# What Do you See for Self-Publishing in 2017?



## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

Where do Kboarders see Self-Pub going in 2017? 

Will there still be ton of people coming in to publish or the there will be less newcomers (which can be good for discovery).. Will Europe start making more money for authors? Asia? 

What do you think is next? Would be interesting to learn!


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## ShadyWolfBoy (Sep 23, 2015)

RBC said:


> Where do Kboarders see Self-Pub going in 2017?
> 
> Will there still be ton of people coming in to publish or the there will be less newcomers (which can be good for discovery).. Will Europe start making more money for authors? Asia?
> 
> What do you think is next? Would be interesting to learn!


Firstly, I think we're going to see a massive churn of self-publishing authors over the next two years. A lot of new faces are going to come in, and a lot of those newcomers and a lot of people already at this are going to be ground out. Visibility is going to get harder to achieve. We're going to see about the same number of success stories, but from a much larger pool of publishers.

Secondly, I think we're going to start seeing the first waves of significant adoption in non-english-speaking countries. Right now, my understanding is that the non-english ebooks are a much smaller market, despite the populations being larger and often just as tech-savvy as the English-speaking audience.
We'll see more German, French, Japanese, etc, native-language written fiction and those markets will expand. 
The English-speaking market will also expand, but at a slower pace as we're running up against a soft saturation point for e-books.

Thirdly, I think that by the end of 2017 we will see some resurgence of serious competition to Amazon. I don't think this will be world-shaking or utterly game-changing, most likely coming in the form of a significant revamp of Google, Apple, or both.

Fourthly, I suspect we'll start to see some of the mid-size distributors who supply books to the independent bookstores, start to sniff around the self-published world with a bit more interest. These will still be pay-to-play endeavors, but they'll craft options that appeal to the higher tier of independent author and the lower tier of press to enable them to start getting their books into stores in small quantities-by distribution standards, realizing that 'one book per store in Idaho' is a LOT of books.

My crystal ball is admittedly cloudy, so I could be very wrong on most of these points


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## Clare W (Aug 13, 2015)

I see great things ahead! Here's my 2c:

- international markets opening up further, whether for English language titles, or for local translations. In the last year or so, India and Brazil have done well for me, and unless their economies slide (quite possible in the case of Brazil) they should continue to grow. On the other hand, the European market places don't seem to do much. Has anyone ever made a sale in the Netherlands??

- increasing "professionalism" and the tools and services to help authors manage their production, marketing and promotions better. We're already seeing some great service providers and innovative products directed squarely towards authors, and I think this is going to grow as demand for a polished book / author platform, etc grows.


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## Accord64 (Mar 12, 2012)

Only one thing I'm sure of for 2017 (and beyond) is that the KU debate will rage on.


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## BWFoster78 (Jun 18, 2015)

We're all going to get rich. Rich! RICH!!!


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

I see more scamming by scammers. We'll see something that we didn't expect before. Remember that scammers make it harder to people to find our books. Noise is our enemy.

I see more author-cooperation in marketing. Our mailing lists are successful, which means more selling through our marketing lists. Selling without paying a third party is good. However, as groups form, as costs mount, as further success is reached, there will need to be a reckoning. Not everyone gets to join. Likewise, I see more multi-author sets for the same reason. Those strategies haven't peaked yet.

I see more Bookbub. Sooner or later, we'll somebody buy Bookbub. 

I see the continued slide of the lesser favored book sites.

I see a market that's increasingly difficult to crack. Better people at marketing will appear in the market and sell more books than me.

There's an opportunity here for professional marketers who can rock the marketing side. If you can make sales happen, you can reap $$$. Successful marketers have a chance at becoming new gatekeepers. However, it hasn't happened yet, but it only takes one marketer cracking the code to professionalize indie marketing. Once one marketer can do it, others will come flocking in. 

As authors go wide seeking world distribution, I see Amazon heating up the competition. Amazon will not give up the indie hill without a titanic struggle. Being with them will gain you more.

I see new the usual amount of fashion and churn cranking on the market.

I see more indies taking home book awards.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

I think it's going to get more competitive as the number of titles increases and readers become more selective. 

I think KU will lower the cap on pages significantly and disallow boxed sets.  

Other than that, I don't know.


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## PaulWRyan (May 12, 2016)

- I think we'll see the number of new books released each year continue to grow, and sadly, means many authors will become buried under a sea of titles. I vaguely recall seeing we're now looking at 2,200,000 titles per year at the moment? http://www.worldometers.info/books/ That, and the average reader only reads about 20 - 30 novels per year so it means 'making it' is becoming more difficult.

- Of course, the KU debate will continue waging as we demand more pennies for our hard work! 

- It also looks like series will continue to be the bread and butter for any writer hoping to make a living at this gig. Also, I imagine word counts will continue to drop and could start to see more 50k - 60k novels be accepted as 'full-length novels'.

- Amazon's foothold on the market growing stronger. Already Amazon own a ridiculous share of the market. So much, that more and more authors will go straight towards publishing 'Amazon exclusive'. Unless a competitor comes out there, then Amazon can continue to do whatever it wants.

- Higher quality of books: tools such as Hemmingway, Grammarly, Write or Die, Edit Minion, Scrivener... we've seen a lot of great writing tools come out and I imagine even better ones on the horizon to help authors.

- New interface for reading comics digitally? Okay, a wish list one for me. I hope they work on something to make reading a comic book on your Kindle less of a pain!

Just a few rambling thoughts to throw into the mix.


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

Glynn Stewart said:


> Firstly, I think we're going to see a massive churn of self-publishing authors over the next two years. A lot of new faces are going to come in, and a lot of those newcomers and a lot of people already at this are going to be ground out. Visibility is going to get harder to achieve. We're going to see about the same number of success stories, but from a much larger pool of publishers.


I'm afraid of this, but seems like a logical part of life - everything cycles. Def. hope it's not a huge one tho..


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

Douglas Milewski said:


> I see more author-cooperation in marketing. Our mailing lists are successful, which means more selling through our marketing lists. Selling without paying a third party is good. However, as groups form, as costs mount, as further success is reached, there will need to be a reckoning. Not everyone gets to join. Likewise, I see more multi-author sets for the same reason. Those strategies haven't peaked yet.
> 
> There's an opportunity here for professional marketers who can rock the marketing side. If you can make sales happen, you can reap $$$. Successful marketers have a chance at becoming new gatekeepers. However, it hasn't happened yet, but it only takes one marketer cracking the code to professionalize indie marketing. Once one marketer can do it, others will come flocking in.


First one would be awesome. More and more co-promotion would be great. Sharing audiences can create the 'rising tide floats all boats', at least on the small level.

I don't thin multi-author sets of big size are great idea.. too many books in a set might diminish the effect for each author. How is your experience there?

And as far as no.2 that would be good but I don't see any great marketing specialists yet. Some good ones are there but it's still mostly depending on Amazon (esp. for fiction). Non-fiction can gain a lot more from marketers.. Hopefully, this gets better.


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

RBC said:


> First one would be awesome. More and more co-promotion would be great. Sharing audiences can create the 'rising tide floats all boats', at least on the small level.
> 
> I don't thin multi-author sets of big size are great idea.. too many books in a set might diminish the effect for each author. How is your experience there?
> 
> And as far as no.2 that would be good but I don't see any great marketing specialists yet. Some good ones are there but it's still mostly depending on Amazon (esp. for fiction). Non-fiction can gain a lot more from marketers.. Hopefully, this gets better.


I see people being very happy with their participation in these sets, so as long as the bloom is on the rose, we'll see more of them. As for marketers, I don't know of any yet, but money says its only a matter of time. The harder the market is to break into, the more likely that an author will pay/profit-share with a marketer. I'd do it right now.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

It's hard to know. Barnes & Noble seems to be in survival mode. I look for their ebook division to crumble and go straight app. Then I look for them to hunker down to protect the brick and mortar stores and stop selling digital content completely. Will that happen as soon as 2017? I have no idea. It seems an inevitability at this point. Google will never be a force in the market if they remain closed to new authors. I look for one of the big dogs to buy BookBub (like what happened with The Midlist) and that will eventually become unavailable to us. In 2017? I don't know. Eventually, though. Like Rosalind I expect a lower cap on KU and probably a ban on bundling. That seems to be the only way to clean up the current problem of people publishing the same work over and over again in different bundles to fluff page counts. I look for the lower cap to happen before that, though. I look for a huge influx of writers but it will overlap with a mass exodus of those giving up, so it will probably even out.


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## mach 5 (Dec 5, 2015)

Wal-mart will open to a broader spectrum of self-publishers (they already are doing a pilot program). Romance will be a big problem for them because of erotic content. There will be a lot of birthing pangs. But by 2020 they may be able to take on Amazon. This isn't necessarily good news as both have a policy of squeezing vendors (that's us).


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## Sara C (Apr 30, 2014)

I agree with Amanda, a ton of authors will continue to pour in, but even more will probably call it quits, mainly because visibility is already much more difficult than it was a year ago, and 20x more difficult than it was 3 or 4 years ago. It also stands to reason that most of the promo sites will either go under, or go the Midlist route. I forsee even more author cross-promo, fb ads, etc to pick up the slack.


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

Douglas Milewski said:


> I see people being very happy with their participation in these sets, so as long as the bloom is on the rose, we'll see more of them. As for marketers, I don't know of any yet, but money says its only a matter of time. The harder the market is to break into, the more likely that an author will pay/profit-share with a marketer. I'd do it right now.


How are the follow up sales after the bundles? That's what for me, really, defines the successful co-promo - if bundle sells wells it's short term success but if there are over 10 authors and not all of them are getting sell-throughs than the promo fails..

And yea, I definitely see a need for them.. closest thing I see to real is the book reviewers who have built audiences on websites or Instagram etc And obviously site like BookBub..


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

mach 5 said:


> Wal-mart will open to a broader spectrum of self-publishers (they already are doing a pilot program). Romance will be a big problem for them because of erotic content. There will be a lot of birthing pangs. But by 2020 they may be able to take on Amazon. This isn't necessarily good news as both have a policy of squeezing vendors (that's us).


That is def. something to keep an eye on... could be quite big. Don't think they can possibly take on Amazon but it can be nice 2nd or 3rd source of income. Or a marketing vehicle to get discovered and increase sales on other platforms along with Amazon.


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## mach 5 (Dec 5, 2015)

I think Walmart absolutely could take on Amazon. How many people walk through their stores every day? (Roughly 80% of American consumers are in the store at least once a year per Forbes.) 

Now imagine ads all over the place during a platform launch period. (Like advertising cookbooks available as ebooks in the produce section.) They could even have it where you pay for the ebook at checkout (by picking up a small card to scan) and it is delivered to your app before you get your groceries out to the car. They could also do that in their print book section, with an ebook card for any print book that they are presently selling in store.  

Getting them onto the site to order the first few times is the challenge and they can do that via in store deals/displays. 

Lots of additional opportunities to increase book buyer awareness. E.g. Kroger's has fuel points for shopping, Walmart could have ebook points for shopping in store.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

mach 5 said:


> I think Walmart absolutely could take on Amazon. How many people walk through their stores every day? (Roughly 80% of American consumers are in the store at least once a year per Forbes.)
> 
> Now imagine ads all over the place during a platform launch period. (Like advertising cookbooks available as ebooks in the produce section.) They could even have it where you pay for the ebook at checkout (by picking up a small card to scan) and it is delivered to your app before you get your groceries out to the car. They could also do that in their print book section, with an ebook card for any print book that they are presently selling in store.
> 
> ...


How many people shop from Wal-Marts website, though? Do we have numbers? Plus, I mean, how many people think "books" when they think Wal-Mart? A lot of people won't shop there because of certain political factors and ebooks are never going to be a big part of their bottom line. Don't get me wrong, I think they could probably be a small income stream for people wide. I don't think they'll come close to touching Amazon on ebooks, though.


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## mach 5 (Dec 5, 2015)

Walmart would have to change part of its attitudes (on explicit material) to compete head on with Amazon. It's working on competing with Amazon on other dimensions, including adding fulfillment centers, etc. Amazon is definitely king in this respect. Its Alexa ranking for the US is 4, Walmart is 35, Apple is 36, B&N is 333, Kobo is 53,xxx. Of course, google is #1, but that doesn't parlay into book sales (too bad can't drill down on alexa (at least not free portion) to see what alexa rank play.google.com has).

Walmart definitely wants to compete more effectively with Amazon. It still has 5 times the revenue Amazon has, but Amazon makes more per employee (3x more!). Digital products would increase revenue while also decreasing the deficit it is running against Amazon in earnings per employee. Walmart is presently the only other entity that can come close to competing as the everything store -- but it has to bring digital into the mix. It has the incentive and it has the money to put into platform development and incentives for both shoppers and vendors (vendors that it will later squeeze for everything it can).

And, yes, there are political factors that keep people from shopping there - but walmart still sells to more americans than any other company in the country.

*ADDING A PREDICTION* - one that is highly unlikely to come true but I can hold out hope. Apple will create an android app for ibooks. Apple device sales are down and market changes may push them further down. Previously, cell phone providers were subsidizing the purchase of phones to reach market saturation. Market saturation has been pretty much reached and the deals won't be as sweet for getting a new cell phone as they have been the past 5+ years.

So Apple will need to start thinking about leveraging the bookstore (epubs don't care about the device, they care about the app). They'll do the same for itunes for mp3s.


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## J.A. Cipriano (May 27, 2014)

Assuming the economy doesn't totally tank or we don't go up in a huge mushroom cloud?

It's going to get more difficult, and not just that, but a lot of midlisters are going to go away, concentrating the majority of sales on people who are already huge. The big fish will continue to swallow market share, and there will be fewer and fewer breakouts. This may or may not be exacerbated by junk/scam books clogging the system, but it will happen. Hell, it's happening now. 

Authors will have to do more and more to achieve less and less, and eventually most will give up or get swallowed via churn. This will be compounded by promo sites losing effectiveness and/or disappearing. Facebook ads will get less and less effective.

