Wednesday News: Changes to Scribd, join a bookclub, Reedsy book editor, and RPF goes mainstream

JanetPublishing Newsbook clubs / book editor / ebook subscription service / fan-fiction / real person fiction / Reedsy / research study / Scribd11 Comments

Scribd Announces Major Changes to Subscription Service – While Nate Hoffelder characterizes this as Scribd “gutting” its ebook subscription service, that’s like more the case for the so-called “power reader” than for the reader who can read one book a week, max.  Scribd is pushing this as a more “sustainable” model for the “long term,” and it is cheaper than Audible’s Gold membership level, which is $15/month for one audiobook.

As part of the re-structured service, all Scribd users will receive unlimited access to “Scribd Select” books and audiobooks, a rotating collection spread across a variety of genres. In addition, all users will have access to three books and one audiobook of their choice each month from the entire Scribd catalog. Titles from Scribd Selects do not count toward the user-chosen titles.

The monthly fee will remain $8.99, and the changes will go into effect sometime in mid-March. – Digital Book World & The Digital Reader

Social group memberships in retirement are associated with reduced risk of premature death: evidence from a longitudinal cohort study – Despite the persistent idea that retirement equals improved life condition, this is not always the case. Health and an overall sense of well-being can actually decline in retirement, especially for those who do not have a strong support system. In some ways, the major finding of this study involving about 850 “older adults living in England” is common sense: joining a social group — like a book club — can improve quality of life after retirement. Does engaging in the online book community count, or would that be more of a retirement stressor?

In the present paper we argue that part of the variance in health and quality of life of retirees can be explained by the implications that retirement has for people’s social group memberships—and their social identities or the sense of self that is derived from membership in one or more social groups.10–12 In more formal terms, we define a social group as a group of any form that a person is a member of and that he or she sees as an important part of their identity. For example, these groups can be leisure groups (eg, a book club), family, friendship or community groups (eg, a church group), sporting groups (eg, a tennis club), work groups (eg, a sales team), professional groups (eg, a trade union) or any other groups that a person sees as an important part of who they are. More specifically, we argue that retirement has an important bearing on health and quality of life because it typically involves relinquishing social group memberships (eg, as a member of a particular professional group, a particular organisation, a particular work-team) that have been a key focus for people’s self-definition for years or decades. At the same time too, it can also provide opportunities to develop new group memberships, and hence for particular forms of socially engaged life. In line with previous work that has pointed to important links between group membership and health,13–15 our general argument is that the consequences of retirement for health and quality of life will depend in part on its implications for the constellation of group memberships that define an individual’s sense of self. – BMJ Open

Reedsy Launches Book Editor To Seamlessly Turn Your Draft Into A Book – Self-publishing services sure are growing, and Reedsy has added an editing function that allows collaborative work on a document as well as access to actual editors who can help the self-published author work on a manuscript. As someone who hates Google docs with the passion of a thousand suns (okay, maybe only 999), I can see how this might be useful for collaborative writing projects other than books.

You could think about this book editor as a Google Docs for books. It lets you write and edit in your browser and everything is saved in real time. Multiple persons can edit at the same time, make comments and track changes. It replaces the cumbersome back-and-forth process involving Word documents and weird file names.

When everything is done, you can tweak the layout and export your book into a publishable ePub and PDF. After that, authors can self-publish their books on the Kindle Store, iBooks Store or do whatever they want with them. PDFs are compatible with most print-on-demand services.  – Tech Crunch

IMAGINES: Celebrity Encounters Starring You – Oh, to be a fly on the wall during the editorial meeting where this book was pitched to the Simon & Schuster bigwigs. Real person fan fiction from a traditional publishing house. I still can’t quite wrap my head around it. Led by Anna Todd, the Wattpad author whose One Direction fan fiction novel, After, got her a sweet and unusual deal with Gallery Books, the book is described as a collection of “stories from Wattpad writers that immerse you in a fantasy world of fame, adventure, and flirtation with your favorite celebrities.”  Wattpad is definitely an interesting community writing model, and you can only imagine how many words like “never” and “not us” and “no way” are being eaten in New York publishing these days.

Let your fantasies take over! That’s what the top Wattpad authors have done in this special collection of fictional scenarios that bring you up close and personal with the real celebrities you love—star alongside about Zayn Malik, Cameron Dallas, Kanye West, Selena Gomez, Dylan O’Brien, Tom Hardy, Jamie Dornan, Benedict Cumberbatch, and many more! – Simon & Schuster

Janet

isn't sure if she's an average Romance reader, or even an average reader, but a reader she is, enjoying everything from literary fiction to philosophy to history to poetry. Historical Romance was her first love within the genre, but she's fickle and easily seduced by the promise of a good read. She approaches every book with the same hope: that she will be filled from the inside out with something awesome that she didnʼt know, didnʼt think about, or didnʼt feel until that moment. And she's always looking for the next mind-blowing read, so feel free to share any suggestions!

→ Janet