Everything’s Coming Up Indie. Right? As slippery as the business of publishing-industry statistics is, the author Hugh Howey and his unnamed associate referred to as Data Guy have now given us a year of AuthorEarnings.com reports. This is a good thing. Despite Howey’s detractors and some of their misgivings, the AuthorEarnings series of interpretive essays have… Read More
Applauding gaps in 'retail stonewalling'
What might have been an hour or so of complaint and commiseration became — in the tweeting hands of The FutureBook community — something more hopeful and more nuanced than some would have predicted. Our topic, ‘Retail stonewalling’ and Amazon sightings in bookstores, took its phrase from Amazon Publishing author Tim Ferriss. And its starting point was The… Read More
'Retail stonewalling' and Amazon sightings in bookstores
Oil and water…The general pattern, of course, has been simple: many bookshops, objecting to Amazon’s effects on the industry, have declined to carry books from Amazon Publishing imprints. A kind of major-player blessing on independent stores has been provided by Barnes & Noble’s corporate stance, announced January 2012, against Amazon Publishing books. So frustrated with the situation was Amazon… Read More
Multi-track issues: #FutureChat recap
After our good #FutureChat exchange about the recent protests of Amazon’s negotiating tactics, one of our FutureBook community members noticed that the #UK’s “Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store” ranking seemed to be top-heavy with a group of Amazon Publishing titles. In fact, these titles doing so well on the list were all books published by… Read More
Kobo & WHSmith: Said the Online Retailer to the Entrepreneurial Author
For all the promises and expectations of control, authors are still very much at the mercy of the marketplaces in which they’re establishing new prominence. Read More