Roger Packer

Self-publishing Blog

Print-on-demand pioneer Blurb taken over by digital printing specialist Reischling Press

Blurb, one of the pioneers of self-publishing for print books, has been taken over by its long-term digital printing partner Reischling Press. Read more...

Amazon streamlines promotional access for authors with new KDP marketing resources page

Amazon has added a new Marketing page to the Kindle Direct Publishing website to make it easier to find available resources to promote your books. Read more...

Wattpad Books pick up London lockdown love-life stories

Data-driven publisher Wattpad Books is to publish a contemporary romance story collection, Lockdown on London Lane by Beth Reekles. The book follows the love-lives of a group of Londoners in lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic. Read more...

Self-publishing star Mark Dawson ousted from Sunday Times bestsellers Top 10 after print book bulk buy

Thriller author Mark Dawson bought 400 copies of his own print book to boost the title into the Sunday Times bestsellers Top 10 in the UK but Nielsen BookScan, which supplies the figures for the list, has now rejected the bulk buy and is recalculating the list. Read more...

Amazon Advertising adds Kindle Unlimited KENP pages read metric to performance dashboard for authors

Amazon Advertising has added Kindle Edition Normalised Pages (KENP) Read to the performance dashboard so authors can get a better measure of the return on their ads. Read more...

Amazon says thousands of indie authors still earning more than $50,000 a year from KDP

Over 1,000 indie authors earned more than $100,000 through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing during the year to the end of May 2020 and ‘thousands more independent authors earned more than $50,000’. Read more...

Kobo Plus ebook subscription service expands to Canada

The Kobo Plus ebook subscription service is opening up in Canada after launching in Europe in 2017 in Belgium and then adding the Netherlands. Read more...

Kindle Unlimited KDP Select Fund total leaps by nearly a quarter for the first half of 2020

The Kindle Unlimited KENP rate for June 2020 rose to $0.0045 from $0.0042 in May while the KDP Select Fund for June 2020 edged up by $100,000 to $32.3 million from $32.2 million in May 2020. Read more...

UK turns to crime and lifestyle books as reading time nearly doubles and tastes change

Nearly half of UK adults say they read books more since lockdown and have almost doubled their total time spent reading per week from 3.5 hours to 6 hours. Read more...

Lightning Source builds up print capacity around the world after publishers turn to POD distribution

Print-on-demand specialist Lightning Source is adding print capacity with investments in the US, UK and Australia. Read more...

How to win the Wattys 2020 — Wattpad sets out what the judges will be looking for as contest opens for entries

The Wattys 2020 is opening up for entries from July 13, 2020 with the aim of helping writers to complete their novels and Wattpad has handed out some advice on how to impress the judges. Read more...

The Fussy Librarian adds transparency with promotion data showing click numbers and CPC details

The Fussy Librarian ebook promotion website has started to publish some valuable data detailing numbers of clicks and cost-per-click on recent free ebook promotions. Read more...

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