Bookcamp. The Bandcamp for authors.
Are you an indie author too? Do you see also lots of your royalties shrink because of the big boys who pocket your income?
After reading an article online (in Dutch - many authors don't see income from books on streaming platforms), where authors report getting as little as 8.5 to 10 cents per streamed book in places like Spotify, StoryTel and BookBeats, a friend and I chatted a bit about that.
She said that indie authors could benefit from something like Bandcamp but for authors. Something like an Author Co-op. My mind immediately gravitates to BookCamp, but that's me.
The idea is great, I think, and it's not new. A bit of searching showed me that someone on Reddit already coined it 12 years ago.
The pros:
- People can connect with authors directly
- No or only few middlemen
- Direct sales for the authors
The cons:
- Setting it up requires work and knowledge, and people committing to it
- Setup fees and maintenance costs will be part of this
- People are lazy and prefer to tap their ereaders to go to the connected store, rather than going the extra 'step' of going online for the co-op.
- A downloaded book will require extra 'work' to get it on the reader. See the previous bullet about people being lazy.
Drop me a note or respond in a comment to the post you found this in.