To employ an irresistible seasonal pun, it is the time of year when we begin to wrap up. In the Northern Hemisphere that means putting on an extra jumper (at our end of term work party we raised environmental awareness for the cold season by having an “ugly jumper theme” and I have only just realized what a wonderful photo opportunity I missed); those who celebrate such things will be starting to coat tomorrow's landfill with dead tree (all festive spirit, me); and most important of all, every self-respecting blog or column about anything is beginning its round of of the year's best. You will be very pleased to know that my fear of being rapped (see what I did there) over the knuckles by higher editorial authorities will keep this column entirely listless.
Kindle in India
We have heard a lot recently about Amazon's investment and expansion in India. This week, with thanks for the tip to Ritesh Kala, saw the announcement that Amazon's Kindle store in India would support ebooks in five languages – Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Gujarati and Malayalam. If paper books remain an essential part of the game in India, the growing ebook market offers huge potential, and now the possibility of translation into these five languages brings very interesting possibilities.
It's Chriiiiiiiistmas: Cyber Monday
straddling the old and new, digital and physical, Oxford Christmas tree between historic St Luke's Chapel and the brand new Maths Institute
Christmas comes but once a year, but the opportunity to spend money on it does not. It does, however, cluster in a few hotspots and few are hotter than Cyber Monday, which seems actually to be not so much a Monday as a whole weekend, at least to the point where it merges with Black Friday, which begins the preceding Monday. One not so surprising fact from this year's Cyber weekend is that, at least in the US, Amazon remains by far the biggest game in town, capturing 31% of sales. A more interesting breakdown of that figure is the substantial growth in sales of cyber devices including, after a year of stories of the decline of the tablet and ereader, the Fire Tablet.
Check your sales dashboards
Sales dashboards have been something of a topic this week. Just over a month ago we brought you news that the merging of Createspace and KDP dashboards was in beta testing. ALLi members have heard a lot of stories this week in particular of authors noticing this feature, which suggests that the beta is expanding and will soon go fully live (thank you to David Penny for alerting me to this trend). Meanwhile, those authors lucky enough to be selling copies on Nook have reported seeing those sales disappear from their dashboards this week. Do keep an eye on your dashboard there, and when someone gets to the bottom of what is happening, we will let you know.
Taxes
You know that nothing excites me quite as much as the subject of sales tax. So I'm delighted to have two pieces of news to bring you this week. First comes the news that Iowa is the latest state in the US to consider imposing sales tax on ebooks. Meanwhile, news from the European Union comes confirmation that EU law now allows member states to charge the same lower (or no) rate of VAT on ebooks as paper books.
And finally…
I love the possibilities digital culture offers. And as proof it needn't get in the way of “real life” this is me at a real life panel at Turl Street Arts Fair discussing digital culture.
You know by now that I like to stuff this feature full of weird and wonderful technological advances. This has been a rather strange week in the media because what I've noticed is an overwhelming number of pieces that do quite the opposite, pointing a negative finger at technology. To the extent my personal Facebook has seen the instigation of a daily “J'accuse” slot taking the technophobes to task. This is a sample of what I mean. Many of you will agree with the sentiments of the pieces. Some, like me, will not. We should all be aware of the trend. Jonathan Safran Foer has been claiming that being online diminishes us whilst this post bandwaggoning the unstoppable “hygge” trend extols the allegedly simple life, and this opinion piece urges us all to break from social media.
Upcoming Conferences and Events
JANUARY 2017
New Delhi World Book Fair, Jan 7-15 [New Delhi] Digital Book World, Jan 17-19 [New York]
FEBRUARY 2017
San Francisco Writers Conference, Feb 16-19 [San Francisco] Association of Writers and Writing Programs, Feb 8 [Washington]
MARCH 2017
London Book Fair, Mar 14-16 [London] Indie Author Fringe, Mar 18
APRIL 2017
Resonate, Apr 19-22 [Belgrade] The Self-publishing Conference, Apr 22 [Leicester]
MAY 2017
99U Conference, May 5 [New York] Book Expo America, May 31 – Jun 2[New York]
JUNE 2017
Indie Author Fringe, Jun 3
OCTOBER 2017
Frankfurt Book Fair, Oct 11-15 [Frankfurt] Indie Author Fringe, Oct 14
All the week's top #selfpub news from @indieauthoralli for #indieauthors Share on X
[…] The Alliance of Independent Authors news update from Tuesday 6th December 2016: https://selfpublishingadvice.org/self-publishing-news-starting-to-wrap-up/ […]
[…] The Alliance of Independent Authors news update from Tuesday 6th December 2016: https://selfpublishingadvice.org/self-publishing-news-starting-to-wrap-up/ […]
Silly people. For many writers, like me, without online contacts we would have no support at all.
Because we have limitations that keep us from leaving the house, for example, or tire more easily than most people, and can’t remain coherent for the length of time your typical writers’ group meets, much less for the additional time spent in social interaction.
‘You can write without ever communicating with another human.’ True, but not helpful.
Don’t overdo the social media. Use it. Give support to other writers – and readers.
But don’t disconnect. It’s very lonely out there, and depressed writers don’t get a lot of writing done.
On India, there have been 100 or so Hindi titles available in the Kindle store for a while now, presumably betas, but the other languages are new. But sadly it’s trad pub only. No option yet in KDP.
On CreateSpace, as per my post in the International Indie Author Facebook Group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/441469159372773/permalink/600313400155014/) Amazon appears to be shifting indies out of CreateSpace and into KDP in order to push CS as a trad-pub option for POD, which begs the question whether we may yet see a POD-Select exclusivity option in the future…
On wrapping up in the northern hemisphere, I;m in the norther hemisphere and still struggling to divest enough clothes to keep cool without scaring the neighbours. Being just a thousand miles from the equator helps. 🙂
We’re all coming round to yours for Christmas then, Mark!
Dan, you might consider two things for the news section.
The Dublin Writer’s Conference – June 23rd to 25th.
and
The 100% free Basics of Digital Marketing for Authors Course from BooksGoSocial, just launched:
http://smarturl.it/marketing4authors
Thanks!
thanks for these!
[…] week, on ALLi’s Self-Publishing Advice Blog, our news editor Dan Holloway, counts down to Christmas and the end of the […]