Changes at BookBaby

BookBaby, the ebook publishing and distribution company, has made some changes in its options for authors. The first new option is a FREE global distribution option if the author provides publish ready ebook files. The author receives 85% of the net sales. Note, this option is not completely free unless you have your own ISBN for your book. Otherwise, BookBaby will charge you $19 for an ISBN and will be listed as the Publisher.

The second option is a change in the royalty payment feature for the $99 Standard Distribution option. In the past, this option included conversion to Kindle and ePub formats and global distribution, all with the author receiving 100% of the net sales. This has changed. Authors will now receive 85% of the royalties.

The $249 Premium Distribution option still provides authors with 100% of the net sales and includes as well as quite a few other benefits to the author.

Technology Offers New Opportunities for Non-Fiction Authors - Online "Mash-ups" - A New Kind of Book?

I have spent a lot of time learning as much as possible about the industry of publishing in general and self-publishing specifically. I am certain I have barely scratched the surface of what there is to learn and the target seems to keep moving.

The first big boon for self-publishers was the advent of the internet along with Amazon, opening the door for self-published authors to have access to customers. Print-on-demand technology combined with a business model relying on POD made self-publishing financially viable for authors.

eReaders were the next big technological shift. It took a while for the device and concept to catch on but Amazon's Kindle has changed things in a big way, making it even easier for authors to publish and sell their work.

More changes are in store, of that I have no doubt. The future will be interesting in the field of self-publishing.

One of the challenges I currently face, and I am not alone, is I am selling more books than ever before, both paperback (POD) and ebook (95% of which are Kindle sales). Yet I am not earning the income I need to earn.

Even with a 70% royalty, I earn less for a Kindle edition than I do for the same title as a paperback. The pricing structure required by Amazon to receive the 70% royalty puts a cap on what I can set as the list price for the book. I am not complaining mind you, just stating a fact.

The pricing structure combined with the fact customers are not willing to pay nearly what the information is worth for in a Kindle book edition, forces lower list prices to generate sales. Again, I am not complaining, just stating the market forces at work for MY BOOKS. I do not want to speculate how market forces are impacting list prices of other authors.

The challenge as I see it, is how do I provide enough perceived value for the information I am selling for the customer to decide the price is in fact a reasonable one for the value received by the customer.

Technology has been the driving, and disruptive, force behind the changes in publishing and self-publishing. It make sense to look to technology for a solution and I believe I have found one, at least for me and possibly other non-fiction authors. It might even be a possible solution for the right fiction author who has the creative vision and technical skill required to pull it off.

On-line "mash-ups." 

Mash-ups are a combination of video with on-screen print information. Think You-Tube with printed information embedded in the screen along with the visual content.

School teachers who teach via distance learning or a lap top schools have been doing this for awhile. Since I teach at a lap top school that offers its summer school classes as "blended courses" (three days on campus and two days via distance) I have some experience in dealing with mash-ups.

It occurred to me this is the approach I need to earn what my non-fiction books are worth. Writing the book is the time consuming part. It can still be sold as a stand alone item or given away as a marketing item in the case of an ebook.

The real value is in the author's knowledge. The online mash-up allows the author to create online "class sessions" while offering downloadable print information at the same time. Even better, the author can offer "action steps" or guided projects to help readers/students through the process of taking the information presented and actually using it.

This is a lot more work than just writing the book. But, it gives the reader/customer much greater access to the author's knowledge base and provides a guided means to actually utilizing the information. 

Yes, it is more work for the author, but this approach dramatically increases the perceived value of the information to the reader/customer, allowing the author sell the information for a much higher price.

How does one go about doing this? You'll have to stay tuned in for a future post on how I am going to do this!

Lightning Source versus CreateSpace for POD (Print-on-Demand) Service Reviewed Yet Again

I have spent the last two days studying my print-on-demand sales figures for the last four years. While the numbers are not terrible, the last year has seen a decrease in total paperback copies of my books sold. 

The good news is the same titles total sales have increased dramatically due to Kindle sales with some sales from the BN Nook thrown in.

The problem, or challenge, is the net profit PER sale for a Kindle book is lower than the net profit PER sale for the same book in POD paperback. How can I address this financial issue?

I am hardly about to stop releasing new titles in paperback but every new title will now come out in Kindle no matter what. I also released a total of nine short non-fiction books, samples really of longer established books, in Kindle format only.

It makes financial sense to consider ways to improve, or at least halt the decline, of my POD paperback sales. After some thought about the matter I came up with several possible solutions:

• Change covers - costs money and for some of the books the POD sales are just not worth it - yet the same book with the same cover sells OK as a Kindle book.
• Figure out how to improve my marketing efforts -always an ongoing struggle.
• Revisit using Lightning Source (LSI) for more of my titles and not rely almost completely on CreateSpace (CS) for my POD printing.

For those of you who have been using POD for several years, I am fairly certain you followed, and felt financially, the issue two years ago when Amazon changed how it listed POD paperbacks available only from LSI. The sudden plummet in sales was disheartening and it took nearly a year for my best selling paperback to recover.

