We are well aware now what the big Apple announcement for January was: their new iBooks Author program.  It is a program that allows for easy creation of books, most notably textbooks, for free.  iBooks might have failed to kill the Kindle platform, even given the whole Agency Model collusion with publishers (the legality of which we’ll have to wait and see about), but that doesn’t mean they’re ready to give up.  After some experimentation with the new program I find myself conflicted.  I wanted it to be mediocre, but it’s not.  And therein lies the problem.

You see, there is a bit of a problem with the program’s EULA.  It won’t be a deal breaker for just anybody, but there is definitely important information to be aware of.  By using the iBooks Author program, you are agreeing that not only will anything you sell be available in Apple’s eBook store but also will never never be sold for the Kindle, Nook, or any other non-Apple device.

Before going into the subtleties of the wording, and there are a few arguments with varying degrees of merit that have been made toward the harmlessness of this clause, consider that this can definitely be read as a response to the recent Amazon effort to gain author exclusivity.  The only difference is that Amazon brings in authors with a chance at more money while Apple just quietly restricts their distribution rights with a clause that users not only never explicitly accept, but don’t even see unless they go out of their way.

That said, there are a few situations where I think this will be an extremely valuable thing to have.  If you are planning to create and distribute your work permanently free of charge, I have yet to find a more intuitive, affordable tool for making textbooks or manuals.  If your book was always intended to be marketed primarily to users of the iBooks store, this probably won’t have much of an impact on you.

Now, let’s acknowledge some ambiguities in the wording and clarify some of the many common points of contention:

Restrictions Only Apply To iBook Format:  FALSE

The definition of “Work” used in the EULA clearly indicates that anything generated using the software counts.  It does not matter if you export to PDF, for example.

Apple Is Stealing Author Copyrights:  FALSE

Anything you create is yours from the moment you create it unless you explicitly hand over permission.  What Apple is doing is telling you where you can sell it.  Using iBooks Author allows them to restrict distribution of your work, but otherwise seems to offer them no rights to it.

All This Applies To Is The Formatted Product, Not The Content:  AMBIGUOUS

Leaving aside the textbook for a moment and assuming we are talking about a book that is completely text based.  If you want to release a Kindle version, it would seem possible to just copy the text and reformat.  The wording of the EULA describes “Work” recursively as “any book or other work you generate using this software”.  This can, and hopefully would be, read to mean that only the final, fully formatted output is affected, but the ambiguity is troubling.

It Is Free Software, They Have A Right To Expect A Return:  TRUE-ISH

Nobody is forcing you to use this program.  It is being provided free of charge by Apple and provides far greater functionality than any other free program out there for the same purposes.  Most such restrictions are aimed toward restriction the active use of the software rather than restricting how a creator can manage their own work, though.  Neither illegal nor unprecedented, but odd and somewhat troubling.

Not A Consumer Targeted Software Anyway:  FALSE

This one comes up a lot.  Despite the large number of advertisements being done involving the cooperation of such publishers as Pearson and McGraw Hill in the iBooks Textbook initiative, there has been no indication that they are contributing work under the same agreement.  This is free software pointed at teachers and authors in the advertising (particularly the promo video).  It has bundled templates to simplify the work, a simple drag and drop interface, and tons of automation.  There is depth for those who need it, but definitely not aimed solely at experienced professional textbook publishers.

Apple Can Prevent A Finished Book From Ever Being Sold:  TRUE

All that is required for a book to be covered by these restrictions is that it be a product of iBooks Author.  Publication is neither automated nor guaranteed, and just because Apple turns you down does not mean that you are free to market your work through another platform or sell through your own means.

Apple Offers Better/Worse Royalties Than The Competition Anyway:  FALSE

Apple is effectively offering the same cut of all sales to authors as the vast majority of authors receive when selling for the Kindle and nearly the same (within 5%) as that offered to Nook sellers.

Now, I’m not about to claim that this is the most horrible thing ever done to authors or even that it is deliberately malicious.  Some have claimed that just as this is a 1.0 software, so is the EULA in early versions too and ambiguity will inevitably be removed.  If so, and there was no intent to deceive or control, so be it.  It is already a complicated enough process to get anything out of your eBooks that authors should be aware of what they are getting into, though.  I, for one, wouldn’t want to be locked out of the Kindle platform by accident when that’s where all the readers are.

This is good software.  Possibly great software.  But the limitations aren’t the same as you get when publishing a Kindle Edition, where all you need to worry about is not selling things cheaper elsewhere.  Under the current wording it seems to literally stop you from reaching an audience.  That’s just unpleasant, and something that people need to be aware of when deciding whether or not iBooks Author is for them.

Recent reports indicate that later this month we can expect to see Apple host a press conference related to, of all things, eBooks.  After news that the Kindle Fire has had a noticeable impact on iPad sales this past quarter, clearly something has to be done.  This is not official as of yet, but multiple sources in positions to be aware of such plans have passed along the same information.  While we have no way as of yet to know for sure where this will lead, the most common rumors seem to point to Apple’s launching of a digital self publishing platform to compete with the Kindle Direct Publishing program.

In reality, such a move on Apple’s part would be quite surprising.  In addition to the fact that simply matching the competition seems to offer far less reward than the effort would be worth given that the iBooks store has failed to really take off so far anyway, Apple is already making about as much on each book sold to owners of their devices as they would be likely to make off a program competitive enough to draw in new authors.  Keeping in mind the fact that anybody publishing through Amazon’s KDP program, or even Barnes & Noble’s slightly less popular PubIt, will already be available to iOS users, the only real motivation for Apple here would be to draw authors into an exclusive arrangement in some way to enhance the iBooks selection.  Amazon has already begun a similar effort tied into their Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, so this would not necessarily be a shocking move, but there is little reason to suspect that Apple is desperate to suddenly push into the eBook market in a major way.

Since we can be fairly certain that whatever the announcement is about will be related to publishing in some way, however, there are a few other possibilities.  Textbook rental is one of the more likely possibilities.  While Amazon’s new Kindle Format 8 provides some more robust formatting options to publishers and the Kindle Fire obviously handles the demands of textbooks more easily than E INK reading devices, so far the Kindle Textbook Rental program has failed to draw much attention.  Given the iPad’s larger screen and Apple’s strong presence on college campuses, it would make sense for them to jump to fill in this gap in the market before anybody else beats them to it.

It is also possible that this has something to do with the ongoing class action lawsuits against Apple and the Big 6 publishers over price fixing and the imposition of the Agency Model around the time the iPad was released.  In the past month the situation has become quite a bit more intense, with the US Justice Department joining in and at least 15 ongoing suits.  It would seem unlikely that the company would want to comment on an ongoing legal battle, but given claims of detailed inside information on the part of certain plaintiffs there is always the chance that preemptive spin on an anticipated settlement attempt might be in order.

The one thing everybody agrees on is that this will not be a hardware announcement.  While there is still speculation with varying degrees of believability about a smaller iPad meant to compete with the Kindle Fire, that will have to wait until later.  For now, it’s hard to know exactly what to expect.

Kindle owners found themselves targeted recently in a fairly unpleasant way.  Penguin USA, one of the largest publishers in the world, decided that it would be a smart business move to pull their entire collection of publications from libraries across the country for Kindle owners.  Everybody else, including owners of competing eReaders like the Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch, could still get these books.  Now, while things have been temporarily dealt with since then – Penguin has temporarily stopped singling out the Kindle users entirely – new Penguin books will not be made available anymore and there is reason to believe that the event will recur unless Penguin and OverDrive (the service providing eBook lending services for most libraries these days) are able to work out a deal by the end of the year.

