I recently developed a need for buying children’s books in bulk. I found a couple sources, one great and the other not so great, and I want to share them with you.
Nate Hoffelder
The second shot in law firm Hagens Berman fight against Amazon has been fired.
It’s finally happened.
Amazon has announced that soon it will no longer accept* Mobi files in KDP. They just sent out an email informing authors and publishers that Epub and Doc are now the preferred formats:
The new year is traditionally a time for self-improvement. Some join gyms, others launch new projects, but I like to get introspective.
I think the new year is a great time to reconsider how we can use Gmail to get more done. Gmail is possibly the most widely used email service, but are you getting the most out of it?
The new color ereader I told you about last week now has an official model name.
I was just over at MobileRead, sharing the good news about Kobo’s new ereader, when I found out about the Pocketbook 740.
Amazon may have put Kindle development on hold for the duration, but Kobo has not.
It took 3 weeks longer than I expected, but the Big Five Publishers have been named as co-defendants in the Amazon ebook price-fixing lawsuit.
Barnes & Noble has always offered ebook royalty terms which were better than Amazon’s, and now they’re a lot better.
Earlier today I set out to write a round up post on the topic of feed reader apps. I am trying to devote Sunday morning to staying in bed and catching up on my news feeds on my iPad, and I thought that would be a great reason to download all the apps, test them, and then write a blog post talking about which one was best.
Remember last November when author groups such as ALLi, SFWA, and The Authors Guild wrote an open letter to Amazon protesting Audible’s returns and exchange policies?
We’re finally seeing some progress on this front. While Amazon is still actively promoting returns as a benefit of subscribing, they did just announce on the ACX blog that they are going to launch a new sales dashboard in March 2021. The new dashboard will break out returns by title. (Previously, Audible had provided no info on returns, instead hiding the info by showing only net sales.)
I have the ACX blog post at the end of this post.
On a related note, last November Audible changed its return policies so that creators would still get paid if a customer returned an audiobook months after buying it.
We’re committed to making Audible and ACX the best experience it can be for our creative community, and we’ve heard your feedback. We have been hard at work building a new reporting system to reflect details on returns, including returned units by title. Starting March 2021, you’ll be able to see this data on your ACX Sales Dashboard. This data will also be included in your monthly financial statements for March 2021 and the following months. We appreciate your patience as we invest the time and resources to make these updates to the dashboard and our backend systems, so that we can expand reporting details for our thousands of creators. As of January 1, 2021, we are paying royalties on any return made more than 7 days after purchase.
We are also making other changes to our ACX policies to provide more flexibility, which we know is important to you. Effective February 1, ACX Rights Holders of DIY or Pay-for-Production titles that have been on sale for 90 or more days can convert their distribution type from exclusive to non-exclusive. In addition, all ACX Rights Holders will have the option to terminate after 90 days of distribution, but Rights Holders with Royalty Share or Royalty Share Plus deals must provide Producer consent when making their request. More details about this update will come in the payments letter that will be sent next week.
image by athriftymrs.com via Flickr
News broke this week that Amazon is being sued for colluding with five major publishers to inflate prices. The case was filed by the same law firm that lead the lawsuit against the Price Fix Six back in 2011.
The law firm of Hagens Berman is accusing the world’s largest retailer of colluding to artificially inflate the retail price of e-books through anticompetitive agreements with the nation’s five largest book publishers.
This is a fancy way of saying that the Agency 2.0 contracts, which gave publishers control over their ebook prices, were negotiated conspiratorially, and that the MFN clauses in those contracts illegally helped keep Amazon in a dominant position in the US ebook market.
This case has been well-covered elsewhere, so I will merely link to various sources before getting into a discussion.
- Here’s the press release.
- Here’s the actual filing.
- Coverage in The Guardian.
Here’s the biggest problem with this lawsuit:
Five independently negotiated contracts does not a conspiracy make.
That, folks, is the Achilles heel of this lawsuit. I agree that consumers were harmed by these contracts, yes, but this lawsuit makes a big deal about a conspiracy without presenting any evidence that Amazon conspired.
Sure, that information could come out later, but it probably does not exist. Amazon is well-known for keeping its negotiations so secret that parties are not even allowed to talk about the process, much less the terms agreed to or the information exchanged.
