What is Sharetribe, What Does it Mean for Authors?

We are in a sharing economy. Sharing economies, collaborative economies can create new opportunities in business and networking. Some entrepreneurs are building marketplaces where people can sell and exchange goods or services.

Sharetribe is a software platform developed by Finnish university friends, Juho Makkonen and Antti Virolainen. They began with the idea to help students sell old textbooks, find a tutor, or get help moving. But after years of development, Sharetribe offers useful features for a sales or marketing online platform. Sharetribe includes support for products, services, payments, categories and works on mobile devices.

A peer to peer marketplace is a different model than publishing a book or product on Amazon or one of the big online markets. When you publish on Amazon you give up control and the company sits between you and the customer. With a marketplace like Sharetribe, you the author have complete control over your setup and reports and fulfillment. You immediately see the Paypal or Stripe processing for each purchase. You are the vendor, customer service, shipping clerk. So there are advantages and disadvantages!

Over the last few months, I have wanted to move away from a total dependence on Amazon for my book selling. I am dissatisfied with aspects of the company’s relationship with authors, especially low selling independents, as well as negative feelings to what I hear about the company’s treatment of employees. In addition, I don’t feel the platform does anything to help the sales of my books. Yes, they have a massive number of customers, but those customers never see my books. I am lost in the sea of millions of books carried by Amazon.

All these concerns motivated me to search for alternatives to Amazon and the other big marketplaces. I found Sharetribe and setup a store on the supported website. The program starts with a 1 month free trial. I may switch to the opensource version if the project has the potential for success.

CoopBooks is a marketplace I have set up to market my books and invite other authors to place their books there also. Authors are responsible for setting up Paypal or Stripe to process payments and make delivery afterwards. I am only doing my ebooks at the present time, but physical books could also be sold. If you are a reader or an author check it out here: https://coop-books.sharetribe.com/

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CreateSpace Merges With KDP

Nicholas C. Rossis

The day we’ve all been waiting for (or, in some cases, dreading) is here! CreateSpace has officially announced that CreateSpace (CSP) and Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) will become one service. All titles it hosts will now move to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). As I had guessed, CS will, in effect, become one of Amazon’s production and distribution centers, printing the titles on behalf of KDP.

If you wish to compare the pros and cons of KDP compared to CreateSpace, check out my earlier posts, KDP Print Just Got A Whole Lot More Attractive and Moving Your Book From Createspace to KDP Print.

CreateSpace Says…

Here is the official announcement in CreateSpace’s own words (text in bold emphasized by me):

“In the coming days, we will give CreateSpace members the ability to move their account and titles. To ensure a quality experience, we will add links to the CreateSpace…

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How Can Creative Writers Use AI to Their Advantage?

Nicholas C. Rossis

You may remember Elaine Bennett, a marketing specialist-turned blogger, currently writing for Bizzmark Blog. She recently shared with us 4 Simple Marketing Strategies for Promoting your Book. Today, she’s dealing with another hot topic, that of the increasing use of Artificial Intelligence. 

Sure, it may be a while before we have a Leo-like android capable of true consciousness, like the one described in A Heaven for Toasters, but should we be worried? I have already written a couple of posts on the subject (“Why Creative People Are Safe from Robots” and “Artificially Created Romance Novels: the Next Big Thing? Nah…”) but I loved Elaine’s realistic take on the subject. 

Source: Unsplash

When it comes to writing, SEO content writers and copywriters usually tend to be those who benefit the most from writing tools and…

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A 1911 Zoomer: To Saturn and Back

Nicholas C. Rossis

Unless you’re a new visitor to my blog, you’ll have heard that my latest book, A Heaven For Toasters, is now live. Set in the near future, A Heaven for Toasters is more than a sci-fi crime romance. It’s the book that will make you look at your toaster in a whole new way. And you can read it on Amazon for only 99c.

One of the more popular pieces of technology featured in the book is self-driving flying cars called zoomers. They are like a big bubble sitting on top of a number of more, smaller bubbles. The former sits the passengers; the latter, the engines. It all sounds terribly futuristic, but then I came across an Atlas Obscura post featuring The Automatic Motorist, A British short film from 1911.

In it, a robot chauffeur is given as a gift to a newly wedded couple. The robot…

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Read my new release, A Heaven For Toasters, for FREE

Nicholas C. Rossis

My latest book now has an official release date–August 13!

