by Tom Ashford

Welcome to the SPF Weekly Write-Up, where each Wednesday we collect together the self-publishing news of the week so you don’t have to.

This week: Amazon experiments with live-streaming, Mark is a judge for the Kindle Storyteller award, and J.K. Rowling keeps churning out those Harry Potter books.

Amazon Live-Streaming – The Future?

So, Amazon might be entering into the world of live-streaming, Facebook Live style. Who’d have thought?

As Mark recently posted in the SPF Facebook Community, he recently received an email from Amazon about live-streaming being introduced (at least in beta stage) on the platform. It’s likely not intended for authors quite yet, but the implications could be huge if Amazon decides to launch it as an option for people selling through KDP. Imagine if readers could order your book during your broadcast, without even having to leave the page…

All Rise For Judge Mark Dawson

Don’t worry – Mark hasn’t gone back to a career in law. He’s actually one of the judges for this year’s Kindle Storyteller Award, alongside Mariella Frostrup, LJ Ross, Orna Ross, and last year’s winner, Hannah Lynn.

The winner gets “a £20,000 cash prize, a marketing campaign to support the book on amazon.co.uk and the opportunity to have their book translated.” Not bad! It’s previously been open only to UK authors, but there’s word that it’s been opened up to those from the US and a few other countries, too.

You have until 31st August 2019 to submit your book, so get cracking! You can read the original article here.

Four New Harry Potter Books

Because there aren’t enough of them already, are there?

J.K. Rowling is releasing four new, short ebooks through Pottermore Publishing, each themed on a different subject from the Harry Potter curriculum. I won’t pretend that I’m not slightly interested, even if it is milking the franchise somewhat. Though I do question describing the books as non-fiction…

As many of you may already know, Rowling retained the rights to the Harry Potter ebooks when she secured a publishing deal, which means that she gets to keep the majority of her ebook royalties. When it comes to Pottermore, she’s pretty much self-published.

You can read more about the new books (if that’s your thing) here.

Tom Ashford

Tom Ashford is a professional copywriter, author of numerous dark fantasy and sci-fi novels, and the Head of Content at the Self Publishing Formula Blog. His books include the Blackwater trilogy and the Checking Out series.

He lives in London with his wife, in an apartment that doesn’t allow pets. Find out more about Tom here.