POD expert Aaron Shepard advocated what he came to call Plan B, a solution and for many authors who self-publish via POD, a workable plan to recover lost sales.

For many authors, it made the decision to use CreateSpace instead of LSI easier, despite the lack of control over the wholesale discount required. LSI allows the author to set the discount within a given range, a high of 55% and a low of 20%. CS requires 40% discount for books sold on Amazon and even higher, approximately 65% for books sold via its expanded distribution program to competitors such as BN. In fact, Plan B required the use of both POD companies.

It would appear the industry, or perhaps Amazon, has changed again. Briefly, the Plan B approach required using CS for books sold on Amazon and LSI for all other sales. The author had to set a list price at CS that would be lowered to the actual desired price when Amazon matched the discount of the same book on BN. The book listed on BN was printed by LSI. The entire approach would require some experimentation to get the discounts by the two online retailers matched and the prices down the target list price after discount.

Confused yet?

Today I made a quick visit to Mr. Shepard's site and discovered there is now a Plan C! It would appear trouble has once again reared its ugly head in paradise and Plan B is no longer really viable. Mr. Shepard tracks carefully a wide range of information about Amazon's discount matching and pricing. I will take his word for it, I have enough trouble keeping up with my own books.

Amazon it would appear no longer matches exactly the discount given by BN, who has stopped discounting as deeply for many books as it once did.

Also, the real issue for many POD paperback titles is not Amazon's dealings with LSI, but rather the ever increasing popularity of ebooks, particularly Kindle books. 

Still, the possibility of releasing new books in both POD and ebook formats using LSI instead of CS, an approach that would allow me to once again use the short discount model of 20% made me sit down with paper and pencil and once again compare and contrast the two companies.

With my copy of Shepard's essential book, POD for Profit, in hand to help me work my way through the maze that is signing up a new book with LSI, I once again came to the same conclusion I had before.

The advantage of controlling the setting of the discount is just not worth what I will have to go through to use LSI instead of CS.  While every author can have areas that are problematic using LSI (please note, I do have titles with LSI and have nothing but positives to say about their customer service, print quality, etc.) mine are all centered around two issues:

• The difficulty of setting up the book files. LSI is so much more difficult to use in this regard than CS.
• The other issue is making changes of any kind to the book or the book's metadata. Sales of the book have to come to a halt in order to make the changes.

And so it is that I will once again re-examine my marketing efforts and continue to try to learn more about marketing my books more effectively and all future books will also be released in Kindle and POD paperback.

Kudos to Barnes and Noble for the New Nook Press!

It might be old news to some of the readers of this blog, but Barnes and Noble recently replaced its old ebook publishing interface, PubIt, with a new one, Nook Press. While BN may be struggling to compete with its combination of brick and mortar stores and to carve out market share in the Amazon dominated ebook market, the company certainly took a step in the right direction with Nook Press, making it much easier for authors to self-publish their books for BN's Nook ereader.

I recently finished three new ebook conversions and uploaded them to the Amazon Kindle ebook store. I have long ago stopped worrying about BN's Nook store. I sell very few books for the Nook. But, since I had three new files ready to go, I thought I might as well take a few minutes and load them on the BN site for sale. I am glad I took the time.

The new interface is much easier to use, has more features and actually has some features Amazon's KDP does not!

Here are two I have discovered so far that I wish Amazon made available to authors:

• You can list your book in up to five categories, making it possible to reach as broad an audience as possible via the search process in the BN search engine. Amazon limits you to two categories when you upload your Kindle file.
• You can actually edit your interior file! I really wish Amazon would let you do the same, making it much easier to correct errors or update your book.

Competition is good and I am sure the need to carve out more share of the ebook market is what forced BN to improve its ebook interface for authors. It is now easier to use than the Kindle interface, at least in my opinion.

While I doubt my sales will take a big jump at BN any time soon, I will certainly be uploading all of my new ebook files at BN as well as Amazon's KDP in the future.

 

IngramSpark Update - Is the New Company User Friendly?

With a wedding coming this fall, the youngest on a traveling gymnastics team, still paying for child number two's college and hoping to have some money set aside one day to retire, I am always looking for ways to make more money in my "second job" as a self-published author. Anything I can do to increase sales and do so with as little actual monetary investment (other than my time) is a topic I am constantly researching.

Broadening my distribution in hopes of increasing sales is one of avenues of investigation. When I first heard of Ingram's decision to launch IngramSpark, I took note. I even shared my initial ideas on the subject on this blog.

What were my hopes? Simple, actually. They included:

• easy to use
• no cash outlay, or at least minimal
• an greater access to the reading public

Upon IngramSpark's launch, I was well, dismayed. To put it simply, I don't really have time to master the learning curve to use Ingram's new division. Lightning Source, which I do use for POD and distribution for one book, was complicated enough to make me publish the other 30+ non-fiction books I have authored on CreateSpace.

