Recent Blog Posts
Six Months of Amazon Ambrosia
Well, the first half of 2012 has surely been the half year of the Kindle. Not for Amazon, you understand, but for the authors who market their work on the Kindle platform.
If you pay attention to the world of literary marketing you’ll know that Amazon chief Jeff Bezos introduced Amazon’s KDP Select program in late 2011. This characteristically business savvy program offered authors – most of them self published – various benefits in return for exclusivity with Amazon. The site offered a monthly pot upwards of half a million dollars to be distributed between Select authors in return for loans of their books to Amazon Prime members. In addition, Select authors could offer their books on a free promotion 5 days out of 50 to reach new readers and spread the word.
This was a great deal for everyone. Well, almost everyone (I’ll come to that in a moment). For Amazon this meant locking in 150,000+ books that could only be sold on Amazon. This is a huge win for a site that’s trying to kill the competition in the eBook market. They’ve already got firm control of the ereader market, but the real money is in books, not Kindle devices (which is why the devices themselves are so darned cheap – they’re loss leaders).
The authors, on the other hand, got a great opportunity to promote their work to thousands of readers with their free promotions, plus a little extra pocket money from the ‘borrow’ pot. What’s more, the perhaps unintentional benefit of these free promotions was that free giveaways counted as full sales in Amazon’s algorithms, which meant that any book that ran a successful giveaway would be rocketed to the top of the popularity lists, just as if it’d sold thousands of books at full price. This sudden, extreme exposure sent more than a few books through the roof that otherwise would have remained hidden among the masses.
Now here’s the problem. When you suddenly throw a few thousand self published books to the top of the popularity lists, something else has to make room for them. In this case, unfortunately, it was traditionally published books. Now, the publishing giants of yesteryear may be struggling in the face of the digital revolution they still have some sway with vendors like Amazon, and presumably they were in uproar as they saw their properties buries beneath thousands of self-pubbed novels.
Some of my own books, a slightly seedy collection of erotic babysitter stories and an unusual collection of werewolf sex stories, were some of those to go through the roof, and while I’m not gonna complain for a moment about the money they made I have to agree that it isn’t entirely fair that I succeeded above trad published erotica.
And so it was that on March 19th Amazon reshuffled their algorithm. All of a sudden free giveaways counted for just a fraction of a real sale, and books no longer got that all important post-free bump to rocket them into the spotlight.
So, what will be the next big marketing move to help self-pubbed books gain exposure? Now Amazon has closed the door, where do we go from here? Thoughts?
Category: Self Publishing News
Ebook Review: New Kindle Style Guide For Dressing A Pear Shaped Body
Don’t you hate it when you buy a style manual, perhaps written by a well known style icon or guru, and you find that most of the advice contained in the book is not relevant to you. This has happened time and time again for me. You see, I have a bit of a unique body shape, so many of the standard types of advice simply don’t apply.
You can therefore imagine how pleased I was to come across a kindle ebook on Amazon specifically identifying clothes for pear shaped women (my exact shape). I carry extra weight on my bottom half and it can get pretty frustrating at times. When I buy a suit for example I have to buy a larger size for my bottom half and a smaller size for my top half. But here’s where things get even more complicated: although I’m a pear-shaped woman, I also have a rather large bust and a short neck – attributes more often seen in women with an apple shaped body.
Luckily this book also has solutions to address this specific issue. The authors have a special section that break the classic pear-shaped body type into several smaller categories. So for example they have specific clothing recommendations for pears with a fat arms, flabby stomach, short neck, large bust and so on.
Reading the above you’d be forgiven for thinking that this book just focuses on problem areas. On the contrary; large parts of the book but all about showcasing our body assets. The book reveals some really quite ingenious ways to draw the attention away from our troublesome body parts and towards areas we are more confident about.
There’s also a section on the psychology of looking good. If we are unhappy with how we look we’ll tend to wrap ourselves up in loose, frumpy clothes–effectively hiding away from the world. Unfortunately we tend to hide our personality away too. And loose, baggy clothes do nothing for our silhouette. Our focus must be on clothes that flatter our body shape as it’s not the size of our clothes that’s important but their fit.
Category: Book Publishing Online
Book Publishing – EPUBS
What are ‘EPUBS’? They’re digitally published books that can be purchased over the internet and downloaded onto a variety of hand-held e-reader devices.
Many people view e-publishing as the the end of traditional book publishing, simply because current trends (being what they are) evidence that everyone appears to want an Amazon Kindle or a Barnes & Noble Nook.
For the budding authors out there, it’s great news. A little research, easily done using google search, and you’ll find yourself inundated with information. For those that want the low-down on just what you can dig up online, there are nuggets such as:
- book publishing software
- e-book templates
- book design/s
- laws governing book publishing – both physical and digital
- e-publishing forums and websites
- self-publishing guides
- and much more
The bottom line is that somehow, self-publishing appeals to the mass market. There’s also the fact that there’s a demand for e-books. Once Amazon kicked off with the Kindle, the self-publishing route has become more and more common.
It’s almost as if traditional book publishing got too big for it’s boots, and where would-be authors were once thwarted by literary agents and snotty publishing houses, now the playing field has been levelled. Now, looking on the internet and decided on the best e-pub route to take is akin to comparing the likes of Tesco car insurance to that of a major competitor.
All you have to do is decide whether you want to go with Smashwords or LuLu, Total-E-Bound or any one of a myriad of others, then work within the guidelines that go hand in hand with e-publishing and/or self-publishing. E-publishing is nothing to be sniffed at, and well worth considering when you factor in the time, effort and rejection rate of traditional publishing houses.
Good luck.
Category: Digital Book Publishing, Self Publishing
