The Case for ISBNs
Yesterday's story about Bowker's doomed efforts to measure the ebook market through ISBN registrations reminded me of a related story which had been languishing in my draft folder. Just about [Read More ...]
ISBN
Bowker Now Claims 625,327 US Indie Books Published in 2015, and Other Meaningless Factoids
When Bowker released its annual report (PDF) on ISBNs used by indie authors in the US in 2015, it didn't tell us anything useful besides the fact that indie authors still weren't using ISBNs for [Read More ...]
Why PRH Sold Author Solutions: Business Dropped by a Quarter in 2015
Penguin Random House bought the vanity press Author Solutions (ASI) in 2012, they made sure everyone knew about it, but when Author Solutions was sold in January, PRH didn't announce the deal [Read More ...]
Kobo Expands KWL’s Author Services With Editorial, Conversion, Design Services
Kobo announced on Wednesday that it had negotiated deals with digital publishing service companies to offer discounts to authors and publishers who contract through Kobo Writing Life's Author [Read More ...]
Kobo Plans to Add POD Services to Their Publishing Portal
Kobo sent out an email today to KWL users, inviting them to fill out a survey and explain what features they want: Hi, You indicated interest in our Print-on-Demand service. We're still in [Read More ...]
Scammers Are Using Createspace to Spam Amazon With Pirated Textbooks
A reader has tipped me to the news that Amazon's own website is a great source of pirated books. Scot Schad discovered that pirates had been ripping off freely available digital textbooks, and then [Read More ...]
BookFinder Reports that More People Were Searching for Fly Fishing in 2014 Than for “Sex”
BookFinder offers one of the best search engines for finding rare and out of print books, and every year this Amazon sub releases a new list of the most searched for titles. I've always found [Read More ...]
Author Earnings Report Reveals that 30% of eBooks Sold on Amazon Don’t Have ISBNs
The fifth Author Earnings Report was released this week, and it tells a starkly different tale about the state of the ebook market. As an independent survey of the ebook market, the Author Earnings [Read More ...]
No, You Can’t Track the Growth of Self-Pub by Counting ISBNs
The most accurate statement I can make about the growth rate of the indie/author segment of the publishing industry is that it is nebulous at best. This part of the industry is so fuzzy that it [Read More ...]
Stats Geeks Rejoice – Bowker Releases More ISBN Data
If you've been frustrated by the general lack of accessible info on ISBN usage in indie publishing then I have some good news for you. Bowker, the organization that distributes ISBNs in the US and [Read More ...]
Three Possible Problems With Bowker’s Self-Pub Stats
Did you catch the hot self-pub story today? Bowker released the stub of a new report which analyzes the ISBNs registered to self-published titles in the US in 2012. They found a marked increase in [Read More ...]
eBooks Made Up 12% of ISBNs Registered in the US in 2011
Late last week Amazon announced a Spanish language Kindle Store for the US and world market. Neat story, and I followed it up that with a short post about the 25% of Spanish ISBNs that went to ebooks [Read More ...]
A Quarter of All Spanish ISBNs Are Used for eBooks
Here's an interesting footnote to Amazon's new Spanish language Kindle store. The ebook market is growing by leaps and bounds in the US and UK, that much we know. But today I found a bit of info [Read More ...]
Smashwords bought 50k more ISBNs
Starting in March 2010, Smashwords has been buying ISBNs from Bowker (the company who manages the system) on behalf of the authors and publishers who distribute their ebooks through Smashwords. They [Read More ...]