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Archives for January 2010

The eBook War

January 31, 2010 by Michael Gallagher

Dear readers:

As a warning, this post tonight is really long.  If you don’t want to read a rant, I’ll see you in a new post tomorrow!

I try not to sensationalize items in the news or get on my soapbox about what is right or wrong; I will let other blog owners devoted to the Kindle do that for you.  What I try to do is (a) give you the heads-up on what books are free in the Kindle format, and (b) give you a tip or two that will make your Kindle experience a little easier or unlock a feature you didn’t know was there.

Many of you have heard of the ongoing spat between Amazon and Macmillan, where three things appear to have happened:

  • Macmillan attempted to force Amazon to change their model and charge different pricing for eBooks, generally around $14.99 per eBook to you and me.
  • Amazon got mad at Macmillan, and pulled all of their titles (including their subsidiary titles – a list of subsidiaries is at the end of this post) over the weekend.  You can read a summary of it in the Wall Street Journal by clicking here.
  • Amazon capitulated today, and will charge $12.99 and higher for Macmillan and its subsidiaries eBooks.

If you would like to read the official Amazon statement, you can click here to read it on the Kindle discussion board: comments are being posted by the second from the Kindle community.

Why am I writing about this?  Well, if people agree to pay those prices, other publishers will follow suit which will raise the overall pricing for you and me.

I don’t think Amazon really cares.  Actually, I think they do care and want the higher pricing to succeed as they will make more money.

What can you do?  You can either (a) boycott any of the Macmillan titles, or (b) agree to them and pay it.  If I individually boycott them it won’t make one iota of difference.  If you and I – plus a few hundred thousand other Kindle owners boycott them, they will probably change their pricing model as a percentage of something is a whole heck of a lot better than a percentage of nothing.

In my “real” life (if you think I blog full time for profit you’re crazy!), I am a CPA and know a little bit about pricing models: I personally think the publishers are sticking too hard to yesterday and not looking at the present and the future .  Publishers stand, theoretically – depending upon how large of an advance they give authors, marketing, and payment of corporate salaries and overhead – to make a whole lot of money on eBooks vs. the traditional hardback or paperback.  How?  Well, of course I have an opinion on it so let me share it!

To publish a book, regardless of it being an eBook or paper, you need editors, proofers, etc.  (you also need a few good authors who can tell a story people want to buy but that’s another conversation for another day).  From there, all other costs a publisher has to cover in the cost of a book go out the window as they just don’t exist for an eBook.  For example, consider the following which are eliminated:

  • You don’t need to purchase a lot of paper by the eighteen-wheeler load.
  • You certainly don’t need to go buy ink for the letters or heavy card or other paper stock to make covers.
  • You don’t need warehouses to store the raw materials used in the production process (paper, ink, glue, staples).
  • You also don’t need to hire warehouse personnel to count inventory, move boxes around the warehouse, load up more eighteen-wheelers to ship out inventory. 
  • Warehouse personnel, due to the labor-intensive nature of their jobs, tend to get hurt more: your worker’s compensation, health insurance, onsite nursing facilities, and other associated costs will decrease.
  • If you don’t need to manufacture, store, or ship books, you won’t need as much production equipment, forklifts, eighteen-wheelers, etc.  Your utility bill to light, heat / cool, diesel fuel, rental costs also go down.
  • Since you’ve eliminated a lot of your fixed costs, you can also eliminate some of your corporate overhead: you won’t need as many human resource, accounting, and other corporate staff typical of this type of organization.
  • When publishers send books out to retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Wal-Mart, etc., if a book doesn’t sell they have to buy them back.  That means someone has to pay for that, too – including the shipping, unloading something that had already been packaged / loaded / shipped to a retailer already, as well as finding and paying for more warehouses to store this unwanted merchandise.  Oh yea, you also need to hire people to periodically inventory this unwanted material, move it around the warehouse for a while, and eventually pay for destroying it after a few years of collecting dust.

