In this week's Go Creative! Show Orna Ross chatted with Porter Anderson for another Creative Publishing update. We find out about a new subscription service that is friendly to indie authors, how the international book fair arena is changing, and the level of uncertainty surrounding the President Elect's impact on American writers.
Below is a summary of his three key areas of discussion and the link to listen to Orna's broadcast. This episode also includes a Creative Writing segment about Haikus, and a Creative Living introduction to Sondra Turnbull, of Goddess Kindled, who will moderate Orna's upcoming Creativist Club, which launches in January.
The Go Creative! Show #11: Creative Publishing Podcast
1. Subscription Services for self-publishing authors
A company named Pallatium has put together a program that’s designed to let self-publishing authors get themselves into subscription services in different parts of the world. This is good news because most subscription services tend to draw from publishers and it's hard for indie authors to break into this arena.
They provide an advance, not a very big one, only about $50, but they’ll negotiate with you on that. And they provide monthly royalties and statements so you know where something’s selling around the world, where you’re being subscribed to and you get payments back. Porter
It's still early days for this service and there are still some contract items they need to clarify. It's a curated service. So rather than taking everything, they are vetting the submissions to pick and choose what will be offered.
2. Book Expos
Book Expo is the American cousin counterpart to London Book Fair and Frankfurt Book Fair, and they are rebranding themselves from Book Expo America to Book Expo in an effort to put their best international foot forward. Book Expo plan on doing more with their annual global market focus, although no details on this yet for 2017.
The Beijing International Book Fair (BIBF) is becoming a strong global book fair contender, and this is probably helping push Book Expo into looking outside of its Pacific and Atlantic borders.
Book Expo moved to Chicago for one year in 2016, and their attendance dropped by more than a third. For the May 2017 event, they will be back in New York but will only do two trade show days.
They’re eliminating the cluster of conferences that once stood around the event, like the bloggers conference and UPubU, the independent author’s conference. Porter
All of these trade shows were designed for the trade publishers to meet their trade retailers, and it's difficult for independent authors to reap the rewards of attending one or all of them. But that's why our ALLi Indie Author Fringe events are so successful at filling the void.
Digital Book World is producing a day for indie authors called DBW Indie Author. Jane Friedman and Porter are programming it and it'll be held on January 19th in New York. It’s the first time DBW has produced a day for authors and this is specifically aimed at independent authors. Orna will be at the event, and we'll be announcing more details about what to expect over the next month or so.
3. How will the 45th President impact Indie Authors?
Trump's Presidential win has cast an aura of uncertainty around many national and international activities, and American authors are also in a state of flux wondering how his ascension will affect them. Here's some of the grey areas that Porter mentions in the podcast:
What will happen with tech and the governments relationship with tech and net neutrality?
Will internet traffic continue to be treated equally as has been arranged so far? Or could that be affected?
Intellectual property? What kind of enforcements are going to be on the horizon? Because we have not been sure that freedom of speech is something that our new president elect is heavily interested in. He may be, I want to be careful in saying that we just don’t have an accurate read here. But there are many things that are in flux right now.
And one of the biggest questions for our authors here in the United States, of course, is insurance. The affordable healthcare act, sometimes called Obamacare is what a lot of authors are using for their medical insurance. The Authors Guild may in fact have to consider producing an insurance program of its own for its membership if affordable healthcare is shot down and our president elect has made it clear that he would like to see it deeply changed. Porter
At this point in time there's more questions than answers, but Porter will be keeping his finger on the pulse as this story unfolds and let us know how Trump's actions and decisions will impact authors.
That rounds up the publishing updates from Porter this month, and if you want to read more about those stories in depth, you can find out all the latest publishing news of the month at hotsheetpub.com, which is a subscription magazine produced by Porter and Jane Friedman.
To read a full transcript of this podcast, click here.
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.
I’m intrigued by Pallatium. I Googled but didn’t find anything. How can we contact them?