News

Interesting, via the Bookseller.

US independent publisher Perseus Books Group has launched a distribution and marketing service for authors wanting to self-publish their own e-books, offering a 70% royalty rate to the author.

Called Argo Navis Author Services, it will be offered to authors represented by agencies that have signed an agreement with Perseus, with Janklow & Nesbit Associates the first to have done so.

So this is a new hybrid model – where agents have a finger in the game of ebook self-publishing.  One would have to imagine that the agent is taking some of the cut, so […]

Cross this off the list of things only traditional publishers can do: distribute to libraries. Well, it has always been possible to get a print book into a library before, but not very easy since libraries have limited shelf space and only select a fraction of traditionally published books, let alone self-released books. But ebooks take up no shelf space. That said, they do cost the library money, so don’t yet expect libraries to be making the entire Kindle catalog available.

From Amazon:

How It Works
You can borrow Kindle books from your local library’s website and, with the

This seems pretty momentous – another notch in Konrath’s death spiral.  Plenty of writers are going from self-publishing to traditional publishing, but not many taking the plunge backward again.  She grew her platform via Harper Collins and now she has the standing to ditch them and still make a living.

Novelist ditches publisher at book launch for ‘condescending’ treatment

Courtney self-published Golden Handcuffs, a fictional exposé of life in the City, in 2006 after quitting her job as an investment banker, following it up in 2008 with Poles Apart, about an ambitious Polish graduate who moves to London. Their

That headline might seem relatively commonplace, but this is a pretty amazing development – maybe even more amazing than Amanda Hocking’s success. The news (emphasis added):

Self-published author John Locke has signed a deal with a traditional publisher. The print editions of John Locke Books will be sold and distributed by Simon & Schuster, the company announced Monday.

Locke was the first — and so far, only — self-published author to sell a million Kindle ebooks. He writes thrillers starring the character Donovan Creed, and has published a popular how-to book, “How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months!”

IndieReader’s new Discovery Award is open to entries:

What do you get when you cross a bunch of great self-published books with extraordinary publishing industry professionals?  IndieReader’s first annual “Discovery Awards” (IRDAs), where undiscovered talent meets people with the power to make a difference.

With the rush by traditional publishers to sign them and their noteworthy bestselling status, there’s no longer much doubt that indie authors can be both commercially and creatively successful.  All that was left to do was create a credible vehicle by which to find them.

What makes the IRDA’s so unique is their extraordinary panel of

Important info, from Aaron Shepard’s blog:

Over the past month or two (or three?), Amazon.com has quietly been letting its stock of many Lightning Source books dwindle and disappear. It has then been assigning most of those out-of-stock books an availability status of 2-3 weeks. In more rare instances, a book shows no direct availability from Amazon at all.

This is very different from how Amazon has operated in the past. For some time now, Amazon has kept substantial stock on hand for all books that sold even marginally—about three weeks worth, the last times I tested it. More

Wow. You might have heard of Pottermore already – the new internet venture for the Harry Potter franchise – but may have thought it was a product of her publisher. The Pottermore site is being completed via a partnership with Sony, but the ebooks will be released as part of her own imprint. The biggest publishing phenomenon on the planet is now a self-publisher.

After a week of heavy speculation, JK Rowling has revealed that she is to self-publish the e-books to her mind-bogglingly successful Harry Potter series through her newly-announced proprietary platform, Pottermore.

While self-publishing in itself is

Via Galleycat:

In the above video, Nagin talks to Jon Stewart about how he chose to self publish the book rather than go through a publishing house, after shopping it with a literary agent. He said: “Once you turn over your manuscript to a publisher, you never know what is going to happen.”

Translation: I’m not sure what. Couldn’t find a publisher?

Here’s the book:

Published via Createspace – currently #436 in books.[…]