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Friday, December 4, 2009
Free Short Fiction From April Hamilton
If you enjoyed our recent Free Kindle Nation Short by April Hamilton, you'll probably want to check out her short-short #FridayFlash series on her blog. The #FridayFlash fiction concept is a hot one at Twitter.
This week's entry, The Trunk, reveals that Ms. Hamilton is no slouch when it comes to the fictive tease.
You may also be pleased to know that each of her novels, Snow Ball and Adelaide Einstein, has recently been discounted to 99 cents in the Kindle Store!
This week's entry, The Trunk, reveals that Ms. Hamilton is no slouch when it comes to the fictive tease.
You may also be pleased to know that each of her novels, Snow Ball and Adelaide Einstein, has recently been discounted to 99 cents in the Kindle Store!
Kindling, the Kindle, and Kindle Groups
The Kindle, not quite suddenly but almost, is everywhere. Every day my pal Betty emails me when she has arrived at her office in the Back Bay to tell me how many Kindles she has spotted on the T during her commute. One day earlier this week she was flanked by 20-somethings bearing Kindles. They're everywhere, I tell you! I know, we're in the Cambridge-Boston area here, not Peoria, but I'm just saying.
So, it struck me as interesting that Arc90, an innovative technology company based in New York, would choose the name Kindling for a new app that it has developed to help organizations percolate new ideas, bubble them up, and foster collaboration to bring them to execution:
First thought: what's this got to do with the Kindle?
Second thought: of course it doesn't need to have anything to do with the Kindle. The word "kindle" and its gerundive and various other forms have been in common usage for centuries, and are not the sole possession of any company. But Arc90 already has a terrific tool called Readability that is bound to appeal to many Kindle owners, so it is not like the company is operating in some zone that is distant from the Kindlesphere.
Third thought: it brought me back to an idea called Kindle Groups that I touted about a year and a half ago in my original Kindle guide, The Complete User's Guide To The Amazing Amazon Kindle (still available in paperback here):
H'mm. Maybe I will use my 30-day free trial on the Kindling app -- once it is up and running -- to percolate my Kindle Groups idea....
So, it struck me as interesting that Arc90, an innovative technology company based in New York, would choose the name Kindling for a new app that it has developed to help organizations percolate new ideas, bubble them up, and foster collaboration to bring them to execution:
Kindling - Web-based Idea Management from Arc90 on Vimeo.
First thought: what's this got to do with the Kindle?
Second thought: of course it doesn't need to have anything to do with the Kindle. The word "kindle" and its gerundive and various other forms have been in common usage for centuries, and are not the sole possession of any company. But Arc90 already has a terrific tool called Readability that is bound to appeal to many Kindle owners, so it is not like the company is operating in some zone that is distant from the Kindlesphere.
Third thought: it brought me back to an idea called Kindle Groups that I touted about a year and a half ago in my original Kindle guide, The Complete User's Guide To The Amazing Amazon Kindle (still available in paperback here):
Kindle Groups
As many Kindle owners have already discovered, the device can be as convenient for reading professional memoranda, manuscripts and other privately sent documents as it is for reading the content one buys in the Kindle Store or the free books that originate from Project Gutenberg, feedbooks.com, or numerous other sites that offer free content. With KindleGroups, Amazon would offer any Kindle owner the opportunity, possibly for an annual fee, to establish a KindleGroups Transmitter account (I'm using this word because it communicates well for now, rather than because I like it) with up to 5 KindleGroups consisting of the johndoe@kindle.com email addresses of up to, say, 1,000 Kindle owners each (although it might well be in Amazon's interest to expand that number gratis). KindleGroups Transmitters, who would be the only ones paying the annual fee, could then send Kindle-compatible documents to all the members of their populated KindleGroups simply by sending such documents to the umbrella address of a particular target KindleGroup. Each recipient account could be charged the going micro-charge rate of 10 cents per conversion, unless Amazon decided the charge was counterproductive for KindleGroup members.
