ALLi News Editor, Dan Holloway
It’s clearly Amazon competition time. Last week (reminder to enter!) they launched the first-ever Vellys, with $62,000 in prizes for US-based serialized fiction authors. Now in the UK, we have the flagship Kindle Storyteller Award. This has a £20,000 first prize and is open to books published through KDP between the start of May and the end of August. Books must be available as an e-book and a paperback, and must be enrolled in KDP Select until the closing date at the end of August.
For those unfamiliar with the format, like the Vellys, there is a two-stage process. High-profile human judges decide the final winner. In this case, that’s Sara Cox and Vick Hope. But in order to get in front of a judge, you need to satisfy a sifting process based on sales and reviews.
Away from e-books and print, there have been developments in the world of audiobooks. RBmedia is one of the largest audiobook producers in the world, but it seems to come to prominence in the news mainly when it buys or is bought by other companies. Famously owned until last year by KKR, the private equity firm that also snapped up Waterstones and Barnes & Noble, the company sold for $1 billion to another investment firm, H.I.G., after KKR had stripped out its subscription service Audiobooks.com and sold it to Storytel.
Now RBmedia has announced its acquisition of Dreamscape Media. According to RBmedia’s CEO, this will allow the company to “serve a broader set of authors and publishers.” Dreamscape publishes audiobooks to markets in 60 countries and is a platform that offers services to indie authors. As the press release describes the company, “Dreamscape Media is an award-winning independent publisher that produces fiction and nonfiction audiobooks and offers audio publishing services to prominent independent authors through Dreamscape Select.”
I also appreciate the two-stage judging process, having both public review data and reputable judges seems like a fair and comprehensive approach.