On this episode of the Self-Publishing News Podcast, Dan Holloway discusses the first-ever International Summit of Audio Publishers and its significance for the audiobook market. He also covers the administration woes of Australia's largest online bookseller, Booktopia, and the launch of Amazon's new Vella prize.
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About the Host
Dan Holloway is a novelist, poet, and spoken word artist. He is the MC of the performance arts show The New Libertines, He competed at the National Poetry Slam final at the Royal Albert Hall. His latest collection, The Transparency of Sutures, is available on Kindle.
Read the Self-Publishing News Transcripts
Dan Holloway: Hello, and welcome to another Self-Publishing News podcast from a thundery Oxford today, where all our students have now left, finished their parties, done their exams, had, I think, their results. Certainly, by the time this podcast comes out, they will have had their results. Congratulations to those who got what they wanted, to those who didn't, then very best for whatever comes next, and we may see you back again whatever your results were, and thank you for spending time with us; it has been a pleasure.
What Does the UK Government Change Mean for UK Indie Authors?
So, it won't have escaped anyone's notice that this has been a week of elections. Here in the UK we have a new government, and I did want to start off by having a very brief talk about what that might mean for us as indie writers in the UK,, and anyone who's dealing with people or firms in the UK, or freelancers in the UK, because the creative economy was actually quite a major part of the new Labour government's manifesto, or at least the manifesto referenced a document that they produced earlier this year on the creative industries, and they made two key pledges on the creative industries.
One was around copyright protection. They are very keen to uphold the current copyright regime, which is very encouraging. There were also positive noises about technology. It wasn't the kind of positive noises that we have seen from the outgoing government, which very much portrayed this binary between technology and creativity. Instead, it was recognizing that technology and creativity can work together, but that in order to do, it is essential that we place human produced creativity at its centre, which is the phrase they used, and also that we protect copyright and make it worthwhile to people creating original work, which was very interesting to see. We will see what happens actually around that.
Possibly of more immediate relevance to a lot of people in Indie land is what they have to say about freelance work. You will know from the Indie Author Income Survey that most people who describe themselves as writers for a living, that is they spend more than 50 percent of their time that is paid on writing and writing adjacent work, actually spend a huge amount of that on the adjacent bit, a lot of which is freelance or self-employed work like editing or teaching creative writing, ad hoc journalism, things that they get paid for on a piecemeal basis, on a self-employed basis, and the incoming government have pledged to, among other things, extend protections to people who are undertaking such work, but also to ban the practice of late payment of invoices.
This follows the European Union's move to do something similar. If you will remember, I reported that the EU introduced a ban on the late payment of invoices. That is the payment of invoices more than 30 days after the good or service had been received. You will remember that I said the publishing industry have managed to negotiate an exemption from this, because they said we can't possibly do our business unless we pay people late, because of things like returns on the one hand and the fact that, as anyone who has been traditionally published will know, royalty statements and payments based on royalty statements, the polite way of putting it is that they happen in arrears, and they would all fall under what is termed late payment in the European Union's legislation.
So, it will be very interesting to see the UK government's comment on late payment of invoices, it actually came in the context of creative self-employed people. So, maybe they are thinking of not offering such an exemption to the publishing industry, but actually recognizing that people who contribute their labour to an essential part of the industry of which we are a part need to be paid on time. So, that will be very interesting to follow. So, regime change here in the UK.
Australia’s Largest Online Bookseller, Booktopia, Enters Administration
Other things that have come up in the news. In Australia, on the other side of the world from us, sad news that the largest online bookseller, Booktopia has gone into administration.
Booktopia is 20 years old. It was a beneficiary of the fact that for many years, Amazon didn't really take Australia very seriously as a market. It then started to do incredibly well during COVID, but it has more recently struggled. It struggled as Amazon has entered the market. There have also been some shaky moments, in particular around its claiming that titles were in stock, when they turned out not to be, and reduction of its returns period to just two days. So, that lost a little bit of trust with customers.
They also struggled financially having over committed themselves to warehousing space. You'll remember at the start of COVID, I reported a lot on how a lot of firms, Amazon in particular, were increasing their warehouse storage because obviously, things moved to a delivery based system as shops shut, but Booktopia in particular has struggled with the amount of warehousing capacity it has taken on, and as a result, it has gone into receivership and its share price has crashed to about 1.5% of what it was at its peak, which leaves it in a position is not likely, sadly, to recover from.
