on Time Magazine:

A few months after posting a message on Goodreads about the imminent release of a new book, Indie author Beth Black woke up to an all-caps ransom email from an anonymous server, demanding that she either pay for good reviews or have her books inundated with negative ones: “EITHER YOU TAKE CARE OF OUR NEEDS AND REQUIREMENTS WITH YOUR WALLET OR WE’LL RUIN YOUR AUTHOR CAREER,” the email, shared with TIME, read. “PAY US OR DISAPPEAR FROM GOODREADS FOR YOUR OWN GOOD.”

Black, who has self-published both a romance novel and a collection of short stories in the past year, didn’t pay the ransom. “I reported it to Goodreads and then a couple hours later, I started noticing the stars dropping on my books as I started getting all these 1-star reviews,” she says. “It was quite threatening.”

Scammers and cyberstalkers are increasingly using the Goodreads platform…

on Kindlepreneur:

Thanks to advancements in Publisher Rocket, we’ve been analyzing data from Amazon for a while. Because of this, and the use of other tools, we picked up on a pattern in how Amazon treats books and their discoverability that I think changes a lot in the industry, and how we authors should operate.

Basically, through analytical proof, we found that when a book has a rise in sales on Amazon through just about any means, Amazon responds by increasing the number of keywords that that book shows up for naturally, and its rankings for those keywords as well. Therefore, because of the increase in a book’s popularity, the book would show up more often in the Amazon store.

I’m calling it the Amazon Popularity Effect.

On the one hand, this makes sense. However, this also opens up a lot of questions like how does Amazon do this…

on Self Publishing Advice:

Winning a major book award is a clear indicator to the book-buying public of a book’s worth, at least as perceived by the judges of that prize. A prize—winner or even a shortlisted runner-up sticker on a book cover has the power to boost sales.

The top literary prizes are very high profile, making news headlines many times over whenever they are awarded, increasing  awareness, branding and notoriety around the book and author. Many other benefits may be gained beyond the winner’s cash prize—$15,000 for the Pulitzer, £50,000 for the Man Booker, and a staggering (Swedish Kronor) SEK8 million (US$1.2 million, €0.93 million, £0.6 million) for the Nobel Prize for Literature. For example, the winner may expect to accrue increased sales in their home market, new or extended contracts from overseas, sales of translation rights, higher advances for future commissions, and greater visibility for their backlist.

Announcements…

on Fiction University:

Submitting a short story to an anthology has a lot of benefits.

Getting short stories published in anthologies (collections of stories by multiple authors) can be a big stepping stone in your fiction writing career.

Here are the reasons why you should try:

Continue reading HERE