Spotify Just Changed Books Forever

Foreign. Hello and welcome. There has been a lot happening, so this past week was full of publishing news and I'll cover what the news was, but I also think that it's kind of exciting and so I want to zoom out while we talk about what the news is. I also want to talk about, you know, the announcements themselves, but the bigger story, which is something I'm really excited about because the non Amazon ecosystem is starting to connect together. So instead of all these companies building in isolation and them not necessarily being strong enough to compete with Amazon, we're seeing partnerships and we're seeing product innovation that's making books more flexible for readers and ultimately creating more opportunities for authors. So I'm pretty excited about all of it. Today I'm going to break down what changed, kind of what I think it's signaling, but also what you should do with this news. So if you are wondering what the heck happened, you haven't been following along with the latest news. There was announcements from Draft 2 Digital, of course, tying into bookshop.org and Spotify, also tying into bookshop.org, but Spotify also had some other announcements. It was a big week last week for Spotify. So I'm just going to dive right in and then I'll check in with you all and see what you're talking about in a minute. But bookshop.org is an online platform that has always been built and was always intended to support local independent bookstores. When you buy from bookshop.org actually let me see if I can even share screen. But when you buy from a bookshop.org you actually can choose your bookstore that you're purchasing from. And sometimes my choices just don't come up when I want them to. Oh, okay, I'll use this, I'll use this browser. Here's, here's a, here's a plug for Author's Empire Workshop while while I'm here happening March 5th and 6th. Definitely come and join us if you're building a book and building a business around it. All right, so I'm just going to use this screen right here. So bookshop.org so what's cool about bookshop.org is you can see right here on their main homepage, 45 million raised for local bookstores. So when you go ahead and you buy a book on here, you can choose a favorite indie bookstore or you can not, you can just order it from bookshop.org and they will put it into a pool that supports indie bookstores everywhere. So you can see here you can choose a bookstore that you want to support and how it works when you select your local bookstore. So for me, Writer's Block is one of my favorite bookstores here. So let's just see if that's one of the ones they have here. There's actually a few. Oh, it's not even here. There's actually a few local bookstores here that I haven't checked out yet that I need to go visit. I'm going to check. I can't believe they wouldn't have the Writer's Block. It's a. If you're ever in Las Vegas, I highly recommend visiting. It just doesn't say store name. I'm going to just ask to see if it has it. Do, do, do. No suggestions found. So it's a downtown Vegas bookstore, but you can choose whichever bookstore you want and it will give 30% of the book's list price to that bookstore. And then if you don't choose a store, your purchase will contribute to a profit pool that's divided amongst the participating bookstores. So they obviously do not participate in this. But regardless, it's a really, really cool platform for the bookstores to have their own kind of support network. Now what happened this week is a couple of cool things. And also as a side note, bookshop.org in the past wasn't, you know, we've always kind of used them and promoted them, but they haven't really been indie author focused per se. And in fact I know some authors that sell books in the UK and I think even Joanna Penn talked about it on her podcast this week. In the uk, if your book wasn't set as returnable and didn't have the typical bookstore discount in Ingram, it wouldn't even get listed on bookshop.org in the UK. And so it was available in the US but there was more stringent requirements in the UK, so. So it wasn't anti indie author. It just wasn't as set up for it. And so, you know, it was more indie bookstore friendly than indie author friendly. And I think again, it wasn't anti author. It was just this designed around the regular publishing industry bookstore models. Okay, now what happened last week starts to flip all of that upside down, which is really, really cool. Draft 2 digital and bookshop. Org had a partnership. Now this is Bookshop making a real move toward indie authors, in my opinion, because if they're partnering with Draft 2 Digital, they're partnering with a lot of small publishers and indie authors. And the partnership was that self published ebooks distributed through Draft 2 Digital can now be sold by independent bookstores. It brings hundreds of thousands of published titles into Bookshop's ebook platform, which is pretty cool. And Bookshop's ebook platform, it launched last year, I think in, in January for the US and later later in the year for the UK. And Bookshop says 100% of their ebook profit from a draft to digital distributed ebook sale is going to go to the affiliated affiliate, affiliated indie bookstore. So this is really, really big and I think it's super exciting for authors, and especially indie authors, because our distribution just got wider and we typically are using Draft 2 digital. So we talked about this before, but we're typically using IngramSpark for bookstore distribution, KDP for Amazon distribution, as well as Kindle distribution. And then we use Draft 2 Digital to aggregate our ebook distribution to get it into the library systems and beyond. And so this now means that there's one more place that people are going to discover your ebook. And Angela has a link. Yeah, it looks like she's already dropped it in there. So if you want to explore this announcement a little bit more, she's gone ahead and dropped the link of the News on the Draft2Digital site about this partnership. Okay, so it wasn't just Draft2Digital partnering with Bookshop.org last week. Obviously Bookshop.org has some serious partnership legs under them right now. But Spotify also made a big announcement with bookshop.org you