~Wednesday's e-Watch: 11 May 2011

Today is the inaugural edition of Wednesday’s e-Watch and it’s packed with info for anyone interested in the status of indie and e-publishing.

In fact, you might feel a little overwhelmed with everything listed here. I do, because, with the exception of the final item at the bottom of this post, everything below happened in the space of ONE WEEK.

So far this week:

Joe Konrath’s post yesterday was another eye-opener in a long string of eye-openers. The first part included a guest post by indie author Scott Sigler. Scott shared his story of how he became a top-selling indie author and the marketing methods he used to build a devoted fan base.

Joe wrapped up Scott’s post with some astonishing sales facts: currently, the Number 1 e-book in Amazon’s horror category is Scott Sigler’s newly-released Blood is Red. Positions 2 and 3 are Run by Blake Crouch and Trapped by Jack Kilborn, both indie authors. In fact, Joe said that the top eight horror bestsellers are indie – and are outselling King, Koontz, and Harris.

Now that’s something.

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Another well-known indie author made news of her own. Most of you have heard by now about indie author Amanda Hocking’s phenomenal success with her self-published books (900,000 books sold in ten months). She made the headlines again when she inked a four-book deal for a new series with St. Martins Press for $2 million dollars.

Well, last week she did it yet again. Amanda made a three-book deal with St. Martins Press for her Trylle Trilogy, a series she already published herself.

Big publisher buys previously self-published series. Thought they didn’t do that.

Looks like the rules of the game are a’changing.

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Last week’s news:

Wednesday was a big day for announcements in the publishing world.

From Smashwords.com: Smashwords books are coming to an app store near you.Today we announced an agreement with ScrollMotion that will transform over 33,000 Smashwords Premium Catalog ebooks into individual mobile apps for distribution to the largest app marketplaces for smart phones, tablets and other mobile devices.

The relationship will gain Smashwords authors and publishers free entry into the app marketplaces for Apple, Android, Windows Phone 7 and WebOS.

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Wednesday’s press release from Lulu.com might be of additional interest to those who are planning to self-publish.

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Also on Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch published a press release from Amazon announcing their latest imprint, Montlake Romance.

Is Amazon moving in the direction of becoming a publishing house?

The question becomes more interesting. Read on.

Friday’s news contained an announcement about Bookish.com, a new book recommendation service backed by Hachette, Penguin (USA), and Simon & Schuster.

As in, Three out of the Big Six publishing houses have formed an alliance.

This alliance includes partnering with AOL Huffington Post Media Group. According to PR Newswire, Bookish will feature exclusive content, sell physical and digital books, and provide social networking.

Sounds like Amazon meets Facebook, right?

Is this an attempt to pool resources to better position themselves against the other Three? Against Amazon?

You can read more about this here and here, and draw your own conclusions.

In fact, Mike Shatzkin has an interesting post from May 8 that examines the mad scrambling taking place by anyone and everyone who’s a big name in publishing. Check it out on his blog, The Shatzkin Files.

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I was introduced to science fiction and fantasy by my dad. He signed me up for the Science Fiction Book Club when I was about twelve, which pretty much changed my life, as I’m sure it did for a lot of other readers and writers of the genre. I haven’t thought or heard about book clubs in years (other than Oprah’s), so when I saw an article on subscription e-books from The Shatzkin Files, I thought I’d pass it along.

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This March 23 post on if:book, A Project of The Institute for the Future of the Book was from Kim White and, ladies and gentlemen, I hate to tell you, but this is where we’re headed: shift happened

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Phew! It’s hard to believe that (except for the last item), all of the above events happened in ONE WEEK!

ONE WEEK!

And I only included the major stuff.

If I missed anything, or you’d like to add to the list, let me know. Include it in your comments and I’ll cover it in a subsequent post.

Remember, even though writing is a solitary art, getting published takes a team. Be part of the team. Help us stay current on the latest events so that we as writers can not only survive these topsy-turvy times, but actually thrive and maybe even come out on top.

Let me know what you think.