Amazon Creates New 'X Factor' or Crowdsourcing Offer

This week Amazon added another layer to their offer, a new ‘crowdsourcing’ book submission one, which as with all things Amazon today, immediately polarised many. The lure is to attract would be authors into what some would call a digital slush pile 'X factor’ competition, where readers vote and those works that get the votes, win and potentially get selected for stardom and the recognition their authors want. Under the new service Authors will be asked to submit never before published works. Amazon will then make available a preview of the work and enable readers to review and nominate their favourite and the books with the most nominations will then be reviewed by the Amazon team for potential publication. It is unclear when and if an author can flip a non-selected submission into KDP, but we suspect that will be on offer and provide an added author bonus.

So does the following have an impact on readers, an author, an agent, a publisher and Publishing?

• Guaranteed advance & competitive royalties: You will receive a guaranteed $1,500 advance and 50% royalties on net eBook revenue.
• Focused formats: We acquire worldwide publication rights for eBook and audio formats in all languages. You retain all other rights, including print.
• 5-year renewable terms, $5,000 in royalties: If your book doesn’t earn $5,000 in royalties during your initial 5-year contract term, and any 5-year renewal term after that, you can choose to stop publishing with us.
• Easy reversions: After two years, your rights in any format or language that remains unpublished, or all rights for any book that earns less than $500 in total royalties in the preceding 12-month period, can be reverted upon request – no questions asked.
• Early downloads & reviews: One week prior to release date, everyone who nominated your book will receive a free, early copy to help build momentum and customer reviews.
• Featured Amazon marketing: Your book will be enrolled into the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, Kindle Unlimited as well as be eligible for targeted email campaigns and promotions.

What is different about this new offer to those offered in the past by some publishers and 3^rd parties? Is it any different to say Author Solutions? What does Amazon offer that others don’t?

We may need to step back and stop seeing these offers from Amazon as individual offers and start to see them as part of an overall offer which may even go further than just books.

They already have the market share of physical and digital books and in doing also have the largest known customer base and information on their buying, browsing and taste.  They have the largest digital self-publishing share with not only KDP but also Create Space and Audible. They make money on KDP and have probably done more for self-publishing than all the exploiting services that went before and can even boast some significant successes. Authors love it because it is transparent, rewards are high and they have a huge potential audience they can reach.

What this new move potentially does is move Amazon into a strong position to exclusively capture new talent and win their publishing rights, provides a feed to KDP as well as Publishing and adjusts the reward and rights benchmark both in terms of reward and importantly term time rights. The later can’t be overlooked as it is a major move away from the exclusive and some would suggest ‘in perpetuity’ aspects of the traditional model. Couple this with Amazon’s ability to make all activity transparent and remove those old Chinese royalty walls and there is a certain appeal for all.

Can others follow? We doubt that anyone today has the market vision and offer, reach, breadth and ability to leverage money on top of existing money in this way.

Self Publishing Is Going to Just Get Bigger, Embrace It

Today we face the prospect of drowning in tidal wave self-published eBooks, YouTube videos, photos, independent music videos and tracks etc which are loaded onto sites alongside and often more frequently than traditionally produced works. Historically these self-published works have been regarded by many as substandard works, looked down upon by the traditional marketplace who referred to them by the term ‘vanity publishing’. Some would even still argue that if you can’t get a publisher, producer or third party to publish your work, then it must be of questionable quality and of little value.

Some claim that by 2020 50% of all eBooks will be self-published. We would question that and suggest that it is probably a huge understatement and the figure is more likely to be 75%. However, we have to acknowledge that establishing what is self-published and what isn’t is likely to become even harder as digital tools to create, promote and produce quality layouts become cheaper and easier to use. We also have to accept that there will be a number of new third parties who will assist the creator to be published and although these are not necessarily publishers as we knew them, they are effectively publishers.

Some will point to Anderson’s ‘Long Tail’ economics and say it doesn't work and the head is getting smaller in number and larger in slice of the pie and the tail is now just too long and they will be right MIDiA Consulting have published a new report on the music business titled‘The Death of the Long Tail: The Superstar Music Economy’.  The report states that the total global artist income from recorded music in 2013 was $2.8 billion, down from $3.8 billion in 2000 but up slightly on 2012 and that artists’ share of total income grew from 14% in 2000 to 17% in 2013. It claims that 1% of the total artists and works account for 77% of all artist recorded music income. This reinforced by the ‘Cowell factor’ of manufactured new stars and the charts, but is music just about charts and recorded music or should also not take in music publishing, performing rights and royalties and merchandising. We often just see music through the eyes of the record producers and not the industry and rarely the musicians.

Others will complain that in the book industry earnings for the mid and back list are being decimated by the introduction of masses of self-published material. The earnings will increasingly be different to those enjoyed yesterday and many will not match the author’s expectations. Michael Kozlowski’s recently advocated that in order to address this that ‘Indie eBooks Need to beSegregated’. We would strongly disagree with this reactive and somewhat naïve approach which is aimed at suppressing creativity. Segregation is a false economics move aimed not at segregating good and bad but at protecting yesterday’s financial model and its bets from the new offerings.

