This week’s round-up of smaller-scale stories begins with some news from the popular X alternative Bluesky. The platform is making it easier to track incoming links from its feed with its go.bsky.app. What this means is that if you want to run analytics to find out where visitors to your articles, stories, or pages are coming from, you can easily track anything that comes from Bluesky.
ALLi News Editor, Dan Holloway
This is part of a concerted effort by the platform to position itself as a destination of choice for people to post, find, and follow links. The site’s algorithm doesn’t punish posts with links in them, unlike other social media platforms that look to keep you scrolling through their feeds and only clicking through somewhere else when doing so generates them revenue.
Self-Publishing Success Story Defies the Stereotypes
Second up is less a news piece and more a rather high-profile longform piece about self-publishing that runs counter to a lot of myths and prejudice. Behind the clickbait title “Are There Too Many Books?” and the introduction featuring Bill Bryson’s unedifying take on indie authors is a really strongly narrated account of indie success, which among other things ties two of the most successful writers of recent years, Sarah J. Maas and Colleen Hoover, to their indie roots.
There are other insights, including from industry insiders, such as questioning not the prolific output of indies but of the Big Five. And the notes of caution it sounds—especially around literary fiction’s struggle for indie authors and the reliance on Amazon—also ring true.
Digital Publishing Award Expands Globally
And finally, thank you to Mark Williams for highlighting the expansion of the Digital Publishing Award, now a global prize. The award celebrates innovation in our world and includes a category for digital leadership. You can’t nominate yourself for that one, but you can nominate one of your peers. Other categories you can nominate yourself for (and I am sure some of you would be fabulous contenders) are for Product / Business Model, Process / Technology, and Start-up.
Thoughts or further questions on this post or any self-publishing issue?
If you’re an ALLi member, head over to the SelfPubConnect forum for support from our experienced community of indie authors, advisors, and our own ALLi team. Simply create an account (if you haven’t already) to request to join the forum and get going.
Non-members looking for more information can search our extensive archive of blog posts and podcast episodes packed with tips and advice at ALLi's Self-Publishing Advice Center.
