Filed under: Amazon, Feedback, Kindle, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Science, Science Fiction, Titan
Getting ready for the official ‘launch’ of Communion of Dreams. I should have the proof copy of the paperback in hand tomorrow or the day after, and if it looks good I hope that the launch can come later this week. Have already had some sales of the Kindle version of the book, and some people have already downloaded a ‘loan’ copy under the Amazon Prime program. If you want to dive in, that’s great – but here’s another little secret: I’m going to run a promotion during the official launch whereby *anyone* can download a free copy of the Kindle version. Yup. So you might just wanna wait . . .
And in working to put the various components of all this together, I stumbled across this fun little optical illusion: The Eclipse of Titan. Check it out!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Feedback, Kindle, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction
{stage whisper} OK, here’s the news.
Communion of Dreams is now available in a Kindle version. I’m waiting for the paperback version to be ready before I make a real effort to promote it. That should happen next week.
But in the meantime, I know a lot of folks have been waiting for the Kindle version. And yeah, it *is* a lot more readable than the old .pdf version was. So you should plunk down the $4.95 for a copy. Definitely. Or, if you’re an Amazon Prime member, you can get it on loan for free – yeah, free.
And that is such a good idea I’m going to steal it. Here’s what I mean . . .
You can really help me out by buying a Kindle version. Seriously, a surge in sales would get people’s attention, and help me out a huge amount. But I’ll make you a deal: if you don’t like it for whatever reason, I’ll refund your money. Of course, I would rather that you liked it, and thought it was cheap cheap cheap at $4.95, and so much so that you went and told all your friends that it is the best book EVER and that they should get a copy. But as a fallback position I’ll refund your purchase if you don’t like it. I mean me, personally – I’ll send you $4.95. You can’t go wrong.
Oh, one more thing . . . anyone who will take the time to write a review of the book will earn my eternal gratitude. Really.
Watch for further news about the paperback edition next week. And maybe some other updates about things before then.
{/stage whisper}
Filed under: Kindle, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
So, thanks for all who weighed in on the cover design question the other day. We’re going to go with a slightly modified version (dropping the “by”) of #7 – this one:
And Lyriel won the drawing for a copy of the printed book.
Now, another question for everyone, and this time I will hold a drawing from those who comments/sends me an email with feedback for a Kindle copy of the book. The question is how I should price the Kindle version?
Here are the choices, and a bit of explanation behind the strategy behind each:
- $7.99. This is a popular price-point for a lot of Science Fiction/Fantasy books, just from casually browsing through that category on Amazon. Yeah, there’s pricier stuff, but it is usually newer books by well-established authors. I am not well-established, and some 35,000 .pdf copies of Communion of Dreams have already been downloaded over the last 5 years. But there is also something to be said for the message of “this is a quality book, you can tell by the price.”
- $4.99. Another popular price-point for the genre. Gets it into the “under five bucks – why not?” category.
- $2.99. Another pretty common price-point, particularly for a lot of much older work or stuff from unknown authors. And at this price perhaps a lot of people who read the .pdf version in the past might say “yeah, I’m willing to pop three bucks for an updated/more Kindle-friendly copy.”
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I could go lower, but that would shift the book into the ‘35% royalty’ category, which is a huge disincentive for me. It also strikes me that this is saying that I don’t value the book highly enough.
So, of those three choices, I would like to know which one you would go for. And if you would like to explain your reasoning, I would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!
Edited to add: Please get your comments/choices to me by noon Monday.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Kindle, Marketing, NPR, Predictions, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
I mentioned a month ago that I was going to be moving to self-publish Communion of Dreams. I just wanted to note that we’re actually moving to accomplish that goal – I need to do a close read-through of the prepped text for the hardcopy version, and when that is done then my Good Lady Wife will work to create a html version for the Kindle edition. When that is done, then we’ll ‘launch’ the book officially – perhaps even yet this month. We’ll see how everything comes together, and whether the 35,000+ downloads of the pdf version of the book is an indication that people will actually buy a copy of the book or not.
