This Week in the Blogs, May 6 – 12, 2017

by Shelley Sturgeon | May 14, 2017

by Shelley Sturgeon

Whether or not you’re busy spoiling your mother, or perhaps being spoiled yourself, on this Mother’s Day, try to take a few minutes to check out this week’s selection of articles. You’ll be glad you did!

Kristen Lamb on Kristen Lamb
Branding for Authors—When Do We NEED Marketing & Advertising?
“Here’s a simple truth that a lot of writers miss and this is so fundamental. Marketing and advertising are NOT brand and platform. These are not all synonyms and interchangeable.”

Judith Briles on The Book Shepherd
Author Book Marketing Myth #1: It’s Not for Me … Really … If not for you, then who?
“I need a “professional” to market my book is what too many authors think and say. That usually follows—I just want to write … I don’t want to market. Or, an I don’t know how to do any type of marketing.”

Dan Wagstaff on The Casual Optimist
Book Covers of Note May 2017
“Everything is awful. Except for book covers…”

Cody Sisco on Self-Publishing Advice Center
How to Form an Indie Author Collective (and Why You Should Consider Doing So)
“The life of an indie author can be a lonely one, even with the extensive support available online from the likes of the Alliance of Independent Authors, and the opportunity to network with other self-publishing authors offline can boost your success and your morale.”

Frances Caballo on Social Media Just for Writers
12 Ways to Uncover Google Analytics Data
“Some people hold the mistaken belief that I’m a techie because I understand and know how to use social media. It’s not true. … I’m just persistent.”

Self-Publishing News You Can Use

By Amy Collins

Amazon’s BUY button

Amazon announced this week that they will be offering the BUY button on book pages to go directly to third party resellers who meet certain criteria. The Author’s Guild has stepped into this decision with this statement:

The Authors Guild is deeply disturbed by Amazon’s new policy of allowing third-party book resellers to claim featured status in the “buy boxes” on Amazon. In a move that’s very likely to cut into publishing industry profits even more, Amazon will no longer automatically assign the main buy box for each hard copy, paper, audio and Kindle edition to the copies that Amazon distributes on behalf of the book’s publisher. Rather, a secret algorithm—which reportedly weighs factors such as price, availability, and delivery time, will now decide which seller (i.e., Amazon or a third party re-seller) gets the buy box.

But a great many industry organizations and leaders are pointing to this as the next step in pushing publishers and authors to CreateSpace and other Amazon based POD programs. Reports have already come in of publisher’s listings and listings from competitive POD company Ingram Spark being removed from the list of potential sellers connected to the BUY button.

Editor’s Note: Deborah Bass of Amazon responded with the following statement:

We have listed and sold books, both new and used, from third party sellers for many years. The recent changes allow sellers of new books to be the “featured offer” on a book’s detail page, which means that our bookstore now works like the rest of Amazon, where third party sellers compete with Amazon for the sale of new items. Only offers for new books are eligible to be featured.