tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32577425201165870502024-03-08T02:02:05.716-08:00EPublishers Worldhttp://epublishersworld.blogspot.comUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger55125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257742520116587050.post-82828616765583246802012-08-31T11:09:00.001-07:002012-08-31T11:09:35.512-07:00Self-published authors react with anger to 'laziness' charge<br />
Bestselling American crime novelist Sue Grafton has back-pedalled on her description of self-published authors as "too lazy to do the hard work" following disbelief and anger from the independently published community.<br />
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Speaking to her local paper earlier this month, Grafton, the author of the A is for Alibi, B is for Burglar series of "alphabet" crime novels starring detective Kinsey Millhone, advised young writers not to self-publish, because "that's as good as admitting you're too lazy to do the hard work". The self-published books she has read are "often amateurish", she said, comparing self-publishing "to a student managing to conquer Five Easy Pieces on the piano and then wondering if s/he's ready to be booked into Carnegie Hall".<br />
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Becoming an author, according to Grafton, is about hard work: "taking the rejection, learning the lessons, and mastering the craft over a period of time". Having had her first three novels rejected, she said she sees "way too many writers who complete one novel and start looking for the fame and fortune they're sure they're entitled to".<br />
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"To me, it seems disrespectful … that a 'wannabe' assumes it's all so easy s/he can put out a 'published novel' without bothering to read, study, or do the research," said Grafton. "Learning to construct a narrative and create character, learning to balance pace, description, exposition, and dialogue takes a long time. This is not a quick do-it-yourself home project. Self-publishing is a short cut and I don't believe in short cuts when it comes to the arts."<br />
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But Adam Croft, a British self-published thriller author who says he has sold 250,000 copies of his books in the last year, called Grafton's belief that taking the DIY route was lazy "outrageous". "The complete opposite is true," he said. "Self-publishing means finding your own proofreader, finding your own editor, finding your own cover designer (or designing your own), doing all your own marketing and sales work, etc. Having a publisher is lazy as all you need to do is write a half-acceptable book and allow your publisher's editor to make it sales-worthy. Self-publishers must do it all – we have no one else to pick up the slack."<br />
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Even so, Croft has no intention of taking the publisher route: self-published authors take 70% of the royalties, he said, while traditionally published writers get around 15%. "I've been approached by a number of publishers but have rejected contact every time. I don't even have the slightest desire to enter the negotiation stage with any publisher as there's no way any of them could offer me anything like what I'm able to do for myself," he said.<br />
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Croft believes that the fact that "every author can now find every reader" is a "fantastic" thing. "People like Sue Grafton are elitist, trying to quash new writing due to some sort of perceived threat. The industry is changing – has changed – and for the better. We have a wonderful open market through which all manner of books can be read by anyone. How can that be a bad thing?"<br />
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Independently published novelist and playwright Catherine Czerkawska also took issue with Grafton's comments, saying they displayed "a profoundly amateurish and unacceptable ignorance of changes to the industry in which she claims to work".<br />
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"I've had 40 years as a novelist and award-winning playwright, I've been a Royal Literary Fund writing fellow and I'm currently serving on the committee of the Society of Authors in Scotland. Is that professional enough for her?" said Czerkawska. "I still found myself at the mercy of an increasingly restrictive and blockbuster-focused industry. There are many of us working away quietly, selling ebooks to readers who give every appearance of enjoying them. For us and our readers, the indie publishing movement has been nothing less than an inspirational and creative godsend."<br />
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The recently formed Alliance of Independent Authors, which represents self-published authors, said that Grafton had not kept up with developments in the sector. "Some self-publishing writers fit her description but many writers are now choosing this route to readers after a long career in trade publishing, for reasons of creative freedom and greater financial reward," said director and founder Orna Ross, an author who was published by Attic Press and Penguin before turning to self-publishing. "Certainly, self-publishers need to guard against the temptation to press the 'publish' button too soon. One of the core objectives of the Alliance of Independent Authors is to foster excellence in the self-publishing sector. We encourage writers to perfect their craft and hire good editors before publishing. Humility, hard work, craft skills, creative development – and their opposite – are found in both the self- and trade publishing sectors. It is impossible to pre-judge an individual writer, or work, on the basis of how they are published."<br />
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Grafton is by no means the only traditionally published author to hold negative views about self-publishing. "DO NOT SELF PUBLISH," Jodi Picoult advised in an interview earlier this year, while Richard Russo said the thought of self-publishing "literally chills my blood". But after the uproar which followed her comments, Grafton has since backed off, telling her local paper that she "meant absolutely no disrespect for e-publishing and indie authors" and that she was "uninitiated when it comes to this new format".<br />
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"It's clear to me now that indie writers have taken more than their fair share of hard knocks and that you are actually changing the face of publishing. Who knew?! This is a whole new thrust for publication that apparently everyone has been aware of except yours truly. I still don't understand how it works, but I can see that a hole has been blasted in the wall, allowing writers to be heard in a new way and on a number of new fronts," she said. "I will take responsibility for my gaffe and I hope you will understand the spirit in which it was meant. I have always championed both aspiring writers and working professionals. I have been insulated, I grant you, but I am not arrogant or indifferent to the challenges we all face. I am still learning and I hope to keep on learning for as long as I write."<br />
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<i>http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/29/self-published-laziness-charge-sue-grafton?newsfeed=true</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257742520116587050.post-31999991767523020462012-08-28T02:37:00.001-07:002012-08-28T02:40:46.126-07:00The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy<br><br />
TODD RUTHERFORD was 7 years old when he first understood the nature of supply and demand. He was with a bunch of other boys, one of whom showed off a copy of Playboy to giggles and intense interest. Todd bought the magazine for $5, tore out the racy pictures and resold them to his chums for a buck apiece. He made $20 before his father shut him down a few hours later.<br />
A few years ago, Mr. Rutherford, then in his mid-30s, had another flash of illumination about how scarcity opens the door to opportunity.<br />
He was part of the marketing department of a company that provided services to self-published writers — services that included persuading traditional media and blogs to review the books. It was uphill work. He could churn out press releases all day long, trying to be noticed, but there is only so much space for the umpteenth vampire novel or yet another self-improvement manifesto or one more homespun recollection of times gone by. There were not enough reviewers to go around.<br />
Suddenly it hit him. Instead of trying to cajole others to review a client’s work, why not cut out the middleman and write the review himself? Then it would say exactly what the client wanted — that it was a terrific book. A shattering novel. A classic memoir. Will change your life. Lyrical and gripping, Stunning and compelling. Or words to that effect.<br />
In the fall of 2010, Mr. Rutherford started a Web site, GettingBookReviews.com. At first, he advertised that he would review a book for $99. But some clients wanted a chorus proclaiming their excellence. So, for $499, Mr. Rutherford would do 20 online reviews. A few people needed a whole orchestra. For $999, he would do 50.<br />
There were immediate complaints in online forums that the service was violating the sacred arm’s-length relationship between reviewer and author. But there were also orders, a lot of them. Before he knew it, he was taking in $28,000 a month.<br />
A polite fellow with a rakish goatee and an entrepreneurial bent, Mr. Rutherford has been on the edges of publishing for most of his career. Before working for the self-publishing house, he owned a distributor of inspirational books. Before that, he was sales manager for a religious publishing house. Nothing ever quite worked out as well as he hoped. With the reviews business, though, “it was like I hit the mother lode.”<br />
Reviews by ordinary people have become an essential mechanism for selling almost anything online; they are used for resorts, dermatologists, neighborhood restaurants, high-fashion boutiques, churches, parks, astrologers and healers — not to mention products like garbage pails, tweezers, spa slippers and cases for tablet computers. In many situations, these reviews are supplanting the marketing department, the press agent, advertisements, word of mouth and the professional critique.<br />
But not just any kind of review will do. They have to be somewhere between enthusiastic and ecstatic.<br />
“The wheels of online commerce run on positive reviews,” said Bing Liu, a data-mining expert at the University of Illinois, Chicago, whose 2008 research showed that 60 percent of the millions of product reviews on Amazon are five stars and an additional 20 percent are four stars. “But almost no one wants to write five-star reviews, so many of them have to be created.”<br />
Consumer reviews are powerful because, unlike old-style advertising and marketing, they offer the illusion of truth. They purport to be testimonials of real people, even though some are bought and sold just like everything else on the commercial Internet.<br />
Mr. Liu estimates that about one-third of all consumer reviews on the Internet are fake. Yet it is all but impossible to tell when reviews were written by the marketers or retailers (or by the authors themselves under pseudonyms), by customers (who might get a deal from a merchant for giving a good score) or by a hired third-party service.<br />
The Federal Trade Commission has issued guidelines stating that all online endorsements need to make clear when there is a financial relationship, but enforcement has been minimal and there has been a lot of confusion in the blogosphere over how this affects traditional book reviews.<br />
The tale of GettingBookReviews.com, which commissioned 4,531 reviews in its brief existence, is a story of a vast but hidden corner of the Internet, where Potemkin villages bursting with ardor arise overnight. At the same time, it shows how the book world is being transformed by the surging popularity of electronic self-publishing.<br />
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Source - <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/best-book-reviews-money-buy-131408538.html;_ylt=ApT9Z6a945_rCDnwiTji7q2auodG;_ylu=X3oDMTFrM2g5cm4zBG1pdANBcnRpY2xlIEJvZHkEcG9zAzExBHNlYwNNZWRpYUFydGljbGVCb2R5QXNzZW1ibHk-;_ylg=X3oDMTJucmE1aTNsBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDMzZlYTM5OGItNTE2YS0zOTY2LTg0ZTYtZjc0ODVkNmM5NmUwBHBzdGNhdANuZXdzBHB0A3N0b3J5cGFnZQ--;_ylv=3?page=all" target="new">Read More</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257742520116587050.post-90496184803271653962012-08-17T01:50:00.002-07:002012-08-17T01:50:40.820-07:00Write for E-publishers WorldShare your knowledge,expertise and experiences in the world of publishing.<br />
Inviting all Authors & Indie Bloggers to write guest blog articles on this site on the topic of publishing and everything related to it.<br />
If you are interested in contributing on this site just post a comment below with your email.We will get back to you asap.<br />
Happy Writing!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257742520116587050.post-54423761581639484472012-08-17T01:50:00.000-07:002012-08-17T01:50:14.000-07:00Why social media isn't the magic bullet for self-epublished authorsIn the third in a series of essays on digital media and publishing, Ewan Morrison, who will appear at the Edinburgh World Writers' Conference, claims that as the project to monetise social media falters the self-epublishing industry's defects will be laid bare<br />
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"Authors – become a success through building an 'internet platform'!". For almost five years we've been subjected to the same message. At the London College of Communication's iGeneration conference this year, I heard that social media was now the only way to sell books, and witnessed glowing examples of the successful use of SM from epub authors such as Joanna Penn (who has her own consultancy and sells $99 multimedia courses on How to Write A Novel). At the Hay festival last month, I heard Scott Pack – self-described "blogger, publisher and author of moderately successful toilet books" – declare that mainstream media, papers and TV "no longer function in selling books"; that the net is now the only way for authors to – you've heard it before – "build a platform". Already every fourth tweet I receive is from an "indie" author trying to self-promote, saying things like "Hoping for a cheeky RT of my last tweet on my book & the 99p offer. B v grateful." And another – "Hope all is well! My dad just published his latest book on Amazon – if possible, I was wondering if you had any tips for him getting his book reviewed by any relevant bloggers. Appreciate any insight." And then there are the hundreds of tweets from social media ebook consultants and so-called specialists offering "the key to online marketing success".<br />
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I'm convinced that epublishing is another tech bubble, and that it will burst within the next 18 months. The reason is this: epublishing is inextricably tied to the structures of social media marketing and the myth that social media functions as a way of selling products. It doesn't, and we're just starting to get the true stats on that. When social media marketing collapses it will destroy the platform that the dream of a self-epublishing industry was based upon.<br />
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First, though, I conducted my own experiment. I decided to take these "platformers" at their word and seriously consider the possibility of self-promoting my books online (I even bought an iPhone so that I could get with the revolution). I am not alone in this: authors who have contracts with the big six publishers are now being asked, or obliged, to "get out there" and self-promote; something that 10 years ago would have been seen as selling-out is fast becoming the norm.<br />
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What follows is what I discovered about self-promotion in the digital utopia of social media marketing.<br />
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The 20% author and the fine art of self-promotion<br />
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As Joanna Penn says: "In a world with lots of talent, success requires more than simply being great." She advocates, "more effective networking, of course!" Self-styled eSpecialists such as Penn often invoke the 80/20 rule which advises that, as a sales person (in this case an author), you should spend 20% of your time writing and 80% of your time networking through social media. In tune with this, self-epublishing author Louise Voss recently informed me that the success of her ebooks came about as a result of spending about 80% of her time marketing (her writing partner also had a marketing background).<br />
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And if that seems like a limitation on your creative time, consider the case of San Diego-based "book publicity and promotions expert" Paula Margulies, who is taking the 80/20 rule even further. She claims that when tweeting and Facebooking you should spend "80% of your time posting about things other than your book, and 20% selling. That's right – 80% of what you post should not be a sales pitch." Why does she recommend this? "Because readers are human beings, who long to make connections with others ... They join social networking sites not to receive non-stop reminders to buy, but to develop relationships." Margulies advocates that authors blog and tweet about hobbies and personal activities: things you like, and which you think will draw other people to you. Essentially, 80% of your tweeting should be about cats, food, sport, what's happening outside your window – all the things that millions of non-writers tweet about. This theory is backed up by many other self-appointed social media specialists.<br />
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Let's look at the stats. If we take Margulies and Penn seriously, how much time does this leave for actually writing? Most self-epublished authors hold down a day job, so let's give them three hours a day, after work, for author activities. That's 1,095 hours a year. Reduce this to 20% (since you have to spend 80% of your time covertly self-promoting online), and you get 219 writing hours a year, which works out as 18 12-hour days to write a book.<br />
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Which could be fine – let's face it, Amanda Hocking famously wrote one of her bestselling ebooks in only three weeks. But then again, Hocking has recently given up on self-promotion and self-epublishing to go with a mainstream publisher. "I want to be a writer," she explained. "I do not want to spend 40 hours a week handling emails, formatting covers, finding editors, etc. Right now, being me is a full-time corporation."<br />
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So, maybe tweeting is too time-consuming. Let's leave aside the question of whether Twitter and Facebook can actually help you sell anything and overlook the fact that only 10% of tweets ever get retweeted, and remain positive, believe in ourselves and move on. Let's get some professional help in creating that platform. Here's what can be done.<br />
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1. Hire a company to teach you how to tweet better<br />
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It's possible that the reason you're not seeing a big rise in book sales online is because you're not tweeting properly. There are plenty of sites with online tips from those who claim they hold the "key secrets to going viral". There are even those who claim that learning how to use Twitter makes you a superior writer.<br />
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If you want to learn their methods, you can attend one of the hundreds of new courses that have sprung up, and pay hundreds of pounds to master your 140 characters. Or ...<br />
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2. Hire a company to generate your tweets for you<br />
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If you're still failing and are daunted at how much effort it takes to spend 80% of 80% of your time being chatty, you can hire a company to do it for you. Book Tweeting Service's website claims: "We tweet your book, blog or author website to 60,000+ readers, editors, publishers and writers who are following us on our Twitter accounts. We will send 5 TWEETS PER DAY which we then share with our 5 Twitter accounts (=30 tweets) to get you maximum exposure." Book Tweeting Service will write your tweets for you. Its tweet plans start with a one-day plan at $29 (£18).<br />
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While this frees time to actually write, the downside is that your tweets may not come across as particularly "you", which might alienate any followers you already had. And, of course, you'll be paying almost £10,000 for a year's worth of tweets. But as these companies say, "Online marketing is a full-time job for professionals." And they should know: many of them are, in fact, just good old-fashioned marketing companies who've developed an internet wing in order to get in on the feeding frenzy. Most, however, are sole-trader start-ups – for that, read solitary, self-taught people who have set up a page as a specialist. Many of them are also self-epublishing authors, trying to make a buck so they can buy time to do their 20% of writing.<br />
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3. Get family, friends and Facebook friends to post reviews on Amazon<br />
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Many self-epublishing authors claim that you can "trigger Amazon's algorithms" and get on to "Amazon recommendations", after you get 30 – or 50 – or 100 favourable reviews. They sometimes say this gleefully, as if it's a trick they've learned and are secretly passing on to you. The idea is that you contact all of your friends on Facebook and get them to post reviews. Although it's a bit crass, and may be dishonest, it's not illegal.<br />
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The problem with this is what I term the Facebubble, or what Eli Pariser calls Filter Bubbles. The hard fact is that since Facebook started tracking our behaviour, no matter whether you have 1,000 friends or 100, you're only going to get updates from the two dozen people you've most recently been in touch with. You're not speaking, let alone marketing, to the vast world of the internet at all. You are only a few steps removed from your old school friends and your mum. This problem is compounded when you try to sell books directly on Facebook to your friends. You're in the Facebubble and you're stuck with the 80/20 rule. You're spending 20% of 80% your time trying to market to the two dozen people who will see your feed. So you sell 10 books, and you feel dirty for having given the hard sell to your mates.<br />
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So what's wrong? Why aren't you sweeping ahead as a new author in the social media revolution? Maybe you've just come to it too late. If you didn't start doing this when social media began then you're already years behind the pioneers: everyone else and their auntie is now trying these very strategies, precisely because the pioneers are now selling courses and books on how to be as successful as they are (if they're so successful, why do they have to do all this consultancy work?) And, anyway, how can you compete with the 1.1 million new writers who have downloaded their ebooks on to Amazon? Is there any space left for you on this platform? Does the platform even exist, or is it a vast collective delusion?<br />
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4. Buy Facebook advertising<br />
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Got your Facebook and Twitter pages, multiplied your friends and followers to 1,000 or 5,000, and still haven't managed to sell more books than you would have done standing on a street corner? Try buying Facebook advertising.<br />