Rather than summarize my frustrations with trying to gain some insight into the IngramSpark site, I will encourage you to read a masterful review by none other than Aaron Shepard, one of the foremost advocates in the self-publishing field in using LSI and Ingram as key components of a business model.

Why take the time to investigate IngramSpark? 

If you are looking for print-on-demand services, ebook and paper distribution on a global scale and don't mind dealing with the complicated procedures, by all means, investigate further.

I all have to say in judgement is I have come to value my time a little more. I am still very willing to invest time, effort and frustration in learning something that will help my tiny business achieve my goals for it. But my limited business time has become valuable enough to me financially that there are limits.

I use CreateSpace for my POD and distribution, both in North America and Europe, via Amazon. I use Amazon KDP for my Kindle books and BN's Pubit to sell ebooks for the Nook. Recently I even expanded my ebook distribution to Kobo.

I don't have to learn any new skills to make my books available using these companies as my distributors and purchase points for readers. Not so for IngramSpark. 

CreateSpace and KDP, and KDP's competitors, are simply too easy to use. If I had one goal for IngramSpark it would be to match that ease of use for small publishers and self-publishing authors. That would ignite serious competition for Amazon's companies and the others, which would benefit authors, small publishers and the consumer public as well.  I simply see no evidence using IngramSpark would make my life easier as a an author and publisher by using its services.

If the company will work to become as userfriendly as CreateSpace, KDP, Pubit and Kobo, I will certainly revisit the idea of using IngramSpark. Until then, I have other ways to invest my time.

Smashwords and ePub - Surprising Conversion Information

This post should probably have gone in the most recent round up post but I only discovered this story today.  Since I am searching for ways to economically, both in terms of time and financially, expand distribution of my non-fiction ebooks beyond Amazon and Barnes and Noble, I have been looking at a wide range of ebook distributors.

Smashwords is one of the better known distributors and one that I had considered until I learned you had to use Smashwords' "Meatgrinder" to convert your book. Having heard and read all the nightmare stories about the final product resulting from the Meatgrinder conversion process, I decided not to pursue Smashwords as a distributor.

Since I have my books converted professionally by eBook Architects and receive both a Mobi (Kindle) and ePub (Nook and others) file for the same title, it simply made no sense to me that Smashwords would not take my already converted files and distribute them for me. Less work for everyone and the files were already inspected for quality and any possible issues.

Well, it would turn out there is more to the story.

Smashwords did not create it's infamous Meatgrinder process. Read this story about how one publisher determined what is going on at Smashwords when it comes to converting files to ebooks.

The Cruel Paradox of Self-Publishing - Atlantic's Take on Changes in the Industry

Ouch. What a title. It certainly got my attention as I was searching for something else. After reading the article, I had to agree with some of the author's points, but not all.

The story is worth reading but I believe is written from the viewpoint of traditional publishing that is only beginning to realize self-publishing could potentially become a major competitor to the traditional publishing houses.

The story, I believe, was probably written due to the fact Penguin Group has purchased Author Solutions Inc, for $100 million dollars. Somebody at the Atlantic took notice. When that amount of money changes hands, it does generate some attention.

Yes, most self-publishing authors sell fewer than 150 copies of their books. I have several that certainly fall into that category. I also have several that have sold thousands of copies and for a niche non-fiction market, I think that speaks well for those books.

Digital publishing has changed the game. Print-on-demand, Amazon's Kindle, the Nook, Google Books and ebooks in general have leveled the playing field a bit for authors.

No longer is the question "how do you get published?" Now the question is "how do your self-publish?" The advantages can be considerable.

The challenges are also considerable and perhaps that is the value in reading the Atlantic's article if you are considering self-publishing.

For those of you who are up to the challenge, the real question to ask is not "how do you self-publish" but rather, I believe, "how do you market a book?!" 

Just as important a question to consider is print-on-demand versus ebooks and Kindle versus Nook. Which digital format to use?

Self-publishing is a business. Books need to be sold in order for them to be read.

Has POD Run It Course? Are eBooks the New POD for Self-Publishers?

Morris Rosenthal, one of the leaders in the print-on-demand business model for self-publishers, has written a very thought provoking post on his self-publishing blog about the POD business model he helped foster and promote. Rosenthal's piece, The Decade of POD Publishing Gives Way to eBooks, is a summary of his latest thinking about the world of self-publishing. 

In February of this year I wrote a less insightful post, Does POD Still Have a Place in Self-Publishing, that poses the same question Mr. Rosenthal is attempting to answer.

Technology has certainly changed how we consume our reading material and readers seem to be embracing the new ereader devices. This past Christmas season Amazon's Kindle was the most gifted item from retailers.

While the Kindle (and Nook) boom is great for authors who self-publish due to the increased access to readers and ability to experiment with pricing for best results, what place does paper edition books occupy in a business plan for a self-publishing author?