Neither Penguin nor OverDrive has said anything about the exact details of Penguin’s problems.  OverDrive was simply sent word to disable the “Get for Kindle” functionality for all Penguin eBooks immediately.  There was not even a warning sent to the affected libraries before the change took effect, which led to a great deal of ill will.  These libraries purchase each copy of the eBooks they rent out and as such were left sitting on the results of essentially wasted money that could not be lent out despite Kindle-owning customer demand.  The expected outcry for massive refunds, which would certainly have garnered a great deal of public sympathy, might well explain Penguin’s temporary capitulation.

Many have believably argued that this is a direct response to the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library that Amazon launched recently for their Prime members.  The timing certainly fits.  Amazon got around the fact that major publishers have refused to buy into this new program by focusing on their KDP titles, smaller publishers, and by outright purchase of each rented eBook that they could get their hands on through wholesale arrangements.  This last move is what causes the ill will since many publishers and authors feel that this exceeds the scope of their current relationships with Amazon.

While nobody involved in the Prime lending library is directly losing money, a major worry in the industry is that eBooks will lose perceived value.  If customers start thinking of eBooks as somehow inherently cheaper that printed books, then printed Book sales will suffer and publishers would be forced to rely on sales of the eBooks, which means being subject to Amazon and Barnes & Noble even more than they are now.  This is the same sort of reasoning that brought on the behind-the-scenes deal with Apple to fix prices of eBooks around the time the iBooks store opened up.

I would say that this is going to go poorly for Penguin.  While their need to react is understandable given that they feel wronged, the targeting was off a bit.  Instead of attacking Amazon directly, they have gone after their own readers.  Yes, the Amazon deal with OverDrive increases the incentive to purchase a Kindle, but going after libraries doesn’t do a lot to make you look better to a customer base that loves to read.  The Kindle is unlikely to be pushed out of the #1 slot in eBook Readers any time soon, even if all the major publishers pulled out of the library system in the same way.  It’s difficult to understand what Penguin is still hoping to accomplish here.

Amazon made what appeared to be some fairly big opponents in the earliest days of the Kindle.  All they had to do was decide to go with a closed format.  Unlike some companies who might have decided that a strong DRM scheme was plenty of protection, they made sure that Kindle owners were locked in by consciously failing to support the industry standard eBook format.  It struck many people, myself included, as manipulative and more than a little bit condescending.

Thinking back, many of my earliest complaints about the Kindle revolved around the EPUB format.  I was ideologically supportive of the Nook in a very strong way as a result.  They might have wanted to lock in customers via DRM, but at least things like outside purchases and library books would work if the user wanted to make the effort to access them.  MobiPocket format was already too outdated in many situations.

Oddly enough, in principle the objections remain to this day.  The difference is that now customers aren’t expected to buy into an unproven platform with no guarantee that success was ahead.  Keep in mind that the Kindle was not the first E Ink eReader.  Sony was already doing a fairly good job of fizzling out by then and has been taking a back seat in the field ever since as a result.

My own change of opinion regarding the importance of the eBook format conflict stems from purely practical matters.  We have reached a point where there is literally nothing you can’t do with a Kindle that can be done on another device.  Library books are plentiful, no author or publisher is likely to boycott the Kindle platform in favor of the competition, and on the off chance that you find a DRM-free eBook you want on your device you can convert it for free with Calibre (a practical necessity for the eBook enthusiast in case you haven’t adopted already. Google it!).  In a situation where the format itself offers no particular advantage inherent to itself, there is no longer much reason to cling to it.  There is a reason you don’t see much use of HD-DVD anymore, or Betamax before that.

As we move forward into the next generation of formats, HTML5 forms the underlying structure.  Kindle Format 8 looks to allow for as much, or as little, formatting as the person producing a given publication desires as a result.  This will improve Amazon’s ability to present their media equally well on practically any size display, which makes sense given speculation regarding future Kindle Tablet options.  Nobody else seems to have really adopted an equally versatile approach yet, and even if that happens it won’t necessarily change anything.  There is only so much you can do in order to essentially show off text in an attractive manner.

What it all comes down to is that customers will go where they get the best experience.  EPUB might be better than Mobi, but with the Kindle providing the better hardware and Amazon backing their product with strong infrastructure and a great book store that didn’t matter enough.  It’s one more format war down.

For those who have been paying attention, it doesn’t come as much of a shock to hear that people are unhappy about the rise in price of Kindle eBooks caused by the Agency Model pricing forced on Amazon by the largest publishing houses in the business.  Apple came out with iBooks as a means of adding value to the iPad’s initial launch, and in doing so arranged things to prevent Amazon from having an advantage.  They went to the publishers, worked out an industry-wide deal, and ended the era of the affordably priced eBook.  Now, finally, somebody is calling them on it.

The basis for the suit is a number of early indications that Apple knew ahead of time that all of the major publishers would be turning on Amazon at the same time.  A much publicized Wall Street Journal article from early 2010 had Steve Jobs clearly aware of the impending changes and certain not only of his company’s ability to price match but of the publishers’ willingness to boycott Amazon in order to change the state of the market.  While Amazon did make every attempt to keep the Kindle Store free of such manipulation and price hiking, in the end each publisher is the controller of its own works and they were forced to concede defeat in order to keep the content available to Kindle readers.

The suit charges Apple and the five largest publishing companies with antitrust violations, among other things, and would seek to represent anybody who has purchased an eBook since the prices jumped over 30% practically overnight last year.  If successful, the Agency Model would be completely overturned, as would the arrangements currently in place preventing price discrepancies between retailers.

There is every reason to believe that this has at least a chance of success.  It is not even the first legal obstacle that publishers have faced since they turned on the Kindle.  In 2010 both Amazon and Apple were brought to talks with the Attorney General of Connecticut, who had concerns that the abrupt change would lead to a situation where competition between companies would be impossible.  Such anti-competitive behavior would of course be a dangerous thing to be involved in, but the companies being looked at at the time were clearly not colluding.  This time, looking at Apple and the publishers, it might not pass quite so easily.

Though it will be months, at best, before there is even an indication of which way this is likely to turn out, it is possible that there will be some change in the meantime.  eBooks are the only area where the publishing industry seems to be growing lately, and the Kindle platform is the driving force behind eBook sales in the US.  Anything that publishers can do to improve sales will be to their advantage, and they have shown at least some small interest in the potential from reduced pricing.  Will it be enough to change the face of eBook publishing without legal intervention?  Time will tell.  It seems inevitable that publishers will come to their senses eventually and drive their numbers up any way that works, though, and the success of the lawsuit is still just speculation.

As most of you will almost certainly be aware by now, the ever popular Harry Potter series is on its way to the Kindle.  The author, J.K. Rowling, is keeping control over the distribution of the books by attaching her sales platform to the Pottermore companion web site that will be opening this coming October.  While the combination of extra content and fan loyalty will certainly make the site and eBook sales even more of a success than we expect, in the meantime the anticipation building around the site has left over-zealous fans open to scams built around the pre-release proceedings.

You see, a lucky few have managed to secure invitations to experience the Pottermore site well ahead of time.  There was a contest of sorts that allowed the truly interested to get their names in, but it was arranged in such a way as to technically allow somebody to get multiple invites.  This, of course, opens to door to eBay sales even if they are technically against the site’s Terms & Conditions.  Sadly as we all know by now, I hope, where there are electronic invitation sales, there are scams.

Harry Potter fans hoping to get in have been singled out for everything from hundred dollar fake early access accounts to total identity theft from some fairly convincing dummy sites asking people for far too much information in order to gain entry.  Pottermore admins have, naturally, warned people against falling for these scams and have pointed out that even if people do manage to find a legitimate account transfer they will still be banned for breaking the rules, but when people are trying this desperately to get around existing restrictions and rules there is little chance of such advise from the people creating the barriers being heeded.

If you are one of the millions looking forward to the Pottermore site, whether for access to Kindle versions of the books or to enjoy the content, your best bet is to just wait it out.  The only worthwhile avenues at this point are the official ones, so if you don’t see what seems to be your way in written about on the Pottermore placeholder like ‘The Magical Quill’ contest has been then you are inviting trouble by pursuing them.

