Best Seller Authors — Book Marketing, Publishing, Author Resources

A Twist on Fan Fiction: Amazon Gives Readers a Say

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Amazon is once again shaking up traditional publishing models. This time, it’s giving fans a chance to add their own personal touches to their favorite fiction – and get paid in the process.

Things will kick off with Amazon licensing three teen TV series – “Gossip Girl”, “Pretty Little Liars” and “The Vampire Diaries” – from Warner Bros Television Group’s Alloy Entertainment, Amazon said on its website. More content deals will be announced in coming weeks.

Amazon has in the past decade emerged as the most disruptive force in publishing. It popularized digital books with its Kindle store and e-reader, contributing to the demise of traditional bookstores such as Borders.

In its effort to legitimize fan fiction, the company is establishing a model under which it acts as publisher and pays fan-writers between 20 and 35 percent of sales, depending on length.

“There’s probably not an author/fangirl alive who hasn’t fantasized about being able to write about her favorite show,” budding novelist Trish Milburn enthused on Amazon’s website. “The fact that you can earn royalties doing so makes it even better.”

(Reporting by Edwin Chan; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

See full story on reuters.com

Photo Credit: Reuters/Leonhard Foeger

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Author Protection from Lies and Scams – Advice from Dan Janal

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Our friend Dan Janal shared this transcript about author protection.

You can learn from reading this.

Dan Janal on Author Protection from Lies and Scams

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

I’ve written a book called “Internet Marketing Confidential” to help authors, speakers and coaches avoid the rip offs online. I’ve been in PR for 30 years and was a daily newspaper editor before that. I handled a lot of high-tech companies. I was on the PR team that launched AOL and was a sysop on CompuServe’s PR and Marketing forum before. So I’m dating myself! I wrote one of the first books about marketing on the Internet back in 1993! So I’ve been online a looong time!

Who can utilize and benefit from Internet marketing?

Really, every small business, as well as speakers, authors, coaches and consultants. We’ve all seen major success stories — look at the success of “Fifty Shades of Grey.” That would never have happened without online marketing and social media.

Why do you think having an Internet marketing strategy is important for authors?

Authors can reach new readers, develop a community with readers who love them, and build ands for characters and companies.

What are your recommendations for authors who don’t know how to start planning their Internet marketing strategy?

That’s a great question. There are lots of possible answers: 1) Authors should determine who their readers are. Then authors need to find out where they hang out — Facebook, blogs, Google+, etc. 2) Authors need to find out what their audiences read: newspapers, blogs, etc. 3) Authors also need to follow reporters who cover their topic by reading their blogs and comments on blogs. 4) Get known. Build relationships. 5) Authors can write press releases and get the word out to reporters as well as readers and people searching on Google. Press releases from authors can rank high on Google. I’ve had great success with PR Newswire. That’s not a plug. It’s fact. 6) Authors should fill out their profile on Amazon. 7) They can also have websites that offer free sample chapters.

How do readers find out what social media accounts their readers are using?

Authors can find groups of readers by going to Google and typing “chick lit blog” or “sci-fi blog” or “business ethics.” Authors can also find readers by searching LinkedIn and Google+. It really is easy to find readers today because so many of them join groups on social media and websites. Some authors have set up fan pages for their books and characters, especially for teen lit. It’s fun to see that! Readers discuss plots and characters — and defend authors against nonfans. It’s great to see!

What advice do you have for authors looking for an Internet marketing expert?

Authors should look for a person who has direct experience with their niche, e.g., travel, kids, or parenting books. Every niche has its own experts, buzzwords and ways of doing things. You want to find someone who has been there, done that. Authors shouldn’t have to pay to teach someone to learn your business. I guess authors could ask for references, but who is going to give a bad reference? Authors can ask their friends for referrals. Who’s done a good job for them? Meet with the person who is going to work with you. The person who sold you might not be the one who does the work. That happens a lot at PR firms. You might get an intern or young staffer. You want to meet that person and make sure she loves your book. And has contacts! You want to make sure her messages will get answered. Personal contacts are golden and well worth the price.

See full story on profnetconnect.com

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Online Retailers, E-books Continue to Grow Ahead of Traditional Publishing and Bookstores

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Some schools are now forcing students to use e-textbooks.

E-books captured 11% of all book spending last year, up from 7% in 2011, Kulo reported, while e-books accounted for 22% of units in 2012, up from 14% the prior year. In 2010, e-books accounted for only 2% of spending. Despite the gains made by digital, paperback remained the most popular format last year, accounting for 43% of spending, down one percentage point from 2011, while hardcovers represented 37% of dollar sales, down from 39%.

The growth in the e-book format last year was one of the factors that increased e-commerce’s lead as the largest channel for book sales, Kulo noted. Online retailers, led by Amazon, accounted for 44% of sales in 2012, up from 39% in 2011. The gains made by online retailers came at the expense of bookstore chains, whose market share fell to 19%, from 26% in 2011. As consumers buy more e-books they also tend to buy more print books from the same outlet—a trend that has cemented Amazon’s position as the country’s largest booksellers, Kulo said. According to the Bowker data, Amazon captured 31% of dollars spent on all books last year, up from 26% in 2011. Despite the chains’ loss of market share, they were the only other channel besides online retailers to have a slice of the book market that was bigger than 10%. Together, chains and online retailers accounted for 63% of spending in the year, up from 56% in 2009. Independent bookstores had a 6% share of spending in the year, the same as in 2011.

Kulo also noted that the Kindle remained the most popular reading device among e-book buyers in 2012, although some members of the Kindle family gained share while others lost ground. Kindle e-ink devices fell from a 43% share in 2011 to 40% last year, but the percentage of e-book buyers who reported owning a Kindle Fire, released in fall 2011, rose to 20% in 2012, from a low base the prior year. Despite a bad holiday season, Nook was used by 15% of e-book buyers last year—the same level as in 2011. Ownership of iPads remained relatively low among e-book buyers at 19%, up from 15% in 2011. The Kindle family, by a wide margin, was also the most popular group of devices used by e-book buyers to download e-books in 2012, with 55% of the e-book buyers using either the e-ink or tablet versions. The Nook, which held second place, was used by 14%. Tablets, including iPads, came in third at 13%.

More data relating to buying trends and consumer book-buying behavior will be included in the upcoming edition of the 2013 U.S. Book Consumer Demographics and Buying Behaviors Annual Review, to be published by Bowker in June.

See full story on publishersweekly.com

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Best Selling Author Named Power Influencer Top 10 by Forbes

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Las Vegas: Best Selling Author Warren Whitlock, publisher of this blog and others has been named a “Forbes top 10 social media power influencer”

Forbes Top Influencer

Whitlock, active online for the last 32 years, best-selling author, speaker and serial entrepreneur in publishing, advertising and marketing consulting and more commented “I am always happy to be acknowledged by these lists. None of these accolades suggest that there’s some competition and a winner but it’s nice to be included with colleagues that I know are helping business take advantage of the revolution in marketing that we currently call social media

“Social media tools that we have today have helped to enable a change from the 20th-century model of doing business where a centralized organization could push out a marketing message to the masses, limited only by the large budgets it took to communicate one way

“thanks to the Internet and especially these tools, consumers have the expectation that communications will be two-way conversations. Those businesses that learn to implement this in every part of their business will see their best years ever while those who continue to try to control a message and push consumers into old models will go downhill.”

Best Selling Author

Whitlock is the best selling author butof two books on social media, including the first book about Twitter and mobile marketing “Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing are Changing the Way We Do Business” and “Profitable Social Media: Business Results without Playing Games”

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Have E-Book Sales Stopped Growing?

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E-Book Sales

ePublish a Book » Journal » US sees stronger ebook sales, but growth slows

Electronic books provided 23 percent of US publishing revenues in 2012 but sizzling growth rates have eased, according to industry figures released Thursday. The Association of American Publishers said ebooks gained ground in all categories — adult fiction and nonfiction, young adult and children’…

See full story on epublishabook.com

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Ebook App Creation Demystified: Free A Case Study Download

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Smart authors are looking at new ways to deliver their book. We know about ebooks, but what about apps. Here’s some news today about Ebook App Creation, and information about a case study that you can download free.

Ebook App Creation

This blog post is an excerpt from a case study that is available as a PDF download from Digital Book World.

In digital publishing today, storybook app creation is still a niche. Compared to printed books, creating book apps is in its infancy and still chartering the road “less traveled by” to borrow the words of Robert Frost – and at Wasabi Productions, we believe it can and will make “all the difference.”

Clearly, we aren’t the only ones who think so as this nascent industry is teeming with innovative app creation (especially for children). Device adoption is exploding in both homes and schools – this year, International Data Corporation (IDC) said it expects the tablet market to reach “a new high” of 190 million shipped units, with year-on-year growth of 48.7%, while the smartphone market is expected to grow 27.2% to 918.5 million units. Device variety and price points are also diversifying, and their ubiquity and storytelling potential mean that apps won’t be the marginal choice for digital publishing for very long.

But, when a path is (relatively) new and untrodden, it’s intimidating to know what it takes to get to the other side. It’s even intimidating to talk about the craft, as there are no agreed norms and few benchmarks. For this and a myriad of other reasons, it’s not yet fully known what it takes to create a profitable storybook app.

Lazy Larry himself

This case study explains how Wasabi Productions created its first app, Lazy Larry Lizard, and provides insight into the development of soon-to-bereleased app, Gorilla Band. We share notes on how the storybook apps are produced from start to finish, including costs, production process, people, technology, pricing, release cycle, marketing and more.

While the case study is far to long to publish here (it’s available here as a low-cost download), below is an excerpt about the first and perhaps most important step in storybook app creation: Idea and exploration.

See full story on digitalbookworld.com

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Inforgraphic: Sony New Book Discovery Map

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Sony has a new interactive infographic that it hopes will help readers discover new books (pictured below).

