[Link] AMAZON IS BEING FLOODED WITH BOOKS ENTIRELY WRITTEN BY AI

IT'S THE TIP OF THE AICEBERG.

It's a growing problem, making it more difficult to distinguish real authors from AI-generated bylines of non-existent writers.

One publisher identified by the WaPo lists dozens of books on Amazon on surprisingly niche topics, with suspicious five-star reviews propping up the operation.

And AI-generated books on Amazon are only the tip of the iceberg, with other AI content flooding the rest of the internet with dubiously sourced material as well, which could easily trigger a pandemic of misinformation.

Read the full article: https://futurism.com/the-byte/amazon-flooded-books-written-by-ai

[Link] The Writers Collective Life

by Gary Phillips

If you’re just starting out as a writer, you could do worse than strip your television’s electric plug-wire, wrap a spike around it, and then stick it back into the wall. See what blows, and how far. Just an idea.

— Stephen King

Writing is not always that dangerous, though for journalists in various parts of the world it is, but it is a lonely business. Writing is counter-intuitive to the idea of the cooperative process. Even if you were copywriter in a busy office, envisioning yourself as a modern day Don Draper, mesmerizing the potential client with your ability at word pictures, selling them on how you’ll sell their doo-dad over martinis at lunch. But eventually you have to bang out the copy, then pass it around to others to get their notes, their edits, their rewrites, picked over, beat up, then handed back to you.

But we all still write alone. We are still the first and final judge on what we compose.

In the old days you stole time from your job and family to write at night or on the weekends to produce the Great American Novel or at least your version of that ideal. If you were a genre writer, maybe you were influenced by the likes of Mr. King who was once so broke that he was living in his car; yet still churning out his stories. Maybe devoted family man, Orrie Hitt, struck a chord as he cranked out his sleaze paperback titles like Naked Flesh and Man-Hungry Female sitting at his kitchen table 12-14 hours a day. Or you might have been inspired by the likes of Ray Bradbury, who wrote Fahrenheit 451 ––his classic sci-fi novel about censorship –– while renting the use of a typewriter in the basement of UCLA’s Powell Library for a dime each half hour. Total reported expense: $9.80.

All this before the internet, before Amazon, before the marriage between digital printing and a bindery machine. Before it all changed.

Read the full article: https://drpop.org/the-writers-collective-life/

[Link] Top Ten Trends in Publishing Every Author Needs to Know in 2017

by Chloe

What does 2017 have in store for authors? If you haven’t had a chance to read forecasts and predictions for the coming year, fear not. We have read all of the top articles written by industry professionals and top indie authors so you don’t have to. We also reached out to some of our industry friends to see what their thoughts are. Below we have compiled a list of the top 10 trends in publishing that will impact indie authors the most, with specific takeaways on how you can best navigate them.

1. The Majority of Fiction Sales will Come from eBooks

Data Guy notes in his DBW White Paper that 70% of adult fiction sales were digital last year. It is likely that ebook readership will continue to grow in 2017. More eBook readers means more eBook sales. This means that if you’re writing fiction, promoting your eBooks is a good place to focus in the coming year.

What this means for you: If you are a first-time fiction author, publishing your work as an ebook is an affordable and easy way to enter the market. If you are a published or self-published fiction author, continue to focus your time, resources and budget on driving ebook sales.

Read the full article.

[Link] Valiant signs on to Amazon’s new fan-fic publishing platform

by Kevin Melrose

When Amazon Publishing unveiled Kindle Worlds last month, one of the first questions in comics circles was which publisher would be the first to sign on to the program, which allows fan-fic writers to earn royalties for certain corporate-approved stories. Now we know the answer: Valiant Entertainment.

The recently revived publisher was announced this morning as part of the second wave of licensors, alongside bestselling authors Hugh Howey (Silo Saga), Barry Eisler (John Rain novels), Blake Crouch (Wayward Pines) and Neal Stephenson (Foreworld Saga). Under the agreement, writers will be able to create and sell stories inspired by Bloodshot, X-O Manowar, Archer & Armstrong, Harbinger and Shadowman, with more properties expected to be added later.

In addition, the Kindle Worlds Store will launch later this month with more than 50 commissioned works, including “Valiant-branded” short stories by Jason Starr, Robert Rodi, Stuart Moore and others. The Kindle Worlds self-service submission platform will open at the same time.

