Here’s a nice wrinkle on audio books, self-publishing, and promotion, Podiobooks, covered in today’s Book Standard.
Podiobooks offers free podcasts of novels and narrative non-fiction. Most seem to be self-published and the podcasts are meant as a marketing tool right now, but the founders see some potential for selling advertising or sponsorships, and offer a 50-50 split of any future revenues on a non-exclusive distribution deal. It’s an interesting idea and another sign of what can be done with electronic distribution.
In most cases authors will sign audio rights to their publisher, and publishers won’t likely be jumping on giving away audio books anytime soon, but they might be inclined to distribute chapters as a promotional gimmick.
Amazon is now offering Amazon Shorts, allowing customers to sample the works of new authors through “exclusive short form literature, for 49 cents each.” These mini books can be downloaded as pdfs or read on the site. Either way, they remain available online in the customer’s personal “digital locker.” They’re not currently copy protected.
The first question is what took them so long?
Although they’re pitching many well-known, mainstream authors in their first release — including folks like Danielle Steele, Robin Cook and Kim Stanley Robinson — the shorts program will allow even unknown authors to easily hawk their “short form” wares at the largest bookstore on earth, and I think the program is uniquely suited to reference and how-to.
They tout the benefits of buidling backlist most of all: from their site –
Benefits of participation in Amazon Shorts:
Access a powerful marketing tool to promote an author’s backlist in a new and meaningful way
Create an author profile page with biography, photo, and complete backlist
Maintain author’s visibility between published projects
Establish a more direct and frequent communication with readers
Introduce readers to unfamiliar writers
Provide a new outlet to sell short fiction and nonfiction
It will be interesting to see how this develops, and of course I’m trying to learn what the royalty pay-out will look like.
Dave Taylor has created a great companion site for his Complete Idiot’s Guide to Growing Your Business with Google.
Rather than offer one or two chapter excerpts, he offers snippets from every chapter in the book. This extensive sharing of the book might remind you of the early web mantra that information wants to be free — I’m not sure we can say anymore that it wants just to be free. In regards to bookselling, and marketing and promotion, it’s probably more accurate to say that information wants to be found.
Note that Dave has garnered blurbs galore, and a foreword from marketing notable Guy Kawasaki. It’s a nice model for other authors and books.
These being the dog days of summer and somewhat slow here — what with the kids out of school and many editors on vacation — I figured I’d introduce myself to those of you who’ve never met me.
And since we’re on the internet, I should confirm that I’m the human.
The Dog is Monty. He’s the same brute I wrote about in February. He’s doing quite well with cats now, though we still keep him under tight leash indoors as he’s pretty goofy and prone to sliding out of control across the floors.