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These are the little picture squares on the right hand side of the screen, which lead users to a book or author page that can be "liked". On that book page you can post live links where people can buy the book from Amazon, Waterstones or your publisher – alongside reviews, or things of general interest. The theory is that when you build up a big enough "like" base, people will actually start to buy.<br />
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How much does it cost? Facebook advertising is on a sliding scale, so the more you spend the more visible they claim they will make you. Based on your targeting options, Facebook suggests a bid of $0.33 per click. Users claim you can get 51,000 clicks for $650. A click, though, is not a "like" - and even a "like" doesn't necessarily lead to anything.<br />
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A writer I know has, after two months of buying Facebook ads, gained 490 new "likes", but the number of books he sold through this was only three. This is just one example, of course, but who would you ask to give you honest comprehensive stats? Self-promoting authors? Facebook, whose entire financial survival depends on selling ads?<br />
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5. Hire a company to create five-star reviews on Amazon for your book<br />
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Things are getting drastic and you've crossed the line already, so why not go illegal and buy fake reviews?<br />
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In January someone on Fiverr ("the world's largest marketplace for small services" posted an ad: "I will write two Amazon reviews from two different reviewers, for anything that you send me, ebooks apps…for $5". Elsewhere, one of my publishers was approached recently by a company, which has since mysteriously vanished from the net, offering just such a service – 30 reviews for £100. This is blatantly immoral but becoming widespread. How many five-star reviews does it take to trigger the Amazon algorithms, now that others are getting in on the game? How much are you willing to pay and risk to find out?<br />
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6. Give your books away for free<br />
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Ultimately, you may find that the only option left available to you is the one that internet gurus and marketers expound in articles such as "Why giving away thousands of free books is a good thing". Again, this is about platforming – developing a readership base of people who will, hopefully, come back and buy the books when you put the prices up. This is the reasoning behind the Amazon top 100 free ebooks lists. This is not, ewriters claim, about ripping authors off, nor about creating a race to the bottom in prices that will ultimately destroy Amazon's competitors in the book market.<br />
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But does giving your books away for free work? A test case is another author I know who went on to the Amazon free deal for a day and entered the top 10 Kindle Free Chart. He had 700 downloads within four hours. However, over the next day, when the price had gone back to £4.99, and in the three weeks that followed, the total number of copies sold was zero. He had, somehow, failed to build his platform.<br />
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Some authors have even found ways of making money by encouraging other writers to give their books away. Paulo Coelho, the 65-year-old worldwide bestseller and "Twitter mystic", now runs an expensive boot camp for wannabe e-authors, in which he promotes his spiritual philosophy of "self-piracy". However, Coelho fails to mention that he made his millions in mainstream publishing in its heyday, or to explain that he carried his existing fanbase with him on to the net, so he isn't actually a verifiable example of building a net platform. He also seems to have overlooked the likelihood that if he had given his books away over the last 40 years, he would never have been able to build the career that he now enjoys.<br />
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The theory goes that if you give your books away for free, one day you'll see a return. But when is that day coming? For those who self-epublish and those who have been downsized by their publishers, it's a question of how long they can keep going before they run out of energy and money; before they lose faith in the effectiveness of this platform that might not be a launchpad for them, but for the net companies that created it.<br />
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You've created your platform. Is your ebook flying?<br />
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The bad news for social media companies is that after all the hype and the projections, there are stats: there is evidence, there are consequences, and heads will roll. In publishing terms it has recently been revealed that 10% of all self-epublishers make £75% of all the money; that 50% of self-published ebooks make less than $500 a year (£320, or 87p a day); and that 25% doesn't cover the costs of production. Broadly, what this means is that if you went out on the street with a book in your hand and tried to sell it to a stranger for 88p, or 99p, and you did this every day, you would still be making more money than 50% of all self-published authors on Amazon and all the other new epub platforms.<br />
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It also turns out that the ebook market now looks a lot like the old mainstream model. A small number of writers make a lot and everyone else wallows in the doldrums of minuscule sales. The only difference is that those at the top are selling 100,000 copies at 99p, not at £4.99, or £8.99 – which in real terms represents a massive shrinkage of the market. Furthermore, it signifies the passage of the publishing industry into the hands of the internet companies that can capitalise on a million small sales by a million small authors.<br />
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What can social media do for authors?<br />
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From my own research over the last year I've discovered that I have a 4% pick-up from Facebook on invitations to readings – which is actually a 60% fail rate on those who click that they will be attending. In contrast, by email, I have a 40% positive commitment from those who say they will come to my events. People, as the net sellers say, like to be treated like individuals. Mass FB mailouts and invitations are impersonal. As Malcolm Gladwell has been saying during the past few years, the internet is good at forming weak, not strong links. Commitment on the net is shallow. This is the same for events and for purchase of books, and also for reading the content of any post. People click "like" on articles they've never read, befriend people they've no connection with. As Gladwell also says, it's the same for political affiliations. You can click on a cause but you won't turn up for a protest march. These are weak connections.<br />
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What can social media marketing actually sell?<br />
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A new study by Reuters shows that four out of five Facebook users have never bought a product or service as a result of advertising or comments on the social network site. Facebook can't prove that it can monetise its 900 million-strong base of users, and as a result it has lost 26% of its value since the IPO launch. Facebook is now in court over privacy issues which it is accused of having breached in the attempt to make sponsored story ads. A general sense of distrust over the monetising of Facebook is spreading, with market specialists claiming that "investors are going to start actively avoiding social in their portfolios".<br />
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There are also numerous examples of people who have built up immense Twitter followings on the idea that they can then turn this into product sales, only to discover that they can't. A pizza joint in New Orleans hit 70,000 people with its Facebook ad, but through its own market research discovered that they had picked up only one new customer. Also in the US, General Motors pulled its $10m Facebook ads account in May, "after deciding that paid ads on the site have little impact on consumers' car purchases".<br />
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Do pizzas and car sales differ from book sales on the social media? To find out we'd have to see some real market research.<br />
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Social media marketing is selling ... social media<br />
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So where is this research? Why do Facebook and Google endlessly tell us that such information is hard to gather? The truth is, the research has barely been started, and the resistance to doing it is because it would expose that the entire industry is based on pure speculation. A study by Facebook's own marketing company, Pagemodo, found that while 64% of business owners say "social media marketing is a promising tactic and they believe it provides returns", only 25% of all businesses interviewed said they believed they had seen an incremental increase in sales.<br />
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In the face of this backlash, Facebook recently responded with a "study" by Comscore (based on stats from Starbucks), which claimed a 38% success rate. But Facebook themselves helped to put the study together (a bit like getting a homeowner to give you an evaluation on his own house), and according to Erik Sherman at INC, Facebook have used a number of tricks to skew the data and the real stats show only a 2.12% increase in actual purchases attributable to their ads.<br />
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Social scientist Duncan Watts has been doing research into Twitter cascades. He wants social networks to conduct real research into how messages and images "go viral", but doesn't believe that they will. The outcome of such experiments, he believes would be "to demonstrate how difficult it is for social marketing to have any impact".<br />
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This chimes with what net gurus such as Laurence Lessig and Pat Kane have been saying for years. As Kane states: "The internet was created with a mixture of a civic, a countercultural and a state structure. The idea of setting up a business on this structure is a tragic misunderstanding."<br />
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But what about the massive growth in ebook sales?<br />
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When we hear about the 366% growth in ebook sales, what we're not hearing are the stats on who is making the money and how much. After all, a 366% increase in profits could be a result of those 1.1 million new authors selling only a handful of copies of their own ebooks each. According to a study in Publishing Perspectives, only 70 self-epublished authors in the world in 2011 were selling more than 800 ebooks a month. These stats came from the Kindle Boards – with the provocation "Who is brave enough to post their numbers?" There may be hundreds or thousands more Kindle authors out there who are not reporting their astronomic sales, but given that Kindle authors spend 80% of their time self-promoting, one assumes we'd have heard about them.<br />
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So where are the real industry stats, and why does Amazon protect us from them? Or is it protecting itself from the accusation that it is the only winner in an online market intended to skim millions from millions of hopeful new writers, who themselves will only ever see minuscule returns on their investment and effort? All that tweeting and self-promoting was structurally bound to fail from the start.<br />
<br />
Tweeting in the Hall of Mirrors v The Return of the 100%<br />
<br />
In economic terms, the only thing social media has yet effectively proven to be able to generate is more social media, and media about the future economic promise of social media. What if the idea that social media can sell products was simply what Facebook needed us to believe so it could put itself on the market? Many investors believe this is now the case.<br />
<br />
As individuals and companies abandon Facebook advertising, and finally come to realise that Twitter does not increase sales for the vast majority of writers, then the very idea of using social media to sell books will begin to collapse.<br />
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In the end it's all about stats: the hidden ones and the real ones. If you're writing and trying to self-sell and net-promote, do your own stats. Calculate your investment of time and money in writing versus social media. Do you want to spend 80% of 80% of your time Facebooking about cats in the hope that you'll make a 2.12% increase in sales on a book you had to write in 18 days? Do you want to spend 80% of your time creating unpaid market propaganda for the social media industry?<br />
<br />
Or would you rather step away from the hype altogether and spend as much time as you can being a 100% writer?<br />
<i>http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/12867/social-media-is-lying-to-you-about-burmas-muslim-cleansing</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257742520116587050.post-77685810382266486492012-06-19T22:52:00.000-07:002012-06-19T22:52:52.064-07:00How Amazon Saved My LifeI am an author.<br />
<br />
I still can’t get used to that title, but I suppose after having written seven books–five of them traditionally published–that’s what you’d call me. The funny thing is that I feel more like a real author now that I self-publish than when I had the (supposed) support of a publisher behind me.<br />
How did I end up on my own? It began when I couldn’t get my first YA book, "Relatively Famous", published, despite getting stellar feedback from editors and nearly selling the film rights to a teen pop star. I was at a loss for what to do. I couldn’t keep writing books without selling them. What if the next thing I wrote flopped? I took a risk, in many ways, and wrote "Flat-Out Love". It was the first book that completely came from my heart, and it was a book that ignored all the industry rules. I knew in the back of my head that I could self-publish it, but at the time it seemed like that would have been an admission of defeat.<br />
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I spent months thinking that I needed a big publisher in order to be a writer, to legitimately carry that “author” title. To validate me, and to validate "Flat-Out Love". I needed a publisher to print my books and stick a silly publishing house emblem on the side of a hard copy. They were the only way to give my books mass distribution, and having them back me would mean that readers would know my book was good.<br />
I also, apparently, thought that I needed to be taken advantage of, paid inexcusably poorly, and chained to idiotic pricing and covers that I had no control over.<br />
I was, it seems, deluded.<br />
It turns out that I was entirely wrong. I was missing what I really wanted. One of the major reasons that I write is to connect with readers, not publishers. The truth is that I couldn’t care less whether New York editors and publishers like me. I don’t want to write for them. I want to write for you. The other undeniable truth is that readers could care less that my books aren’t put out by a big publisher. They read for the content, not the publishing house emblem.<br />
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I have a lovely, smart, powerhouse agent, who tried to sell my next book, "Flat-Out Love", to every major publishing house. She adored the story and thought it would sell. Fourteen editors turned it down, although each one said how strong the book was. But, editors seemingly didn’t give a crap about whether or not they liked the book. What they did pay attention to were their totally misguided ideas about what would and wouldn’t sell.<br />
I heard two things over and over again about my book. The first was that my story starred an eighteen-year-old college freshman, and that age was “categorically” too old for YA books and too young for adult books. It seems that one is not allowed to write about characters between the ages of eighteen and…what? Twenty-five? Because… because… Well, I’m not sure. The second thing I heard was that because my simultaneously-too-young-and-too-old heroine was not involved with anything slightly paranormal, the book wouldn’t sell.<br />
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Did I cry over some of these rejections? Absolutely. Did I feel inadequate, untalented, hurt? Yes. Did I doubt my ability to craft a story that readers could fall in love with? You bet.<br />
And then one day I got yet another rejection letter and instead of blaming myself and my clear lack of creativity, I got angry. Really, really furious. It clicked for me that I was not the idiot here. Publishing houses were. The silly reasons that they gave me for why my book was useless made me see very clearly how completely out of touch these houses were with readers. I knew, I just knew, that I’d written a book with humor, heart, and meaning. I’d written something that had potential to connect with an audience. As much as I despise having to run around announcing how brilliant I supposedly am and whatnot, I also deeply believed in "Flat-Out Love". I knew that editors were wrong.<br />
<br />
And I finally understood that I wanted nothing to do with these people.<br />
I snatched the book back from my agent and self-published it. With great relief, I should note. I could finally admit to myself that the only thing I had really wanted was to be told, “You’re good enough.” You know who gives me that? My readers. My generous, loving, wild readers.<br />
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Publishers pay terribly and infrequently. They are shockingly dumb when it comes to pricing, and if I see one more friend’s NY-pubbed ebook priced at $12.99, I’m going to scream. They do minimal marketing and leave the vast majority of work up to the author. Unless, of course, you are already a big name author. Then they fly you around the country for signings and treat you like the precious moneymaking gem that you are. The rest of us get next to nothing in terms of promotion. If your book takes off, they get the credit. If it tanks, you get the blame.<br />
<br />
No, thank you. I’m all set with that.<br />
You know who I do like, though? Amazon. Well, all online ebook sites that let me self-publish, but Amazon is the true powerhouse right now. Say what you want about this company, but it’s because of them that I can continue writing. It’s unclear to me how a big publisher thinks that I could live on their typical payouts, and why they think I should drop to my knees in gratitude for their deigning to even publish my book in the first place when I’ll do all the work myself. I’m not going to be grateful for that nonsense, but I am going to be grateful as hell to Amazon.<br />
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Bestselling trad-to-indie-author Barry Eisler, famous for turning down a six figure deal from St. Martins Press to go out on his own, took a lot of heat for having compared an author’s relationship with a big publisher to Stockholm syndrome. The truth is that it’s not a bad comparison at all. Snarky, funny, and exaggerated, perhaps, but there is more than one grain of truth there, and I just know that authors across the country were nodding so violently that we had collective whiplash.<br />
When writing for a publisher, you learn to be overly thankful for every pathetic little grain of positivity that comes your way. A disgustingly awful cover? Smile broadly and say how gorgeous it is. Contracts arrive months after arranged? Whip out your pen and sign with no complaints. You’re eating Ramen noodles while they are taking all of December and January off and while they essentially shutdown during the summer to vacation on the Cape? Slurp your soup and be happy.<br />
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Because of Amazon and other sites, I’m making enough money that I can continue writing. I’m averaging sales of 3,500 books a month, not including the month that Amazon featured "Flat-Out Love" in a list of books for $3.99 and under. That month I sold 45,000 Kindle copies, and sold over 10,000 the next month. Those numbers are insane to me. Absolutely insane. The fact that I continue to sell well a year after the book’s release is humbling. Yes, I wrote a book that has earned me excellent reviews, so I take credit for that, and I worked myself to death finding bloggers to review my book (God bless my loyal bloggers who took a chance on me!), but I have to credit Amazon with giving me such a strong platform with such overwhelming visibility. I can be a writer. I am a writer.<br />
And it’s not just me. Self-published authors, many of whom are writing about college-age characters, are finding viable careers. Abbi Glines, Tammara Webber, Jamie McGuire, Tina Reber, AK Alexander, Angie Stanton, Stephanie Campbell, Colleen Hoover, Liz Reinhardt, and plenty more. I’m seeing more and more traditionally published authors walking away from the headaches and turning to self-publishing. It can be tricky to leave because very often an author needs the advance money in order to survive, and then gets stuck contracted for books that quite likely won’t earn out that advance or won’t ever provide much in terms of royalty checks. When authors break the cycle, get the hell out, and flourish on their own, it’s a wonderful thing.<br />
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Indie writers owe Amazon big time for what they’ve given us. Are they perfect? No. Do they make mistakes? Yep. And they’ll continue to make mistakes. But I promise you that traditional publishers never call up their authors and ask what they can do better. I nearly wet my author pants when I got a call from someone in the Kindle publishing department who wanted to know what publishing and promotional features I’d like to see. He wanted to know all about my experience with them, what I liked, what I didn’t like, and on and on. I was floored. Amazon messed up their sales reporting page not that long ago, and you know what they did? They sent a goddamn email out to their authors explaining what had happened! And then they fixed it! Do you think a big publisher would do that? No, they certainly would not.<br />
But you know what these silly NY publishers are doing? Running around trying to buy now-successful self-published books. I know more than one author who is making $50-150,000 a month (yes, a month) who are getting the most stupidly low offers from big publishers to take over that author’s book. Why would my friends take a $250,000 advance (if even offered that much), take a puny royalty rate, see their sales hurt by higher pricing, and completely give that book up for life? They can and will earn more themselves and continue to reap the benefits of a 70% royalty while maintaining all the rights to their work. If publishers want to play the game, they have to pay according to what authors can make without them. Offer something that we can’t do on our own. Help us, believe in us, support us, and play damn fair for once.<br />
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While I’m certainly not making $150,000 a month, "Flat-Out Love" has done very well for me, and I’m earning enough that I can keep writing. I’m in the middle of another book right now, and I realized that one of the many fabulous things about working for myself is that I have complete freedom to write whatever the hell I want. A publisher certainly could have bought "Flat-Out Love" and signed me for a two or three-book deal. One of the many whopping hitches with that would have been that I’d then have to write another book or two that were in a very similar vein to "Flat-Out Love". But I don’t want to do that. I want to write the book that I am now. The book that has swearing and sex. The book that is darker and edgier. The book that is definitely not for younger readers. A publisher would never have let me do that.<br />