When the site does open up, Pottermore will be completely free to the public.  Users will be able to access it in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish, with more options coming within the year.  There will be over 18,000 words of new material for you to read through, a shop to purchase things like eBooks from, a number of simple games that go along with events in the books, and a generally social experience through which to share your enjoyment of the Harry Potter series.

There is a lot there to get excited about, and if you are a big enough fan to be interested in paying large amounts of money just to get into a soon-to-be-free site then you’re probably very excited indeed, but wait it out.  Rowling, Harry Potter, and the Pottermore site will all come together in just a couple more months.  No book is important enough to risk identity theft or large sums of wasted money.

In recent news, Apple has decided to start thoroughly enforcing their in-app purchasing rules after a bit of a delay.  While this is inconvenient for Kindle users, Nook users, and pretty much everybody who isn’t Apple, perhaps the most uniquely affected portion of the eBook marketplace will be the fans of Nook Kids for iPad app. Its narrow audience and specific requirements definitely make it a special case.

If you think about the strengths of the iPad, or tablets in general so far, when it comes to eReading, the biggest factor in favor is the color screen.  Not much good for the purpose if you read a lot of bestsellers, classic literature, poetry, or anything along those lines, but absolutely essential for optimal viewing of kids’ books among other things.  Right now, the Nook is pretty much the only eBook line handling children’s books in a thorough fashion.  One of the things you’ll see on all their advertisements is that they have the “largest collection of kids’ books all in one place”, and that even seems to hold up pretty well.

Now, if you make the assumption that few parents are grabbing their children tablets of their very own, which I think is a fair assumption given the average prices and general fragility of the gadget compared to the toys they might be used to, the change becomes particularly inconvenient.  Basically, if my hypothetical child were to have their own Tablet PC or Kindle, it would be in my best interest to not allow them any way to make purchases on the device itself.  Whether this is accomplished via parental controls or simple lack of functionality doesn’t matter much.  On the same device that I keep around primarily for my own use, that I simply happen to pull out during shared reading time, the lack of functionality is an infuriating factor.  Yes, browser-based purchasing is still simple enough to use, but it adds enough steps to the process of acquiring a book that will likely only take a small amount of time per reading anyway that it renders impulse buying less attractive.

This was Apple’s plan, of course.  Force people to either give Apple a 30% cut of every sale or lose a large portion of their revenue entirely.  When nobody else is offering the same service, it won’t necessarily kill the business, but I would expect interest among iPad owners to fall off to a certain degree.  A big setback in the short term that may allow competition to rise up if Barnes & Noble can’t get a better handle on the situation.  Personally, I would anticipate seeing Nook Kids for Android apps any time now.  The tablet market is growing noticeably, and it is only a matter of time before something pops up that can compete with the iPad.  Right now that looks like an Android Tablet.  Maybe it will be the Kindle Tablet, maybe not, but as far as the OS choice goes, there isn’t a whole lot else going on right now for portable devices.

The Kindle has done a lot to bring publishing from fantasy to reality for new authors everywhere.  In an industry previously dominated by publishing houses that have a track record of refusing to take risks on new things, it provides an easy way for somebody to get their work out there and let it stand on its own merits.  This is not without its issues, however.  Under the old system we had some regulation, even if it was ridiculously over-restrictive.  Now, we can only hope that the best rises to the top.

The downside of the Kindle and its self-publishing options has generally been seen to be a lack of editorial input.  Bad books get published, poorly edited books get published, basically anything that people churn out can hit the digital shelves the day the author hits the Submit button.  Unfortunately, that’s not really all we have to worry about.  There were always going to be a few less than original titles that were meant purely to get the most cash for the least effort and to hell with the customer, but now a method has been devised for anybody who wants to put in the effort to put out 10-20 new books a day without even bothering to write.

The form that this takes can be anything from republished PLR content (content that the “author” buys the rights to republish under their own name) to the deliberately malicious.  The former are interesting in that they at least have the potential to be real, quality works, even if they aren’t exactly originals.  A system calling itself “Autopilot Kindle Cash” claims to be able to teach people to publish as many as 20 of these recycled eBooks per day at minimal expense.  For the most part, it is a load of worthless writing that offers little enjoyment, advice, or information, but that doesn’t mean that the occasional gem might not appear.  I can’t say that I support the idea, but it is the lesser of two evils.

On the more unpleasant side, we have scam links.  Some of these will come at the end of PLR content.  Others will just be thrown in wherever is convenient.  I’ve personally come across several that took me to scam sites promising easy money, but there is no reason to believe that there aren’t quite a few that link even more unpleasant content.

It would be unreasonable to expect Amazon to have every eBook checked out before publication.  Given the size of the platform, it just wouldn’t make sense.  To be fair, they even respond promptly to complaints by bringing down the offending eBook or author and offering refunds.  It seems a little strange to have to deal with this sort of issue while shopping for books, though.

For now, readers might want to watch for vaguely worded product descriptions, books with few or no reviews on them, and authors who seem to put out a lot of books all at once.  Most importantly, as with anything that can send you around on the internet, be careful what links you click on.  It’s a shame that the Kindle isn’t entirely safe from this sort of abuse, and I hope to see something fix it in the near future, but it’s simple enough to stay safe if you’re cautious.

Not too long ago, Amazon(NASDAQ:AMZN) announced that they were finally officially selling more Kindle Edition eBooks than they were print books, even discounting free book downloads.  It was a big deal and, I think, still is.  It indicates changing perceptions of what a book is to a reader at the conceptual level.  I’m not saying that the battle is won or anything, but milestones matter.

Since that time, people have reacted in a number of ways.  Publishers have expressed skepticism, which makes perfect sense given their level of investment in keeping eBook prices as high as possible.  People like me who are fans of the Kindle, its associated platform, and the community building up around it have expressed the obvious enthusiasm.  I’m not claiming a lack of bias on this point.  At least one analyst, a Michael Norris, has publicly called the claim “obnoxious” and expressed the opinion that the whole announcement was a publicity stunt made possible by taking things completely out of context.

Context is indeed what matters here.  Norris goes on to express the opinion that Amazon must be padding their numbers with some apparently astounding sales from the popular Kindle Singles program.  While I’m skeptical of the claim that the Singles are where Amazon is making most of their sales, having looked through the selection more than once, it doesn’t really matter.  The fact that the Kindle Singles are shorter doesn’t make them “not books” in my eyes.  Really, I don’t think it does for this guy either.  I believe what he is objecting to is the fact that a product selling for $0.99 can hold as much weight as a product going for $12.99 when it comes time to compare sales. He comes out and says “Obviously, when you’re selling units so inexpensively, you’re going to sell more of those than, for example, a $14 paperback print book” and thinks he’s making a point against eBooks.

This gets to the heart of the matter, and I think it explains the difference between what customers want to know and what publishers would like them to know.  As a reader and buyer of books, both electronic and otherwise, I am more interested in the number of copies being sold than I am in how much profit somebody is making off of them.  I’m not a stockholder.  If somebody tells me that in spite of 20% of all book sales in a year being eBooks only 5% of a specific publisher’s income came from them, I wonder what that publisher was doing wrong, not what is wrong with eBook loving customers.

What I’m trying to get at is that saying that the numbers are misleading just because they address an aspect of the transition to a new medium that you don’t like is not cool.  Yes, this is a different context from what you may be used to, but it is not out of context.  If anything, it highlights a more relevant piece of information about the new publishing business than most other things I have seen.  Is the announcement a bit self-serving on Amazon’s part?  Of course, or why would they have made it?  It wouldn’t be useful, though if it didn’t tell people something they wanted to know.  The Kindle is doing well, possibly better than anybody could have expected at this point, and whether or not that had to do with Kindle Singles it seems that people were interested enough to take notice.

