Once a month Orna Ross’s Go Creative! Show focuses on Creative Publishing, and in this latest episode with Porter Anderson, they chat about the Hot Sheet and three newsworthy topics from the past month that are most relevant to authors.
The Go Creative! Show #5: Creative Publishing Podcast
Porter Anderson is Editor in Chief of the Frankfurt-based Publishing Perspectives, which provides an outlook on the whole international industry. He also runs a subscription publication with Jane Friedman, called The Hot Sheet.
What is the Hot Sheet?
The goal of this publication is to bring authors relevant news and information. It's a bi-weekly subscription magazine offering expert and independent news and analysis, which doesn't push a specific agenda.
Jane Friedman is a session speaker at our Frankfurt Indie Author Fringe Event on October 22nd, and you can enter her giveaway on the day for a chance to win a free 12-month subscription of The Hot Sheet.The Hot Sheet covers topical publishing industry changes that affect authors. There were many other publications covering the publishing industry, but there wasn't one specifically targeted at authors, so The Hot Sheet was born.
ALLi also has a regular self-publishing news update. Dan Holloway’s weekly post concentrates on practical news and advice to help authors make a book, sell a book and reach more readers.
3 Hot Topics Relevant to Authors
Here are three segments of publishing news that surfaced recently, which Porter talked about in depth in this Creative Publishing broadcast:
1. Publishing For Authors: ISBNs
Bowker gave Publishing Perspectives first look at its information about how many self-publishing ISBNs it has seen in 2015.
727,125 (US only)
A 21% increase from the previous year, which is a massive sign of the level of activity in self-publishing. A point to note is that this is not equivalent to how many titles were released, and the reason for the distinction here is that more than one ISBN is attached to a title if it’s released in multiple formats, and some self-published books are released without an ISBN.
Porter goes on to explain the drop in Author Solutions ISBNs, which seems to indicate a decline in the vanity press model. Whereas the biggest increase is Createspace, with some strong showings from Smashwords, LuLu, and Blurb.
Here at ALLi, we encourage authors to have their own ISBNs, and this topic is frequently discussed in Orna and Joanna's monthly Ask ALLi broadcast, and here's two informative ISBN articles we featured earlier this year;
2. Publishing For Authors: Amazon Stores
We’re gradually seeing Amazon start moving out into the community as a small neighbourhood entity, opening about three stores per year. The newest one announced is for Boston. The most recent opened is in La Jolla, California, part of San Diego.
Porter wrote an article for Writer UnBoxed about the slow decline of Barnes and Noble, highlighting how Amazon are not opening large stores akin to B&N, instead, they’re opting to open small stores, to gain a presence in the community. In shopping malls, they’re opening pop-up stores that are even smaller, primarily for their devices.
3. Publishing For Authors: Going Global
Porter talked to Orna about the international scene and some of the territory expansion and news that should be on author's radars.
- The Scandinavians, have managed subscription in ways that the rest of us have not. A subscription that is not Amazon, Kindle Unlimited, can still have a very good success rate. StoryTel has recently bought Mofibo, from Denmark, into Sweden and we’re seeing an even greater rise as they begin to produce their own audio.
- There's concern in the German market about the copyright arrangement with the VORT, that collects copyright revenues and divides them historically between the publisher and the author. The courts have said that it’s not legal and the author should have all revenues. That could mean publishers going out of business.
- The AusAsia basin is doing so much to move quickly to a digital format and streaming.
Each country at a little different position and with a little different need, and there’s not enough translation happening among them yet.
Click here for a full transcript of this Broadcast
To find out more about Orna’s Go Creative! Show, Creative Writing, Creative Publishing or Creative Living you can visit her website at OrnaRoss.com and other episodes of the Show can be found here.
You can listen to another conversation between Orna Ross and Porter Anderson live at the Frankfurt Book Fair on October 22nd. Porter Anderson interviews Orna about what the next year is likely to bring for Indie Authors.
Creative Publishing Insights from @ornaross & @porter_anderson #gocreative #podcast #IAF16 Share on X