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The New York Times recently ran an article about authors who are now writing two books a year instead of one. Why? Because they need the money. Of course they need the money! Their publishers are gouging them out of money that is rightfully theirs. When I read about one highly successful author who is now writing for fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, I thought, “What a lunatic. That’s not a life.” Look, I don’t think any author needs to release two or three books a year to earn a living. If that’s what you are comfortably able to do creatively speaking, go for it.<br />
Being on a publisher’s deadline to deliver a book every four to six months can be pretty rough. Life gets in the way, and emotions and creativity ebb and flow. Yes, writing is work and requires dedication, but it also has the capacity to be amazingly fun. Publishers, if you ask me, take a dump on much of the good stuff. For now, I’m happy to do one really strong, solid novel once every twelve to eighteen months. If I tried to bang out a book every few months, they would be crummy books, and I would be broke.<br />
What’s funny is that despite loathing publishing houses these days, I actually hope that they pull their act together. They have distribution power. They have dedicated, talented people in the industry. They have the capability to do wonderful things. But for now they are so messed up, so outdated in the way they structure their contracts, and so often very out of touch with what readers want. Smart editors are often ruled by archaic designs. Do I have plans to seek out a publisher? Um, no. I can’t imagine one would take me anyhow. And I wouldn’t consider working with a publisher unless (until?) they make drastic changes to their business model.<br />
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Indie authors are writing for our readers, not for publishers and what they think will sell. And now we can afford to write! And I can assure you that freedom fuels creativity, risk-taking, and passion. We get to bring you our stories in the way we want to tell them, without the dilution and sculpting from publishing houses. And the fans? Oh, the fans are simply unbelievable. We are so directly connected to them, and the ease of communication and feedback is unparalleled. I’m learning what readers want, and I can incorporate that into my work without worrying that an editor will nix all the good stuff. Their support and enthusiasm breathes life into days when I feel particularly challenged.<br />
And there are some spectacularly moving experiences. I’m in a circle of authors who have been dubbed "The Cancer Warriors" because our books have become saving graces for people going through cancer treatment. Readers are escaping hell on earth through our books. We sell smartly priced books with sharp content, books that never would have reached these readers without the ability to self-publish. We get to do our small part to help them fight. Getting to be part of something like this is at the top of my list for why I write. It makes me want to face New York publishers head on and scream, “You see that? Do you see what we’re doing without you?” Indie writing brought me into readers’ lives in ways that I never could have imagined.<br />
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I wouldn’t trade that for all of New York.<br />
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Jessica Park is the author of the novel FLAT-OUT LOVE, the YA novel, RELATIVELY FAMOUS, and the Gourmet Girl mystery series. She also has a few eshorts out: WHAT THE KID SAYS (1 & 2) and FACEBOOKING RICK SPRINGFIELD. She lives in Manchester, NH where she spends an obscene amount time thinking about rocker boys and their guitars, complex caffeinated beverages, and tropical vacations. On the rare occasions that she is able to focus on other things, she writes.<br />
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Source : Huffingtonpost | Indiereader.comUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257742520116587050.post-50594875893339161282012-04-19T05:23:00.000-07:002012-04-19T05:23:32.841-07:00How Scott Sigler used free media to become a best-selling author"I'm writing to give people incredible value for their dollar, not win awards."<br />
<br />
San Francisco-based writer Scott Sigler is a New York Times best-selling novelist. The science fiction and horror writer has a growing fan base, and when he tours the country to promote a book, as he recently did for his new novel "Nocturnal," those same fans show up.<br />
But it wasn't always like this. Scott Sigler used to give away all of his writing for free and says it was the best career move he ever made.<br />
"Meeting the fans is fantastic. But it's the people who already like you [who show up to book readings]," Sigler said in an interview with Yahoo News.<br />
So rewind the clock several years before Sigler had four popular novels released under the Crown Publishing label. He was still a writer but one without a dedicated audience. That's when Sigler began taking an unconventional route toward building his readership: He started giving away his writing for free.<br />
"If they try you out for free, they become lifelong customers. There are so many affordable ways to go find people. For readers, they are respected as intelligent consumers," Sigler said.<br />
Sigler began this process when he started offering readers free access to the book "Earthcore," which he says was the world's first podcast-only novel, released in 20 weekly episodes.<br />
Over the years, Sigler's self-described "junkie" fans have downloaded more than 15 million individual episodes of his stories in this format.<br />
That led to his publishing deal with Crown. But in some ways, it was only the beginning of Sigler's continued use of free media to introduce new readers to his content.<br />
With his publisher's blessing, Sigler began producing video trailers for his novels. <br />
"The greatest advantage of a trailer is the people who stumble upon it. Getting people who would otherwise never hear of you," he said.<br />
He wasn't the first author to have a trailer made for his book. Other famous book trailers like the one for "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" racked up millions of page views. Even cerebral author Thomas Pynchon has a book trailer for his 2009 novel "Inherent Vice." And authors like Cory Doctorow have given away versions of their books for years.<br />
The difference has been in Sigler's do-it-yourself approach. When he produced his first book trailer, Sigler enlisted the help of his fans and film students. Sigler used his own money to fund the projects, even buying food for the artists who helped create his first book trailer.<br />
For "Nocturnal," he worked with artist John Dunivant and animator Kevin Capizzi, and enlisted acclaimed YouTube voice artist Toby Turner to provide the trailer's voice over.<br />
"I wanted a trailer that was in the style of an enhanced comic to reflect the over-the-top content of the story," Sigler said. "I'm thrilled with the trailer. We've gotten better as we go. It's been enormously helpful in selling books."<br />
The idea of giving away content for free is anathema to most authors. Twelve years ago when I was working for a college radio station in Eugene, Oregon, I thought it would be a fun idea to broadcast an audio recording of my favorite author, Harlan Ellison, reading a version of his story, "Paladin of the Lost Hour." I cheerily sent a letter to the famously contentious writer's Kilimanjaro Corporation, informing them of my intentions.<br />
The day the letter arrived at Ellison's offices, I almost immediately found a response note pinned to my mailbox from our station's manager, which read, "Some guy named Harlan Ellison called." The letter then proceeded to describe Ellison's demeanor in a series of colorful expletives.<br />
Naturally, I was terrified. But when I called Ellison back, he couldn't have been more of a gentleman. He simply asked that I mail him a check for any denomination, even one penny. It was the principle. He is a professional writer and was going to be paid for any use of his material.<br />
"The 'Old Guard' of really established guys don't need to do it," Sigler said of his literary predecessors. "They have such a huge audience already. Newer authors and beginning authors have to start thinking about using the Internet to get an audience."<br />
And while Sigler's approach is cutting edge, it is simultaneously a back-to-basics approach to the craft. One of the earliest lessons writers might learn is to read their own material aloud,to check for mistakes and to gauge the general flow of their content. Sigler says recording podcasts of his work has greatly enhanced his own writing.<br />
"It completely changed my style of writing," he said. "When you're reading it out loud, you can kind of hear your pretentiousness. You're not getting any story information; you're just kind of showing off as a writer."<br />
Another benefit Sigler says he gets from sharing his material with fans is an abundance of constructive reader feedback. Along with giving away podcasts of his writing, he interacts with his fans daily through his personal website and other social media outlets like his Twitter account.<br />
The notion of using alternative mediums to promote a writer's work is nothing new. The only real difference between Sigler's approach and the infamous "War of the Worlds" radio program hosted by Orson Welles is that Sigler's listeners know what they're signing up for.<br />
"Aside from books, most of my influences are movies," Sigler said. "I'm a big fan of commercials, the art form of commercials. Sixty seconds that makes people want to go see something."<br />
<br />
By Eric PfeifferUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257742520116587050.post-91123784367786294052012-02-08T00:33:00.000-08:002012-02-08T00:33:14.906-08:00The Breakthrough; The Making And Breaking Of A Career<br><br />
An article every novelist, and aspiring novelist, should read.<br />
This article was first published in the Autumn 2011 issue of The Author. It is reproduced here with the kind permission of the author who, understandably, wishes not to be identified.<br />
‘Don’t worry, your next book will be your breakthrough book.’<br />
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In my 26 year career as a writer, this sentence became a sinister mantra, one of the worse prophecies a writer can hear. And yet I always bought into it. Until the end, when I realised that the more often publishers use the word ‘breakthrough’ alongside a future-tense verb, the more it’s equivalent to a man telling you you’re lousy in bed - but hey, who knows? He’ll give it another shot and maybe the next time you’ll actually perform.<br />
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I was a smug 35-year-old when my first book was published: a straight-to-paperback chick lit romantic comedy. The publishers gave me a launch party, there was Champagne. It was a night full of promise. That book sold well enough to enable me to trade up to a more prestigious publisher and a hardback, which hit the shelves in Sainsbury’s and got more than a few good reviews. However, the sales weren’t great. What I needed, I was told, was a book that would get me on TV and radio, a book that would make me known to the mass market.<br />
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Becoming a mass-market-seeking slut, I switched agents, switched publishers again and came up with an idea that I wanted to write about and which might plug into the reading public’s zeitgeist. It worked. I was on the Richard and Judy early morning show, Sky TV, radio all over the place. And again, great reviews.<br />
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This time, as the sales figures dribbled in, no one could explain why I hadn’t done it, why I hadn’t broken through. But that was OK, I shouldn’t worry, the next one would.<br />
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The downward slope is a humiliating one. There soon came a point when I was no longer invited to speak at sales conferences or even attend them. Advances dropped. Once, when my editor left her job, I had lunch with her successor who spent the entire time telling me how great her other authors were. At some point, she nonchalantly informed me, she would get around to reading one of my books. At meetings with my publishers, the people who showed up weren’t the Premiership players anymore. They were very nice, gave me cups of coffee, and explained why the higher-ups weren’t going to spend any money on advertising. And that’s when I heard the second most loathsome phrase to a writer’s ears: ‘No need to worry. We know this book will get a lot of word-of-mouth publicity’. Which translates into: ‘Don’t even think we might shell out any money to promote you’.<br />
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‘Word-of-mouth’ are the last words out of publishers’ mouths before: ‘We’re not renewing your contract’. Altogether, I’d had seven novels published, been translated into twelve languages, garnered praise from all the big newspapers - as well as one review which had me cowering in bed for a week - and still managed not to earn out my advances. Of course my contract wasn’t renewed.<br />
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In a way, it was a relief to be dropped. I was getting too old to do chick lit, and I dreaded every visit I made to the publishers, knowing I’d see posters on the wall and books in all the bookshelves, none of which would have anything to do with my work. Coffee became a glass of mineral water. I began to dream of working in a dry cleaning place, figuring it would be fairly difficult to envy other dry cleaners.<br />
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But then I had a great idea for a book. Not chick lit, but a psychological thriller. Everyone said it was a brilliant idea. I knew this was the one. All I had to do was change my name so no one would be looking at previous sales figures. I wrote it, without a contract. My agent loved it. There was that momentary pang of ‘uh oh’ when it didn’t go to auction, because I knew: if there had been a bidding war, they’d have spent money promoting it. But I deep-sixed that fear. I’d sold it to a great publisher, my editor thought it was terrific, other people in the building had stayed up all night reading it, Tesco’s took it, not only took it but made it their Tesco Book of the Month. Breakthrough time.<br />
<br />
Otherwise known as Catch 22 time. The little Tesco Book of the Month sticker didn’t make people buy a book they’d never heard of. One which had no reviews and hadn’t been advertised anywhere, because, as I was told, I’d changed my name; ‘new’ writers with straight-to-paperback thrillers almost never got reviews. And all the money allocated to promoting it had gone on getting it into Tesco’s in the first place. There I was, right back to word-of-mouth. Apparently the book-reading public had taken a vow of silence.<br />
<br />
Three months later it was published in America. I happened to be in New York when I picked up a copy of People magazine and found a rave review of my book in it. Ecstatic, I emailed my American editor and said wow! People magazine, this is great. She emailed back saying she had no idea it was in People. Which issue of People?<br />
<br />
Which issue? It was Thanksgiving weekend, when more Americans travel than they do at any other point in the year. They’d buy magazines for those train and plane trips, they’d read this review. Everyone in the US reads People. By the time I got to my laptop to email her, I’d had 50 emails from friends congratulating me. My editor didn’t say she’d been in rehab or dogsledding in Lapland; all she said was which issue? My disbelief quotient at that point was nothing compared to what it was when I subsequently checked US Amazon and found that the only way to get a copy of my book was to pay $100 for it. My editor explained that they’d sold out of their ‘whopping’ 8,000 print-run and it would take some time to reprint. It took three weeks.<br />
<br />
Their next print-run, all of 2000 copies, sold out immediately again. The price ratcheted up to 100 bucks a copy for another two weeks, by which time that issue of People had disappeared - even from dentist’s waiting rooms. ‘We dropped the ball on that one,’ my editor subsequently told my agent. No, they didn’t drop the ball. They dropped a five ton block of cement on my career.<br />
<br />
The second of my two-book deal with my English publisher lies peacefully inert somewhere on the ocean floor. I’d transitioned from the woman who wasn’t good enough in bed to the man who couldn’t get it up. Four publishers, four agents and six editors later, I’m finished. And now positively basking in the pleasure of not receiving royalty statements with a zero at the end and in the pure joy of never having to hear the following:<br />
<br />
‘August is a good month to publish, really.’<br />
‘October is a good month to publish - it isn’t August.’<br />
‘February’s a great month - it’s not August or October’.<br />
‘In retrospect, maybe it should have been a hardcover.’<br />
‘In retrospect, it should have been an original paperback.’<br />
‘In retrospect maybe the jacket was wrong.’<br />
‘You’re going to get great word-of-mouth on this one.’<br />
‘This one’s your breakthrough’.<br />
‘Sorry, we’re out of mineral water, but here’s a glass of tap.’Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257742520116587050.post-38090682284028986652012-01-25T00:17:00.000-08:002012-02-11T01:22:47.315-08:00Amazon is going away as a data sourceAt Goodreads, we make it a priority to use book information from the most reliable and open data sources, because it helps us build the best experience for our members. To that end, we're making a major change.<br />
<br />
On January 30, Goodreads will no longer display book information that comes from Amazon.<br />
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Amazon's data has been great for us for many years, but the terms that come with it have gotten more and more restrictive, and we were finally forced to come to the conclusion that moving to other datasources will be better for Goodreads and our members in so many ways that we had to do it. It may be a little painful, but our aim is to make it as seamless as possible for all our members.<br />
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Amazon data that we will stop using includes data such as titles, author names, page counts, and publication dates. For the vast majority of book editions, we are currently importing this data from other sources. Once the imports are done, those few remaining editions for which we haven't found an alternative source of information will be removed from Goodreads.<br />
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Member ratings, reviews, and bookshelves are safe, but your data may be moved to a different edition of the book. If we can't find a matching edition, then your review will be attached to a book with no title or author. But the good news is that there's a way you can help.<br />
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Today, we are announcing new tools to help Goodreads Librarians source data for the books that need rescuing.<br />
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To view these new tools, click here and click "rescue me!" next to any of the books on the list. You will then see a form with data to fill in and some helpful guidelines for where to locate said data.<br />
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Early next week, we will be importing a database of 14 million ISBNs from a new source, so many of the books that seem to need rescue today may not actually be in jeopardy. We won't know until we import this new data source. So please don't spend a lot of time rescuing books—we don't want you to do unnecessary work. What we really need is for everyone to try rescuing a few books to see if the tools are working as we hoped. That way, once next week rolls around, we'll be ready to get down to the business or rescuing the books that actually are in jeopardy.<br />
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Thanks for helping Goodreads remain the amazing resource and special place it is. Hopefully all of this work will result in an even more robust Goodreads database, a database that, with your help, is already one of the best book databases in the world, and will last the ages.<br />
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The rescue link: http://www.goodreads.com/rescue_books/at...<br />
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Update: There have been many questions about Kindle Editions and books in the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) program. As these editions are unique to Amazon, there are no alternative data sources. We anticipate keeping these, and will bend over backwards for all our authors who publish via Kindle to make sure their readers on Goodreads have a smooth transition.<br />
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<b>Amazon Publishing bookshop boycott grows</b><br />
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Independent booksellers join Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million and Canadian chain Indigo in refusing to stock retail giant's own books<br />
The cold war between north American booksellers and Amazon has hotted up this week, with the booksellers joining together to announce that they will not be selling any of the titles published by the online retailer.<br />
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The opening salvo was fired last week by America's biggest book chain Barnes & Noble, when it announced that it would not be stocking Amazon Publishing's books. The website publishes a large range of titles, with imprints covering everything from romance to thrillers, and major authors including Deepak Chopra and self-help guru Timothy Ferriss.<br />
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"Our decision is based on Amazon's continued push for exclusivity with publishers, agents and the authors they represent," said Jaime Carey, chief merchandising officer, in a statement. "These exclusives have prohibited us from offering certain ebooks to our customers. Their actions have undermined the industry as a whole and have prevented millions of customers from having access to content. It's clear to us that Amazon has proven they would not be a good publishing partner to Barnes & Noble, as they continue to pull content off the market for their own self-interest."<br />
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Barnes & Noble's 705 stores were quickly joined by Canada's 247-shop Indigo Books and Music, with vice-president Janet Eger saying to Canadian press that the retailer would also not be stocking Amazon's books on the grounds that "Amazon's actions are not in the long-term interests of the reading public or the publishing and book retailing industry, globally". The US's second largest bricks and mortar book retailer Books-A-Million followed suit, entering the fray late last week when it told Publishers Weekly that its 200 stores would not carry Amazon Publishing's titles either.<br />
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Now the US's independent booksellers have joined the boycott, with the American Booksellers Association's e-commerce platform for independent stores, IndieCommerce, beginning the process of removing all Amazon titles from its database, according to Publishers Weekly.<br />
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"While Amazon is seeking to distribute its print catalogue through conventional means, it seems that they are simultaneously pursuing a strategy of locking in ebook exclusives which other retailers are not allowed to sell. IndieCommerce believes that this is wrong," wrote director Matt Supko, in an email to independent booksellers. He also stated that "only publishers' titles that are made available to retailers for sale in all available formats will be included in the IndieCommerce inventory database".<br />
