Dan Holloway

This author has written 950 articles
Simon And Schuster Launches Digital Imprint

News Summary: Simon and Schuster Launches Digital Imprint Simon Stream; Canadian E-book Spending Falls to Five-Year Low

It feels like it was only a few days ago that I reported on a Big Five publisher launching an imprint to target successful self-published authors. Indeed, I assumed that I was reading more about the same story I had reported on earlier this month. But it's not. Earlier in July, Simon and Schuster announced they were relaunching Pocket Books, the erstwhile mass market paperback imprint, as a press to publish two or three bestselling titles by previously self-published authors per month, with an emphasis on romance. The intention that time was to work with forward-thinking hybrid authors, as they put it.
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Financial Impact Of BookTok

News Summary: Can You Measure the Financial Impact of BookTok? (Apparently So)

We hear a lot about BookTok's positive influence on the creative world, especially among nascent young readers (alongside what we hear about its deleterious influence on the world's youth). In a scenario as old as Socrates, we have booksellers crediting BookTok with rescuing an industry as legislative crackdowns and curfews the world over would have us believe TikTok is an existential threat to the world's young (and some whisper from op-ed columns whether those two statements might refer to the same thing).
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Anthropic Settlement

News Summary: Judge Issues Final Approval for $1.5 Billion Anthropic Settlement; Copyright Office Proposes Fee Increase

For those of you waiting to receive some kind of compensation in the Anthropic lawsuit (and indeed those who are waiting on other potential lawsuits and wondering if anything other than hot air is ever likely to come of them), the wait is one step closer to being over. A judge has issued the final approval for the $1.5 billion settlement in the class action case of Bartz v. Anthropic. This will see each of the 91.3 percent of titles in the eligible class whose owners came forward receive payment.
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Perplexity Launches An Ebook Store

News Podcast: Perplexity Launches an Ebook Store; Library of Congress Acquires Indie Books; Spotify Passes 100 Million Audiobook Listeners

On this episode of Self-Publishing with ALLi, Dan Holloway covers three stories pointing in the same direction: books are everywhere. He reports on AI search engine Perplexity launching an ebook store, adding yet another major platform to the growing list selling books directly to readers. He examines the Library of Congress's initiative to acquire indie and self-published titles — and explains why copyright registration and deposit matter more than ever in the age of AI lawsuits. And he closes with Spotify's announcement that it has passed 100 million audiobook listeners, now dwarfing Audible in audience size.
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KDP Raises Its Top Royalty Ceiling

News Podcast: KDP Raises Its Top Royalty Ceiling; Bookshop.org Launches UK Audiobooks; Dystomance Is the New Romantasy

On this episode of Self-Publishing with ALLi, Dan Holloway covers three positive stories: KDP raising the upper price limit for its top royalty bracket from $9.99 to $12.99, effective July 7th; Bookshop.org launching audiobooks for UK readers on a £12.99 monthly subscription designed to deepen ties between readers and their local indie bookstores; and the rise of dystomance — the blend of dystopia and romance trending on BookTok, with a self-published title helping drive the wave.
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What Librarians Look For

News Summary: ALA Meeting Reveals What Librarians Look for When Ordering Indie Titles

Earlier this month saw the annual meeting of the American Library Association (ALA). Long-time indie supporter Guy LeCharles Gonzalez was there and reported back some invaluable insights. It follows a number of items featuring libraries and the issue of pricing, specifically the way librarians believe e-books should be priced for library usage. This time, the main point of interest is on discovery, and two related questions: what are librarians looking for from indie titles? And how can indie authors make their titles easier for librarians looking for those things to find (and, crucially, to go ahead and order once they have been found)?
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Amazon Raises KDP

News Summary: Amazon Raises KDP 70% Royalty Cap to $12.99; Bookshop.org Launches Audiobooks in UK

Breaking news: as of July 7, Amazon has extended the upper limit of the 70 percent KDP royalty bracket to $12.99 from $9.99. That allows some books to have a higher ticket price reflecting an author's desire to price within the market, without having to take a hit down to the 35 percent royalty rate. For those in that $10–$12.99 range currently, you may be eligible to switch to 70 percent per the FAQs, but will not automatically be switched.
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EU Adds Tariff On Book Imports

News Podcast: EU Adds Tariff on Book Imports; The Economist Charts AI Publishing Surge; Pocket Books Returns for Indies

On this episode of Self-Publishing with ALLi, Dan Holloway covers four stories: a new EU tariff that will affect authors shipping books directly to European readers; The Economist's striking data showing book publishing volumes have doubled since ChatGPT launched in 2022; the Commonwealth Short Story Prize awarding its top prize to the very story accused of AI authorship; and the relaunch of Simon and Schuster's Pocket Books imprint, which is specifically targeting successful indie and hybrid authors for a romance-first print list launching in January 2027.
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AI-Generated Books Now Match Human Output

News Summary: Economist Graph Shows AI-Generated Books Now Match Human Output at 150,000 Titles Monthly

Wherever books are discussed, the past few weeks have seen heated discussion of a graph that appeared in the Economist. It puts flesh on the bones of that "million more books" claim that did the rounds a little earlier. What it shows is the correlation between the steepening of the "books published" figures and the release of ChatGPT 3.5 in November 2022. In classic hockey-stick style, it shows AI-generated books sharply increasing to the point where they are equaling the number of non-AI-generated titles at around 150,000 a month.
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