Alloy Entertainment, the book-packaging division of Warner Bros. Television, has already licensed Cecily von Ziegesar’s Gossip Girl, Sara Shepard’s Pretty Little Liars and L.J. Smith’s The Vampire Diaries for what’s being billed as the first commercial publishing platform for fan fiction.

Amazon Publishing will pay royalties to both authors and rights holders: For works of at least 10,000 words, authors will receive 35 percent of net revenue (based on sales price rather than the standard, but lower, wholesale), paid monthly. There will also be an experimental program for shorter works, between 5,000 and 10,000 words, which will be typically priced under $1; the author will receive a digital royalty of 20 percent.

Licensors will provide content guidelines for each “World,” which must be followed; in addition, Amazon won’t allow pornography, offensive content (including racial slurs and excessive foul language), “poor customer experience” (including poorly formatted stories and misleading titles), excessive use of brand names, or crossovers.

Read the original post: http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2013/06/valiant-signs-on-to-amazons-new-fan-fic-publishing-platform/

[Link] Do Amazon and Createspace rip off Indie publishers with failure to correctly report sales?

by John. R. Clark, Managing Editor at AgeView Press

When AgeView Press Indie pubbed the book FLYING SOLO in May of 2012, the author, Jeanette Vaughan immediately began tracking sales. She heard from excited friends and family who immediately emailed when ordering their copies. The first sales were off of Createspace’s e-store with the title ID number given to the author. Then, through Amazon, a week later, when the book went live on the site. Finally on Kindle, when the ebook format was completed.

Initially, things appeared kosher. People exclaiming that they had ordered the book, were showing up within a day or two on the electronic royalty reports with a reasaonable accuracy. But by June and July, sales descrepencies were noted by the author from customers claiming that they had purchased the book directly through Amazon, not an Amazon affiliate. Many of these sales were simply not listed.The author contacted Createspace customer support, who gave assurance that all sales were being accurately reported. FLYING SOLO was now also on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select as well as expanded distribution channels, which included Amazon affiliates in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Sales were being reported to the author from readers and bookclubs in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

The first note of apparent discrepancy came when a dear friend of the author ordered three copies of the book from Amazon in June. These books were ordered all at the same time, from Amazon.com direct. Yet, that cluster of three sales was never posted as such.  Another instance in early July involved the same issue. Again, a customer ordered three copies, yet no sales were trackable through Amazons channels for three sale purchased on the same day.

Meantime, the author was making public appearnances, being featured on blogs and radio, and rounding with booksignings. During the months of June and July, no expanded distribution channel sales were posted on the royalty report, yet customers were emailing the author letting her know how much the book was being enjoyed overseas. More than 15 five star reviews for the novel were posted on Amazon.

What should have shown as a surge of sales, as the book peaked, never appeared on the royalty reports. The author was suspect. She contacted Ingram directly, only to be informed that they were not supposed to reveal information to an author directly. So, the Indie publisher, AgeView Press made the call. Ingram showed 16 copies of the book ordered through their system total since May. Those sales never showed on the June or July royalty report. The author filed formal complaints with Createspace customer service, but received only canned letters in response explaining that indeed there was an issue with reports in Expanded Distribution and it was being investigated. Advice to author? Please be patient.

By August, it was clear there were gross in accuracies. The 30 copies ordered from Barnes and Noble never showed up. Few if any sales were listed for August. Yet the author had confirmation of over 4,000 copies in distribution worldwide. The crowning blow came in September. A plan was devised. A friend, agreed to help with the investigation. She ordered a copy of FLYING SOLO on September 7th, taking screen shots of her order and confirmation of payment directly from Amazon. She printed out here receipt showing date and time of purchase. The book arrived on September 13, to San Jose, California. Photos were taken. The sale was complete. Copies of all screenshots and receipts were scanned and sent to the author. By September 20th, no sales were shown at all on Createspaces report. Phoning Createspace, the author was informed that no sales were showing for Amazon for the month for that title. It was time for outrage!  What had been suspected, had now been proven. Not once, but twice!

Continue reading: http://jeanettevaughan.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/do-amazon-and-createspace-rip-off-indie-publishers-with-failure-to-correctly-report-sales/

[Link] Amazon's Plagiarism Problem / The Kindle Swindle

Amazon's Plagiarism Problem
by Adam Penenberg

Amazon's erotica section isn't just rife with tales of lust, incest, violence, and straight-up kink. It's also a hotbed of masked merchants profiting from copyright infringement. And even with anti-piracy legislation looming, Amazon doesn't appear too eager to stop the forbidden author-on-author action.

