How authors will get paid for them. — Findaway Voices, the largest audiobook distributor in the independent author space, was purchased by Spotify back in November 2021 and they closed the deal in June 2022. So authors knew that their audiobooks were headed to Spotify, but I must admit, I’m a little surprised by how authors are going…

The company has all the resources to compete with Amazon. Now it has a reason to as well. — How much do most authors know about Google Play Books? I would guess that the majority of authors don’t even have an account. Given that Google Play Books makes up about 1% or potentially less of the market share in English-language book markets, most authors don’t think twice about trying…

For wide authors, wide-curious authors, and anyone interested in direct book sales — On July 5th, I’m launching a new nonfiction Kickstarter project called Go Wide, Grow Wide. It’s for wide authors and the wide-curious. BUT it will also have two books that are relevant to KU-focused authors (authors primarily in Kindle Unlimited) AND wide authors: Get Your Book Selling on Amazon and…

What an author should state as their “reason why I’m fundraising” — One of the biggest things I hear from authors about running a Kickstarter campaign is, “How do I do this when I’m basically begging for charity?” Other phrases or ways this might come out are: “Is it weird to ask my fans for money?” “I’m already putting the book out…

Your intellectual property has value. Be sure you understand your rights. — The Next Web is covering Kindle Vella this week and has summarized something from one of my Medium articles written months ago: “Writer Monica Leonelle has raised concerns about rights grabbing. She fears that Amazon will snap up intellectual property on the cheap, and then turn the content into successful…

What to do when you can’t advertise your content. — The biggest complaint and challenge around fiction apps is that authors don’t have a great way of marketing their work there, which means they can’t consistently build their audience through methods that they control. With the number of authors and creators out there, ads are a must for marketing your…

Hint: They are thinking like comics creators. — Although serialized and short-form fiction is taking off in English-language markets, it’s not exactly easy to market your offerings as an independent author. Many fiction apps are a closed ecosystem of sorts, in that you need to gain visibility within the app itself to see traction. At least, it’s not…

Here’s what you need to know. — With Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform launching in July 2021 and not one but two major acquisitions in the serialized fiction app space expected to close in June 2021, I thought I’d do a series about serialized fiction and how it’s changing the landscape of independent publishing, especially around how we…

Early screenshots from the Kindle iOS app — Today, July 13, 2021, Kindle Vella soft launched their Kindle Vella program on their website at amazon.com and with a seamless integration into the Kindle iOS app. I’ve captured early screenshots of the program from my Kindle iOS app via my iPad. …