DISRUPT THE TRADITIONAL TEXTBOOK PUBLISHING INDUSTRY
Like Pearson, Cengage Learning, McGraw-Hill Education, Apollo Global Management
Find Top Hat: Professors can create course materials and sell it around the world. The idea is to cut out the publisher and let professors sell directly to students and each other.
EBOOK
Amazon broke $100 billion in revenue for the first time 2015.
4/27/16 Amazon Unlimited Fraud
Amazon Unlimited is a all-you-can-read service. You pay one price and can read anything that's in the program.
Amazon pays authors out of a fixed pool, on the basis of how many people read their books. More interestingly, it
pays by the page. An author make more money if someone reads his book through to page 200 than if they give up at
page 50, and even more if they make it through to the end. This makes sense; it doesn't pay authors for books
people download but don't read, or read the first few pages of and then decide not to read the rest. This open up
the possibility for fraud. If an author can create a thousand-page book and trick the reader into reading page
1000, he gets paid the maximum. Scam authors are doing this through a variety of tricks. What's interesting is
what while Amazon is definitely concerned about this kind of fraud, it doesn't
affect their bottom line. The fixed payment pool doesn't change; just who gets how much of it does.
Amazon's new strategy of paying authors for every page read through Kindle
Unlimited . Authors were paid a flat fee for every reader who downloaded their book - typically around $1.30
(89p) per book.
But after the change was introduced, authors were instead paid six tenths of a cent for each page read, meaning
that an author would have to write a 220-page book, and have every page read by every person downloading it to
earn the same amount they previously got. All the authors who choose to make their books available on Kindle
Unlimited are paid, not a flat rate for each page read, but a portion of
funding pool that Amazon provides. The size of the pool fluctuates, from $11m last summer to $15m last
month, but it's set by Amazon. No matter how successful the scammers are, Amazon doesn't lose any more or less
than the $15m it sets aside to pay Kindle Unlimited authors. But other authors do lose out. The same pool goes to
pay more “pages read”, reducing the fee for each individual page read.
Authors lose out again in Amazon pay-per-page scam
Company pays authors based on how much of their books have been read, but fraudsters are taking advantage - and
it's not Amazon that suffers. The heart of the scam revolves around Amazon's new strategy of paying authors for
every page read through Kindle Unlimited. Many authors who saw their revenue from Amazon slashed overnight.
Previously, authors were paid a flat fee for every reader who downloaded their book - typically around $1.30 (89p)
per book. But after the change was introduced, they were instead paid six tenths of a cent for each page read,
meaning that an author would have to write a 220-page book, and have every page read by every person downloading
it to earn the same amount they previously got. In practice, however, Amazon isn't able to judge whether or not a
reader has truly read a book, and so the company judges how much of the book has been read by the latest syncing
position received by its servers. In other words, a reader who opens a book and skips to page 400 would be judged
as having “read” 400 pages - and the author paid accordingly. Typically, a reader would have little reason to do
that. But a number of enterprising scammers have uncovered several ways to encourage them to do just that,
according to the New York Observer. Amazon is clearly aware of the scam, because authors who accidentally
encourage similar behaviour have found themselves banned.
In other words: if a scam author publishes a book filled with nonsense (maybe a mishmash of a few thousand
randomly picked pages from public domain websites), but then includes a link at the front that takes a Kindle
Unlimited reader to the last page, Amazon will register that as if the user has “read” the entire book and pay the
author for thousands of pages of reading that never took place. Royalties in Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owners'
Lending Library
Tricks 1
For example, write a 100-page book, then auto-translate it into different languages and invite your readers to
click through to the first page in their native tongue. If 95 percent of your readers are English speakers, page
one can come after the Chinese, Italian and Pashto versions, then as soon as they have clicked to the first
English page, Amazon thinks they have read 300 pages. Tricks 1 - winners -
mainly those who write longer books that are read in full.
3/7/16 2016 US Supreme Court affirms ruling in Apple e-books case
E-book buyers will receive $400 million in cash and credits and lawyers involved in the case will get $50 million.
The US Supreme Court upheld a ruling that Apple was part of a price-fixing conspiracy for electronic books, clearing the way for a $450 million settlement to be paid. The top court declined without comment to hear an appeal from Apple, which lets stand a 2013 ruling by a New York federal judge. Apple had tentatively agreed to pay out $450 million to compensate consumers harmed by the price-fixing, while at the same time pursuing its appeal. In July 2013, US District Judge Denise Cote ruled that Apple was liable for conspiring with five book publishers to fix e-book prices. The US Department of Justice meanwhile welcomed the ruling. "Apple's liability for knowingly conspiring with book publishers to raise the prices of e-books is settled once and for all,” said Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer of the Justice Department's antitrust division. "And consumers will be made whole."
The case stems from a complaint filed on behalf of consumers, accusing Apple of working with five top publishers in 2009-2010 to set the prices of electronic books in an Apple-led effort to break rival Amazon's dominance of the market. Prior to Apple's entry into e-books, the publishers -- all of whom reached separate settlements in the case -- complained about Amazon's $9.99 price for most titles. Apple and the publishers agreed on contracts that let publishers set the price of most bestsellers at $12.99 or $14.99, but Apple won a provision that allowed it to match the prices of Amazon or any other retailer. Apple's chief executive Tim Cook had said ahead of the trial that the California firm would not settle, claiming it had done nothing wrong but was merely pursuing normal business practices.