Just 18 months ago if I had been asked should an author bring out an ebook edition I would have responded with an unequivocal yes, but after the print version. Now I would advise either a simultaneous release or the release of the ebook version first. Some experts, which I am not, are starting to advocate releasing the ebook version and waiting to see if there is demand for the POD version.

For now, the type of non-fiction books I write are best served, for the most part, with paperback editions due to the graphics and photographs. Ebooks simply are not quite as good yet as traditional paper books in this area, though the technology is improving in leaps and bounds. Once the technology catches up, I am fairly certain I will follow the trend of ebook first and POD later, if ever.

For now, every author probably has a different experience, based on genre and type of interior the book has or must have. Do what fits your business model the best and will generate the most sales or the highest level of revenue.

At any rate, read what Morris has to say about the subject. It will make you think about the future of your self-publishing business.

Not All eBook Conversion Companies Are Equal

When I self-published my first book using the print-on-demand (POD) business model advocated by Aaron Shepard and Morris Rosenthal, I had never even heard of ebooks as we now know them. I was excited just to have a book in print and to have someone actually buy a copy from Amazon!

Now, 65% of my book sales come from Kindle books. Needless to say, having as many of my titles available in the Kindle format as possible is important to me from a business perspective for a variety of reasons.

I have used iPages to do some of my own conversions. I was able to live with the ePub versions produced this way for the Nook, which I have negligible sales in anyway, but it took far too much work to produce something I could live with in Kindle format. And these books were short and had no graphics or photographs to deal with. 

I have paid CreateSpace to convert some books. These conversions looked great and work great. So long as they are used only on a Kindle and not another device utilizing a Kindle app to read the book. There have been a few problems with several of my titles done by CreateSpace in this area. To CreateSpace's credit, they reconverted all the titles at no charge. Still, it caused some ill will, not between CreateSpace and me, but with some of my readers, who probably will never purchase another one of my books. Bad business no matter how you look at it.

Then there is my experience with eBook Architects. I have nothing but good things to say about these folks from Austin, Texas. They cost more than CreateSpace and some other companies I have investigated. To be honest, it is not a good selling point when I call to ask questions and the person on the other end of the phone cannot speak English or Spanish well enough for me to communicate (I live in Texas so my Spanish is, out of necessity, passable).

But, their turnaround time is excellent, they do immaculate work, and most importantly to me, an outside part verifies the quality of their work on every ebook reading device. You book comes with a seal of quality when they complete the job and you are allowed to use this seal in your marketing for the book.

Finally, every Kindle conversion eBook Architects does comes with an ePub version for the Nook as well. You essentially pay for two conversions for the price of one. Of course, you can hardly expect CreateSpace to hand you a conversion for their competition!

CreateSpace does reasonable work at a very reasonable price if your book has no bells or whistles and it not too long. Until they get the bugs worked out, just beware there could be a few problems with some Kindle apps.

You won't have any problems with eBook Architects and they stand behind their work.

Regardless, you will need an ebook version of your book to go with the POD version. With more and more people using Kindles and Nooks to read, if you want your book to have as wide an audience as possible, you need to have both types of versions available.

Do you homework before you select a conversion service. I would start with the two I just wrote about with a nod towards eBook Architects.

California verus Amazon - Who Will Win? Technology and Changes in Self-Publishing

The state of California has gone after Amazon, and other on-line affiliate businesses, in an effort to generate tax revenue. Amazon has responded by thumbing its nose at California and canceling its relationship with the on-line vendors involved. For an excellent post complete with excerpts of statements by parties involved, visit The Publishing Maven's blog.

Over and over I have read if you want to draw readers to your blog, state something controversial. At the risk of offending any readers (they say never discuss politics and religion) here goes.

Governments, all of them, need to learn to live within their means. That means spend less or no more than what you take in. The rest of us have to live in this manner or face the consequences and our governments, local, state and national, all need to do the same. If you want to spend more money on one item, you have to spend less somewhere else. Living on a budget requires you operate in this manner.

The politicians in California, and everywhere else, I am fairly sure are surprised by Amazon's reaction. They shouldn't be. If someone poked me with a sharp object I would move quickly to remove myself from the general area of the person poking me. Businesses react the same way when it comes to costs the business operator can avoid or feels are cumbersome.

As to the brick and mortar stores who have trouble competing with Amazon, I say this, create your own on-line presence and develop a niche market that you serve best. Create loyal customers through fantastic service and make sure your products are quality. Work to create more customers through word-of-mouth advertising. In the case of book sellers, use Amazon to help sell your books or other products. The man in the brown truck is your friend! UPS is in the business of helping small businesses deliver their products quickly and efficiently.

Technology changes things in big ways. It is a historical fact. The arrival of first the railroad and then the automobile spelled the end of the horse and buggy as a common means of transportation. Machine guns and barbed wire changed how Europeans engaged in land warfare, resulting in the horrible slaughter of trench warfare in World War I. The personal computer and the internet has changed the world in profound ways and will continue to do so. The only real certainty is change will happen.

