News | Self-Publishing Review

Jeff Bezos to Study Kindle Ebooks to Learn the Secrets of the Universe

Seattle, Washington, April 1st, 2019 – Today Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos revealed that he is going to study all Kindle ebooks to finally answer life’s enduring mysteries. The idea came to him when watching the second season of the Netflix series, “The OA.” In the series, a tech billionaire creates a game to lure in gamers in order to study their dreams, which seem to have repeated patterns that reveal mystical secrets, so he can then…not sure, it’s entertaining, but kind of confusing.

“First off,” Bezos said from his home in Medina, WA, “You should only have an Amazon Prime […]

SPR2019-04-02T04:45:07+02:00April 1st, 2019|Categories: News|Tags: Amazon News and Tips|

Barnes & Noble Press Now Offering Pre-Orders

In a bid to compete with KDP Print, Barnes & Noble Press (renamed early 2018 from Nook Press), has announced some new options:

Print Pre-Order: Now available for all print books on sale. Set your publication date up to 180 days in the future without needing final cover or interior files. Don’t forget, eBook pre-order is already available up to 12 months in advance of publication!

Get one free correction for print book files: If your print book files aren’t exactly to our platform’s requirements, we’re giving you one free correction per cover and interior file, on us. Upload

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SPR2018-10-17T13:10:32+02:00October 17th, 2018|Categories: News|

CreateSpace and KDP Print are Merging

It’s finally underway: after launching KDP Print in 2016 and announcing the phase-out of CreateSpace, Amazon’s Print-on-Demand wing is now retiring. If you currently have books are on CreateSpace, they will be automatically moved to KDP Print in the coming weeks. From KDP:

In a few weeks, we’ll automatically move all accounts to KDP. If you’d like to get a head start, you can move your entire catalog yourself in a few steps. To ensure a quality experience, we’ll enable the ability to move your CreateSpace books to KDP in phases, so authors may see it at different times.

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SPR2020-02-21T04:32:33+02:00August 30th, 2018|Categories: News|Tags: Amazon News and Tips|

SPR Awards 2017 Winners Announced!

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Cate Baum2018-06-05T03:18:30+02:00March 25th, 2018|Categories: Features, Lead Story, News|Tags: SPR Book Awards|

Goodreads Offering Free eBook Giveaways

A year and a half after its first announcement, Goodreads has finally revealed its Kindle giveaway program open to all authors, starting in January 2018. From the Goodreads blog:

Today, we’re announcing our new U.S. giveaways program, with two packages offering new high-impact features to drive increased book discovery and reader reviews. The new program is designed to deliver additional marketing benefits that authors and publishers have been asking for, including more ways to reach the author’s readers, and automatically adding the book to the Want-to-Read lists of anyone entering the giveaway. And for the first time, Kindle Direct

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SPR2017-12-04T12:28:22+02:00December 4th, 2017|Categories: News|Tags: Amazon News and Tips, Goodreads Articles|

Pronoun is Shutting Down

In fairly shocking news, ebook distributor Pronoun is closing shop. From their homepage:

Two years ago Pronoun set out to create a one-of-a-kind publishing tool that truly put authors first. We believed that the power of data could be harnessed for smarter book publishing, leveling the playing field for indie authors.

We are proud of the product we built, but even more so, we’re grateful for the community of authors that made it grow. Your feedback shaped Pronoun’s development, and together we changed the way authors connect with readers.

Unfortunately, Pronoun’s story ends here.

While many challenges in indie publishing

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SPR2017-11-07T11:20:00+02:00November 7th, 2017|Categories: News|

Announcing The Finalists of The SPR Book Awards 2016!

It’s been a very competitive year for The SPR Book Awards, as self-publishing continues to flourish with some really nice book covers, interiors, and storytelling. This year, the SPR reviewers decided to focus on the writing skills and presentation of the words – we wanted to really enjoy to the material the authors created themselves. In a few hours, we’ll be announcing the winners, but we are proud to announce the following finalists.

FINALISTS – Announced 8am PST December 15, 2016

All Finalists will be invited for an author interview at SPR over the next weeks. Congrats to all […]

Cate Baum2019-04-12T14:11:36+02:00December 15th, 2016|Categories: Features, News|Tags: SPR Book Awards|

New Amazon Guidelines Prevent Customer Reviews For Free/Discounted Products – Except Books

In all this election fever, you may have missed that Amazon has changed their Community Guidelines on October 03, 2016 prohibiting authors from seeking Customer Reviews by offering a free or discounted product. As website ilovetoreview.com reports, “Specifically, Amazon sellers can no longer give a discounted or free product to anyone in exchange for a review, honest or otherwise.” This is a huge blow for sellers – EXCEPT AUTHORS! Good old Amazon adds, “The above changes will apply to product categories other than books. We will continue to allow the age-old practice of providing advance review copies of books.” […]

Cate Baum2016-10-04T12:07:56+02:00October 4th, 2016|Categories: News|