It won't be enough to launch to market and write to market. Soon that will be par for the course because everyone will be doing it. Even worse, once any book hits, it will get crowded out within a month or two as people jump aboard.


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## 555aaa (Jan 28, 2014)

There's already about 4 million ebooks on Amazon but there's something like 18 million print books. My prediction is that instead of the top 0.25% of books taking half the sales revenue at Amazon, it will be the top 0.1% as more books enter the system, costs to promote go up, and the algos continue to favor what is popular. 

Frankly what has been happening in the ebook market is that we have basically a genre fiction camp whose readers and writers sit happily in that ecosystem and every other kind of book which doesn't work in that world. Which is actually most books. If you write the definitive biography of Thomas Edison, and it takes you a couple years, there is nothing in the indie ebook ecosystem that can possibly make that business case work.  Biography, history, literary fiction, textbooks, cookbooks, art books, complicated how-to books with illustrations - none of those work as ebooks. I see that split deepening next year.  It won't impact most Kboards members.

Successful indie authors will find a new way to monetize content (or their brand) while at the same time accepting lower unit pricing or page read pricing. 

Amazon might spin off Kindle into a more fully independent division or re-banded company if readership doesn't cross over sufficiently into other types of customer engagement.

Text-to-speech will be so natural in maybe five years that there won't be many audiobooks published. I think we'll start to see the cracks in that market in 2017.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

I actually really disagree on the audiobook-growing-less idea. A good audiobook is so much more than text-to-speech--it is a performance. Amazon is pushing Audible HARD. I think audio is going to grow a lot.


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

mach 5 said:


> I think Walmart absolutely could take on Amazon. How many people walk through their stores every day? (Roughly 80% of American consumers are in the store at least once a year per Forbes.)
> 
> Now imagine ads all over the place during a platform launch period. (Like advertising cookbooks available as ebooks in the produce section.) They could even have it where you pay for the ebook at checkout (by picking up a small card to scan) and it is delivered to your app before you get your groceries out to the car. They could also do that in their print book section, with an ebook card for any print book that they are presently selling in store.
> 
> ...


They would need to start selling book as main thing almost in the shops and I don't think that makes sense for them.. and even less as ebooks.. maybe they will spend more resources and promotion on selling print books in shops but it won't be enough to make a dent in Amazon. Also, I think they will be only selling mid-list and up Indie books so that will not help newer authors.


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

J.A. Cipriano said:


> Assuming the economy doesn't totally tank or we don't go up in a huge mushroom cloud?
> 
> It's going to get more difficult, and not just that, but a lot of midlisters are going to go away, concentrating the majority of sales on people who are already huge. The big fish will continue to swallow market share, and there will be fewer and fewer breakouts. This may or may not be exacerbated by junk/scam books clogging the system, but it will happen. Hell, it's happening now.
> 
> ...


Hmm... why would mid-listers be the ones to be hurt most? I'd say new ones will be that... if mid-lister has good email list they can still make the books sell and with each book grow slowly. Now for newbies, seems it will be so hard to get discovered.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Also, the majority of people shopping at Wal-Mart tend to skew toward the bottom of the money pyramid. They're generally not interested in ereaders because food and clothing is more important. I just read a survey that says the average Wal-Mart shopper is a 50-year-old woman with a household income of $53,000. Also, the same survey showed only 19 percent of Wal-Mart shoppers use the website. The rest go to Amazon. I just don't think the Walmart demographics support ebook success.


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

I think that Amazon will continue exploring how to make more money off of KDP. (That's what their title discovery schemes are all about.) eBooks are one thing, but the bigger market remains paper books, and selling to two markets is always better than selling to one. While they aren't there, I think that they will continue throwing money at this problem until they learn how to monetize it. They WANT their best-selling ebooks to become best selling paper books.


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## Lady Vine (Nov 11, 2012)

Let's see:

- Authors having to publish even faster in order to stay relevant
- More free books flooding the market (again, in order to stay relevant)
- More money being spent on advertising just to stay in the same place
- Lots of the early best-selling indies dropping out
- New scams
- Amazon removes the exclusivity requirement from KU, and makes it an opt-in type of thing
- The other retailers do exactly what they've been doing all along: nothing

I actually agree about the text-to-speech thing replacing audio. For the price-conscious, this will suffice. They won't care about the art of voice acting, they'll just want their story told to them while they're driving, or washing the dishes etc. Probably won't be 2017, though. But a few years, definitely.


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## JalexM (May 14, 2015)

Lady Vine said:


> I actually agree about the text-to-speech thing replacing audio. For the price-conscious, this will suffice. They won't care about the art of voice acting, they'll just want their story told to them while they're driving, or washing the dishes etc. Probably won't be 2017, though. But a few years, definitely.


Had a fan told me he uploaded my book to text to speech so he could listen to it while he worked, so I can see this happening.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Douglas Milewski said:


> I think that Amazon will continue exploring how to make more money off of KDP. (That's what their title discovery schemes are all about.) eBooks are one thing, but the bigger market remains paper books, and selling to two markets is always better than selling to one. While they aren't there, I think that they will continue throwing money at this problem until they learn how to monetize it. They WANT their best-selling ebooks to become best selling paper books.


I'm not sure that's really the case. Haven't ebooks taken over fifty percent of the market now? I think I read that statistic years ago so it's probably higher now. Print books will continue to decrease as time moves forward. I don't think they'll ever completely go away, but it's cheaper (because of no physical goods to manufacture) and saves on delivery costs to sell an ebook. In fact, I think there will come a time when everything in print is POD. You'll walk up to a machine in a Kroger or Starbucks, pick from a digital catalog and watch it printed right there. I don't believe print garners Amazon more money in the grand scheme of things.


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## JaclynDolamore (Nov 5, 2015)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Also, the majority of people shopping at Wal-Mart tend to skew toward the bottom of the money pyramid. They're generally not interested in ereaders because food and clothing is more important. I just read a survey that says the average Wal-Mart shopper is a 50-year-old woman with a household income of $53,000.


Ereaders don't cost that much! Ebooks are some pretty cheap entertainment. I'd be crying for joy if our household income was 53k but I still have an ereader and buy ebooks...

...but I do think it's true that Wal-Mart would struggle to be a player anyway, just because they are not really an online media company at all.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

I think what will happen with audio is that it will drop in price. Brilliance is pricing new audiobooks at about $7.50 for members. (At least they're doing that with mine.  ) Plus WhisperSync. $2 more for professionally narrated audio? All those are ways in which Amazon is trying to remove that price barrier.


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## tommy gun (May 3, 2015)

If Walmart were to decide to go into ebooks they could do it easily.  
Copy and paste Smashwords or Draft2Digital and they could have you go direct easily enough.  All the business models that are out there they could copy  for ebooks.
They have the finance and business background to throw at it.  If they choose to do so.
It's all a numbers game. (apologies I am not trying to be vague but there appear to be a LOT of options)


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## WDR (Jan 8, 2014)

I'm not sure I can come up with any specifics for this one. For 2017? I think it'll be mostly status quo, so most of my predictions below are more for 2017 and beyond.

*Increasing Number of Books Released?*
Hm&#8230; The more good books there are to read, the more people read. With the explosion of books available from independent authors over the past five or six years, readership has also gone up to match. The more authors there are pumping out good books, the more readers there are to read those books. The ratios remain the same. If you look back over this period, you will find that the complaints about being discovered haven't really changed.

Another factor is that we are already well past the gold rush stage of the ebook market. The real gold rush was back in 2005-2006 when independent writers first started making the news about being independent writers. Now that indies are fairly common, they are no longer big news. At least, until our books start getting made into movies. Then we'll be news all over again. There may even be a second gold rush as other movie studios rush out to find indie authors with stories to be made into movies. The key is, it will require blockbuster movie to start the rush.

What I expect to see is the field of independent authors become a little tighter. Of all the writers who go the traditional route and all the authors who go the independent route, the percentage of those who actually succeed is roughly the same. So, in 2017 we may see more writers jumping in to try self-publishing, but most will fire off that one book and probably never go beyond that. In both groups, the ones who succeed are the ones who doggedly push forward and continue to try. The percentage of the total of both groups is about the same. However: of those groups of writers who slog it out and keep working at it, more independent writers succeed than traditionally published writers---the ratio gleaned from Authors Earnings is roughly 6:1 in favor of indies to succeed at making a living as a writer.

*More Trad. Writers Jump Ship to Become Indies*
A friend of mine is working on an alternative history story for which he currently has no publisher. He is a successful author through the traditional publishing path, has several series out that all have very good following and has done a number of collaborations with other authors. He has a publisher for his other books that he really enjoys working with. But he has also run afoul of some of the dirty tricks that publishers play on their authors, such as holding a title for years and not publishing it.

Now that the dust has settled in the Hachette vs. Amazon kerfuffle with Hachette coming out the "winner", 2015 prove all too painfully that the traditional publishers first shot themselves in the foot and then shot themselves in the head to stop the pain in the foot. Ebook sales for traditional publishers have collapsed. The Big-4 claim it is because readers have rejected ebooks in general and have gone back to print books. But the real numbers show that sales for ebooks of independent authors have actually _increased_. In fact, they increased a little more than the ebook sales for traditional publishers have decreased. That means not only are readers buying ebooks, they are buying them _more!_

It's getting harder for traditional authors to sell books and make a living. I see more of them jumping ship and trying the self-publishing route.

I fully expect my friend to come knocking and picking my brain about self-publishing when he's ready to push his new book out the door. If he does, he'll join the migration of writers turning to independent publishing. If that book does well enough, he will probably turn more and more to independent publishing. I expect he'll do well at it.

*The Big-4 Become the Big-3 (aka "The Remaining-3")*
Publisher-X and Publisher-Y will announce they will be merging. The announcement will come roughly around August or September. They will cite "Significant Market Opportunities" which really means "lagging sales forcing consolidation to reduce costs and decrease competition."

They will increase prices on all their products due to "inflation." Consumers will turn more to independent authors who are charging affordable and reasonable rates for their books. The term "Gatekeepers" will mean less "Quality Assurance" than "Bouncer."

A flurry of freelance editors will hit the indie market as they are laid off from the new conglomerate. Also, a number of small publishers will appear in the market soon after, increasing the competition on the Big-3 as executives are cut loose.

I expect independent authors to find more opportunity in 2017.

*Retailer-X Goes Toe-to-Toe With Amazon!*
Walmart taking on Amazon in the ebook market? I seriously doubt it. The last time I was in a Walmart, their clientele did not exactly strike me as the reading public. Walmart has a very, very long way to go before they can take on Amazon in the book market. They would have to be very serious in order to move forward on a project like that.

As far as Walmart putting the squeeze on authors like they do their other venders, they might find that it won't work with us. We don't have to do business with Walmart as long as Apple and Amazon are paying us 70%. Wanna cut rates? Go ahead! I won't sell my books through you. Competition works well in our favor. Remember, the only reason Amazon gave us 70% is because that's what Apple announced they were going to pay authors. As long as that holds, the competition will have to play ball or they'll never get up to bat. Of course, Walmart could take the different path and offer authors 80% so long as they release on Walmart first for #-weeks before releasing on the other retailers. I'd go for that deal, so long as it isn't locking me into an exclusivity agreement.

*B&N Nook Books Finally Goes Pfft!*
We've been predicting this for a couple of years. One of these years, we'll be right!

Not sure where B&N is going, but they keep saying one thing and doing another where Nook is concerned. You can dangle the carrot for only so long before the mule finally gives up.

If Walmart is serious about getting into the ebook business, buying out the Nook from B&N could prove to be their best move in this direction.

*IRS Says, "Hey! Wait a Sec&#8230;!"*
As more people (specifically: US citizens) become independent authors and make a living from writing, the IRS finally decides to take a closer look at what is going on in the independent markets.

This whole "Royalty" thing will come to a head.

Amazon, Apple, B&N, Kobo, etc. are NOT publishers! They are _retailers!_. What they pay us is not a _royalty_, it is a share of the _sales proceeds_.

I've long suspected that somewhere in the tax code, the above-noted retailers are taking a tax dodge by claiming these payments as royalties. I don't know what the repercussions might be, but at some point the IRS will want to weigh in to clarify things. On the other hand, I don't think the IRS will rock the boat too much because writing books is like finding gold, it generates worth (money). Creating wealth means a healthy economy. They won't want to break it. But during such a period, it could get painful for us.

(Yes, I know that Amazon _does_ have a publishing arm and that means for some, Amazon is their publisher. But I am my own publisher. Not Amazon. I merely sell my products through them.)


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## Yayoi (Apr 26, 2016)

Damn, just reading these posts make it all the more depressing. I mean, for aspiring authors such as myself, I wish I could have been in the game much sooner, because I can imagine it was a little bit easier back then. But now, with shit loads of novels published every day, it's now overcrowded more than ever. I wonder if there's any way for new authors to make a splash and not be mediocre. 

Can this be done?


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## Iain Ryan (Jun 25, 2014)

ACX in the colonies.


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## jaehaerys (Feb 18, 2016)

My predictions:

- Ebooks will continue to rise in popularity. More self-published authors will break out and be discovered. 

- Readers will use virtual reality apps that allow you to read your uploaded ebook in a variety of different free and premium environments that you can choose from a menu, for e.g.: a busy coffee shop, a lush forest, next to a babbling stream or gentle falls, by the roaring sea, in a meadow surrounded by horses, on a snowy mountaintop, in the clouds, on a plane, on the train, on Mars - and I expect you'll have the option of having your uploaded ebook appear as a print book that you'll be able to virtually flip its pages with a hand controller or you can read it in ereader or tablet form - who knows, if you go online maybe you could even sit and read in a virtual space with other readers of the same ebook or choose to be seated with others who've currently chosen the same virtual space as you...you could even communicate with them and talk about the book, likes/dislikes etc - maybe you could even have the author of the book read to you "in person"

- Perhaps some Silicon Valley startup will emerge with a book streaming app that's a hybrid of Spotify and Wattpad - I'm just spitballing here, no idea how something like that would work, nor am I sure I'd want it to

Anyway, food for thought.