can purchase physical books inside Spotify through bookshop.org so this allows physical book purchases. So somebody is enjoying your audiobook and they're like, I do this often. I am reading an audio or reading an audiobook and I purchase the physical book because I loved the audiobook so much and vice versa. Sometimes I'm reading the audiobook, I'm reading the physical book and I want to listen to the audiobook either while I'm going through it and or have have both because I'm driving, I want to consume it. I tend to consume audio when I'm driving and then when I'm sitting at home I tend to read. And so I also like to platform switch, which is also why I'm super excited about one of their other announcements. But let's stick with one announcement at a time, shall we? So Spotify and bookshop.org so this is saying, this is Spotify saying discovery isn't just about audio. Right? So they get it, they get that, that readers are multi platform consumers. They're not just or multi format, multi platform, all the things. And the reader, the Mentality is not just I found this book, but I own it. And they want to keep them inside of their ecosystem. Right. They don't want the, the reader to pop off and go to Amazon. Now that they're on Spotify, they're like, if they want to buy the book, let's make it easy for them to do it. So I think it's really, really cool. I don't know how many people are going to make this a physical purchase inside of the Spotify platform. Time will tell. But I think this is really, really cool and an exciting partnership that Spotify and Bookshop. Org has formed here. Now, the one that I think was really innovative, really cool of Spotify is they solved a problem that Amazon has not solved. And I am really excited about this. It's page map and I think I have it here on the screen. It might be easier if you guys can see something happening, so. And if I don't, I will. Actually, Angela, just in case, do you want to drop the link for the Page Match announcement? Oh, that you did already. Okay, let's see if it'll let me click on it. There it is. Of course it won't let me copy it. Okay, I'll just find it again because I don't know when I share if it's going to let me find the right screen. Oops. Let's go here. Okay. YouTube bookshop. Okay, we'll go here. We'll use this one and I will type it back in for you. So it was Page Match. Let's just see if it comes up. Okay, there it is. Okay, so their Page Match. This was their announcement. This is the link that Angela dropped in. So Page Match allows you to switch between formats. And so this is really cool because as I said, I'm often listening when I'm driving and reading when I'm at home. And what happens is you have to find the place where you left off. Well, not anymore. And it's as it says here, it's the first of its kind feature lets you switch between a print book or an ebook and its audiobook counterpoint counterpart with a quick scan of your mobile phone camera. It's designed to help books adapt to your schedule, not the other way around. Sorry, you guys. I'm fighting something. So if you hear my voice cracking, I'm gonna win. I'm gonna win. But I am fighting something. So Page Match is currently rolling out and will be available on most English language titles by the end of February. So I don't have it. I don't know if anybody has it yet. I haven't heard. But it is going to roll out to premium subscribers and Audiobook plus plan members can use this feature. So it's really cool because again, if you are reading your physical book now, with a quick scan, it's going to automatically put you in the right place on your audiobook so that when you hop in the car, you're good to go and vice versa. So I think this is really, really great. And again, it goes back to the thing that I've been talking about a lot of which is books are to be experienced, right? Readers are not going to be format. They're not going to be tied to any one format. And an experience doesn't mean the book comes alive and somebody dances in the middle of it. Although, you know, with fiction, who knows, right? That certainly isn't out of the realm of possibility of what could, what could come. But at the end of the day, I think that we need to think a little bit bigger with our books. And it is not just about a physical book. It's not just about an ebook. You have to think about this ecosystem that your reader is going to just expect that you have put in place. And what is really important to note is that this is friction removal, right? So just imagine you've lost your place in your book and you get in your car and you don't know where it is. Well, you might not bother trying to find it in the audiobook. You might just be like, I'll just put on a podcast or I'm just going to listen to my favorite song. And so friction removal is how you increase a reader's completion rate of your book. And if somebody finishes your book and you've followed our hashtag no boring book process to write a book that people are going to love and want to review and want to talk about, well, and they finish your book. Now, you've got a fan, right? You've got a fan that tells somebody else, guess what? Your sales are going up. And your authority, your credibility, your name recognition, all of those things expand. And while it's small, any little bit of friction that you can remove for a reader to consume a book is a very, very good thing. And yes, Amazon has had whisper sync for a while, but whisper sync has never quite functioned in this way, right? Whisper sync only worked if you had the ebook and the audiobook. And of course, the ebook had to be identical to the audiobook, and it had to work interchangeably in that way. But the physical book wasn't Addressed. So this is really, really cool. And then the final news that Spotify put out last week, not as exciting for me personally, but it's still worth noting their recaps. So they had announced audiobook recaps, I think, in the fall. They were only available on Apple systems, but now they were going to be available in Android in the spring. Again, the recaps were more, I think, applicable to fiction readers than to nonfiction, which is why we haven't spent a lot of time talking about them. But, you know, that that is important to note