For the full story on this and our new ebooks stores’ access check out the main MWi site today.

Just click HERE.

As MWiDP enters its second month of pregnancy the ultra-sound scans are in and the bulge is beginning to show. So time for a quick update for those who are in, and too for those who are watching and wondering.

Well, the good news is we now have over sixty titles live, and more pending, so a great start.

The bad news is, we would be much further ahead were it not for the nightmare that is KDP.

Longer term we hope to get full recognition by Amazon as a publisher and get better access, but that will take time. For now we’re stuck with KDP.

Because our Crossing The Pond authors are already published on amazon.com and are transferring rights to us for European distribution we  have the small problem of convincing Amazon’s anti-piracy police that we are not stealing these books without the authors’ knowledge.

In theory simple enough. We upload the title. KDP send us an alert asking to see the contracts. We send the contract. Title appears 24 hours later.

That’s the theory. And for 95% it works well. For the remaining five per cent one of two things happens.

Either the title goes live right away with no piracy checks. Not very reassuring for authors.

Or KDP simply ignore it. And then they ignore our emails asking why there is a delay. Then they finally reply to the formal complaint and answer a totally different question.

Amazon pride themselves on their customer-centric service and the ability to get a personal response to a problem. Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to apply to UK-based publishers using KDP. It seems amazon.com treat their satellite Kindle sites (UK, France and Germany) as second-rate, and as a nuisance to be shoved to one side rather than as a valued part of the Amazon community.

***

Which perhaps goes some way to explaining why US authors seem to do so badly over here, and why authors publishing from here to the US site similarly do so badly over there.

Which begs the question, does it make a difference where you are when you upload an ebook Or at least on which site your account is based?

What’s for sure is that we’ve seen significant chart boosts for a number of our am.com authors since listing their titles direct on am.uk.

Coincidence? Perhaps. Savvy marketing on our part? Well, we do our bit, and have experimented with categories and blurbs. But we can’t force people to buy books, only let them know they exist.

But anyone who has been following the MWiDP tweets and Facebook reports will know several am.com authors have suddenly found themselves with top 100 category places on am.co.uk since signing with us. Yes, they’ve seen sales too, but by no means huge. Yet a dozen or more authors who previously listed on am.co.uk from an am.com account have suddenly seen those same books make huge gains in chart position.

Do the Amazon sites favour home-loading for KDP authors? We can’t be sure. But it sure feels that way sometimes.

We’ve had a huge seller here in the UK with Sugar & Spice, but no movement on am.com. Sure, we sell there, but nothing remotely comparable. And we’re not alone in this. And we know that works both ways. Huge US indie sellers make insignificant sales here.

If it is the case that the Amazon sites favour home-loading then US authors clearly increase their prospects by signing their titles with us to upload directly to am.co.uk, quite apart from the long term benefits of the MWiDP cloud and our long-term promotion plans.

And likewise UK authors may find benefit in getting their titles uploaded direct to am.com from the US rather than indirectly through am.co.uk.  On which point UK authors will be pleased to know we are making arrangements for just such a facility.

***

What’s next for MWiDP?

Well, some MWiDP authors are already getting together with like-genre sellers to exchange links and blog posts and support one another, and that’s a key part of the cloud idea behind the set-up. Authors are not just befriending one another but exchanging reviews and reviewers, and propelling one another forward.

They are also discovering each others’ editors, cover artists and formatters. As soon as time permits we’ll be updating the MWiDP site with details of editors, cover artists, etc who wish to offer their services, and we hope they’ll offer a discount for fellow MWiDP authors as part of the deal.

We will also be going through all our listed titles individually, looking at blurbs and other opportunities to tweak the UK listings to suit the UK audience. For example, children’s authors have books listed as Middle Grade (MG), but this is meaningless to British readers, who have no idea what age-group Middle Grade might be. There are lots of similar tweaks that can be applied to increase your appeal to the British audience. And after that we’ll be looking at tweaking the blurbs on the am.de and am.fr sites to make them more appealing to our European readers. No sales on am.fr yet, but a few MWiDP authors are selling on am.de.