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## Abalone (Jan 31, 2014)

It could work, but it's not financially sound. For a company to go up against Amazon, they'd need a lot of cash reserves. And if you know anything about Amazon, they'll beat a competitor at their own game because they can survive the loss.


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## celadon (Sep 12, 2015)

Yayoi said:


> Damn, just reading these posts make it all the more depressing. I mean, for aspiring authors such as myself, I wish I could have been in the game much sooner, because I can imagine it was a little bit easier back then. But now, with [crap] loads of novels published every day, it's now overcrowded more than ever. I wonder if there's any way for new authors to make a splash and not be mediocre.
> 
> Can this be done?


I know how you feel; I wish I had gotten onboard years ago! But I didn't think about it!

One thing I keep repeating to myself: Scammers are lazy. They can't produce the real thing, which is why they scam. Also, there are the writers who are more dabblers and won't stick around very long if things aren't going easy for them right away.

The key is--and has always been--to not give up too soon, and to work to produce quality.

In the genre I'm working in (non-fiction, how-to), there are a TON of scammers who try to fool readers, but it's painfully obvious to anyone with a brain that they can't deliver the goods because they don't know what they're talking about. And, there are those who are sincere, but just not _that_ good. My only hope is that I'm not a scammer, and that I think I'm fairly good--not the best, but hopefully good enough. And if I'm not good enough yet, I intend to work harder until I am!

So, I think what I take away from all of this is, we have to work harder to produce quality. The scammers may be _with_ us, but they can never _be_ us, meaning, they can never be someone who can deliver the goods. They can never truly compete, because they cannot do what we do. (However, it won't stop them from trying to make trouble, alas.  )


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

KU crackdown to where it's no multi-author box sets. Also KU crackdown of rules to where it will only truly affect those who were following them all of the time anyway.

Trad buy-out or strangle hold on Bookbub to where only the top successful indies get ads. No true competition below that. Lower mid-list indies get frustrated and once again give up or seek trad contracts to make more immediately money from advances.

Massive box set crackdown due to repeated abuses by authors skirting the rules. 

Massive title crackdown due to 3+ line titles getting featured in trad magazines, embarrassing Amazon's policy toward indies.


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## JohnMilton (Jan 23, 2016)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> How many people shop from Wal-Marts website, though? Do we have numbers? Plus, I mean, how many people think "books" when they think Wal-Mart? A lot of people won't shop there because of certain political factors and ebooks are never going to be a big part of their bottom line. Don't get me wrong, I think they could probably be a small income stream for people wide. I don't think they'll come close to touching Amazon on ebooks, though.


I think that you have to keep in mind that walmart is Wayfair. I work in retail, and wayfair is growing astronomically because they have all the benefits of a brick and mortar footprint in place. They are going to continue to get more and more visibility.


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## JeanneM (Mar 21, 2011)

Jeez, other than that Mrs. Lincoln...how did you enjoy the play?

I've never seen so much doom and gloom in one thread. If you truly want something, you can, and will get through the obstacles as they appear. If you can't get through them, go around them, climb over them etc.  

With Amazon cracking down on scammers, I think you will see fewer books being uploaded. Scammers don't hang around a place that doesn't give them what they want...they will go to the next shiny thing. Don't lose hope.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

JohnMilton said:


> I think that you have to keep in mind that walmart is Wayfair. I work in retail, and wayfair is growing astronomically because they have all the benefits of a brick and mortar footprint in place. They are going to continue to get more and more visibility.


And I can't think of one person I know who would buy a book from Wayfair. I honestly don't know anyone who buys books at Walmart either, though. People think cheap physical goods she they think of Walmart.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

- more people writing to the market, and with them, many more readers turning away from buying indie products.

_I'm already seeing this happening in some market niches and it will grow worse. There's no easy solution to this, as it is the result of the lack of a slush pile._

- more scammers

_As long as Amazon will hold on to KU or try to corner and direct authors, there will be scammers exploiting those methods in some way. Again, people will become more and more disenchanted._

- genre fiction will become far more generic, with very few outliers. Most of those will probably be hybrids.

_I'm seeing this, again, also already. Readers are gravitating towards those indie authors who are getting trad contracts and deals. _


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I'm not sure that's really the case. Haven't ebooks taken over fifty percent of the market now? I think I read that statistic years ago so it's probably higher now. Print books will continue to decrease as time moves forward. I don't think they'll ever completely go away, but it's cheaper (because of no physical goods to manufacture) and saves on delivery costs to sell an ebook. In fact, I think there will come a time when everything in print is POD. You'll walk up to a machine in a Kroger or Starbucks, pick from a digital catalog and watch it printed right there. I don't believe print garners Amazon more money in the grand scheme of things.


Amazon is in the market to make money. They don't care about platform. They want their ebook platform to grow, but as their paper bookstore is a significant money maker, they naturally would want to expand that market as well. That's why they're investing in physical bookstores. If sales shrinks, they lose revenue, which is against their profiteering religion. In total, I personally believe that the size of the print market still beggars the size of the ebook market.

Amazon already uses POD for many titles.

Although it sounds great walking up to a POD machine, such machines require maintenance. They break. Given a choice of using a kiosk or just ordering online, I think that most readers will opt for online if they have to wait more than a few minutes to get their order.


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## suliabryon (May 18, 2009)

Wow, so much doom and gloom! 

On the topic of genre writing becoming "all of the same" or "more generic", there is nothing new under the sun. I don't mean that in reference to the writing, but more as a comment on the pattern that has existed since before indie ever hit big. Here is how it always worked in the trad publishing world: someone writes something fresh and new that hits big and takes off. Not necessarily Harry Potter or Twilight big, but quit-your-day-job big: readers want more. Publishing starts looking for more right away. A few new series that are the same-tropes-but-also-fresh takes get published and also do well. A year or two goes by, and soon everyone with a trunk novel or an eye to trends is flooding the slush piles with like-novels. They aren't quite as good and fresh as the originals or the second wave, but some of them are good enough publishers think they can make a buck. These get published, most barely make mid-list money. Finally, the market is saturated, the new books being published offer a sameness that doesn't appeal much to readers, and contracts don't get picked up again after book one or two. But wait! Something new over in this other genre has taken off big! New market trends, better strike while the iron is hot! 

This is NO different from what happens with indies, it just happens much faster because we publish many books a year and don't have to wait for an editor to find us in a slush pile. It doesn't mean the world is ending. It means you still need to write what you love, hit the right tropes, but find something fresh and new and unique to you as a twist. Rinse and repeat.

That last part is super important. Maybe the authors in the days of the indie gold rush "had it easy", but that was an unusual circumstance. (If indeed it even was easy - I suspect that some worked a lot harder than they are given credit for.) What we have now is more the norm - you have to keep writing, keep trying, and persevere if you want to make something of your business. This was true in traditional publishing's day as well. I once had a conversation with Jim Butcher at a writing conference. He said the only difference between him and a dozen "failed authors" was perseverance. That for every one of them who gave up and quit trying, he kept writing and kept submitting. As he did so, his craft kept improving, publishers kept seeing his name on manuscripts, and eventually he was picked up. Again, it is no different. Of those two million books published in a year, how many are indie? Of that number, how many will publish one book, and then quit? How many will publish two, or three, or a series and then quit? How many will keep writing, keep publishing, keep promoting, keep networking with other authors, keep trying until something hits?

Those are the authors who will succeed and make this business their day job. I have never been more grateful for the twenty years I spent trying to get a trad contract. I had an agent before I decided to go indie. She really wanted to shop my series to editors. Before that, I accrued a number of rejection letters that went something like "Your writing is great, it's publishable, but we are not looking for x at this time..." I am lucky. I have no doubts that my craft is there. I've been honing it for three decades, and I made it far enough in the trad publishing game to have already had to persevere against massive rejection. I look at indie publishing as the best, shortest route to success. 1. I don't have to wait for a trad publisher to decide yes, my work is what they are looking for/fits into their schedule this year. 2. I am not limited to the trad publisher schedule of waiting 2 years to see my book in front of readers, and a year between books, or for anthology opportunities. 3. I get to decide what is best for my business. What covers to use, what blurb to use, how to best promote it and distribute it. Is it easy? No way. I have one book out with a second up for pre-order, and I can't count the number of hours I have spent self-promoting, finding promo opportunities, trying to get my books in front of readers. That is on top of my writing time and holding down a day job. Because writing more is key - I have to produce and keep producing. I am still a "prawn" as they say on these boards, but I am doing well for where I am at, and none of that would have happened if I hadn't sat down and figured out a marketing strategy and plan before I ever hit publish, and if I hadn't continued to work my butt off since hitting publish. I am going to be in two anthologies and at least one boxed set (maybe two) in the next 3-4 months because I went out and looked for the opportunities. And then I wrote the short stories for the anthologies so I could be a part of them, even though it took time from my WIP, even though it was hard. Because those opportunities were too good to pass up.

My point is, it doesn't matter how many people decide to hit publish in 2017. It matters what YOU do for your business. If you have already hit publish, you are ahead of all of those people already. Keep going. Write more. Publish more. Look for promo ops. Build your newsletter and fanbase. If Bookbub gets bought up or goes down, I will be sad because I never got to experience it. I won't lament that now I will never be a success, because that is just how a lot of people get a push to success now - it isn't a magic bullet. Those people still had to produce a good book, a good series, get good covers, etc. Bookbub was the final thing that sent them into a successful spike. There are other ways to do that, like cross-promotion with other authors. If BB goes away, something else will replace it. The only way to ensure failure is to quit. the only way to ensure success is to keep going. 

My dream has always been to write for a living. Since I was ten years old, scrawling horrible Star Wars-esque novels into spiral notebooks instead of doing my homework. I have not given up in thirty years, and I have never been closer to achieving that dream than I am right now. I don't care what Amazon changes about KU, if Bookbub dies, if 3 million people publish next year. I'm never giving up, and because of that, I know it is only a matter of time before I succeed. Jim Butcher's advice is still as true today as the day he said it back before the indie boom.


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## Talbot (Jul 14, 2015)

I ain't skeered. Like others have said there will always be problems. The one that succeeds is the one that doesn't let them stop her.


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## mach 5 (Dec 5, 2015)

Well said, suliabryon. The "noise" of other books and other forms of entertainment has always been there and since the advent of the internet, it's almost limitless and has been for at least the last 5 years -- which would encompass the kindle gold rush era. And so much of that other entertainment and other book noise is free. Free and just a few keystrokes or remote control buttons away. Yet there are indies making thousands, tens of thousands even hundreds (yes, multiple) of thousands PER MONTH.


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## suliabryon (May 18, 2009)

mach 5 said:


> Well said, suliabryon. The "noise" of other books and other forms of entertainment has always been there and since the advent of the internet, it's almost limitless and has been for at least the last 5 years -- which would encompass the kindle gold rush era. And so much of that other entertainment and other book noise is free. Free and just a few keystrokes or remote control buttons away. Yet there are indies making thousands, tens of thousands even hundreds (yes, multiple) of thousands PER MONTH.


Thanks.  I just didn't want people reading this thread and getting so discouraged they quit. And yep, plenty of people make a living at this, which many, MANY threads on these very boards can attest. Like anything else, you have to put a lot into it if you want a ROI.


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## Darius Brasher (Feb 6, 2015)

Yayoi said:


> Damn, just reading these posts make it all the more depressing. I mean, for aspiring authors such as myself, I wish I could have been in the game much sooner, because I can imagine it was a little bit easier back then. But now, with [crap] loads of novels published every day, it's now overcrowded more than ever. I wonder if there's any way for new authors to make a splash and not be mediocre.
> 
> Can this be done?


I was just listening to Tim Ferriss on one of his podcasts. He is sometimes called the Oprah of Audio, and he has one of the world's most popular podcasts. In the episode I listened to, he said that before he started his podcast, almost everyone he spoke to told him to not do it because the market was too crowded with podcasts and there was no way for a new one to break out and be really successful. If he had listened to those people, he would have never started.

As far as being an indie author, I'm just a prawn, so what the heck do I know? But, my life philosophy is that old saying: The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. I believe that if you generate good content, you can find success.


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## Chrissy (Mar 31, 2014)

Darius Brasher said:


> I was just listening to Tim Ferriss on one of his podcasts. He is sometimes called the Oprah of Audio, and he has one of the world's most popular podcasts. In the episode I listened to, he said that before he started his podcast, almost everyone he spoke to told him to not do it because the market was too crowded with podcasts and there was no way for a new one to break out and be really successful. If he had listened to those people, he would have never started.
> 
> As far as being an indie author, I'm just a prawn, so what the heck do I know? *But, my life philosophy is that old saying: The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. I believe that if you generate good content, you can find success.*


+1


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

suliabryon said:


> Thanks.  I just didn't want people reading this thread and getting so discouraged they quit.


If people quit publishing over a thread of wild speculation, they probably were already planning to quit all along.


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## anniejocoby (Aug 11, 2013)

I unfortunately see the demise of all non-Amazon retailers, if not in 2017, soon after. The reason is simple - it's becoming harder and harder to make decent money if you're not in KU, so these other retailers are going to be losing more and more authors. Amazon is becoming more and more dominant, while the other retailers are doing nothing that I can see to step up their game. I've enjoyed being wide, but even I'm seeing the writing on the wall - the next books that I publish, in my new genre, are going to be in KU, as that seems to be the only way to really make money these days. 

I wish it weren't so, but that's what I'm seeing.

PS - or maybe this was harsh. After all, they'll always have trad publishers propping them up, but I do see indies abandoning them in droves. I guess that's a better way of putting it.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

anniejocoby said:


> I unfortunately see the demise of all non-Amazon retailers


As long as Kobo remains ruler of Canada, they'll be plucky enough to stick around.


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## J.A. Cipriano (May 27, 2014)

RBC said:


> Hmm... why would mid-listers be the ones to be hurt most? I'd say new ones will be that... if mid-lister has good email list they can still make the books sell and with each book grow slowly. Now for newbies, seems it will be so hard to get discovered.


A midlister, is someone who can publish a book, get a decent launch and Amazon pretty much carries it. I think the ability of those people to get carried following their subsequent launch is going to be the problem. This is fine for people who can make a ton of money on the book in the first few days of a launch , but it's going to hurt those people who launch a book and after a week, see little to no additional money from it.

