Best Seller Authors

Book Marketing, Publishing, Author Resources

Pricing Changes for Amazon eBooks

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The $9.99 best seller that helped Amazon.com Inc. build a dominant position in the now-thriving e-book market was at risk of extinction Sunday after Amazon capitulated in a battle sparked by the launch of Apple Inc.’s new iPad.

Amazon conceded defeat Sunday evening after halting sales of all books published by Macmillan in a dispute over higher e-book prices. Having made the $9.99 e-book a fixture, Amazon now faces the prospect of raising its prices to match new terms Apple is offering publishers.

This is not over folks. We’re going to see a continued power play from the old school publishers as the Amazon Kindle, Apple iPad and others take over the market.

As we discussed here, the winner will be the player that controls distribution. Will that be the traditional publishers?

Amazon Plays Hardball With Publishers

Amazon Kindle

I caught a discussion among some writers about titles missing from Kindle when a publisher doesn’t like Amazon’s pricing.

Apple makes the iPadSome suggested that Amazon better be careful now that Apple has announce the iPad.. the giant iPod touch the will be out soon… claiming “the timing couldn’t be worse for Amazon”

The timing couldn’t be better.

Amazon, Apple, or somebody is going to discover new ways of getting books to people. Whoever does will win the ebook distribution war.

The Apple iPod was not the first mp3 player.. Jobs was the first to take on the music publishers and win. The “game changer” is not the pretty new hardware.. it will be the distribution deals that give consumers what they want.

Amazon make the KindleImagine a future where the quantity of books sold without killing a tree equals the number of ringtones purchased. Sure, there would be some low prices, some piracy, some

I can’t say where things will end.. but it’s clear that we won’t be going back to publishing of yesterday. That’s gone for good.

Submit Your Novel To Win Cash: The 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award:

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award

Amazon.com, along with Penguin Group (USA) and CreateSpace, is pleased to announce the third annual Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, the international competition seeking the next popular novel. For the first time, the competition will award two grand prizes: one for General Fiction and one for Young Adult Fiction. The 2010 competition is open to unpublished and previously self-published novels waiting to be discovered. Each winner will receive a publishing contract with Penguin, which includes a $15,000 advance.

Manuscript submissions are now being accepted through February 7, 2010, at 11:59 p.m. (U.S. Eastern Standard Time), or when 5,000 entries have been received in each category, whichever is earlier.

Go to www.createspace.com/abna to register and submit your manuscript following the instructions on the entry form.

Wishing You a #Happy10 (Happy New Year 2010: The Year of Giving)

As we prepare to go into 2010 I want to share with you how we can make a real difference and help each other.

This time last year I had an idea to give away some gifts for New Year’s Day.  I wrote this blog post on Twitter Handbook and started using the #Happy09 tag on tweet for a little contest.

Soon it seemed that everyone on Twitter was using #Happy09 and it became the most popular term on Twitter for 3 days.

We had a lot of fun, and soon went way beyond the contest to talk about what we thought was really important.. conversations, relationships, happiness. I ultimately gave away the gifts to April Tara when she asked if it was okay to share all the gifts (April got the message! Read her post about it here).

Since #Happy09, I’ve heard from the people involved many times. New friendships were made, joint ventures started and even some new clients for myself and others, but Twitter has grown by over 1000% and it’s very unlikely that we’ll ever see this again.

But why not try?

Yesterday, I got thinking of what would make for a great #Happy10. The hashtag (that’s the made up word staring with #) was easy enough to come up with and I felt a contest wasn’t right. What we need today is a way to share the spirit of GIVING that makes social media perfect for authors and others sharing a message.

The Go Give Book Cover
For every business person that want to succeed in the age of social media

I connected with @ThomScott, Colleague of @BobBurg who co-authored the best selling book The Go-Giver with John David Mann. Thom is one of the most giving people I know. I asked if he and Bob could join me on Friday night for my Twitter radio show and do a special on  giving and show an example of how Twitter users are going to give more in 2010. Thom and Bob said yes and the #Happy10 idea was good to go.

We will have lots of examples of authors, business people and entrepreneurs who have used GIVING to get more results in marketing and can say they have a more fulfilling life. I’ll also be asking Thom and Bob about their philosophy of book promotion and how they have sold hundreds of thousands of copies of Bob’s books and made multiple best sellers.

Important Notes for Authors, Book Marketing and Others Promoting on Social Media

What you’ve read above is exactly what happened. I didn’t have to rent space, pre-order equipment or get an approval for Twitter or a government agency. More important.. I absolutely did not, and will not set hard and fast rules about how the promotion needs to go.

I have objectives.

I want to see my readers, listeners and everyone get the message of “giving”

I hope to see Bob and Thom sell a few more books and some people remember the radio show

It will be nice that some new people read this blog post and notice what business I’m in

That’s about it. All this will happen and MORE. I can imagine hearing stories in comments here, tweets on Twitter and likely will run into people during the next year who will say “Hi Warren.. You don’t know me but I watched #Happy10.” I also fully expect to see an outcome I have not thought of. I know this can happen because it always does.

Social media marketing is not something you can or would want to completely control. The thousands (and sometimes millions) of people that get involved will have ideas you could not dream of and will carry your message far beyond what you expected.

Please join me in sharing #Happy10. All you have to do is add “#Happy10” to any tweet you think appropriate. There are NO RULES… If you have an idea of how we all can give more for 2010.. more value, more service, more love, more sharing, more content.. just tweet them to me (use @WarrenWhitlock in the message if you want to make sure I see it) or comment here.

Share a link to this blog post by using the RETWEET button or the sharing options below… then watch for #Happy10 tweets using TweetChat or Twitter Search. When you see someone talking about giving (or whatever interests you) REPLY to them and start a conversation. If you use the #Happy10 tag for these conversations it would be nice.. but please don’t feel you have to (NO RULES).

Let me know if you have a positive outcome. I’ll be doing interview on the Social Media Radio Show and will be looking for authors and entrepreneurs who find new people they can help, readers or business ideas so I can feature you in an upcoming blog post.

Most of all.. HAVE FUN… Share your ideas about GIVING and have a prosperous New Year (or #Happy10 as we say on Twitter)

Textbooks Will Lead Us Away From Books

Paper books are winding down. We’ll have them around for a long time to come, but the kids going into college now are going to bring the future faster than you think

Joel West postulated these 3 reasons why Amazon will get out of the ebook business

  • Amazon‘s (AMZN) Achilles heel is the proprietary mobi format against everyone else’s e-pub, but if college students are using a book viewer for 4 years and renting books for one semester, this becomes almost a non-issue.
  • Moving from selling dead tree books (with printing costs and inventory risk) to renting e-books will reduce the publishers’ costs dramatically. If publishers don’t share those savings with consumers — given the student and politician outcry about textbook prices — there will be hell to pay. I suspect, however, that most will play games with planned obsolescence in hopes of keeping their margins up.
  • I doubt the e-book reader is a separate category over the long term. To me, it seems obvious that the e-reader will go the way of the pocket camera and the MP3 player as a dead-end stand-alone device.

I think it’s still early. We don’t know who will win the hardware wars

However, every author and publisher needs to look at how to profit from the move away from selling dead trees