that they are not, you know, it's not going away. They are continuing to expand upon it and roll it out to Android. I mean, this is the preview. And by the way, the way I think of it is kind of like when you turn on a show and you get the previously on. That's how I. That's how I see it, right? It's like the previously on whatever Landman or whatever show you're watching. All right, so what we're seeing, and this is the big picture stuff that I really wanted to address, is format fluidity, right? Friction removal and format fluidity, which I think is fantastic. It also means that your reader is potentially going to be purchasing your book in multiple formats, which, like I said, I've been doing for years. And in fact, one of the first authors I saw actually recommend you do this was Alex Hormozi, which when. With his book, first of his book in that. In that series was. He was like, this is designed for you to read this book and listen to the audiobook at the same time. And I laughed at the time. I was like, that's a genius way to sell. To sell your book twice. And it is, but it was also very beneficial. I was like, okay, well, he's recommending this. Why not do it? And I listened to the audiobook while going through the physical book, and he was right. You know, it's kind of like having a teacher teach you something that's in a textbook at the same time as you're looking at the textbook. It does improve retention and also just enjoyment of the material because I was seeing things while I was hearing about it. So that I think is really, really cool. And I think authors need to be paying close attention to that because the question isn't, are you a print person or an audiobook person? It's kind of like, how do you want to stay within this book right now? And if I want to switch seamlessly, I'm going to go Spotify all day long. So Maybe I'm going to buy my book from bookshop.org and then I'm going to stay with Spotify for the audiobook. What I think is really, really great is we're seeing the ecosystem players collaborating. We have our bookstore, we have our bookstore, our physical book distribution arm collaborating with our audiobook and our ebook distribution platforms. They're starting to connect. This is something that happens in a more mature kind of industry. So, you know, the self publishing world, you know, we're not, we're not, we're not the innovator, we're not the brand new kids on the block anymore with all the self publishing. It's been around long enough that we're starting to see maturity and this is what they're doing, which I think is great. It gives us more lanes to reach our reader, more ways to reach our reader. I also think it gives us more resilience because we don't have that single platform dependence on Amazon. And again, better reader experience does mean more books read, right? More books read from start to finish, which means more word of mouth, which is great. So I think for like what to do or how to think about this or, you know, nothing is new as far as what I always recommend. But I think more than ever, we don't want to think about audiobooks as an optional format, right? We want to treat, when you're publishing a book, treat the audiobook, the print book and the e book as something that has to happen, right? It's a system. And if you're missing a piece, you're missing a piece of the system, of course, the other piece. And I've been saying this since I started talking self publishing, go wide, right? It's risk management. It facilitates growth. Even if only 20% or 10% of your sales come from some other angle beyond Amazon, which is the case for some books, you still are getting 10 or 20% of your sales from someone else. And I think that is really important because again, if Amazon ever shuts you down or changes their system and wreaks havoc with where you were getting sales, knowing you've got other channels to reach your reader is really important. And of course, if you do use Draft 2 Digital, go and check your dashboard, you'll have to opt in or kind of push it forward to the bookshop distribution. We had some of our authors automatically roll. I had Alyssa check on my team right before I went live and she had to nudge my second edition of Self Publish and Succeed Forward in the Draft 2 Digital Dashboard and then just watch for more partnerships, because I think that we're going to see some more. These are some significant partnerships. I can't, I can't see in my head where there'll be more, but I bet you these will inspire some other cool partnerships to come along. And finally, if you aren't already doing this, I hope you start today, which is build your own relationship email list community. Build your own relationship with your reader so that your platform is your own and you are growing no matter what all these players are doing. Because that is really the best risk management you can have as an author and the way to be the most, you know, to have the most sustainable career. All right. I flew through that to get. Give you guys as much content as I could real fast. Now I can see what you guys are talking about. And if you have any questions, questions. Is the next step AI video correlation? Possibly. I think, I think the next step is that more interactivity first, which, you know, I did demo. I don't remember the exact demo date that I demoed the one interactive version of my audiobook. But I think that what you're going to see is something more interactive to have it translate where you need it to have it create notes for you. I think it's more interactivity first than video, but I, you know, I don't know, but I think interactivity is the natural step. It's all the technology is already there. I just think we're going to see it move into some of these platforms that we're, you know, the readers are already purchasing from, versus the one that I showed you guys from Sinai. You have to promote it and then get people to buy from Sinai directly because they're not, they're not in the middle. But my guess is that a company like Sinai will get bought out by one of these other companies like Spotify, for example, and then we'll have interactive audiobooks for sale in a platform that we already trust and we're more comfortable with. Angela, are you there?