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The latest clash between Amazon and its bricks-and-mortar counterparts follows anger from US booksellers before Christmas, after Amazon.com offered a discount to customers who looked at items for sale on the high street and then bought them online. ABA wrote an open letter to Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos at the time, calling the promotion "the latest in a series of steps to expand your market at the expense of cities and towns nationwide, stripping them of their unique character and the financial wherewithal to pay for essential needs like schools, fire and police departments, and libraries".<br />
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Source : Guardian | GoodreadsUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257742520116587050.post-19336088064104508142012-01-25T00:15:00.000-08:002012-01-25T00:22:49.306-08:00Amazon removes incest-related erotica titles from store, Kindle archive<br><br />
A discussion thread on Amazon’s Kindle Community forum notes that Amazon has begun removing some previously-published books or stories from its store, and from the Kindle archives. Readers who have previously downloaded them to their Kindles can keep them there, but cannot re-download them (and will be refunded the price of purchase assuming Amazon can still find the purchase record).<br />
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The story whose removal sparked the discussion was an erotica title called Wicked Lovely by author Jess C. Scott. The tale dealt with incest, and involved a love scene between a 17- and an 18-year-old. However, Amazon would not tell Scott specifically what caused the removal of her novel. The only response she has received, after repeatedly trying to contact Amazon for more information, is a form letter:<br />
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Dear Publisher,<br />
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As stated in our content guidelines, we reserve the right to determine what content we consider to be appropriate. This content includes both the cover art image and the content within the book.<br />
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Best regards,<br />
<br />
Amazon Customer Service<br />
http://www.amazon.com<br />
<br />
Further down the thread, author Selena Kitt notes that Jess is not the only author to have had works removed.<br />
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Incest books (and they seem to be currently targeting incest – whether characters are eighteen or not in the book in question – all of my characters are eighteen or older and there is an explicit warning at the beginning of each book making that clear) are being pulled from Amazon as we speak. I’ve had three removed. Esmerelda Greene has had at least one pulled. There are several others that have disappeared as well.<br />
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A number of participants in the discussion compare this to the pedophilia how-to guide removal of last month, in which Amazon first said it would not be removing a book due to its commitment to principles of free speech—and then abruptly yanked it after all a couple of hours later.<br />
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On the other hand, I wonder how much this might have to do with the big news story that broke recently of a Columbia University professor being arrested for a three-year “consensual” sexual relationship with his 24-year-old daughter. If incest is a hot topic in the news right now, it might be that Amazon is trying to preempt complaints from people who might search for “incest” on Amazon and then be offended when they find it—or it could be reacting to such complaints from people who already have.<br />
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Amazon has done this sort of thing before, of course. The example everyone remembers is the improperly-sold George Orwell titles that were actually removed from Kindles as well as from the store, leading Jeff Bezos to apologize and promise not to do that again. But if you web-search “amazonfail”, the top results point to a more apt example: Amazon’s 2009 self-admittedly “embarrassing and ham-fisted” removal of 57,000 gay-and-lesbian-themed books from its sales rankings and search algorithms.<br />
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Jess C. Scott points out:<br />
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The content guidelines on Amazon do not have clear guidelines as to what is considered as "acceptable" in the erotica genre. I see other similarly-themed books still available for purchase, and see books with the subjects of rape, bestiality, etc, available for purchase (books that have not been deleted from Amazon’s catalog). If underage sex is illegal, why is Vladimir Nabokov’s "Lolita" still available for purchase?<br />
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Whatever your feelings are concerning incest, or its portrayal in fiction, every book in the entire “erotica” genre probably contains something that will be offensive to someone. And yet it is also one of the best-selling genres in electronic literature.<br />
And Amazon’s failure to define clear categories or to provide an explanation of where the bright lines are could have a chilling effect on writers similar to that of Apple’s often-arbitrary app store rejections of the last few years on developers. How can you know whether any given story dealing with risqué issues will be considered acceptable?<br />
Of course, Amazon is under no obligation to carry any title it deems offensive—it’s only a violation of the First Amendment if the government or a government-connected body acts to prohibit speech—but hopefully it will provide some further explanation of what the grounds for rejection are.<br />
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Source : TelereadUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257742520116587050.post-8687682501858752012012-01-25T00:13:00.000-08:002012-01-25T00:14:22.928-08:00Is Apple’s Dismal iBooks Author Software License Even Enforceable?It seems Dan Wineman was the first to sound the alarm, with Ed Bott using his soapbox at ZDNet to shout it from the rooftops: Apple’s new “free” iBooks Author program, which allows authors to create their own professional layouts while they write books, includes an astonishingly greedy and overbearing clause in its end-user license agreement (“EULA”):<br />
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B. Distribution of your Work. As a condition of this License and provided you are in compliance with its terms, your Work may be distributed as follows:<br />
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(i) if your Work is provided for free (at no charge), you may distribute the Work by any available means;<br />
(ii) if your Work is provided for a fee (including as part of any subscription-based product or<br />
service), you may only distribute the Work through Apple and such distribution is subject to the following limitations and conditions: (a) you will be required to enter into a separate written agreement with Apple (or an Apple affiliate or subsidiary) before any commercial distribution of your Work may take place; and (b) Apple may determine for any reason and in its sole discretion not to select your Work for distribution.<br />
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Apple will not be responsible for any costs, expenses, damages, losses (including without limitation lost business opportunities or lost profits) or other liabilities you may incur as a result of your use of this Apple Software, including without limitation the fact that your Work may not be selected for distribution by Apple.<br />
<br />
As Bott explains, “The nightmare scenario under this agreement? You create a great work of staggering literary genius that you think you can sell for 5 or 10 bucks per copy. You craft it carefully in iBooks Author. You submit it to Apple. They reject it. Under this license agreement, you are out of luck. They won’t sell it, and you can’t legally sell it elsewhere. You can give it away, but you can’t sell it.”<br />
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Jason Gilbert at Huffington Post considers the problems in enforcing the EULA as a “contract of adhesion” (because it’s included in the license and you have no ability to negotiate it) and as including “unconscionable” terms (a rare legal doctrine that courts virtually never apply). But there’s a more fundamental problem: the terms are unenforceable under the Copyright Act.<br />
<br />
There are two types of licenses under copyright law, an exclusive license and a nonexclusive license. Here’s how they differ:<br />
<br />
In an exclusive license, the copyright holder permits the licensee to use the protected material for a specific use and further promises that the same permission will not be given to others. The licensee violates the copyright by exceeding the scope of this license. …<br />
<br />
By contrast, in the case of an implied nonexclusive license, the licensor-creator of the work, by granting an implied nonexclusive license, does not transfer ownership of the copyright to the licensee. The copyright owner simply permits the use of a copyrighted work in a particular manner.<br />
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IAE, INC. v. Shaver, 74 F.3d 768, 775 (7th Cir. 1996).<br />
<br />
The iBooks Author EULA plainly tries to create an exclusive license: Apple claims, in essence, the copyright holder [that's the author] permits the licensee [that's Apple] to use the protected material for a specific use [the iBooks store] and further promises that the same permission will not be given to others [that's the 'you may only distribute the Work through Apple' part].<br />
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Here’s the problem: under the Copyright Act, an exclusive license is defined by 17 U.S.C. § 101 as a “transfer of copyright ownership,” and under 17 U.S.C. § 204 such a transfer “is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance, or a note or memorandum of the transfer, is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed.”<br />
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Of course, Apple doesn’t ask anyone to sign anything before using iBooks Author. There’s a lot of debate over whether a “shrink-wrap” or “click-wrap” license is enforceable (here’s an older post of mine, too), with most courts evaluating them on a case-by-case basis, but there’s no doubt that ‘using a program’ isn’t the same thing as ‘signing a written document granting an exclusive license in a copyrighted work.’<br />
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Apple seems to have recognized that problem: the EULA demands “you will be required to enter into a separate written agreement with Apple (or an Apple affiliate or subsidiary) before any commercial distribution of your Work may take place.” They’re probably relying on the Eden Toys line of court holdings, which agree that an exclusive license can’t be granted without a signed, written document, but also permit copyright holders to subsequently ratify in writing an informally granted exclusive license:<br />
<br />
Under the pre-1978 copyright law, exclusive licenses could be granted orally or by conduct. Id., § 10.03[B][1], at 10-37 (1980). Under the new Copyright Act, however, Eden’s claim of an informal grant of an exclusive license seemingly must fail in light of the statute of frauds provision of the new Act, which states that an exclusive license “is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance, or a note or memorandum of the transfer, is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed….” 17 U.S.C. § 204(a) (Supp. IV 1980). However, since the purpose of the provision is to protect copyright holders from persons mistakenly or fraudulently claiming oral licenses, the “note or memorandum of the transfer” need not be made at the time when the license is initiated; the requirement is satisfied by the copyright owner’s later execution of a writing which confirms the agreement.<br />
<br />
Eden Toys, Inc. v. Florelee Undergarment Co., Inc., 697 F. 2d 27 (2d Cir. 1982).<br />
<br />
Which means that, in the end, the iBooks Author EULA leaves both Apple and the author in a strange stand-off: Apple doesn’t actually have the right to tell the author not to take their work somewhere else, but the author can’t do that without breaching the EULA — even though they retain full rights in their copyright.<br />
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But Apple has been too clever by half here: if an author does breach the EULA (by not subsequently signing the written agreement after having used the “free” software) and distributes their iBooks-created-work elsewhere, what are Apple’s damages? Because Apple doesn’t have a copyright interest in the book (like an exclusive license), they can’t claim lost royalties as the damage. Instead, they have to claim that an author breached the EULA of a program that users did not have to pay for in money.<br />
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[Update: Some readers have opined, in essence, that breaching a EULA is copyright infringement. Not necessarily so; see the Glider World-of-Warcraft case I wrote about. (The court opinion itself is available here.) Is the iBooks Author exclusive licensing provision a "condition" or a "covenant?" I'm going with covenant, because it's a promise to do something in the future, i.e. sign the subsequent written exclusive licensing agreement.]<br />
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How did this happen? By Apple stupidly overreaching. The Copyright Act includes § 204 for the precise purpose of preventing companies like Apple from trying to swindle creators of their works out from under of them, but Apple apparently has such low confidence in their own iBooks store that they don’t think any author will use it unless they believe, mistakenly, that they have to.<br />
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Frankly, I hope this incident causes some people to re-evaluate their opinion of Apple, if they still have a positive opinion of the company after the negative media attention following Steve Jobs’ death. As the New York Times recently reported, iPhones and iPads are made in China, not America, for two simple reasons: because Apple relies on labor conditions of the sort our great-grandparents fought at great personal risk to make illegal and because the Chinese government subsidizes their manufacturer’s infrastructure. That’s not “thinking differently,” as Apple mischaracterizes itself in its advertising. It is greed, pure and simple.<br />
<br />
<br />
By Max Kennerly, Esq.<br />
via litigationandtrialUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257742520116587050.post-61137783657103079942012-01-24T05:42:00.001-08:002012-01-24T05:45:41.139-08:00Bad ReviewsDont freak if you get a bad review!!!<br />
Have a look at some of the worst reviews some of the world famous bestsellers around the world have got!<br />
Any time you get a one star review, check some of these reviews and remember a bad review does not mean that your writing sucks.<br />
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“the story is terrible, the characters are completely uninteresting, and this idea has been overused.” The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams<br />
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“It was about a bunch of rabbits which I just could not have cared less about.” Watership Down, Richard Adams<br />
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“I would rather read Twilight twelve more times than read this again.” Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen<br />
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“The first major error in this book is its plot. It is just so tedious.” Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury<br />
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“Overwrought, Vindictive, Dysfunctional and Insane.” Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte<br />
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“This bratty girl’s practically non-existent parents die. Then she feels bad for herself all the time.” The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett<br />
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“Just people acting stupidly for no apparent reason except to be disagreeable.” Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll<br />
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“midevil night tales. not humorous. “ Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra<br />
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“I had to stop reading such bad writing. The detective immediately started to overlook obvious clues.” Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie<br />
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“The main character wasn’t likeable at all.” A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens<br />
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“It more made me angry because of how it has been elevated, even more so now that it’s an Oprah book.” Great Expectations, Charles Dickens<br />
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“I knew exactly how the book was going to end, so I couldn’t bring myself to finish it.” Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky<br />
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“I’m kind of a sucker for true crime. But UGH. BORING.” An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser<br />
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“absurd swashbuckling adventure” The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas<br />
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“This book is pointless. Nothing happens in the entire book.” The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald<br />
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“I think simply dropping a group of kids on a desert island does not in fact prove anything.” Lord of the Flies, William Golding<br />
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“The theme became repetitive and i got bored and had to put it down.” Catch-22, Joseph Heller<br />
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“Decent world building. All the rest range from sub-par to terrible.” Dune, Frank Herbert<br />
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“I know there’s a good story in there somewhere but it gets lost in unending, ridiculous, irrelevant dialogue.” The Iliad, Homer<br />
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“The existential plight of a man turning into a bug was utterly dull for me. “ The Metamorphisis, Franz Kafka<br />
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“The book is verbatim the movie. I wasn’t impressed.” One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey<br />
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“This is the first book that I’ve read by Stephen King that isn’t about the Red Sox and I think King and I should stick to baseball.” The Stand, Stephen King<br />
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“I couldn’t get on with it. too Slow and doesn’t work as a whodunnit because we now have DNA evidence.” To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee<br />
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“First, C.S. Lewis… is not a good writer, plain and simple.” Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis<br />
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“It was really bad and like everyone dies.” The Call of the Wild, Jack London<br />
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“No inner heart, no longing, no sense of people, of desire, of inner worlds and struggles.” One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez<br />
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“I really didn’t like how Eve was portrayed throughout the book or Satan for that matter.” Paradise Lost, John Milton<br />
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“Scarlet is a raging evil snarky miserable bitch and I hate her.” Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell<br />
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“blah blah I hate America blah blah I’m smart blah blah I’m from Europe blah blah.” Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov<br />
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“Did not like this book at all, if i could give it a less than 1 I would. This book is way to confusing and uses really big words.” 1984, George Orwell<br />
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“So the whole damn story can be boiled down to “popular kid gets away with doing what he wants”. How original.” Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, J.K. Rowling<br />
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“It was filled with language and a lifestyle that was offensive to me.” The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger<br />
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“Lord, could Romeo be anymore of a girl? Obviously Juliet wore the pants in the relationship.” Romeo & Juliet, William Shakespeare<br />
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“Victor comes across as an extremely sad and hapless figure.” Frankenstein, Mary Shelley<br />
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“A book about miserable poor people.” A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith<br />
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“The dialogue was horrific. The story was bad. The ending was creepy, weird, and made me wonder what the heck it meant.” The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck<br />
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“it is incredibly flowery, particularly strange given the “thriller” genre that it tries being a part of.” Dracula, Bram Stoker<br />
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“This is not a book, this is propaganda on a stick.” Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe<br />
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“He never tries to look at things from someone else’s point of view.” Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau<br />
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“What is seriously lacking in Tolkien’s world is any original idea or just imagination in general.” The Lord of The Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien<br />
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“This book is bloated old piece of crap. How this even got published in the first place is beyond me.” War & Peace, Leo Tolstoy<br />
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“A horrid book which was like every other book that takes part in this time period about a little boy who has an overactive imagination which just gets boring after a while and it amazes me that people can find pleasure in this incredibly horrible book.” The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain<br />
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“a storyline that never seemed to have a point.” Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Jules Verne<br />
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“Slaughterhouse-Five represents a total failure of imagination.” Slaughterhouse Five: A Novel, Kurt Vonnegut<br />
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“Arachnophobia is real, and being forced to read this in 4th grade gave me nightmares for months.” Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White<br />
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“There is almost no action, and way too much talk.” The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde<br />
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“I remember finding the rhyming annoying.” Green Eggs and Ham, Dr. Seuss<br />
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So,there Cheer up and Keep Writing!!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257742520116587050.post-76802015441530142752012-01-24T05:41:00.000-08:002012-01-24T05:41:41.050-08:00The Bestseller CodeThe web site www.thebestsellercode.com is fascinating. Through some mysterious algorithm it evaluates about 500 words of your novel and grades it on a scale of one to twenty (1 to 20).Someone took the first page and a half and plugged it into the test. It scored 20.0. A Perfect Score!<br />
