This Week’s Self-publishing News

I love the Equinoxes. Whether you’re in the northern hemisphere or the southern, these are the times of year when the clock moves most quickly, sunlight swallowing or being swallowed by the dark at an unequalled rate. It’s that same rapid change we see in the publishing world, the change on which we indies thrive.

Did we mention?

Indie Author Fair is getting closer. There’s a whole cosmos of indie fabulousness online all day (details here, speaker line up here). Diarise it. IN CAPS.

And there's an accompanying competition for yo all to get entering and voting on!

• Enter Our Competition:
  We're now accepting entries for our Opening Line Competition. It's FREE to enter and we have a Cash Prize lined up. Click here to visit our Submission Page.
• Vote in Our Competition:
  The 10 entries with the most votes at the close of the competition will be submitted to our competition sponsor to make the final decision. So make sure to check back often to cast your vote. Click here to visit our Voting Page.​​​​​​​
• View the Agenda for April 15/16

Sabotage!

Nominations open today and run until April 24th for the annual Saboteur Awards, run by Sabotage Reviews, the world's leading site for many parts of indie literary culture. Always welcoming of self-published books, alongside awards for spoken word are categories such as novella, collection, anthology, poetry pamphlet, and multimedia work. Full details here.

Celebrating Success

What a difference a week makes in the world of the Guardian’s self-publishing coverage. Last week was all about the massive bunfight that erupted when Ros Barber explained why she doesn’t self-publish. This week two really encouraging pieces, the first (here) by indie star Rachel Abbott,

Indie superstar Rachel Abbott

and the second (here) a fascinating study of the last winner of the Guardian’s short-lived Book of the Month awards in 2014, Mike Stoner’s Jalan Jalan, which found success in Asia.

Taking up from last week's bullish feelings about Amazon's potential in India, here is news of a massive infrastructure building project in Hyderabad.

More of the pie

An interesting report suggests that last year, 22% of ebook sales were for self-published titles. The figures come from Nielsen, but seem not to exclude books without an ISBN (details here).

Calling the shots

Not a self-publishing story, but James Patterson is always worth listening to, and now he’s cottoned on to an indie trick, pushing Bookshots, a series of fast-paced, cheap one-sitting e-reads. This is important for indies because of the potential knock-on for demand for such books and the opportunities that will create (full story here).

Coffee shops are on the march!

I’ll take some regularly featured areas in one little paragraph. This week, it’s Paris that’s getting its first Espresso-machine-kitted bookshop

picture from the Xerox briochure

with the reopening of academic bookstore PUF (here). And there’s a new prize open to self-published (and unpublished) novels (here). Another interesting development is the partnering of Babelcube and Streetlib to offer authors access to translators on a no upfront cost basis, with a sliding scale of profit-sharing ratio (full details here). Finally, this is an interesting look at Instagram vs twitter as marketing tools.

Free Choice

Finally, a very detailed and fascinating look (here) at the question of when and whether to offer work on a “pay what you like” basis from the always interesting Kristine Kathryn Rusch.



Upcoming Author Conferences & Events

APRIL 2016

Newcastle Writers Festival: Apr 1 – 3 [New South Wales, Australia] Bologna Childrens Book Fair: Apr 4 – 7 [Bologna, Italy] Los Angeles Times Festival of Books: 9 – 10 Apr [Los Angeles, USA] Okanagan Valley Writers’ Festival; 8 – 10 Apr [Penticton, BC, Canada] London Book Fair: 12 – 14 Apr [London, UK] Indie Author Fringe: Apr 15 [Online, Global] – brought to you by ALLi
Pikes Peak Writers’ Conference; Apr 15 – 17 [ Colorado Springs, Colorado] Story Circle Network Women’s Writing Conference; Apr 15 – 17 [ Austin, TX] Writer’s Institute; Apr 15 – 17 [Madison, Wisconsin] Jane Austen Festival Australia: Apr 15 – 17 [Canberra, Australia] 23rd Annual Budapest International Book Festival: Apr 21 – 24 [Budapest, Hungary] Buenos Aires Book Fair: Apr 21 – May 9 [Buenos Aires, Argentina] Hawkesbury Upton Literature Festival: Apr 23 {Gloucesterhire, England}
Pow Wow Festival of Writing: Apr 24 [Birmingham, UK] Abu Dhabi International Book Fair: Apr 27 – May 1 [Abu Dhabi, UAE] Geneva Book & Press Fair: Apr 27 – May 1 [Geneva, Switzerland] Las Vegas Writers Conference; Apr 28 – 30 [ Las Vegas, Nevada]

MAY 2016

Teheran International Book Fair: May 5 – 15 [Teheran, Iran] The Self-publishing Conference: May 7 [Leicester, UK] Auckland Writers Festival: May 10 – 15 [New Zealand] Book Expo America: May 11 – 13 [Chicago, Illinois, USA] Franschhoek Literary Festival: May 13 – 15 [South Africa] Varena-Sydney Writers Festival: May 14 – 22 [New South Wales, Australia] Sydney Writers Festival: May 16 – 22 [New South Wales, Australia] Indie Author Fringe: May 14 [Online, Global] – brought to you by ALLi
Warsaw Book Fair: May 19 – 22 [Warsaw, Poland] Writecon: May 21 [Zurich, Switzerland] Kingsmead College Book Fair: May 21 [Johannesburg, SA] International Literature Festival: May 21 – 29 [Dublin, Ireland] Australian Booksellers Association Conference & Trade Exhibition: May 29 – 30 [Melbourne, Australia]

JUNE 2016

Dublin Writers Conference:  June 24 – 26 [Dublin, Ireland] Seoul International Book Fair: June 15 – 19 [Seoul, Korea]

JULY 2016

Hong Kong Book Fair: July 20 – 26 [Hong Kong, China] South African Book Fair: July 29 – 31 [Johannesburg, South Africa]

(The above list may not include all the major events; please feel free to email us with any important ones we’ve missed out, or include in comments below.)