Sorry, I was finding videos for that question.

Got it. Sorry.

That's the only question that I've seen.

Okay. Yeah. And I saw old Susie says I came late. Will I be able to see this later? Yes. I kind of flew through things. I'm not feeling 100% and so I wanted to make sure. I didn't want to cancel today because this was so big and so important and so exciting. I didn't want to leave you guys hanging on this. But I did kind of fly through. So we'll do, we'll do Our prizes real quick and then. So if you have any other questions, you can go ahead and ask them. Otherwise, we will wrap up and I will see you guys next week. Is next week our state of the or is that the week after? I can't remember. I'll have to look after. I can't remember. I forget what day it is. I don't think it's next week.

It's next week. I was checking earlier today.

Okay, so state of publishing is next week. So we'll probably talk a little bit more about this next week as well. And that is not live on YouTube. So I'll post a regular video on YouTube on Tuesday. We are doing the state of publishing inside our school community. So if you are not in the school community and you want to be there for the state of publishing show that we're going to do once a month. You do have to join our our school community. Okay, so this is not. It keeps wanting me to invite a guest. Hold on, something's wrong here. Share screen. Let's see if this will work now instead of my Streamyard, Can you share the giveaway tool? It's not working for me. You're muted. If you're talking, we can't hear you.

I wasn't saying anything important. Just like, oh, hey, yeah, let me get it. Oh, something. It does look different. I see what you're talking about. Oh, there we go.

It was. It was acting weird.

It had a weird pop up at first, but it looks like it's working now.

Okay, great. All right, so if you've said hello, you will be in our draw. Here it comes. And Mike says there's no better person out there to explain this to us than you. Thank you, Mike. I appreciate that. And thank you everybody for your well wishes. Bruce Wayne, congratulations. You are our winner today. Angela has all the things. She has our hashtag NoBoringBooks mug. This is the vintage version, I believe, but she has the hashtag noboringbooksmug. She has our oh so soft journal as well as copies of Self publish and succeed and Self promote and Succeed. So email her at TeamokLaunchers and let her know what you would like her to send you and of course your mailing address. And if you are outside of the US we will send you a digital prize because shipping and duties and all the things not so friendly outside. But we'll make sure you get something. All right, folks, I don't see that anybody else has questions, so I am going to escape before you do. Have a fantastic week and I look forward to seeing you inside the school community next Tuesday for our State of the Publishing Industry show. Bye, everybody.