With Kobo, Borders Enters the E-Reader Fray

 Posted by at 11:46 am  1 Response »
May 082010
 

Kobo joins Kindle, Sony, iPad, and Nook

Borders, the nation’s second largest bookstore chain today jumped into the fight for the e-reading public with a new e-reader from a Canadian company Kobo, Inc (used to be Shortcovers). Borders owns a significant portion of Kobo, Inc.

The big advantage over Amazon’s Kindle, the Sony E-reader, Barnes and Noble’s Nook, and Apple’s iPad is price. Kobo retails for $150. The big disadvantage is that you have to download a book to a computer then transfer it to your Kobo via cable. The others all use 3G or WiFi technology allowing the user to download material directly to the device. The Kobo supports only the e-Pub and PDF formats which is somewhat limiting.

The Kobo, which has been available in Canada for a few weeks, comes preloaded with 100 classic titles.

Here’s a short video introducing the device:

 

Will your favorite book be available on a Kobo?

Borders says it will offer over 1 million books in its e-book store which it plans to open in June. The Kobo people say there are millions of books currently available for the Kobo from various sources, including 1.8 million free books from Kobobooks.com.

Eventually nearly all books will be available for each mobile device, so make your choice by considering the device features you like and its price point.

Just a write thought.

Something to Shoot for when You Make Your Book Trailer

 Posted by at 8:26 am  No Responses »
May 062010
 

I’ve been researching do-it-yourself video for a presentation I’m giving later this month at the Independent Book Publishers Association’s Publishing University.

This is hardly an example of what most indie publishers will attain, but it is an example of what you can do with clever people, a home studio, a somewhat hefty budget, and two minutes and ten seconds.

 Much of the actual videotaping is quite professional and may be beyond most publisher’s expertise, but many devices used in this video, like the simple title cards (some on masking tape!), the replaying of parts of scenes, and the sound effects (most available free on the Internet—Google “free sound effects”) could be used pretty easily.

It is inspiring, does give us a target to shoot for and besides, it’s fun to watch.

Just a write thought.

Dust Already Settling: Microsoft’s Courier Tablet a Fatality. HP’s Slate too?

 Posted by at 8:04 am  No Responses »
Apr 302010
 

The weeding out of the e-reader/mobile device field has started (continued?) with Microsoft announcing it is canceling further development on its book-shaped, two-page device codenamed Courier.

HP’s Slate is rumored to be on the chopping block too. Perhaps something to do with HP bailing out Palm last week. According to this rumor, HP didn’t like the Windows 7 touch screen technology and felt that Palm’s webOS was better.

Does this mean eventually there will only be one or two players on the field? Nope. The market is too big and there are still a number of heavy-weight companies with product in the pipeline including Dell with its 7- and 10-inch iPad-look-alikes named “Streak.”

Perhaps even Microsoft is still in the game. According to Frank Shaw, a corporate vice president, quoted in a Business Week aritcle, “[the courier’s] technologies will be evaluated for use in future Microsoft offerings.”

What is the eventual impact for authors and publishers? Virtually every book—self-published or not—will be available to download to virtually every reader from dozens of sources. This broadens and levels the playing field for authors and independent publishers who today have to battle the many gatekeepers in the distribution chain.

Just a write thought.

Heady Times in E-Book Publishing

 Posted by at 9:40 am  No Responses »
Apr 252010
 

As I read the April 19th edition of Publishers Weekly, which has a number of articles touching on e-books, I’m reminded of the 1970s when Gottschalk’s, a Fresno-based department store chain, was offering free lessons to housewives on how to use a new-fangled device called a microwave. I’m also reminded of when Beta was battling VHS for dominance in our living rooms. And of the mid-1400s when Guttenberg put his big toe into the river that today we call the “information highway.”

 The e-reader or mobile device—it’ll do a lot more than allow you to read text—is analogous to the microwave. We still don’t understand quite what it is or what it will do for us but we are anxious to learn.