This isn’t a new topic, but it also doesn’t seem to be going away.  There are some very loud people convinced that the Kindle spells the end of the book and they’re quite willing to say so.  In a very, very limited way, they’re right.  The problem is that they’re missing the point.

You see, books have come a long way already over the years.  It doesn’t matter if you decide to cite oral tradition, serialized texts, or pretty much anything else as the origination point for the modern concept of the book, it’s not possible to deny that the book as we know it is an evolution from something else.  The transition to the medium we know and love today, which is itself distinct from the books produced prior to the printing press for example, has allowed for more variety and enjoyment to emerge than ever before.  The Kindle, and other eReaders like it, is simply the next stage in the ongoing progression.  It takes the established situation and makes it more efficient to deliver, less restrictive in terms of publication, and more generally accessible overall.

In a way, this is the heart of the problem.  The publishing industry isn’t built around the text.  In the end, it doesn’t matter if they are selling the most amazing piece of literature ever written or the latest exploitation of the vampire romance novel phenomenon so long as people are buying.  The industry makes its money by selling the book as a physical object and offering the person or people who produced the information inside a cut of the profit.  If you take away the paper, their model seems less sustainable.

If anybody sitting at home can do the work to get a novel written, polished, and put up for sale with no need for a middle-man and at a higher percentage than the publishing houses are prone to offering, then what is the point of courting them?  What we need to see now is some initiative on the part of these companies.  What are they bringing to the table?  It isn’t enough to cite history and what they’ve done before.  If the Kindle is supposed to be single-handedly destroying publishing as we know it, you have to assume that it has more to do with what the public considers to be worth their money than it does with Jeff Bezos being an evil genius bent on taking over the world.

If they are going to stay afloat, people need to be informed about what advantages there are in going with a publisher.  The doors need to open up a bit.  If this isn’t enough, then it isn’t a sign that somebody is out to get them, it’s a sign that publishers simply aren’t providing authors with decent value anymore. The industry isn’t changing on a whim, it’s changing because things like the Kindle platform are making it possible for authors and readers to avoid the red tape and pointless markups that are left over from a time when successful publishing was literally impossible without an impressive backer.  We’re moving on.

In case you are lazy and would like to get right to the point, you can click on this link and get the video discussed in this post. Otherwise – keep reading, it’s well worth it.

Ok so maybe you’ve seen the articles on Forbes.com, in the NY Times or The Huffington post about how Kindle authors like Amanda Hocking are literally writing their way to millions of dollars in sales right?

And maybe you’ve heard of other authors who are not making millions, but modestly making thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars in Amazon Kindle book sales every month right?

And maybe you’ve even noticed that almost all of these people… The million dollar sellers and those selling thousands monthly are unknown authors and in some cases completely new to writing…. Heck even one of Kindle’s biggest stars Amanda, has admitted in interviews that she is not a professional.

So if most of the big sellers are newbies and/or unknowns how have they been able to achieve the amount of success that they have and so quickly?

Well the answer is pretty simple… In fact so simple that I would even venture to say that almost anyone who followed the proper “system” could sell a lot of books…. And I do mean A Lot!

So by now you’ve probably figured out that having the proper system in place has a lot to do with the amount of success that you have with your book(s) and in turn the amount of visibility you get, the amount of sales you make and ultimately the amount of money you make :-)

Now What?

So we now know that when it comes to selling a good amount of your books, luck has nothing to so with it… Nor do you have to be a professional or seasoned author… In fact you don’t even have to any experience with writing, because having the proper system will do wonders for you.

So what should your book selling “system” consist of?

Well to begin with it should allow you to easily be able to tell;

• What topics sell like mad
• How to create titles that attract attention and pull readers in like a magnet
• How to use Amazon to build a list of “Fans” that will happily buy every single title that you release
• How adding 1 simple graphic to your book’s cover can double or even triple your sales
• Secret price points that allow you to sell more books than you may have ever thought  possible

And much more…

Yep that’s the beuty of having a perfect system…

But the downside of systems is having to put one together because it can take time if you have to do it all on your own or worse yet, have no idea how…

But something that I’ve seen recently is a video that shows you how 1 guy has put together a nearly fool proof step-by-step system that allows him to make…

$10,000.00 a month selling his ebooks on Amazon.com’s kindle

And just as with some of the examples that we spoke about above, this guy is;

• Not a professional writer
• Not a “well known” name
• Not super smart
• And in fact he failed English 101 in school twice… Twice!

Yet he is making over $10,000.00 a month selling his material on Kindle.

How does he do it?

Good question, in fact he has been nice enough to put together an entire step-by-step video that shows you his entire system and allows you to copy what he is doing.

This guy even logs into his Kindle account and shows you proof of how much money he is making and how he got to over $15,000.00 in sales in just 6 – 7 months

I couldn’t believe it at first , but his system really works as you”ll see when you go here to watch the video

https://musicbizcenter.infusionsoft.com/go/kcf-bk/kcf-bk/

Enjoy :)

After years of adamant refusal to consider the idea of releasing electronic versions of her amazingly popular Harry Potter series, there are rumors circulating that J.K. Rowling is giving serious thought to a release for Kindles and Kindle-like devices.  While it is doubtful that there are all that many people out there who are interested in reading the Harry Potter series who have also failed to procure the books at this point, considering the impressive sales figures, it’s hard to believe that this would be anything but a genius money-making decision for Rowling.  There have, in fact, been reports that this could benefit the author somewhere in the realm of £100 million.  The interesting part of all this is not so much how great it would be to Rowling’s already bulging bank figures as how important it could be for the eReading world.

I’ve seen reports that as much as 20% of the total book sales this past year came from eBooks.  For a new format, that’s huge.  It’s a slow process, though.  For the most part this stems from the fact that to truly get into the eReader experience you need a dedicated device like the Kindle.  Sure, lots of people get by with reading on their phones, PCs, or tablets, but it doesn’t work for everybody.  That means that the potential customer needs to lay out over a hundred dollars for a product that may or may not be of any use to them as far as they can tell. That’s a pretty big deal for most people.

What this move would mean, however, is the equivalent of a rock star endorsement. People who love the books will be more willing to grab something like a Kindle now that their favorite author has been swayed from her position of animosity toward the platform, especially since it means having access to their books in their entirety all at once without sustaining minor back injuries to carry them around.  Even more important, perhaps, will be the parents who are swayed to provide Kindles for their children as a result of the release.  As with any new technology, the earlier you are introduced to it, the more naturally you will be able to adapt to it, in general.  The sooner that eReaders become a part of the everyday lives of consumers and soon-to-be consumers, the faster mass adoption will proceed.

Admittedly, this is all nothing but speculation.  The power of the Harry Potter branding is clear, though.  We have movies, candy, peripheral reference books, and even a whole theme park based on nothing else.  It’s become so entrenched in literature today that you will see countless blurbs comparing anything with a magic wand or a contemporary setting connected to magic with the Harry Potter series.  I don’t see any real way to get around a major impact.  While I don’t view this as anything groundbreaking in terms of decision making on behalf of an author, the impact as it all goes forward will be fascinating to watch and should be unlikely to do anything but help eReading as a whole.

When writing a book that you intend to put out through something like the Kindle‘s self publishing platform, there are always going to be complications.  There’s a reason that publishing houses are in business, after all.  Doing it all yourself is difficult and many authors would rather just do the writing than spend their time on editing, proofing, distribution, accounting, and publicity, right?  Still, that’s the deal you get when you go it alone.

As a result, sometimes problems will often pop up if you’re not careful!  Maybe nothing important, maybe a lot.  In the case of one self publisher, Jacqueline Howett, it was a lot.  Now, I’ve heard many a time that one of the hardest things that authors have to come to terms with can be that as soon as the first copy hits shelves, and sometimes sooner, it is completely out of your hands.  For better or worse, it’s out there.  That’s even more true with Kindle books given that once something appears on the internet it is pretty much staying there.  It is therefore a bad idea to send out unrevised copies of your book, let alone head to a reviewer’s website and confront them on a bad review over it.  Let’s face it, the profanity didn’t add much either.

