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: 2019 starts slow with the winner of the 2018 Cover Design Awards, and an interesting article on just how large the Amazon empire has grown.

The Many Tributaries of the Amazon River

Okay, this isn’t so much news as it is an interesting article I read, but what do you expect? 2019’s only a few days old. Nothing much has happened yet.

The people over at The Wire have put together a list of everything Amazon currently has a hand in – pretty impressive when you consider that they started out selling books online (out of a garage, I believe?). What should be interesting to us is the sheer scale of their literary acquisitions – they may not come as a surprise to our seasoned readers, but those new to SPF might be surprised by how they’ve come to take over so much of the industry.

Aside from all the publishing imprints they’ve created, since 2005 they’ve also bought BookSurge, CustomFlix, Brilliance Audio, Audible, Goodreads, Shelfari and Comixology, all to build up their offerings in regard to eBook, print, audiobook and comic publishing.

That alone seems like a lot (and I’ve condensed even that down considerably), but wait until you factor in how many other industries and fields Amazon have grown into. I think The Wire put it into perfect perspective when they point out that Amazon now occupies “roughly as much space worldwide as 38 Pentagons”. Yeesh!

And the Winner of the Cover Design Awards 2018 is…

Professor K: The Final Quest, by Gabriel Farago!

It really is a lovely cover, designed by Nick Thacker. Two thousand people voted on a shortlist of twenty, so well done Gabriel!

Congratulations to the runners-up as well: second place went to Ellery Kane’s The Hanging Tree (designed by Giovanni Auriemma) and third place went to From The Ashes by Christopher Mitchell (designed by Deranged Doctor Design and illustrated by Irina French).

You can take a look at the winning designs 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.