Companies, organizations, universities and other information-intensive groups would take advantage of this functionality by promoting the purchase of, or even bulk buying, Kindles for their members.
KindleGroups would help Amazon achieve an enormous increase in its penetration of corporate and other group-based markets. Naturally these Kindles would then lead to increased sales of Kindle editions, increased user time on the Amazon PC site, increased sales of all other Amazon products, and logarithmic increases in the spread of the kind of digital culture to which Amazon's future revenue is intrinsically tied.
These are the basics, I think. Since I ordinarily come at these things from a bookselling perspective, I've been thinking for a while that the time should come soon when Amazon should arrange with Stephen King or J.D. Salinger to release his or her next book for the Kindle 60 days ahead of print, and then keeping doing this about once a month. Of course Amazon already knows that: nothing sells TVs like must-see TV.
But then last week I was thinking about a community organizing outfit with which I worked back in my youth, ACORN. They've got a thousand or so staffers spread around the country, paying for data transmission, Blackberries, laptops, whatever. They probably have a dozen or more must-read internal memoranda each week, so I got to thinking about Kindlizing their staff communications, which in turn got me thinking that every other info-intensive corporation or association or agency in the country could profit from Kindle-connectedness.
I'm kind of jazzed about this idea. I'd love to hear what others think about it.
Customer Experience: People love staying connected with their Crackberries and iPhones, but these devices aren't primarily intended for reading and are not easy on the eyes once one moves beyond a two-sentence email or text message. The Kindle is ideal for reading longer memoranda, reports, and manuscripts, and once you (or your employer) springs for a Kindle you'll never have to read such documents on a tiny backlit screen again. Leave your laptop home, and your Kindle and smartphone will get you through most or all of what you'll need to do on most road trips. If you are a "transmitter," what's not to like about knowing that you can connect wirelessly with entire groups of staff, colleagues, or other group members, and share documents of any length, just by sending them to a single KindleGroups address. Even if Amazon imposed an annual cost of, say, $99 for transmitter accounts, remember that the Kindle's wireless connectivity is free and you'll see how nicely it compares with the steep monthly data costs for a Blackberry, iPhone, laptop, or other device.
Likelihood of Adoption (on a scale of 1 to 10): 7. I sent this idea to Jeff Bezos and his team a couple of months ago, but I didn't get any love. Maybe I am missing something -- there is a first time for everything -- but my take on this is that it would allow Amazon to start harvesting Kindle sales by the hundreds rather than individually. Of course there is absolutely no point in Amazon moving forward with the KindleGroups idea unless they also provide a "folders" or "Google labels" feature to make it easier to manage content on the Kindle Home and Content Manager screens.
Almost free today in the Kindle Store: Samantha Hunter's Sexy Story "Barely There"
If you enjoy reading steamy romantic stories on your Kindle (perhaps in the bathtub, like Jeff Bezos?), you've probably come across the fiction of Samantha Hunter. Samantha tweeted me the other day that she's made this 5-star story available for just 99 cents in the Kindle store, so on this day when there are no newly available free books in the Kindle Store I am happy to pass it on to the readers of Kindle Nation!
"An irresistibly sexy, and sweetly romantic story of second chances with a paranormal twist that left me wanting more." -FictionVixen.com
Editorial Reviews
When shy Emily Tucker almost dies and ends up in a coma, her out of body experience gets very physical -- with her sexy business partner and friend, Gavin Wright. Emily isn't sure what's happening as she keeps finding her incorporeal self popping up in Gavin's apartment, but she's running out of time. Her Living Will asks Gavin not to let her linger for long. All she knows for sure is that when she's touching Gavin, she takes physical form again, and this may be her last chance to let him know how she really feels about him. But what will happen when the night's over?"An irresistibly sexy, and sweetly romantic story of second chances with a paranormal twist that left me wanting more." -FictionVixen.com
Thursday, December 3, 2009
An Aside to Authors and Publishers: CreateSpace Expands Distribution Through Deal with Ingram
For many Kindle Nation citizens, this post will be an easy one to skip over. It's about what we around here call dead-tree books, and at first blush it may seem of primary interest to authors and independent publishers, because, at first blush, it is.
