Nate Hoffelder

I am currently following a discussion over on KBoards about Kobo and Walmart, and one author just dropped a useful nugget of information that authors might find useful.

Kobo is telling authors who distribute through Kobo Writing Life that they need to limit their book descriptions because:

As you have may have heard, Kobo is going to be launching with Walmart in the US very soon. We wanted to let you know that due to a limitation on Walmart.com’s side, they are not able to accept book descriptions longer than 4000 characters. This limit includes spaces, punctuation, and all embedded HTML. A description that is longer than 4000 characters will not completely block the book from being sent to Walmart.com, but it will result in the description showing as blank on Walmart product pages.

It occurred to me this morning that I didn’t know whether Kobo had told any else about this restriction, so it might be worth passing along.

If you are an author who uses book distributors like Draft2Digital to put your books in Kobo, now would be a good time to check your book descriptions and make sure that they are compatible with Walmart’s rules.

Speaking of which, I’ll go ask Kobo for any other helpful suggestions.

Stay tuned.

in response to Sunday’s article on Amazon prime Reader launching in France, a reader sent me an email with the news that the service has also launched in Spain and Italy some time ago. (thanks, Dave!)

Amazon Prime subscribers in those two countries can now read from a catalog of thousands of titles, including Star Wars graphic novels, Harry Potter, Twilight, and for Dummies books as well as Lonely Planet travel guides (in English).

Amazon Prime Reading is bundled with Prime memberships, and the content is licensed from authors in exchange for a flat fee (and possibly publishers , although we can’t say for sure).

Amazon officially launched support for Arabic-language ebooks today. Said ebooks could be read on the Kindle since early this month, and were available in the Kindle Store since last November.

Amazon announced today that Kindle customers around the globe can now enjoy reading from a growing selection of more than 12,000 Arabic language Kindle books on Kindle devices and the free Kindle app for iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets and Fire Tablets. Starting today, readers will find a large digital selection of popular Arabic language titles in the Kindle Store including books from leading authors like Naguib Mahfouz, and Nizar Qabani, best-sellers like Al Aswad Yaliko Biki and Harbo Alkalbi Athania (winner of the 2018 International Prize for Arabic Fiction), classics like Ibn Khaldoun’s Muqadimah, Al-Mutanabbi’s anthology, and Kalila wa Dimna as well as translated English language bestsellers like How to Win Friends and Influence People, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, A Tale of Two Cities and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Customers can shop for Arabic language Kindle books on existing Amazon websites including www.amazon.com/KindleArabic, www.amazon.co.uk/KindleArabic, and www.amazon.de/arabischeEbooks.

The APA (Audio Publishers Association) released a new report last week that showed audiobooks generated $2.5 billion in sales in the USA last year, up 22.7% over 2016.

The report is based on 1,009 online surveys, and numerous focus group polling. The data was weighted to the audiobook market, resulting in the released figures.

Are the figures correct? I do not know, but I can say that publishers are acting like this is a huge market – in some cases audiobook publishers are paying more for audio rights than authors can get for print/digital rights. Whether that is a sign of a huge market or a bubble, I can’t say.

Who listens to audiobooks?

• 54% of audiobook listeners are under the age of 45.
• Audiobook listeners consume books in all formats with 83% of frequent listeners having read a hardcover or paperback in the last 12 months and 79% having read an ebook.
• Audiobook listeners read or listened to an average of 15 books in the last year, and 57% of listeners agreed or strongly agreed that “audiobooks help you finish more books.”

How and where are they listening?

• Smartphone usage continues to grow with 73% of listeners using these devices and an increase in the percentage of listeners using this device most often: 47% in 2018 vs. 29% in 2017 and 22% in 2015.
• Smart speakers are increasingly impacting the audiobook world with 24% of listeners saying they have listened on a smart speaker and 5% saying they listen most often on a smart speaker.
• 53% of listeners say they most often listen at home and 36% say their car is where they listen most often.
• The top three activities while listening to audiobooks are: driving (65%), relaxing before going to sleep (52%), and doing housework/chores (45%).
• 73% of audiobook consumers agree that listening to audiobooks is relaxing.
• 55% agreed or strongly agreed that they chose to listen to an audiobook “when they want some time to themselves.”

Additional Key Findings

• Of the over 46,000 titles produced on audio in 2017, the most popular genres purchased were Mysteries/Thrillers/Suspense, Science Fiction, and Romance.
• The top three reasons why people enjoy listening to audiobooks are: 1) They can do other things while listening (81%); 2) They can listen wherever they are (80%); and 3) Audiobooks are portable (75%).
• Libraries remain major access channels for audiobooks and important drivers of audiobook discovery. 52% of people said borrowing from a library/library website was important or very important for discovering new audiobooks. 43% of listeners said they downloaded an audiobook from a library and 14% said that most often use the library for their digital listening.

