Kindle Scout is a “reader powered” publishing program offered by Amazon where authors can submit their new never-been-published books and be considered for a publishing contract by Kindle Press.
Books that make the cut will be published by Kindle Press. They’ll receive a publishing contract with 5-year (renewable) terms, a $1,500 advance, 50% eBook royalty rate, and Amazon’s “easy rights reversion” so you can get your book rights back when you’re done.
What makes this program unattractive is the 20% lower royalty rate than if you’d published through Kindle Direct Publishing yourself. This rate is still 35% higher than if you’d published through a traditional publisher, so it’s kind of a push in my book.
What makes this program something you should look at is the advance (it’s not much, but it’s more than you’d get if you published yourself) and the all important “featured Amazon marketing.” If you’re an author, you know that writing the book isn’t the hard part; it’s getting people to know you’ve written a book. Amazon – the 800 lb. gorilla in the room when it comes to selling books and eBooks – sells more books than everyone else combined. If they’re going to feature your book, then – by all means – you should welcome that!
Yep. Since 2007, the self-publishing part of the ebook pie has been sizable. In just a few years, the self-published author has gone from zero to hero, owning 25% of the top 100 ebook market, as reported by Amazon. No matter how many reports traditional publishers put out – saying people are eschewing ebooks, that kids don’t like ebooks, and that ebooks are the bane and scourge of the publishing world – it appears that those bought-and-paid-for ‘statistics’ aren’t based on the cold hard numbers generated by their greatest imagined enemy: Amazon.
A free tool from Helicon Books, the online EPUB validation, aims to save writers time and money when publishing eBooks by offering them a full review and report of critical errors in their document ensuring a smoother process to market, including quality assurance against iBooks and Kobo specific guidelines.
Jose Antunes has posted reviews of a number of great photography books, including one of the great ones about landscape photography. From the post: