Thursday, December 30, 2010

Affiliate Making Money

Hi, I’m Tris and I write books.

And I’m pretty excited about the coming age of ebooks and the potential of Google Editions. According to the WSJ, Google Editions could be coming to the U.S. soon and other countries soon after. TNW is right on top of the news about this, but I wanted to take the author’s privilege and wax poetic about what this might mean for writers and authors.

First, you need to know that I don’t write fiction, I write for Pearson Technology Group (Que, Sam’s, and many others). I write books on blogging, WordPress, and social media. My publisher is betting big on ebooks and how ebooks will make the books I write more interactive, in depth, and up to date than ever before. I gather from another WSJ article on ebooks that fiction writers are none-to-pleased with ebooks and how they are making less money since the dawn of “e”. Myself, well, let’s say Pearson is more forward thinking about how ebooks and authors and publishers are good for each other. In the world of tech writing, being able to be lighter and faster is much, much better than waiting.

Case in point, my latest book Using WordPress. There are three entire chapters (not to mention additional audio and video commentary) that we were able to keep electronically, though they couldn’t make it into the paper book. If it wasn’t for the electronic versions, you wouldn’t have that. Unfortunately, my publisher isn’t perfect. If you buy the book electronically, you still have to go to the publishers site to get the additional chapters.

But I digress.

Google Editions.

Several things excite me about Google getting into publishing. First is that they aren’t going to be tied to a physical ereader. They are starting off from the perspective of distributing content. Which is how it should be. But that independence might come at a price: adoption. I have an iPad, as you know, and I buy and read most of my books through Toronto-based Kobo. I’ve liked the Kobo reader from the start, it had a better reading experience from the get go (not to mention pulling the DRM from the books I bought so I could load them into iBooks wasn’t fun). However Kobo is affiliated with a couple of existing bookstores (up here it’s Chapters-Indigo), will I be able to read Google ebooks that I buy with the Kobo reader that has the rest of my books? Will I be able to read them in iBooks? Big question there about whether or not Google Editions will take off. I might be able to add another reader to my iPad, but Kindle, Nook, and Kobo Reader owners can’t.

According to reports, I sounds like I’ll be able to offer affiliate links for readers to buy my (and other) books through Google Editions, just like Amazon. This could be something that will help Google gain traction early on. We know that Adsense is a pretty successful venture for Google. We know it works and can be pretty good for earning money on a site. I don’t see any reason why Google Editions will be any different.

So, we have a potentially more independent book seller, not tied to a physical reader, who will also let me earn money by recommending books. I’m good with this so far.

But will Google Editions help independent publishers and authors? Will it help niche writers expand their audiences? I’m going to work off a couple ideas here to say: yes on both. First, if a publisher wants to push more electronic books, the production costs are certainly less with digital editions than “dead-tree” versions. So being able to take more risks on authors who they might otherwise pass on, is a win for us scriveners. On the distribution front, until now, Amazon ruled the roost for self-published ebooks. While details aren’t available right now, I would suspect that Google would love to poke Amazon with a sharp stick and offer ebook publishing services as well. That gives publishers and authors another outlet, that means competition. That sounds good to me.

Here is the bottom line. I’ve always seen ebooks as a boon for authors and publishers who can adapt to them. I’m not saying paper books are going anywhere (though for me they keep going in drawers), I’m saying that ebooks allow authors to offer books to a large audience while keeping costs low with lower print runs. If the ebook sells better than the paper one, well don’t print as many of the paper ones.

Yes, not everyone will be able to take advantage of this and Google Editions might wind up like Google Wave and Buzz, but I think that in the last few months we’ve seen more interest in epublishing not less and I think this interest is going to turn into success for Google.

If they don’t blow it.

But hey, what do I know. I’m just Tris, and I just write books.

A milestone reached by mobile music discovery service Shazam: the company says it has come good on its promise and reached 100,000 users, picking up 25 million in the last six months alone.

The figures do not break out how many of those are active users, as opposed to those who have dipped into the service once and never again.

See more of our latest Regulatory coverage
or add an alert for future coverage of Regulatory.

But there is evidence that it is making a good return on those who do manage to stay for longer: the original, core service of Shazam lets users enter a snippet of music into an app, or via a mobile website - the service is available via Android, BlackBerry, BREW, iPhone, iPad, J2ME, Symbian and Windows - which Shazam then uses to find the full track. In January Shazam said it was referring 260,000 users to affiliate sites like iTunes on a daily basis as a result of those searches.

Although Shazam has been around for a decade already, it is only in the last few years, with the takeoff in mobile data and smartphone usage, that the service has really come into its own.

This year, Shazam has been moving well beyond its music roots, using the “audio fingerprint” as a way of unlocking other kinds of content. Shazam has partnered with brands in marketing campaigns, and with television shows from the likes of NBC (NYSE: GE) and HBO, to let users “Shazam” clips from ad campaigns and programs to be led to further content: along the lines of an aural version of QR codes.

