WPC-144 - Relaunching with Bryan Cohen

Bryan Cohen is a two-time USA Today bestselling author with over 40 books and 100,000 copies sold. He's also the head copywriter at Best Page Forward, a book description service, and he's the co-host of The Sell More Books Show, a weekly publishing industry news show.

MENTIONS:
Bryan last appeared on the Wordslinger Podcast in WPC-055 - Ninja Book Descriptions with Bryan Cohen

Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Girl in the Mayan Tomb - https://books2read.com/mayan-tomb

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Website(s):
http://www.sellmorebooksshow.com
http://www.bestpageforward.net/blurbs 

Twitter handle(s): @bryancohenbooks

Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Bryan-Cohen/e/B004I9WJTY/

THIS WEEK’S INDIE PUBLISHING NEWS:

No Love Between Audible and Romance Authors — Is Audible ripping off romance authors? Yes. But that’s my opinion. It is, of course, based on the latest information coming to us about Audible’s new subscription package for romance titles. It was hailed as being similar to Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program, which pays authors for pages read. But where KU pays authors something comparable to the royalty they would have gotten for a sale, Audible’s program is paying only pennies per listen. Compounding that is the fact that the program only pays the author once they’ve reached a $50 threshold, so for many authors it could be YEARS before they see a very meager return on thousands and thousands of listeners downloading their books. So I’m standing firm on this one—Audible is ripping off romance authors. You may feel free to disagree in comments. It’s a free country. Especially if you’re listening to someone’s romance book. https://goodereader.com/blog/indie-author-news/is-audible-romance-ripping-off-authors

Uppity author thinks authors should be paid for their work — According to author Philip Pullman, there’s something a bit unbalanced about the fact that profits and margins are increasing in the publishing industry while the share given to the author is diminishing. In a quote from The Guardian, Pullman said, “To allow corporate profits to be so high at a time when author earnings are markedly falling is, apart from anything else, shockingly bad husbandry. It’s perfectly possible to make a good profit and pay a fair return to all of those on whose work, after all, everything else depends. But that’s not happening at the moment.” This would seem a good time to point out that indie authors keep a much bigger share of their royalties. True, they work for it, in terms of marketing and platform building. The disparity between what authors make versus what shareholders and stakeholders make is astounding: About three times what the authors makes for his or her work. My take: The industry has to make a profit, and that’s why this disparity exists. The solution, then, is to excise your career from the meat grinder of traditional publishing as much as you possibly can. If the trad industry can embrace a hybrid model, where the idea is to assist the author in increasing their reach and growing their platform, everyone can win. Agree? Disagree? Answer in the comments. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/mar/05/philip-pullman-calls-for-authors-to-get-fairer-share-of-publisher-profits

Barnes & Noble’s comeback will be a slow burn — BN hasn’t been feeling so well, and the road to recovery is going to be long. Following a lackluster holiday season and a series of unexpected layoffs in February, Barnes & Noble has released details of its “long-term strategic plan.” The idea is to improve customer satisfaction and profitability by going back to book sales as the focus. It looks like they’re finally waking up to the fact that no one buys music or DVDs from Barnes & Noble (or anywhere, really), so those will likely fall out of the offering. They’re putting their money on gifts and stationary. Because that’ll work. This feels an awful lot like “same thing, new name” to me, but I’m hopeful that BN will see the kind of growth it needs. If they do, in fact, start focusing on the customer more and on defunct product offerings less, it could … well, do nothing, honestly. Truthfully, I don’t see any way that will help. But the new prototype stores, which have been rumored  to have offerings such as wine bars and restaurants … ok, no, I just don’t see that working either. Maybe it’s time for Barnes & Noble to sell out to Amazon and get it over with. Comment with your take. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/76213-no-quick-fix-for-b-n.html

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