And today’s technology battle is among competing e-book formats (Amazon’s Kindle, Apple’s iPad, Adobe’s Digital Editions, and the soon-to-be-released Blio, just to name a few frontrunners), each vying to be the leading, if not the exclusive format.

Finally, the Guttenbergs of the day are giving us many new ways to receive information beyond ink on paper, often richly interactive ways Guttenberg could never have envisioned.

It’s fun to watch, but it’s difficult to know where to place your money.

What should an author or publisher do at this stage? Learn what you can, participate when it makes sense, but don’t fret. Content is still king and when the dust settles, the king may have a queen, a few princes or princesses, and maybe even a consort or two, but it’ll still be king.

Just a write thought.

Naïve Self-Publishers often Taken

 Posted by at 1:50 pm  No Responses »
Apr 112010
 

[Under the “everybody needs an editor” category, the following paragraph was left off this post. Ooops.]

There is a huge industry built upon the dreams of would-be published authors and startup publishers. Look around a little and you’ll find any number of dubious opportunities. For instance….

For $305 ForeWord magazine will write a review of your book and give you the opportunity to have it placed on their website and distributed to other online sites.

Is this worth $305?

Conventional wisdom holds that paid reviews offer little value in terms of selling books. In many instances you can have a colleague write a review and distribute it to the same sites. If your colleague has a name or title people respect, the review may be better received than one from a little-known magazine. Why pay hundreds for something of doubtful value?

Wait, it gets worse.

For $195 more ($500 total), iUniverse will send your book to ForeWord for you. What is the postage on a book today anyway?

Are there better ways to spend one’s money promoting a book?

Here’s a fun idea: The $500, Three-Day, Three-City Book Blitz.

Arrange for three presentations on your book’s subject or, if you are a novelist, on some aspect of your story, in three different cities within driving distance of each other over three days. Think beyond bookstores to Friends of the Library groups or senior centers or fraternal organizations. Be inventive.

Be sure books are available for sale and signing at each event. Alert the media in each city. Mention it in your blog—both before and after. Have pictures taken of you speaking and the crowd and post them on your site and around the Web.

Now for the $500.

Use $300 to pay for lodging and gas. Treat yourself and a companion to a gourmet dinner each night of your trip with the other $200.

Not only will you have more fun, you’ll likely sell more books.

Just a write thought.

Churchill on Writing Books

 Posted by at 8:16 am  No Responses »
Mar 162010
 

The quote below—which I’d never heard until Bill Secrest, Jr., a QDB author and friend, sent it to me—is worth its own blog:

 “Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.”

       —Winston Churchill

 Hot tip: Want to make your writing tighter? Take a look at each time you have used the word “that.” Most can be deleted to your reader’s benefit.

 Just a write thought.

Three Things I “Knew” Before the O’Reilly Tools of Change Conference

 Posted by at 9:17 am  No Responses »
Feb 272010
 

One of the reasons to attend conferences is to confirm that your current beliefs and practices are valid. If you are anything like me, you, on occasion, make business decisions and take actions based on gut feelings or past experiences—feelings and experiences that are, as Nixon’s press secretary Ron Zeigler might have put it, inoperative.

There were at least three things I “knew” before I attended the TOC conference. I was pleased to find they were in fact still “operative.”

1. It isn’t time yet to abandon all the marketing efforts that have worked for years. Book events, speaking engagements, printed reviews, and interviews on radio and TV still have a place. Support your non-social media marketing with social media marketing and vice versa.

2. An app for an iPhone or other device isn’t a replacement for a book, but can both support your book sales and be profitable on its own.

3. The author, rather than the publishing company, is the social media marketer of choice. This is true for at least three reasons: Authors are usually more passionate and knowledgeable about their subject than a publishing company’s employee; social media is about personal connections, not corporate connections; and authors offer star appeal.

One thing I was surprised to learn was pointed out by Tim O’Reilly in his conference-closing address: The top ten blogs according to Technorati.com often include large organizations that are, in reality, publishers in that they are involved primarily in news gathering and distribution. Examples are The Huffington Post, Mashable and Boing Boing.