It has also been trying to further exploit its market footprint by also selling advertising real estate around its own apps: earlier this month it launched expanding ad services, selling the entirety of its inventory to Universal Music until the middle of January, 2011.

While Shazam announced it was profitable back in October 2009, it is still mulling what might be the next step. The company previously told paidContent that it would consider an IPO, more recently Will Mills, head of music and content for Shazam said the company wasn’t focussing on who would buy the company.

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Tuesday, December 28, 2010

personal finance books

When Ebooks Are More (and Less) Cost Effective Than Physical Books

While many may prefer eBooks for the convenience they offer (or prefer paper books for the sentimentality), finding out which is cheaper isn't so black-and-white. Personal finance blog Get Rich Slowly shows us how to save the most money when buying books.

Photo by Pen Waggener.

All other preferences aside, it looks like eBooks are cheapest then the books are extremely new or extremely old:

E-books are great for new releases. For new books, the electronic version is almost always the cheapest way to go. At a friend's house the other day, I noticed he'd paid $29 for the latest John Grisham book. $29!!! That's insane. That John Grisham book costs $16 at Amazon, and the Kindle version costs $10. In fact, most e-books cost between $10 and $12. When the cost savings is combined with the space savings, e-books are the clear winner for new releases.

E-books are okay for classics. Anything that's in the Public Domain (published before 1923) can generally be downloaded to your e-book reader for free. Sometimes the formatting is goofy, and there usually isn't any supplemental material (like essays and notes), but you do get the books at no cost. (Searching for free Kindle books? Here's Amazon's list of free eBook collections, and here's their best-sellers in the Kindle store, including free books on the right.) Of course, these books can usually be had for cheap (or free) in their dead tree versions, so there's not a huge savings here.

E-books suck for most titles published between 1923 and, say, 2008. Books from the past century are still priced between $5 and $10 in electronic editions. This is ridiculous. You can borrow these for free from your public library. Or you can go to a used bookstore, a garage sale, or a thrift store to pick them up for less than they cost in digital format. Plus, tons of popular books aren't evenvailable electronically. (A real-life, typical example: Cry, the Beloved Country costs $12 on the Kindle. A brand-new paperback copy from Amazon? $9. The mind boggles.)

It's a rather interesting pattern, though good to know if you don't particularly have a preference for one over the other. Of course, if you find eBooks are just too darn convenient and instantaneous (or you prefer to have the physical copy for sentimental, ease of lending, or other reasons), you can always stick to your preferred media and we won't yell at you.

Note that the above also doesn't take into account the cost of buying an e-reader, which only pays for itself if you read a lot of books, so unless you use it for other things anyway, you'll want to keep that in mind as well. Hit the link to read more, and if you've noticed a similar patter, share how you manage your book buying in the comments below.

Benjamin Weaver is an outsider in eighteenth-century London: A Jew among Christians; a ruffian among aristocrats; a retired pugilist who, hired by London's gentry, travels through the criminal underworld in pursuit of debtors and thieves.

In A Conspiracy of Paper, Weaver becomes entangled with a crime of the most personal sort, involving the mysterious death of his estranged father, a notorious stock-jobber. To find the answers he seeks, Weaver must contend with a garrulous prostitute who knows too much about his past, estranged relatives who remind him of his alienation from the Jewish faith, and a cabal of powerful men in the world of British finance who have disguised their business dealings with an intricate web of deception and violence.

The more Weaver discovers, the darker the truth becomes, until he realizes that he is following too closely in his father's footsteps-and they just might lead to his own grave. Relying on brains and brawn, Weaver uncovers the beginnings of a strange new economic order based on stock speculation - a way of life that poses great risks for investors, but real dangers for Weaver and his family.

An enthralling historical thriller, A Conspiracy of Paper will leave readers wondering just how much has changed in the stock market in the last three hundred years..."
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Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: Green News Report: December 28, 2010 ...

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): The reactor on your roof: Caltech breakthrough uses solar power to generate liquid fuel; Fmr. Shell president predicts $5-a-gallon gas by 2012; EPA develops neurotoxicants list; Obama admin takes ...

Making News and Entertainment More Social in 2011 - Facebook ...

In April, The Washington Post integrated Facebook Platform to create a social experience across the site with “Network News.” The Washington Post has seen more than 280% increase in referral traffic year-over-year, as news becomes ...

'Green River Killer' Could Face New Murder Charge - AOL News

Related Searches: top 10 serial killers, green river murders, gary ridgeway, rebecca marrero 1982, capital punishment, the green river killer, green river cc auburn wa, crime news, crime reports, ...

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

When Ebooks Are More (and Less) Cost Effective Than Physical Books

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

What happened when I changed my intent

Intend to enjoy and you might make money

Tuesday, December 7, 2010