eBookGuru.org

I monitor a variety of RSS feeds and I am always on the lookout for news on eBooks and eReaders. This week there seems to be an embarrassment of riches in terms of the number of articles available.

Here is just a sampling of a few of them:

PCMag.com reviews the new Barnes & Noble eReader software for PC, Mac and iPhone and overall rates it 3½ out of 5. It also takes a shot at Amazon and the Kindle, stating that B&N allows you to read titles on devices you already own. It also compares Amazon’s Kindle library (300,000 titles) to B&N’s eBook library (700,000 titles). Overall the B&N appears to be an attractive eBook store alternative to Amazon, and the addition of an eReader from Plastic Logic that promises to start shipping in early 2010 will only make the comparison even easier.

Adding insult to injury to the beleaguered Kindle is a damning article in the New Yorker. The article has some harsh criticism for the device and Amazon’s proprietary format, although to be fair some of the criticism is specific to eInk devices, notably the lack of color and back-lighting. Overall the author does seem positive about eBooks but seems to prefer the Sony eReader for eInk and the Apple iPhone / iPod Touch where color, illustrations, and back-lighting are important.

Another interesting article appeared in IT Canada regarding the EPUB format, which was developed by the Toronto based International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). It states that the EPUB format

is quickly becoming an e-book industry standard as support from publishers and tech giants such as Adobe Systems Inc., Sony Corp. and Google Inc. continues to grow.

In sharp contrast to Amazons proprietary DRM restricted AZW format, EPUB is an open, non-proprietary, XML based format, in which DRM is optional.

The industry has gone into two camps: Amazon and everyone else … You have Amazon and they’ve got their proprietary, closed standard, DRM, one-source-for-everything (approach) and you’ve got the rest of the world trying to agree on an open standard for which you can have multiple book stores.

There is also the news that Samsung has launched their eBook reader, although it is only available in South Korea for the moment. The device is smaller than a Kindle and will offer some neat features like hand-writing recognition.

Finally there is the possibility of Apple competing against Amazon with the rumored introduction of a Tablet PC. The combination of a Tablet PC and the iTunes store could

blow Amazon and other e-book makers out of the water…

The success of iTunes for music and iPhone applications indicates that there is market potential for eBooks by making eBooks just as easy to download. It goes further to speculate about à-la-carte ordering books, something that already possible through the Shortcovers program from Canada’s very own Indigo Books.

The one thing that none of these articles dispute is that there is a future for eBooks. What this future looks like, how we will be reading eBooks, and what format the eBooks will be available in, are all very good questions. Personally having seen what DRM has done to the music industry, not to mention how Amazon bungled it’s recent recall of illegally published Kindle books, I’m hoping for the success of an open format like EPUB and as many readers as possible.

Amazon sparked an outcry in the blogosphere late last week when it deleted two books from people’s Kindles. Ironically the eBooks in question were George Orwell’s “1984″ and “Animal Farm”, prompting headlines like

Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others

Amazon recalled the ebooks because the publisher lacked the rights. As an author, I can appreciate the steps that Amazon took to remedy the problem even if I don’t agree with their methods. No doubt about it, Amazon made a mistake, not in what they did, but in how they went about it. Working for a public relations firm, I’ve gained new appreciation for the value of proper communications, something that Amazon would do well to heed. It also raises disturbing issues regarding ownership and censorship. If Amazon can delete the books in question, there is nothing to say that they can’t replace existing books with ‘edited’ versions. Sounds very ‘Big Brother’ to me.

However, this points to a problem inherent in self-publishing. Where are the checks and balances? Amazon states that the eBooks

… were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books…

How does something like that happen in the first place, especially given the titles in question? Surely this should have raised some red flags for someone somewhere? If this had been a traditional publisher, there would have been more steps involved before it was published but even that is no guarantee.

When I was accepted for publication, I provided the publisher with the copyright certificate for my novel but it wasn’t a requirement. The main difference is that there is a relationship inherent in this arrangement so my certifying in the contract that I own the work free and clear is probably sufficient. This relationship doesn’t exist in the self-publishing world. Also the process of editing makes it difficult to obtain a copyright before the contract has been signed. This doesn’t hold true for self-publishing.

The rise of eBooks and blogs has made it easier than ever for people to make their voice heard. It has also made it easier than ever for other people to steal someone else’s work. Perhaps it’s time for companies in the business of self-publishing to reevaluate the requirement for copyright.

A Kindle in Every Backpack. This is the title of a proposal by the Democratic Leadership Council that argues that the government should provide students with Kindles. The proposal argues that this could improve education quality and save money.

