Amazon this week announced that it has filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of California against some 20 individuals scamming authors by falsely claiming an affiliation with Amazon Publishing and Kindle Direct Publishing. Read more
Amazon has revised its Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) guidelines to require users to acknowledge AI-generated content, however the new section distinguishes between AI-generated content and AI-assisted content and does not compel disclosure of the latter.
Are you curious about all of the changes going on at CreateSpace and seeing new offerings being announced at Kindle Direct Publishing? I have been, too. Read more
Publishing reporters doing wrap up stories occasionally call me for impressions. From those conversations I have gleaned that the prevailing impression of where the book business is now is of "stability". Read more
Print bookselling remains artificially silo'd by country even today, for variety of legacy historical and logistical reasons. But by contrast, the global ebook marketplace is a seamlessly international one. Read more
The Author Earnings report has come out once again, and if there's any criticism to be lobbed its way, it's that the data is thorough enough to make even the most fanatical number cruncher see spots. The breakdown in last month's report is once again by sales channel, English speaking sales market, publication route, and more. Read more
So, you are about to self-publish a book in e-book or print-on-demand format. It seems like a no-brainer to sign an exclusive contract with Amazon Kindle, and up goes your book to Amazon's vast online audience. After all, presumably they own 60 or 70% of the e-book market. Read more
Indie authors seem to be living in an age of wonders. They can upload a PDF and sell it instantly on Kindles and tablets. They can print-on-demand like merry little Gutenbergs, slinging their wares from India to Indiana. They can raise an army of fans to crowdfund their latest opus. But all is not rosy in the world of indie publishing. Read more
If you know anyone who writes books, or if you follow any authors on social media, you're probably used to regular cries of doom and gloom about the death of writing and how Amazon is killing the book as we know it. Some of this may even be true. Read more
Hugh Howey is a self-published author who leveraged Kindle Direct Publishing to distribute his Silo Saga about a post-apocalyptic wasteland. They have sold over 300,000 copies in the US and have been optioned for a movie to be directed by Ridley Scott. You might say that Howey is a self-published professional author whot did well for himself. Read more
‘I always quote Kurt Vonnegut. He said in the early part of his career he was dismissed as a science fiction writer and that critics tend to put genre books, including sci-fi, in the bottom drawer of their desk... It's true. I get the New York Times every Sunday. In 37 novels, I've never had a stand-alone review. I'm always in the crime round-up.
A survey of 787 members of the Society of Authors (SoA) has found that a third of translators and a quarter of illustrators have lost work to generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. Translators are also more likely to use AI to support their work, with 37% of respondents saying they have done so, followed by 25% of non-fiction writers.
The author Lynne Reid Banks, known for her novel The L-Shaped Room and her children's book series The Indian in the Cupboard, has died at the age of 94.
I launched my podcast Making It Up nearly three years ago with the goal of interviewing writers not for any particular work of theirs, but to talk to them about their lives. I didn't want to ask them what famous author they want to have dinner with or what their top five favorite books are ... yech. Read more
Until we have a mechanism to test for artificial intelligence, writers need a tool to maintain trust in their work. So I decided to be completely open with my readers
'I've been reading reviews of my stories for twenty-five years, and can't remember a single useful point in any of them, or the slightest good advice. The only reviewer who ever made an impression on me was Skabichevsky, who prophesied that I would die drunk in the bottom of a ditch.'