A side note: When my friends turn up their noses at reading books on a Kindle or other mobile device (like I used to), I’ve been smugly telling them there is an e-reader in their future. Now, after seeing what’s about to hit the landing strip, I’m going to tell them it is in their near future.

 Just a write thought.

TOC Publishing Conference Takeaways

 Posted by at 5:52 am  1 Response »
Feb 242010
 

Here, in random order, are a few quotes worth contemplating —often paraphrased—from various speakers at the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference. My apologies to the speakers for not attributing these, all were brilliant and many said basically the same things in different and enlightening ways.

• Mobile publishing does not equal digital publishing.

• Mobile is more like print than digital.

• Engagement is on the user’s terms.

• Mobile users are acceptive of ads.

• Usage is in short bursts of 3.5 to 4 minutes.

• Monetary exchange answers aren’t clear yet.

• In 2005, Apple’s first attempt at cell, the ROKR, held 100 songs.

• 2010 will be “The Year of the Mobile.”

• Consumers are trained now.

• The pieces are finally in place: Content, distribution substructure, devices.

• No buginess is accepted by users.

• Apps run from $3,000 to $100,000. Sourcebooks spends $3,000 to $7,000 for an app.

• Collect and analyze data: Metrics, metrics, metrics.

• Mobile devices are “super measurable.”

• Apple’s app store: 200,000 plus apps with 2 billion downloads.

• $4.99 is the pricing “sweet spot” for an app right now.

• No gatekeepers, but no quality controls.

• 75% of apps are paid, 25% are free.

• Symbian is the most-used cell phone operating system, but not popular in the U.S.

• Vendors (set up to assist you in making apps) make money by confusing you.

• One app sold for $800 and just returned an image of a ruby. Three were sold before Apple took it down.

• Plan your app’s launch day like you would with a book.

• Tuesdays and Wednesdays are best for launches.

• If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.

• Fail quickly, iterate rapidly.

• For wirelesss downloads mentions on Mashable and TechCrunch are better than regular media.

• There’s a free Stanford course on iPhones available from Apple’s iUniversity.

• Most success stories are without a marketing budget.

• Learn XML.

• Your website is the hub of a social media strategy.

• Choose team members passionate about your topic for social media marketing.

• Offer tools so your audience can promote your content.

• Content is king.

• Sales are driven by instant gratification.

• Embed links generously.

• Don’t be a commercial.

• Your high quality content is a targeted sales pitch.

• Stay focused.

• Start slow and build.

• Think long-term.

• Be consistent and persistent.

• A sign in Einstein’s office: Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.

• Macmillan’s Dynamic Books: Text books that can be changed by the professor are an effort to curb used book sales.

• The speed of innovation is accelerating.

• Generational shifts are coming into play in big ways.

• The 8 to 18 crowd spend average of 7.5 hours on digital device a day.

• Simplify, connect, conquer.

• Watch the periphery.

• Limit the variables.

• Leave your comfort zone.

• Publishing was B2B is now B2C.

• Golden Age of Engagement.

• Self-expression is the new entertainment.

• Moore’s law (Google if you aren’t familiar with it) applies.

• Information technology has a 50% deflation rate annually.

Attending conferences like this is expensive, but it repays you over the year many times over.

 Just a write thought.

Books and Cell Phone Apps?

 Posted by at 4:58 am  No Responses »
Feb 232010
 

The O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, held this year at New York’s Marriott Marquis Times Square, is the place to try and keep up with the technological advances currently flooding the book publishing industry.

I attended three workshops yesterday. The first was titled “Selling in Mobile Markets” and was presented by Rana Sobany author of the O’Reilly book Marketing iPhone Apps.

She gave some interesting history:

The 1980s, she said, was all about carriers establishing the substructure necessary for cell phones. The first cell phone call was made in 1983.

The 90s were about cell phone size with, in 1999, Motorola unveiling the StarTAC, the first cell phone to weigh in under one pound.