There's a certain point in income where that may not matter as much. Where even your tent pole launch makes you more than enough money so that even if you don't make a dime after that, it's fine, but up until that point, the shortening tail will hurt someone who can't do that a lot more than someone in the bracket above. because the peaks and valleys are both a lot lower.

A new person will have this problem more so, because they can't launch as high, but that's no different from how it always was. I'm not saying it is impossible or to give up, I'm just saying to approach it knowing it's going to be harder and harder.


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## Gentleman Zombie (May 30, 2011)

*My wild speculations:*

- More professional tools for indies to use to make better books. 
- Amazon will continue to gobble up the ebook market. No one is interested in competing with them. 
- Genre fiction, especially those genres ignored by the big guys, will continue to be indie bread and butter. 
- Increased scammer/spam controls will be a big (but necessary) headache for inidies. 
- New monetization models will emerge, including an ad supported ebook subscription service. 
- Erotica will make a comeback, but not on Amazon. A new retailer focusing on just that genre will emerge. 
- More indies will move from strictly writing, to offering services to other authors (covers, editing, advertising, proofing, etc..)

*Where I think it's smart to focus on:* 
Genre fiction will continue to be where it's at. But it's going to be very niche and stuff the big guys aren't interested in publishing. Genres we've discussed here ad nauseam: Space Operas, Supers, Classic Fantasy, Cozies, Urban/Street Lit, Urban Fantasy, various forms of "naughty romance. The winners will be fast writers who can churn out book after book. Staying visible will become more about output than perfection. The person who comes up with software that makes writing faster, will be a bazillionaire. 
YMMMV

Oh and about fast writers. I'm betting on seeing more authors banding together "Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys" style and publishing under a single pen name. So you may have a group of writers publishing Cozies under one name, or romances, etc. This will maximize output and preserve visibility. Don't be surprised if you see more indies advertising for members to join a coordinated writing group or for writing partners for projects.


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## Guest (May 18, 2016)

PaulWRyan said:


> - It also looks like series will continue to be the bread and butter for any writer hoping to make a living at this gig. Also, I imagine word counts will continue to drop and could start to see more 50k - 60k novels be accepted as 'full-length novels'.
> 
> - Higher quality of books: tools such as Hemmingway, Grammarly, Write or Die, Edit Minion, Scrivener... we've seen a lot of great writing tools come out and I imagine even better ones on the horizon to help authors.


Dear Ramble: I've been writing mystery novels since 1990 and 60k has always been considered a "full-length novel" for the genre. And why do I so often see Ernest Hemingway's surname misspelled by other writers? What does this show?


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## PenNPaper (Apr 21, 2016)

anniejocoby said:


> I unfortunately see the demise of all non-Amazon retailers, if not in 2017, soon after. The reason is simple - it's becoming harder and harder to make decent money if you're not in KU, so these other retailers are going to be losing more and more authors. Amazon is becoming more and more dominant, while the other retailers are doing nothing that I can see to step up their game. I've enjoyed being wide, but even I'm seeing the writing on the wall - the next books that I publish, in my new genre, are going to be in KU, as that seems to be the only way to really make money these days.


Most of the successful authors I know - and I'm an outlier who knows a good deal of them - want nothing to do with KU and are doing quite well on the other vendors.


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

J.A. Cipriano said:


> A midlister, is someone who can publish a book, get a decent launch and Amazon pretty much carries it. I think the ability of those people to get carried following their subsequent launch is going to be the problem. This is fine for people who can make a ton of money on the book in the first few days of a launch , but it's going to hurt those people who launch a book and after a week, see little to no additional money from it.
> 
> There's a certain point in income where that may not matter as much. Where even your tent pole launch makes you more than enough money so that even if you don't make a dime after that, it's fine, but up until that point, the shortening tail will hurt someone who can't do that a lot more than someone in the bracket above. because the peaks and valleys are both a lot lower.
> 
> A new person will have this problem more so, because they can't launch as high, but that's no different from how it always was. I'm not saying it is impossible or to give up, I'm just saying to approach it knowing it's going to be harder and harder.


Well, I kinda count Mid-list as those who can release a book well and make enough money to keep going. And with each launch they would do a bit better. That's why I def. think it's gonna be rough for those with no email list etc but those who made it to Mid-list now, I think are safe-ish.


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

Interesting to see idea of BookBub getting sold in future.. They should be making a bank so they should be safe. But you never know about sale if someone offers huge deal.. 

Anyway, an interesting twist could be BookBub becoming more of a social network for authors and readers.. they already added Author pages.. it could be a first step in that direction. I think that could be very good thing and a new GoodReads. Those who would use BB well and get lots of subscribers there, could make a good living just off of it.


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## 555aaa (Jan 28, 2014)

One more thing - POD is already becoming mainstream, and I think you'll see some competition against createspace and Ingram from some low-cost outfit say in Mexico. Prices should drop significantly as the tradpub industry moves away from offset, and that's going to open up some new opportunities for indies.  It's all about building better robots, and robots are getting better. People will still pay $20 for a book if they buy one book a year, which I think will continue. Mass market (super-cheap paperbacks) is going to die off because ebooks are the new mass market.


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

555aaa said:


> One more thing - POD is already becoming mainstream, and I think you'll see some competition against createspace and Ingram from some low-cost outfit say in Mexico. Prices should drop significantly as the tradpub industry moves away from offset, and that's going to open up some new opportunities for indies. It's all about building better robots, and robots are getting better. People will still pay $20 for a book if they buy one book a year, which I think will continue. Mass market (super-cheap paperbacks) is going to die off because ebooks are the new mass market.


I'm sad to agree, but I don't think that it has to be that way. I think that the paperback would work well if its still fulfilled it original purpose as an impulse buy. Get books in front of readers and their wills will crumble. "Oooh. Shiny!" The way that you get addicts coming back is to make sure that they can't get away from your product.


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

Douglas Milewski said:


> I'm sad to agree, but I don't think that it has to be that way. I think that the paperback would work well if its still fulfilled it original purpose as an impulse buy. Get books in front of readers and their wills will crumble. "Oooh. Shiny!" The way that you get addicts coming back is to make sure that they can't get away from your product.


Not always true.. not because we don't want books, but there is just not enough space at home for them! I stopped buying paperbacks just because of that!


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## cebap (Dec 15, 2014)

I'm going to base this off of what I've seen in a very similar industry to ebooks (the mobile game app store.)


As other have said, it's going to be more difficult to stand out in the app store as it's flooded with more content. 
Amazon will be looking for quality from their indie authors, but that will not be what makes money.
Those that make money will take writing trends and polish them to make a quality product that is written to market. Basically, blatant cloned work that doesn't suck.
I think writing for known IP's will become more prevalent, I'd keep an eye on Kindle Worlds.


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## jenminkman (Mar 2, 2013)

Clare W said:


> I see great things ahead! Here's my 2c:
> 
> - international markets opening up further, whether for English language titles, or for local translations. In the last year or so, India and Brazil have done well for me, and unless their economies slide (quite possible in the case of Brazil) they should continue to grow. On the other hand, the European market places don't seem to do much. Has anyone ever made a sale in the Netherlands??


I sell like crazy in the Netherlands. I do write in Dutch as well, so that helps. Romance and thrillers are big here and people don't think 3.99 is an insane price to pay for an ebook. That's actually pretty low compared to trad-pub books in Dutch. If you need advice (or a little boost; I run a bargain ebook newsletter in Dutch) you can always PM me.


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## Abalone (Jan 31, 2014)

I recall a post on this site or another one where the traveler showed a POD book printer. It was inside a book store. You could pick one of the classics or a book not available in print, and order it. It would print, cut and bind the book inside the machine and take about 40 minutes. Hopefully someone knows what I'm talking about so I don't sound like a lunatic.



RBC said:


> Interesting to see idea of BookBub getting sold in future.. They should be making a bank so they should be safe. But you never know about sale if someone offers huge deal..
> 
> Anyway, an interesting twist could be BookBub becoming more of a social network for authors and readers.. they already added Author pages.. it could be a first step in that direction. I think that could be very good thing and a new GoodReads. Those who would use BB well and get lots of subscribers there, could make a good living just off of it.


Bookbub makes a hefty amount with traditional publishers. They're not going anywhere.


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## mach 5 (Dec 5, 2015)

Abalone

There is the espresso book machine. It started out in a few select libraries like U of M in Ann Arbor with out of copyright books for research purposes. It has spread some, but very few bookstores have them as they originally were 100k then down to second generation of about 50k - still a a large investment. Then there is the licensing issue, which if it hasn't been solved already, I imagine Ingram or similar will help pave the way - not Amazon because the bookstores won't want to work with Amazon on it.

http://www.ondemandbooks.com

The one bookstore I know of that has one makes its money via authors who don't know about eg createspace. That is, a fee for formatting the book for the machine plus the fee for printing.

http://www.schulerbooks.com/sites/schulerbooks.com/files/Packages.pdf


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

cebap said:


> I'm going to base this off of what I've seen in a very similar industry to ebooks (the mobile game app store.)
> 
> 
> As other have said, it's going to be more difficult to stand out in the app store as it's flooded with more content.
> ...


APub picked my books up precisely because they weren't blatantly cloned things. That's why I make money, too.

If you want to do ok, write cloned things. If you want to do great, write something that's not exactly like every other book out there. My opinion.


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## Nicholas Erik (Sep 22, 2015)

Man, I'm seeing so much doom and gloom in this thread it's crazy. What about all the tools and new opportunities that will open up in audio, print and other mediums? As indies, we're only scratching the surface of those huge markets. What about ad opportunities to replace those that become more competitive - things like Goodreads Deals, Amazon's ads and so forth? Some of these won't work, but some of them will mature in ways that we can't foresee.

There's this illusion that things were super-easy six years or seven ago. In a way, they were - but there was a huge psychological barrier to entry. Just publishing your book on KDP was seen as a joke and a career killing move. There was also a dearth of quality information - everyone had to figure out for themselves that giving away a book for free vaulted them up the paid charts, for example. People still have severe issues with giving their work away for free when it's clearly an effective strategy - this argument gets bandied about the boards every few months. Imagine the psychological resistance six, seven years ago, when giving away a book for free was seen as a career death sentence.

There are still threads about whether people should spring for BookBub. Imagine when it first came on the scene. All the stuff with BookBub, permafree and the algos that you can learn in two hours perusing these boards took people literally _years_ to figure out.

So yeah, there have been "easy" buttons, but you had to A) have the books and B) have the guts to actually test ideas that 99.9% of people deemed insane or "not possible." The same thing is happening now - look at the skepticism before this write to market trend burst across the boards. Conventional wisdom was that FB ads were a money pit before Mark Dawson broke that whole thing wide open. I could go on and on, but indie publishing isn't unique - it's the classic 4 minute mile phenomenon.

Yeah, things will change, but things were always challenging. The world is moving fast, and it's only going to move faster over the next ten years. If I had a time machine, I could obviously dominate the 2010 landscape knowing all that I know now. But none of that information was available at the time. Even with all this knowledge about writing to market and launching well, how many people actually execute the steps necessary to succeed? We're talking 50+ hours of researching tropes, another 10+ researching the market and 75+ writing the book for a first attempt. The average person spends 3 out of 8 hours at work actually working with someone looking over their shoulder. Self-discipline and execution are insanely hard.

I look at this in much the same way I do exercise: we all know what it takes to "get jacked." There isn't some secret. But how many people do you know who have visible six-pack abs (or are even in reasonable shape at all)? The same is true with online business, of which indie pubbing is a subset: all the info is out there for free. Authors give away information worth north of six figures on this board - better than any paid course or book I've encountered. Most people don't take advantage of it for a million reasons. But the fact remains that your actual competition is much lower than you think, simply because most people are unwilling to do what is necessary to succeed.

And, oh, going beyond indie publishing: what about the explosion of scientific research into skill acquisition (things like deliberate practice)? What about automated writing tools that allow us to publish cheaper, faster and speed up your learning curve 10x? What about the proliferation of free and cheap tools that allow people to start, maintain and grow a business for 1/100th of the cost of just 15 years before?

I'm excited. Really excited. If you're unwilling to learn - and, most importantly, apply what you've learned - then yeah, you're totally screwed. You can't be the person finally testing permafree in 2016 after four years of no sales - you're gonna get buried by people experimenting and learning faster than you. But if you keep learning, the next ten to fifteen years are going to be an incredible time to be alive.

Nick


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## G.L. Snodgrass (Aug 12, 2014)

My predictions for 2017

1. It will be different. It is always different
2. Content will continue to be king. What you write and how well you write it will have the biggest impact on success
3. Amazon will continue to dominate. Books (both print and ebook) will continue to constitute only 10% of their business.
4. Those that publish more often will continue to have a better chance of succeeding
5. The Ebook industry will continue to grow. More money will be produced for authors than 2016
6. More independent authors will make a full time living than traditional authors
7. As always happens. The Market will adjust. If it becomes too difficult, more people will drop out/not start. At that point, the market will open up again. rinse/repeat.
8. Genre fiction will continue to be the biggest market. Those readers read more books at a faster pace. It's not the number of readers in a market. It's the number of books they read.
9. Traditional publishing will continue to keep their Ebook prices high. They can't afford to lower them. if they do, print sales suffer, without print and distribution, there is no reason to use a big publisher. Their continued existence is dependent on their ability to be a gatekeeper. Eliminate the gate to bookstores and they die a quick death.
10. KU will continue to expand. At the current rate, readers are averaging 2000 pages per month. ($10/.005). That is 5, 400 page books per month. I see that average remaining but more people joining.

Wild predictions -
1. A non-Amazon vendor offers high royalty for exclusivity.
2. A non-Amazon vendor begins a subscription service but doesn't require exclusivity
3. B&N stops selling ebooks
4. Another service grows to rival book bub
5. An Indie author wins the Booker award or a Pulitzer (not going to happen because of the politics surrounding these awards.)


