Dear Friend,
While the dull Amazon/Hachette dispute continues to make news throughout the publishing industry (zzzzz…), we hope you’ve spent your summer getting some quality writing done. We’ll be around when you need us for your next eBook or print project and we hope that your summer sales have been great.
Do you have a question about how to professionalize and optimize your front matter, back matter, and metadata but were too afraid to ask? We managed to compile all the best practices on the subject into one consolidated eBook. Don’t worry, we’re not trying to sell anything, and it’s completely free. Please feel free to download a complimentary EPUB, MOBI, or PDF here.
Despite our preaching that eBooks must be reflowable to scale properly to all types of devices, PDF eBooks are still a necessity in a few instances. PDF eBooks are used for All Romance eBooks, Google Play, certain book bloggers who can only accept PDFs, and a few other special cases. Learn more about how a PDF eBook works at the BB eBooks blog.
Amazon rolled out Kindle Unlimited last month and the results have been mixed. Any program that gets people to read more sounds like a boon for authors; however, Amazon runs the risk of commoditizing books to the point where indie authors can’t make a decent paycheck. Feedback from authors has been mixed. Some authors have reported their books enrolled in Kindle Unlimited (via KDP Select) have helped their genre rankings, but other authors have reported their sales plummeted. Additionally, the royalty payment scheme (like similar services in the music industry) leaves a lot of questions unanswered. There are more details on the BB eBooks blog here.
A big congrats to all the RITA nominees and awards at RWA 2014. We’re so proud that some of you are our clients.
Is there a disturbing lack of older female protagonists in erotic fiction? Erica Jagger of The Huffington Post thinks so. The article mentions Arianne Richmonde, who published the successful Pearl series that centers around a 40-year-old woman.
Yahoo Finance takes a look at some of the well-to-do indie publishers and how they became successful. Lots of good tips in here!
Yours sincerely,
The BB eBooks Team