The first page and a half from a recent unsolicited novel and plugged it into the test showed only scored 4.6…out of 20.The comparison of a bestselling author to an unschooled first-timer was an astounding (20.0 vs. 4.6).Go to the site and get your score.A computer cannot tell if yours is a good story or not. It can only compare word choices and number of syllables. It has no sense of style or storytelling ability. This is simply a fun way to look at the structure and craft of your writing.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257742520116587050.post-44608522827285383722012-01-19T06:23:00.000-08:002012-01-20T08:08:29.293-08:00Apple to announce tools, platform to "digitally destroy" textbook publishingApple is slated to announce the fruits of its labor on improving the use of technology in education at its special media event on Thursday, January 19. While speculation has so far centered on digital textbooks, sources close to the matter have confirmed to Ars that Apple will announce tools to help create interactive e-books—the "GarageBand for e-books," so to speak—and expand its current platform to distribute them to iPhone and iPad users.<br />
Along with the details we were able to gather from our sources, we also spoke to two experts in the field of digital publishing to get a clearer picture of the significance of what Apple is planning to announce.<br />
So far, Apple has largely embraced the ePub 2 standard for its iBooks platform, though it has added a number of HTML5-based extensions to enable the inclusion of video and audio for some limited interaction. The recently-updated ePub 3 standard obviates the need for these proprietary extensions, which in some cases make iBook-formatted e-books incompatible with other e-reader platforms. Apple is expected to announce support for the ePub 3 standard for iBooks going forward.<br />
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<b>GarageBand for e-books</b><br />
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At the same time, however, authoring standards-compliant e-books (despite some promises to the contrary) is not as simple as running a Word document of a manuscript through a filter. The current state of software tools continues to frustrate authors and publishers alike, with several authors telling Ars that they wish Apple or some other vendor would make a simple app that makes the process as easy as creating a song in GarageBand.<br />
Our sources say Apple will announce such a tool on Thursday.<br />
And Inkling CEO Matt MacInnis agrees that such a move would be very likely. MacInnis previously worked on education projects at Apple before leaving the company in 2009 to pursue his own ideas about creating interactive digital books. Inkling currently offers a variety of digital textbooks with interactive features, including the ability to share notes with classmates and instructors, via an iPad app.<br />
"When you think about what Apple is doing... they are selling tens of thousands of iPads into K-12 institutions," MacInnis told Ars. "What are they doing with those iPads? They don't really replace textbooks, because there's not very much content on offer," he said.<br />
Don't expect that content to come directly from Apple, however. "Practically speaking, Apple does not want to get into the content publishing business," MacInnis said. Like the music and movie industries, Apple has instead built a distribution platform as well as hardware to consume it—but Apple isn't a record label or production studio.<br />
But what Apple does provide is industry-leading tools for content production, such as Logic or Final Cut Pro, to help create content. The company also produces tools like GarageBand or iMovie that make such production accessible to a much wider audience.<br />
Will Apple launch a sort of GarageBand for e-books? "That's what we believe you're about to see," MacInnis told Ars (and our other sources agree). "Publishing something to ePub is very similar to publishing web content. Remember iWeb? That iWeb code didn't just get flushed down the toilet—I think you'll see some of [that code] repurposed."<br />
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<b>Mobile, social learning</b><br />
<br />
Technology-in-education expert Dr. William Rankin also believes digital books will expand with tools that will enable social interactions among textbook users. Rankin, who serves as Director of Educational Innovation of Abilene Christian University and has extensively researched the use of mobile devices in the classroom, was one of three authors of a white paper on the effects of digital convergence on learning titled "Code/X," published in 2009.<br />
In that document, Rankin and his colleagues laid out their vision for the future of learning, which included an always-on, always-networked digital device called a "Talos." That device turned out to be very similar to the iPad that Apple announced just six months later.<br />
"What we saw coming was a change in the kinds of places that learning would happen," Rankin told Ars. Since the device would always be with the student, it would give her access to information anytime and anywhere. "For that, you need a different kind of book."<br />
Such digital texts would let students interact with information in visual ways, such as 3D models, graphs, and videos. They would also allow students to create links to additional texts, audio, and other supporting materials. Furthermore, students could share those connections with classmates and colleagues.<br />
"What we really believe is important is the role of social networking in a converged learning environment," Rankin told Ars. "We're already seeing that in Inkling's platform, and Kno's journaling feature. Future digital texts should allow students to layer all kinds of other data, such as pictures, and notes, and then share that with the class or, ideally, anyone."<br />
Exactly how what Apple announces on Thursday will impact digital publishing isn't certain, however.<br />
"Think about how meaningful simply authoring and publishing to an iPad will be for K-12," MacInnis said. "However, it might not be great for molecular biology."<br />
MacInnis sees Apple as possibly up-ending the traditional print publishing model for the low-end, where basic information has for many years remained locked behind high textbook prices. Apple can "kick up dust with the education market," which could then create visibility for platforms like Inkling. These platforms could then serve as a sort of professional Logic-type tool for interactive textbook creation to complement Apple's "GarageBand for e-books."<br />
"There will be a spectrum of tools and consumers, and we will continue to fit on that spectrum," MacInnis opined. "I don't know if the publishing industry will react to it with fear or enthusiasm."<br />
<br />
<b>Steve Jobs' pet project</b><br />
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We know that former Apple CEO Steve Jobs was working on addressing learning and digital textbooks for some time, according to Walter Issacson's biography. Jobs believed that textbook publishing was an "$8 billion a year industry ripe for digital destruction."<br />
According to our sources close to his efforts, however, Jobs' personal involvement was perhaps more significant that even his biography purports. Jobs worked on this project for several years, and our understanding is that the final outcome was slated to be announced in October 2011 in conjunction with the iPhone 4S. Those plans were postponed at the last minute, perhaps due to Jobs' imminent death.<br />
Despite the delay, however, ACU's Rankin believes the time is right for a change to happen in the field. "We're headed toward a completely digital future at ACU," he told Ars. "A recent study showed that 82 percent of all higher education students nationwide will come to campus with a smartphone. We need to have resources and tools ready for these mobile, connected students."<br />
<br />
By Chris Foresman<br />
arstechnica.com<br />
<br />
<hr><b>Apple Announces iBooks 2, A New Textbook Experience For The iPad</b><br />
<br />
“Education is deep in our DNA, and it has been since the very beginning,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s SVP of Worldwide Marketing. On that thought Apple just announced iBooks 2.<br />
This move is centered around reinvent the textbook. Schiller explained today that Apple sees textbooks as amazing devices, but they’re heavy, not searchable or durable. According to Apple the iPad is the perfect counter. It’s portable, durable, interactive, searchable, current and capable of containing even richer content.<br />
“Kids are really going to love to learn with iBooks,” said Phil Schiller<br />
The platform embraces interactive textbooks. Pinch to zoom on DNA strands, watch videos about the Hindenburg, experience learning in an interactive fashion. The words are still there. Apple is just making learning a bit more exciting.<br />
Apple claims that this will reinvent textbooks. It will allow the iPad to become a text book of sorts. Schiller started out the conference by proudly proclaiming that at least 1.5 million educational institutions use iPads. The goal here is to make those iPads a bit more functional.<br />
The iBooks 2 also brings quizzes to the tablet, which are also interactive in a new way. Students might be asked to tap on a portion of the map to identify something.<br />
Searching for definitions in iBooks 2 is as easy tapping the word and they aren’t limited to just a block of text. They can also include videos and pictures.<br />
iBooks 2 is available starting today as a free download.<br />
This announcement puts Kno in a bad position. iBooks 2 packs many of Kno’s prime features into a native iPad app. Kno might have the edge with content, though. The company has long worked with the top education publishers and has an impressive library of textbooks. Kno, as a 3rd party app, has the advantage of being able to embrace other platforms like the web and Android where iBooks 2 will likely remain only on the iPad. If Android is to explode, Kno might be able to springboard to victory (that’s a big “if” though). <br />
Apple also announced that Pearson, McGraw Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt have signed on as partners. “I can’t overemphasize the importance of these partners working with us,” said Schiller. Starting today, several high-school text books are available for downloading for $14.99 each. These books are currently in school and used by more than four million high school students. More will be available soon.<br />
<br />
Source : TechCrunchUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257742520116587050.post-53269359383554154012012-01-14T02:04:00.001-08:002012-01-14T02:05:20.250-08:00Customers Love Kindle Owners’ Lending LibraryKindle Owners’ Lending Library now over 75,000 books<br />
<br />
KDP Select books were borrowed 295,000 times in December<br />
<br />
Due to strong customer adoption, Amazon adds $200,000 bonus to January fund — an increase from $500,000 to $700,000<br />
<br />
The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library is off to a strong start: customers borrowed 295,000 KDP Select titles in December alone, and KDP Select has helped grow total library selection to over 75,000 books. With the $500,000 December fund, KDP authors have earned $1.70 per borrow. In response to strong customer adoption of the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (as well as seasonal, post-holiday use of new Kindles), Amazon.com, Inc. has added a $200,000 bonus to the January KDP Select fund, raising the total pool from $500,000 to $700,000.<br />
<br />
Paid KDP sales grew rapidly in December — and results show that paid sales of titles participating in KDP Select are growing even faster than other KDP titles. On top of this growth in paid sales, KDP Select authors and publishers on average are receiving an incremental 26% in December as a result of their participation in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.<br />
<br />
“KDP Select appears to be earning authors more money in two ways. We knew customers would love having KDP Select titles in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. But we’ve been surprised by how much paid sales of those same titles increased, even relative to the rest of KDP,” said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content. “Due to this early success and a seasonally strong January, we’re adding a $200,000 bonus to January’s KDP Select fund, growing this month’s total pool to $700,000.”<br />
<br />
The top ten KDP Select authors earned over $70,000 in the month of December from their participation in the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, a 30% increase on top of the royalties they earned from their paid sales on the same titles in the same period. In total (paid sales plus their share of the loan fund), these authors saw their royalties grow an astonishing 449% month-over-month from November to December. The list of top 10 KDP Select authors includes Carolyn McCray, Rachel Yu, the Grabarchuk family and Amber Scott.<br />
<br />
Carolyn McCray, a writer of paranormal romance novels, historical thrillers and mysteries, earned $8,250 from the KDP Select fund in December. “KDP Select truly is a career altering program,” said McCray. “I couldn't be happier with the tools, support and exposure it has given me. To say the trade-off of exclusivity on Amazon for the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library has been a profitable one would be a gross understatement. Participating in KDP Select has quadrupled my royalties.”<br />
<br />
Rachel Yu is a 16-year-old author of children's books, and she earned $6,200 from the KDP Select fund in the month of December. “It’s so cool to be part of the success of KDP Select,” said Yu. “It's just like a library but with easier access. There's truly no other opportunity like Amazon for self-publishing.”<br />
<br />
The Grabarchuk family earned $6,300 from the KDP Select fund in December from their puzzle books. “After only a month KDP Select has dramatically changed things — finally indie publishers are playing as equals with the big publishing houses in the world's biggest eBook marketplace,” said Serhiy Grabarchuk, Co-Founder of the Grabarchuk Puzzles company.<br />
<br />
Amber Scott is a romance writer and earned $7,650 from the KDP Select fund in December. “Enrolling in KDP Select utterly transformed my career,” said Scott. “I've experienced not only a surge in royalties but a surge in readership thanks to the increased exposure. I love the chance to earn new readers through the innovation of the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. What an exciting time to be an author!”<br />
<br />
Since launching Kindle Owners’ Lending Library on November 2, Prime members with Kindles can now choose from over 75,000 books to borrow for free—including over 100 current and former New York Times Bestsellers—as frequently as a book a month, with no due dates.<br />
<br />
Source: Amazon.com, IncUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257742520116587050.post-87547388150958538262012-01-14T02:03:00.000-08:002012-01-14T02:03:37.146-08:00Authors making a bundle through Kindle Direct PublishingAmazon seems intent upon further disrupting the already roiling publishing industry and is apparently succeeding.<br />
<br />
The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library is off to a strong start: customers borrowed 295,000 Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select titles in December alone, and KDP Select has helped grow total library selection to over 75,000 books.<br />
KDP lets authors publish their works directly through Amazon rather than first going through traditional print publishers and a number of them are making much better money than likely via traditional means.<br />
We’re about to finish the first book we borrowed from the Kindle Lending Library. Amazon Prime members can borrow a book a month. A word of warning – many of the KDP select titles suffer from relatively amateurish writing and poor editing, judging from the samples we’ve read and comments we see online. Some, however, are entertaining reads, if not exactly great literature.<br />
<br />
In any event, it is providing authors with another route to publication and profits.<br />
With the $500,000 December fund, KDP authors have earned $1.70 per borrow.<br />
In response to strong customer adoption of the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (as well as seasonal, post-holiday use of new Kindles), Amazon.com, Inc. has added a $200,000 bonus to the January KDP Select fund, raising the total pool from $500,000 to $700,000.<br />
“KDP Select appears to be earning authors more money in two ways. We knew customers would love having KDP Select titles in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. But we’ve been surprised by how much paid sales of those same titles increased, even relative to the rest of KDP”<br />
<br />
Paid sales grew rapidly<br />
Paid KDP sales grew rapidly in December — and results show that paid sales of titles participating in KDP Select are growing even faster than other KDP titles. On top of this growth in paid sales, KDP Select authors and publishers on average are receiving an incremental 26% in December as a result of their participation in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.<br />
<br />
“KDP Select appears to be earning authors more money in two ways. We knew customers would love having KDP Select titles in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. But we’ve been surprised by how much paid sales of those same titles increased, even relative to the rest of KDP,” said Russ Grandinetti, VP of Kindle Content.<br />
<br />
“Due to this early success and a seasonally strong January, we’re adding a $200,000 bonus to January’s KDP Select fund, growing this month’s total pool to $700,000.”<br />
The top ten KDP Select authors earned over $70,000 in the month of December from their participation in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, a 30% increase on top of the royalties they earned from their paid sales on the same titles in the same period.<br />
<br />
Writer earned $8K plus in December<br />
In total (paid sales plus their share of the loan fund), these authors saw their royalties grow an astonishing 449% month-over-month from November to December. The list of top 10 KDP Select authors includes Carolyn McCray, Rachel Yu, the Grabarchuk family and Amber Scott.<br />
<br />
Carolyn McCray, a writer of paranormal romance novels, historical thrillers and mysteries, earned $8,250 from the KDP Select fund in December. “KDP Select truly is a career altering program,” said McCray.<br />
“I couldn’t be happier with the tools, support and exposure it has given me. To say the trade-off of exclusivity on Amazon for the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library has been a profitable one would be a gross understatement. Participating in KDP Select has quadrupled my royalties.”<br />
Rachel Yu is a 16-year-old author of children’s books, and she earned $6,200 from the KDP Select fund in the month of December. “It’s so cool to be part of the success of KDP Select,” said Yu. “It’s just like a library but with easier access. There’s truly no other opportunity like Amazon for self-publishing.”<br />
The Grabarchuk family earned $6,300 from the KDP Select fund in December from their puzzle books.<br />
“After only a month KDP Select has dramatically changed things — finally indie publishers are playing as equals with the big publishing houses in the world’s biggest eBook marketplace,” said Serhiy Grabarchuk, Co-Founder of the Grabarchuk Puzzles company.<br />
Amber Scott is a romance writer and earned $7,650 from the KDP Select fund in December.<br />
“Enrolling in KDP Select utterly transformed my career,” said Scott. “I’ve experienced not only a surge in royalties but a surge in readership thanks to the increased exposure. I love the chance to earn new readers through the innovation of the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. What an exciting time to be an author.”<br />
<br />
Source : TechJournalSouthUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257742520116587050.post-3360039563973440792012-01-14T02:01:00.000-08:002012-01-30T01:17:13.048-08:00Amazon's Plagiarism Problem<br><br />
Amazon's erotica section isn't just rife with tales of lust, incest, violence, and straight-up kink. It's also a hotbed of masked merchants profiting from copyright infringement. And even with anti-piracy legislation looming, Amazon doesn't appear too eager to stop the forbidden author-on-author action.<br />
After publishing 20 non-fiction books with mainstream publishers, Sharazade (her pen name) decided to try her hand at erotica, and over the past year has published two sex- and fantasy-themed ebooks, both of which are available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords (Warning: Linked pages may contain explicit content.) Her stories often involve travel--a passion of hers--and are set in exotic locales. Recently she began publishing other authors through 1001 Nights Press, a small house she founded, and last month she learned that Amazon was letting indie publishers and self-published authors into its Kindle Select program.<br />
<br />
Sharazade, who requested anonymity because she also works as a freelance writer, editor, and teacher and doesn't want clients or students to know about her erotica exploits, recognized several benefits to working with Amazon. She could offer a title free for up to five days, and that's great publicity since her book would inevitably shoot up in the rankings. If any Kindle Select members borrowed her book--they are entitled to one title per month--she would receive a proportional sliver of the $500,000 Amazon set aside in December to pay publishers and authors. Then, once her book wasn't free anymore, it would be tied to things like "Customers who bought X also bought Y," plus readers might post glowing reviews and buy backlist books.<br />
She decided to test drive the service with Erotic Stories of Domination and Submission: Taking Jennifer, a book by one of her authors, then watched it climb the rankings in "gratifying leaps." But Sharazade was dismayed that a number of books, a few with nonsensical titles, were beating hers, even though they were hamstrung by twisted grammar and perverse punctuation. Some sported covers comprised of low-resolution images with no lettering. One author managed to misspell her own name. "Even in porn, customers come down on books that are totally incompetent," Sharazade says, "but this wasn't happening with these."<br />
<br />
After checking the author page for Maria Cruz, who that day had the top-selling erotica book in Amazon's U.K. Kindle store, she counted 40 erotica ebook titles, including Sister Pretty Little Mouth, My Step Mom and Me, Wicked Desires Steamy Stories and Domenating [sic] Her, plus one called Dracula's Amazing Adventure. Most erotica authors stay within the genre, so Sharazade was surprised Cruz had ventured into horror. Amazon lets customers click inside a book for a sample of text and Sharazade was impressed with how literate it was. She extracted a sentence fragment, googled it, and found that Cruz had copy and pasted the text from Bram Stoker's Dracula. Curious, Sharazade keyed in phrases from other Cruz ebooks and discovered that every book she checked was stolen.<br />
It turns out Cruz isn't the only self-published plagiarist. Amazon is rife with fake authors selling erotica ripped word-for-word from stories posted on Literotica, a popular and free erotic fiction site that according to Quantcast attracts more than 4.5 million users a month, as well as from other free online story troves. As recently as early January, Robin Scott had 31 books in the Kindle store, and a down-and-dirty textual analysis revealed that each one was plagiarized. Rachel M. Haven, a purveyor of incest, group sex, and cheating bride stories, was selling 11 pilfered tales from a variety of story sites. Eve Welliver had eight titles in the Kindle store copied from Literotica and elsewhere, and she had even thought to plagiarize some five-star reviews. Luke Ethan's author page listed four works with titles like My Step Mom Loves Me and OMG My Step-Brother in Bisexual, and it doesn't appear he wrote any of them. Maria Cruz had 19 ebooks and two paperbacks, all of which were created by other authors and republished without their consent, while her typo-addled alter ego Mariz Cruz was hawking Wicked Desire: <br />
<br />
Steamy bondage picture volume 1.
