Transcription
All right, it took about a week or two off. My apologies! News has piled up. In fact, Publish Drive just released a new free feature—yes, free, with no asterisk! This is really kind of cool that they're offering a free publishing option. By the way, there is a subscription-based service that you normally have to pay to get into, but not anymore.
Speaking of publishing, oh gosh, the Internet Archive! You guys remember when I talked about them some time ago? They did this process of scanning physical books and making the eBooks, the digital version, freely available to people in libraries. Yeah, that didn't turn out so good for them.
And speaking of things not turning out so good, hopefully this one starts to turn out a little bit better. SoundCloud has been a safe haven for book pirates and fishers. Yes, anybody that's doing fishing, if you will—that's with a "ph," if you will. Well, what can you do about this SoundCloud book piracy? I'll share more details about that.
More recently, I did not see this, and apparently this rolled out in July. Ingram Book Group—actually, excuse me, Ingram Content Group—is now working with Spotify for audiobook distribution. Oh, hang on a second! Is this the same company that owns Ingram Spark? Yes, it is!
So, we're going to be talking about those four pieces of news and more inside the self-publishing news for September 9th, 2024. Let's go ahead and jump right into things.
The very first thing I want, of course, is to give a big shout-out to the fine folks over at Book Award Pro. Get your hands on my preferred book marketing software through Book Award Pro. You can get a free starter plan where you can do all the things yourself—where you can get book awards, book reviews curated just for your book—or you can upgrade to the Essentials Plus or Pro Plan. On the Pro Plan, they will actually submit your book to book awards that are perfectly curated for you. There's so much to it that you will love, and find out why I rave about Book Award Pro when you visit my affiliate link at dalinks.com/bookawardpro.
Let's get on into the very first piece of news rolling out today. This one is coming from the Authors Guild. Oh goodness gracious! The Authors Guild applauds the final court decision affirming Internet Archive book scanning as copyright infringement. Believe it or not, I actually covered this piece about a couple of years ago. It seems probably a little longer than that—actually, it was back in 2020 during the whole pandemic.
What the Internet Archive did was they found certain print books that didn't have a digital counterpart, meaning there was no eBook for it. So, what they ended up doing with those books was they scanned them all and then made them available as eBooks. But nobody informed them that that is actually pirating. You are literally stealing someone's content.
Now, one could probably make the argument that, well, it's the same publication. If they bought it once, they should be able to distribute however they wish. But unfortunately, distribution rights vary based on the type of book that you have. There are different publication rights or distribution rights for eBooks, the same thing for print books, and the same thing for audiobooks.
By going in there, what they did was actively steal content from people. Just because you've bought the print book does not mean that you're able to distribute that content freely to anybody else outside of yourself. The Internet Archive got into huge trouble, and when they tried to appeal this, they were rejected.
As much as I would love to support the Internet Archive—they are very big for the Wayback Machine, where it archives all the stuff that's online, and you can kind of track the history of anything that's happened throughout the history of the internet—I'm not sure if it goes that much. It might be a bit of a hyperbole, but nonetheless, it's a great service. However, they kind of stepped over the line. They went into a territory that's not transformative. This is not fair use when you are literally taking content that is not yours and distributing it for free.
For some reason, they just felt, "Oh, well, we're doing the world a good service." Yeah, that's a good service, so long as you compensate the authors and the publishers for that content. And they didn't. So now they're in some real serious trouble. The Authors Guild said, "We applaud this," and I applaud it as well. I think I saw it on Some Ordinary Gamers—or yeah, Some Ordinary Gamer, that's with Mudahar. Mudahar actually covered it more recently, and I'm just applauding the whole time. I'm like, you know what? This guy that's got millions of subscribers is covering this now, but you know who covered this four years ago? Me!
I was covering it, and for whatever reason, I got a bunch of trolls that came out of the woodwork, and they're like, "Oh, you're such a pig! You're so greedy!" and blah, blah, blah. No! We got to pay our bills with these things! We are authors, for goodness' sake! You think that every single one of us is making millions of dollars, and you think it's okay just to take from a large author? The problem is, if you start taking from large publishing companies and their authors, yeah, sure, it won't hurt them. But with that type of precedent set, what's going to end up happening is it's going to take from smaller authors that are just trying to pay their bills.
So, this was a bad look. It's a bad option for the Internet Archive. For whatever punishment they're going to get because of this, it's coming to them, and I'm not going to say I blame them at all.
All right, next piece of news coming out from the fine folks over at Written Word Media. They need a little bit of your help here. As we head into the final chapter of 2024, we'd love to hear from you. Can you take 15 minutes to share your insights in our annual author survey? Your feedback provides valuable insights to the indie author community, plus you'll get a summary of the results to see where you stand among fellow authors.
