by Tom Ashford

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

This week is a bit of a slow one, following the London Book Fair: Amazon cuts its fees for self-publishing filmmakers, and politics makes for great book sales.

Amazon Cuts Fees for Self Published Filmmakers

Well, sort of. Amazon is changing the way its Prime Video Direct payment structure works, so that the highest performing video content is rewarded with the highest royalty rates, and less popular videos only get a smaller return. It’s their way of ensuring that filmmakers only create the most compelling content.

I don’t think this is an approach they’d take with authors, however. Imagine if only the big-sellers were making 70% royalties from their ebooks whilst those starting out were stuck at 35%. Wouldn’t be much of an incentive!

You can read more about the changes to Prime Video Direct here.

Politics Makes for Good Book Sales… Who Knew?

Without discussing any of the world’s political circumstances, it turns out that times of political turmoil actually lead to an increase in political book sales. Who would have thought? Sales of non-fiction books in the ‘political’ category rose by 32% in 2018 – that’s 3.8% of all printed non-fiction. Something for indie authors to capitalise on, perhaps?

It’s not just modern politics on the left and right that are driving book sales, either. It turns out that some of the classics are on the up as well – including George Orwell’s Notes on Nationalism and Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto.

You can read the full (and more politically detailed) article here.

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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.