<br />
Writers I contacted through Literotica, who do not profit from the stories they post, expressed different reactions to being plagiarized, ranging from abject anger to flattery that someone thought their work worth stealing to fear I might reveal their real identity. A highly prolific scribe with the pen name Boston Fiction Writer, whose story, "Boston Halloween Massacre" had been transposed into an ebook titled Massacre on Halloween and sold under Robin Scott's name, threatened to hurt the person who stole her work, "even more than they hurt me, so that they'd think twice about stealing another story from me. I dare say, she'd have no more fingers left to steal anyone's stories, ever again." David Springer, a security guard whose "nom de naughty" is Oediplex, recently learned that his story, "I Remember Mother" was repackaged for the Kindle as My Step Mom Loves Me by Luke Ethan, and wondered how well the book was selling.<br />
"I never did expect to get wealthy from writing," he says, "though I wish I had a penny for every orgasm my stories have produced."<br />
<br />
David Weaver, a 52-year-old math teacher whose story "Galactic Slave" was being sold for Kindle as Slave of the Galaxies, also by Robin Scott, doesn't have the resources to engage in a spat over copyright. "What makes this kind of theft so insidious is how easy it is to get away with and avoid getting caught," he says.
<br />
Naturally erotica isn't the only category ebook pirates have set their sights on. Manuel Ortiz Braschi has published thousands of ebooks on Amazon, often claiming as his own works in the public domain, including Alice in Wonderland. Amazon has pulled most of them, but Braschi continues to peddle an advice book for senior citizens and a plagiarized cookbook Amazon previously removed when it was sold under a different author's name.
Mike Essex, a search specialist at U.K. digital marketing agency Koozai, identified several how-to books on procuring health insurance that were plagiarized, sometimes sold under three or more different author's names with slightly different titles but identical content
(like this one).
Fan fiction abounds with plagiarized titles, as does fantasy. Last year Canadian novelist S.K.S. Perry learned that an imposter was selling his novel Darkside for $2.99 as a Kindle ebook without his knowledge. He wrote on his blog: "All I can assume is that someone convinced Amazon that they were S.K.S. Perry, and submitted my book for sale." The same happened to Steve Karmazenuk, whose fantasy novel, The Unearthing, was co-opted by another Amazon seller.
<br />
<br />
Amazon's policy is to remove offending content when it receives complaints of plagiarism. Erotica author Elizabeth Summers had at least 65 titles expunged when plagiarism allegations surfaced. Recently Robin Scott's books also disappeared from Amazon when writers complained. (Scott, which is almost assuredly not her--his?--real name, did not respond to requests for an interview over Twitter.) But this reactive approach isn't entirely effective. After users in a Kindle forum griped about Maria Cruz, her entire cache of ebooks--all 51 of them--were deleted, but in the days that followed she posted a whole new set of material, mostly collections of porn pictures although there were a few traditional text-based works, too. And it usually takes Amazon time to act. "Galactic Slave" writer David Weaver told me he contacted Amazon weeks ago to request the stolen work be removed from the site and all proceeds forwarded to him, but Amazon has not yet complied.
<br />
To be fair, Amazon isn't the only ebook store grappling with plagiarism. In addition to her collection of Kindle ebooks, Eve Welliver offers five plagiarized works through Apple's iBookstore. "Supposedly Apple hand-checks all the erotica, which is why it takes forever for your books to show up there, but somehow she got through," Sharazade says.<br />
<br />
This penchant for plagiarism shouldn't surprise us. Self-publishing has become the latest vehicle for spammers and content farms, with the sheer volume of self-published books making it difficult, if not impossible, for e-stores like Amazon to vet works before they go on sale. In 2006, 51,000 self-published titles were released; last year there were 133,036 self-published books, and that number is destined to climb.
Writing a book is hard. All those torturous hours an author has to spend creating, crafting, culling until nonsensical words are transformed into engaging prose. It's a whole lot easier to copy and paste someone else's work, slap your name on top, and wait for the money to roll in. This creates a strong economic incentive, with fake authors--Sharazade thinks it's possible they are organized gangs based in Asia--earning 70% royalty rates on every sale, earning far more than a spammer could with click fraud. The new self-publishing platforms are easy to use and make it possible to publish a title in as little as 24 hours. There's no vetting, editing, or oversight, and if your work is taken down you can always throw up more titles or simply concoct a new pen name and start over. There's even a viral ebook generator that comes packed with 149,000 articles that makes it possible to create an ebook in minutes.<br />
Legislation has been proposed that would give content holders more leverage in dealing with etailers: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). It would award copyright holders wide-ranging powers to run websites that host infringing material off the Internet without needing to acquire a court order. If it becomes law credit card companies could be forced to suspend financial transactions, search engines required to de-link ecommerce sites, and DNS providers made to hobble access. It's the kind of law, well-intentioned as it might be, that could have serious negative repercussions, opponents say. No wonder Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google, and Yahoo! have reportedly been considering a coordinated protest against it in the form of a blackout day.<br />
There is, I believe, a simpler solution. Why not require an author to submit a valid credit card before she can self-publish her works on the Kindle? If an author, who could still publish under a pen name, were found to have violated someone else's copyright Amazon could charge that card $2,000 and ban her from selling again. Amazon could also run content through one of the many plagiarism detectors that are available--such as Turnitin or iThenticate--before an ebook is put on sale.<br />
<br />
Perhaps, though, Amazon doesn't care if it sells plagiarized works; it benefits from the sale whether it holds back an author's royalties or not.<br />
A company spokesperson responded to my requests for comment with the following statement:<br />
We take violations of laws and proprietary rights very seriously. More information about eBooks rights can be found in Sections 5.7 and 5.8 of the Kindle Direct Publishing Terms and Conditions. If a copyright holder believes that their work has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, they can write to copyright@amazon.com. More information on Amazon's notice and procedure for making claims of copyright infringement can be found here.<br />
[Ed note: typed out links were converted to hyperlinks]<br />
Sharazade, for her part, says,
"I have no problem competing against legitimate writers and publishers. That's all part of the deal. But I am irritated by competing with cheaters. That kills the fun of it."
<br />
And she adds: "It's lying, cheating, money, and sex. Might make a nice story?"
<br />
<br />
By Adam L. Penenberg <br />
Adam L. Penenberg is a journalism professor at NYU and a contributing writer to Fast Company. <br />
Full article >> <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/1807211/amazons-plagiarism-problem?partner=gnews" target="new">Here</a><br />
<br />
<hr>Unlike traditional publishing companies, self-publishing programs like Amazon's Kindle Select lack the keen eyes of publishers, leaving room for copyright violations — and plagiarism.<br />
<br />
Sharazade is the pen name of a writer and editor who is a rising star on Amazon's erotica section.<br />
"I do a lot of traveling, and most of my stories are travel-based in some way, either set in an exotic location or having to do with modes of transportation ... or airports, airplanes, buses," she tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz.<br />
Sharazade is also an entrepreneur, publishing erotica for other writers, including a story she put up on Amazon recently called Taking Jennifer, which climbed the charts.<br />
"On the U.S. site, it eventually got to 21 in the free erotica, and on the U.K. site, it got to No. 3," she says. "When you are that close to the top, I think it's natural that you look around to see what the competition is like."<br />
<br />
My Sister Bestfriend<br />
<br />
The book holding fast at No. 1 was an erotica story called My Sister Bestfriend by Maria Cruz.<br />
"I was being beaten by a book with an un-grammatical title," Sharazade says. "I mean it's one thing to be beaten by My Sister's Best Friend, but, you know, My Sister Bestfriend."<br />
She decided to take a closer look at her competition. Cruz was clearly prolific and successful. She had 42 titles, 41 of which were erotica stories. But one title seemed out of place. It was called Dracula Amazing Adventure.<br />
Sharazade, who worked as a college professor, says she felt there was something odd about the ebook.<br />
"I took a sentence from the description and put it in between quotes and dropped it into Google, and Bram Stoker's Dracula came up." Shar says. "It was word for word Dracula."<br />
<br />
The Bust<br />
<br />
It didn't stop there. Shar says she found instances of plagiarism in every single book published by Cruz, mostly from the website Literotica, where people can upload stories for free.<br />
Luke Ethan, another erotica author, also published and sold a book lifted from Literotica. The real author was Dave Springer, a security officer who also happens to write erotica.<br />
Springer says he wasn't upset to learn his story had been published without his consent.<br />
"I thought it was funny," Springer tells NPR's Raz. "I was complimented to think that somebody thought my writing was good enough to try and sell to other folks. And I thought it was funny that the poor souls who were paying $3 for 28 pages online could have gotten it online from several different places for free."<br />
Sharazade contacted Amazon, hoping the company would take the plagiarized material off its site. But nothing happened.<br />
In a statement to NPR, the company said it "worked steadily to detect and remove books that violate copyright." Amazon's agreement with authors indemnifies the company for damages against copyright violations. Once you agree to the terms, Amazon isn't responsible.<br />
<br />
The Investigation<br />
<br />
Adam Penenberg, who teaches journalism at New York University, was curious about Springer's case and offered to do some digging. He says the person who sold Springer's work was actually from Kuwait. He had registered on Amazon under the name Luke Ethan and gave a fake address in Texas.<br />
"You can get on some forums, one is called WarriorForum, where they discuss all sorts of marketing things," Penenberg says. "How to make money on the Internet is the idea behind it. The guy that I heard was pirating [...] got onto these forums where they sell you a collection, a zip file full of stories that have been ripped off the Internet and repackaged."<br />
Penenberg says there are a growing number of authors who have published 30 to 50 books under different pen names. Though Amazon eventually shuts them down, deciding on what qualifies as copyrighted material makes the issue complicated. Penenberg likened this type of publication to spamming.<br />
"All you got to do is steal some content ... and if there's shame attached to erotica that makes it even easier because people are less likely to report it," Penenberg says. "So you just post it once, Amazon doesn't see it for a while and you get four or five months of royalties if you do that enough, you can make some good money."<br />
<br />
His article, "Amazon's Plagiarism Problem," appeared in the January issue of Fast Company magazine Source - NPRUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257742520116587050.post-10565836286968638002012-01-14T01:58:00.001-08:002012-01-14T01:58:50.518-08:00Best Practices For Amazon Ebook SalesYou have a book. You want an ebook. So all you have to do is upload your cover art and paste in your back cover copy and voila, you have an Amazon.com bestseller.<br />
<br />
Right? Wrong.<br />
<br />
A reader’s experience in the comfort of a bookstore, where they can leisurely pursue multiple books, read the back cover thoughtfully, and browse through the pages is a completely different experience than shopping on-line.<br />
On Amazon (or any on-line bookstore) you are competing for the reader’s attention. They are distracted by their latest e-mail, how slow the website is loading and what their team is doing in the other window.<br />
You have seconds to capture someone’s attention on any website and this translates to Amazon.com as well. So as a writer or publisher you have to learn how to grab the buyer’s interest and compel them to make the purchase.<br />
<br />
How do you do that?<br />
<br />
By understanding your book’s Amazon.com page. Rather than thinking of it as a webpage, I recommend that you think of your book’s Amazon.com page as a ¼ page ad in a glossy magazine. You want to build excitement, hype, and the urge to buy rather than dutifully explaining your product.<br />
Let’s go briefly through a typical Amazon.com page and see how this shift in paradigm (explanation to excitement) works compared to what most publishers and authors do today.<br />
<br />
Cover Art<br />
<br />
You must present a compelling graphic, which may be different from your hardback or paperback cover. Bright colors are not just acceptable, but many times get you more traffic/retention of readers and therefore sales.<br />
Do not crowd your graphic. Put the bare minimum of copy a reader needs to know about your book (title, author, and possibly a very short blurb – but no more than 2-5 words). Even when your cover art is enlarged it is difficult to read much more than that on-line and your cover is better served to visually excite the reader than be cluttered.<br />
<br />
Reviews<br />
<br />
Even though this metric is displayed as only a tiny icon under the writer’s name, this metric has a huge impact on sales. When it comes to book sales, you have to be popular to become popular. In regards to the number of reviews it is pretty obvious you want as many reviews, scored with as many stars, as possible. This “Reviews” metric is a quick indicator to the reader of how seriously they should take your book. A low number of reviews or a low star rating and the reader may exit your page before scrolling down an inch.<br />
There is also a new ‘like’ feature next to the reviews (it is in beta, but many new titles have the button). Again, the more ‘likes’ the better.<br />
It is the job of the writer or publisher to drive reviewers (friends, family, fans, Tweeps, bloggers, etc) to your Amazon page and fill these reviews/likes (a bare minimum to have legitimacy is 5 but 10 is a better number to shoot for) as quickly as possible after your title goes live (and especially before any kind of ad campaign).<br />
<br />
After the original launch, then you can allow the reviews to come in organically through paying readers, however monitor your page daily. A single 1 star review can kill sales.<br />
<br />
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought<br />
<br />
While you cannot control this horizontal scroll bar filled with other titles directly (Amazon uses an algorithm to place the books in an order of their choosing), you can influence this greatly, especially at launch.<br />
The longer you allow an empty or sparse scroll bar in this section, the lower your sales will be.<br />
On scanning down, if a reader does not see that row filled to capacity, they know that your book has not been purchased very often. Therefore, you aren’t popular. Therefore why should they take a chance and buy your title?<br />
<br />
There are a couple of ways to accelerate the filling of this bar:<br />
<br />
Have family/friends/colleagues/fans buy your book during a ‘soft’ launch (pre-advertising, or promoting your book on social media).<br />
Price your book at 99 cents (the lowest allowed by Amazon) and drive as much traffic as you can during your ‘soft’ launch window. Once you have the bar filled you can re-price your book.<br />
Product Description<br />
This is a very poorly understood section of the Amazon page. Do NOT use this vital section for an actual product description. Think of this section as the exciting and enticing copy you would load into your ¼ page magazine ad.<br />
There are many ways to go about this, however the matrix below seems to work consistently at driving sales:<br />
<br />
First off, note any awards or accomplishments for either the writer or the book itself. Establish yourself/book as an authority on the subject or prove that it is popular. Keep this BRIEF however. This initial portion of your “Product Description” should be at most 2-3 sentences.<br />
If you have not won any awards or have not been recommeneded and/or blurbed by a celebrity/authority, do not worry. It is nice to have that flashy start, but you can easily just begin with the next section.<br />
<br />
Put your best 3 quotes/blurbs/reviews for your book (punchy, short, exciting). Again, each quote, etc should not be longer than a few sentences.<br />
Remember that most people do not scroll down past the “Product Details” to the official reviews section of the Amazon.com page. So unless you show a prospective reader your reviews here, they may never make it over the ‘jump’ of the “Product Details.”<br />
<br />
You want to get your most glowing, punchy, exciting quotes out front. Don’t hold back. This is a MAJOR section where buyers abort the purchase funnel. Therefore this is where you need to really grab their attention. If you don’t excite the reader here, you will quite possibly lose a sale.<br />
<br />
After these initial 3 quotes, put a brief style description of your book. Do NOT go into specifics about the book. You will lose the excitement you just built. Keep your energy up and driving towards a sale. Remember this is ad copy not a by-the-numbers description or even your typical back cover copy. This is a sales pitch.<br />
Follow your punchy/pithy/exciting sweeping pitch with 2-3 more glowing reviews (no longer than a sentence or two each) to reconfirm that the book you just described is a popular one. End your book’s “Product Description” with a definitive call to action. “If you enjoy gardening any time of the year, then ____ is for you! “<br />
Remember, the entire goal for your book’s Amazon.com page is to instill confidence in the buyer that not only is your book a good book (which many others readers have purchased and liked), but that it is the perfect book for them.<br />
<br />
<br />
By Carolyn McCray, Author<br />
Carolyn McCray is a social media and sales consultant to writers and publishing houses alike. Her own controversial thriller, “30 Pieces of Silver” hit the #1 spot on the Amazon “Men’s Adventure” list, (beating out the likes of Clive Cussler), and is currently selling through at a nearly 1:1 ratio of external clicks to sales. Carolyn is also the founder of the Indie Book Collective, an organization dedicated to helping writers utilize social media to sell their books.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257742520116587050.post-43354914508644359622012-01-14T01:57:00.000-08:002012-01-14T01:57:11.362-08:00Amazon Ebook MarketplaceFor all but a select few household-named authors, the days of launching a book, promoting it for six weeks, and then moving on are over. But do not despair! If we embrace this new 24/7/365 paradigm, we can actually increase our bottom line. Yes, the eBook market is extremely crowded with cheap product, however, if you understand how Amazon and the other digital booksellers determine which titles to put into their internal recommendation queues (“Customers Who Bought This Item… etc.), you can leverage that information into greater sales for your eBooks.<br />
<br />
This article is broken into three parts.<br />
<br />
The first article explores how Amazon et al weigh sales and determine your ranking and the number of times they will put your title out into their internal recommendation queue. The second article discusses “Price Pulsing” and why it is an essential strategy for prolonged digital book sales. The third article discusses “Sales Nodes” and why they are vital to leveraging “Price Pulsing” and all other sales strategies.<br />
<br />
Forgive me but for this first article I must discuss some fairly geeky math to help you understand the basics of Amazon’s sales matrix so that you can understand how then to leverage it for greater sales.<br />
<br />
First I must state that Amazon will not release the exact matrix it uses to calculate ranking or how it determines which titles to propagate out into the internal recommendation queue, however after nearly a year of analyzing the cause and effect of external advertising campaigns on eBook sales I feel very comfortable making some basic assumptions regarding this vital mechanism.<br />
It appears Amazon’s matrix is looking to pick out the titles that are most likely to sell the most books and puts those titles out into its internal recommendation system the most frequently. Which makes sense. A book selling well now, will sell well if they give it more exposure. The question becomes though, how does it estimate which books are the most likely to sell?<br />
This is where anecdotal research comes in handy. It is widely accepted that Amazon rewards you for hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly sales. It also appears that Amazon weights the monthly sales the heaviest, then weekly, then daily. It weights hourly sales the least.<br />
Clearly the system is set up to protect against flash-in-the-pan type sales. Just because you sell a hundred books in an hour doesn’t guarantee you will even break into the top 1,000, let alone the top 100.<br />
So the first thing we must accept is that the Amazon ranking system is complex, taking in sales from a minimum one month to establish your current ranking and therefore the number of times it puts your book into the internal recommendations queues.<br />