Where we’ve read and enjoyed the books we are offering to write a foreword which you may wish to include in your actual book upload file. This would be in Saffi’s name and the benefit is that you can then add “Foreword: Saffina Desforges” to your contributors list, which will appear alongside the author name on the amazon home page.

Why bother?

Essentially your book will then appear in the results for any search for “Saffina Desforges”, which of course is a Kindle best-selling brand, and also the top most-searched for name on Waterstone’s, the UK equivalent of B&N. We can’t promise the customer will then buy your book, of course, but it will certainly increase exposure.

***

Beyond that, several major initiatives to come.

To begin with, the first of our short-story anthologies launches next month. As part of the Saffina Desforges Presents series, we open with the Kindle Coffee-Break Collection. A mixed genre pot-pourri of short stories backed by the Saffina Desforges brand.

Seven-to-ten authors in an anthology volume introduced by Saffi and with links to the authors’ other works included. Just one more way we at MWiDP are seeking to add value to your work.

This is the first of an open-ended series. More short stories needed for future volumes!

Secondly, we are in discussion with a number of international ebook outlets looking to get all the MWiDP titles listed on their sites. There is a keen interest in English language books in “foreign” lands, and also many English speaking countries like India, Pakistan, Singapore, Nigeria, etc, that have small ebook outlets that will grow and grow. Most such outlets do not handle self-published works, but as a “publisher” we can potentially open doors closed to indies going direct. The more authors we have on board, the stronger our ability to access these retail sites with your titles.

At the moment the key sticking points are currency exchange and payments issues. Given the small sales expected at this stage the cost far outweigh the returns, but as we bring more and more titles into the MWiDP portfolio so this problem will diminish. More on this as it unfolds.

Thirdly, we are creating the MWi ebook store, a direct-sales website where international buyers can purchase your ebook direct in whatever format they require, paying through Paypal, Google Check-Out, etc.

This should be up and running before the New Year – hopefully next month –  and while of course we can’t begin to compete with Amazon’s one-click service, we can supply direct to anywhere in the world.

Important to understand Amazon does not do this. Amazon may be the world’s biggest bookstore, but it doesn’t supply ebooks to the world. Far from it.

As a resident in West Africa I cannot open an Amazon account, and I cannot even view most ebooks on am.com. I can only access and buy from Amazon through my pre-existing UK account. The same goes for many other parts of the world. Amazon is a closed shop to half the world’s population!

And for those places Amazon do actually download to, they add a $2 surcharge, even on “free” books!

So the new MWi e-book store will have potential to reach readers Amazon cannot. Sales won’t be huge, of course, but the more ways we can extend our reach the better. Every little helps.

Finally, as authors ourselves we are regularly in contact with, and contacted by, agents and occasionally publishers and other third parties interested in our work. None have yet come up with an offer interesting enough to tempt us. But where we come across any third party who we feel is genuine and likely to be interested in your particular work or genre you can be sure we will make a recommendation where appropriate. It may be nothing comes of it, but just possibly it will be a connection worth making.

***

As we begin the countdown to the Holidays a reminder to all that this is marathon, not a sprint.

We can’t guarantee a single extra sale, only extra exposure and opportunity, and while a few lucky authors have seen instant leaps in chart position, the real test is if we can make a long term improvement to your prospects.

Hopefully we will all see gains as we go into “the Holidays”, with all those new ereaders coming onto the market (an estimated 2.5 million KindleFires pre-ordered for November alone) and the big surge over Christmas and into January.

Of course for the US authors the main aim is getting a foothold in the UK / European market that they can build on.

But for MWiDP as a whole the real benefit is longer-term, building links, making friends and helping support one another.  The more we do that the more we can all compete with the muscle and money of the traditional publishers as they shift inexorably to digital.

Christmas 2011 may be yet to come, but at MWiDP we’re already thinking about Christmas 2012 and beyond.

For those watching and wondering, a brief update.

Amazon’s anti-piracy safeguards are slowing things down more than we expected, but I guess we should all be grateful for their efforts.

In practical terms it means that, once we’ve receive the contracts, exchanged files, and uploaded everything to Amazon, the book then goes into the Amazon machine beyond our control.

