Great article about the publishing industry, specifically the NYC publishers and how their model needs to change before they're rendered irrelevant when every writer with an ounce of self-worth decides to indie- or self-publish and say nay to the big corporations more worried about their bottom line than the authors providing their product.

"We need to destroy publishing’s most basic assumption: the idea that a writer’s time is without value, their effort should be one of love (and only love), and most importantly, that’s it’s morally acceptable to build a $118B industry on free labor."

https://medium.com/quickies-in-new-york/self-publishing-transparency-and-why-the-basic-premise-of-the-publishing-industry-needs-to-die-a-c508ce7fd57a

Got an email this morning about an invitation to a children's themed Prime Book Box.

Because you're a valued children's book customer, we thought you'd like to be the first to know about Prime Book Box, the perfect way to discover great children’s books that will inspire a love of reading.

With a Prime Book Box subscription, you’ll enjoy:

• Curation: Designed for readers (and future book lovers) from baby up to 12 years old, we use expert recommendations from our Amazon Books Editors and high customer ratings to select age-appropriate books for each box.
• Flexibility: Choose a delivery frequency of every 1, 2, or 3 months. Skip a box anytime.
• Value: At $22.99/box, Prime Book Box saves you up to 35% off List Price, and provides the best value on books sold by Amazon.com.

Prime Book Box is currently available by invitation only. If interested in subscribing, please click below and request an invite. You’ll be notified via email when you’re able to begin.[/li]
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I'm guessing it's print book only, and I'm guessing they're going to have book boxes for other genres. Not surprising that Amazon is trying out the bundle/loot crate concept. Curious to see where this goes.

Been seeing this fly all over FB lately:



Unless something has changed lately, I'm pretty sure the second bullet is wrong. Last I heard, inclusion in Amazon newsletters is all about sales and ranking at a specific spot in time when the newsletters are generated.

And I doubt # of reviews have anything to do with also-boughts.

If anyone knows for sure, let us know!

Not discussing the politics involved in this, but reading the first few pages of the Simpson Senate testimony that was leaked is fascinating reading, and probably great for anyone researching or writing a political thriller. A lot of it is probably boring for a reader, but reading it to get a feel for how a hearing goes might be worthwhile.

http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/politics/read-the-full-transcript-of-glenn-simpsons-senate-testimony/2700/

Anyone else get an invite to the Amazon Author Beta? Got an email earlier, including:

We invite you to take a special sneak peek at the beta of Amazon Author, the new Author Central experience.

Amazon Author offers a one-stop solution for personalizing your Amazon Author Profile, managing your books, and more around the world. Log in once and you’ll be able to update your Amazon Author Page in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, India and Japan with biographies in each language. With a new-and-improved site design, Amazon Author works beautifully on your smartphone and tablet as well as your computer.

During the beta period, you’ll still access some features, such as Sales Rank, U.S. Nielsen BookScan sales data, and Customer Reviews, via Author Central while we work on migrating each to Amazon Author.

So far it looks intriguing. Nice functionality and easy to update bio and picture. Similar functionality to the usual Author Central, though the interface looks a little slicker and faster to respond. Some of the functionality isn't ported over yet, but it looks promising. Other reactions?

Keeping newbies and pros alike informed, as you work your way through various writer services, be aware that based on an email I got because I'm on the genreCrave mailing list, genreCrave is going to rebrand as OTOH Books. I don't know if the Facebook groups for genrecrave will be changing since I'm not a member, but wanted to get the information out there in case writers get into researching promo opportunities and don't know which service is which.

Some insights on beta readers and their danger to new writers from Dean Wesley Smith.

https://www.deanwesleysmith.com/killing-the-sacred-cows-of-publishing-beta-readers-help-you/

You are an artist. Allow your characters to live on the page. Allow your own voice (which you can't see) to be there for your readers.

Always focus on the next story, not the last story.

Just stop even thinking of using beta readers to destroy your work.

Because that is what beta readers do.

I don't disagree with the thesis. Other than a brief flirtation with a writing group in the very early years of my career, I haven't used beta readers beyond one trusted reader and hiring out developmental editors, copy editors, or proofreaders.

Probably nothing new here for many, though some fellow prawns and newbies might find something useful.

My UF series has been out for a year and I hadn't used any free Select days on the books. As an experiment before I left for holiday last week, I set up four free days for book #1, and a KCD deal for book 2 for the same span of time. I left book 3 at full price. All this was just to see what happened. I booked a freebooksy ad for Sept 1 which cost $100, and then fired off and forgot about the deal.