Let’s compare and contrast that with the costs of an electronic book:

  • You still need an editor and a proofer: no one wants to read garbage.  You’ll also need some corporate staff to make things happen.  Those things don’t change, nor does the #1 requirement of having an author who writes something compelling people would like to purchase.
  • Once a book is proofed and type-set, you will need to hire someone who can convert it into Kindle format.  I’ve converted 37 books to the Kindle format (so far), ranging from 10 to 1,500 typed pages, with and without pictures: it’s not too difficult, and formatting with an active table of contents is not too hard, either.  If a certified bean counter like me can figure it out, I’m sure others can, too.
  • Once a book has been converted, you need to ship it to the retailer and tell them the price.  Let’s take Amazon with the Kindle and Barnes & Noble with the nook as an example. If I need to ship it to them, I can either (a) email it to my contact at the retailer, (b) spend about 10 minutes myself uploading to something similar to Amazon’s Digital Text Platform, or (c), I can burn it to a CD and FedEx or mail it to my contact at Amazon.  That sure beats having to hire warehouse and logistics personnel to manage my inventory.
  • If it sells, great!  I need to sit back and collect a royalty check.
  • Let’s assume I have a dud for a title, and no one really buys it.  What do I need to do?  Nothing!  There are no books to accept returns on in my warehouse, no calls or other communication with the vendor required, and no reimbursements to be made to the retailer for the unsold inventory.  I also don’t have to find warehouse space to store all of this unwanted “stuff.”

Some of the above is tongue and cheek – I am not advocating firing everyone and contributing further to this ongoing recession: you still will need to print some books, but just not as many.  On the other hand, you’ll be able to cut out a significant amount of those costs.

Bottom-line is, publishers charge $25 or more for paper books because there are a lot of costs involved in the production of the physical (not the electronic) book.  You’re also paying for the costs of failed titles, the CEO and other corporate staff’s large salaries and nice offices, and things totally unrelated to the book you are purchasing.

I am not against anyone making more than an average profit – I am a capitalist through-and-through.  I just can’t stand monopolistic powers that could affect me.  That’s what Macmillan is doing, and that’s why I will be doing my best to exercise my rights as a consumer into buying any of their eBooks – I think the paper book (hardback in this case) makes their resulting profit margins less, and my overall cost of readership less.

Let me give you an example:

In May 2009, I bought the book One Second After by William R. Forstchen; I thought it was an outstanding book – consider it this generation’s version of the Pat Frank classic Alas Babylon (side note: why isn’t Alas Babylon available in Kindle format?).  The Kindle version I bought was $9.99 and the hardcover version was $14.99 (it is $13.32 from a third party Amazon seller, brand new today).  One Second After was an outstanding book, in my humble opinion.  Consider Forge Press (a Macmillan subsidiary), whenever the Kindle version is available again, will charge $14.99 for the eBook version.

Let’s see – I can get the eBook version for $14.99 or hardback version for $13.22 – shipping is free, as I am an Amazon Prime member which means UPS will send it to me in two business days, or I can wait five business days for free regular shipping.  Amazon is subsidizing some of the purchase price, as Amazon has to pay a percentage of the publisher’s retail price.  Let’s say it’s 50% of $24.95 – the publisher gets $12.48, and Amazon gets about $2.50 – that;s a razor margin if I ever saw one.

Seven times out of ten I will order the hardback version.  Why?  Well, I will read it fairly soon after receiving it, then I will do one of four things:

  1. Loan it to a friend to read. 
  2. Take it to Half Price Books and get $5-$7 for it as it is a new book (probably only a buck or two if it was a couple of years old).
  3. Sell it on eBay for $8-$9 and net $5-$7 after the eBay and PayPal selling fees.
  4. Keep it on the bookshelf.

Taking these in a random order –

#1 doesn’t happen very often as I have found out the hard way a lot of the books I loan out never seem to make it back on time.  That sounds like a reflection of my friends, but that is also another story for another day (and a different blog).

#4 also doesn’t happen very often as my bookshelves are overflowing.

#3 used to be one of the main options, but packing up and mailing, waiting on people to pay (if they weren’t a deadbeat bidder) was too much of a hassle.  Besides, my wife banned me from selling on eBay for a while (seriously, my PowerSeller status went down the tubes), and I suddenly discovered how much free time I had.  I kind of like the free time.

#2 is what usually happens.  Seeing as how the net cost of me reading the book is now somewhere in the $8-$10 range (cost of the book less the amount received from Half Price Books), I’ll do that the majority of the time: remember, I am an accountant and that’s just the way I am programmed internally.

Why seven out of ten times with option #2 vs. 100%?  Well, sometimes there are things called impulse purchases, or I am at an airport and see something at Hudson’s News for almost full price – in the Hudson News example, I will read the book description, etc. then walk over to my gate, fire up the Kindle, and purchase it for a lot cheaper that way.  I’m sure I am not the only one doing that.

To wind up my long-winded example, in this case I buy the hardback book.  The publisher had all of those costs I mentioned way at the beginning of this blog post, and the price earned $12.48 before paying his corporate overhead, costs to the author, marketing, returns, etc.  Or, he could sell it with a fraction of the overhead for something else.