Technology has made self-publishing a viable business model today. While some of the stigma of self-publishing still remains, the powerful combination of Amazon, B&N,  the print-on-demand technology and business model, excellent and relatively easy to learn to use software and the recent development, acceptance and surge in e-book readers has made the world of self-publishing one in flux.

Within five to ten years, the world of publishing as it is now known will not exist. Those publishers who do not adapt to the new reality will go the way of the buggy maker. Those who do, will prosper.

Government needs to learn to adapt as well. Regardless of the political party in control of the government entity, governments must learn to spend less than the amount of revenue taken in. Tax increases are not the answer. Learning to operate like a business and being financially efficient are. If a government entity offers a service, it should be of a quality as high, or higher, than what private enterprise can or would offer. Why higher? Because the taxpayer has no say in whether or not to purchase the service. The private consumer does. Therefore, the service must be of a high quality since it is being imposed on the "consumer."

Paperback Sales versus E-book Sales in the Past Seven Months

With the end of May almost here, I sat down and took a quick look at my sales figures in the past few months, not in terms of income, but in terms of total books sold, both POD paperbacks and e-books (Kindle Books). The totals startled me a little bit and are indicative of the current trends in the publishing industry.

Starting with the month of November, 2010, and finishing with the month of May, 2011, I have sold 623 paperback books on Amazon (these numbers do not include Expanded Distribution Channel sales or specialty retailers). During the same time period I have sold 291 Kindle books. Please note as well, my first Kindle title went on sale in November and only sold 3 copies. The two totals combined indicate I have sold 914 total books during the past seven months. The 291 Kindle books account for roughly one third of my total sales.

The reason I compared sales from November of 2010 through May of 2011 is because I did not start selling Kindle books until November of 2010.

The Publishing Maven posted about ebooks making up such a large portion of the book market currently, basing her post on a recent article in Forbes Magazine. Joel Friedlander has been writing and commenting a great deal about ebooks lately at his blog, The Book Designer.

The lesson to be drawn from these sales figures, at least for me, is in the future, every edition of a new book I release will have at a minimum a POD paperback version and a Kindle edition of the title. Ebooks are here to stay but so, it would appear, are paperback books, at least for a few years longer.

The Real Kindle Killer!

This is a fascinating article and thought provoking. Technology is changing the printing and self-publishing industry, there is not doubt. But is new always better?  For those considering including ebooks as part of your offerings, this is a good read.

The Real Kindle Killer!

Formatting Your POD Book for Amazon’s Kindle – Obtaining the Needed Skills

There are costs in self-publishing. An author can pay large sums of money to have a book typeset, edited, marketed, a unique cover and interior designed, cover scribing created among a few services available for a fee in the self-publishing world. Now the cost of converting the interior file from a print version to a Kindle ready version can be added to the list of cost considerations for authors.

As with nearly everything in the self-publishing world, an author can learn how to do almost any task involved in preparing a book for publication, if the author is willing to invest the time, and in some cases money, to acquire the skills necessary to do the job. I do believe editing one’s own manuscript is not the best approach to creating the best possible book, so plan to have someone else edit the manuscript.

Self-publishing is a business and costs are important. Saving money in the production of a book can cost money in the long run if the quality of the book’s design is poor, resulting in fewer sales than possible. Kindle readers can be quite harsh in their reviews on Amazon if they don’t like the quality of the interior of the book. Poor reviews can kill sales of an otherwise good book for sale on Amazon.

I currently have two titles available in Kindle versions. The first title I converted myself and loaded it on the Amazon Kindle Direct Platform. To my horror, when I opened the file to examine how the book would look on a Kindle, the results were disastrous. I quickly shelled out the money to pay CreateSpace to do the conversion work and the results were professional. My original effort is now where ever it is electrons go when they have been deleted on the internet.

As a matter of adapting to the ever changing world of self-publishing, my business model has been modified to plan for the costs of paying for professional conversions of my print files into Kindle ready files for all new titles I self-publish.

In looking at my backlist of nearly fourteen titles, some of which have not sold well in POD format, I am wondering which are worthy of the investment of limited funds to have a professional conversion done. I believe the content contained in each is worth what I charge for the book, but as anyone in the publishing industry will tell you if they are honest, some books will simply be duds in terms of sales.

It is my hope low priced Kindle versions will create sales where there have been few and some positive reviews will increase both Kindle and POD sales. Or course this is a gamble. The money invested in creating the Kindle version does not mean the title will sell, in any version.

My decision as the CEO of my little empire is I will invest money in my backlist titles that have sold enough POD copies to earn a profit. The rest, I will attempt to convert the files myself to create Kindle versions. 

All things technical cause me some stress. I readily admit to not being a techie and it takes this old dog a bit of time to learn new tricks on the computer. My youngest daughter could probably learn how to complete the conversion in a few hours (perhaps I should get her to learn how to do it!). So, I have set out to learn as much as I can about the conversion process in hopes of acquiring the needed skills.