Continue reading: http://www.fastcompany.com/1807211/amazons-plagiarism-problem

=====================================================

The Kindle Swindle
by Laura Hazard Owen
March 2011 (but still applicable concerning this topic)

Mike Essex, a Search Specialist at UK digital marketing agency Koozai, believes that ebooks are the next frontier for content farmers and is already noticing an increasing number of spam e-books hitting ebookstores like the Kindle Store. He originally wrote about his discovery on the Koozai blog.

In his blog post, Essex pointed out that readers won’t necessarily recognize whether content has been plagiarized. And if an e-book is exposed as plagiarized, the author can simply take it down and resubmit it under a new name. A bad review on one site won’t keep people from buying the same ebook on another site. And these titles are priced so low that unhappy buyers may not bother complain.

Essex carried out an experiment for PT: “I took the lyrics to the song ‘This is the song that never ends’ and repeated them over 700-plus pages. No formatting, just one continuous block of duplicate text. Within 24 hours, it was live on the Amazon Kindle Store and I haven’t received a single message from Amazon about it. Surely an automated process would be able to easily tell I had repeated myself over and over, but this wasn’t flagged up.

Continue reading: http://www.publishingtrends.com/2011/03/the-kindle-swindle/

[Link] Salon's Rebuttal Article to Russo -- Farhad Manjoo

Don’t Support Your Local Bookseller
Buying books on Amazon is better for authors, better for the economy, and better for you.

I get that some people like bookstores, and they’re willing to pay extra to shop there. They find browsing through physical books to be a meditative experience, and they enjoy some of the ancillary benefits of physicality (authors’ readings, unlimited magazine browsing, in-store coffee shops, the warm couches that you can curl into on a cold day). And that’s fine: In the same way that I sometimes wander into Whole Foods for the luxurious experience of buying fancy food, I don’t begrudge bookstore devotees spending extra to get an experience they fancy.

What rankles me, though, is the hectoring attitude of bookstore cultists like Russo, especially when they argue that readers who spurn indies are abandoning some kind of “local” literary culture. There is little that’s “local” about most local bookstores. Unlike a farmers’ market, which connects you with the people who are seasonally and sustainably tending crops within driving distance of your house, an independent bookstore’s shelves don’t have much to do with your community. Sure, every local bookstore promotes local authors, but its bread and butter is the same stuff that Amazon sells—mass-manufactured goods whose intellectual property was produced by one of the major publishing houses in Manhattan. It doesn’t make a difference whether you buy Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs at City Lights, Powell’s, Politics & Prose, or Amazon—it’s the same book everywhere.

Read the full article here.

====================

Your thoughts?

[Link] Amazon’s Jungle Logic -- Richard Russo

I FIRST heard of Amazon’s new “promotion” from my bookseller daughter, Emily, in an e-mail with the subject line “Can You Hear Me Screaming in Brooklyn?” According to a link Emily supplied, Amazon was encouraging customers to go into brick-and-mortar bookstores on Saturday, and use its price-check app (which allows shoppers in physical stores to see, by scanning a bar code, if they can get a better price online) to earn a 5 percent credit on Amazon purchases (up to $5 per item, and up to three items). ...

Stephen [King] wrote “I love my Kindle” and noted that Amazon had done well by him in terms of book sales. But he too saw the new strategy as both “invasive and unfair.” He thought that many would see the new promotion as nothing more than comparison shopping on steroids but that, in fact, it was “a bridge too far.”

Read the full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/opinion/amazons-jungle-logic.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1 

====================

Your thoughts?

Mark Coker on Amazon's KDP Select

Amazon Aims to Empty Competitor Shelves of Indie Ebooks

"Amazon yesterday launched a broadside against competing ebook retailers when it introduced a new program that requires authors to remove their books from competing retailers.

"The new service offering, KDP Select, promises participating authors a shot at earning their share of a $500,000 monthly pool of cash. Amazon will distribute the funds to participating authors based on the number of times an ebook is borrowed from Amazon's new lending library."

To read the rest of the article, click here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-coker/amazon-ebooks-kdp-select_b_1139260.html

======================

What are you thoughts? Are Mark's concerns valid? Or just anti-corporation rhetoric? Do you plan to use KDP Select?

Feel free to post your comments below.