An example. I had two books in a major social media event, the Labor Day Book Blowout, in which all 150 titles were discounted to 99¢ for the Labor Day weekend.<br />
<br />
Book 1 –HeartsBlood had been on Amazon for six months and normally hovered in the 5,000-10,000 range. The title normally sells about 8-14 books per day. On the day of the event, HeartsBlood peaked at #1,113 with a total of 39 books sold for the day.<br />
Book 2 – All Hallow’s Eve: The One Night it is BAD to be Good was launched the night before the event and therefore had no ranking or sales before the event. The title sold 69 books the day of the event and peaked at #1,089.<br />
As you can see, two books in exactly the same event ended up with very similar rankings yet sold vastly different numbers of copies (nearly double, in the case of All Hallow’s Eve). It took far fewer copies sold of HeartsBlood to drive her up the rankings.<br />
I could repeat this example over and over again during events. It is clear that previous sales impact hourly rankings. I term what happened with HeartsBlood as “traction.” The more sales a book has over the last month, week, and day provides a built-in number of internal recommendation berths, thereby giving your title some sales traction. This traction is also reflected in higher rankings.<br />
However this traction fades and even vanishes after certain milestone segments of time. Why? Because directly after a large event (book launch, blog tour, sales event) where you have larger than normal sales, Amazon’s matrix sees those sales and seems to say, “Okay, this book is a great seller so I am going to increase the number of times I put this title out into the internal recommendation queues.”<br />
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Because of this increase in recommendation queues appearances, your title will continue to sell more books. However usually not as many as you did on during that large event, so the next day when Amazon’s matrix calculates your sales, it realizes maybe you weren’t the incredible seller it thought you were the day before and decreases your internal recommendation berths. Which in turn decreases your sales and ranking.<br />
After that first day drop-off (which is fairly minor), the matrix keeps you in a relatively higher recommendation berth rotation for a week. If your title fails to live up to last week’s major sales burst, after seven days, the matrix will downgrade the number of internal recommendation berths and therefore your sales and your ranking.<br />
This one-week post-high-sales drop-off is palpable. I term it “unlatching.” Your sales and ranking normally take a steep decline after this one-week unlatching, dropping as much as several hundred to several thousand in ranking spots (based on where you were to start).<br />
However, after this drop you will normally hold in the same recommendation rotation for a full thirty days from the event. After that, sadly, if your sales do not live up to that event’s much higher sales record, the matrix will fully unlatch from your title and you will experience a significant drop in sales and rankings, up to thousands if not tens of thousands of lost ranking spots.<br />
<br />
At the one-month mark, many times a title will go into free-fall, dropping hundreds of rankings per hour until it settles to a grossly lower ranking.<br />
For most publishers/authors this free-fall and steep drop-off in sales are a mystery. Why was it doing so well yesterday, and now the eBook is in the 60,000 range? The answer? You lost traction in the rankings (those month-old sales are now stale and not used to calculate your ranking) and Amazon “unlatched” your title from the internal recommendation queue, decreasing your internal sales.<br />
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Again, though, no need to despair. Knowing how Amazon calculates sales and rankings allows you to plan ahead and create promotional strategies that maximize this effect.<br />
This is what we will be covering in the next article “Price Pulsing to Maximize Long-Term Sales.”<br />
I also strongly urge everyone to review my other articles but especially regarding “Best Practices for Amazon Sales.” In the next article I will be referencing many of the concepts in that piece.<br />
Again, as always I will be subscribing to the comments below so feel free to leave a question or feedback and I will try to get to it within twenty four hours.<br />
<br />
By Carolyn McCray, Author<br />
Carolyn McCray is a social media and sales consultant to writers and publishing houses alike. And using the principle laid out in this article, her recent non-fiction book, “Dollars & Sense: The Definitive Guide to Self-publishing Success” debuted at #1 on the Amazon Bestselling list for Study & Teaching and reached #2 on the Authorship Bestselling list beating out such rock stars as JA Konrath and Zoe Winters. Carolyn is also the founder of the Indie Book Collective, an organization dedicated to helping writers utilize social media to sell their books.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257742520116587050.post-58306412542451857022012-01-14T01:55:00.000-08:002012-01-14T01:57:33.405-08:00“Price Pulsing”: the Benefits of Dynamic Pricing on AmazonBefore reading this article I strongly suggest you read both my recent article Gaining Traction in the Amazon Ebook Marketplace and Amazon Best Practices. You will need the knowledge described in both of them to really take advantage of the information given here to enhance your royalties.<br />
As noted in my latest article, Gaining Traction in the Amazon Ebook Marketplace, regarding Amazon’s internal recommendation system, the more books (units) you sell, the more you are recommended out into the queue and the more books you tend to sell. The contrary is also true. The fewer books (units) you sell, the less you will be put into the recommendation queue and the less you will sell, until you settle somewhere in the deep 100,000s or lower.<br />
The other important fact regarding Amazon’s internal queue is that it appears to be “price blind.” It rewards you for total units sold, not for the royalties generated by those sales. Therefore you could sell 1,000 copies at 99¢, or 1,000 copies at $9.99, and your book would go into the internal recommendation queue at the same rate. It is also pretty obvious, with the bargain-shopping mentality of Amazon customers, that you tend to sell far more copies at 99¢ than $9.99. It so much easier to sell 1,000 units at 99¢.<br />
This is the “inverse” effect between rankings and royalties. The cheaper your book, the more you will tend to sell, and the higher your rankings. Higher rankings may qualify your book for bestseller lists, which then help you gain more sales because of increased discoverability.<br />
The only problem with this 99¢ bonanza is that it brings in dismal royalties (even when you rank in the low hundreds). Set your price higher, and you will garner more royalties per book. However, you will sell fewer and fewer books until you slide off the bestselling lists and back down into the 10,000′s–200,000′s range.<br />
But there is a way to have the best of both worlds: “Price Pulsing.”<br />
Price Pulsing is when you take a book down to 99¢ temporarily to gain more unit sales, get into the recommendation queues, rise into the bestseller lists, and then, as you “peak” (rather than gaining rankings, you begin to slip back down), switch back to your higher retail price. In general it will take you seven to ten days to reach your “peak” or “crest.” Changing prices at the height of your pulse puts your book into the recommendation queue/bestselling lists when it is the most discoverable, thereby reaping royalties you could not have seen any other way.<br />
And don’t forget that all of those 99¢ sales are going to give you “traction” over the next week and even month, because of how Amazon rewards unit sales (see my last article here if you need to brush up on how Amazon’s internal recommendation queue works). Your book will go into the recommendation queues more frequently, selling more units at the higher rate for weeks to come.<br />
However, as noted in my last article, this effect is finite.<br />
As your sales decline, Amazon will reward you less and less until it “unlatches” completely and you are back down to the sales ranking you had before the pulse.<br />
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This is how you Price Pulse:<br />
<br />
Reduce price (most of the time to 99¢; however, for books in the upper price range of $7.99–9.99 a drop to $2.99 will have the same effect, although not as powerful)<br />
Ride out this wave of sales.<br />
At the “peak” or “crest,” switch back to the regular retail price.<br />
Fall in ranking, but gain additional royalties, thanks to greatly increased discoverability.<br />
Enjoy this benefit of increased internal recommendations for up to a month.<br />
Prepare to do it again.<br />
Other key aspects of a successful “Price Pulse,” are:<br />
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Announce that this 99¢ price is a promotional price, as we never want to undermine the value of our books. Make it clear in the product description that 99¢ price tag is a special, limited time offer, and take advantage of the “get ‘em while they’re hot” mentality. In this way customers appreciate the sale but do not think your book is only “worth” 99¢.<br />
Do NOT put a specific time frame in the product description. Use terms like “limited time,” “special promotion,” or “for this week” (which can run for as many weeks as you need it to run). We do not want to say “until September 24th,” because we do not know when our sales will peak and we do not want to be locked to any specific dates.<br />
Once you have optimized your product description (see my article here on the subject) and our back matter (if you are unclear on how to accomplish this, I will publish a set of articles in November to help), so that any sale we get from this price pulse will travel downstream to our backlist.<br />
You can also add social media promotions to the mix (because the one time people on social media are very likely to make a purchase is because of a low sale price) and paid advertising to drive your book up the bestseller lists as high as you can, to really enhance your discoverability.<br />
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Can we do a “price pulse” to the same book every month, month after month? Yes, but the effect tends to fade, especially if you are using any form of social media to help propel the pulse. Do not despair, though! This is where “sales nodes” (grouping like books together to into a discrete sales unit where they resonate, creating a lift for the entire node), come to the rescue. Those nodes will be the topic for my last article in this series.<br />
As always I will be monitoring comments on this article (along with all of my others) and will try to respond to your questions within 24 hours!<br />
<br />
<br />
By Carolyn McCray, Author<br />
Carolyn McCray is a social media and sales consultant to writers and publishing houses alike. And using the principle laid out in this article, her recent non-fiction book, “Dollars & Sense: The Definitive Guide to Self-publishing Success” debuted at #1 on the Amazon Bestselling list for Study & Teaching and reached #2 on the Authorship Bestselling list beating out such rock stars as JA Konrath and Zoe Winters. Carolyn is also the founder of the Indie Book Collective, an organization dedicated to helping writers utilize social media to sell their books.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257742520116587050.post-45361369201531271272012-01-14T01:52:00.000-08:002012-01-14T01:52:09.941-08:00How to Price Your eBookOne of the most common questions I hear from indie authors is: “How do I price my eBook?”<br />
First, let’s deal with some wrong thinking about price. There is no one method or approach to pricing that will work for every book. That’s right. There is not a single answer to this question.<br />
So, the real question becomes, what is some way I can determine a price for my book that the market will bear?<br />
Let’s consider some of the information you’ll need to come up with a good pricing strategy.<br />
1. How many titles do you have available?<br />
2. What are other comparable eBooks in your genre selling for?<br />
3. What are you distribution channels?<br />
4. What are your sales goals? Are you looking for a short, big burst of sales or are you looking at building a steady stream of sales over a period of time?<br />
<br />
<b>Number of Titles Available</b><br />
If you only have one title available, your pricing strategy will probably vary from an author who has multiple titles. For example, when my first book, A Dream Unfolding, was released, I priced it at $2.99 until the second book in the series came out. I chose the $2.99 because a lot of authors talk about that being the sweet spot price for eBooks (more on my thoughts about that later). My sales were okay – not really reaching over 100 books per month at that price point.<br />
When I released my third book in the series, I dropped the price of the first book to $0.99 while pricing books two and three at $2.99. I was still working on building my marketing strategy, but I sold over 200 copies of the first book that month and another 150 between the other two.<br />
After a month of some very strong marketing, selling over 700 books between all three titles, I decided to come up with a better strategy for pricing books two and three. I left book one at $0.99 to reduce the barriers for new readers to try my books as a new-to-them author.<br />
My answer for books two and three? I priced them both at $5.99. Before you cringe and say that my sales tanked, let me offer you the next point.<br />
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<b>Price of Comparable Books in Your Genre</b><br />
I did a pricing study of the top 100 best selling eBooks in my genre. You know what I found when I did that? The average price for my genre was $5.29 with some eBooks as high as $9.99 and others as low as $0.99. I decided to go up a little from the average and price them at $5.99.<br />
The results? I didn’t see any drop off in sales. Instead, I saw a marginal increase, which I attribute to better marketing efforts, closing out the month with 1740 books. That number has been steadily increasing each subsequent month.<br />
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<b>Distribution Channels</b><br />
How do distribution channels affect pricing? Well, if your eBook is on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other distributors, be aware of their rules. Amazon has a strict policy (see KDP’s Terms & Conditions for the most accurate info) that your eBook cannot be priced lower on another distributor than it is on their site. Apple has a rule that the book must end in 99 (i.e. $0.99, $1.99, etc). These rules must play into your pricing strategy.<br />
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<b>Sales Goals</b><br />
Lastly, your sales goals are a part of your pricing strategy. If you’re looking for a short term burst, try lowering your price for a short period of time, like for a 99 cent sale.<br />
If you’re looking for long term, steady sales growth, consider doing a pricing study or pick a price and stick with it for awhile. Price alone will not provide long term sales Marketing plays an important role to the success of your novel.<br />
<br />
<b>The Sweet Spot Price</b><br />
Given my own results with books priced higher than $2.99, I disagree with the idea that there is a one-size fits all sweet spot price for all eBooks of all genres. My historical novels are doing well at the $5.99 price point.<br />
Conversely, my new contemporary novel is not getting as much traction at $4.99. My approach to this? I’m working on beefing up my marketing efforts for it—leaving price alone. If it’s still not doing well in its third month of release, then I might play with price.<br />
Remember, price is just one of the tools at your disposal for selling your novels. Don’t forget about advertising, distribution, and promotions.<br />
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<br />
By Karen Baney<br />
Self-published author<br />
www.karenbaney.comUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257742520116587050.post-78000447122251357632012-01-04T05:20:00.000-08:002012-01-04T05:20:01.898-08:00Apple to launch new Self-Publishing Program later this monthApple is going to be holding an exclusive event in New York city later this month to possibly launch a new program for their iBooks and Publishing platform. Sources close to the matter have told us that they intend on launching a new digital self-publishing platform to get peoples content into the iBookstore. This is a huge step forward for Apple to compete with Amazon (DTP) and Barnes and Noble (Pubit).<br />
<br />
One of the only ways to get listed into the Apple iBookstore if you are an independent author is to go through a 3rd party such as Smashwords. They assign you a free ISBN for choosing them and they will submit your books to iBooks and tons of others.<br />
<br />
Apple will be taking a cue from the new Amazon program that gives indie authors an incentive to publish exclusively with them. There is no details yet on the actual semantics of the program and how it will work. One has to wonder on the revenue share system they will employ to be competitive with other mainstream self-publishing systems. The one thing we were told is that they will use the EPUB format and make it very easy for people to convert their documents or existing books to comply with their format.<br />
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<br />
By Michael Kozlowski<br />
Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257742520116587050.post-72668968076756073902011-12-30T05:55:00.001-08:002011-12-30T05:55:34.699-08:00Amazon Sold Over 4 Million Kindle Devices This MonthAmazon has just released new data regarding its Kindle sales for the holiday season. According to the e-commerce giant, Amazon customers purchased millions of Kindle Fires and millions of Kindle e-readers. And 2011 was the best holiday ever for the Kindle family, as customers purchased over 1 million Kindle devices each week.<br />
Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos said in a statement: “We are grateful to our customers worldwide for making this the best holiday ever for Kindle.” Bezos also highlighted the fact that the #1 and #4 best-selling Kindle books released in 2011 were both published independently by their authors using Kindle Direct Publishing.<br />
The Kindle family, including the Kindle Fire, Kindle Touch and Kindle, held the top three spots on Amazon’s best seller list, respectively. The Kindle Fire, Amazon’s new tablet device, was the most gifted and wished for product on Amazon this season, and was the top selling product un the UK, France, Spain and Italy. The Kindle Fire was also the best selling product on Amazon’s mobile site.<br />
Gifting of Kindle books was up 175 percent between this Black Friday and Christmas Day compared to the same period in 2010 and Christmas Day was the biggest day ever for Kindle book downloads.<br />
For third-party sellers on Amazon, this year proved to be a merry Christmas as well. 2011 was also a record-breaking holiday season for businesses that sell on Amazon. Third-party sellers experienced record holiday growth, with the number of sellers who exceeded $5,000 in sales during the holiday season increased 44 percent year-over-year. For the year, businesses on Amazon sold hundreds of millions of units worth billions of dollars worldwide.<br />
Amazon says this was a record-breaking year for the Kindle family in terms of sales, especially with respect to its newest device, the Kindle Fire. As we wrote previously, the Kindle is actually outpacing the iPad’s post-launch<br />
<br />
Source : TechCrunchUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257742520116587050.post-38620276596306566292011-12-11T05:23:00.000-08:002011-12-11T05:25:49.646-08:00Amazon Aims to Empty Competitor Shelves of Indie Ebooks<br><br />
Amazon yesterday launched a broadside against competing ebook retailers when it introduced a new program that requires authors to remove their books from competing retailers.<br />
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The new service offering, KDP Select, promises participating authors a shot at earning their share of a $500,000 monthly pool of cash. Amazon will distribute the funds to participating authors based on the number of times an ebook is borrowed from Amazon's new lending library.<br />
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To entice indie authors, Amazon's FAQ notes that if the author's book accounts for 1.5% of the downloads during the monthly lending period, they'll earn 1.5% of the pot, in this case $7,500.<br />
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But there's a catch. Actually, there are multiple catches as outlined in Amazon's Terms and Conditions for the program. Some carry potential anti-competitive and restraint-of-trade implications.<br />
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From the time an author enrolls their book in the program, they cannot distribute or sell their book anywhere else. Not the Apple iBookstore, not Barnes & Noble, not Smashwords, not Kobo, not Sony, not even the author's own personal blog or web site. The book must be 100% exclusive to Amazon.<br />
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If the author violates Amazon's exclusivity terms at any point during the three-month enrollment period, or if the author unpublishes their book to remove it from the program so they can distribute the book elsewhere, the author risks forfeited earnings, delayed payments, a lien on future earnings, or could face termination of their Kindle Direct Publishing account.<br />
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The author's enrollment, and thus their liability to Amazon, automatically renews every three months if they fail to opt out in time.<br />
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Let's examine the broader implications of this new program, not only for authors but for the nascent ebook industry as well.<br />
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Impact on authors:<br />
<br />
Forces the author to remove the book from sale from the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Smashwords and others, thereby causing the author to lose out on sales from competing retailers.<br />