If not? Perhaps I’ll take up writing ‘paranormal romance’…
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Health, Kindle, Promotion, Publishing, Writing stuff
In light of yesterday’s anticipation, today’s official announcement actually has me feeling sorta “flat.”
I’m not sure why. The book is now available in both Kindle and paperback versions, and all the preliminary indicators are that things will go well – we’ve even sold a book already! I should be excited.
Instead, I just feel tired and unmotivated. Odd.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Failure, Jeff Bezos, Kindle, Marketing, Predictions, Publishing
News item of interest today:
Kindle Books Outsell Print Books on Amazon
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Before the Kindle, Amazon started selling traditional paper books in July 1995. But now, Amazon has announced that Kindle books are outselling paperbacks and hardcovers.Since April 1, Amazon has sold 105 Kindle books for every 100 print books sold. These numbers include books that have no Kindle edition. Also, for all of 2011 so far, Amazon has had the fastest year-over-year growth rate for its books business due to the overwhelming Kindle sales and steady print book sales.
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“Customers are now choosing Kindle books more often than print books,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO. “We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined it would happen this quickly – we’ve been selling print books for 15 years and Kindle books for less than four years.
When the Kindle first came out, I was *very* skeptical that it would replace conventionally printed books. Here’s what I said in November 2007:
I think it is still a hard sell. $400 is a chunk for something which only kinda-sorta replaces a real book. And if you drop it in the mud, it isn’t just $7.95 to buy a new copy. But it does seem to be an intelligent application of the relevant tech, and sounds intriguing. There will be those who snap it up, just ’cause – but Amazon has a long way to go before it is mainstream.
That’s my guess.
Well, I was wrong, and Jeff Bezos was right. Well, sorta.
The Kindle 3, which came out last summer, is a lot different than the original Kindle. It’s smaller. Lighter. Works better. And costs less than half what the original did. In fact, just yesterday I ordered one for $189.
Yeah, let me repeat that: I ordered a Kindle yesterday.
I had been doing research into the e-reader in preparation for publishing Her Final Year and part of that preparation was going out and playing with the latest version of the Kindle at a local store. I’ll be honest, I was flat-out impressed with the current machine.
As I’ve noted before, I’m a ‘late adopter’ of technology, always willing to wait for things to mature enough that the bugs are worked out and the price comes down. And I’m also a professional bookbinder & book conservator. When *I* am willing to buy an e-reader, then things have changed. As I said 18 years ago:
For me, the book is a codex, something that you can hold in your hand and read. From the earliest memories of my science fiction saturated youth, I remember books becoming obsolete in the future, replaced by one dream or another of “readers”, “scanners”, or even embedded text files linked directly to the brain. Some say ours is a post-literate culture, with all the books-on-tape, video, and interactive media technology. I think I read somewhere recently that Sony (or Toshiba or Panasonic or someone) had finally come up with a hand-held, book-sized computer screen that can accommodate a large number of books on CD ROM. Maybe the future is here.
Maybe. Lord knows that I would be lost without a computer for all my writing, revisions, and play. The floppy drive that is in this book was taken from my old computer (my first computer) when a friend installed a hard drive. It is, in many ways, part of my history, part of my time at Iowa, and all the changing that I did there.
Yeah, the future is indeed here. Mine should arrive the first of next week.
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Ballistics, BoingBoing, Emergency, Failure, Feedback, Government, Guns, Kindle, Marketing, NYT, Politics, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, RKBA, Society
An update to this post… In the four days since the site went public, we’ve had almost 75,000 hits. That’s more hits than I’ve had to the Communion of Dreams site this entire year. I’d say it’s off to a good start. Interesting that it has already started to propagate beyond the usual gun forums and whatnot – we got a lot of hits from a link on SomethingAwful, and we’re seeing some links from people’s Facebook and Myspace pages.
