New Policy From All Romance E Books

It seems that All Romance E Books (ARe) has announced a change in policy for the coming year. Beginning in January there will no longer be a required ten-book minimum from authors or publishers in order to sell from the ARe or Omni-Lit sites.

“Some of our hottest selling books are coming from indies,” said Lori James. “More importantly, the change in policy is in response to author and reader requests.”

More and more authors are choosing to self publish these days but finding third party distribution is difficult when faced with the fact that a minimum number of books are required in order to sell from a particular site. ARe's move to discontinue their minimum requirement has some authors talking already.

What will the influx of self pubbed authors with only one or two books do to sales overall? Some authors worry that it will dilute the sales pool yet again--just like every time another pub opens. Others worry about quality of books. My advice there is to simply look for the publisher and stick with the tried and true.

And that doesn't mean there aren't some really good quality books that are self pubbed. But overall? I suspect we'll see lots of authors publishing just because they now have a venue for distribution when they were rejected by publishers.

Also to be considered is the argument that e books lack quality in general. No, that's not so, but let's face it--not all authors, editors, and publishers were created equally and there is definitely a difference in quality from house to house. So with the potential flood of self pubbed authors invading what does that do to the e book industry overall?

Digital publishing is still growing and quality will be the deciding factors with buyers. To stand the test of time and to convince Jane and John Does to stay with e books is this a good move?

Lots to think about for sure.