Henry Baum

This news from Smashwords comes at an appropriate time, given the death of Steve Jobs.  The self-publishing revolution is entirely because of Apple. Entirely.  You can point to the Kindle as being the change agent, but the Kindle more than likely wouldn’t exist without the success of the iPod.  Though ereaders existed prior to the iPod, the iPod and iTunes changed how people access content.  As always, Apple provided the model which other people then adopted into other platforms.  The Kindle Fire is now mimicking the iPad.

Also worth noting that the Mac spurred the age of desktop publishing[…]

Interesting, via the Bookseller.

US independent publisher Perseus Books Group has launched a distribution and marketing service for authors wanting to self-publish their own e-books, offering a 70% royalty rate to the author.

Called Argo Navis Author Services, it will be offered to authors represented by agencies that have signed an agreement with Perseus, with Janklow & Nesbit Associates the first to have done so.

So this is a new hybrid model – where agents have a finger in the game of ebook self-publishing.  One would have to imagine that the agent is taking some of the cut, so […]

Cross this off the list of things only traditional publishers can do: distribute to libraries. Well, it has always been possible to get a print book into a library before, but not very easy since libraries have limited shelf space and only select a fraction of traditionally published books, let alone self-released books. But ebooks take up no shelf space. That said, they do cost the library money, so don’t yet expect libraries to be making the entire Kindle catalog available.

From Amazon:

How It Works
You can borrow Kindle books from your local library’s website and, with the

This seems pretty momentous – another notch in Konrath’s death spiral.  Plenty of writers are going from self-publishing to traditional publishing, but not many taking the plunge backward again.  She grew her platform via Harper Collins and now she has the standing to ditch them and still make a living.

Novelist ditches publisher at book launch for ‘condescending’ treatment

Courtney self-published Golden Handcuffs, a fictional exposé of life in the City, in 2006 after quitting her job as an investment banker, following it up in 2008 with Poles Apart, about an ambitious Polish graduate who moves to London. Their