Basically what happened is that Howett sent out a poorly formatted initial release of her book, The Greek Seaman, out to be reviewed by a blog called “BigAl’s Books and Pals”.  As I mentioned before, it bombed and walked away with only 2 Stars on account of consistent spelling and grammar errors.  Howett herself was quick to jump into the comments on this review and point out that she had requested that the reviewer download an updated version released a day later and maintains that the review would have gone differently had this been the case.  When the reviewer piped up that he had gotten the new version, she got a bit irate.  Then she got a LOT irate.  After several moderately long rants against both the reviewer and her fellow commentators, most amusingly including the line “You are a big rat and a snake with poisenous venom. Lots of luck to authors who come here and slip in that!”(spelling preserved), she apparently lost the capacity for even an imitation of rational debate and fired off a few comments containing nothing but profanity before fading out of the “discussion”.

At this point, Howett is basically a cautionary tale for new Kindle writers.  While I doubt she’ll completely go away any time soon, her reputation is shot and it’s going to be difficult, even assuming it’s possible, to recover anything from this.

I suppose it gets the point across, though.  If you write a book, roll with the punches.  There will be bad reviews.  Take what advice you can from them, if applicable, and move on.  There’s really no point in confrontation over what, in the end, amounts to personal taste.  After all, I’m certain there are a number of people out there who wouldn’t care if the book was badly written so long as the story was enjoyable.  Making a fool of yourself in public won’t help, and what’s said in public can’t be taken back.

So, we’re back again to the conversation regarding the ever-unpopular Agency Model for pricing of Kindle and other eBooks.  For once we have some actual solid new developments, though not necessarily any major changes as a result yet.

First off we have Random House, the only major holdout up until this point, caving on the issue and joining the other publishers in abandoning the traditional wholesale pricing in favor of setting the price retailers can sell eBooks for directly.  While this isn’t precisely a surprise, it is a little disappointing.  The advantage in the short term is clear for the company, however, since it makes them eligible to sell their books through the semi-popular Kindle competition application, iBooks (more on the Kindle vs iPad situation another time).  The advantage may turn out to be less than useful in the long run, however, and not just because of the impact it will have on customer satisfaction.

This past week, European Union Antitrust regulators raided the offices of a number of publishers (at this time undisclosed) in furtherance of an investigation into potential breach of price fixing regulations by the adoption of the aforementioned Agency Model. Given the high levels of concern the EU has for avoiding restrictions of competition, these companies could be on the hook for enormous fines if they are found in violation.  While at this time there is no indication that anything more than investigation is happening, and certainly no charges are being filed, it has to be making people a bit nervous.

What amuses me most about all this is not the potential penalties that publishers may incur so much as how little I see them mattering in the long run.  See, the overall impact of the model seems to have been nothing more than an increasing interest in self-publishing and eBook piracy.  They’re really not doing themselves any favors.

The main argument in favor of the Agency model that I have heard seems to be directed specifically at Amazon and the Kindle.  Amazon’s known for taking new bestsellers and discounting them to near- or even below-cost and making up the difference on the bulk of other sales.  Given their success, probably good for business.  In order to improve their Kindle platform they were doing something similar with eBooks for a while.  It was just always cheaper to buy an eBook, which makes sense, right?  Publishers came to the conclusion that it was actually devaluing their property.  If customers came to expect eBooks to be cheap, then how could the publishing companies earn as much as they want?  Hence the current situation.

Do people actually pay for books that cost more digitally than they do in a hardcover, though?  Probably some, but you have to think it’s unlikely overall.  It isn’t all that hard to grab a copy of the book you want through alternate means when you feel it’s the only way to get the book you need without being taken advantage of, and I’m informed it’s becoming an increasingly popular choice. I don’t endorse piracy, but you can’t blame customers for this one.  You have to get value for your money, these days more than ever, and if the publisher doesn’t get that, then they’re responsible for costing both themselves and the author the sale.

A few weeks ago, I posted some recommendations for Kindle-based reading material.  One of the books I brought up caused some problems for people because, while the book itself was great, the copy on the Kindle Store was overpriced and has some pretty glaring errors that indicate inferior quality control.  This got me thinking about the current arguments for and against self-publishing in the digital world.

One of the things we’ve heard over and over again from publishers is that when you price your ebooks too low, it cuts down on the money they can afford to spend on the typical overhead that goes into book publication.  That is, editors, publicists, etc, all fall away.  This particular book (Dune by Frank Herbert for anybody that’s interested) was clearly not more than a step or two removed from a scan of the paper book run through some OCR software.  Where’s the advantage to paying the extra money in situations like these?  I’ve chosen this book as a good example, but I’ve found that it isn’t uncommon for books originally published pre-ebook to have these errors in them while still being sold for the same price as newer books with proper quality control.

In case you’re unfamiliar with OCR, or Optical Character Recognition, let me explain as briefly as I can.  You start with a scanned image of a page.  Just a picture basically. You then feed it into your OCR software which “looks” at the page and tries to pick out words and formatting to make it into a text-based document.  You need to do this in order to have the resizable text, font choices, text to speech, etc that make the Kindle so neat.  Sometimes the resultant text is nearly pristine, sometimes it is highly flawed.  OCR has come a long way over the years, but even so it’s unlikely for you to ever get a completely perfect scan the first time through.  You need a human, usually with no tool more complex than a basic spell checker, to run through and look for instances when the software mistook an ‘h’ for ‘l n’ and other such near equivalencies, not to mention random brackets and semicolons that for some reason just appear out of nowhere sometimes.

These are not difficult problems to address.  Your average underpaid intern could manage to get through most novels in an afternoon or two.  Maybe a little more for books like Dune that make up a lot of dictionary-unfriendly words and force you to pay attention, but the point stands.  If all the fuss over pricing really stems from the value present in a professionally published eBook rather than a potentially poorly edited self publisher, then why aren’t we getting finished products?

I didn’t mind these sorts of things when ebooks were still basically a hobbyist thing that people on the internet did for fun.  We’re a good long way beyond that, though.  No, it doesn’t make a book unreadable most of the time, but it shows a distinct lack of interest in real customer satisfaction.  Like I said, so far it seems to me to primarily apply to older books, but some people do still enjoy books more than five years old.  Wasn’t the point of an Kindle that I would be able to carry my whole library in a pocket?  The device lives up to it, I just want the publishers to do so as well.

Lately, I can’t help myself but notice a new emerging movement of free e-books haters. Mind you, I’m not talking about the pirated free e-books haters. That emotional response to copyright infringement is congruent. I mean a group of people, who dislikes the fact that:

1) free e-books exist;

2) free e-books are popular among readers.

Where do I see these people? Well, they tend to hang out around Kindle-related websites leaving vehement anti-free e-books comments here and there. You probably know what I’m talking about.

To my astonishment, I discovered a common trait among the free e-book haters (how about I just call them FEH): they tend to be authors themselves. So, why would the wise writers be so against the fact that their fellow writer decided to offer his/hers work for free?

It appears that FEH perceive readers as ungrateful, evil crocodiles who only want to consume free stuff and never pay for the literary labor. Well, that’s just silly! A thankful reader, who enjoyed a freebie will always go looking for more books by the author he/she enjoyed.

So, I have a theory. You see, FEH usually are recently sprouted authors with one e-published work, with some useless subject matter, say How to Choose Your Paper Mate Pen Wisely: a Very Thorough Guide (sponsored by Paper Mate). So, if they put their sole literary child out there for free, then how would they make their first billion? And that’s how we get “Free e-books spoil people! Let’s close all the public libraries!” (© imaginary FEH).

