Matthew Iden's Blog, page 7

I’ve recently started poking my nose into the world of audio books. Now that I have a bona fide series out there, the investment of time seems more than worth it. Why not have another product on the line to meet readers’ wants and needs? Many of you have heard of ACX (www.ACX.com), the Amazon division [...]

Reblogged from J W Manus: I get several emails a week from people who are self-publishing or thinking about self-publishing. They ask me questions about the process. Sometimes I can answer: "What's a good program for making an ebook?" (look here)  "My ebook has weird characters. What's causing that?" (look here) "What does Smashwords do?" [...]

Over the last two days, I’ve come into contact with a couple of what I consider dodgy publishing and self-publishing “offers” and news bits that I thought I’d share. First, David Gaughran–author, industry watchdog, and self-publishing champion–recently blogged about an arm of Perseus Books, Argo Navis, that is “helping” traditionally published authors self-publish their next [...]

I’ve been lucky enough to be invited to several books signings and events this year, one of which was the fun Day of the Book festival in Kensington, Maryland. I had a great time holding down the Mystery Writers of America table with fellow scribbler Alan Orloff. A lack of sales was almost made up [...]

A little update on the Also Boughts issue at Amazon: it’s obvious now that the wholesale removal of ABs is not a permanent change and that the book seller is split-testing its consumer base like mad. The testing is definitely occurring across browsers, with major differences amongst Internet Explorer, Mozzila Firefox, and Chrome. The nature [...]

Like many self-published writers, I’ve been unhappy/dismayed/puzzled at Amazon’s removal of ratings and stars from Also Boughts’ listings, but I might be having a change of heart–I was just looking at the Also Boughts for my most recent novel, One Right Thing, and realized something very refreshing: every title looked as interesting as any other. [...]

Hey Folks - If you’re over my April Fool’s scare, why don’t you head on over to www.emysterybargains.com. It’s the brainchild of frequent visitor to this blog, managing editor of Cemetery Dance magazine, and fellow writer Brian Freeman. He’s got both a Mystery and a Horror blog that features one awesomely-priced book each day. The site [...]

Seattle–(BUSINESS LINE)–April 1, 2013– In a not-entirely-surprising move, online retail giant Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) announced today that it had moved its publishing model beyond the distribution of paperback and digital books and has bought its customers’ ability to read. “It’s really just a natural progression of both Amazon’s technological and business goals,” said Ravi Bharathi, [...]

Cue the Ambivalence Machine. Goodreads has just “joined the Amazon family.” While all indies should be happy and thankful that Amazon helped break traditional publishing’s stranglehold on the market, lack of competition–or in this case, a blow to independent reporting and reviewing–isn’t really good for anyone. It will be interesting to see how other book distributors like [...]

This is part II of a two-part series on advertising with the site Bookbub.com Please check Part I out here. Results Several friends–Amanda Brice, Karen Cantwell, and Misha Crews–had amazing results using Bookbub for Romance and Mystery. Misha, in particular, had great success featuring her novel Homesong, garnering 68,000 downloads in just three days. So, [...]