David Gaughran's Blog, page 21

From Pizza Hut To Easy Street: The David Dalglish Story

Fantasy author David Dalglishis a big name in the self-publishing world, but he’s on the cusp of something even bigger.

His path wasn’t easy. When David uploaded his first book, way back in February 2010, he was working in Pizza Hut.

The popularity of his books, and the speed with which he was able to publish them, meant that it didn’t take long before he was able to quit that job and write full-time.

David’s stellar sales (over 350,000 books to date) led to big offers from major publishers.But...

Amazon’s Recommendation Engine Trumps The Competition

There’s an old adage that bestsellers are chosen rather than made, and there’s some truth to that. The amount a publisher splurges on the advance has to be recouped before the book turns a profit. The more money that has to be recouped, the greater the marketing budget.

Sleeper hits are the exception for a reason. It’s a lot easier to hit the bestseller lists when you are on the front table of every single Barnes & Noble than if you are spine-out at the back of a handful of stores (or gatherin...

Penguin’s Solution for Authors: One Racket To Rule Them All

Regular readers of this blog will know all about Penguin’s purchase last July of the universally reviled Author Solutions – a company infamous for overcharging writers, doing a terrible job of publishing their books, and forcing ineffective and expensive marketing services upon those authors when their books (inevitably) fail to sell.

My posts on the topic have been leaning heavily on the tireless work of Emily Suess – a writer and blogger who has been documenting this racket for some years no...

The Author With The Biggest Mailing List Wins

What happens when a reader finishes your e-books? What’s the first thing they see? What’s the first thing they do? Back-matter is extremely important. Presuming you have done your job as a writer well, it’s a golden opportunity to draw readers into your world.

The basic components of effective back-matter are fairly straightforward: blurbs for and/or links to your other books, links to whatever social media presence you have, a short note requesting reviews, and, most important of all, a link...

99 Books and 99 Authors at 99c (with $990 in prizes)

Apologies for the blog silence while I put the finishing touches to Let’s Get Visible. I’m poking my head out of the writing cave to tell you about a very special promotion I’m taking part in today: 99 authors who have dropped the price of their 99 books to 99c for one day only.

There are also $990 worth of prizes up for grabs, and you can find out more here (where you will see the line-up of participating books.

Amazon is featuring 80 of the participating booksas a very special Kindle Daily De...

Simon & Schuster Joins Forces With Author Solutions To Rip Off Writers

Simon & Schuster has launched a self-publishing operation, Archway Publishing, contracting one of the most disreputable players in the business to run the show: Author Solutions.

We’ll get to that distasteful link-up in a second, but first let’s have a look at what Simon & Schuster are offering prospective customers (i.e. writers).

Fiction packages start at $1,999 and go up to $14,999. If you have written a business book, prices are saucier again: $2,999 to $24,999.

While the upper end of the pr...

Bacon, Booze and Books: What Kings Ate and Wizards Drank

When I first heard aboutWhat Kings Ate and Wizards Drank: A Fantasy Lover’s Food Guide I knew it was going to be brilliant. The concept alone demanded it – which I had heard about a few months beforehand.

I’m in a writers’ group with Krista D. Ball, and when she explained what she was working on, I wasn’t alone at being filled with a mixture of excitement and envy. I wasn’t jealous because I could have written this book – I couldn’t have – but because it’s one of those once-in-a-lifetime fanta...

Self-Publishers Aren’t Killing The Industry, They’re Saving It

There’s a lot of talk at the moment that cheap books are destroying the industry.

In traditional publishing circles especially, fingers are being pointed at self-publishers (and their chief enablers, Amazon), whostand accused of encouraging a race to the bottom, of devaluing books, and training readers to pay ever-cheaper amounts – making the whole book business unsustainable.

Today, I have a guest post from Ed Robertson – author of BreakersandMelt Down- which takes issue with that view. His lo...

Amazon Opens Japanese Kindle Store

Amazon will open a Kindle Store in Japan tomorrow – October 25 – after months of speculation (and the summer entrance into the Japanese market of up-and-coming rivals Kobo).

According the the press release from Amazon,customers in Japan can now pre-order the Paperwhite for an extremely competitive 8,480 yen ($106), with the 3G version costing 12,980 yen ($163) – although neither will ship until November 19. US customers will notice that makes the Paperwhite marginally cheaper in Japan than Ame...

Popularity, Visibility & KDP Select

For most writers, anonymity is the biggest hurdle they face. The open nature of digital distribution can be a double-edged sword; there are 1.1 million titles in the Kindle Store after all.

While the virtual shelves are endless, and while readers have demonstrated an increased appetite for reading (and hoarding) once they switch to e-books, the spotlight is limited. There can only ever be 100 books in the Top 100. The major sites (like Ereader News Today or Pixel of Ink) will only feature a li...