But the bottom line is that the playing field for publishing and bookselling just got a lot closer to being level, from the point of view of authors and independent publishers. And in the long run this could be a good thing for readers and independent bookstores as well.
Here's what has happened, with thanks to TeleRead's Paul Biba for the heads up.
CreateSpace.com, a print-on-demand publishing company wholly owned by Amazon, has made a deal with the nation's largest book distributor, Ingram Content Group, and Ingram's own print-on-demand subsidiary, which is called Lightning Source. As a result, CreateSpace authors and publishers are now able to distribute their titles to thousands of bookstores, libraries and online retailers. Here's a link to the CreateSpace press release.
For the past three years, CreateSpace has been far and away the best printing deal available for independent authors and publishers, except for one glaring omission. The CreateSpace platform allowed its clients print-on-demand production, with no up-front capital costs and no inventory or out-of-pocket fulfillment costs, at per-unit production costs that are competitive with short-run production costs for print runs ranging from 1,000 to 3,000 copies. For authors and publishers seeking to sell their books through Amazon or through their own websites and events, this amounted to a very sweet deal. CreateSpace has been my independent publishing company's production arm for the past three years, and the interior and exterior quality of their printed trade paperback books has been flawless.
But there was a huge disconnect between CreateSpace and the rest of the bookselling world beyond Amazon, because CreateSpace did not offer wholesale distribution to bookstores, online retailers, and libraries. And the alternatives, involving Ingram and its primary competitor Baker & Taylor, were often difficult to navigate and significantly more expensive.
Now all that has changed in a collaborative deal that is so dramatic that it makes both companies' spokespersons' rhetoric about their passionate commitment to books seem utterly believable.
There are three new CreateSpace Expanded Distribution Channels, in addition to the previously available choices of the Amazon bookstore, a CreateSpace eStore whose doorways are seldom darkened by paying customers, and a relatively cheap author-copies feature:
Authors and indie publishers who have books in print on the CreateSpace platform can initiate expanded distribution options for their titles immediately. Here's how:
That's it. Good luck.
Here's the full text of the CreateSpace press release, for your convenience:
But the bottom line is that the playing field for publishing and bookselling just got a lot closer to being level, from the point of view of authors and independent publishers. And in the long run this could be a good thing for readers and independent bookstores as well.
Here's what has happened, with thanks to TeleRead's Paul Biba for the heads up.
CreateSpace.com, a print-on-demand publishing company wholly owned by Amazon, has made a deal with the nation's largest book distributor, Ingram Content Group, and Ingram's own print-on-demand subsidiary, which is called Lightning Source. As a result, CreateSpace authors and publishers are now able to distribute their titles to thousands of bookstores, libraries and online retailers. Here's a link to the CreateSpace press release.
For the past three years, CreateSpace has been far and away the best printing deal available for independent authors and publishers, except for one glaring omission. The CreateSpace platform allowed its clients print-on-demand production, with no up-front capital costs and no inventory or out-of-pocket fulfillment costs, at per-unit production costs that are competitive with short-run production costs for print runs ranging from 1,000 to 3,000 copies. For authors and publishers seeking to sell their books through Amazon or through their own websites and events, this amounted to a very sweet deal. CreateSpace has been my independent publishing company's production arm for the past three years, and the interior and exterior quality of their printed trade paperback books has been flawless.
But there was a huge disconnect between CreateSpace and the rest of the bookselling world beyond Amazon, because CreateSpace did not offer wholesale distribution to bookstores, online retailers, and libraries. And the alternatives, involving Ingram and its primary competitor Baker & Taylor, were often difficult to navigate and significantly more expensive.