Makes you see both sides of the argument, doesn’t it?  For argument’s sake, lets say I’m the publisher and I sell it for $9.99 – with 30% going to Amazon and the remainder to me ($6.99).  I would argue the incremental profit of selling a paper book vs. an electronic book of $5.49 is not enough to cover all of those fixed costs associated with the paper version of the book.

That’s my two cents, and sorry to rant.  I’m going to do my best to avoid (boycott) Macmillan and its subsidiaries for a while.  If others do it, too, maybe the law of supply and demand will kick in and the prices will be lowered.  Besides, I’ve found a lot of great independent authors I never would have otherwise found if it wasn’t for my Kindle.

Michael

Here is the list of Macmillan’s publishing footprint, courtesy of several blogs but first sent out by Bufo Calvin, who is not one of those soapbox bloggers I mentioned in the first paragraph, he’s actually one of the more helpful folks ot in the Kindle community, in the I Love my Kindle Blog:

Browse by author:

http://us.macmillan.com/browsebyauthor.aspx

Publishing trade names:

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
 
  FSG Hardcovers
 
  FSG Paperbacks
 
  Hill & Wang
 
  Faber & Faber
 
First Second
 
Henry Holt & Co.
 
  Henry Holt Hardcovers
 
  Henry Holt Paperbacks
 
  Metropolitan Books
 
  Times Books
 
Macmillan Audio
 
  Behind the Wheel
 
Nature Publishing Group
 
Palgrave Macmillan
 Picador
 
Quick and Dirty Tips
 
Scientific American
 
St. Martin’s Press
 
  Minotaur Books
 
  Thomas Dunne Books
 
Tor/Forge
 
  Tor Books
 
  Forge Books
 
  Orb Books
 
  Tor/Seven Seas
 
Bedford, Freeman and Worth
 
Bedford/St. Martin’s
 
W.H. Freeman
 Worth Publishers
 
BFW High School
 
i>clicker
 
Hayden-McNeil
 
Palgrave Macmillan
 
Trade Books For Courses
 
FSG Books for Young Readers
 
Feiwel & Friends
 
Holt Books for Young Readers
 
Kingfisher
 
Roaring Brook
 
Priddy Books
 
Starscape/Tor Teen
 
Square Fish
 
Young Listeners
 
Macmillan Kids

Want to have this blog sent wirelessly to your Kindle vs. reading it on your computer?  Click here for the Amazon page for Free Kindle Books Plus a Few Other Tips.

Filed Under: Misc. and Random Stuff

Deadlock Free from Amazon Today

January 31, 2010 by Michael Gallagher

Deadlock  by James Scott Bell is also free today in the Amazon Kindle store, and has received an average user rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars based on 15 customer reviews.  You can pick up your free copy by clicking here.

Here is the book’s description from the Amazon website:

A parent’s worst nightmare. A lawyer’s biggest challenge. A young boy’s life on the line.

From Publishers Weekly:

In this legal thriller for the evangelical Christian market, former trial lawyer- turned-novelist Bell imagines what would happen if a prochoice, atheistic Supreme Court Justice suddenly became a born-again believer. A near brush with death and the sudden loss of her mother leaves 52-year-old liberal Justice Millicent “Millie” Hollander pondering eternity and considering faith. When she becomes chief justice, Millie discovers that the belief she has embraced excites a firestorm of confusion and anger from her former supporters. A case involving a separation of religion and state opens up a huge rift in the Court, and the media soon turns the whole affair into a three-ring circus. Alarmed about Millie’s potentially conservative positions, the president and stereotypically hard-drinking, womanizing Sen. Sam Levering plot her impeachment and possibly her death. A weak subplot concerns a teen’s abortion and subsequent lawsuit against the clinic where it was performed, which rather unconvincingly intersects with Millie’s story toward the close of the novel. Portions of the plot aren’t completely fresh Angela Elwell Hunt’s recent The Justice ably tackled the same general topic for the same audience. But Bell’s take on the idea of a Supreme Court justice making a religious about-face offers some unique spins, including a curveball plot development that will blindside most readers. Laudably, most characters are multidimensional, and even the senator’s evil troubleshooter, Anne Deveraux, becomes worthy of pity. Evangelical prolife fiction aficionados should appreciate this addition to the CBA thriller genre.