A day or so later we receive an automated email telling us the listing is on hold, and asking us for copy of the contract(s) to prove we now have rights to publish the book.  We send the contracts to Amazon and they approve us and lift the hold.

Which makes for very frustrating delays for both us and you as authors.

As anyone who has dealt with KDP will know, trying to get a response out of them is rather like pulling teeth. It’s impossible to get a personal response, so consequently questions about speeding up the listing process ae ignored.

Since last week only three signed-up authors have gone live.  The others have are still in the KDP queue to be approved. It seems KDP don’t work at weekends either.

Despite the delays, we have some great writers joining us, and by the end if the month should have a very respectable stable of authors to get us under way.

Karin Cox, Christina De Maio-Rice, M.P. McDonald, Patricia Rockwell, and Sarah Woodbury are just awaiting final clearance from KDP, and others are in the early stage so being uploaded. More news on all next week.

For today, just to formally welcome the three authors who managed to clear all the KDP hurdles in the first week. The following are taken from their author pages.

In alphabetical order:

Prue Batten

Like most writers, Prue has written since she was a child, fiddling around with paper and pens, rather the way an artist does with brush and paints. The scale of the writing increased with her age, to the point where when her children left home, she thought she had the time and space to complete the novel she had always wanted to write.

She lives in Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, the island bunkered down to the south of the Australian continent. Having been born and educated there and despite living in other places, she and her husband moved back about 18 years ago. The island ethos appeals to her sensibilities – what she sees as the security, beauty and freedom of living removed from the rest of the world. She claims it makes for a perfect environment in which to write.

She and her husband farm a cropping and wool-growing property just outside of Hobart and when time and seasons permit, she loads her Jack Russell terriers in the car and heads to a little ‘House’ on the coast to write, swim, walk and kayak. The coast is where she claims to be truly at home; content when she is on the beach or the water in summer or winter.

She is university educated with a media and bookish background. The scholarships awarded for an Arts degree and for a postgraduate diploma in librarianship and her later occupation as a radio and television journalist were a past history that laid some hefty foundation stones for investigation, an absolute pre-requisite for the craft of writing.

G.S. Johnston

Originally from Hobart, Tasmania, G. S. Johnston currently lives in Sydney, Australia with two cats – home-loving Reba and the wayward Rose – and Miss Mia, a black and white cuddle dog.

In one form or another, he has always written, first forcing his hand to span a full octave at the piano and find a melody but eventually writing music and lyrics.  Feeling the need for a broader canvas, he started writing shorts stories and novels.

CONSUMPTION: A Novel is his first published novel.  He is finishing a new novel and has another idea fermenting.

He would be impressed more with humanity if someone could succeed in putting an extra hour in every busy day.

Cheryl Shireman

Cheryl Shireman lives in the Midwest United States on a beautiful lake with her husband, Bruce. Inspired after reading her favorite childhood book, My Friend Flicka, Cheryl began writing in her teens. Through years that brought marriage, three children, a painful divorce, going back to college, a second marriage, and graduate school, the one thing that has remained constant is Cheryl’s love of writing.

Her first novel, Life is But a Dream: On the Lake is the culmination of those many years of living, dreaming, and writing. Due to reader demand (lots of emails!), this book is now the first book of the Grace Adams Series. Her second novel is entitled Broken Resolutions.  Cheryl’s third novel, the second book of the Grace Adams Series, Life Is But a Dream: In the Mountains, will be released in the fall of 2011.

Cheryl is currently working on another novel. But, then again, she is always working on another novel (probably in her pajamas and staring out the window at the lake). Her website is http://cherylshireman.com

 

We are now looking for new authors! (previously or unpublished, subject to ownership of digital rights)

Please contact markwilliamsauthor@gmail.com

Mark Williams international Digital Publishing (MWiDP)

 MWiDP is a new and innovative digital-only imprint aimed at giving writers the best of both worlds: Small press credibility and services, with indie-style returns and indie-style control, backed by a team with a proven record of success.

We offer a growing range of tailored services to suit the individual requirements of authors, backed with plain-English contracts and the experience and expertise of the UK’s foremost indie writing team.

What differentiates us from other small digi-press publishers is that we are successful self-published writers.