And these lawyers think Amazon conspired with publishers?
Pull the other one, it has bells on.
Furthermore, while I want this lawsuit to be decided in favor of consumers, it probably won’t result in the contracts getting tossed. That is my desired goal, but I don’t see it happening. (Unless of course Amazon also wants the contracts thrown out, so it settles the suit and switches sides in the lawsuit.)
In any case, we are in for a very entertaining 6 to 8 months.
image by luckypines via Flickr
The Book Designer is a blog which most authors should know. Founded by Joel Friedlander, this blog has been around for over ten years now, and in that time it has dispensed sage advice from dozens of experts (including myself).
For the past couple years I have been an occasional contributor to The Book Designer, which is how I found out that The Book Designer was sold just before Christmas. This has not yet been publicly announced (and I don’t know why not) but I just learned that Chandler Bolt bought it.
I can’t really say I know Chandler, but I have interacted with his staff at Self-Publishing School. A few times now, we have talked about a guest post, but so far nothing has jelled. I am not terribly familiar with that site (it’s way out of my price range) but I did find a couple reviews.
Update: Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware tweeted this when I told her the news. She also directed me to BBB complaints about Bolt’s school.
Whoa, really? I may have to reconsider recommending that blog. I periodically get questions about Chandler Bolt and his "school" (mostly as a result of spam-style solicitations) and I've gotten one pretty serious complaint (person also complained to BBB https://t.co/9NbuGaUwKR )
— Victoria Strauss (@victoriastrauss) January 12, 2021
If you’ve worked with Chandler Bolt, or used his Self-Publishing School, I would love to hear about your experiences.
No plans have been announced for the future of The Book Designer, but I do know that publication of new blog posts has been suspended for the time being (I had a guest post scheduled for 4 January).
Edit: I have been asked to clarify the sale:
FYI – just to clarify, Book Design Templates https://www.
bookdesigntemplates.com/ and Author Toolkits https:// authortoolkits.com/ were not a part of the sale to Chandler Bolt of the Self-Publishing School and both remain under the ownership and control of Joel Friedlander and Tracy Atkins.
NetGalley sent out an email today (and put a notice on their home page) informing users that the e-galley service has been hacked on Monday. The hackers defaced the NetGalley home page, and they also may have made off with a backup copy of the NetGalley database.
Here’s the text of the email, which can also be found on the NetGalley website. (There’s also an FAQ.)
Dear NetGalley Member,
It is with great regret that we inform you that on Monday, December 21, 2020 NetGalley was the victim of a data security incident. What initially seemed like a simple defacement of our homepage has, with further investigation, resulted in the unauthorized and unlawful access to a backup file of the NetGalley database.
It is with an abundance of caution that we wanted to let you know this incident may have exposed some of the information you have shared with NetGalley.
The backup file that was impacted contained your Profile information, which includes your login name and password, name and email address. Also, if supplied by you, your mailing address, birthday, company name, and Kindle email address. We currently have no evidence of the exposure of any of this data, but we cannot at this stage rule out the possibility. We expect that you may have many additional questions–below are the questions we would have if we received this email.
Please be assured that we take the security of our members' information very seriously and we sincerely regret that this incident occurred. We immediately reviewed our security standards and just implemented further means to protect your data. The next time you sign in you will be prompted to change your password.
We appreciate your understanding, and thank you for your support. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have other concerns. We wanted to provide you with this information as soon as possible, but like most companies, our team will be offline during the holidays–we will absolutely be available to answer your questions on December 28th. We hope you have a wonderful holiday.
All best,
The NetGalley Team
Google sent out an email today, bringing our attention to their new sales data page.
Dear Partner,
We’ve redesigned how sales data appears in your Google Play Books Partner Center account. In the new Analytics page, you can quickly and easily see an overview of your sales.
This new functionality allows you to view and analyze your sales data by units sold or earnings. You can also filter your sales data by title, book format, country, and custom date ranges.
Additionally, we’ve added new charts displaying Top selling titles, Average sale price, and Top geographies.
You can visit the Analytics tab in your Partner Center now to explore this functionality.
Thanks for being a part of the Google Play Books publishing community.
Have you tried it yet?