Of course, this theory relies on a completely hypothetical situation, which is most likely absurdly inaccurate. However, the point is that Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) influenced publishing towards making it more accessible. As a result, the modern literary world not only expanded, but also became more commercialized. There are many emerging authors, who write not for the love of writing, but for the chance to “win” a lottery in publishing business. And the concept of free books is just standing in their way.

I hope I’m wrong about it. Although, if I’m somewhere close to the truth – dear FEH, your chances to make a fortune on a useless guide will come true only in case if a million of e-book shoppers will stumble and fall on “buy this guide” button. Or, it might be one unfortunate shopper – stumbling and falling a million times. Perhaps, you might need to reconsider changing a profession from a pure business person to a business person, who writes well. And very possibly, the hostility toward free e-books will somewhat diminish in its proportions.

Yours truly,

- one (e-)book(/guide) author

We can take it for granted today that the future of book publication revolves around the eBook.  Yes, I will acknowledge that it is unlikely to ever be the sole medium available to readers, but I would definitely say that it will be increasingly seen as the standard from here on out.  This was obvious even before Amazon(NASDAQ:AMZN) announced their recent comparison of paperback and Kindle book sales.  So, where does this leave the publishing industry?

In many ways instances, new authors had come to see the big publishing houses as unapproachable.  They had their big names that they were banking on and the chances of being the one new author in a hundred, or a thousand, to get a positive response was daunting.  People have said that more authors are springing up than ever before.  I don’t buy that.  People write and it’s only now that it’s been possible for even hobbyists to get their work out there.  That is what the move to digital book platforms like Amazon’s means for writers.  A chance to survive, or fail, on your own merits without the need of attracting a patron.  At least in theory.  You’re going from a traditional payment play to some form of micro-payment system where every person with a Kindle is a potential backer of your work.  Sure you lose security in the process, but you’d have only had that if you managed to break in in the first place.

It’s an interesting new environment that emphasizes different values than we might expect.  The downside of self-publishing, no matter how easy the actual process of book creation is, is self-promotion.  Not much of a chance that you’re going to be the next big thing if you can’t let people know that you wrote a book, that your book is about something they might be interested in, and, at a slightly later stage, that there are people who have read your book and enjoyed it. Word of mouth is useful, of course, but really this seems to turn writers into public figures to an unprecedented degree and would seem to cause success or failure to rest on the endurance and adaptability of the author rather than the strength of the work they have produced.

I’m going to admit that when I started writing this, I was taking a negative view on that.  It seems to cheapen the experience and draw value away from what I really believe to be the only thing that should matter when you’re deciding what to read: the Book.  But really, what’s new there?  The only difference now is that readers really have a chance to vote with their wallets.

If you have a nearly unlimited field of books to choose from, it can’t be worse than an industry that seems to have basically coasted along on a couple dozen big names for as long as anybody can remember, can it?  Yes, we’ll lose some great authors at the side of the road because they didn’t have the drive, personality, time, skills, or whatever, to be their own publicists, but there’s not much doubt in my mind that we’ve been losing far more than that before now than ever will be the case again.  So…gonna go with the Kindle platform and its attached self-publishing options as being a good thing in my opinion. The draw away from the big publishing houses should help more than it hurts, I hope.

Any thoughts from you guys?

Some Background:

We’ve talked quite a bit here in the past about the potential for advertising entering into digital book media.  The convenience provided by eBooks, both for readers in easy acquisition and for publishers in terms of easily and instantly updating an “edition” of a text without need for the delay of printing and shipping, is undeniable and provides all sorts of potential for advertisers.  Intuitively, it would seem like you’re more receptive when doing something relaxing like laying back with a Kindle than you would be while watching the nightly news’s depictions of the day’s horrible political gaffs or crime sprees, wouldn’t it?

The big roadblock, so far, has been the reader response.  Readers seem to absolutely hate the idea of ads in books on principal.  In the interest of being fair, I’ll admit that I used to be of the same opinion.  Over the past several years, however, I’ve gotten some great eBooks at discounted rates through sites like WOWIO at times when books would have been otherwise out of my budget for whatever reason, and I’ve been impressed with how they handle the ad insertion.  It’s tasteful, unobtrusive, and doesn’t interject into the reading experience in any way.  All the things you wouldn’t think advertising likely to be.  And it made my books cheaper, which I like.

After I commented on the site a while back, our editor Andrei, actually got invited to do a little Q&A session with WOWIO CEO Brian Altounian.  Needless to say, the opportunity was more than welcome.  Here’s the result, for your enjoyment:

The Interview:

Please describe how WOWIO does its business and what sets it apart from other online book stores?

WOWIO isn’t so much a book store as an online destination and community that serves as a digital media distribution marketplace. Through our family of sites which includes WOWIO.com, DrunkDuck.com, WEvolt.com and PopGalaxy.com, we provide opportunities to create, share and consume digital media content, including comics and eBooks. Our goal is to provide the best, most entertaining content possible while helping generate revenue for creators and publishers.

The thing that really sets WOWIO apart from others is our business model. We’ve developed a model that is driven by advertising which allows us to reach the 18-35 year-old audience, and we’ve proven that this model can work. We’ve worked with several major partners such as Maxim Magazine and Fandango.com to bring rich, interactive content to our customers.

Another differentiator is our mobility. While some eBook providers limit where their customers can access their content, we allow our customers to access libraries over multiple devices and screen sizes. Since our library is synched to our website, as long as you can access the web you can access your content.

Lastly, our members are not just consumers, but also creators. They are a very vocal and creative community that provides insight and new, sharable content that similar online content providers cannot match. For example, budding comic book writers can upload their strips to DrunkDuck and allow others to view, comment and share the work.

What made you decide to go into eBook business?

I knew that media was headed in a digital direction, had watched the challenges faced by traditional media in making that transition, and saw an opportunity to establish a model and content experience that could scale appropriately for publishers, authors, creators and advertisers as this convergence occurred. We wanted to create a better business model that could change the landscape of eBooks and I think with our patent issuance and some of our recent advertising programs, we have begun to realize that vision.

In addition to the advertising subsidized model, we wanted to establish industry innovations around the blended media eBook “reader” experience – we add other forms of media, such as audio and video, into the text – to enhance levels of engagement, creativity and immersion and are on pace to set that bar again with some of our forthcoming projects.  Basically, we saw a lot of needs that would emerge in the traditional publishing space as the digital transition occurred and felt that we could accelerate the gap between technology emergence and content provision through our family of digital distribution sites.

DRM-free is highly supported by book readers but it is not a popular idea with the publishers. How do you find the balance between the two? Do you believe that more good has come from it than harm for WOWIO so far?

I think more good will always come from increased solutions to digital innovation in the publishing space. The good thing about WOWIO is that we are fans, readers, publishers and creators, too – so we get perspective from all sides, we welcome healthy debate, and make the best decisions we can on behalf of our creators, publishers and customers.

People inherently have an attachment to the products they purchase and the DRM-free model allows us to fulfill those goals for customer experience. Customers will buy more books and go deeper on the list once they experience an author. Customers do not feel disconnected from a product they purchased and this model provides a sense of customer experience and loyalty to the product. It also rewards authors and publishers that provide a great reader experience with new and recurring customer bases.

Many consumers have strong negative attitude towards ads in eBooks because they fear that ads will be intrusive and disruptive to book reading experience. Has it been a problem for WOWIO so far? Do you foresee it being a problem in the future?

We understand the concerns consumers have with ads in eBooks but we’ve created a model that not only avoids the intrusion so many fear, but one that allows users easier access to their favorite content.

For example, ads do not pop up throughout the book. There is an ad at the beginning before a reader starts a story and one at the end when the book is completed. And since we use an ad-supported business model, that means ads help make the titles more affordable or even sometimes completely free. It also provides an additional source of revenue for our publishers as well as an opportunity to get their content into the hands of more readers.