Now all that has changed in a collaborative deal that is so dramatic that it makes both companies' spokespersons' rhetoric about their passionate commitment to books seem utterly believable.
There are three new CreateSpace Expanded Distribution Channels, in addition to the previously available choices of the Amazon bookstore, a CreateSpace eStore whose doorways are seldom darkened by paying customers, and a relatively cheap author-copies feature:
The expanded distribution royalties payable by CreateSpace to authors and indie publishers -- about 20% in many cases depending mainly on retail price and page count -- will be less than royalties paid on Amazon store sales, but will in most cases be significantly more than the royalties that would be payable either through what we still call "traditional publishing" or through the kind of short-run digital publishing referenced above.CreateSpace Direct: By enabling this distribution outlet, you can make your books available to certified resellers such as independent bookstores and book resellers. The CreateSpace Direct program allows eligible resellers to buy books at wholesale prices directly from CreateSpace.
Libraries and Academic Institutions: By enabling this distribution outlet, you can make your book available to public libraries, elementary and secondary school libraries, and libraries at other academic institutions.
Bookstores and Online Retailers: By enabling this distribution outlet, you can make your book available to thousands of major online and offline bookstores and retailers, and expand the size of the potential audience for your books.
Authors and indie publishers who have books in print on the CreateSpace platform can initiate expanded distribution options for their titles immediately. Here's how:
- Go to your CreateSpace dashboard page.
- Select an "Available" title for which you would like initiate expanded distribution options and
click on the pencil/edit icon to its right. - Scroll down to the heading called Sales Channel Management and click on the "Edit" hyperlink to the right of the heading.
- Scroll down to the heading called Expanded Distribution Channel Sales and, at the bottom of the page, review the Distribution Royalty Calculation to ensure that you are prepared to accept the royalty offered to you for these channels. You can change your book's price, but the price will be fixed across all of CreateSpace's distribution channels.
- If you wish to go forward and enable Expanded Distribution, click on the "Enable" button next to each of the three sub-categories. You will be able to enable the Libraries and Academic Institutions button only if your book's ISBN was provided directly by CreateSpace.
- After you have clicked on these buttons and see "Enable" in green to the right of the sub-categories, click the "Save" button at the bottom of the page.
- You will be returned to the previous page, where you should scroll down to the Sales Channel Management heading and verify that you see a line that says "Sell via Expanded Distribution - Yes."
That's it. Good luck.
Here's the full text of the CreateSpace press release, for your convenience:
CreateSpace Announces Expanded Distribution Options for Members through Ingram Content Group and Lightning Source
CHARLESTON, S.C. – Dec. 03, 2009 – CreateSpace, part of the Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) group of companies, today announced a new agreement with Lightning Source Inc., the print on-demand unit of Ingram Content Group Inc. The collaboration between the two companies will expand CreateSpace's distribution options for its members beyond Amazon.com and CreateSpace eStores.
Under the new agreement, CreateSpace's Books on-Demand platform will allow members to print and then distribute their titles to thousands of bookstores, libraries and online retailers. CreateSpace members will have access to this enhanced print and distribution option as part of the CreateSpace Pro Plan, a program which gives members access to lower print pricing for their own book orders and better royalties for sales on Amazon.com.
"With this expansion, CreateSpace members will not only be able to reach Amazon.com customers, but they can also reach the thousands of bookstores, libraries and online retailers that work with the Ingram Content Group, " said Dana LoPiccolo-Giles, managing director, CreateSpace. "With Lightning Source and Ingram, our members can make their titles available to the larger book marketplace while remaining inventory-free with print on-demand."
"At Ingram, we are passionate about books and the book industry," said Philip Ollila, chief content officer, Ingram Content Group. "Our new relationship with CreateSpace is a continuation of Ingram's long-term strategy to offer the broadest selection of books to our customers worldwide."