These types of surveys really do help out resources like myself and other news resources beyond Written Word Media. So, if you do have 15 minutes to spare or less, please go on over and take this author survey. It really helps me help you with some of the more accurate data. The more authors we can get over there, the better! So please do me a huge favor and share that link that's inside the show notes with other authors so that we can really build a great survey that's all-inclusive and get a good accurate picture of where we are here in 2024.
Moving a little further forward, the fine folks over at the Alliance of Independent Authors actually shared with me a little while ago—and I shared it here on the broadcast—about SoundCloud pirating books, but it's not what you think.
So let me give the TL;DR because I did do a live broadcast about this. SoundCloud is essentially allowing some bad actors to go in and put digitally narrated audio tracks that promote your stolen books on their platform. Yeah, just go over to SoundCloud right now. I think it's soundcloud.com. Search up Dale L. Roberts and see how many books are out there, how many times people have just falsely listed this right here.
The thing is, it might be a book pirating site, or it might even be a phishing site. Now, book pirating means they just stole my book and they're making it freely available to people. Phishing means they are essentially waiting for you to come in, and they're going to either A) steal your information (data mining), or B) load you up with a lot of malware and viruses.
You deserve it if you're trying to go and steal from people. Here's the thing: we need to kind of put an end to this. SoundCloud has a platform, and I think it was in 2023 that there were 140 million users. How is this being overlooked? Not to mention that the Alliance of Independent Authors has been trying to get a hold of SoundCloud, and they have been ghosted. They're not responding to any of these things.
I've broadcasted this over on my main YouTube channel and, of course, here on the podcast, and just to no avail. SoundCloud is okay with bad actors leveraging their platform for sending people off of their platform to steal your books. There we go, there's the TL;DR.
So, the best thing that you can do is report any infractions that you see. Look for your book and report it right away. The reporting process is arduous, but if you want to get it taken down, do that. Or get a lawyer—lawyer up! Get that lawyer to approach SoundCloud and tell them to pull everything down. Take that stuff down! Absolutely! SoundCloud, do better! You suck!
All right, moving a little further forward, of course, you can go ahead and get that on the replay. I've got a link to that inside the show notes, as per usual.
On a more brighter note, something that's not going to make me flip out: Ingram Spark is right now running a giveaway! Enter to win and save up to 40% on your next order, and be entered to win a $1,000 voucher to spend on our book marketing offerings. Enter the promo code "PROMOTE MY BOOK" (all caps, folks, like you're shouting at them) on your next order.
Special savings are available on orders as small as 25 copies of a single qualifying book. So, if you'd like to be entered for a chance to win that $1,000, do that before September 30th, 2024. The discount is valid for hardcover, paperback, black and white, and color books. The discount applies to the quantity ordered per individual title. So, if you want that 40% off, it's going to have to be 1,000 copies or more. I don't need 1,000 copies—that's a lot!
All right, here's the one that is so interesting. Big shout-out to them! They actually rolled this out in their newsletter, I think it was a day or two ago or something, and they brought up the fact that over on Spotify's Newsroom, they are now partnering with Ingram Content Group.
All right, so let me just walk this back real quick. Ingram Content Group is largely responsible for distribution and fulfillment for print books for major companies like Ingram Spark, of course, places like Draft2Digital, KDP's expanded distribution, Lulu's global distribution, Blurb's distribution, and so many more.
So let me just kind of frame this, though, here really quick because it's just regarding Ingram Content Group. Unless you're actually distributing and publishing through them, like a small indie pub type thing, it's not going to be available to you. But it is kind of nice to see that there's this partnership going on here, bringing more audiobooks from independent authors to Spotify.
With Ingram Content Group, this deal will bring audiobooks from over 100 Ingram-distributed publishers to Spotify, encompassing releases from Europa Editions, Milkweed Editions, G&D Media, Bard Press, New Society Publishers, and more.
For the longest time, Ingram has been largely associated with print and eBook distribution, but now it looks like audiobooks are starting to be that option. I wonder if this is going to be something that we will see coming out over on Ingram Spark. That would be pretty freaking awesome! That'd be clutch, as my buddy Jason Brock would usually say.
At any rate, moving a little further forward here in the news, the Dibl Create has just rolled out in beta a fiction content writer. It wasn't too long ago that I had shared that the non-fiction content writer was available. Now they have a content writer for fiction. I started playing around with it, and so far, it's actually pretty good. It's a little scary, but much like I always share, just because AI can write the content doesn't necessarily mean it's ready to go to market as soon as you've just generated it.