It’s an intriguing concept but according the proposal traditional textbooks cost $109 per student, rising to $115 per student in 2016. Currently the Kindle 2 costs significantly more than that for the hardware alone, not to mention the cost of the content. The Kindle DX, which is better suited for use as a textbook replacement, costs almost $200 more than the Kindle 2. Admittedly if a Kindle was provided to every student this would result in lower costs but it’s hard to see the economic benefits.

The proposal states that the costs of eTextbook materials would be about $200 initially and then drop to $80 by 2012. Looking at the proposal here and now however, the comparison is an outlay of $499 ($299 for the Kindle, $200 for the eTextbooks) vs. an existing cost of $109 for a difference of $390. It gets even worse if you propose using the Kindle DX, rising to a difference of $580. That’s anywhere from 3½ to over 5 times more costly per student. Or to put it another way for the same cost as equipping a student with a Kindle, you could equip another 3 – 5 students with traditional textbooks.

Don’t get me wrong, I think this is a great idea. I just think that it’s perhaps a little ahead of its time. eBooks are still a nascent market and we really don’t know where the market is going to end up.

Reports of cracked or frozen Kindle screens don’t inspire a lot of confidence in the proposal either. Even investing in the cover for the Kindle doesn’t seem to help, as a recent class action lawsuit against Amazon (see Update below) attests. Given the high cost of ownership, most Kindle owners are very protective of the devices yet they are still having problems. Somehow I can’t see a group of school students, for whom the device would be essentially free, being more careful.

Flexible screens like the Readius could be the answer to this problem but the recent bankruptcy of Polymer Vision, the company behind the Readius, means that it will probably be a long wait before this technology becomes mainstream.

Given that plans are already underway to make the Kindle DX available to University students, it would seem prudent to wait for the results of this pilot program. The pilot program will

…evaluate the impact of the device on the learning experience, determine if faculty delivered the information in new ways, and determine if students approach their reading and assignments differently.

As much as I would love to see kids with Kindles, I think there are too many unknowns. Advances in technology and lower production costs could change the landscape for eBook readers dramatically as more people start to use them. After all, look how long cell phones have been around and how much they’ve changed today as they morph into smartphones. Perhaps the eTextbook reader of the future will be a touch Netbook. To me this makes more sense for students, who would likely use the device for more than just reading. Given that Netbooks are comparable in terms of cost to a a Kindle DX, it’s hard to argue for a single function device, as good as it is.

Still, the very fact that this was proposed is a good indication of the strength of the eBook market. Regardless of how we end up reading eBooks in the future, it seems pretty clear that eBooks and eTextbooks are the future of reading.

UPDATE: Amazon has just announced that they will replace cracked Kindle 2 readers for free.

Most of the authors reading this blog have their book published in ebook format prior to getting into print and don’t even consider getting out there into the real world to promo. It is very important to get some face time with your readers and/or potential readers. So you need to get up, get out and talk, talk, talk.

You must get out there face to face and hand to hand to meet people. It is the real life person that is going to buy your book. Just like you aren’t the boogie man behind the computer that wrote that book, they are not the nameless face behind the credit card that brings you your royalty checks. I’m not sure about you, but I would be more likely to buy a book from someone I have met than from someone I have not.

Imagine this….You are a writer from Georgia, your book isn’t due out for several months, but there is a book fair or conference coming up in about 83 days. All you have to do is email a chairperson on some committee and you can have fifteen minutes of fame. Fifteen whole minutes to read a piece from your book. Guess what? Hundreds of people, who are now fans, have just heard your book and want more. Do you have business cards? Maybe some post cards with information about your old books on them? You web address? Anything? Come on, now’s the time!

Stop by your local library, let them know that you are a local writer and you would be interested in donating a copy of your book to their local authors collection. And while you’re there, would they mind if you did a book signing in the near future? You can do the same thing with local book stores. They enjoy having local authors in and showing that even people from your home town can make it. Now let’s say that your book has a scene in it that is set in a hair salon, would your local salon be interested in holding a book signing for you? Use the resources that are at hand. You never know what possible networking contacts you may come up with while you are at one of these face to face events. Until you are out there and are ready to catch the bug (possibly in the literal fashion, sniff sniff, can you pass me a tissue?) you may never know the extent to what you have passed by.

Local radio and TV stations love to do pieces on local artists. You could contact stations and see if they have a community section that would be interested in spotlighting a local writer. BUT BE PREPARED, most of these spots are taped EARLY in the morning. Trust me I have tried. And be prepared with every answer you could possibly think of to answer, because they will ask one that you are not prepared for. If possible, ask them for a list of questions ahead of time to prepare yourself mentally for the interview. The interview I did was over the phone and I was a wreck. I stuttered and stammered and couldn’t get the answer right to save my life, but it was a very early segment and I am sure only several thousand people heard me anyway. Nothing like listening to a blubbering idiot on your commute to work.

