And now for the news!
Some highlights from this month in the world of self-publishing, specifically regarding publishing trends within the publishing industry, and their implications for all authors!
This article by Jim Milliot for Publisher’s Weekly is the perfect way to bludgeon your way into Monday, packed with fascinating tidbits on the state of self-publishing by way of a new report from Bowker. It would seem that, now we’ve reached October 2017, we’re finally drawing conclusions about 2016, a year in which we apparently (collectively) purchased 786,935 ISBNs. According to the report (and Milliot), this serves as “an 8.2% increase over 2015,” which is, well, statistically significant. This number averages out the numbers for print books (which rose significantly) and for e-books (which dropped a bit). What does this report mean for you and me? First, there are several conclusions we might reach: firstly, that the drop in e-book ISBN purchases is leveling out (in 2015, there was an enormous drop), Amazon is still purchasing the bulk of ISBNs, and there are still plenty of companies jockeying to pick up the bulk of the remainder. There are perhaps more gems of wisdom we might identify here, and we encourage you to dig into the original article, which you can access here.
“Marvel and DC could learn a thing or two from their indie competitors,” writes Alexander Huls as he opens this article for the Pacific Standard. What are those things that might be learnt? That women make, buy, and read comics in which they are well-represented! We might examine that idea at length, but Huls has already done such a fantastic job we highly recommend you take a peek at the original piece for brilliant insights into the established comic publishers (like Marvel and DC) and what they have done to lose their edge in appealing to what is now a significant market share of the comics industry–a shortsightedness which is now paying dividends to independent and self-publishing comics companies. We’ll just leave you with one final quotation:
Women Write About Comics’ Purdy echoes that sentiment. “When you get through a convention or an industry space, it’s always: ‘Where are the women? Is this generation of women going to be the one to finally break through?’ We already broke through,” Purdy says.
You can read the rest of Huls’ fantastic article at the link.
We’re not disputing that there are plenty of pitfalls to landing a traditional publisher, as Loren Kleinman chronicles in her article for HuffPost … but we might dispute that a newcomer to the self-publishing industry is the way to cure all those ills. After all, there have been (as the Bowker article reveals, above) plenty of contenders attempting to redress the gaps and shortfalls of the traditional publishing industry, and if they haven’t found the solution in aggregate, it’s unlikely that just one new company would. Still, it’s worth exploring all options, right? So, what is Publishizer? According to Kleinman, it is “a NYC-based startup and crowdfunding platform that’s helped hundreds of authors get published,” which sounds a little bit like sales copy. Still, the rest of the article is fascinating, as it is made up of an interview with Lee Constantine, Publishizer’s Head of Growth. According to Constantine, Publishizer was established to combat one of the perceived shortcomings of self-publishing–namely, its lack of legitimacy, and its inability to compete with the “elusive” traditional publishing option. How does Publishizer aim to do this? Algorithms. Of course it’s more complicated than that, but we highly recommend you read Kleinman and Constantine’s full interview.
As a self-publishing author, you may find it helpful to stay up-to-date on the trends and news related to the self-publishing industry.This will help you make informed decisions before, during and after the self-publishing process, which will lead to a greater self-publishing experience. To help you stay current on self-publishing topics, simply visit our blog every Monday to find out the hottest news. If you have other big news to share, please comment below.
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