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

Nicholas Erik said:


> There's this illusion that things were super-easy six years or seven ago. In a way, they were - but there was a huge psychological barrier to entry. Just publishing your book on KDP was seen as a joke and a career killing move. There was also a dearth of quality information - everyone had to figure out for themselves that giving away a book for free vaulted them up the paid charts, for example. People still have severe issues with giving their work away for free when it's clearly an effective strategy - this argument gets bandied about the boards every few months. Imagine the psychological resistance six, seven years ago, when giving away a book for free was seen as a career death sentence.


It's not an illusion. It's simple Supple and Demand thing. There wasn't much supple but demand was growing huge. Now it's the opposite. Gold Rush was there now since the marketing is flooded discovery suffers. The amount of free downloads authors get is hugely different now than it was then. I think that 4 Minute Mile thing was passed 2-3 years ago. Another sign of that is the amount of people selling 'get rich with Kindle' strategies and that is another classic sign of Gold Rush end - make more money selling shovels than finding gold.

All strategies are losing effectiveness. It's just normal cycle of things in anything. If you look at Internet Marketing in general - Google ads were huge business builder in 2006, then came SEO, then came Social Media (Facebook organic reach wasn't limited so people built huge fan pages with that and built businesses from that). Then Content Marketing came in, now we're in information overload age. Now FB ads came but they are getting more expensive. There were also Youtube years which built musicians like Justin Bieber and ton of others. Nowadays, Snapchat and Twitch.tv are less used by the mainstream but they built up lots of income for people (esp. Twitch and Snapchat is getting there).They wont be effective builders soon too..

So this cycle is natural and we are seeing it in Indie Pub. It is a bit doomy and gloomy but doesn't it will suck. It's also so dependent on Amazon so they might do something artificial to cause another growth period, or they may fail. If their phone experiment had taken off, who knows, there may have been another wave of demand coming from more readers and discovery for authors would be easier. Maybe if they release something new, they can make it happen.

In the end, being realistic, isn't doom and gloom. It's just having right expectations and then going to work. If people have right expectation, they will be less likely to quit. If you know you need to endure, you will do it easier. But if you expect easy stuff, you'll give up when it doesn't come..


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Krista D. Ball said:


> As long as Kobo remains ruler of Canada, they'll be plucky enough to stick around.


Ditto for Tolino in the German speaking world. I also don't see Apple and Google leaving the e-book game altogether and some of the small niche retailers like ARe and DriveThruFiction have very dedicated customer bases. B&N might eventually die off, but then its demise has been predicted for years now.


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## Yayoi (Apr 26, 2016)

Okay, so I've been following this thread and I encounter the term "scammers" for awhile now. What kind of people do you exactly refer to? You mean the kind who just churn out book after book to make big bucks, that's it? I'm new to this self-pub thing so I'm still a little naive (though I'm not new to internet marketing per se).


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## KevinH (Jun 29, 2013)

I anticipate that the number of new books released each year will plateau. (It can't keep going up forever.)  As someone said, new writers will come into the industry, but this will be matched by an equal (or greater) number heading to the exits. 

I believe Amazon will try to broaden its offerings - maybe offer translation services (with a discount, of course, if you're in KU).  

I believe the commitment for being in KU will lengthen, going perhaps to 120 days.  If so, I think Amazon may sweeten the pot to make it an easier pill to swallow (ie, a higher royalty - 80%? - for a longer commitment).


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Yayoi said:


> Okay, so I've been following this thread and I encounter the term "scammers" for awhile now. What kind of people do you exactly refer to? You mean the kind who just churn out book after book to make big bucks, that's it? I'm new to this self-pub thing so I'm still a little naive (though I'm not new to internet marketing per se).


I am referring to:

1. The scrappers - those who scrap content off the internet and then use people or tools to create page reads of those books. They are basically a self-contained group.
2. The scum - those who attempt trickery in titles and/or names to get page views from people who are looking for something more popular
3. The who mes? - those who knowing, and gleefully, skirt and occasional break the rules on purpose and continue to do it, and continue to keyword stuff their titles, their actual book covers (to keyword stuff their titles), break the rules with their actual content, violate the spirit of KU rules, and then play innocent...over and over and over and get away with it because no one wants yet another mass 1 star review drive thru again like the last time.

But that's just me.


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## Nicholas Erik (Sep 22, 2015)

RBC said:


> It's not an illusion. It's simple Supple and Demand thing. [snip]
> 
> All strategies are losing effectiveness. [snip]
> 
> In the end, being realistic, isn't doom and gloom. It's just having right expectations and then going to work. If people have right expectation, they will be less likely to quit. If you know you need to endure, you will do it easier. But if you expect easy stuff, you'll give up when it doesn't come..


The market's obviously different. No one's arguing that it isn't. Tactics come and go - free was one such tactic. I see smart authors making up for the lack of sheer #s on free downloads via things like audio (e.g. through WhisperSync - adding a $2 sale to lots of those free downloads), better back matter, pre-orders (which weren't available until two years ago on 'zon) and so forth.

FB ads, SEO and so forth aren't strategies, they're tactics. Besides, all of the things you listed work fine - they just work _differently_ than they did ten or fifteen years ago. If you approach them the same way, then you obviously won't meet with success, because things change.

New tactics will open up to replace the old. This is a natural cycle.

I disagree with this idea of massively increasing competition and supply. There are more books, but most - trad-pubbed or indie - are not worth the digital bytes they're printed on. I read ~100 books last year and maybe 5 - 10 were actually worth reading. Quality is a much rarer bird than we give it credit for. We're still far from the saturation point in terms of quality. Will we get there? Probably. It won't happen in 2017, though.

Further, as for demand, there's supposed to be 20 billion internet ready devices in 2020 - there are around 6 billion now.

I never said it was easy - I was saying it's never been easy, and that's not likely to change. That's the illusion I was referencing: people sit down and don't start, because they think they've missed some mythical gravy train. There really never was a gravy train; six years ago, there were some spectacular successes and a whole lot of people making zip in indie pub...kind of like there is now. Old opportunities are closing, but look at what's opened up in the past year: "writing to market" wasn't a "mainstream" thing until like 5 months ago. Now some are already declaring it's dead and that it's all over!

My closing point: If you work 40 hours a week applying what you learn from these boards, I'd be shocked if you didn't make a living. FACT: it's never been a better time to be a professional fiction writer. But how many people honestly put in that time? Close to zero. Thus, the actual competition is far lower than you think.

Thus, I respectfully disagree with some of the doom and gloom masquerading as realism. Based on history, my experience and the available information, it strikes me as inaccurate. Anecdotally, from the boards, I've seen at least a dozen people break out in spectacular fashion this year - plus many others substantially improve their businesses.

I could be wrong. We could all be screwed, and Amazon could shut down KDP tomorrow. I have no way of knowing. But the information I do have suggests that the future is likely to be better, rather than worse - so long as you can make adjustments.

Nick


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

::looks around and in her best Kat Williams voice says::

It's May!!! 2016 ain't even half over! And ya'll worried about 2017? I'm still worried about 2016!

::goes back to writing frantically::


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> ::looks around and in her best Kat Williams voice says::
> 
> It's May!!! 2016 ain't even half over! And ya'll worried about 2017? I'm still worried about 2016!
> 
> ::goes back to writing frantically::


2017 is the new 2016?


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## celadon (Sep 12, 2015)

Yayoi said:


> Okay, so I've been following this thread and I encounter the term "scammers" for awhile now. What kind of people do you exactly refer to? You mean the kind who just churn out book after book to make big bucks, that's it? I'm new to this self-pub thing so I'm still a little naive (though I'm not new to internet marketing per se).


In my experience, the non-fiction scammers:

Regurgitate WIKI articles and make a 20-page "book" out of it.

Have titles like, "Fast-track, crash course on how to make [widgets] in 30 minutes, how-to, step-by-step" but the book is written in poor English, rambles on, and there are no step-by-step instructions, and with subjects that would require illustrations, there are no illustrations. For example, if it was a book about how to be a better photographer, the book would have exactly ZERO photographs! (Or if it did have photographs, they would be public domain or swiped from Flickr or something.) Add to that, maybe a dozen 5-star reviews from people raving and swearing that this fabulous book solved all their problems and now they're a master at photography! Scammy scammy scammy!

When you have books like this in your genre, it's frustrating to see all the scammers, but at the same time, they are not really competing with you, because they are producing garbage and anyone with a brain will see that as soon as they look at the book.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

Yayoi said:


> Damn, just reading these posts make it all the more depressing. I mean, for aspiring authors such as myself, I wish I could have been in the game much sooner, because I can imagine it was a little bit easier back then. But now, with [crap] loads of novels published every day, it's now overcrowded more than ever. I wonder if there's any way for new authors to make a splash and not be mediocre.
> 
> Can this be done?


Yeah boo, don't doubt. It won't get easier, so don't drag your feet if you can help it, but it's still more than possible.

A lot of what's changed in self-publishing over the last seven years or so is who's winning. Time was, everybody who hung out a shingle could get ahead easily. Then the game started to shift towards people who were bringing over an established tradpub readership, who were publishing faster, who were nailing market expectations, who were marketing successfully. There's always going to be room at the top for people who're good at this.

What's a little less obvious is that there's lots of people who aren't exactly at the top of the heap, but who're still writing for a decent living. It's something you can build over time, without any splashy successes. It takes skill, persistence, and daily exertion, but it can be done. That's not going to change. If anything, I think the midlist will continue to grow as the size of the indy pie increases--my sense is that there's a lot more appetite for indy books than you would've found a few years ago. We can all benefit from that.


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

Even thought I see things getting harder, that's no reason not to start a business. Somebody has to make that money, and it may as well be you.


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## Yayoi (Apr 26, 2016)

Yep, it won't get easier no doubt. But nothing will happen if I don't start writing! ~ *Goes back to typing my novel*


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## EC (Aug 20, 2013)

tomgermann said:


> If Walmart were to decide to go into ebooks they could do it easily.
> Copy and paste Smashwords or Draft2Digital and they could have you go direct easily enough. All the business models that are out there they could copy for ebooks.
> They have the finance and business background to throw at it. If they choose to do so.
> It's all a numbers game. (apologies I am not trying to be vague but there appear to be a LOT of options)


Or just buy one of the aforementioned and integrate platforms.


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## EC (Aug 20, 2013)

I'm prepared to bet that the Walmart customer base reads books by the ton. A major player such as this coming to the market is going to dramatically widen ebook readership. 

I predict that nothing will change for the people who treat writing to the ebook market as a profession. Write good books, use your nous to build an email list, and to advertise, and you'll be fine.  

Newbies will break through, but every year that goes past their competition level is getting tougher, not because of the amount of books that come to market ( the majority sink without trace, no more than digital litter ), but because they are competing with savvy authors who have built a back-list/email list, and have been at this game for a while. 

Audio will become king, as more and more people adopt the platform due to it's convenience. Years ago people laughed when they saw others with the first cellphones, then they laughed when they saw people walk around with earphones listening to some new device. Stand at any bus stop or train station these days and count the amount of people wired for sound - just about every other person. What are they listening to? probably music, but more will put down their tablets and kindle readers on their way to work and just listen to the story instead, because put simply, it's less cumbersome. 

And convenience always wins in the end. 

However, my number one prediction - which I would bet the mortgage on - is that way too many authors are going to continue getting their knickers in a twist over things they can't control - scammers being top of that list. There are professionals out there who are working for the major companies reacting ( all be it sometimes patchy and slowly ) to scams - leave it to them. If you see a title you think is a scam, hit report then move on. Then go back to work in that which you can control.

Control the controllable, because you can't control the uncontrollable.


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## B.A. Spangler (Jan 25, 2012)

For writers -- a huge increase in indie pubbed books, decreasing visibility. A significant increase in authors looking to go the traditional agent/pub route.

For Readers -- they'll begin to move away from Amazon (some growth for B&N, Apple, new platform?, etc), having grown tired of the stale offerings from Amazon (very repetitive mailings) and the poor user experience when browsing titles.


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## C. A. Mitchell (Aug 6, 2015)

Jessie G. Talbot said:


> I ain't skeered. Like others have said there will always be problems. The one that succeeds is the one that doesn't let them stop her.


Amen.

Be patient. Always be learning, always be writing. Work hard and play hard.


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## BlinkFarm (Oct 25, 2015)

Facebook ads related to our business will continue to increase in cost and decrease in ROI as more people ride the bandwagon.

Audiobooks will continue to grow in popularity and some authors will find they can make a better living as narrators. Scammers will find a way to ruin audiobooks, too.

Amazon will finally find a way to improve the KU customer experience by cracking down on scammers, but payouts per page will continue to fall.

[Edit: deleted tapatalk signature]


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## 555aaa (Jan 28, 2014)

Douglas Milewski said:


> Even thought I see things getting harder, that's no reason not to start a business. Somebody has to make that money, and it may as well be you.


I like the cut of your jib, sir.


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

Nicholas Erik said:


> The market's obviously different. No one's arguing that it isn't. Tactics come and go - free was one such tactic. I see smart authors making up for the lack of sheer #s on free downloads via things like audio (e.g. through WhisperSync - adding a $2 sale to lots of those free downloads), better back matter, pre-orders (which weren't available until two years ago on 'zon) and so forth.
> 
> FB ads, SEO and so forth aren't strategies, they're tactics. Besides, all of the things you listed work fine - they just work _differently_ than they did ten or fifteen years ago. If you approach them the same way, then you obviously won't meet with success, because things change.
> 
> ...


It was wayyy easier to get discovered on Amazon back then.. It was easy. Upload a book, make it free and get downloads. Yes, some people didnt want to do it but those who did..wow.. Now people have to do ads on book sites like Bookbub to supplement it. It was a gravy-train..

And while we see new authors breakout, the level of success seems lower than original success stories.. You underestimate how much Amazon created artificial growth for a time. To a point where people thought they were good at marketing books because they uploaded the book to KU... this impossible now. I think this is a good correction in the marketplace that makes authors learn real business and marketing better.

But it's definitely intriguing and hopeful that with many new devices coming in there will be more demand. Audiobooks hopefully, will continue to grow in consumption.