Remember the most important piece of information that I can possibly give you. The worse thing that someone can say to you is, “No.” You will not be out anything if they do, but you will have gained more confidence by getting out there and exposed yourself to one more line of questioning. You will have one more no behind your back and are one more no closer to a yes. When you receive your nos they may actually be accompanied by a “but”….and a compromise. So don’t give up, and keep plugging. Your writing deserves to be put out there and given just as much work that you put into the writing! Now Remember, Tomorrow Never Comes! So come back next week and see what you can do about it.

PS…..have to leave you with a few that my friend Kissa told me about as she was reading this for me before posting. When she is traveling, she leaves business cards with her tips. She leaves them in book stores on the shelves. (I think I personally would put them at the register, but that’s just me!) When she sends promo items to her readers she sends extras and asks them to pass them along to their friends. Thanks so much Kissa for sending those ideas along to share with my great readers!

But it isn’t everything. Often usability trumps price. Most Linux based operating systems are free but witness the paucity of Linux desktops compared to Windows and Mac Systems. As of May 2009 Windows commands 88% of the market share for operating systems.

The same applies to eBook readers. The Cool-er eBook reader from Coolreader was the brainchild of Niel Jones who created the Cool-er when he tried to buy an out-of-stock Sony eReader. He immediately saw the market potential of eBooks and decided to capitalize on it.

While I applaud the effort to bring down the price of eBook readers, it only works if you are getting value for your money. While the $249 price of the Cool-er is less than the $299 price of the Kindle, the value isn’t quite as alluring as it was less than a week ago when the Kindle was $359. When you factor in the cost of books that you can use on the Cool-er and other intangibles such as user experience, the Cool-er isn’t really that much of a bargain. In fact Wired magazine states in a product review of the Cool-er that

The up front fee for the Kindle or Sony Reader is greater yes, but they more than make up for it in robust content, extra features, and superior hardware.

One thing is for certain – we are getting closer to the sub $200 price point that I referred to in an earlier post where sales of eReaders will start to really take off. In fact I expect that this will likely occur earlier than the mid 2010 to 2011 timeframe predicted by Forrester Research. In less than a year and half, the price of the Kindle has dropped by 25% or $100 from it’s original starting price of $399. While I would be pleasantly surprised to see an eBook reader reach this price point before the end of 2009, I really don’t see it happening. If it does, then I would certainly caution potential purchasers to heed that ancient Latin saying caveat emptor or buyer beware.

#7 Gathering All Your Friends Around

OK, you’ve finally got some people following you around. (Relax it’s just me and about 1000 of your closest fans!) It may be that manly body spray or the pheromones that you put on this morning, but whatever; it’s working for you. We’re here and we want to know where you are going to be. You need to make sure that you are SPECIFIC when you tell us where you are hanging out.

* Instead of, “Hey, I’m going to be over at AJ’s blog tomorrow, why don’t you stop on by!” Consider the following. “Hey guys, I’m going to be over at AJ’s blog tomorrow (www.ajbestwrites.com) The blog post is going up sometime around 8am and I will be answering questions on and off throughout the day. So stop by and see me! I need all the support I can get!”

When you give all the pertinent information make sure to include everyone in there. There may be people who honestly don’t know who I am. (I know, I know, I can’t imagine it either, but seriously they don’t!) And there are people where you do your promo work who have never been by AJ Best’s website (shock of all shocks since I haven’t gotten it up yet!) and don’t know when the blog normally posts. So tell them these things. Maybe AJ is a night owl and likes to have her posts run at night, so your friends and followers may end up confused and lost in a time warp. (You may stop dancing now, we are not at a showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show! Attention here people, attention!)

* Signatures lines baby, signature (sig) lines! Now don’t get over zealous here. I have seen some sig lines that are actually longer than the email message that the author sent me. That is a little bit much. If your audience gets bored after two lines then you have just over two lines too many! So keep it to the point. Where do you REALLY want to have them come see you? Where do you spend the vast majority of your time working the crowds? Start with the most important thing first your website. They have to know where to find your important information. Then list things in order of importance from there — blogs, and then social networks. Now let’s say you have a MySpace page, and a Facebook, but spend 85% of your time at MySpace, well for goodness sake, put that one in your sig tag and leave out Facebook. No need to clutter it with everything else. And if you have 12 lines of text about all of your books that you have out, do you really think that a flashing neon sign flashing the book covers, your name AND your website will get them to pay more attention to you? All things in moderation.

* OK, so you have the readers hooked on you, and they are on your website. They are searching frantically for your contact information so they can tell you just how wonderful you really are. Hold on, they can’t find it? It’s not there? WHAT!? Make sure that if you want readers to contact you, that you are available. Even something as simple as a contact form enables them to get in contact with you without giving out your email address if you are afraid of getting too many emails or getting spammed. Remember, you can’t gather your friends around if they don’t know where to find you!