For more information about CreateSpace, please visit www.createspace.com.
About CreateSpace
CreateSpace is a leader in manufacture on-demand services for independent content creators, publishers, film studios and music labels. CreateSpace provides inventory-free, physical distribution of Books, CDs and DVDs On-Demand, music downloads via Amazon MP3 and video downloads via Amazon Video On Demand. CreateSpace is a brand of On-Demand Publishing LLC, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN).About Lightning Source
Lightning Source is the leading print-on-demand company in the world, offering the unique combination of quality one-off book manufacturing and access to the most comprehensive distribution solutions in the publishing industry. Lightning Source is an Ingram Content Group company. The Ingram Content Group of companies provide a broad range of physical and digital services to the book industry, and immediate access to the largest selection of books and book-related products in the industry. For more information visit www.lightningsource.comAbout Ingram
Ingram Content Group Inc. provides a broad range of physical and digital services to the book industry. Ingram's operating units are Ingram Book Company, Lightning Source Inc., Ingram Digital, Ingram Periodicals Inc., Ingram International Inc., Ingram Library Services Inc., Spring Arbor Distributors Inc., Ingram Publisher Services Inc., Tennessee Book Company LLC, Coutts Information Services, and Ingram Marketing Group Inc. For more information, visit www.ingramcontent.comAbout Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth's Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth's most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as books, movies, music & games, digital downloads, electronics & computers, home & garden, toys, kids & baby, grocery, apparel, shoes & jewelry, health & beauty, sports & outdoors, and tools, auto & industrial.Amazon Web Services provides Amazon's developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon's own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. Examples of the services offered by Amazon Web Services are Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS), Amazon Mechanical Turk and Amazon CloudFront.
Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca and www.amazon.cn.
As used herein, "Amazon.com," "we," "our" and similar terms include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise.
Forward-Looking Statements
This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly from management's expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to competition, management of growth, new products, services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment center optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system interruption, inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com's financial results is included in Amazon.com's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.
MEDIA CONTACTS:
For CreateSpace
Amanda Wilson
amandasu@createspace.comFor Amazon.com
Amazon Media Hotline
206-266-7180
Bathing with the Kindle, and Another Good Day in the Life of Jeff Bezos
In an earlier post this morning, on the continuing problems facing the world's leading Not-a-Kindle-Killer, I commented that it is seldom not a good day to be Jeff Bezos. Jeff's Amazon shares were trading before the bell at $144.11 then after closing yesterday at $142.25. They were around $90 when Amazon launched the Kindle International in October, and have more than tripled this year. As I type they are a little above $145.For Mr. Bezos, that means that his 94,158,586 (as of August) shares of Amazon stock are worth $13.65 billion, up from $7.4 billion the weekend before Amazon launched the Kindle a little over two years ago.
But who's counting? It's all just paper. Or e-paper.
Speaking of paper, the nation's leading newspaper has an interview with Bezos running in this Sunday's magazine. If you subscribe to the Kindle edition of the New York Times, you can read it Sunday morning. If you subscribe to the Kindle edition of Kindle Nation Daily, you can read it right now, right here.
It's snappy reading, which is often the case with Jeff. Along with his no-apologies rejoinder to interviewer Deborah Solomon's question about author royalties for Kindle content, my favorite piece of the Q&A involved this highly confessional -- but without accompanying art -- how-to presentation on bathtub Kindle reading:
Q. What do you say to Kindle users who like to read in the bathtub?From one how-to guy to another, Jeff, kudos to you!
A. I’ll tell you what I do. I take a one-gallon Ziploc bag, and I put my Kindle in my one-gallon Ziploc bag, and it works beautifully. It’s much better than a physical book, because obviously if you put your physical book in a Ziploc bag you can’t turn the pages. But with Kindle, you can just push the buttons.
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