Went on vacation and had a great time. Didn't have the means or interest to review the results. Got back Sunday night and checked things out.

Book 1 hit #84 free overall in the Kindle store at one point, and picked up over 2700 downloads of the book. I picked up 30 sales (mostly book 2) as well, plus a few sales of books in my other series.  Page reads picked up as well. Close to making that $100 from the ad back.

I got an email yesterday that ebookdaily selected book 1 for a spot in their newsletter, which was a nice unexpected bounce. Got another bunch of downloads and sales from that boost. I suspect more page reads will come in the next couple weeks as people get around to reading book 1.

With hardly any effort and just one paid promo, I moved some copies. Happy for that. Probably not much of an experiment, but I likes how the free days on #1 plus KCD on #2 worked. Looking forward to seeing what happens when I do the same thing with a larger backlist.

This is sorta geared toward non-male readers, but, really, anyone can answer. I like UF. I like a lot of UF, both female POV and male POV (and I bet I'd like non-binary POV if I knew of any--reccos?). I know UF by and large is dominated by female POV characters. I generally enjoy the male POVs too, like Butcher, DaCosta, Line, Finn, etc.

So I'm curious. If you read male POV UF, what do you like about it? Different perspective from a female pov? Different experience? Given that a lot of female POV UF is oriented toward the kick-ass snarky POV character, I'm seeing much the same from male UF POVs. So if everyone's kick ass and snarky, what do you like about the male POV as compared to the female?

Details here: https://submit.hallmarkpublishing.com/submit

Hi there! Hallmark Publishing is open to submissions of wholesome romance and cozy mystery novels. If your book seems like a Hallmark movie or TV series, it might be right for us!

To submit your novel, you’ll need to fill in all the required fields on this form and paste in a short query letter. You’ll also need to upload a 3 -4 page synopsis and your complete manuscript, both as Word docs. The text of your manuscript should be double-spaced in a plain, easy-to-read font of  12- or 14-point size.

Here are our complete submission guidelines:

We’re looking for male/female romance novels and cozy mystery novels of around 70,000 – 85,000 words in length. We love romances and mysteries that also celebrate friendship, family, and/or community ties. All stories must have happy endings.



For romance, we’re mostly looking for light contemporary stories set in the United States. We’d especially love to see Christmas, small town, and seasonal themes (winter, Valentine’s Day, spring, June brides, beach reads, fall), and we want to hear about your series ideas.

We’re interested in romantic suspense. We’ll consider historical romance set in North America or the U.K. While we aren’t looking for heavy redemption arcs, religious elements in a story are fine.

We aren’t interested in paranormal romance in general, but we’re open to time travel or a little bit of magic.

For mystery, we’re mostly seeking contemporary stories set in the United States. We’d love to see ideas for series.

 We aren’t looking for other fiction genres or nonfiction at this time.

No nudity, sex, profanity, or graphic depictions of sexuality or violence will be accepted. Physical interaction must be limited to hugging and kissing. In murder mysteries, the murder must happen “off the page,” and we tend to avoid other heavy or disturbing content.

We prefer third person, alternating between her and his point of view, but we’ll consider a first-person narrative with an entertaining voice. We’d love to see stories that reflect ethnic diversity.

Please don’t mail physical copies of manuscripts. We accept electronic submissions only. We never read scripts, so please don’t send them.

Thank you so much for your interest in Hallmark Publishing!

No indication of pay, and the terms of use are not all that great. http://www.hallmarkchannel.com/hallmark-publishing/terms-of-use

So I guess check it out if interested, but be cautious if you choose to submit a story.

Just recently discovered this podcast and thought I'd share since I don't recall seeing a thread about it.

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/everyday-theology-podcast/the-prolific-writer

Also on iTunes and so forth. Started late last year and has had a lot of good writers on the show, including Russell Blake, Chris Fox, Libbie Hawker, Wayne Stinnett, Amanda Lee, and others. And soon, some hack with a black-and-white cat on his shoulder.

Each episode is like a mini-course in itself. I've binge-listened most of the episodes and there are some solid gold nuggets in there. So go listen and enjoy and learn up.

Some interesting Amazon-related news.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/16/amazon-is-buying-whole-foods-in-a-deal-valued-at-13-point-7-billion.html

Makes me wonder if they'll carry bestsellng Amazon imprint books in the stores.