The feedback on our model has been very positive so far. But we think that others jumping into this space will need to be mindful of how the ads are presented because if the ads are too intrusive or take away from the reading experience, it will have an extremely negative impact.

Ads in books have been tried before but with little success. What makes you believe that eBook ads will be more successful?

One of the reasons this model has not worked before is that the ads were presented in a very obstructive way. The ads got in the way of the content and discouraged people from finishing the book.

Ads in eBooks present a different kind of opportunity for publishers, advertisers and consumers because the new technology allows the ads to be presented in completely new ways. We can ensure that they remain unobtrusive but we can also include additional elements to enhance the user experience, such as outbound links and video content.

Also, the ads placed within eBooks on WOWIO allow us to offer our books for free or at a discounted price making them much more attractive to readers. For example, in the deal we did with Fandango, they provided a free copy of Gulliver’s Travels on WOWIO for users that purchased tickets to the recent Jack Black film through their site.

But the only way it will work in eBooks is if publishers and advertisers keep the experience simple, clean and refrain from ruining the reader’s experience.

Current ads in sponsored WOWIO eBooks are static and pre-defined when the book is published. Do you have plans for dynamic ads or ads that are more targeted to a specific user?

Absolutely. The technology allows us to insert multiple forms of advertisements, such as video or animated content. But our ads are not pre-defined – the type of ad and the titles that include ads will depend on the sponsor, the publisher and sometimes the author. We work with all parties involved to determine which titles are best suited for ads, how long they run and what content is included.

What devices do customers use to read eBooks sold by WOWIO? Is Amazon Kindle a popular choice?

Amazon Kindle is definitely a popular choice, probably due to the compact size and ease of use. Users can take it and access their library anywhere. But what’s great about WOWIO is that our customers aren’t limited to a specific device. So if your Kindle’s batteries are low and only have a laptop available, or if you don’t own an eReader at all, you can access your library and continue right where you left off.

Where do you envision eBook industry and your company in five years from now?

I see WOWIO emerging as a leading blended media distribution provider. WOWIO will continue to serve as a leader in eComics and eBooks, bringing on leading publishers in both comics and traditional publishers.

The publishing industry is going to change several times over the course of the next five years, all of which will be impacted by our patent, our advertising model and, most importantly, by our innovative blended media immersion approach. It will be an exciting space that we look forward to helping define with great end-user products and experiences in the years to come.

And in Closing:

Admittedly, this was a fun one for me, so maybe I’m slightly biased.  Not going to try to deny that.  To me, however, the points made here make sense.  If you can provide a customer with something they will enjoy for less money than they would pay for it elsewhere, they are likely to buy from you even if it means flipping through two pages of ad material.  Kindle books can make this happen in a way that print books never could, which seems to me like it makes the use of ads inevitable.  The only fear is that people new to the concept will take it too far rather than knowing where to draw the line and avoid damaging the reading experience.

To be honest, this solution even works out better for publishers than the current DRM model does.  If you can provide an eBook cheap to free, people are unlikely to bother pirating it.  And let’s be honest and say that it takes far less work to remove the DRM protection on your average eBook than it does to edit individual pages from said book.  What’s in there is staying there unless it’s truly obtrusive or offensive.  Publishers love security.  There will always be a large portion of the audience who would rather pay more for an untouched copy of their book, but this is going to happen in order to make a connection with everybody else.  Let’s hope that a company that really does understand their audience does play a big part in defining the future of this aspect of the industry.

Current reports have indicated that the much awaited Google entry into the eBook marketplace is soon to be released.  We had expected to see this early in the summer, based on initial time-lines, but some technical difficulties and a few not so technical difficulties got in the way.  More recent reports lead expectant readers to believe that we will now see a store unveiling within the next month!  Google Editions, as it is currently known, will be an extension growing from the established Google Books service.

The central idea behind the service, as best as I can tell, is that users will be able to access their purchased books through any device with a web browser after they log into their Google account.  This would eliminate the need for dedicated eReading devices, in theory, while still allowing access to your purchased books on devices like the Kindle that have web browsing capabilities.  The one obvious functional roadblock comes from the inability to access your eBooks without an internet connection.  Supposedly there will be the option to download your purchases, but so far no information about format or offline compatibility seems to be available.  This could slightly hinder adoption by owners of Nook and Kindle devices, since leaving y0ur internet connection constantly turned on can cause significantly faster battery drain.

It is unclear at this point what the potential is for success here.  Google has a reputation for doing things right, but they face an established market of competitors at this point and a lack of goodwill from existing copyright holders(as evidenced by the need for a 2008 settlement on lawsuits related to the Google Books service).  It won’t help matters that Google will not allow publishers to set their list prices for eBooks at a price higher than the lowest priced print version of the same book, nor that the default pricing will be set at 80%.  Will the popularity of the service be enough to overcome this?  We can only wait and see.  Personally, I’m hoping so.  My only major complaint about the Kindle has been the closed format restrictions that it forces on me, so ways around that would be more than welcome.

So, you’ve written a book?  Congratulations.  Whether it’s the work of years or simply your latest NaNoWriMo entry, it was almost certainly a difficult and demanding project that it would be great to get some recognition for.  Sure, you can go through the traditional routes and send out your manuscript to the publishing houses in hopes that you get a bite, but should you be looking for another route, whether due to rejection, disinterest, or simple distaste for involving yourself with those companies, Amazon’s DTP(Digital Publishing Platform) for the Kindle might be right for you.  Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Create an Account

One of the advantages to going with the Kindle for your digital platform is that any Amazon.com account should basically be good for this already.  Simply head to the DTP Log-in screen and enter your usual information.  If this is your first time playing with the DTP service, you’ll be asked for some basic publishing-specific settings such as tax information and preferred payment method.  It’s pretty straightforward and you should have little trouble.

Step 2: Format your eBook

Presumably you’ve already taken the time to do any sort of content editing you’d like to do.  Dwelling on the details of that would turn this post into a book of its own, as I’m sure you’re aware.  What is important, however, is making sure you’re setting things up properly to be accessible on the Kindle platform.  The supported file formats at the moment are:

Unencrypted Mobipocket(.mobi and .prc)

This is pretty much the ideal, if you can do it, since it is the format that the Kindle-specific file format is derived from.

Unzipped EPUB

These should actually make the conversion very cleanly in most cases.  It is basically the current generation of the old Mobipocket format(yes, I know I’m oversimplifying) and can be brought back to that earlier iteration in eBook formatting pretty easily.  If you’re hoping to get your book set up for more than just the Kindle, you’ll likely be using this format anyway, at some point.

Plain Text

Obviously not much you can do wrong in this one, though it is a bit limiting.

Microsoft Word .doc File

Definitely usable, but with some complications.  Avoid anything like headers or footers.  No page numbers(remember that the Kindle reflows the text to respond to size adjustments and such).  For the same reason, don’t bother playing with Margins or anything.  Also, for whatever reason, Amazon recommends you add in images using the “Insert” command rather than copy/paste for best results.  Something to keep in mind.

*IMPORTANT* Don’t mistake this for the new .docx file format.  That is a different and wholly incompatible thing.

Adobe PDF

This is the poorest option, by all accounts, but it will still work after a fashion.  There is simply too little formatting information in your average PDF to hope to get much of anything besides the bare text and most minimal formatting out of Amazon’s conversion process.  You might actually be better off finding a third party utility to break down your PDF into something that can be played with in MS Word or a similar program that can be converted into a more useful format.

Zipped HTML

There are a number of specific things to be aware of in using an HTML document for your Kindle book.  While this is the most finely controllable method for formatting your book, by most accounts, it is also complicated and requires great attention to detail.  In most cases, until and unless you have extensive experience using this sort of an eBook format, you might be better off using something else.

To be honest, speaking from personal experience, the best thing you can do to get something ready for publication is to take what you have finished, convert it to either .mobi or HTML, and send it to your Kindle to see how it works.  Flipping through on the device itself will save you a world of trouble in case something goes wrong.