From Library Journal:

Often the swing vote on the U.S. Supreme Court, liberal (and atheist) Millicent Manning Hollander is on the verge of becoming the first female chief justice with the backing of a powerful but morally bankrupt senator and the President. But a near-fatal accident, along with her mother’s unexpected death and a burgeoning relationship with minister Jack Holden, pushes her in a different direction; Millicent’s religious conversion changes her life and her interpretation of the law. As the chances increase that the Court may rule on an abortion case involving 16-year-old Sarah Mae (will the Christian Right finaly defeat Roe v. Wade?), Millicent’s political foes threaten to impeach her, and only her new-found faith can help her. Bell, a lawyer known for solid Christian legal thrillers (Final Witness), offers a thought-provoking fantasy about what might happen if a staunch liberal becomes a conservative Christian, although he does slips into didactic overload with his strong anti-abortion rhetoric when he discusses Sarah Mae’s situation. Strongly recommended for more conservative collections.

Want to have this blog sent wirelessly to your Kindle vs. reading it on your computer?  Click here for the Amazon page for Free Kindle Books Plus a Few Other Tips.

Filed Under: Free Book Links, Free From Amazon Store

Sins of the Fathers Free Today from Amazon

January 31, 2010 by Michael Gallagher

Sins of the Fathers by James Scott Bell is free today in the Amazon Kindle store, and has received an average user rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars based on 15 customer reviews.  You can pick up your free copy by clicking here.

Here is the book’s description from the Amazon website:

A parent’s worst nightmare. A lawyer’s biggest challenge. A young boy’s life on the line.

The unimaginable has happened. A thirteen-year-old boy has fired a rifle into a baseball game, killing several of the kids on the field. Parents are devastated. The townspeople are horrified.

When public opinion swells to an enraged cry for justice, an ambitious deputy district attorney sees his opportunity—a sensational trial that will catapult him into the D.A.’s office in the upcoming election. There’s just one obstacle: the boy’s defense attorney, Lindy Field.

To all appearances, the case is a slam-dunk. Convict the killer, make him pay. But it’s not that simple. Lindy’s young client is unwilling—or unable—to help Lindy defend him. And as the case progresses, it becomes clear that someone doesn’t want the truth revealed.

As Lindy delves into the haunted world of her client’s torment, she finds a spiritual darkness that dredges up her own troubled past. And when dangerous forces close in around her, Lindy must fight for answers not only in the justice system, but in the very depths of her soul.

Want to have this blog sent wirelessly to your Kindle vs. reading it on your computer?  Click here for the Amazon page for Free Kindle Books Plus a Few Other Tips.

Filed Under: Free Book Links, Free From Amazon Store

The Starfish Manifesto

January 31, 2010 by Michael Gallagher

The Starfish Manifesto by Wolfgang Simson is a penny today in the Amazon Kindle store, and has received a perfect rating of 5 out of 5 stars based on 2 customer reviews.  It is currently #12,240 on the Kindle bestseller list, and you can pick up your free copy by clicking here.

Want to have this blog sent wirelessly to your Kindle vs. reading it on your computer?  Click here for the Amazon page for Free Kindle Books Plus a Few Other Tips.

Filed Under: Free Book Links, Free From Amazon Store

The Monkey King Today at Amazon

January 30, 2010 by Michael Gallagher

Continuing my philosophy anything for a penny is free ( you just can’t buy anything for a penny these days), let me introduce you to a children’s book for the Kindle, The Monkey King: A Superhero Tale of China, Retold from The Journey to the West by Aaron Shepard.  It has received a perfect rating of 5 out of 5 stars based on two customer reviews.  You can pick up your copy by clicking here.

Here is the book’s description from the Amazon website:

If you think Superman or Spiderman has been around a long time, think about Monkey. He has been China’s favorite superhero for at least five centuries. He’s amazingly strong, he can fly, and he has a few tricks those other superheroes never heard of. And he’s always ready to do battle with demons, dragons — sometimes even the gods.

Monkey stars in The Journey to the West, an epic comic fantasy from the sixteenth century. The part retold here is about Monkey’s origin and early career — and the one time he didn’t come out on top.

Want to have this blog sent wirelessly to your Kindle vs. reading it on your computer?  Click here for the Amazon page for Free Kindle Books Plus a Few Other Tips.

Filed Under: Free Book Links, Free From Amazon Store

He Who Hesitates

January 30, 2010 by Michael Gallagher

Here’s a quick tip – if I or anyone else tells you about a book being offered for free on the Amazon Kindle website and you are interested, please jump on it immediately.  Don’t wait a few days, or you may see a book being offered for sale at a cost to you.

For example, several of the books I’ve told you about that were free were free for just a short time.  Maybe they hit their quota for freebies of some of these titles, or maybe the promotion expired on a date certain – I don’t know off the top of my head.  Bottom line here is don’t wait – once the book is yours, no matter if you paid nothing or $9.99 for a book, it is yours!

Want to have this blog sent wirelessly to your Kindle vs. reading it on your computer?  Click here for the Amazon page for Free Kindle Books Plus a Few Other Tips.

