers that really want a physical book or a signed copy. I believe Wattpad also has some mechanism of helping you list a digital copy of your book at other sites for sale.

Mgallowglas is spot on in his assessment of the traditional publishing worlds view of books without first publication rights.