Chris Lynch, co-chair of the APA’s Research Committee and president and publisher of Simon & Schuster Audio, commented: "In addition to the continued stellar sales growth, the results show that our customers are finding more opportunities to listen. Our heaviest users are book lovers in all formats, and their increased use of audiobooks is allowing them to get through more books, more quickly."

image by Will Folsom

Following several years of quiet debate, a division of the American Library Association has announced that it will be changing the name of its children book award.

From The Guardian:

The board of the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) made the unanimous decision to change the name on Saturday, at a meeting in New Orleans. The name of the prize was changed from the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal to the Children’s Literature Legacy Award.

The association said Wilder “includes expressions of stereotypical attitudes inconsistent with ALSC’s core values”.

The first award was given to Wilder in 1954. The ALSC said Wilder’s work continued to be published and read but her “legacy is complex” and “not universally embraced”.

Wilder was born in 1867 and died in 1957. She is best known for her eight Little House on the Prairie novels, about pioneer life in the American West, which were published between 1932 and 1943.

Wilder is not the first to be removed from an award due to the author’s racism; the World Fantasy Award used to feature a bust of H P Lovecraft before it was changed in 2015. It was widely known that Lovecraft was racist, but the prize was only changed four years after the award was won by Nigerian-American author Nnedi Okorafor, who only learned of Lovecraft’s racism as a result of her win, and the year after Somali-American Sofia Samatar won.

Scholars have been discussing the racism in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books for decades, but it was only in the last few years that the issue started getting widespread attention for the racist attitudes toward Native Americans as well as the racist cultural references toward African Americans.

It was only a matter of time before her name was removed from the award, and frankly, I am surprised those books are still being used in schools – they amount to cultural propaganda and should not be taught to impressionable minds. They present an idealized version of a period of American history that glosses over the many darker aspects of that period, so much so that the racism is only the first problem with the books.

Prime Reading is a part of Amazon Prime where readers can access thousands of ebooks for free.

The service initially launched in the US in late 2016, then expanded to the UK, Austria/Germany, China, and now France.

Amazon.fr added a Prime reading feature to Amazon Prime this week. Subscribers can now access thousands of ebooks, all for free. It’s hard to tell the exact figure (that is shown only to paying customers) but I am told that Harry Potter books are included, and so are Anna Gavalda.

The service is free to readers, but authors and publishers are paid a flat fee for putting their works in Prime Reading for a set period of time. The payment and period varies based on a book’s popularity, with Amazon paying anywhere from 100 euros to a couple thousand dollars for the rights to include a book in Prime Reading for a period of 180 days. (The book will of course remain in the regular Kindle Store during that time.)

IDBoox

Whip out the Advil, because a recent ruling by the US Supreme Court is going to cause a lot of headaches for authors and other small operators who sell online.

The Court issued a ruling today in South Dakota v. Wayfair which overturned decades of precedent and created a thorny tax problem for sellers.

From Ars:

State governments may require online retailers to collect sales taxes even in states where the retailers have no physical presence, the US Supreme Court ruled in a decision issued today.

The 5-4 ruling could clear the way for more states to require collection of sales taxes on products ordered online from out-of-state retailers.

The case, South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc., Et Al., involved a South Dakota state law "requiring out-of-state sellers to collect and remit sales tax 'as if the seller had a physical presence in the State,'" the decision noted. Online retailers argued that the law was unconstitutional, and the State Supreme Court agreed, but the US Supreme Court overturned the state court ruling. South Dakota expects to collect another $48 million to $58 million in taxes a year because of this ruling.

The South Dakota Supreme Court based its ruling on a 1992 US Supreme Court case, Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, which held that out-of-state companies don’t have to collect state sales taxes in states where they don’t have a physical presence.

Today’s Supreme Court ruling said the Quill decision was flawed:

Quill imposes the sort of arbitrary, formalistic distinction that the Court’s modern Commerce Clause precedents disavow in favor of "a sensitive, case-by-case analysis of purposes and effects." It treats economically identical actors differently for arbitrary reasons. For example, a business that maintains a few items of inventory in a small warehouse in a State is required to collect and remit a tax on all of its sales in the State, while a seller with a pervasive Internet presence cannot be subject to the same tax for the sales of the same items.