Today there are a reported 4.6 billion cell phones in use. This approaches the population of the world, which is approximately 6.8 billion, but there are lots of third-world countries without land lines to most places, forcing the use of cell technology and, apparently, many people carry more than one cell phone.

Sobany, an articulate woman in her 30s (I’d guess) who is passionate about her subject, said she’d bet many in the audience were carrying more than one. I doubted that, but later in the conference I was speaking to the sales rep for Publishers Weekly and he fielded calls on at least two as we spoke. I felt underprivileged with only a single iPhone in my pocket.

What does that proliferation of cell phones mean for authors and publishers? It means we had better plan on having a presence in the mobile world. It is predicted that within a few years more people will access the Internet via mobile devices than from PCs. Mobile apps are today—and will be more so in the future—important ways to support book sales.

Here, in no particular order, are a few new nuggets I gleaned from Sobany’s talk:

 • She says this decade will be the “iPhone” decade. Not meaning that iPhone will be the only player, but is the one currently defining the industry.

• Publishers, in designing apps for mobile devices need:

    —a brand vision, by which I took she meant working single titles would result in loss of momentum and subsequent impact. She said, at the least, use a common logo. This would suggest book authors should consider writing series or leave the apps to your publisher.

    —to make data-driven decisions.  Metrics, metrics, metrics…one great thing about mobile devices and the web in general is that you can obtain lots of data. Using it to ferret out what actions are best is still art as well as science, but ignore it at your peril.

    —iterate quickly. Updating to keep your app current to the needs of today’s user is important if you don’t want your app to be replaced by another’s.

    —keep in mind that the attention a user gives to his device is given in short bursts of about three and a half  to four minutes. This isn’t all bad, it is a highly-focused three and a half to four minutes, but an app that requires 10 minutes of concentration….

There was much more. I’ll try to get to some of it later, but, an interesting prediction I heard more than once at this conference is that Twitter will, in essence, be a thing of the past by the end of the year. Twitter, a short-lived fad? Who could have predicted?

Just a write thought.

Amazon.com Caves on Kindle E-Book Pricing

 Posted by at 12:00 am  No Responses »
Feb 012010
 

Amazon.com and MacMillan, one of the nation’s largest publishers, engaged in a bit of tussle over the last few days. It was about the much-debated (within the publishing industry anyway) pricing Amazon had chosen to offer on Kindle e-book editions of best-selling books.

Where a hardcover best-seller might have a retail price of $25 to $30, Kindle editions were offered at $9.99.

Since Amazon pays about half of the retail price for each Kindle edition sold, the company was apparently using the $9.99 pricing as a lost-leader in an effort to sell more Kindle e-readers which in turn would create a greater demand for Kindle e-books.

Publishers, however, were worried that, in the nascent e-book business, consumers would become fixated on a belief that e-books should sell at considerably lower prices than hardcover books.

MacMillan raised a fuss over the discounted pricing and, for a few days, Amazon quit selling thousands of MacMillan titles directly—you could still buy the titles through Amazon from other vendors.

Yesterday, Amazon reversed course and capitulated. They will now offer Kindle editions of MacMillan titles at the publisher-suggested prices of around $12.99 to $14.99.

 In my opinion much of this is moot or soon will be.

 Within five years, digital files of most books will be stored in one or two huge repositories where the rights owners—publishers, authors, whoever—will dictate how much they want to charge for each downloaded copy; perhaps with prices for different categories of buyers such as libraries, brick-and-mortar stores—who will use equipment that prints and binds a book while you wait—and online retailers.

Amazon and other retailers will tap into these repositories, downloading and delivering  a copy each time they get an order for a book. The retailer will add whatever mark-up their efficiencies and market pressures allow to the price they pay.

The repository will handle collecting from the retailer and paying the publisher or other rights holder.

Look for Amazon to discontinue stocking printed editions of most titles, prefering to download and print each book when a customer orders one.

Just a write thought.

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