Filed Under: Kindle Tips, Misc. and Random Stuff

Things Are Free for Only a Short Period of Time

January 29, 2010 by Michael Gallagher

Wow, talk about yanking someone’s chain!  This morning in two different posts, I told you about four books that were going to be released on February 1st that were going to be free and you could pre-order those now to be received and automatically downloaded on Monday.

Those titles are no longer free.  I’ll give you the links below again so you can check it out at a later date: who knows, maybe they will be offered for free again?  I don’t know why they changed it to full pricing, and can only speculate – maybe they already filled the quota of how many they were going to give away, maybe it was offered for free as a mistake, who knows what the real answer is?

I actually signed up for three of the four to be delivered to me (no, continuing my earlier stand I did not signup for the romance title), and I was concerned I was now going to be charged for these titles; I am happy to report they are still showing up as free under my “open orders” of the Manage Your Kindle section of the Amazon website.

If you signed up for them to be sent to you when it was still free, you can check to make sure you haven’t signed up for something you thought was free that somehow is not.  Here is how you do it:

  1. Go to the “Manage Your Kindle” section of the Amazon website.
  2. Scroll down a little bit, and look for the section called “Open Orders.”  You’ll find this under the “Your Active Kindle subscriptions” section and immediately above the “Your Orders” section of this web page.

Assuming you’ve made it this far, and you pre-ordered any of those four books, you will see them listed here.  Check under the :price column.”  If it is still showing $0.000 you should be good to go; if you see an actual dollar value there, and want to cancel the order, click on the “View Details” link corresponding to that line-item.

I believe the price charged to me will be zero, as that is what it says; I also have a pre-order for a book to be released in April, and that is showing a price.

If you are subsequently charged, you can call Amazon customer service at 1-866-321-8851 in the USA, or outside the USA you can call 1-206-266-0927.

Filed Under: Free Book Links, Free From Amazon Store

Another Book for Free on February 1st So Pre Order it Now

January 29, 2010 by Michael Gallagher

Wow, Amazon is getting ready for several pre-releases on February 1st for books.  In addition to the ones I told you about earlier this morning, get ready for Dave Metz’s book, Crossing the Gates of Alaska.  You can pre-order it now, and it will be automatically delivered to you for free when you turn your Kindle’s wireless on the morning of February 1st or leave it on all night and be surprised when you see it the next morning ;}

I’ll send out another message on the 1st, but if you would like to pre-order it now, just click here.

Want to have this blog sent wirelessly to your Kindle vs. reading it on your computer?  Click here for the Amazon page for Free Kindle Books Plus a Few Other Tips.

Filed Under: Free Book Links, Free From Amazon Store

Three Books Available for Free to be Released on February 1st

January 29, 2010 by Michael Gallagher

Amazon has three books available for pre-order at a great price (hint: free) that will be released on February 1st.  You can click on the pre-order button for each book and, around midnight on February 1st, they will be automatically downloaded to your Kindle. Of course, if you don’t have your Kindle’s wireless feature on they won’t download, but they will once you turn that feature on….;}

I’m going to give you the book’s title and author now, along with the link to go to it’s appropriate Amazon page to pre-order.  I will also send you out a reminder on February 1st , which is just around the corner.

Click here for H.P. Jeffers’ book, Dark Mysteries of the Vatican.

Click here for Mary Wine’s book, In the Warrior’s Bed which you romance-genre readers will be sure to love.

Click here for Andrea Peyser’s book, Celebutards.

Want to have this blog sent wirelessly to your Kindle vs. reading it on your computer?  Click here for the Amazon page for Free Kindle Books Plus a Few Other Tips.

Filed Under: Free Book Links, Free From Amazon Store

The Black Chamber Free Today

January 28, 2010 by Michael Gallagher

David Chacko has lots of books available in print and Kindle format on the Amazon website, but has a brand new book being offered for free on the Smashwords site called The Black Chamber.  You can pick up your free copy by clicking here.  Be sure to choose the Kindle format!

Here is the book description:

THE BLACK CHAMBER introduces Stephen Warfield, the man who unravels puzzles at America’s most secret intelligence organization–NSA. On this mission Warfield conducts his greatest manhunt in search of his former lover, who stands at the center of the most damaging scandal in US history. Follow Warfield–code-name Mariner–from the highest levels of Washington into the long shadow of a drug cartel.

Want to have this blog sent wirelessly to your Kindle vs. reading it on your computer?  Click here for the Amazon page for Free Kindle Books Plus a Few Other Tips.

Filed Under: Free Book Links, Free From Other Sites

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