A lot of editing, proofreading, and developing needs to go into it. That human intervention, that human touch, is what makes the huge difference. You want to take a look at the fiction content writer? You can do that through my affiliate link at dalinks.com/diblcreate. You'll want to set up with the Pro Plan. They have a 7-day free trial. You can go ahead and cancel for whatever reason you don't want to get it—that's fine! But I'd say take it for a test spin.
The 7-day free trial is at dalinks.com/diblcreate.
Here's the big news that came out over the last week, and my apologies I didn't get this to you guys any sooner. It is from the folks over at Publish Drive. They want to let you know that you can officially upload a book for free! In fact, let me quote verbatim: "We're thrilled to bring you some fantastic news that will transform your publishing journey. As part of our dedication to supporting authors and publishers, we're excited to announce that you can publish your first book on Publish Drive for free! With our free plan, you'll enjoy one eBook title publishing for life, distribution to 35+ eBook channels, the eBook converter, sales analytics, and support from our AI chatbot, and access to our help center. And best of all, you keep 100% of your royalties!"
So, Publish Drive is an aggregate publishing platform, but unlike places like Ingram Spark or Draft2Digital, where they take a percentage of your revenue, Publish Drive doesn't take that percentage. They work on a subscription basis, and I've covered them before. I actually use their platform. Is it a platform for everybody? No, but now with this new one free title upload, I mean, give it a shot!
I am not being paid to tell you this, but if you're able to distribute 100% for free and take all 100% of your royalties, the nice thing is maybe you'll make enough money that you can afford that upgrade to the subscription process, and then you can start to distribute things like paperback books or audiobooks or soon-to-come hardcover books. They said they're surveying a lot of the account holders now. I'm kind of excited to see that.
Because of this upgrade, they actually took their starter plan—which I think it was like $4.99 per month—uh, forgive me if I can't remember the exact amount. It used to be only one book you were allowed on the starter plan. Now they've actually upgraded it to three books, so that's kind of cool!
There's no additional cost to distribute audiobooks and print books when you go through the starter plan. But again, the free plan allows for one free eBook, and you get 100% net profits. That right there is super, super cool!
Yes, it was $33.99. Now that I'm looking at the data here, it's $13.99 on the starter plan, and free is free, as you would imagine.
Hey, I got an email coming in from Book Brush, and I want to kind of share this here with you guys. Book Brush is a fantastic company for graphic design. I've covered them in a previous podcast before. I've chatted with Kathleen Sweeney over at Book Brush. It is one of my preferred graphic design tools. It's like Canva on steroids for authors!
At any rate, they wanted to kind of share some information here: "We want to take a moment to thank you for being a valued member of the Book Brush community. Your loyalty means everything to us, and we're dedicated to supporting you throughout your author journey. Recently, Canva announced a price increase on their teams plan for longtime customers. Canva is also valued at $26 billion as a company. While Canva's growth has been remarkable, we want to reassure you that here at Book Brush, we are not following suit with the price increase. As a small niche company laser-focused on helping authors like you, we're keeping our prices right where they are. Why? Because we believe in making top-notch tools accessible for authors without breaking the bank. We've got your back, always!"
So, you want to take a look at Book Brush? Go on over to Book Brush. You can get a free plan. I think they allow you up to like 10 to 15 free images per month that you can go ahead and generate. It's fantastic! I really like Book Brush. Great resource! You guys shouldn't sleep on this one.
Angela Eure Smith actually has a newsletter called Opportunities over on Substack. I shared this in my previous podcast, but I figured I'd go ahead and share with you. She actually has additional opportunities between August 31st and September 28th. Go through this! This is so fantastic! She curates a lot more than what you'll ever get here on this podcast. Really, really good!
And this is one of the reasons why I wanted to share this with you because Book Life—this is Publishers Weekly's website—they have an Indie Spotlight, and it's 100% free to submit your book to this. In fact, in the month of September, they are taking submissions for picture books. They'd like to read your picture books and other illustrated titles, including graphic novels. Email your submission info to their email. "Indie Spotlight: Picture Books" should be in your subject line.
In October, no surprise here, it's for scary stories! So anything that's horror, mystery, and supernatural, they'll go ahead and take that. It's kind of nice to get yourself a nice little spotlight for free!
The fine folks over at BookBaby actually send out a regular email that shares a lot of their resources they have online. There was a piece they did last August in 2023 about 15 promotion ideas to boost your sales and reach. Let me give the TL;DR and some of the overhead view. It's a 7-minute read, by the way. You can go ahead and review this inside the show notes.
Online book promotion strategies include:
- Build a professional author website.
- Use social media.
- Post social media and Amazon ads.
- Guest blogging and author interviews.
- Leverage email marketing.
- Explore book review platforms.
You have offline book promotion strategies including:
- Organize book launch events.