The world has changed and the true democratisation of creativity is upon us and this has been enabled by the internet and means that we can all write, make videos, take pictures, create games and make music. Forget the quality issue the fact is that this explosion of material is changing the way we now create, develop, market and value stuff. This genie is not going back in the lamp and we now have to realise that there will be more not less and that new consumer values will change all and that the creator rewards will be different.

Some state that the consumer demands quality and that this can only be achieved through the editorial development process. However there are now many consumer viewpoints and values and these often clash with these traditional binary beliefs. Who would have believed that some low quality YouTube videos would receive the number of viewings they have and gone on to spawn new stars of their own. Who would have expected the global sensation of ’50 Shades of Grey’ and it now being adapted to mainstream film? Would we have ever heard ‘Gangnam Style’ without YouTube? Would performers such as Lilly Allen or the Arctic Monkeys have made it if left to the traditional music business?

We accept that there are millions who don’t make it in both the traditional and self-publishing models but that is no reason to not move on and accept that we are now moving into an era of free expression, creativity and democratisation. 

The Three Rs: Authoring in a Digitral Age. No. 3 Rights

This is the first part of the presentation given to the Swanwick Writers Summer School, 11th August,2009. It is based on The Three ‘Rs’: Authoring in the Digital Age.

The third R is shared between rights and reward.

It brings me back to that Litopia discussion and the issue of how authors get rewarded in this digital age. Let’s try and park the physical book world to one side and look purely at digital rights and reward.

Today author advances are disappearing or shrinking. Digital rights are effectively being talked of as a single subsidiary right but we must recognise that these are different from the rights we are familiar with today but can also affect them.

What happens to the rights reversal in a digital age where print on demand and an ebook can mean a book is never out of print? Why should a work be effectively tethered to a publisher in perpetuity?

Always make sure that you can revert your rights and when the conditions for reversal are reached get them back. You can with little effort, sell as many digital individual copies of an out of print work as a publisher and enjoy more return.

Guess what the price of an ebook is today?

I can’t tell you the answer only that some publishers tie it to the current renditions RRP, others to the hardback, and others to whatever. The price has to include tax which changes from state to state, country to country and even within the EU is not standardised. The consumer is however now seeing Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders US, Indigo in Canada and others trying to create a $9.99 price point.

Remember that iTunes moment everyone talks about? They did it by creating a .99 cent price point. I would predict that ebook prices can only go one way and it isn’t up.
Many are using the ebook as the promotional lost leader to capture the physical sale. Others are saying that they will not release the ebook until after the hardback has had its day so avoiding the cannibalising of hardback sales.

James Patterson today has a best selling US ebook ‘The Angel Experiment’. It isn’t new it came out 4 years ago. The reason it is a best seller today is that its been given away to promote his new series. Mega authors such as Patterson may be able to give their books away, big publishers may think it a smart marketing move, but what impact could it have on authors and publishers who don’t enjoy the same economic freedom?

It’s often like the wild west out there today.

But remember the contract you sign today will not deliver royalties for some time and can you predict what the market will look like in 2 years or 3 years?

Should there be a separate digital rights contract which is not based on the physical rendition but on a fixed term licence?

With physical sales came returns and so royalties took time to be paid. However with digital sales there are no returns so why does the author have to wait? Why not transfer the money when it hits the till or at least not long after?

Should digital royalties’ be based on a % of RRP, which is often meaningless in the digital rendition?

Should digital royalties be based on a % of net receipts, which if the current trends continue could be a % of little or nothing?

Should digital royalties be fixed amount? Publishing may be a gambling business but who will gamble on predicting that today?

Should you negotiate different rates based on the different channels as Google, Amazon, Apple are all different in their models? Just like yesterday’s territorial rights they can all be done separately.

Then there is the Google Book Settlement in the US. My thoughts on this debacle are well documented but what I would say it has raised it the whole issue on copyright. I find it amazing that an industry that is all about copyright and rights failed to create a rights registry to control them and waited for a handout from Google to even start the process.


I see a fantastic opportunity for writing talent in the digital world. Tomorrow you may not have the same dependency on some relationships that you believe pivotal today.

I believe that publishing is about joining those dots between the author and the reader.

I believe in the right for authors to revert their rights and not be tethered to a publisher unless they want to be.

I believe that digital rights should be term based and reflect the different channels.

I strongly believe authors should see a greater slice of the digital pie.

I also believe that there will always be publishers and retailers, but they may not be the same number, or that they will provide the same services they do today.
The one thing that is certain is that tomorrow will be different and you are in the best position to benefit.

You are no longer in that theatre performing to an audience hidden in the dark. You can switch on the lights and embrace the digital age.
Enjoy the journey!