Personally, I still hope author merchandise will take off somehow and become an income source. But this hasn't happened so far. But with 3D printing something will happen in future!

And no one is saying Amazon shuts down KDP.. that would def. be doom and gloom and taken to extreme level. That would be weird..


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

EC said:


> Or just buy one of the aforementioned and integrate platforms.


I don't think Walmart is taking this market that seriously. And even if they do, they don't have specialist industry knowledge to compete with Amazon yet. And that is huge. Throwing money around doesn't help to make the project succeed. Esp. when new project is not the companies first priority (and no way books are Walmarts no.1 priority).


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## JalexM (May 14, 2015)

RBC said:


> I don't think Walmart is taking this market that seriously. And even if they do, they don't have specialist industry knowledge to compete with Amazon yet. And that is huge. Throwing money around doesn't help to make the project succeed. Esp. when new project is not the companies first priority (and no way books are Walmarts no.1 priority).


They are walmart, about 1/3rd of Americans have shopped at walmart in the past year and a little over 70% of Americans have read a book in the past year. If they get serious then they will make a dent in Amazon's shares as there is most definitely some cross over.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

JalexM said:


> They are walmart, about 1/3rd of Americans have shopped at walmart in the past year and a little over 70% of Americans have read a book in the past year. If they get serious then they will make a dent in Amazon's shares as there is most definitely some cross over.


Shopping in a Walmart store is vastly different than purchasing an ebook from them. Plus, as other people said, with Walmart cutting off erotica and a good half of the romance market, that will simply turn people off. Only 19 percent of people who shop at Walmart use their online store, too, and that's for physical goods. The number of people buying digital content would be drastically lower than that.


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

JalexM said:


> They are walmart, about 1/3rd of Americans have shopped at walmart in the past year and a little over 70% of Americans have read a book in the past year. If they get serious then they will make a dent in Amazon's shares as there is most definitely some cross over.


 I really struggle to see myself buying an ebook in a store.. much less store like Walmart.. Paperbacks maybe, as it can be an impulse buy (but I don't have space on shelves). So while it's certainly theoretically possible, it's not very likely.. It's just not a great environment to buy books and not the shopping mood people are in.. If Walmart buys B&N and does something there, maybe, but making a play in-store.. I don't see it working out..


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

At some point, maybe not as soon as 2017, I see the ebook platforms charging to publish. Not a lot, but enough to cut down on the volume and to discourage the scammers. I also foresee the end of free books. These have a cost for the platforms, and the non-free books subsidize it. That's why Zon sets a minimum price of 99 cents. At some point, they'll stop price matching free. I also see a time when books that don't sell are dropped from the store. Don't sell a book in two years, Zon asks you to pay a maintenance fee or delists it. Frees up disk space and bandwidth. They will do this to maintain response times and to clear the clutter that doesn't make them any money.

Everyone wants Zon to increase staffing and service, both for readers and for authors. Someone has to pay for that, and providing publishing services to people who don't generate revenue is a long-term loser.


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## mach 5 (Dec 5, 2015)

Funny the Walmart issue is getting so much pushback. They've been selling in Canada via a contract with Kobo for years, but that brings in mostly trad books. But that means they've been gathering some knowledge on the backend in a low profile market (compared to the US). They have long had booksellers on staff at corporate. [ETA - an outside firm handles the book merchandising for Walmart] Target and Walmart have the power to veto trad publishing covers, blurbs, etc., because they are such a large market for print.

Oh - and I forgot, but I recall once upon a time, Ellora's Cave print books (probably their Simon and Schuster distribution deal) being on the website for sale. So while they are unlikely to have that level of dirty in the store, they'll have it it for order online.

We also can't discount an increase in visibility for the online store from authors promoting their Walmart ebook link - perhaps over Amazon. Because of the algorithms, I currently don't release my newsletter until my Amazon link is live and I won't go more than 24 hours with a live Amazon link waiting for the other stores to go live without releasing the newsletter. But Walmart might find a way to change that behavior via incentives, etc.

Anyone here go to the Hawaii Conference and meet with the Walmart reps? I hear there was some fierce jockeying by one big indie to get a spot and bad behavior when she didn't. But maybe she doesn't know anything about selling books online.


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

mach 5 said:


> Funny the Walmart issue is getting so much pushback. They've been selling in Canada via a contract with Kobo for years, but that brings in mostly trad books. But that means they've been gathering some knowledge on the backend in a low profile market (compared to the US). They have long had booksellers on staff at corporate. Target and Walmart have the power to veto trad publishing covers, blurbs, etc., because they are such a large market for print.
> 
> Oh - and I forgot, but I recall once upon a time, Ellora's Cave print books (probably their Simon and Schuster distribution deal) being on the website for sale. So while they are unlikely to have that level of dirty in the store, they'll have it it for order online.
> 
> ...


Doubts are not pushback.. I think everyone would love for Walmart to succeed it just doesn't seem likely. It would be interesting to see how much Walmart manages to sell on their online store.. They will definitely move the needle for some hand-picked authors who get featured in their shops. But will that make a dent in Amazon. Not likely. If anything,probably they will just increase the other books' sales for that author ON Amazon..


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## FireBadTreePretty (May 24, 2015)

1. The small epublishers (Samhain, Ellora's Cave, etc) that rose up in the Amazon Gold Rush are finally all going to be dead with only the sad amoeba sized publishers (you know the usual 'we're just two authors who wanted to make a publisher that was focused on the WRITER!') left. This will leave more folks like me who published with the small fish (in my case the defunct Musa Publishing) to go over to self publishing. This is a good thing because I feel like a lot of writers got some good skills working with the small publishers so they will help with adding quality to fiction ebooks.

2. More shitty lifestyle blogs will have an ebook out and more online entrepreneurship 'gurus' will tell people to churn out niche books and a book version of their blog. You will see a lot of these 'information products' used for the middle of a sales funnel or as a compliment to an online course but ultimately add little to the quality of the self publishing pool.  These products will sink quickly.

3. More people will drop out of self publishing in the next few years. The 'online marketing gurus' are already suggesting moving ebooks down the sales funnel. Writing and any kind of publishing is hard. I think that there is little incentive on the first book (or even second or third) to grind at self-publishing unless you have passion. While there are people even on this forum who break out, there are many many more who flounder and sell very little. You gotta like writing.

4. Amazon defeats the scammers and takes the legit yet ignorant writer down with them. They will figure out ways of closing loopholes, capping book sizes, and maybe even do a fee for publishing. As a kindle reader, I hope they do. Its awful sometimes trying to find something to read.


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## treesloth5 (Dec 11, 2014)

There are a few brands I want to get in on, right now I see the most advantageous:

1. Cthulhu is a brand, Lovecraft in general is famous.

2. Sherlock Holmes

3. Jane Austen and friends

Those are probably the three areas that are popular enough to sustain working in someone elses' pre established brand. The thing is something like Sherlock Holmes is that the Doyle Estate maintains a finger hold on some of the later Holmes works whenever the character is older. There was a law suit over it, declared him public domain however there was a limit to his elderly years as a bee keeper. There are several comic book characters that are Golden Age, relatively used by different companies, and have some of a following. But requires a lot of work to establish in and the comic book industry is small relative to certain straight text based books.

There are several new brands coming online over the next few years as more public domain characters become available. The downside is that because of complex rules through trademarks will make this more ineffective strategy to try and grab some characters. One public domain character would be Zorro that right now would be highly profitable, however he is held in trademark through a shell company that produces no new content. Then of course there are legitimate trademarks like Disney and Micky Mouse as they continue to use and expand their portfolio of characters, but then the trademarks limits reproductions and expanding the lore. So there is going to be a high move to keep down as many characters as possible.

The main characters to look for over the next few decades, but trademarks will make it difficult to shift around them. The main areas I'm looking at are characters that no one really knows about, but have some sort of cult following and have no trademark shenanigans attatched to them. From a business stand point, there are several from the pulp fiction days that could be reused in several different ways. 

However, we must also portend that there are several mythologies that have not been used steadily to any large degree. The biggest would be Witcher and Slavic Mythology, so while Witcher is new and powerful the basis of those stories are European mythology and fairy tales. It is through the remix for several different aspects that encourages authors to create something new while creating something from cultural stock. 

What I am interested in this:

A. Take pre-existing characters and use them inside of new worlds to build new brands along with my own creations
B. Build marketing and merchandising products that can expand the entire "world" and branding process to create alternative forms of income outside of just say things like books
C. Take advantage of networking other content products outside of the book industry such as independent game designers who would use a cheap license to promote products and so forth. 

There's where I see taking a brand, but getting to that point takes time. There are web comic authors who have successfully raised money through selling Kickstarter merchandise.


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## mach 5 (Dec 5, 2015)

Very interesting, bp!

I have a Sherlock project I'm slowly developing. It's been so long since I read the books that I'm going through them again, first. But with the Robert Downey movies, and to a lesser extent the new Doyle & Houdini series (rather unimpressed with the debut - odd choice on leading actors), I agree that this is an area ready for fresh titles and interesting takes.


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## m.a. petterson (Sep 11, 2013)

Walmart already has a world-class online presence. To get into ebooks would only cost them bandwidth and a few more employees. More if they robustly marketed it, of course.

Electrons don't take up shelf space. So why _wouldn't_ they enter the market?

IMHO it's low-hanging fruit.


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

m.a. petterson said:


> Walmart already has a world-class online presence. To get into ebooks would only cost them bandwidth and a few more employees. More if they robustly marketed it, of course.
> 
> Electrons don't take up shelf space. So why _wouldn't_ they enter the market?
> 
> IMHO it's low-hanging fruit.


Have you bought from them online?


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## mach 5 (Dec 5, 2015)

I amended an earlier post stating Walmart has in-house booksellers. They use an outside firm to handle it for them.

They are still very much taking baby steps. Found this article - http://www.thebookseller.com/futurebook/pivoting-presents-enthrills-big-christmas-318806 - again, all canada or mostly canada


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## m.a. petterson (Sep 11, 2013)

RBC said:


> Have you bought from them online?


Yes. To save shipping I pick up the item at the store. It quite often arrives the same or the next day.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

You are right. It's going to get so hard nobody will be visible. Everything will explode. It's not even worth thinking about and you should get out now. 

Where's that eye-roll smiley? Hmm.

Guess what? There have been more books in the English language than people can ever read in a lifetime for...uh... at least hundred+ years? So... not something I worry about.

My predictions for real?

1) Writing good books that people want to read and handling the business side in an intelligent and business-oriented manner will still work.
2) Audio will still be an awesome extra income stream.
3) The market will continue to get tougher for people who are [email protected] parts of their business (skimping on covers, not writing great books, etc), because that's what happens when a market matures.  That's why you see not so great books with bad covers that still manage to hit tropes do well for a few months, then fall away and disappear in the ranks.
4) There will still be trends and niches were [email protected] works for a while, until it doesn't.
5) Amazon will continue to dominate the market because they have the best discovery and recommendation engine and great customer service.
6) More of the people doing well with end up Hybrid if they aren't already as publishers continue to experiment and realize that there are lots of more or less sure bets out there already.


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## Lu Kudzoza (Nov 1, 2015)

I don't know what will change, but here's a few things that will stay the same.


Authors that write great books will sell a lot of books via word of mouth
Authors that write meh books will sell a few books by accident (or good marketing)
Authors that market their work will sell more books than those who don't
Authors that separate their writing from their business will write better books
Authors that write mainly to make money will write average books
Authors that write great books will have higher sell through rates
Authors that write great books will build brand recognition


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

The big caveat is that there are multiple learning curves and investment curves associated with this business, ones which can bog down even the smartest and keenest writers. New people will always come in asking, "What am I doing wrong?" because almost nobody comes into this business knowing everything. The writers who will succeed in the future are the ones who keep learning and developing, so that they can reach they point where they can write good books that people want to read, understand how to brand for their genre, and understand their business well enough to make the correct decisions.


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## Nicksm28 (May 16, 2016)

Safe to say the self-publishing boom isn't in its infancy anymore?


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

emilycantore said:


> Having converted to Dragon late last year and had some amazing success, my prediction is that dictation will become the required tool for author success.
> 
> Dictation I can do 20,000 in a single day. I can't hit that number typing.
> 
> ...


A bunch of this is already true. Joint names, having a better chance of success with 4-6 books a year, etc... That's all been true for years.


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## Chrissy (Mar 31, 2014)

emilycantore said:


> Perhaps I should be clearer... massive high speed writing!
> 
> *I wrote a novel in fifteen hours of dictating. I had a good outline and tore through it. That book sells incredibly well. No different from one I wrote by hand.*
> 
> ...


Other than having an outline, what other things do you attribute you dictation success to? In other words, any tips?


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

emilycantore said:


> Perhaps I should be clearer... massive high speed writing!
> 
> I wrote a novel in fifteen hours of dictating. I had a good outline and tore through it. That book sells incredibly well. No different from one I wrote by hand.
> 
> ...


Nah. I'm not worried about that. There will be a few, sure. There are some now who write a book a month (or share a name/use ghosts and release every week or two weeks). But that will never be the majority. Dictating text is one thing. Dictating a fully fleshed out novel-length story every 3 days is another. Maybe some will do it. Most though or enough to somehow swamp a pretty huge market? Not likely enough for me to waste worry time on.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Annie B said:


> Nah. I'm not worried about that. There will be a few, sure. There are some now who write a book a month (or share a name/use ghosts and release every week or two weeks). But that will never be the majority. Dictating text is one thing. Dictating a fully fleshed out novel-length story every 3 days is another. Maybe some will do it. Most though or enough to somehow swamp a pretty huge market? Not likely enough for me to waste worry time on.


Agreed. I think people who are able to write polished novels in a day or a couple weeks, novels that stick high for months or years, who can do that every few weeks, are . . . rare, and will continue to be rare. Not to say they don't exist.