By answering a set of questions about books, readers are shuttled to one of 15 highly popular titles. While the map may help the reluctant reader discover a newer title, or help Sony sell more of each of the ebooks (each of the book covers on the graphic links to the sell page at the Sony Reader Store), publishers worried about the problem of new book discovery will not be impressed.

For those publishers, the worry isn’t that readers won’t discover their most popular titles, it’s that readers won’t find their mid-list titles and books by new authors.

See full story on digitalbookworld.com

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David Mamet and Other Big Authors Choose to Self-Publish – NYTimes.com

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: David Mamet and other best selling authors choose to self-publish

This year, when Mr. Mamet set out to publish his next one, a novella and two short stories about war, he decided to take a very different path: he will self-publish.

When the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and author David Mamet released his last book, “The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture,” with the Sentinel publishing house in 2011, it sold well enough to make the New York Times best-seller list.

Why Self-Publish?

Mr. Mamet is taking advantage of a new service being offered by his literary agency, ICM Partners, as a way to assume more control over the way his book is promoted.

“Basically I am doing this because I am a curmudgeon,” Mr. Mamet said in a telephone interview, “and because publishing is like Hollywood — nobody ever does the marketing they promise.”

Then there is the money. While self-published authors get no advance, they typically receive 70 percent of sales. A standard contract with a traditional house gives an author an advance, and only pays royalties — the standard is 25 percent of digital sales and 7 to 12 percent of the list price for bound books — after the advance is earned back in sales.

ICM, which will announce its new self-publishing service on Wednesday, is one of the biggest and most powerful agencies to offer the option. But others are doing the same as they seek to provide additional value to their writers while also extending their reach in the industry.

Since last fall, Trident Media Group, which represents 800 authors, has been offering its clients self-publishing…

See full story on nytimes.com

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The Jamie McGuire Story

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I heard about Jamie McGuire and here fight with Amazon. I didn’t know much on the details, so I read the following on a blog post by Kristen Eckstein

Often, the facts of these stories are as “big company is the bad guy” as much as I’d like to suppose (I get mad a big companies from time to time), but regardless of the facts or resolution, I’m inclined to agree with Kristen’s comments.

email from jamie mcguire

While the author, Jamie McGuire states that one of Amazon’s problems with her book is “content,” and other trusted publishing blogs including this post at The Passive Voice and this one at Author Marketing Experts, Inc. hint at song lyric copyright issues being the primary “content” issue, all of these ideas are simply speculation as Amazon has kept conveniently silent, even to the author. In my opinion, a publisher and/or author should be informed as to anyissues with their book, especially legal issues. What if Amazon had caught a copyright infringement issue when the book was still in distribution as a self-published title? Would they require the author to pay their profits as well as hers back? And would they inform her and let her correct the book?

When it comes to copyright, if that is indeed what’s going on here (again, speculation), authors need to be more careful in general. I always coach authors to only use what they know for sure is in the public domain, and even then find a way to say it in their own words to avoid any issues like this. Again, if copyright is the primary issue at hand, most authors haven’t a clue what they can and can’t use, what’s fair use and what requires permission, so they should at least be told that is the issue and given the chance to rectify it.

Read the full post on Kristen’s Blog

My Comments on Jamie McGuire and Kristen’s Post

You referred to the relationship between the author and Amazon as if Amazon were the publisher.

The word is “self-published” and in case that isn’t clear.. it means that the publisher of the book is the author.

As a publisher, I am liable for what’s in the book. I also have a fiscal responsibility to the authors I publish. I’ve not read the terms of the KDP contract lately, but assume that Amazon is not offering to act as publisher for authors in that program.

I’ve seen discussions where uneducated authors imply that Amazon should be taking responsibility and assuming that Amazon somehow is out to defraud them. To imply intent without any evidence is reckless.

I like how you label your views as speculation. Speculation and opinion are beneficial.

On the subject of Amazon’s right to the profits they made in legal activity are covered by contract and case law. If the off author does something that harms Amazon and has accepted liability in contract between the parties, it’s probably not Amazon’s bill and the amount of money in dollars or percentages has no bearing on the legal.

It may be a good marketing for Amazon to explain themselves and/or lower the cost of defending party. I can’t comment on whether or not they are doing that as I don’t have the facts. My calculation of what fines and legal fees would be to Amazon compared to the income made from a small publisher would have me guess that the author in this story is getting off cheap:)

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623 of the Best Books Ever Written

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Best Books – Catcher in the Rye

Can you build a reading list of the best books from a mathematical equation?

“A list of Books” takes best seller list collects dozens of 100 best books lists and combined them with a formula to bring you the best books of all time.

You be the judge. Look at this list of the 13 best books list and the 623 that they came up with.

Look at the process, and then comment below on whether it comes anywhere near to what you expected.

Could you read the all?

Would you want to?

13 “Top 100 Books” lists combined and condensed in to one master list, for the benefit of your reading pleasure. 623 books in all — can you collect them all?

See full story on alistofbooks.com

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Dan Janal on Author Protection from Lies and Scams

Best Selling Author

E-Book Sales

Ebook App Creation

Why Self-Publish?

My Comments on Jamie McGuire and Kristen’s Post

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