TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics » J.A. Konrath

3 Author Blogs Every Writer Should Read

Joanna Cabot — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:00:18 +0000

One of the best ways to learn as a writer is to study the work of other writers. And one of the best ways to learn as an entrepreneur is to study other entrepreneurs. So who should you learn from if you are an author who wants to not just write, but sell? Here are [...]

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Book Promotion: What Works, What Doesn’t

Joanna Cabot — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 16:02:28 +0000

Thanks to Nate over at The Digital Reader for alerting me to this great blog post by author Lindsay Buroker. Buroker runs through a number of Amazon ‘tricks’ which, for various reasons, are losing steam as powerhouse author tools. Some tools, such as tagging and keyword manipulation, never worked that well anyway because people don’t [...]

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Wanted: Publishers who won’t treat me like a criminal

Joanna Cabot — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 23:00:14 +0000

I’ll be going mostly DRM-free next year. I’ve been thinking for awhile about this. I balked because I worried that books would simply not be available without DRM, and that I would be missing out on the good stuff just to make a point. But then I realized that it’s been ages since I actually [...]

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Quick Links: Amazon in the news

Chris Meadows — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 03:15:00 +0000

It’s an Amazon roundup! Here are some Amazon stories from the last few days that might not deserve full pieces by themselves, but are nonetheless interesting tidbits. Wired reports Amazon has released a firmware update for the Paperwhite that will allow readers to enlarge panes in manga novels—undoubtedly aimed mainly at the Japanese market, but [...]

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Joe Konrath writes to DoJ in support of antitrust action

Chris Meadows — Wed, 30 May 2012 03:41:08 +0000

I previously discussed publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin’s letter to the DoJ concerning the antitrust investigation against Google. Here’s one from about as far to the other side as you can go: self-publishing booster and blogger Joe Konrath. In his letter, Konrath accuses the publishers of keeping e-book prices high to protect sales of their high-margin [...]

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J.A. Konrath making 23 ebooks free for 3 days

Paul Biba — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 16:47:08 +0000

From his blog: I’ve sold 7000 ebooks in the last 36 hours, making over $14,000. For the next three days, I’m making 23 of my titles free on Amazon Kindle. You can find it here. Blake Crouch is also doing this, says Konrath.. Get them while they’re free.

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Amazon rumored to be inviting self-publishing authors to Kindle Prime lending program

Chris Meadows — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 04:20:58 +0000

According to an anonymous source, Amazon is inviting self-published authors to make their works available in Amazon’s Kindle Prime lending library, for checkout to owners of Kindle devices who subscribe to Kindle Prime. The invitations are going out to individual authors now, but Amazon will reportedly go public with the offer on December 1. Here’s [...]

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J.A. Konrath addresses proposed bookstore boycott

Chris Meadows — Sun, 22 May 2011 15:48:08 +0000

I just posted about how Amazon, via self-publishing and agent-based publishing, poses a threat to publishers who still haven’t updated their business model to compete. Here’s a post from self-publishing booster J.A. Konrath’s blog that points out one of the reasons why Amazon is such a threat. Responding to one bookstore calling for a boycott [...]

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Adding real interactivity to e-books

Chris Meadows — Sat, 21 May 2011 15:33:14 +0000

On Techdirt, Mike Masnick discusses a post by J.A. Konrath proposing turning each e-book into its own social network. The idea is to give an e-book a form of “interactivity” that is more interactive than the audiovisual bells and whistles most publishers seem to associate with interactivity these days. Konrath’s post discusses the possibility of [...]

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Barry Eisler turns down $500,000 advance to self-publish, as Amanda Hocking negotiates with major publishers

Chris Meadows — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 04:48:01 +0000

Hot on the heels of Microsoft vs. Barnes & Noble vs. Apple vs. Amazon comes another interesting juxtaposition. Today on J.A. Konrath’s blog, Konrath interviewed pro-published writer Barry Eisler, who has just turned down a $500,000 offer from a mainstream publisher in favor of self-publishing his own book. Eisler explained that this level of advance [...]

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J.A. Konrath tells ‘bedtime story’ of his self-publishing success

Chris Meadows — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 01:55:53 +0000

Joe Konrath has posted again about his successes with self-publishing through Amazon. (We’ve covered a number of such posts from him already.) This time he couches it in the form of a “bedtime story,” which is a bit cutesy but it gets the point across. Soon, Joe was making over $1000 a month on Kindle. [...]

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E-books and the economics of writing

Chris Meadows — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 12:15:00 +0000

Karen Dionne, a novelist herself, has an article on Daily Finance looking at the new economics of e-book publishing in light of recent changes in the industry. She looks at J.A. Konrath’s success on the Amazon platform, and also at writer Nancy Cruz Coleman, who had written a retelling of Rumpelstiltskin called Rumpel but had [...]

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J.A. Konrath on Huffington Post: The ease of self-publishing e-books

Chris Meadows — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 18:38:52 +0000

J.A. Konrath has an editorial on the Huffington Post in which he talks about how he used Amazon to publish the horror novel Draculas, that he, Blake Crouch, Jeff Strand, and F. Paul Wilson wrote together. Thanks to the self-publishing capabilities offered by Amazon, they were able to go from a completed book in September [...]

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Joe Konrath’s e-book sales pass 100,000 mark

Chris Meadows — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 15:15:00 +0000

Speaking of Joe Konrath, he made a blog post a few days ago stating that as of 9/21/10, his overall e-book sales had topped the 100,000 mark. He is selling over 7,000 e-books per month via Amazon alone, and Amazon represents almost 3/4 of his total e-book sales. He also notes that the poorest-performing e-books [...]

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J. A. Konrath on Kindle vs iBooks sales – no comparison; plus a lot of other stuff

Paul Biba — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 11:46:04 +0000

From Konrath’s A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing blog: Publishers might be looking at enriched or enhanced ebooks as their new big-ticket items to replace hardcovers. But the major ebook retailer, Amazon, isn’t set up for video. Kindle isn’t even able to do color yet. That leaves Apple, and according to my numbers Apple is a [...]

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