I'm still writing at about the same speed as when I started four years ago. It's still working. I just say that for others who are thinking, "Oh noes I have to write a book a week now?" I write about 500-600K/year. That's a reasonably good clip, but it's only 4-5 books a year, and it's still working well despite the frequent claims that the market will be taken over by people writing a book a month. Perhaps it depends on genre and length of book, also.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

Annie B said:


> Nah. I'm not worried about that. There will be a few, sure. There are some now who write a book a month (or share a name/use ghosts and release every week or two weeks). But that will never be the majority. Dictating text is one thing. Dictating a fully fleshed out novel-length story every 3 days is another. Maybe some will do it. Most though or enough to somehow swamp a pretty huge market? Not likely enough for me to waste worry time on.


Yeah, dictation isn't a secret. Most of the existing authors who thrive with it have already heard the good news and still slog along at a 1 novel/month pace at best. Many others have tried it and found it totally unworkable. The revolution won't be dictated.

+1 to Annie's earlier post. What were the major disruptions over the last couple years? KU1? KU2? Amazon's not going anywhere, folks. Neither is the competition, and neither are the fundamentals.

The business isn't evolving nearly as quickly as it was a few years back, and that's good news. You can succeed today by following the same principles that made Hugh Howey, Russell Blake, and Elle Casey succeed in the previous epoch. That won't change dramatically in 2017.


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## Wolfpack (Jun 20, 2013)

EC said:


> If you see a title you think is a scam, hit report then move on. Then go back to work in that which you can control.


Great advice


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## mach 5 (Dec 5, 2015)

bpmanuel said:


> bp's very, very, very long post


That would make an excellent craft post. In fact I just copied it into my Development file.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

emilycantore said:


> I think it will be a generational change, the way computers were. I'm fast on a keyboard because I was raised typing on one. My parents on the other hand will never be quite as fast as me.
> 
> I'm astounded how fast dictation has made me but I've only been learning how to do it since last year. There will be new writers who turn up who have been dictating since they were kids.
> 
> ...


That's fine. My point is: will they sell more? Because I'm still selling pretty well despite not writing a book a month.

The speed of my books isn't dictated by my typing speed. It's dictated by how long it takes me to think about where the people are now. That's also what sells books for me, personally.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

emilycantore said:


> Not talking about you and what you do. Great, you sell. Me too.
> 
> Btw, this thread has taken on a really aggressive tone. It's just spitballing guys, chill out.


No, it hasn't. Folks are disagreeing with you, that's all.

Nobody's seen dictation change the game to anywhere near the degree that you're forecasting, so you should anticipate pushback. It's a wild-eyed prognostication on your part. The virtue is that you'll look like a genius if it's true, ultimately, but you'll have to forgive us if we disagree in the meantime.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

If it was just typing speed, I could do a book a week, pretty easily. That's without dictation. But writing a book isn't just typing speed, or dictating speed.  That's my point. The number of people who can write a great book quickly aren't going to magically increase just because dictation technology exists. That's why it wouldn't worry me as a slower writer that it does and that I don't use it. That's all we're saying.


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## Yayoi (Apr 26, 2016)

Douglas Milewski said:


> The big caveat is that there are multiple learning curves and investment curves associated with this business, ones which can bog down even the smartest and keenest writers. New people will always come in asking, "What am I doing wrong?" because almost nobody comes into this business knowing everything. The writers who will succeed in the future are the ones who keep learning and developing, so that they can reach they point where they can write good books that people want to read, understand how to brand for their genre, and understand their business well enough to make the correct decisions.


I agree. And it seems like a really tall order, an uphill battle for authors everywhere. *sighs*


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## Chrissy (Mar 31, 2014)

emilycantore said:


> Write a series so you can establish a world. Having a world to write in is wonderful. You fill it with characters and then stories generated in that world come with a rich ready-made background.
> 
> Forward planning - throw in a hint of something book one and that's the main plot of book four. Allows you to easily seed your work with future plot and story developments.
> 
> ...


Thanks!


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Annie B said:


> You are right. It's going to get so hard nobody will be visible. Everything will explode. It's not even worth thinking about and you should get out now.
> 
> Where's that eye-roll smiley? Hmm.
> 
> ...


By the way: I agree with all this. All sounds likely to me.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

emilycantore said:


> It's weirdly hostile and argumentative. The thread question is what do you see for self-publishing, not "hey, let's make predictions and then have people argue against them".


If your prediction touched a nerve, I'd hazard to say that it'd have something to do with the notion of the dictating Übermenschen eating everybody else's lunch at the rate of a novel a week. That's provocative, because 1) a novel a week is something that very few authors--even those who already dictate--have ever demonstrated, and 2) it suggests that one way of working is so far superior to another that it will come to define the entire industry. If you've spent any time with humans, it should be pretty clear that that'll ruffle some feathers. At best you're foretelling something so strange that it's without precedent, and at worst you're telling a whole lot of people that their methods are inferior. Either way, folks are going to have a thing or two to say in response.

It's not a big deal. Nobody's mad. Just don't be surprised if you say something controversial and a controversy follows.

This is especially true on the internet, and truest of all on discussion forums.


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## celadon (Sep 12, 2015)

Annie B said:


> If it was just typing speed, I could do a book a week, pretty easily. That's without dictation. But writing a book isn't just typing speed, or dictating speed.  That's my point. The number of people who can write a great book quickly aren't going to magically increase just because dictation technology exists. That's why it wouldn't worry me as a slower writer that it does and that I don't use it. That's all we're saying.


That's what I'm thinking too. I don't write novels, so I can't speak about that. But I think there's an artistry to any type of writing, a crafting of it, and you can't bang that out with dictation. You have to go back and get it just right. I may regurgitate a first draft very quickly, more quickly if I dictated it, but it would be far from ready to sell. It would need a lot of tweaking. I'm sure I'm not alone in this, right?


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

Annie B said:


> If it was just typing speed, I could do a book a week, pretty easily. That's without dictation. But writing a book isn't just typing speed, or dictating speed.  That's my point. The number of people who can write a great book quickly aren't going to magically increase just because dictation technology exists. That's why it wouldn't worry me as a slower writer that it does and that I don't use it. That's all we're saying.


I totally agree. And with what Rosalind and everyone else says too. I don't know about others but I really enjoy the revision and editing process. It's a chance to polish the sentences and make them really sing. There's an artistic aspect to writing that I enjoy, and that takes time.

And then, my editors need time. The content editor needs 2 weeks to read, think and then give me sound advice that they need to type into my MS. The copy editor maybe need anywhere from 1-3 weeks. I don't like rushing them because I don't want a rushed job. I want them to catch all the errors and take the time to think. They aren't machines. Same with the proofreader. What's the point of proofreading if they can't take a physically reasonable time to proofread. Machines may be fast, but human eyes are eyes. They get tired.

1 novel a week, sure. That's if one does away with all the people on the team who can make a novel a truly polished, professional product. Now maybe there's an exceptional writer out there who can produce that fast and don't need anyone else. And I'd go farther to say that the books may sell too. Readers are not that demanding if the story has a good plot. But I can't see how this will be the norm. And what about cover artists? They need time to create the cover too. Unless you know months in advance what you're writing or you use all pre-mades.

Oh and I suppose the writer also must have the technical skills to do the formatting too. We'll write/dictate the book and format it all in one week. Formatter takes too much time. Yes, let's put everybody out of business. We can do it all. Who needs them.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

I think everyone should do what works for them. I was only trying to explain my own thinking, because I know that before I published, I got super nervous about all the advice about how you had to do things to succeed. I almost didn't do it at all, because I read a bunch of things about how you shouldn't expect to sell, or it would take years to succeed, or almost nobody succeeded, or you had to publish every month, etc. You all know the sorts of things I'm talking about.

Me, personally--I focus on the long term, on writing books that will have legs. That's the most important thing for me, because I don't write in hot genres or trends, and I write long books. Writers who are primarily writing shorter, quicker things, picking up on trends in turn--that's a perfectly legitimate strategy, and it definitely lends itself to putting books out faster, because a to-trend book is less likely to have significant legs anyway. 

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what the future brings. So far, I've heard lots of scary predictions every year for the 3-1/2 years I've been doing this, and I just plod along doing it the same old way, and it still works. I'm guessing nothing that radical will come along, but I could be wrong.


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## celadon (Sep 12, 2015)

emilycantore said:


> Dictated a 60K novel in 15 hours. Sells just as well as the one that took 60 days. Slowest part was fixing transcription errors. Editing same length of time.
> 
> I was on track to do same with current novel before I was hit with bronchitis.
> 
> It's very doable to produce good work in a short time with dictation.


Wow, it sounds like it's working great for you. 

I don't know if everyone's style or method works the same, however. No doubt dictation would be a valuable tool, but whether it would speed things up to that level, I don't know. I pore over my writing (not that I'm that great of a writer--I do non-fiction about a subject I'm passionate about, that's all) to tweak it and get it "better." Would dictation take all that agonizing and tweaking away? I don't see how. So, for you it obviously has been a big win. For me, it would undoubtedly speed things up, but I don't think it would transform my writing.



AlexaKang said:


> I totally agree. And with what Rosalind and everyone else says too. I don't know about others but I really enjoy the revision and editing process. It's a chance to polish the sentences and make them really sing. There's an artistic aspect to writing that I enjoy, and that takes time.


This is what I was trying to say.

I don't consider my writing to be artistry like some fiction would be. I'm just doing non-fiction, basically writing instructions on how to do something and explaining my feelings about certain subjects. But, I want to get my point across as best as I can. I rarely get it right the first time. I'm not even really a writer... not in the way most of you are. I'm sure there are flaws aplenty in what I do. I need all the help I can get. It takes time and thought and "sleeping on it."


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## mach 5 (Dec 5, 2015)

emilycantore said:


> Dictated a 60K novel in 15 hours. Sells just as well as the one that took 60 days. Slowest part was fixing transcription errors. Editing same length of time.
> 
> I was on track to do same with current novel before I was hit with bronchitis.
> 
> It's very doable to produce good work in a short time with dictation.


I believe it's possible. I know the rich dialogue and detail and amazing connections my pre-sleep drafting comes up with. I just haven't pulled out my recorder at night and started dictating because I'm supposed to be trying to sleep, not drafting stories.

Also, Amanda Lee TYPES a novel a week - it then goes out to her developmental editor, she gets it back, spends a little more time (but she does 3 a month and last week for this kind of finalizing or time off), then copyeditor.


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## WDR (Jan 8, 2014)

For those concerned that some of the predictions seemed dark and found such depressing---don't.

While Necessity is be the mother of Invention, Adversity is the father of Opportunity.

There are more people writing books today than ever before. Reread the carefully: there are more people making a living writing books today than ever before. The market for books isn't shrinking, it is growing. Sure, with so many new books coming out each day it may be a little harder to get noticed by the public. It just means you need to try a little harder. But with so many good books coming out, there are a lot more people who are buying books. And more people buying books means better opportunity for your book to make a sale.

The key for anyone who wants to succeed at writing professionally is that you have to keep working at it. Fortunately, as shown on Authors' Earnings, self-publishing writers are more likely to succeed than those who go the traditional route.

To call several years ago the "Golden Age of Self-publishing" would be a bit of a misnomer. More to the point, because self-published authors were such a novelty, it was fairly easy to get publicity from news outlets looking for human interest stories. Now, self-published, independent authors are fairly common. (Again, reread that last sentence!) Now we aren't such a big deal, so that free exposure isn't quite as big as it was. Still, your local paper would be happy to run a piece about a member of the community making it. Remember, your first real sales begin close to home. People love to brag about how they have a writer in their community.

You have a better opportunity to make it as an author now than at any time before in history. Seven years ago during the "Golden Age", self-published and successful writers were not that common. Now we are. That should be sending you a very clear message! So, don't be depressed. Instead, you should be getting excited. Time to limber up your fingers/toes/tentacles/appendages-of-choice and get writing! You've got a story to tell and it won't get sold unless you write it!


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## Pauline Creeden (Aug 4, 2011)

This thread is chocked full of awesomeness - personally I think debate is the mother of great ideas


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## rex kusler (Feb 12, 2010)

Amazon's customers have become more savvy. I think they look to see who the publisher is on the detail page and then they look up that publisher to see if it's an imprint of a big New York publisher or a small new publisher trying to squeeze into the e-book boom--or just an indie author's stage name. If there is no publisher listed they know the book is self published. There are fewer and fewer new kindle owners filling up their devices. Once they've got thousands of books on their kindle, they become more selective.


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## Clare W (Aug 13, 2015)

> Amazon's customers have become more savvy. I think they look to see who the publisher is on the detail page and then they look up that publisher to see if it's an imprint of a big New York publisher or a small new publisher trying to squeeze into the e-book boom--or just an indie author's stage name. If there is no publisher listed they know the book is self published.


Maybe that's applicable to some genres / categories, but my experience has been different. In my non-fiction categories there's a good mix of indie and trad published titles. But even as a customer, I'm not swayed by who the publisher is - far less look them up. I'm much more interested in reviews, personal recommendations, the author's previous books, etc.


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

rex kusler said:


> Amazon's customers have become more savvy. I think they look to see who the publisher is on the detail page and then they look up that publisher to see if it's an imprint of a big New York publisher or a small new publisher trying to squeeze into the e-book boom--or just an indie author's stage name. If there is no publisher listed they know the book is self published. There are fewer and fewer new kindle owners filling up their devices. Once they've got thousands of books on their kindle, they become more selective.


I've only looked at a book's publisher once, and that was after I started reading. The book was so repetitive and self-contradictory in the first hundred pages that I popped back to see if it was indie, and all I have to say is, HarperCollins' editorial staff should be ASHAMED of themselves.


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

WDR said:


> To call several years ago the "Golden Age of Self-publishing" would be a bit of a misnomer. More to the point, because self-published authors were such a novelty, it was fairly easy to get publicity from news outlets looking for human interest stories. Now, self-published, independent authors are fairly common. (Again, reread that last sentence!) Now we aren't such a big deal, so that free exposure isn't quite as big as it was. Still, your local paper would be happy to run a piece about a member of the community making it. Remember, your first real sales begin close to home. People love to brag about how they have a writer in their community.