- Partner with local bookstores and libraries.
- Attend book conferences.
- Utilize print media and direct mail.
- Engage with book clubs and reading groups.
- Collaborative book promotion efforts, including cross-promote with other authors.
- Seek endorsements and influencer recommendations.
By the way, I'm doing that right now with one of my upcoming books! Run contests and giveaways. Schedule podcast and radio interviews.
There's so much to this piece! It's only seven minutes, but you're going to learn so much, and it's going to grease your creative wheels on how you can get your book in more people's hands.
So again, visit bookbaby.com if you want to go ahead and take a look at some of their great pieces on their blog. It's blog.bookbaby.com.
Excuse me, the Authors Guild is right now running a webinar on September 20th at 1 p.m. Eastern time: "What Agents Want from Querying Authors." So if you're looking to query any agents, the agents will walk you through common questions and various considerations, including what to look for when browsing agents' wish lists, which query letters, tips, and tricks really work, is it acceptable to query many agents simultaneously, what are normal query response times, and more. It's a free webinar, folks! Go ahead and get yourself set up with it.
Speaking of free, I just am getting to the last of the Reaching More Readers podcast with Ally, and here I think it's next month. I'm going to be transitioning over to a new segment about branding, marketing, and promoting for authors over on the Ally podcast. But you can go ahead and take a look at the last of the two broadcasts we have for Reaching More Readers with Holly Greenland.
We didn't go ahead and visit that link. It's going to be talking about the best marketing investments for indie authors. Holly and I had a great 26-minute conversation—excuse me, 28 minutes, my correction there. So go ahead and take a look at that on the Ally website.
And hey, by the way, there is an exclusive opportunity that April Cox of Self-Publishing Made Simple is going to be offering to everybody here. Normally, April will charge $20 for people to get into events like this, but I managed to coax her down to free! I love free! It's one of my favorite costs!
But we're going to be talking about proven strategies from my 10 years of experience—actually, over 10 years of experience. Discover more proven book marketing strategies from an author with over 10 years of experience, having helped countless indie authors succeed. These expert tips are designed to boost book sales and build a strong author brand, perfect for anyone looking to take their book marketing to the next level.
Big shout-out to April Cox! That's going to be on September 16th—this will be one week from today, on a Monday, from 8 to 9:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. I'm blocked out for an hour and a half, so I'll probably be sticking around for all that stuff.
And speaking of exclusive interviews, I'm super excited to welcome Maddie Dal Rimple to my main channel again! We're going to be talking about her new book about landing yourself some more speaking gigs. It's called "From Page to Platform." You're going to learn how to define your message, land paid speaking gigs, and captivate an audience. Join me! That is going to be on September 12th at 4:00 p.m.—I believe, excuse me, that's 5:15 p.m. My memory is not too good; I should probably just read the prompter here.
Big shout-out to the fine folks over at eBook Bears! They actually showcased my first book in my series here, "Self-Publishing for New Authors." So, so cool! Stay tuned because I'm actually organizing a massive virtual book fair, and we're going to have an event next week on September 17th from 1 to 5:00 p.m. It's going to be massive! Stay tuned because I'm going to put more information out in your email inbox if you're a part of my email newsletter or inside my community tab here on the YouTube channel.
If you're listening to the audio podcast, come on over and join me over on the YouTube channel if you will! That's dalinks.com/youtube.
Last but not least, it is starting to get down to the wire! If you'd like to get advanced access to "Advertising for Books: A Guide to Promoting and Selling with the Largest Online Bookseller," this is my book about Amazon advertising. I just didn't put Amazon inside there because, well, I wanted to be able to do video ads for this.
You can go ahead and get yourself advanced access by joining my ARC team over at dalinks.com/arcteam.
Last plug here: special thanks to the folks over at Book Award Pro for their support here of this podcast. You want to help support this podcast? One of the best ways to do that is to support these sponsors that put their ad money and dollars into something like this. It means the world to me that they do this!
So go on over, visit dalinks.com/bookawardpro. Get yourself set up with at least a free account, upload a couple of books, and see what comes back to you.
What do you think about some of these pieces of news? Was there anything that I missed over the past couple of weeks? Join me over in the Discord server when you visit dalinks.com/discord.
Till later, it's been Self-Publishing with Dale, and I'll chat with you next week!
Hey, thanks so much for tuning in! Special shout-out to my channel members for both the podcast channel and the main channel. Without your support, some projects we do at Self-Publishing with Dale would be much harder to fund. If you want to contribute to the cause, visit dalinks.com/memberships for details and get your on-screen shout-out at the end of each broadcast.
Till later, this has been Self-Publishing with Dale, and I'll see you soon!