Fortunately, there are several inexpensive books available in Kindle format on exactly how to do the needed conversion! I plan to read, review and share my thoughts on the three books on creating Kindle ready files I have obtained in the coming weeks and hope the readers of this blog find the reviews helpful.

The first book I plan to review is Morris Rosenthal’s Kindle Formatting in Word: Illustrated Kindle Tag Tips to Accompany a Blog Post.

Kindle versus iPad - Who will win the ebook reader wars?

Morris Rosenthal posted correspondence between himself and Aaron Shepherd today on his self-publishing blog. The gist of the conversation was the two discussing which ebook reader device, Amazon's Kindle or Apple's iPad, will win the ebook reader wars. Since these two gentlemen are two of the best experts on the POD industry in particular and self-publishing in general, anything they have to say about the matter is worth taking note of. The following is the comment I posted on Morris' blog:

This will be an interesting situation to see which device wins, much like VHS versus Beta when VCRs first became available. The best format does not always win.

Part of the equation, I believe, is the competitive nature of the two biggest competitors in the market, Apple and Amazon. Both are highly competitive. Which is willing to do the most to win the war of the e-reader? Somewhere in this mix, Barnes & Noble is fighting for its survival and the Nook needs to be factored in.

Bezos has shown a willingness, as I read it, to lose money to gain a dominant market share and then earn a profit. Are the other e-book competitors willing to do the same?

I also have to wonder about the issue of “core business.” Amazon, at its core, is a book seller. Has the addition of other merchandise watered down its core business? The Kindle and the Kindle bookstore are extensions of what should be Amazon’s core business – selling books via the internet.

How much of Apple’s business is selling books? Information is certainly a major component of Apple’s business, but at its heart, is Apple in the business of selling books/information or is the core of its business selling technology? If Apple places too many of its eggs in the “book basket,” will it allow another competitor to creep up on it in the hardware/technology side of the business?

I shall watch with great interest as the outcome will impact my bottom line as a self-publishing author.

The ebook reader wars are something self-publishing authors must pay attention to. Ebooks are here to stay and while I am not about to give up on the POD arm of my tiny self-publishing empire, I am working slowly, and as funds permit, to convert the titles I deem worthy of converting to ebooks.  Winding up on the wrong side of the ebook reader war could spell disaster for an author in terms of lost sales.

My personal take on the situation is to lean slightly towards the Amazon Kindle. Amazon's core business is selling books. In addition, Amazon is vested in the POD industry as the owner of CreateSpace. Amazon understands the book market in ways Apple will struggle to learn. The learning curve for Apple to master the book industry may be the edge Amazon needs. Neither company can afford to blink in the contest though. Authors and self-publishers live in an interesting time.

Pricing for POD and Kindle versions of the same title

The price of a book is an important consideration, particularly for self-publishing authors. I publish non-fiction books about coaching basketball and two about self-publishing. I know a lot about coaching basketball and have learned a great deal about self-publishing. I like to share information I have learned with others and the advent of POD and eBook technology allows me to not only share information but to earn money in the process.

My expertise is not in writing fiction and it certainly is not in the complicated world of business (at least it is complicated to me). I teach history but have successfully avoided drawing the assignment of teaching economics in my years in the profession. I have a basic understanding of the concept of supply and demand and the impact of this equation on pricing. I do not completely understand the vagaries of the consuming public and the role pricing plays in the purchase decision.

The can be no doubt the lower price of eBooks plays a role in the popularity of eBook sales. But how important is the role of the price? How important is the role in the price of a print copy of a paper book? What impact does lowering the price have on sales? What impact does raising the price have on sales? Does the difference in price between a POD version of a title and a Kindle version make a difference in the decision of which copy to purchase? 

One argument for lower pricing is the lower price will drive sales and the lost income from the lower profit margin will be more than made up for through a large increase in total sales. Others might argue, at least for non-fiction books, that too low a price indicates the value of the information contained is limited. A high price indicates the value of the information in the book is significant.

My question is when is a price too high and when is a price too low? I happen to think the information in all my books has value, but then I am the author. The real question is how much do the customers who purchase my books think the information is worth? 

There in lies the key to the question of pricing, or at least what I think is the answer. How much is the information in my non-fiction books worth in terms of money to my potential customers? If I raise the price too high, it will have a negative impact on sales. If I price the book too low it will have an impact on the profitability of the book in question and, I believe, eventually have a negative impact on the total number of copies sold.

Amazon helps some with the pricing guidelines for its Kindle books. Whether you like it or not, Amazon's "suggestion" Kindle books should be priced between $2.99 and $9.99 seems to have set the standard and it is hard to argue with the 70% share of the retail price Amazon pays its Kindle authors. With easy and nearly immediate access to Kindle book sales information for a specific title, an author can experiment with pricing and over time determine the impact, positive or negative, a specific price has on any given title. The same is true of a POD paper book. CreateSpace provides hourly updates of sales for authors on the Member Dashboard.

