‘The Absolute Best Experience For Readers’ Here’s an argument we don’t hear frequently for the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select programs. I’m ensuring the best possible reader experience with ebooks. This is the soon-to-be-seafaring author Hugh Howey, who says that there’s something more important than the doubling of his overall income since Amazon instituted per-page payouts… Read More
The Amazon Birthday Party
On the occasion of its 20th birthday, The Bookseller would like to wish Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos many happy returns. Amazon is a remarkable business led by a remarkable visionary. My colleague at The Bookseller, Philip Jones is right — party hats: on. In his leader piece for today’s edition of the magazine on… Read More
Is Amazon KDP Select's per-page payout better?
I’d like to be paid per-page for everything written about Amazon’s KDP Select since the 15th of the month. And certainly, I’ve tried to hold up my end. I wrote about it here. And then I wrote about it there. And now I’m writing about it once more, hoping that you’ll join us in this week’s #FutureChat on… Read More
Gaming the system: Amazon at home and abroad
The special symmetry of ‘the disrupter that demands to be undisrupted’ As Friday’s edition of The Bookseller points out, last week brought Amazon’s place in European markets into tighter focus. A scene-setting article from my colleague Lisa Campbell announced the European Commission’s formal antitrust investigation into the retailer’s relationships with publishers and ebook distribution. Campbell also pointed to… Read More
Is the honeymoon over? KU comes between Amazon and its self-publishers
A kind of downgrade for Amazon, and nowhere near Wall Street The most significant change is that Amazon KDP has slipped to third and also reflects the growing discontent self-published authors have with the introduction of Kindle Unlimited and recent communications regarding the new VAT law in Europe for 2015. We also have five new providers entering… Read More
Not exclusively about exclusivity: Kindle Unlimited
With subscriptions at the center of last Friday’s #FutureChat — and Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited (KU) in particular — it’s worth noting how pleased we are that both Justo Hidalgo of Spain’s 24Symbols and (tentatively) Eric Briys of France’s Cyberlibris will join us on 14th November in London for The FutureBook (#FutureBook14), Europe’s largest publishing conference, at the… Read More
AuthorEarnings.com: Kindle Unlimited On The Line
‘I wish our conclusions could be more . . . conclusive’ But all things being equal? Authors are working without a net right now. As with so many things in publishing at this point in its encounter with the digital dynamic, the potential contradictions loom large in the new AuthorEarnings.comreport, just out today from the… Read More