Step 3: Upload Your Book

They’ve made this part really simple.  Assuming you are still logged into the DTP system, you will see a button that says “Add a New Title”.  Click on it and enter all the information it asks for.  You’ll need to provide not only your book file and a description of the work to sell it with, but also any important publication data, an assurance that you have a right to publish the book, a decision about whether or not to enable DRM, and a cover/product image.  The product image is important, since it is what will appear on the product page in the Kindle store.

You will then be prompted for information on countries where you hold the rights to your work, and to select a pricing/royalty option.  You can choose from either 35% royalties, in which case you get to set your price in stone, or 70% royalties, which means that Amazon has a lot more say over how much your book is going to be costing if they decide they need to price match or anything like that and that they deduct a small delivery fee based on file size for each sale.  Either way, you set your price(s) in the little box below that area and you’re done.

Step 4: Promote it

Let’s face it, getting the book on the Kindle marketplace is the easiest part of things.  The hard part, aside from the writing itself, comes next!  Now you’ve got to spread the word.  Many recent authors have had luck with creating a public presence for themselves through creative use of blogging, web promotion, and plain old word of mouth.  Whichever method you choose, you’ve got a good start going already.  Good luck!

For the first time in a while, we have some real hope for a decent full-color eReader in the near future.  Sure, the NOOKcolor will be out soon, but nobody really cares that much.  E Ink, maker of the current amazingly popular screens for the Kindle and nook, has announced a new display technology that they have dubbed Triton.

E Ink Triton is a color active matrix imaging film that manages to retain all of the benefits of their previous products(such as the monochrome E Ink Pearl screen found in the current generation of the Kindle) without limiting the display options when it comes to illustration.  Users can expect to retain the direct sunlight readability, quick page turns, amazing battery life, and durability that they have come to expect and hopefully quite a bit more, depending on how companies like Amazon(NASDAQ:AMZN) manage to adapt the technology for improved user experience.

This comes with the usual cautions, of course, before people get too excited.  Namely, this is not an LCD screen.  This means that you cannot expect everything to work precisely the same way a standard computer monitor would.  You will not be watching video on it, nor will there be a back-light.  It is an amazing leap forward for eReading technology, not just another potential selling point for entries into the tablet race.  Reflecting on that point, if this works well and is adopted for use in something like the Kindle, there will really no longer be any grounds for complaints about usability from people wanting anything short of a full-function tablet.

This advance bodes well for the future of eReading and will definitely tie in well to such things as the recent push by Amazon to get periodicals published on the Kindle platform.  I know that we won’t be seeing a color Kindle by the end of this year, but now that it appears to be a practical inevitability, the possibilities are abundant.

A while back, Amazon’s(NASDAQ:AMZN) Kindle publishing platform made headlines for its remarkable offer of 70% royalties, under the right circumstances, to self-publishing authors wanting to make their products available through the Amazon.com site.  Although authors are often confronted with a Kindle vs nook debate when it comes to where to move their stuff, since Barnes & Noble(NYSE:BKS) launched a similar program, Amazon is making further moves to ensure that they remain the main source for all your independent author needs.

In the past week or so, Adobe(NASDAQ:ADBE) launched the beta for a plugin for their popular InDesign software that allows users to create documents specifically for the Kindle.  It can currently be downloaded directly through the Amazon Kindle’s Publishing Program site.  Previous to this, InDesign users would usually be faced with the annoyance of converting from EPUB to an acceptable upload format.

Users of this tool will enjoy several useful features:

• Expanded & refined font styling and text placement
• Easier placement of in-text links, including Table of Contents
• Smooth transition of images
• Easy content preview using the Kindle Previewer

The Previewer mentioned there is a neat little tool Amazon released early this year that will allow users on practically any OS to check out what their book will look like on the physical Kindle right down to font resizing and orientation changes.  It’s something of a must for anybody really interested in getting things right, from what I hear, and it has been updated recently to account for the Kindle 3 release and the minor screen changes that that entails.

Since the Kindle is clearly taking the lead for the foreseeable future as far as eBook distribution platforms go, this will be a big help for all you aspiring authors and long-time fans of Adobe products.  It would be nice if Amazon came around and started supporting more widely used formats, but since that doesn’t seem to be happening this makes accommodating their peculiarities that much easier.

As things come to a head between publishers and providers, and as Barnes & Noble(NYSE:BKS) and Amazon(NASDAQ:AMZN) compete over the digital self-publishing market, Amazon is attempting to place themselves firmly in the forefront of publisher attention by offering the potential for doubled royalties to users of their DTP self-publishing platform.  The gist of the announcement is simple; If you publish a book through their service and the digital copy is at least 20% cheaper than the print copy, listed between $2.99 and $9.99, and have Text-to-Speech enabled, you will get 70% royalties on all your eBook sales instead of the standard 35%.

Let’s face it, this gives Amazon a huge advantage when it comes to providing content for the Kindle and all related software readers.  As much as the traditional publishing industry balks at the concept, independents are coming out of the woodwork these days and some of them are making big names for themselves in the eBook marketplace(J.A. Konrath makes a good example).  By keeping them happy and coming back for more, money in this case, Amazon has a chance to gain fairly exclusive rights to loads of great talent.  It’ll be interesting to see what the response is both from the industry and the competition!

As of today, 6/16/2010, Random House’s Magic Tree House series, a childrens’ staple since 1992 by Mary Pope Osborne has been released for the Kindle.  All 43 books in the amazingly popular series are now up for sale in the Kindle Store as I write this, with the 44th already available for preorder, anticipating its September 14th release.

The Magic Tree House series has sold over 70 million copies worldwide, been translated into 28 languages, and distributed in 31 countries over the course of its life cycle so far.  It is a widely acknowledged tool in promoting childrens’ literacy and can be(and often is) coupled with Random House-distributed educational material related to the stories for use in classrooms as a teaching aid in any number of subjects.

Much publicity has focused on what the Kindle can do on college and high school campuses, but this brings useful attention to the fact that an eReader with a properly durable case, perhaps even a library’s worth of them, could easily enhance the learning experiences of children at any age.  The Text-to-Speech feature is helpful for any struggling reader and the ability to vary the font size can make a text more approachable for easily overwhelmed young readers still unsure of their ability.  Clearly a step in the right direction.

While it’s ridiculously early to be talking much about a product that will, in the best possible case that they’re claiming, not be available until late fall(December has been mentioned), the Kno is an interesting take on the eReader market and might address some of the reasons that the Kindle is having trouble taking off as anything but a library resource at many universities.  While the Kindle is far more pleasant than any LCD for leisure reading, eye strain is usually a lesser concern for a student hitting the books.

Here’s what we know so far:

• It’s HUGE.  Two linked 14″LCD touchscreens meant to accommodate a full sized textbook with note-taking capability and integrated annotation functions for textbooks
• It’s expensive.  They’ve not released much information about pricing yet, but most sources and interviews about the device tend to focus on the range of $1,000
• WiFi enabled.  Enough said.  It’s for students and if you can find a college student without regular internet access these days, you’re likely going to a lot of trouble for it. 3G would be overkill
• Deals with McGraw Hill, Pearson, Wiley and others already in place for textbook distribution
• SDK entering Beta this year.  More options are always better and it’s a safe bet that the application selection on this one will be essential

That’s about it.  The size and weight will be off-putting for a lot of people.  This is clearly not a leisure device for most.  For students already used to carrying around multiple textbooks each the same size as and nearly the same weight as these devices, however, it makes a lot of sense.  The ability to display textbooks with natural pagination, little to no scrolling, and annotation by the student has the potential to make the Kno a must-have for students.  Overall, the news is cautiously optimistic.

–

Yes, this is simply the new incarnation of the Kakai device we reported on a while back.  We’ve gotten more details and they’ve gotten more interesting since then.  A second glance was merited.