The question I am struggling with now is what should the price difference between two editions of a title be? Will a price that works for a POD version with no Kindle version be impacted negatively if there is too big a difference between the POD price and the Kindle price?

My goal is to optimize sales for all of my books regardless of the version in question. Consider me greedy, but I want to sell as many Kindle books as I can and the same is true of my POD print books. I still have one more child to put through college. Pricing plays a role in the equation of generating sales and it has a role to play in how much profit my self-publishing business earns.

I will be sure to share what I learn in the coming months as Kindle versions of my current POD books come on line for sale and as I publish new titles with both in both eBook and POD versions.

Amazon Sales Ranking for Kindle Books - Are Print and Kindle Versions Linked in Search Results?

My sole Kindle book at the moment, The Game of Basketball, sat alone on top of the search results for Kindle books about "coaching basketball" last week. I was excited to check sales for the week and to see I had sold 16 copies in a single day.  Sadly, it has fallen a few places to 6th, but I am still happy with how the Kindle version of the book has taken off.

How did the book get to this position so quickly in the all important Amazon search results? I am pretty sure two forces combined to create the success of the Kindle version of the book. The first factor is the introductory price of $2.99. The POD version sells for $17.95 and Amazon seldom discounts the book.

The second factor is a concentrated marketing effort in my weekly coaching newsletter.  This approach involved promoting the release of the Kindle version, the availability of FREE apps to download to various electronic devices to read Kindle books and the fact the introductory price is going to go up February 1st.

I consistently give away free content that is valuable to coaches, including excerpts of the same book when it was available in a print version only. It is my belief I have built up credibility with the readers of the newsletter via the free valuable content as well as my other coaching books being filled with useful and valuable content. I also have concluded the low price combined with a get it now or pay more later marketing promotion prompted a lot of sales in a very short period of time.

There have been some added benefits as well. The Kindle version has drawn an additional 5-star review praising the content and the dismal sales of the print version have improved. So much so that the ranking of the book in the all important search results has jumped in the past week from 120 to 18. 

I have never believed the hype that someone who buys a Kindle version will buy a paper version as well. Why would a customer do that? The point of having a Kindle for many readers is the savings over time in the purchase price of the books.

Could it be Amazon is beginning to link both Kindle sales and print sales together for the TITLE and not the version of the book? It would make sense for Amazon to do so. A popular title available for sale in both a Kindle and a print version gives the customer a choice, and Amazon is supposed to have as its driving force a customer first mindset. 

Promoting popular titles that offer a choice of how the title will be delivered makes sense. Combing the two versions sales data to further drive the popular title higher in the search results is customer friendly and would allow both Amazon and the author to take advantage of the long tail factor, thereby increasing sales.

For those of you who read this blog who are data and math inclined, please shed some light on how tracking sales of versions of a title could prove, or disprove this theory that the versions have been linked in the Amazon search results. What data would need to be tracked, for how long and how should the data be analyzed. Math minds better than mine will be required to solve this puzzle.

Kindle Readers and the Impact of Pricing

For those of us who sell our books on Amazon, we love it when our readers post positive reviews, especially five-star reviews. My Kindle book just picked up another five-star review for the book to add to the two the paperback version had already earned.  Below is the review:

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Valuable points for every coach and player, December 28, 2010

By 

Wyoedbrown (KFalls, OR) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: The Game of Basketball: Basketball Fundamentals, Intangibles and Finer Points of the Game for Coaches, Players and Fans (Kindle Edition)

I just picked this up for my Kindle because the price was right and I coach basketball. It turns out to be the best book on the little things we sometimes forget to teach I have ever read. The author addresses a slew of little things that I take for granted in good players, but then I wonder what's wrong when my players aren't doing some of those things.

Note, the review starts with a comment about the price. The paperback version is over 300 pages long and sells for $17.95 which is actually about $7 below the list price for comparable books on Amazon and from retailers who sell to coaches.  The current Kindle price is $2.99 and I was promoting it on my website for coaches and in my e-newsletter as an introductory price. Now I am hesitant to raise the price.

It is obvious the coach who purchased the book is happy with the information in the book and I am happy he commented positively on the value of the content. But would the coach have purchased the book had the price for the Kindle version been so low?

This may not be conclusive evidence, how can a single example be conclusive, but it does fit with what I have been reading about the importance of pricing of Kindle books.

Just what is the best price for the Kindle version of this book? I would really like to make more per copy but will raising the price lower the sales? How much can I raise the price and not impact sales in a negative fashion? Will raising the price increase sales based on perceived value of the information contained in the book?

The answer to this question will probably only be answered by some experimentation and record keeping over time, but I do believe it is an important one I need to consider. I will have two more Kindle books available in the next 3-4 months and hope to have an reasonable answer to this question before I making these books available.

Kindle Sales Continue To Grow - Get On The eBook Express!

I make it a point to read Morris Rosenthal's blog on self-publishing weekly. Morris is one of the founding fathers so to speak of the current state of self-publishing and has many insights into the business of self-publishing, something most authors seem to avoid.