Local sales can't even compare to Amazon sales.. you're kind of staying in local bubble and not grasping how huge impact Amazon created. Authors had hundreds of thousands of free downloads per book in short time, now few thousand only. That is one huge difference and sign of how things changed. Press doesn't drive sales as much as people think it should do (it's better for social proof)..

Definitely agree that adversity is opportunity and maybe it will keep driving innovation! This is the hope! Also, once the amateurs/money chasers fall off and industry has a 'correction' then the opportunities will become better for those who stayed and it will be better.


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## celadon (Sep 12, 2015)

Clare W said:


> Maybe that's applicable to some genres / categories, but my experience has been different. In my non-fiction categories there's a good mix of indie and trad published titles. But even as a customer, I'm not swayed by who the publisher is - far less look them up. I'm much more interested in reviews, personal recommendations, the author's previous books, etc.


Same for me. If it's fiction, the opinions of other readers is all I really need to know. Even with non-fiction, same thing. If the reviews are pretty good, then that's an indicator that the book is not rubbish. However there are no absolutes, and the scammers can buy good reviews. That's why the return option is a good thing.


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## Jill Nojack (Mar 7, 2014)

Rosalind James said:


> APub picked my books up precisely because they weren't blatantly cloned things. That's why I make money, too.
> 
> If you want to do ok, write cloned things. If you want to do great, write something that's not exactly like every other book out there. My opinion.


I think Rosalind has a point on that one. If you look at what Amazon picks up for Kindle Scout, which they promote heavily in KU, a lot of the books really just don't "fit" in the mold of "writing to market". I haven't read all of them, but I have read a number of them, and the Fantasy at least usually has something a little off center - best example being paranormals that are actually black comedies (check out Four by RE Carr). I don't think there is a typical Urban Fantasy in the bunch. Nothing cloned. The books don't outsell the very successful books that are written to the tropes, but Amazon will be promoting them for the long run, as I understand it. That can only be a good thing.


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## WDR (Jan 8, 2014)

RBC said:


> Local sales can't even compare to Amazon sales..


Local sales are Amazon sales. They buy ebooks from Amazon.

I could have been a tad clearer in my comment about "close to home."

What I meant by this was going out and meeting people as an author and telling them about your book. Most of this will happen locally and your sales will start to grow from here. If one is starting out as an author in Massachusetts, I don't expect that writer to drive across country to California on a book signing tour when their book has just started selling. Nor should one expect to be invited as a keynote speaker at a fan convention. Instead, you contact local reading groups and ask if they would be interested in you talking about your book. (That often results in a dozes sales!) Trust me, things start to grow quickly when you do this.


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## Ted Cross (Aug 30, 2012)

If indie book stores were smart, they would make it much easier for good indie books to be allowed on their shelves, since this might give them a leg up on B&N.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

I've never understood the cost/benefit analysis of the book signing thing. I know lots of authors do it. I've never done one. For me, I'd have to be a big name with people lining up to see me before it would make sense. But clearly I'm missing something. I'd rather do an ad and give away thousands of free books. Seems like it would result in more sales, and it costs me no time. Or


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

If I ever wrote books and signed them, the whole world would realize that I'm named "Dolphin" because my handwriting looks like I haven't any fingers.


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## mach 5 (Dec 5, 2015)

Rosalind James said:


> I've never understood the cost/benefit analysis of the book signing thing. I know lots of authors do it. I've never done one. For me, I'd have to be a big name with people lining up to see me before it would make sense. But clearly I'm missing something. I'd rather do an ad and give away thousands of free books. Seems like it would result in more sales, and it costs me no time. Or


Traditional publishing thought it was a good thing. I think it was more to build rapport with the bookstores than the readers. It's not something that you can measure for efficacy, really. Big business does a lot of things marketing wise that can't be measured. Drove me crazy when I worked for one and had to deal with marketing.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Dolphin said:


> If I ever wrote books and signed them, the whole world would realize that I'm named "Dolphin" because my handwriting looks like I haven't any fingers.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

The idea of ever having to do a book signing for a traditional publisher was a significant factor in my decision to self-publish.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

Lydniz said:


> The idea of ever having to do a book signing for a traditional publisher was a significant factor in my decision to self-publish.


Perfectly understandable.


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## hlynn117 (Apr 25, 2016)

BWFoster78 said:


> We're all going to get rich. Rich! RICH!!!


I like you.  But seriously, I agree with the international markets. I also think that authors that are willing to experiment with serialization will do better. That's the trend in China right now, and it's what has made Wattpad huge. Figuring out how to monetize that in the English world is going to happen.


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## JamesOsiris (Mar 23, 2014)

My predictions:

- The market is going to continue integrating ebooks as a normal thing in life, not a fringe fad. As a result, they are going to start demanding higher-quality work and devices.
- The number of authors will increase, but the number of authors able to deliver work of the required quality will collapse.
- Amazon *might* do something about scammers. I suspect a big part of the reason why they haven't is because of outdated hardware, software, and policy practices blocking the process. I have a feeling that some of Amazon's hardware framework is aging poorly.
- The midlist will continue to transfer over to the self-published market.
- Paperbacks and audio will make a resurge.
- Some bookstores will develop submission policies and procedures.
- As the market begins to demand higher quality work, author co-ops and curator services are going to become viable.


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## Dolphin (Aug 22, 2013)

Nic said:


> Perfectly understandable.


It really is.


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## sstroble (Dec 16, 2013)

Read 5 years ago that about 15,000 books a day (5,475,000 a year) were being published worldwide. 
By 2017, about 20,000 books a day (7,300,000 a year) will be published worldwide, resulting in a demand by readers for help in finding what to read. Software engineers will develop a program, Book Evaluation, to rate any book on a scale of 1 through 10, with a rating of 1 being, "Warning, the Surgeon General has determined that reading this book may be hazardous to your health"  and a rating of 10 being, "A must read."
The software will sell for $9,999; companies that buy it will charge 99 cents for users to have any  book evaluated. Book Evaluation will prove so popular that Apple will begin offering it as an optional app for all of their products. Next, Amazon will include it as an app on all their Kindle devices.
For a season (length yet to be determined, time will tell), readers will be ecstatic as what they consider to be the best books fill their electronic or wooden bookshelves.


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## Ted Cross (Aug 30, 2012)

sstroble said:


> Read 5 years ago that about 15,000 books a day (5,475,000 a year) were being published worldwide.
> By 2017, about 20,000 books a day (7,300,000 a year) will be published worldwide, resulting in a demand by readers for help in finding what to read. Software engineers will develop a program, Book Evaluation, to rate any book on a scale of 1 through 10, with a rating of 1 being, "Warning, the Surgeon General has determined that reading this book may be hazardous to your health" and a rating of 10 being, "A must read."
> The software will sell for $9,999; companies that buy it will charge 99 cents for users to have any book evaluated. Book Evaluation will prove so popular that Apple will begin offering it as an optional app for all of their products. Next, Amazon will include it as an app on all their Kindle devices.
> For a season (length yet to be determined, time will tell), readers will be ecstatic as what they consider to be the best books fill their electronic or wooden bookshelves.


And for an extra .99 the software will read the book for you so you don't have to.


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## sstroble (Dec 16, 2013)

Ted Cross said:


> And for an extra .99 the software will read the book for you so you don't have to.


Yes.


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

JamesOsiris said:


> My predictions:
> 
> - The market is going to continue integrating ebooks as a normal thing in life, not a fringe fad. As a result, they are going to start demanding higher-quality work and devices.
> - The number of authors will increase, but the number of authors able to deliver work of the required quality will collapse.
> ...


What makes you think paperbacks would make a comeback?


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## mach 5 (Dec 5, 2015)

RBC said:


> What makes you think paperbacks would make a comeback?


I am skeptical about fiction paperbacks increasing in popularity (although they are still quite popular in many genres, especially as personal accessories to be admired by our guests or fellow metro riders). However, there are some things that could assist a resurgence. I think it was last year that B&N basically locked some reader out of previously purchased ebooks if they were reading on anything other than a Nook following an update to the Nook app for other devices. Ellora's Cave (I believe it was them -- my opinion of my memory, so don't sue me, Ms Engler) reportedly did a major site update that somehow wiped out their readers' digital bookshelves. The reader could get a book back if they submitted proof they had purchased it. Some readers of course had been buying for a decade from EC. Similar happened (cut off from bookshelf - but with no recourse, I think) when Borders went out of business, I believe, plus there are slightly different occurrences (like Sony shifting its library to Kobo) where you have X amount of time to reclaim your books at a new vendor.

Enough of that and people might buy their "keepers" (autobuy authors) in print and their cheap (or free) throwaways in digital despite the cost difference between their keepers in print versus ebook.

There's also the "deep reading" movement, digitally (screen) induced sleep issues and so on.

On the other hand, you have elderly (downsizing to smaller spaces, have old hands, or who may not be able to find the books they want in large enough print, for example) and people who cannot otherwise hold books or a long enough time (and physically pay for the time they were holding them), who will help keep ebooks going strong.


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## jackz4000 (May 15, 2011)

Rosalind James said:


> I think everyone should do what works for them. I was only trying to explain my own thinking, because I know that before I published, I got super nervous about all the advice about how you had to do things to succeed. I almost didn't do it at all, because I read a bunch of things about how you shouldn't expect to sell, or it would take years to succeed, or almost nobody succeeded, or you had to publish every month, etc. You all know the sorts of things I'm talking about.
> 
> Me, personally--I focus on the long term, on writing books that will have legs. That's the most important thing for me, because I don't write in hot genres or trends, and I write long books. Writers who are primarily writing shorter, quicker things, picking up on trends in turn--that's a perfectly legitimate strategy, and it definitely lends itself to putting books out faster, because a to-trend book is less likely to have significant legs anyway.
> 
> Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what the future brings. So far, I've heard lots of scary predictions every year for the 3-1/2 years I've been doing this, and I just plod along doing it the same old way, and it still works. I'm guessing nothing that radical will come along, but I could be wrong.


Forget much of the the negativity in this thread and listen to Annie B and Rosiland. Not everyone is going to be able to make it to become an author who consistently makes a great income, but some will.

*ANNIE B:*

1) Writing good books that people want to read and handling the business side in an intelligent and business-oriented manner will still work.
2) Audio will still be an awesome extra income stream.
3) The market will continue to get tougher for people who are [email protected] parts of their business (skimping on covers, not writing great books, etc), because that's what happens when a market matures. That's why you see not so great books with bad covers that still manage to hit tropes do well for a few months, then fall away and disappear in the ranks.
4) There will still be trends and niches were [email protected] works for a while, until it doesn't.
5) Amazon will continue to dominate the market because they have the best discovery and recommendation engine and great customer service.
6) More of the people doing well with end up Hybrid if they aren't already as publishers continue to experiment and realize that there are lots of more or less sure bets out there already.


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

mach 5 said:


> I am skeptical about fiction paperbacks increasing in popularity (although they are still quite popular in many genres, especially as personal accessories to be admired by our guests or fellow metro riders). However, there are some things that could assist a resurgence. I think it was last year that B&N basically locked some reader out of previously purchased ebooks if they were reading on anything other than a Nook following an update to the Nook app for other devices. Ellora's Cave (I believe it was them -- my opinion of my memory, so don't sue me, Ms Engler) reportedly did a major site update that somehow wiped out their readers' digital bookshelves. The reader could get a book back if they submitted proof they had purchased it. Some readers of course had been buying for a decade from EC. Similar happened (cut off from bookshelf - but with no recourse, I think) when Borders went out of business, I believe, plus there are slightly different occurrences (like Sony shifting its library to Kobo) where you have X amount of time to reclaim your books at a new vendor.
> 
> Enough of that and people might buy their "keepers" (autobuy authors) in print and their cheap (or free) throwaways in digital despite the cost difference between their keepers in print versus ebook.
> 
> ...


Don't see either of reasons making a dent.. very temporary thing. Also first time I hear about sleep issues (I know about bright screens but it's never enough to discourage reading.. kind of like smoking.. people know it doesn't do well but they still do!).

I think biggest thing is Shelf space.. I don't buy paperbacks just for that, even tho I want them. I might buy a few but normally I'd buy 20-30 a year. Now those shift to ebooks.

It would certainly be nice to see some resurgence tho, would be good for authors' incomes.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

RBC said:


> It would certainly be nice to see some resurgence tho, would be good for authors' incomes.


Not sure about that. I buy print books whenever I can, still. Ebooks are often just on top of that, and that's also why I baulk at high ebook prices.


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

Nic said:


> Not sure about that. I buy print books whenever I can, still. Ebooks are often just on top of that, and that's also why I baulk at high ebook prices.


Until you run out of space, great! I did  Definitely, not a fan of high ebook prices for fiction books..


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## Mari Oliver (Feb 12, 2016)

suliabryon said:


> Wow, so much doom and gloom!
> 
> On the topic of genre writing becoming "all of the same" or "more generic", there is nothing new under the sun. I don't mean that in reference to the writing, but more as a comment on the pattern that has existed since before indie ever hit big. Here is how it always worked in the trad publishing world: someone writes something fresh and new that hits big and takes off. Not necessarily Harry Potter or Twilight big, but quit-your-day-job big: readers want more. Publishing starts looking for more right away. A few new series that are the same-tropes-but-also-fresh takes get published and also do well. A year or two goes by, and soon everyone with a trunk novel or an eye to trends is flooding the slush piles with like-novels. They aren't quite as good and fresh as the originals or the second wave, but some of them are good enough publishers think they can make a buck. These get published, most barely make mid-list money. Finally, the market is saturated, the new books being published offer a sameness that doesn't appeal much to readers, and contracts don't get picked up again after book one or two. But wait! Something new over in this other genre has taken off big! New market trends, better strike while the iron is hot!
> 
> ...


I don't know how I missed this post but thank you. Your words uplifted my spirit this evening. I've been feeling pretty down about all of this wondering how I'm going to carry on after sucking so hard, but your post reminded me that no matter what it's important to keep going.

_Apologies to Vintage Mari--we have no issues with this post. The thread has been locked as it was revived, not organically, but by an ill advised post by another member whose post has now been removed. We are discussing this issue, thanks. PM me if you have any questions. --Betsy/KB Mod_


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