"Forty-one States, two Territories, and the District of Columbia have asked the Court to reject Quill’s test," today’s ruling, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, also said. "Helping respondents' customers evade a lawful tax unfairly shifts an increased share of the taxes to those consumers who buy from competitors with a physical presence in the State. It is essential to public confidence in the tax system that the Court avoid creating inequitable exceptions."

The thing about this ruling is that it applies to all sellers, including authors who sell ebooks, print books, and other products on their websites.

If you sell direct (and reside in the USA) then you will need to find a way to collect sales tax for every state in the US. I expect that payment processors like Stripe and Paypal will have to step up and start collecting taxes on the seller’s behalf; it is frankly beyond the abilities of most small sellers.

I don’t have the answer right now how you would collect taxes, but I plan to look into it and devote a newsletter to it.

image by Oneras

B&N’s once mighty ebook division has fallen on hard times. What at one point was a billion dollar a year business has now shrunk to the point that there are digital publishing startups that have more revenue and larger work forces.

Barnes & Noble reported in its annual SEC filing that annual Nook revenues for the period ending 28 April totaled $111.5 million, down from $146.5 million the previous fiscal year. That is a decline of 24% in just a single year, and a decline of close to 90% from peak revenues in 2012.

The Nook division accounted for 3% of B&N’s revenues, with gifts and toys accounting for 28% and media (including books, DVDs, etc) accounting for 69%.

B&N also told the SEC that as of 28 April, the Nook division employed 57 people, including part-time workers. It’s not clear how many of those provide tech support, but we do know that many parts of the Nook division have been outsourced or shut down. eReader hardware development, for example, used to be handled in-house but has since been handed off to Netronix, a Taiwan-based OEM.

B&N had reduced staff and outsourced functions in a bid to reduce cost and turn the Nook division profitable; however, Nook continued to show an operating loss last fiscal year, costing B&N $36.3 million.

Edit: And yet somehow the Nook division also turned a profit, according to Forbes:

B&N CFO Allen W. Lindstrom noted in an earnings conference call that, ‘NOOK turned its first ever full-year profit, generating $3.5 million of EBITDA. Sales declines were offset by continued cost rationalization.'

Amazon is about to throw a wrench in authors' carefully made plans.

Reports are coming in that some time in the next month, Amazon will be sending Createspace users an email informing them that Createspace is merging into KDP Print. Yes, the inevitable is about to happen, but it’s not all bad; according to my source, legacy pricing for existing Createspace users will still be available (Createspace’s pricing was better in some markets).

Launched in July 2016, KDP Print is intended to give authors an easy to to manage both their print and digital books in a single location. In its early days access was quite limited, but the service opened for a public beta test early last year, and Amazon has been adding features ever since.

The newer platform doesn’t quite have the same features as Createspace, but according to experts there are good reasons to choose either one. It appears, however, that Amazon might soon no longer give authors a choice.

Or so early reports suggest; I am still working to confirm this rumor. The Createspace website is down at this time, thus making it impossible to see if they have posted a notice, and Amazon hasn’t responded yet to my query.

Have you been told anything by KDP or Createspace support? Can you go ask them and see what they say?

Update: I think we have confirmation from Amazon:

We don’t comment on rumors or speculation. However, as we’ve said previously in response to author inquiries, CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing are both part of the same team that helps authors publish and sell their books. They also use the same facilities and printers. Both services will be fully integrated in the future. This will allow us to innovate even faster for customers.

image by blogefl via Flickr

Earlier this week Amazon released a statement tangential to the ongoing problem of cheating in Kindle Unlimited, but as with many of Amazon’s statements the bigger story is what was left unsaid.

To recap, Amazon has a problem with people gaming the system in Kindle Unlimited. This issue has been around since the beginning, and as Amazon changed the rules to thwart the cheats, the cheaters changed their tactics in what is no more or less than a game of whack-a-mole.

In the early days people were uploading really short books, and were getting paid for a loan when the 10% threshold was reached (with a 10 to 20 page book, this didn’t take long). Amazon fixed that by switching to a system where they paid based on the number of pages read by subscribers, and in response the scammers invented the book-stuffing con and started uploading really long books.

The way that the book-stuffing con works is that scammers stuff lots of extra content into an ebook before uploading it to Kindle Unlimited, and then trick readers into jumping to the end of the book. This worked because at the time Amazon could only track a reader’s location but not which pages they had read.

Amazon announced this week that the jump to the end trick no longer worked:

In response to concerns we’ve heard from authors, we wanted to take a moment to clarify in more detail how we measure pages read to calculate the monthly allocation of the KDP Select Global Fund.