• We know, understand, and have a proven track record for making the new system work for us.
• We have a proven track record for supporting other writers instead of seeing them as competitors.
• We have a proven social media platform and two brands – Saffina Desforges and Mark Williams international – that together are a potent force.
• We are innovative and forward-looking authors and publishers that embrace change and welcome fresh thinking.

Other small presses, just like the “Big Six”, are simply trying the same old tricks with a new delivery system. They think all they need to do is convert a script to digital and everything carries on as before. How wrong they are.

We are looking for writers to join us in a new cloud partnership where the writer has almost all the advantages of being indie, but also almost all the advantages of a “small publisher” brand.

No complex contracts with a ton of small print in obscure legalese. Just plain English terms and conditions spelt out and agreed by both parties.

As Kindle UK best-sellers twice over, and the biggest selling indie authors in the UK, we have a large base of European and international readers, as well as numerous blogs and websites, and we regularly guest on blogs across the globe.

We are committed to expanding our brand and supporting fellow authors across all genres.

 CrossingThe Pond

Crossing The Pond is one of MWiDP’s unique new services to non-UK authors.
The UK is the biggest English-language e-book market outside the USA. Measured by books bought per head of population it is the biggest.
Since Kindle UK opened in summer 2010 the UK e-book market has expanded rapidly and continues to do so, with a number of UK-exclusive e-retailer sites like Waterstone’s (UK equivalent to Barnes & Noble) and Tesco (UK equivalent to Wal-Mart) available to sell through.
Of course amazon.co.uk is by far the largest. And while in theory you can load your ebook to both the UK and German Amazon sites through your amazon.com account, it is self-evident that for those that do their UK sales are invariably nowhere near US sales.
We believe our proven expertise in selling in the UK market (over 100,000 ebooks sold and two top 100 hits in our own right) can be used to help promote your books.
We believe we can bring exposure and support to overseas authors doing well “at home” but struggling in the UK market, so we are offering packages to suit authors’ needs.
The Crossing The Pond package offers you the chance to pass us the UK distribution rights to your ebook and allow us to sell it here on your behalf.
Why should we do better than you are on your own?
For these reasons:
First, any books published under our imprint will be linked to all the other books under our imprint, including our own best-sellers. All books will receive full placement on our blogs, including the new MWiDP site, and be included in our newsletters, promotions, etc.
Each author will have your own promotion page on the MWiDP site and can here include other ebooks you have available, including links to your US vendors like amazon.com and B&N for that title, even though we are not distributing them. So you pick up international sales direct, as well as from UK buyers.
Where appropriate (i.e. we would not link adult titles to children’s / YA books) we will carry links to your books in the back of our own titles.
Where both parties are agreeable we will seek to share links between all MWiDP authors in their books and on their sites, creating a “cloud” that will become bigger and more efficient as more authors join. Important always to understand that in the new digital paradigm fellow authors are allies, not rivals. The more we support one another the more we all benefit.
Further, as fellow-authors we are constantly on the look-out for new sales avenues and promotional opportunities, both within the UK and worldwide and in constant discussion with fellow writers, publishers and, where appropriate, agents. As part of MWiDP your interest are our interests.
We can’t guarantee to make you a best-seller, but we can guarantee you our full support.
Practicalities:
For writers providing the ready-formatted manuscript files (mobi / ePub) and cover art files we offer an 80-20 return in the author’s favour, based on the full royalty we receive from the distributor.
Example: a title sold at 2.99 on Amazon nets 2.00 after fees. The author therefore gets 1.60 and we get 0.40.
True, you can get the full 2.00 on your own, but we believe we can get the author a bigger market share that will far outweigh the 0.40 you “lose” on the deal.
Contracts are for two years with option to renew. Subject to providing your own ready formatted script file and cover image file you have the right to cancel at any time, subject to thirty days notice.
Where we at MWiDP provide editorial / format / cover and other services the cancellation period will vary accordingly, but for most clients for the Crossing The Pond service it is presumed you will already be on amazon.com / B&N, etc, so a simple matter of file transfer.
For new authors, or established authors launching new titles, we will be offering a range of bespoke services to suit all needs, including editorial, format and cover design assistance. Please email us for further details at: markwilliamsauthor@gmail.com.