Called A Heaven For Toasters, it kicks off what will hopefully turn into a fun new series:

A science fiction crime adventure with plenty of humor and romance, set in the near future

A souvlaki and some sun. That is all Detective Mika Pensive wanted from her fun weekend away on the Greek island of Hydra. Instead, she finds herself caught up in a sinister plot, hatched by a reclusive billionaire with a penchant for illegal genetic engineering. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she has to put up with her new partner, Leo. Leo is an android—or toaster, as people scornfully call his kind. The only thing that could make things even worse would be for the headstrong Mika to fall for Leo. But people don’t fall for toasters—do they?

Set in the near future, A Heaven…

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Free Story: You Can’t Fight a Prophecy

Nicholas C. Rossis

In April, I posted my thousandth post on this blog. To celebrate, I will share here all my short stories. Every couple of weeks, I’ll be posting one story from my celebrated Exciting Destinies series for you to enjoy. With over 30 stories so far, I hope you’ll have lots of fun in the coming months!

This week, it’s You Can’t Fight a Prophecy from You’re In For A Ride.

Click here to read some more free stories.

You Can’t Fight a Prophecy

Image: Pixabay

“You can’t fight a prophecy,” the wrinkly shaman says and gives me a toothless grin. The shrug accompanying his words shakes the feathers around his neck, making him look like a frail old bird trying to give flight.

Fight it? I don’t even understand it.

“What’s he say, Doc?” the large boulder of a man standing behind me asks. His camouflaged face and broad…

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10 Reasons Why You *Shouldn’t* Support Once Upon a Time in the Wyrd West!

Diane Morrison

1. You’re a hobbit and you don’t like adventure.
2. You think originality is dangerous! You should NEVER bring a unique setting to fantasy or science fiction! And God help you if you MIX the two!
3. You believe that stories about people and their very human motivations are boring, even if you punctuate them with lots of action and dramatic tension.
4. You like selfish protagonists who become helpless victims of their own flaws, not flawed protagonists who fight constant ethical struggles to be better people.
5. You don’t like badass women and you never want a book to pass the Bechdel test.
6. You think it’s a bad idea for authors to reweave old tropes in new and exciting ways that you’ve never seen before.
7. You don’t like cowboys. Or knights in shining armour, either. And definitely you don’t think anyone should ever put the two together.
8. You think realism in magic is stupid…

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4 Simple Marketing Strategies for Promoting Your Book

Nicholas C. Rossis

This blog tends to offer rather advanced book marketing tips. Sometimes, though, I forget that there are a lot of authors who may be overwhelmed by posts about ROI, essential ad metrics, KENP counts, and AcOS. 

So, here is a guest post by Elaine Bennett, a marketing specialist-turned blogger, currently writing for Bizzmark Blog. It is aimed at anyone wishing to take a step back from the grittier details of book marketing and look at the big picture. 

Source: Unsplash

What is the point of writing your book if nobody reads it? Chances are you’ve heard this line before.

But it’s true. Especially today when everyone seems to be writing and trying to get published or self-published.

In order to get your book in front of readers, you will need to use the power of book marketing. Think of it as a…

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Overcoming Common Obstacles To Become An Author

Nicholas C. Rossis

This is another freelance contribution by Sally Keys. You may remember her from her recent freelance contribution, How Creative Writing Can Boost Your Intelligence. Sally is a professional freelance writer with many years of experience in diverse areas. She made the move to freelancing from a stressful corporate job and loves the work-life balance it offers her. When not at work, she enjoys reading, hiking, spending time with her family, and traveling as much as possible. 

Common Obstacles To Becoming An Author And How To Overcome Them

Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

Fully 80 percent of Americans say they have the ambition to write a book, yet only a fraction of those will go ahead and even fewer will actually succeed. Writing for a living can be a dream job for those with a true passion for a perfectly arranged sentence, but the reality of being an…

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Focusing Your Novel With a Journalist’s Trick

A Writer's Path

by Andrea Lundgren

Okay, perhaps it’s more of a tool than a trick, but journalists have been using the “Who-What-Where-When-Why-and-How” format on hard news pieces for well over a century (to judge by the sort of articles they write, where each of these items are addressed), and I’ve found the six questions are equally useful when writing a novel.

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