My Guest Editorial on Reader Views' Website
For Monday, February 16, 2015
The (Agenting) Times They Are A-changin’ - Guest Editorial
Last week, Susan Violante, in her piece on the “Book Industry Gone Hybrid!”, made the following observations: “Traditional Publishers will publish Indie as well as we see some of them buying out some Print On Demand groups, and some Indies and small presses are venturing with traditional and indie publishing as well. Authors are not only going Indie, but they are also using their Indie product to market themselves to Traditional publishing. Even Agents are taking the Hybrid plunge by representing Indie Authors!”
Observers of the publishing scene know this is just the tip of the iceberg. When it comes to agents, the tsunami resulting from a new initiative created by Amazon is about to change their world as well.
Called Kindle Scout (KS), the program ingests books submitted for consideration by the KS staff which, upon acceptance, are posted for 30 days on the KS Website. You’ll find the books here. Readers with Amazon accounts are then able to nominate the books they’d like to see published. You can nominate up to three books at any one time, and as books drop off the site after their 30-day nomination period, you are free to nominate others. In a way, you can think of it Amazon’s way of crowd-sourcing the review of their ‘agent’s’ slush pile. Books that make it through the selection process—and a good indication of prime candidates are the ones that are Hot and Trending—have the potential to being awarded a publishing contract, which includes a $1,500 advance, what many would consider ‘generous royalties’, and perhaps most important, a huge marketing push from Amazon. (I’ve always said, compared to marketing and selling your book, writing is the easy part!).
From a reader’s standpoint, the benefit of the KS program is you will receive a free Kindle edition of any book you nominate that is selected for publication by Amazon.
I already have submitted one book—my 6th Detective Louis Martelli, NYPD, mystery/thriller—to the KS program, but alas, there was no joy in Mudville. Perhaps my second try, a YA novel titled The Hypnotist, which I penned using my pseudonym, Alyssa Devine, will meet with success. You can find that novel here. Any and all nominations are gratefully accepted. But unlike Chicago, you only can vote once.
If you an aspiring author and have had more than your fair share of rejection letters from agents, think about giving Kindle Scout a try. It represents an entirely new paradigm in the rapidly evolving world of indie publishing.
Theodore Jerome Cohen
www.theodore-cohen-novels.com / www.alyssadevinenovels.com
For more helpful publication- and author-related material from the Reader Views Blog, go to http://readerviews.com/blog/
The (Agenting) Times They Are A-changin’ - Guest Editorial
Last week, Susan Violante, in her piece on the “Book Industry Gone Hybrid!”, made the following observations: “Traditional Publishers will publish Indie as well as we see some of them buying out some Print On Demand groups, and some Indies and small presses are venturing with traditional and indie publishing as well. Authors are not only going Indie, but they are also using their Indie product to market themselves to Traditional publishing. Even Agents are taking the Hybrid plunge by representing Indie Authors!”
Observers of the publishing scene know this is just the tip of the iceberg. When it comes to agents, the tsunami resulting from a new initiative created by Amazon is about to change their world as well.
Called Kindle Scout (KS), the program ingests books submitted for consideration by the KS staff which, upon acceptance, are posted for 30 days on the KS Website. You’ll find the books here. Readers with Amazon accounts are then able to nominate the books they’d like to see published. You can nominate up to three books at any one time, and as books drop off the site after their 30-day nomination period, you are free to nominate others. In a way, you can think of it Amazon’s way of crowd-sourcing the review of their ‘agent’s’ slush pile. Books that make it through the selection process—and a good indication of prime candidates are the ones that are Hot and Trending—have the potential to being awarded a publishing contract, which includes a $1,500 advance, what many would consider ‘generous royalties’, and perhaps most important, a huge marketing push from Amazon. (I’ve always said, compared to marketing and selling your book, writing is the easy part!).
From a reader’s standpoint, the benefit of the KS program is you will receive a free Kindle edition of any book you nominate that is selected for publication by Amazon.
I already have submitted one book—my 6th Detective Louis Martelli, NYPD, mystery/thriller—to the KS program, but alas, there was no joy in Mudville. Perhaps my second try, a YA novel titled The Hypnotist, which I penned using my pseudonym, Alyssa Devine, will meet with success. You can find that novel here. Any and all nominations are gratefully accepted. But unlike Chicago, you only can vote once.
If you an aspiring author and have had more than your fair share of rejection letters from agents, think about giving Kindle Scout a try. It represents an entirely new paradigm in the rapidly evolving world of indie publishing.
Theodore Jerome Cohen
www.theodore-cohen-novels.com / www.alyssadevinenovels.com
For more helpful publication- and author-related material from the Reader Views Blog, go to http://readerviews.com/blog/
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