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By unpublishing a title from any retailer, the author destroys any accrued sales rank, making their book less visible and less discoverable when and if they reactivate distribution to competing retailers.<br />
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Makes the author more dependent upon Amazon for sales. As authors increase their dependence upon Amazon and lose sales from other retailers, they risk becoming tenant farmers on Amazon soil. As history buffs may recall, the great Irish Potato Famine was a result of over-dependence on a single crop grown on soil owned by a single landlord, exacerbated by government policies favoring landlord interests over human interests. Most indie authors would be smart to diversify their crops across multiple retailers.<br />
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Amazon has modified the Kindle Direct platform's user interface with the effect of making it almost difficult not to enroll a book, lest the book's account setup appears incomplete. Where they once placed their pull down menu for managing a book's settings, they've now placed the enrollment link. The pull down settings menu is moved to the bottom of their dashboard.<br />
<br />
<br />
Impact on readers:<br />
<br />
Books enrolled in the Amazon program will be removed from all other retailers, thereby forcing readers to patronize Amazon if they want to sample or purchase the book.<br />
<br />
<br />
Impact on competing retailers:<br />
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Harms other retailers by denying them the ability to sell the author's book.<br />
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Many authors will permanently stop distributing to Amazon's competitors once they become fully dependent upon Amazon for the lion's share of their earnings.<br />
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Motivates more customers to purchase at Amazon since Amazon has this exclusive content.<br />
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Discourages formation of new ebook retailers around the world by making it more difficult for new retailers operating outside the US to gain footholds in their respective markets if they lose fair access to the content readers want to read.<br />
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Program Limits Competition, Restricts Opportunity for Authors<br />
The new Amazon KDP Select program reeks of predatory business practice. Amazon is leveraging their dominance as the world's largest ebook retailer (and world's largest payer to indie authors) to attain monopolistic advantage by effectively denying its competing retailers access to the books from indie authors. Some of these retailers supply international markets or power the ebook stores of other retailers outside the US, so Amazon's terms harm non-US retailers at a time when Amazon is opening stores in those same countries.<br />
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More importantly, the KDP Select program harm authors by limiting their sales opportunities at competing retailers. Since Amazon controls anywhere between 60 and 70% of the ebook market, some authors may underestimate their lost sales opportunity. Their participation in the KDP program will blind them to missed sales opportunities and make them ever-more dependent upon Amazon.<br />
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Amazon might argue that indie ebooks today only account for a fraction of overall book industry sales. True, but that fraction is growing quickly as indies scale all the best-seller charts. This trend will continue as more and more professional authors turn their back on traditional book publishers in favor of self-publishing.<br />
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Amazon is smart. They understand indies are the future of book publishing. They also understand that by causing authors to remove their titles from distribution and lose sales rank (a key factor in ebook discoverability), they'll severely limit competing retailers' long term ability to drive sales for the authors.<br />
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European Commission and US Department of Justice Unwittingly Assist Amazon's March toward Monopoly<br />
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Amazon's new service offering comes at a time when the European Commission and even the US Department of Justice are scrutinizing the legality of agency ebook pricing. Agency ebook pricing (this blog post last year explains my company's move to agency pricing, which, ironically, was necessitated by Amazon's price matching practices) allows authors and publishers to set their own price and receive higher royalty rates. Amazon is a long time foe of agency, and as a result is probably enjoying a virtual wet dream as they savor the implications of potential restrictions against the agency model.<br />
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If agency pricing is limited or overturned, it would allow Amazon to engage in predatory pricing by selling ebooks at below cost in an effort to drive current and future competitors out of the market. It's ironic that the EC and US DOJ are pursuing these ill-advised campaigns that could lead to less competition in the ebook market, not more.<br />
<br />
What the EC and US DOJ fail to realize is that big publishers (the target of these investigations), which (I agree) price their books too high, are becoming less relevant to the future of book publishing as authors lose faith in the myth of big publishing. The problem of high prices from big publishers is not an agency pricing issue, it's a problem of big publishers pricing their books too high.<br />
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Agency Pricing Enables Indie Authors and Small Publishers to Lower Prices<br />
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Despite fears to the contrary, we see evidence at Smashwords that agency pricing might actually encourage lower book prices. Indies, which are enjoying great benefits from the agency model (my company only distributes to agency retailers), are using agency to offer customers lower prices, not higher prices. The average ebook at Smashwords is priced under $5.00, and we have over 15,000 books priced at FREE. Why do indies price their books lower when they have the freedom to charge anything they want? The reason is that indies realize that consumers appreciate low prices, and as a result these lower prices give indies a competitive advantage over the large publishers.<br />
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When an indie author can earn 60-70% of list with agency pricing, they can set a lower price yet still earn more per book sold than if the book was sold under a wholesale pricing model (where the royalty would equal 43-50% of list). As an example, if an author wants to earn $2.00 from each book they sell, at a 70% agency rate they'd price the book at $2.85. Under the wholesale model (50% discount off list), they'd need to price the same book at $4.00 to earn $2.00.<br />
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The agency model puts profits in the pockets of the author or publisher, where it belongs, while allowing the retailer to earn a fair profit. Agency pricing relieves retailers from the pressure of competing on price. Instead, agency retailers compete on customer experience, such as creating discovery tools and recommendation systems that help match readers with the books they'd enjoy reading.<br />
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How should indie authors respond to Amazon's KDP Select program? Horror might be a good start. It's in every author's best interest to support the development of a vibrant and competitive global ebook retailing ecosystem. With the democratized distribution enabled by indie ebooks, authors should distribute their books to as many retailers as possible. A world of many ebook retailers, all working to connect readers with books, is much preferable to a world where a single retailer restricts access to books.<br />
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In the interest of full disclosure, I am not an impartial observer. I have a horse in this game. Smashwords is the world's largest distributor of indie ebooks. We publish and distribute over 90,000 ebooks from 33,000 indie authors and small presses around the world. We exist to serve our authors and publishers by distributing their titles to retailers such as the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, the Diesel eBook Store and others. In other words, we supply Amazon's competitors. We also distribute a small number of titles to Amazon. We're eager to supply Amazon our entire catalog, but unlike every other leading ebook retailer, Amazon to date has been unwilling to provide us agency terms.<br />
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By Mike Coker<br />
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Source : Huffington PostUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257742520116587050.post-79561886137289370152011-12-05T02:59:00.000-08:002011-12-05T05:04:10.936-08:00EPublishers World - Everything about it<br><br />
Having done extensive research on E-publishing successes,the following are some valuable pointers to follow if you want to be as successful in this E-Publishing World - Selling and Making profit!!!<br />
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1. Understanding Traditional Publishing and POD/Kindle : <br />
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You write a book and rewrite and revise it several times till you think it is perfect and ready for publish.Then you send it to various literary agents whose primary job is to place your book in front of the editors at the publishing houses.Many agents simply toss it into a trash bin without a look at it and very rarely send it back ( at your expense ).If you get lucky the agent floats your book in front of the various publishing houses.However,most of the readers/editors at these houses dont give it a second glance as there is always too many competitions out there.Plus,these editors give preference mostly to the already established names.By any chance if your book does get bought you may or may not see a cheque straight away,with your agent taking a percentage of it.<br />
However you'll still be asked to rewrite it several times before finally it goes for print.And after printing,the publishing houses will give the book to their sales representatives to distribute in various bookstores to sell.However,the publishing house will not do any promotion or marketing for you.They generally ignore small time authors and promotes only the 'big names' in the industry.Hence,if you want it to sell you will have to contact the bookstores,set up a book signing,contact reviewers and seek out interviews to promote your book.So essentially you are doing all your writing,selling as well as promoting.In the end you'll get only a small percentage of the cover price,with your agent cutting a commission from it.<br />
In short you research,you write,you contact agent,you rewrite it again and you promote it as well but it is the publishing house,your agent and bookstores that make the most out of your hard work.However,with POD - print on demand technologies things are fast changing.You donot have to rely on a literary agent or a publishing house anymore.You can do it yourself ie. self-publish as and when you want.POD is easy and cheap.You can publish your work yourself and keep the profits too.You print only when you have an order instead of printing thousand copies in advance with additional storage space required to store the unsold copies.Thus POD saves you a lot of money.And now with the arrival of Kindle,ebook publishing is of no cost to the publisher/author at all.<br />
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2. Make a Concept : <br />
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Try not to sell just a single piece of writing but instead make a concept on a subject and explore ways to make it grow in various ways.Those ways can be articles,booklets,<br />
ebooks,books on tapes/CDs,seminars,special reports.You can sell,re-package and sell it again to the same buyers or a new audience.Re-package it again and sell it all over again.Columns or Blog posts on a particular subject can be compiled into a book.From a book it can be converted into a seminar subject.A shorter abreviated version of the same can be published in another website.<br />
Also allow newspaper or magazines to publish excerpts of it with a byline and reference to your website which will in turn drive more traffic and sales.Hence,a single article/column can be reused,reformatted several times into various formats instead of having to create something new all the time.<br />
Other products like Booklets or Guides on various subjects within that same category can be sold in related websites,shows,exhibitions,rallies and vendor booths etc.Inside cover of these booklets can be used to list all your books and other products that you have for sale.Content of the booklet or guides can also be use as a column format in the website with a pitch to purchase the booklet.These booklets/guides can also be converted into a CD and sold at retail.Thus instead of comming up with new products,a single set of original product can be used over and over again which can give the best return.You write it just once but sell it several times in different formats. <br />
As a writer,the words that you write or produce are your product.Treat it as a business with the sole aim to sell your products,only then you will succeed.If one project or idea is not making a profit for you,try and find another one that will.But dont give up.Your aim should be to try and maximise the financial return for all your time,money and energy that you have invested in your work.Also the products that you sell should be able to promote the sale of your other products as well. <br />
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3. Make your Blog earn for you : <br />
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Blog is a very useful tool to promote your products on it and it can generate sales.It is the newest and most easiest way to make money for you.Write a regular blog on a subject of your interest and gather a following.If your writing is interesting your followers would spread the word.Now blogs have one more income opportunity and that its to use Google Adsense on it.Using google adsense is really the most sensible thing to do if you are a regular blogger because google adsense does put money into a publisher's pocket.Google however donot encourage the publishers to reveal how much they earn through the program,but if used wisely you can earn a decent income.So use google adsense on your blog.All you have to do is add the small 'html code' into your pages.<br />
When a reader clicks on the ads that the google bots insert in your ad-blocks,the publisher/you recieve a small commission.The more pages and content you add to your website/blog,more the commission would go up.Different ad-links produce different commissions.However donot self-click ( also known as fraud clicks ) or make your friends click on the ads.This would result in you losing all your commission that you earned by google suspending your account altogether.So,do it the right way and watch your earnings grow.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3257742520116587050.post-86846199802672678522011-12-05T02:54:00.002-08:002011-12-05T02:54:55.976-08:00Interior Book Design<br><br />
What Are Interior Book Design and Typesetting? <br />
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You have typed your book in a word-processing program, such as Microsoft Word or Word Perfect. Why not justify the margins, check for typos, and print?<br />
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Interior book design—the art of laying out a manuscript—is just that: an art. It is also a science. Interior book design is a skill that improves with experience. Right away, "the difference between doing it yourself and hiring a professional”—that oft-repeated phrase—is clear.<br />
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The layout and design of a book should suit the content. A book for children will have a larger font than a collection of academic articles. Screenplays, picture books, text books, travel guides, and cookbooks all require careful design. The design of a novel or self-help book should allow the reader to flow through the pages. Why? So he or she fully enjoys reading or easily gains knowledge from the book.<br />
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A well-designed book is pleasing to the eye. People may go to the bookstore, pick up a book whose cover and title appeal, open to any page, and immediately decide that the font is too small or the words are too cramped for them ever to read the book, even if they might delight in the content.<br />
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These are some of the elements that an interior book designer considers when determining a book design:<br />
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• page and margin size<br />
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• font selection<br />
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• paragraph and line spacing<br />
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• title page and table of contents<br />
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• headers, footers and page numbers (perhaps with a graphic)<br />
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• chapter titles or section headings<br />
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• graphics placement & design (illustrations, photos, charts)<br />
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• layout of special material (such as tables, front matter and back matter)<br />
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• use of white space<br />
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• hyphenation control<br />
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• orphan and widow control<br />
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• special touches in the design that make your book unique <br />
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Some books contain text boxes that needs to stand out. Perhaps the box would look good with a border or a background tint. All elements must be carefully placed in the layout. Sometimes, the main body of text has to wrap around a chart or an illustration or a paragraph needs a drop cap. The book designer makes this possible.<br />
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Typesetting is done after the design is finished. It is the application of the design to your book as a whole. Typesetting includes tweaking the spacing between letters, between words, and between lines, as well as hyphenation, orphan, and widow control. Good typesetting can make a book look great.<br />
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Why Hire a Professional Book Designer? <br />
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The content of a book must be reflected in the interior design. An ornate design with borders and script fonts is suitable for some books, while a simple, clean layout is appropriate to others. The design of a children's book should enable a child to read without difficulty. Your book will look as though it was produced professionally if every part of your production—text, graphics, book design, and printing—demonstrates quality and the touch of experience.<br />
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A book designer's experience and familiarity with the features available in professional desktop publishing software make all the difference to the final product—your book! In addition to being able to place all the elements of your manuscript together in a pleasing layout, the designer will design a book whose production is as cost-effective as possible. A book that looks wonderful when you open it required skill, time, and careful attention to detail to get it that way.<br />
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Finally, the book designer will send your book to your printer in a problem-free format. The designer knows what questions to ask the printer, understands his guidelines and submission requirements, and knows what kind of paper is appropriate for a particular job. He or she will preflight the file and provide any technical information that the printer needs. A file that is not prepared according to the printer's specifications might end up looking very different from what you see on your computer screen, and the printer is likely to add extra charges to make corrective changes.<br />
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One more thing! A good designer takes pride in his or her work. No designer wants someone to pick up a book and say, “That was done by an amateur.” The professional designer will do his best to make your book a pleasure to read, captivating to the eye, and even admired and emulated by other designers.<br />
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Good Book Design Helps Increase Your Book Sales <br />
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A well-designed book tells a bookseller or reader that you value your book. People are more likely to buy it if they find it visually appealing. If your book has no eyesores, editorial errors or design flaws, nothing will jump out to make the book buyer think, “This book is not for me.” You want people to say, “Yes, I want to read this book!”<br />
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Therefore, make sure your book is well-designed and typeset. This will benefit you and help your book attain success. You have already put valuable time and energy into writing the manuscript. Produce an excellent book from start to finish. Your book is worth it!<br />
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Copyright © 2006 Jill Ronsley. All rights reserved.<br />
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Jill Ronsley, director of Sun Editing and Book Design, provides book design, typesetting, book cover design and editing services. She has produced self-help and nonfiction books, novels, poetry books, children’s picture books, screenplays, and so on. Visit http://www.suneditwrite.com for more information. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jill_RonsleyUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0