BookBub Introduces New in Kindle Unlimited Deals
If you have books in Kindle Unlimited (KU), BookBub has added a promo called New in Kindle Unlimited. The benefits:
- Drive revenue through increased page reads. Partners who ran early New in Kindle Unlimited promotions reported immediate spikes in page reads, and long tails of increased activity that continue to boost revenue well past the feature date.
- Boost visibility across the Amazon store. New in Kindle Unlimited engagement drives improvements in rankings that maximize your book’s discoverability across the Kindle store, leading to organic visibility beyond BookBub subscribers.
- Expand your readership. Reach hundreds of thousands of KU users in BookBub’s audience to hook new fans and increase engagement across your catalog.
- Highlight a new release or revive a backlist title. Maximize your new book’s momentum in its critical early weeks after launch, or engage thousands of new readers when enrolling an existing title into KU.
You can read more about it here.
Anthropic Settlement Money on the Way
The Bartz v. Anthropic class action, filed August 2024, is just about at the payout stage. The $1.5 billion settlement was reached last year, reportedly the largest copyright settlement in U.S. history. Anthropic agreed to pay rights holders approximately $3,000 per qualifying title (i.e., pirated book). There’d be a 50/50 split with the publisher (assuming the publisher had actually registered the copyright, which they should have), unless the author got rights reverted, in which case they’d get the whole caboodle.
Initial settlement checks (or direct deposits) are expected to be disbursed in the next couple of months.
Unless the author chose to opt-out of Bartz in order to hunt larger game, namely “statutory” damages of up to $150,000 per title. A few law firms offered to take these on a contingency basis. The ka-ching ka-ching sound is tempting, but in the real world of deep pockets and protracted litigation, the prospect of getting significant dough is, in non-legal terms, dicey.
Cinematic Audiobooks
Like the rise of the machines (see Terminator, The) there is apparently a move by major publishers toward more “immersive” audiobooks, as opposed to solo narration. That means adding things like music, sound effects, and different voices for each character. You know, more like a movie. We are such an audio-visual culture now that the move makes sense. Or does it:
Excessive sound effects or dramatic performances can distract from the writing, making the production feel artificial….Voice actors must understand their characters, the emotions they convey, and each relationship. One poor performance can ruin the experience, even if the rest excel.
Personally, I like a good solo narrator, which means they don’t try to “do” a voice for each character, or put their idea of method acting into the reading. This is one area where an AI Virtual Voice may fare better than a human, bad-actor voice.
Comments welcome.
I agree with you about sole narrator rather than bells & whistles which I would find distracting.
RE: cinematic audiobooks: while I’m not a fan of audiobooks anyway (because “listening” to a book just doesn’t hold my attention as opposed to actual reading) I would find it even harder to listen to an audio book if it was ‘souped up’ like this trend sounds. And I wonder if it takes away from the relaxation of the book experience.
I’m a reader. My brain doesn’t work with audiobooks. I hire single narrators, but I like that they can use different voices for different characters (usually the main players, and they don’t get ‘cutesy.”). Maybe it’s because my dad always used voices when he read to me when I was a child.
I listen to audio books when on a long drive – makes the miles melt away. Listened to a Ballard/Bosch book last time and I was glad to hear the two different (original) voices. I’ve listened to several Connelly books with Bosch as the main character, so it was fun to hear his voice in the book with Renee Ballard as the MC.
As far as the music, etc, I find it distracting. Just give me the words, please!
Interesting to learn about the new BB feature. I don’t currently have any books in KU, but I think this could work well for new releases into that program. A few years ago BB rolled out a general new release feature which didn’t appear to be very effective in getting the word out. KU is a different beast of a platform, and borrowing a book is easier than buying one for KU subscribers.
As for audio books, I’m a fan, but prefer the single narrator approach, with no music, please 🙂
After listening to Jim Dale reading the Harry Potter novels with a different voice for every character, the new full productions are very unnecessary. The advantage of different voices is changes in dialogue are much easier to hear without “Jack said,” thrown is all over the place.
One thing audiobooks have taught me is that “said” isn’t invisible any longer. A lot of “he said and she said” in an audiobook grates on the ears. I only listen to audiobooks while I’m driving, and music and such would be distracting.