Bookshops in Australia seem to be doing well but basically, this is going to play into Amazon's hands. It's going to be harder for people to get books online other than from Amazon.
Booktopia did great things, from what I gather, for local creatives, for the local Australian creative economy, in a way that Amazon just doesn't. Sad news there, that we are increasingly seeing.
Amazon Launches ‘The Vellies’ Awards with $62k in Prizes
Seeing things concentrate power in the hands of people like Amazon, which seems like a slightly odd moment to turn to another piece of Amazon news, which is the launch of The Vellies.
So, the Vellies, this is a new prize for anyone based in the U.S. It has $62,000 worth of prize money, and that prize fund includes a first-time author award of $15,000 and a grand prize of $25,000.
As the title, The Vellies, suggests, this is for titles published on Kindle Vella, which is the, is Amazon's serial fiction platform. The criteria are that, by the closing date, and the closing date is 20th of August. By the closing date, there need to be 10 episodes and a total word count of at least 10,000 words. The usual things apply, and when it says for everyone, it doesn't really mean for everyone. It means for everyone, provided you don't write non-fiction, poetry, fan fiction, children's stories, or erotica. But if you write anything else, then give it a go, and very best of luck.
It promises high profile judges, but you need to get there first, obviously, as the things tend to, and the pre-sifting will be done on popularity. So, it will be done on followers. It will be done on readers. But if you can pass those hurdles, then your work will get to a judge, and will be judged on its merit, and I very much hope to report on some ALLi success. Whatever happens. I look forward to reporting on whoever wins, because it's great to see rewards for serialized fiction, which is something that I'm particularly fond of writing as well as reading.
First International Summit of Audio Publishers Announced in New York
What else have we got? We have the first ever, and this is something that surprised me, that we have something called the first ever International Summit of Audio Publishers.
It's a global event taking place in New York in September. It feels really surprising that, as I say, that this is the first time, or it's badging itself as the first big global get together of everyone who is a major stakeholder in the game, and by everyone, they really do mean the big players. So, Audible ACX, Spotify, of course, Overdrive, Storytel. Really good to see people from Arabookverse and other non-English language audio markets. So, a truly global event.
The subject matter is what the subject matter was always going to be. It's a one-day event. These things are very high level. It will be interesting to see what trends come out, but by and large, it's an exercise of soft power by publishers and platforms who want to convince writers and publishers to go with them. So, it will be really interesting for us as authors to see what the sweetener is for us.
Particularly interesting is the panel composition. The AI discussion, the discussion is between a panel host and a representative of Storytel, which is really interesting and seems like a handy way of avoiding obvious controversy.
Spotify, who might be slightly more controversial have been given the task of talking about author empowerment. So, that is clearly something that they're very keen on, obviously. We saw just recently that they have rolled back on their audiobook subscription, so they've now disambiguated a music only subscription from their Spotify premium, which includes audiobook subscriptions. So, their bid, as I mentioned to create this one stop shop for audio is becoming slightly more a la carte.
So, they've gone less all-in on this sort of pile it hight model. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.
They obviously have suffered reputationally from some of the stories that have come out in the music world about the low rates of payment for listens and streams. Obviously, the Audiobook market is different, people don't listen to audiobooks in the same way as they listen to music, in the same volume, for example. We have this very static seeming figure of 1.5 audiobooks a month, which seems to be almost the magic figure of what people who listen to audio, that is how many books they listen to. It's a pretty static and pretty reliable figure.
It does mean that the income that comes from streaming, there is more of it to go around divided amongst a smaller potential set of creators.
The other thing of course that Spotify does, which is really interesting, is the way they slice and dice their offering to listeners. So, you get 15 hours a month. You don't have to do what you have to do with Audible and use the whole credit to buy one book. You can listen to a few minutes of this and a few minutes of that, and your minutes get allocated bit by bit for every book you listen to, and Daniel Ek has said several times that he thinks this is a great way to introduce people to indie authors, to maybe less high-profile titles, the things that they might not find elsewhere.
So, Spotify is clearly keen to show that what they do for authors isn't necessarily the same as the thing they've got a bad rap for, and it will be very interesting to see what they are saying about how they are going to be empowering authors in the audiobook landscape to come.
I will, of course, be reporting on what happens and what is said, but do go along to the news column if you want to find out how to sign up for yourselves. It's September the 10th in New York. I can't see any details at the moment of an online version. This very much seems to be a networking-based event, but nonetheless a very important one.
With that, I'll leave you and look forward to speaking to you all again next week.
