Tuesday Round Up | 22/01/2019

Tuesday Round Up | 22/01/2019

Good morning!

Welcome to another Tuesday round-up. This week we have another great podcast from The Creative Penn (okay, total fangirl) discussing running a one-person business, the Kobo Writing Life talks about podcasting as content marketing., and the Writership podcast discusses scene and story resolutions. In articles, we have two very informative articles on shrinking author incomes, and another on corporate censorship and their unchecked power. I’ve not had time to check out videos for this week’s round-up, but hopefully, I’ll be able to gather a few links for next week. 

Happy reading!

Articles

The Disastrous Decline in Author Incomes Isn’t Just Amazon’s Fault

The bookselling behemoth is making life harder for writers, but so is the public perception that art doesn’t need to be paid for.

Publisher's Weekly | Breaking Down Financial Woes for Writers

In an effort to gather as much information as possible about how much authors earned in 2017, the Authors Guild conducted its largest income survey ever last summer, reaching beyond the guild’s own members to include 14 other writing and publishing organizations. In all, the survey drew 5,067 responses from authors published by traditional publishers and from hybrid and self-published authors as well.

Corporate Censorship Is a Serious, and Mostly Invisible, Threat to Publishing

When state or civil authorities blacklist books, the act is correctly labeled censorship. But what is the word when corporations order their subsidiaries to snuff out information?

Podcasts

The Creative Penn | How To Be A Successful Company Of One With Paul Jarvis

What if you could scale your revenue without growing your expenses? What if you could make a living with your writing but still remain alone in your writing room? I discuss these questions and more today with Paul Jarvis.

In the intro, I talk about second-hand book sales [Dean Wesley Smith], how the death of poet Mary Oliver can help deepen our writing [listen to her on the On Being Podcast], why ‘sparking joy‘ is so important (referencing Marie Kondo on Netflix), plus the Kickstarter for Intellectual Property Tracking.

Kobo Writing Life | Ep 133 – Let’s Talk Podcasting with Amanda Cupido

n this week’s episode, Cristina sits down with author and podcast producer Amanda Cupido to talk about her book Let’s Talk Podcasting: The Essential Guide to Doing it Right. Amanda talks about how she got into podcasts, the difference between podcasts and older media such as radio, and she discusses the underrepresented voices in the podcasting community. Amanda also shares her tips for starting your own podcast and the most common roadblock that aspiring podcasters encounter.

Writership Podcast | Ep. 136: Resolutions

We all have some idea of what a resolution is, but what are these scene and story-enders meant to do? In this episode, I explore scene and story resolutions in the context of C. Gabriel Wright’s LBGTQ love story, “Someone.” The editorial mission encourages you to collect resolutions by reading and watching stories—and from your own life. 

Amazon’s Hall of Spinning Knives | David Gaughran

Amazon’s Hall of Spinning Knives | David Gaughran

There has been a lot of disturbing news recently about how Kindle is treating its authors.

Cases include books having their ranks stripped without warning, and even whole catalogues being removed. More disturbing is that Amazon appears to be denying their authors any redress – not to mention refusing there is a problem with their system. The only way to make this company face up to its obligation to uphold fair practices is to ensure Amazon cannot hide their poor-conduct. We must share these stories as far and as wide as we can.

Authors should be working together as a community rather than trying to sabotage each other or cheat the rankings. Sadly, there will always be those who do indulge in dishonest practices, but to be accused is not the same as being guilty. These authors deserve to be shown the evidence against them and given a chance to answer to it.  If there is no evidence beyond what the algorithm vomits up, then should Amazon not be publicly apologising – if only for the sake of its own reputation – and working to improve their system? Based on the stock warnings, these cases appear to be the result of an overzealous, automated fraud prevention system that is clearly not working properly. These cases need to be dealt with carefully, individually, and by people rather than robots. The authors cannot be held responsible if their books have been targeted by scammers trying to boost their books by making others look guilty, This is the first thing that should be ruled out before punishment is dealt, especially when you consider that Amazon are jeopardising the livelihoods reputations of these authors.

Phoenix Sullivan is well-known in the indie community – I’ve known her myself since 2009 or 2010 and consider her a close friend. Aside from being exceptionally generous with her time and knowledge…

Source: Amazon’s Hall of Spinning Knives | David Gaughran