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Did you see this post in the NYT about the future of publishing? I was going to write about it, but have been occupied with other matters. Then I saw this piece by Clay Shirky in response, and figured I’d just tell people to read what he said. An excerpt:
There are book lovers, yes, but there are also readers, a much larger group. By Gleick’s logic, all of us who are just readers, everyone who buys paperbacks or trades books after we’ve read them, everyone who prints PDFs or owns a Kindle, falls out of his imagined future market. Publishers should forsake mere readers, and become purveyors of Commemorative Text Objects. It’s the Franklin Mint business model, now with 1000% more words!
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Got a note from a friend in response to yesterday’s doom & gloom report. He asked what my advice would be for anyone wondering about how to handle some modest investments (and acknowledged that I am not a financial advisor in any professional way). My reply:
Warm clothes and sturdy shoes.
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Well, I have other matters to attend to. Have a longer post working in the back of my mind, perhaps for later.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow, Jeff Bezos, Kindle, Marketing, Publishing, Science Fiction, Society
Via Cory Doctorow, a lengthy look at the End of Book Publishing as We Know It in New York Magazine. It’s a very long piece, but worth going through for anyone interested in the current state of the publishing industry and some possible directions it may go in the future.
As I have said in the past, I think that the industry is essentially “broken.” Increasingly, the traditional publishing system relies on gimmicks and celebrities (most such artifically created). From the article:
But overspending isn’t going away, even with a rotten economy. Last month, Harvard economist Anita Elberse wrote a piece debunking the hypothesis of Chris Anderson’s anti-blockbuster blockbuster, The Long Tail (which Bob Miller acquired at Hyperion for a mere $550,000). Elberse led off with a tidbit from a study of Hachette’s Grand Central Publishing. Of 61 books on its 2006 list, each title averaged a profit of almost $100,000. But without the top seller, which earned $5 million, that average drops to $18,000. “A blockbuster strategy still makes the most sense,” she concludes.
It’s inherently risky, though. You have to wonder about the prospects for one new book that Elberse had her students case-study—Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World. Grand Central, inspired by the best seller Marley & Me, is betting on the new mini-genre of cat-related nonfiction. Grand Central initially offered $300,000, then went up to $1.25 million. Gobs more will be spent on marketing. You’ll likely be hearing about Dewey when it comes out this month, and if half a million of you still feel that you can’t get enough heartwarming pet stories, it just might earn back its advance.
So, what happens? Well, I think that we’re seeing it: the “publish it yourself” strategy, for authors on their own or teamed up with Amazon. Yeah, I don’t like the Kindle, but it does look like otherwise Amazon is moving in the direction of becoming vertically-integrated, and Bezos’s baby may be a major component in that process:
Publishers have been burned by e-book hype before. A few years back, analysts were predicting we’d all be reading novels on our Palm Pilots. Barnes & Noble even began selling e-books. Though it doesn’t quite look the part, Bezos’s chunky retro Kindle is the closest so far to being the iPod of books. In mid-August, a Citigroup analyst doubled his estimate for this year’s sales of the readers—to almost 400,000.
Why weren’t publishers elated? What’s wrong with a company that returns only 10 percent of the books it buys and might eventually eliminate the cost of print production? Well, it doesn’t help that Amazon, which has been on an intense buying spree (print-on-demanders BookSurge; book networking site Shelfari), lists publishers as its competitors in SEC filings. Editors and retailers alike fear that it’s bent on building a vertical publishing business—from acquisition to your doorstep—with not a single middleman in sight. No HarperCollins, no Borders, no printing press. Amazon has begun to do end runs around bookstores with small presses. Two new bios from Lyons Press, about Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain, are going straight-to-Kindle long before publication.
So, what does this mean for the average non-celeb writer? In other words, what does it mean for me?
I’m not sure. As I have said repeatedly, I would like to have a conventional publishing gig – “sell” Communion of Dreams to one of the imprints who handle Science Fiction (or even better, “speculative fiction”) and have copies of the thing sold in bookstores all across the country. That’s what I grew up with. But it may well make more sense to get go through one of the self-publishing services, and just sell the thing off my websites and through Amazon. With almost 12,000 copies downloaded, there may well be a market for a hardcopy version.
Thoughts?
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 