His blog this week concerns Kindle Sales by Amazon during a one week period, namely the week of December 26-January 1. Based on Morris' numbers, Amazon sold over 3 million Kindle books during the aforementioned time span. Morris always has some interesting commentary and insights about the publishing industry, technology and how the rapid changes we all face as self-publishing authors will impact our industry. 

In fact, Morris tracks Amazon sales rankings of both paper and Kindle books and provides charts that allow interpretation of sales rankings and what they mean in terms of actual sales. 

Morris and his math models aside, just what does the current trend in Kindle sales mean for authors who self-publish? Simply it means you better get on board the eBook express. Either learn HTML and convert your files for your POD books for Kindle publication as well as the ePubit format for Nook and other similar eReader devices or pay a qualified professional to do it for you.

I don't think the POD business model is going to go away any time soon and as authors we will need to continue to take advantage of the POD technology to get our books into print in traditional book form. At the same time we will need to embrace the new eBook technology. 

As the technology grows in popularity with younger readers, and yes, I can vouch for younger readers in today's world (my real job is teaching high school history and coaching basketball) and their embracing of technology as the means by which they obtain information, I have to believe more and more books will be sold as eBooks and not as traditional paper books.

Just as the eBook seems to be growing in popularity with fiction readers, it is growing in popularity with schools and school districts. Our math department uses eBooks almost exclusively. The history department I work in uses eDocuments for many of our primary source documents, saving the department a great deal of expense allowing us to maximize our limited budget.

All of this seems to indicate an ever moving push towards the eBook as a commonly excepted format for books and other forms of information.

Amazon Initiates Kindle Book Loaning Program - Sort Of

Fighting the eBook trend is probably as smart as laughing at the idea of every home having a computer. Even though I am now the proud owner of a Kindle and my wife enjoy's her Nook, both of us prefer paper books (though I will admit it was nice to be able to read five books and not have to carry them on my trip to Delaware, Philadelphia and New York with my basketball team this past week).

One of the advantages, or so I thought, of paper books over Kindle books was the ability to lend books to your friends. Now, to some extent, even that advantage is gone. I received the following message explaining the new lend a book feature for Kindle books from Amazon in an e-mail:

Dear Publisher,

We are excited to announce Kindle book lending (http://www.amazon.com/kindle-lending). The Kindle Book Lending feature allows users to lend digital books they have purchased through the Kindle Store to their friends and family. Each book may be lent once for a duration of 14 days and will not be readable by the lender during the loan period.

All DTP titles are enrolled in lending by default. For titles in the 35% royalty option, you may choose to opt out of lending by deselecting the checkbox under "Kindle Book Lending," in the "Rights and Pricing" section of the title upload/edit process. You may not choose to opt out a title if it is included in the lending program of another sales or distribution channel. For more details, see section 5.2.2 of the Term and Conditions.

For more info on how Kindle Book Lending works, see our FAQ here: http://forums.digitaltextplatform.com/dtpforums/entry.jspa?externalID=581

Sincerely,
 
Amazon Digital Text Platform

Observations On Using CreateSpace's New Kindle Conversion Service

After the success, well, my terms of success, of my first Kindle book, I have decided to have several more of my books converted to Kindle using CreateSpace's very economical $69 conversion service. In the process I have learned several things that might be of interest to others interested in this service.

First of all, I could not find a link anywhere on the CreateSpace website to purchase the service. In fact, there is only one location on the entire site where you can find anything about the Kindle conversion service. It is located in the Services section on the Design, Editing and Marketing page. This link will only take you to a page describing the service and other marketing information to entice you to use the service.

I simply could not recall how I managed to get my first book converted. I e-mailed my customer rep and low and behold, the answer was revealed. Why CreateSpace does not provide this information on its site page about the Kindle conversion service, I do not know, but here is the answer on how to purchase the service.  You have to e-mail your customer service rep and the rep will manually add the conversion service to your shopping cart for the title you want converted. You may then purchase the service.

I also learned that any title published using another POD service (LSI) or a traditional off-set press is not eligible for the CreateSpace conversion service. So, my one other title that is published using LSI as the POD printer is being converted by eBook Architects.

My first experience with the CreateSpace Kindle Conversion was not without its problems, as noted in an earlier post, but CreateSpace did a wonderful job of rectifying the situation and the finished eBook was well done and had the desired bells and whistles.

Given the cost of paying for Kindle conversions by other companies, why does CreateSpace charge such a low price? $69 is basically giving their service away when comparing what other reputable companies charge for the same level of conversion. Christy Pinheiro who hosts the blog Publishing Maven, commented elsewhere on this blog the pricing of the service might be part of a marketing strategy on the part of Amazon/CreateSpace to draw authors away from LSI since Lightning does not offer a Kindle conversion service, making CreateSpace a more desirable, or perhaps more honestly, a necessary choice since CreateSpace will only provide the service for books published through CreateSpace's POD service.