We have worked steadily over time to improve the fidelity of the KENPC system that measures the number of pages read. For the vast majority of cases, KENPC v3.0 records actual pages read with a high degree of precision. For the few remaining cases, such as very old devices, we employ several processes and technologies (both manual and automated) to accurately measure pages read. In addition, we regularly audit the pages read of top titles.

Our commitment to the fair allocation of the KDP Select Global Fund remains a top priority. That includes addressing attempts to manipulate our services. If you have direct evidence of these types of activities, we will review every single example provided to us at [email protected].

There were reports last fall that this had been fixed, but I have also heard from authors who disagreed, so it is good to finally get a statement from Amazon.

But even so, while Amazon may claim to count pages read with exactitude, authors argue that the way Amazon measures a page size is less an exact science than a wild guess or perhaps a randomly generated number.

Authors are saying over on KBoards that it is possible to make minor changes to an ebook’s formatting and end up with significantly different KENPC. One said he could format his ebook fiver different times and get five different KEPNCs, and another wrote:

I contacted my rep about this just a few months ago when I was reuploading a few books and watching the KENPC change. I waited, made a small tweak, uploaded again, and got another different page count. Often by 20+ pages. Using Vellum for formatting, no hacks, and there’s significant variability among books with similar word count. This is one of the most frustrating things for me. It needs consistency or it will forever be gamed.

And a third wrote:

My two most recent books (1 and 2 in a series), formatted exactly the same with identical front and back matter. 66,006 words=369 KENP. 62,445 words=308 KENP. On one book, 202 words per page. On the other book, 178 words per page. My writing style and language doesn’t vary that much between the two books. One book has 6% fewer words, and 5% fewer characters including spaces, but it is allocated 17% fewer KENP.

The thing is, folks, if one page in Book A is equal to 1.2 pages in Book B and 0.8 pages in Book C then it really doesn’t matter how carefully Amazon counts the pages.

Any count reported by Amazon is fundamentally bullshit because there is no single standard page size.

Let me phrase it another way: Amazon’s accounting system in Kindle Unlimited is broken on a fundamental level.

Cheaters are and will continue to be a serious problem (they already know how to format their books to maximize page counts) but the much larger problem is that no two authors are being paid the same way.

The emperor truly has no clothes, folks.

image by bdesham

In spite of cheats like Chance Carter, the third largest ebook market in the world continued to expand in May 2018.

Amazon announced on Friday that the Kindle Unlimited funding pool total $22.5 million in May (plus bonuses – most of which went to the cheats) up from $21.2 million in April 2018. At the same time the per-page rate royalty hovered at $0.00454 in May, compared to $0.00456 in April and $0.004449 in March 2018.

• US: $0.0045 (USD)
• UK: £0.0035 (GBP)
• Germany: €0.0031 (EUR)
• Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy: €0.0045 (EUR)
• Canada: $0.0045 (CAD)
• Brazil: R$ 0.0110 (BRL)
• India: 0.0883729 (INR)
• Japan: 0.5631 (JPY )
• Mexico, Australia: unknown

Here’s a list of the monthly funding pools. It does not include the bonuses paid out each month.

• July 2014: $2.5 million (Kindle Unlimited launches early in the month)
• August 2014: $4.7 million
• September 2014: $5 million
• October 2014: $5.5 million
• November 2014: $6.5 million
• December 2014: $7.25 million
• January 2015 – $8.5 million
• February 2015: $8 million
• March 2015: $9.3 million
• April 2015: $9.8 million
• May 2015: $10.8 million
• June 2015: $11.3 million
• July 2015: $11.5 million
• August 2015: $11.8 million
• September 2015: $12 million
• October 2015: $12.4 million
• November 2015: $12.7 million
• December 2015: $13.5 million
• January 2016: $15 million
• February 2016: $14 million
• March 2016: $14.9 million
• April 2016: $14.9 million
• May 2016: $15.3 million
• June 2016: $15.4 million
• July 2016: $15.5 million
• August 2016: $15.8 million
• September 2016: $15.9 million
• October 2016: $16.2 million
• November 2016: $16.3 million
• December 2016: $16.8 million
• January 2017: : $17.8 million
• February 2017: : $16.8 million
• March 2017: $17.7 million
• April 2017: $17.8 million
• May 2017 :$17.9 million
• June 2017: $18 million
• July 2017: $19 million
• August 2017: $19.4 million
• September 2017: $19.5 million
• October 2017: $19.7 million
• November 2017: $19.8 million
• December 2017: $19.9 million
• January 2018: $20.9 million
• February 2018: $20 million
• March 2018: $21 million
• April 2018: $21.2 million
• May 2018: $22.5 million

via Self Publisher Bibel

Instafreebie and other free ebook sites are a great way to give away ebooks, but not all readers are capable of loading an ebook on their Kindle.

