Who wrote that one?

Couple of weeks ago before I got stuck into NaNoWriMo I was doing the rounds checking the links from cheekyseagull to Apple and the other distributors. Basically checking which ones had the new covers for Control Escape and What You Ask For in place.

I dropped on to the Apple page for Control Escape and then clicked the links for other books by the same author.

Racked up across the page were a line of books all by Martyn Taylor, but half of them were written by my namesake. Another Martyn Taylor, (same spelling) his titles were local history around Bury St Edmunds in East Anglia. He works through a publisher. I publish independently and at the moment work exclusively in digital formats. I have plans to move into POD some time in the new year, again working independently.

I queried the situation with Smashwords who checked it out and reported back. Apparently there are no individual author pages on the Apple website and all publications by authors with the same name are listed together.

Hachette Job...?

A lot of time and effort has been spent over the last week or so discussing the current discussions between Amazon and Hachette with a number of viewpoints being aired, David Gaughran explores the situation on his blog here  from the point of view of the publishing house; Hachette is one of the biggest publishers in the market and Amazon. Mark Coker at Smashwords here considers the impact the outcome may have on independent authors. A main point is the use of the agency model where the publisher sets the price of the book, the model used by Smashwords in agreement with its distribution channels giving the choice of price to the author/publisher.