fbpx
skip to Main Content
Self-publishing News: What’s In A Name?

Self-publishing News: What’s In a Name?

Dan Holloway head and shoulders photo

The news this week has been dominated by two stories we've seen already this month. From speaking to other authors it's clear that the so-called Cockygate incident has caused so much consternation is because it feels as though a (small) part of the indie community has turned on another part, and we all feel that wound. The thing most of us at ALLi value most is a community so willing to give and to help, and that is something we see again and again across the indie world, so it hurts us when we feel that is threatened. Fortunately new and strong communities seem to have come out of this as well – the indie spirit is strong enough something like this won't break it.

Cockygate Update

Photo by Claire Anderson on Unsplash

Photo by Claire Anderson on Unsplash

You will remember when the Cockygate story broke a couple of weeks ago, I'm sure, because as stories go, it's somewhat mind-boggling. Author Faleena Hopkins had taken out a trademark on the use of the word “cocky” in her “cocky romance” series. And she started issuing cease and desist letters to other authors who were using the word in their titles. When we left it, author and retired lawyer Kevin Kneupper had just issued a countersuit to have her trademark declared invalid. It looked like there might be a wait before anything else happened. But no.

To summarise what happened next (a full account can be found in this excellent piece) – a group of authors set up “The Cocky Collective” and published an anthology, the proceeds of which will go to help authors targeted by Hopkins; Hopkins initiated proceedings against them, and against Kneupper, which will commence on June 1st; and the artist whose font was the subject of Hopkins' “logo trademark” has issued proceedings against her. Excuse me a moment while I catch my breath.

GDPR 4 Days In

Photo by Claire Anderson on Unsplash

Photo by Claire Anderson on Unsplash

As you may have gathered from Howard's excellent post and last week's news, the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules came into force last Friday. We have known about this for 2 years, so everyone had time to get things running smoothly on the day, didn't they…? It would seem not. On day 1, several American sites went dark in Europe, fearful they wouldn't be compliant. And in the few days since, non-compliance suits have been issued against Facebook, Instagram, Google, and Whatsapp. There has been some concern amongst writers that they may be required to register as data controllers with the UK's Information Commissioner's Office, which would carry a fee of $60-$4000. Fortunately, the ICO's guidance suggests that if you are using personal data solely for marketing or advertising your products, you are exempt from the fee. That said, if you are marketing on behalf of others, you are not exempt. What that means for those of us who recommend products and stuff we like in our newsletters I am not yet sure. Watch this space.

Amazon's MerchCollab and the end of Stumbling

Burst on Nappy.Co

Burst on Nappy.Co

If you are big enough (100,000 followers) to be considered a brand, Amazon has a new scheme, Merch Collab, that enables you to get designers to design cool stuff (OK, basically T shirts) for your brand and split the profits with you. Meanwhile, next month we say goodbye to Stumbleupon after 16 years of discovering content for people. Although I will confess I thought it had disappeared long ago, I have many fond memories of the social bookmarking site which was responsible for much of the traffic many of my earliest ventures in Indieland attracted.

(More) Review Chaos at Amazon

Amazon has a reputation for changing its review policy without telling anyone and for people only discovering the change when they go to post a review and can't or, for authors, when they wake up and find a chunk of their reviews have gone missing. And they also have a reputation for then being elusive in explaining what has happened. This week it happened again, with authors discovering numbers of reviews had gone missing. The problem, as previously, seems to have been computers trying to figure out which reviews are genuine and which aren't and not always getting it right, and while this issue has been resolved, we wait for the inevitable next.

Top #selfpub news stories for #indieauthors, in one quick read, by #ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway @agnieszkasshoes Click To Tweet

Upcoming Conferences and Events

MAY 2018

Book Expo, May 30 – Jun 1 [New York]

JUNE 2018

Indie Author Week, June 9-16 [online] Dublin Writers' Conference, June 22-24 [Dublin}

SEPTEMBER 2017

Gothenberg Book Fair, 27-30 Sep [Gothenberg] Indie Lab, 29-30 Sep [Cincinnati]

OCTOBER 2018

Digital Book World, Oct 2-4 [Nashville] Ness Book Fest, Oct 4-7 [Scotland] Frankfurt Book Fair, Oct 10-14 [Frankfurt] Helsinki Book Fair, 25-28 Oct [Helsinki] Croydon Litfest, 27 October [Croydon, UK]

Author: Dan Holloway

Dan Holloway is a novelist, poet and spoken word artist. He is the MC of the performance arts show The New Libertines, which has appeared at festivals and fringes from Manchester to Stoke Newington. In 2010 he was the winner of the 100th episode of the international spoken prose event Literary Death Match, and earlier this year he competed at the National Poetry Slam final at the Royal Albert Hall. His latest collection, The Transparency of Sutures, is available for Kindle at http://www.amazon.co.uk/Transparency-Sutures-Dan-Holloway-ebook/dp/B01A6YAA40

Share

This Post Has 10 Comments
  1. I want to express my appreciation for the writer of this blog post. It’s clear they put a lot of effort and thought into their work, and it shows. From the informative content to the engaging writing style, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

  2. being new to this, I’m impressed by all that information and am thrilled that I did join eventually.
    Many thanks for the great jobs you people are, I hope one day I will be able to contribute something
    useful too.

  3. I suggest authors save their Amazon reviews in a PDF so when they go missing you can add them again to your Amazon page. And, you can prove to Amazon Central you had the reviews.

    I use the reviews on my website and in my media kit.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Latest advice, news, ratings, tools and trends.

Back To Top
×Close search
Search
Loading...