Weekly Newsletter
JonColeyAuthor.com Books2Read.com/JonColeyAuthor JonColey.Gumroad.com Amazon.com/author/joncoley
Why are there so few crazy cat ladies in super hero comic books?
Turns out they just don’t have a dog in the fight.
We’ve got some big news today for readers. Just a couple of days ago, Draft2Digital and BookShop.org announced a new partnership. This will eventually be huge. Why? Because D2D’s vast number of indie author books, most of them without digital rights management (DRM), are already or soon will be populating BookShop’s app. Most of my titles are there, and I brought the receipts. More about that later.
Okay, a little history is in order here. Bookshop.org is a website that allows independent booksellers to compete with huge companies by filling customer orders, paperbacks mostly, and sharing the profits. In other words, it allows you to buy local. Last year the organization opened its ebook branch, but that was mostly through the big 5 publishers. As you probably know, those kinds of ebooks are needlessly expensive and pretty much all of them have DRM features, making it impossible to read the books across apps or other devices. Fast forward to this week, and a plethora of independent titles are coming your way for much cheaper and without those DRM inconveniences. Also, like with paperbacks on their website, you are now able to support the local bookshop of your choice or allow your purchases to support all independently owned bookshops in the system.
So the app is free, and I have downloaded it onto my phone. It looks like other reader apps on the market, especially Apple Books or Kobo. Its menu of carousels are quite commercial right now, but I easily found my titles through the search menu. One cool thing that I did not expect was at the bottom of the scroll, an entire menu of Free Classics. These books look just like the ones that people can buy in the large brick and mortar shops, such as Barnes and Noble.
Full disclosure - I discovered the info above from two sources, specifically self publishing podcasts. Dale Roberts interviewed the CEOs of both companies. He has a Substack that all self published authors should follow. These same two CEOs were also guests on the Alliance of Independent Authors podcast.
On the writing front, the final edit of MOONDOM FIVE is complete and uploaded to all the platforms, including the app discussed above. The ebook preorder price is 99 cents until launch day (March, Friday the 13th). We are at the bottom of page 25 in my current jokes for kids project, which is a little over halfway. Slow and steady wins the race. You may have noticed a new link in my subtitle. I bought a domain with my name. Right now it’s just a simple landing page with links to all the stuff. Later on, I intend to make it a cohesive hub for all my readers. Again, slow and steady.
Finally, I told you I brought receipts. The gallery below is screenshots of my titles found in the Bookshop.org app. Also, there’s a ChatGPT caricature of me and my dogs that is currently the profile pic on the website. A coworker made it for me, by the way.
Until Next Time, God Bless!
