Audiobooks and Spotify
Well this is…horrifying? I think this is horrifying.
Spotify is going to offer audiobooks? This is nice.
Spotify is only going to pay authors the full royalty if someone listens to the entire book? This is…alarming.
Royalties are small enough already. Not everyone knows that an author typically gets 10% of the price of a hardcover book and 6% of a paperback. (If we’re talking about a picture book, those royalties are split between author and illustrator.) But at least you get that entire amount even if somebody only reads a chapter or two.
Maybe this will be a delightful way to open up a huge new market and get lots and lots of new listeners…but I don’t feel I can be blamed for being skittish. It just seems like a way to whittle down the already small share of profit that goes to people who build up the creative work that allows platforms like Spotify to profit. (Except apparently they’ve yet to turn a profit? This also alarms me.)
Read MoreHappy Pub Day, Save the…Rhinos!
Delighted to announce that Save the…Rhinos! is now available. Each of the books in these nonfiction series has an intro by Chelsea Clinton and is full of fabulous animal facts and true stories of conservation success.
The best rhino fact–a contented rhino (lots of grass, plenty of warm sun, no other bothersome rhinos around) makes a noise like this: mmmmmwonk.
May your day be full of mmmmmmwonk!
The Wyvern
Another delightful creature that I hope will be featured in a new chapter book (still waiting to hear back from the editor who’s interested): the wyvern. Yes, it looks like a dragon, but you can tell the difference by counting the legs–a dragon has four, and a wyvern has two.
Read MoreCan Reading Be Stealing?
If someone takes your book off a shelf in a bookstore without paying for it, that’s theft.
If someone reads your book online without paying for it, ditto. They may not have a physical book in their possession, but they’ve taken hard creative work without paying a dime. And writers cannot live when readers do that.
But if an AI sweeps up your online book and reads it without paying for it, that’s…innovation?
When the AI reads your book and uses it along with many, many others to create new works that nobody needs to pay for because, hey, nobody actually wrote them, that’s…
I don’t now what that is. Nobody does. But I’m worried that it’s the beginning of the end of a world where writers work hard to knit words together to create characters and plots and worlds and visions that we can share.
Stephen King has some thoughts about this too.
Sarah L. Thomson
A children’s book author publishing award-winning nonfiction, poetry, picture books and novels including…
“Readers will treasure the blossoming friendship between opposites in this whimsically illustrated tale. Short chapters and plenty of action make for an accessible and appealing reading experience. . . . Touching and inspiring.”
—Kirkus Reviews