This Week’s Self-publishing News: Opening Up

The talk of the self-publishing town this week is one that is indie music to my ears! In Monday's opinion slot, Orna will have ALLi's official response to the implications for self-publishers of Britain voting to leave the EU, for authors selling into and out of the UK. In the meantime, life goes on for readers and writers, and this seems to have been a week of opening up to indies.

Opening Up to Indies!

Encouraging news for indies – the British Book Design and Production Awards (full details here) is very keen to get more self-published authors involved in order to recognise the quality of books being produced. A great chance to have Indieland's excellence showcased. Meanwhile, incredibly exciting news for anyone who uses Wattpad and spent their youth like I did! The iconic show Tales From the Crypt is coming back to our screens, and it's scouring Wattpad for great horror stories to adapt! Full details here.

Monetising Free

“Free” has been a controversial word for self-publishers probably since before money was a thing. iReadBooks is a very interesting looking site that attempts to provide an answer to the vexed question of how to allow authors the benefits of using free whilst also providing some kind of financial recompense. The model iReadBooks uses is a sponsorship one, with third parties funding the author's cut in return for eyeball space. It is a very interesting idea, but at the moment it comes with the usual ALLi caveat in such circumstance that it awaits review from our watchdog.

Rounding Up the Usual Suspects

The updated Kindle white

It feels like Amazon has been everywhere this week. Readers will have noticed a few dollars trickling into their accounts with Amazon, Kobo, Nook and iBooks to follow), finally, as a result of the ebook price fixing antitrust settlement. Meanwhile, the announcement a new Kindle Instant Book Preview widget is incredibly exciting. It means, essentially, that you can embed the “look inside” feature on your website, and that means something incredibly important for marketing – that you can keep readers embedded in the environment of your website while they fall in love with your book. There's also news of a new, more powerful equally affordable Kindle for your readers to read it on. Barnes and Noble, meanwhile, have issued figures (here) that are not so hot though look set to improve.

Amazon in India

Meanwhile, news from Amazon in India that new online stores are opening for books in Bengali and Gujurati. This further investment in India is most welcome, though it is still the case that KDP does not support books in these languages, so we hope for further updates soon!

And finally

We all know indies love editors, but if there's one thing you will never get editors to agree on it's the Oxford, or serial, comma. This week's viral grammar video explains its origins!

Upcoming conferences and events

JUNE 2016

Dublin Writers Conference: June 24 – 26 [Dublin, Ireland] Seoul International Book Fair: June 15 – 19 [Seoul, Korea] ALA Annual Conference,  June 23–28 [Orlando]

JULY 2016

Evesham Festival of Words July 1-3 (Evesham, UK] Beacon Lit, July 2, Ivinghoe UK
ThrillerFest X, July 5–9 [New York City] Romantic Novelists' Association Annual Conference July 8-10 [Lancaster, UK] Comic-Con International, July 21–24 [San Diego, Calif] Hong Kong Book Fair: July 20 – 26 [Hong Kong, China] South African Book Fair: July 29 – 31 [Johannesburg, South Africa]

AUGUST 2016

Writer’s Digest Conference, Aug. 12–14 [ New York City]

SEPTEMBER 2016

Historical Novelists' Association Annual Conference Sept 2-4 [Oxford, UK] Kentucky Women Writers Conference,  Sept. 16–17 [Lexington] Word on the Street, Sept. 25 [Toronto, Canada] RomCon, Sept. 30–Oct. 1 [Denver] Chicago Writers Conference, Sept. 23-25 [Chicago]

OCTOBER 2016

Frankfurt Book Fair, Oct. 19–23 [Frankfurt, Germany] Frankfurt Book Fair Indie Author Fringe, Oct. 12 [Online Conference]

(The above list may not include all the major events; please feel free to email us with any important ones we’ve missed out, or include in comments below.)