That is why some authors give away copies bought in the Kindle Store, and now Amazon is making it easier.

Last week they announced a new bulk purchase option for Kindle ebooks.

Now, Amazon enables you to purchase multiple copies of your eBook in a single order.

As an author, a great way to build your brand is to run social media giveaways, gift your eBooks to readers at a conference, and/or send an eBook to your newsletter subscribers.

When you purchase multiple copies of a Kindle book on Amazon, we create a set of redemption links, one for each copy of the eBook. You can distribute these links to any reader on Amazon.com.

To get started, find an eBook, choose “Buy for Others”, and select the quantity of eBooks you’d like to purchase.

Visit our Help Page to learn more about our new Kindle feature “Buy for others”.

Paying retail for a volume order of ebooks is rather expensive, but there are some readers that can’t be reached any other way.

image by Tinh Te Photos

Launched in late 2016, KDP Print is Amazon’s solution for a single publishing portal that covers both print and digital books (audiobooks are probably on the roadmap as a future addition – KDP Audio, anyone?).

Many authors beleive Amazon intends for KDP Print to replace Createspace, and now it looks like Amazon may be using a subtle but annoying tactic to get authors to leave Createspace.

There’s a thread over at KBoards where authors have been sharing their recent experiences with  Createspace  demanding proof that the authors own the copyright on their books. For example:

I’ve used Createspace since 2013. I noticed a drastic decrease in quality control when KDP print launched. In four of the almost five years I’ve been using Createspace, I’ve never had any copyright verification requests. This year, I’ve received 18. Some of them, like the ones with a pen name, I rolled my eyes and responded to the email. Even more, were non-English editions published under the name on my Createspace account. Again, I rolled my eyes and replied to the email. Yesterday, I was updating my superhero novel cover with a new back cover blurb, and I get a verification email. The novel in question has been on my Createspace account since it’s publication in 2015, and uses the same author name that the Createspace account is registered with. There is absolutely no reason for Amazon to verify copyright other than they want to make continuing to use Createspace difficult to those of us who don’t want the hassle of using KDP Print.

It’s really hard to tell whether this is an over-zealous bot or an intentional policy, but there is a report that the uptick in verification requests came at the request of Amazon. "I asked one of the reps what was the deal of so many of these happening to independent authors and they confirmed there was an algorithm issue causing a much larger slew of items being triggered," an author reported. "They also said this was something initiated on the Amazon-side of the company outside of Createspace and they had to go through the 'procedures' as specified."

At this point the discussion I have been able to find is mostly limited to KBoards, so it is difficult to judge the scale of the problem.

Have you gotten one of these emails? Is this a hot topic in private backchannel conversations?

image by Eleaf

The Authors Guild has a well-deserved reputation for being a puppet of legacy publishers. This group has never missed an opportunity to bash Amazon and spread FUD (even though Amazon does more business with authors than publishers pay in royalties).

This is why I was surprised to read that The Authors Guild says they have set up a way that members can use to resolve disputes with Amazon.

After discussions with Amazon, we have agreed to an additional procedure that will directly flag issues where Authors Guild members feel they are being harmed as authors (not as customers), and online communications with Amazon have not borne fruit in a timely manner. Authors Guild members may now file complaints directly with the Guild. The Guild will review all of the author complaints to determine whether they raise problems that Amazon can or should address.

The Guild will not be able to successfully resolve every issue, of course; but in cases where the incident has been in violation of Amazon’s policies, they have worked with us to resolve them. In other cases, Amazon has heard us out and has been willing to review policies that work to the detriment of authors.

HOW TO LET US KNOW ABOUT YOUR ISSUES WITH AMAZONAuthors Guild members may contact us at [email protected] or here if 1) they have an issue with their books’ Amazon listings, such as where a third-party seller has won the “buy box” when there are publisher copies readily available, 2) infringing copies of their books are being sold, or 3) fake or abusive reviews of their books remain on their books’ pages. We ask that members attempt to resolve these problems directly with Amazon first through their normal complaint procedures

This option is only available to TAG members, and we don’t yet know if it will help, but god knows the industry needs this.

I have heard way to many horror stories about authors being punished by Amazon without ever being told exactly why. In many cases, the authors' only recourse is to ask for an explanation, and then after they get a form email response, appeal to Jeff Bezos.

Any alternative to the current situation is a huge improvement.

image by streetwrk.com