* Twitter (www.twitter.com) is a great way to get in touch with people quickly to let them know what is going on in your life. You have 140 characters to get in there, and leave a message letting them know where you are. You can shrink the URL down by using a number of different methods (http://bit.ly/) which is a website you can go to that will enable you to shorten the URL, but I happen to have a favorite way to shorten mine. It’s called Glue (www.getglue.com). Not only does it shrink URLs so you can get them on Twitter (and with bit.ly also) easily, it connects you to friends and the things that they are looking at. I can go on and on about that, but this is an article about gathering all of your friends around you. (Hold on, isn’t that what Glue does?)

* Calendars! They are the easiest way in the world to keep in touch with your readers. I have created calendars for friends and they have added them to their page so their readers can keep up with where they are blogging, chatting, and guesting. It’s very easy to do with Google (www.google.com/calendar) and you are able to give access to all of your friends, family and relatives. It’s a great way to keep everyone up to date on what’s going on in your life.

So you need to make sure that people can see where you are, when you are, and who you are hanging out with. Make sure to keep the lines of communications open, because we all want to be around you, — Don’t You Know That You Are A Shooting Star? Don’t believe me? Just ask Bad Company. Catch you next week when I have to tell you to Be Prepared to Catch the Bug!

My all time favorite thing to do it go to my Ning groups.

• http://bookblogs.ning.com/
• http://romancereadersandwriters.ning.com/

It was here that I was able to find like-minded people. You know, those wonderful people that eat, sleep, and breathe romance books. I go into the groups and find a book blog, see if they have a contact link. If they do I might say, “Hi, My name is AJ Best and I was wondering if you do author interviews or guest blogs on your site? Because like Toby Keith says I Wanna Talk About Me!” The worst they can say to me is no. (Hopefully it’s not because they don’t like that song.) If they do, then I go to another blog and start the process over.

What will hopefully happen is a buzz will start. “Oh, some chick named AJ Best or something like that will be blogging with us sometime next week.”

Then it will build to, “OMG, AJ’s coming on Friday, I can’t wait, and let’s go tell Val!” Now let’s all hope that this is a good thing. We are trying to not scare away the readers here.

• http://groups.yahoo.com/ There are thousands of yahoo groups out there and they are varied in subject as well as in context. You can find local area writing groups, romance writing groups, sci-fi writing groups, … OK, so you get the point. And with most of these groups they have rules as to when you are permitted to promote your work. Make sure to read the rules and if they are not crystal clear and are only clear as mud, sit back and watch. See what the local yokels are up to and go with the flow. This will make sure that you aren’t stepping on any toes. There are many readers attached to these groups, so get in there and start promoting yourself and your work! If your publisher has faith in you, you should too.

• Going back to step #10 (Get Your Name Out) get your own blog, and blog consistently. You don’t have to always talk about writing and your books; you can talk about your real life. Believe it or not readers sometimes put writers up on a pedestal. They see you as “writers” and not real people. (Yeah, yeah, I hear ya!) So get on your blogs and show them your real side. (Hold on guys, maybe you don’t want to get that real!)

• Nine chances out of ten your publisher (if you’re published already) will have a blog of their own. Take advantage of the free publicity man, it doesn’t come around every day. Your publisher and their teamwork hard to get your name out there! Make sure to help them along in any way that you can. But remember, they are working with more than one author, so give them everything you possibly can. A wise man once told me (and seems he was told from Huey Lewis or Springsteen), “It’s better to have and not need, than to need and not have.” So give them a blog with cover art even though they created it, it saves them the trip. Give them your website, I know they have it on file, but that makes it one less thing for them to look up!

• Review sites are another GREAT source of free publicity. Most review sites that I am aware of will give a courtesy email to the author to say, “Hey, our site reviewed your book! Come check it out!” What they really want you to do is make a comment! Say thanks. Common courtesy goes a long way in the real world folks. And while you are thinking about the review site, hit the reply button and say, “Hi! Thanks so much for the review. I appreciate the time your reviewer took to review my book. I was wondering if your site did author interviews or guest blog posts. I am available any day that you may have available except for Sundays. Thanks in advance. AJ.” What’s the worst that they can say? NO? Guess what, you are only out a little bit of time if they say no and it’s well worth the effort to make that contact.

So get your tail out there and talk about yourself. Get out and let the world know who you are and what is going on in your life. Let them know the real you and the writer side of life as well. Get them hooked on you and your writing so when the next book comes out, they won’t be able to live without it. Stop back by next week where we will be talking about Gathering All Your Friends Around.