Not content with offering authors a platform to self-publish and setting up several publishing imprints to publish a wide range of genres themselves, Amazon is now looking to the wisdom of the crowd to launch what looks like Amazon's Got Talent, but without the TV show.
Bon Voyage! Huge demand for Kindle Voyage $200 e-readers as first edition sells out in days
The death of the e-reader amid an avalanche of tablets has been predicted for some time now but the new generation of e-readers seems to be doing just fine, with the first production run of the Amazon Voyage not only selling out within a few days in the US but also looking set to be a rare hardware moneyspinner for Amazon.
iBooks bundles up a ton of box sets at 99c apiece
Apple’s iBooks is running a worldwide merchandising feature offering 100 box sets with most priced at 99c each, although some are just 49c.
Nook Press boosts self-published authors in the UK with preview deal with The Bookseller magazine
Barnes & Noble’s Nook Press is targeting the UK for a much needed boost to its ebook business by linking up with UK trade publishing magazine The Bookseller for a New Preview Section for self-published authors in the UK.
Amazon sets off on a Voyage with new Kindles
Are we really at the 7th generation of Kindles already? That seems to be the case, with Amazon introducing two new Kindles and a new operating system that ties users firmly into the Amazon empire.
Amazon adds huge bonus for Kindle Unlimited and $500,000 for KDP star authors
Amazon added a massive bonus of $2.7 million to more than double the Kindle Select Fund total for August to $4.7 million, by far the biggest-ever for the fund.
Kindle Unlimited borrow rate slumps by 15% to $1.54 for August
Well, the figures have come out bang on time but they don't make great reading. I had expected a payout of around $1.60-1.70 per borrow for Kindle Unlimited/KOLL for August but Amazon have announced the rate is $1.54, not far off the lower range of my forecast, but still disappointing.
Young Americans are still hitting the books
There always seems to be a myth that young people have given up on reading and now devote their lives solely to social media, but anyone who has seen the stunning sales for books like The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and the Divergent series by Veronica Roth, among many others, know that the truth is that young folk are voracious readers.
The mathematics of Kindle Unlimited and the ebook subscription business
As we all wait with bated breath for the 15th (or thereabouts) of the month which will reveal August's borrow rate for ebooks on Kindle Unlimited (my bet is on a range of $1.60-$1.70), I thought I'd set out a few numbers I've crunched about the effects of the first couple of months of Kindle Unlimited and the ebook subscription business in general.
You’ve got to speculate to accumulate
If you're a writer who's into science fiction, fantasy, horror, or anything in-between or even unclassifiable, then you could be in with a chance of winning $1,300 (£800) in the Albedo Aeon Short Fiction Contest that's open for another couple of months.
Is this the pre-order of all time?
The wheels of traditional publishers can grind exceedingly slow, with the lead time between completion of a novel and publication often a year at least, but the great Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood is writing a new work that won’t be published for another century.