David Gaughran's Blog, page 16
June 28, 2014
Media Bias and Amazon
There is so much crap being spouted in this anti-Amazon media push that you need a nose-peg and waders to get through it all.
Let’s take a look at what happened this week.
Hook, Line & Sinker
Statements from either side in the Amazon-Hachette dispute have been thin on the ground. Both companies are said to have signed NDAs – restricting formal comments while negotiations are ongoing – but Hachette has been leaking to reporters, and marshaling authors and industry figures in its defense, leading...
June 24, 2014
Fake Bestsellers, Concern Trolls and Hidden Agendas
Last Friday we were treated to a story from the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times, where Tony Horwitz claimed “I Was A Digital Bestseller” then complained about how little money this made him, and how he would now stick with traditional, print publishers as a result.
Then this Op-Ed was held up – in outlets like Gawker – as another example of how writers have it so tough in this scary new digital world which is going to lead us all into penury.
Just like the story I wrote in January – Fake Cont...
June 23, 2014
Writer’s Digest Dumps Author Solutions
I have some huge news: Writer’s Digest has terminated its partnership with Author Solutions.
Abbott Press – the imprint launched by Writer’s Digest, parent company F+W Media, and white-label vanity press provider Author Solutions – is still operational, but all ties to Writer’s Digest have been cut.
It appears that Abbott Press will now be run directly as yet another Author Solutions brand but Writer’s Digest and F+W Media will have no further connection with it. (If you are unfamiliar with Aut...
June 9, 2014
Who’s Afraid of Very Cheap Books?
A common meme in publishing is that cheap books are destroying the world or literature, and that low prices are undermining the viability of publishingor writers’ ability to make a living.
I’ve long thought this position is nonsense – a narrative which plays on misplaced fears of change and a confusion of price and value, whichis also based on flawed assumptions and analog, zero-sum thinking.
And, if anything, the opposite is true.
Why So Cheap?
Self-publishers are fond of 99c pricing for a numbe...
June 7, 2014
Launching A Book By The Seat Of My Pants
I’m launching Mercenary today and you can grab it from Amazon, B&N, Kobo and Smashwords for just 99c, and you can add it on Goodreads here.
I recommend grabbing it now because the price will be jumping to $4.99 in a few days. The reasoning behind 99c is below, but first here’s the blurb:
Lee Christmas gets drunk and falls asleep at the throttle of his locomotive, plowing straight into an oncoming train. Blacklisted from the railroad and his marriage in tatters, he flees New Orleans on a steamer...
June 3, 2014
The Case Against Author Solutions, Part 1: The Numbers
The more you study an operation like Author Solutions, the more it resembles a two-bit internet scam, except on a colossal scale.
Internet scammers work on percentages. They know that only a tiny fraction of people will get hoodwinked so they flood the world’s inboxes with spammy junk.
While reputable self-publishing services can rely on author referrals and word-of-mouth, Author Solutions is forced to take a different approach. According to figures released by Author Solutions itself when it w...
May 31, 2014
This Is The Kind Of Competition Publishers Want
Source: Flickr
Since the huge shift to online purchasing and e-books, a common meme is that there is some kind of “discoverability” problem in publishing.
The funny thing is readers don’t seem to have any problem finding books they love. Any readers I talk to have a time problem – reading lists a mile long and never enough hours in the day to read all the great books they are discovering.
The real discoverability problem in publishing is that readers are discovering (and enjoying) books that don...
May 29, 2014
Why Is The Media Ignoring Author Exploitation By Publishers?
The Amazon-Hachette dispute has caught the media’s attention. Butwhat aboutthe story the mediarefuses to cover?
The media is more concerned with one-sided accounts of Amazon’s perceived actions – when no one really knows the exact nature of the dispute.
The media is more concerned with what Amazon might do in the future, than actual author exploitation by the world’s largest trade publisher: Penguin Random House.
Penguin Random House owns the world’s largest vanity press – Author Solutions – whi...
May 26, 2014
Amazon v Hachette: Don’t Believe The Spin
The internet is seething over Amazon’s reportedhardball tactics in negotiations with Hachette.
Newspapers and blogs are filled with heated opinion pieces, decrying Amazon’s domination of the book business.
Actual facts are thinner on the ground, however, and if history is any guide, we haven’t heard the full story.Here’s how it started.
In a historical quirk of the trade, publishers and booksellers negotiate co-op deals at the same time as the general agreement to carry titles. (For those who do...
May 21, 2014
NoiseTrade: Build Audience While Boosting Your Mailing List
What if I told you there was a cool new way to share your work with the world that could help you build audience, boost your mailing list, and make money at the same time?
Welcome to NoiseTrade.
The idea is simple. Authors can upload ebooks (and audiobooks) and NoiseTrade’s community of readers can download them for free – for as long as the author wants. There is a tip-jar, and you can suggest a figure, but it’s not compulsory.
So it’s pay what you want, but with a killer twist. In exchange for...