The trial focused on a six-week period in late 2009 and early 2010 during which Apple negotiated contracts with publishers ahead of its iPad launch and proposed a new and more profitable business model. The settlement calls for Apple to pay $400 million to consumers and $50 million to cover legal fees. Officials noted that publishers have paid a total of $166 million for consumer redress, which brings the total amount to $566 million. Most consumers will receive credits which may be applied to future e-book purchases. The 2012 case was filed against Apple, the publishing groups Hachette Book Group USA, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster.
Steve Jobs's own words were used by the gov't to prove Apple conspired with book publishers.
6/30/15 Apple conspired to fix ebook prices US court rules
The US Justice Department said publishers involved in the conspiracy included Hachett, HaperCollins, Penguin, and
Simon & Shuster.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-33335432
Books and Music isn't underpriced, it's overpriced!
Go feds! E-books are way overpriced
YOU ARE READING AND LEARNING ABOUT THIS ONLINE VIA THE INTERNET!!! GET IT?
Go for mass consumption, make the hurdle low, allow people to indulge and build a career...and make a hell of a lot of money.
The mainstream media means less than ever before.
And the books didn't blow up immediately.
She was selling fewer than 1,000 a month in the spring, but sales blew up in November.
That's the power of the Internet. Everybody can know at once, something can blow up overnight.
Turns out your best marketing may be the Web.
Assuming you're going independent. And bloggers are not people who steal, but passionate friends who will promote your work.
Your ebook ready format could blow up online, because these genres have Net infrastructure.
7/21/14 Report: On Amazon, self-published authors earn more royalties than all “big five” authors combined
According to a new report by AuthorEarnings.com, self-published authors on Amazon are now earning more in combined royalties from their books than authors from all “big five” publishers - Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster - combined. Moreover, self-published authors are now earning nearly 40% of all ebook royalties on the Kindle store.
Interesting findings on DRM too - It wasn't surprising to see that most Big 5 books employ DRM, but we were shocked to see that it is practically 100% of them. Indies, on the other hand, locked down roughly 50% of their titles. Since there isn't any variation in the Big 5 books, we are forced to look at the self-published titles for any effect on sales, and indeed there is one. The 50% of non-DRM ebooks account for 64% of total unit sales. Indie titles without DRM sell twice as many copies each, on average, as those with DRM.
ONE YEAR LATER 2015 Amazon sues 1,114 'fake reviewers' Amazon sued a number of websites in April for selling fake reviews. Amazon says the 1,114 defendants, termed "John Does" as the company does not yet know their real names, offer a false review service for as little as $5 (£3.24) on the website Fiverr.com, with most promising five-star reviews for a seller's products.
8/28/14 You can try to be the next Hemingway -- for $6,000
NOT TRUE
Self-publishing can cost much less than $6000.00. Read the Comments!
also read: http://jakonrath.blogspot.com, and david gaughran.
Who to Hire to publish your book
Look into scribd.com and their partners:
And see also Lightning Source, Canva.com, CreateSpace, Ingram Spark, Shutterstock
2014 Self Published ebooks: the surprising data from Amazon!
86% Kindle Wins
7% Paperback
4% Hardcover
2% Audible Audio Edition
1% Mass Market Paperback
Hugh Howey, author of the bestselling, indie-original science fiction series Wool, has published an eye-popping,
and important data-rich report on independent author earnings from ebooks sold on Amazon. Howey makes a good case
that the "average" author earns more from a self published book than she would through one of the Big
Five publishers, and, what's more, that this holds true for all sorts of outliers (the richest indie authors
outperform the richest Big Five authors; less-prolific indies do better than less-prolific traditionals,
etc).
2013 Federal
judge finds Apple guilty of conspiring to raise ebook prices
Apple played 'central role' in ebook price-fixing conspiracy, says federal judge Tech company to face trial for
damages over attempt to thwart Amazon's dominance after book publishers settle with US
The ruling was not unexpected, as Cote had earlier suggested that Apple's defense would fail, and the publishers
- Hachette Book Group Inc, Macmillan, HarperCollins Publishers LLC, Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster
- settled with the Department of Justice ahead of the trial. With Random House, these six firms are the largest
publishers of trade books in the United States. "The plaintiffs have shown that the publisher defendants
conspired with each other to eliminate retail price competition in order to raise e-book prices, and that Apple
played a central role in facilitating and executing that conspiracy," Cote said in the decision (pdf).
"Without Apple's orchestration of this conspiracy, it would not have succeeded as it did in the spring of
2010."
2012 The five publishers sued were
CBS Corp.'s Simon & Schuster Inc.; Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group; Pearson PLC's Penguin
Group (USA); Macmillan, a unit of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH; and HarperCollins Publishers Inc., a
unit of News Corp. , which also owns The Wall Street Journal.
The U.S. filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple Corp., Hachette SA, HarperCollins,
Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster in New York district court, claiming collusion over eBook
pricing.
The government is seeking a settlement that would let Amazon and other retailers return to a wholesale model,
where retailers decide what to charge customers, the people said. A settlement could also void so-called
most-favored nation clauses in Apple's contracts that require book sellers to provide the maker of the iPad with
the lowest prices they offer competitors, the people said. Upholding the agency model would give publishers more
control over pricing and limit discounting, helping the industry avoid sales losses as more consumers buy books
online.
Sales of e-books rose 117 percent in 2011, generating $969.9 million, Publishers Weekly reported Feb. 27, citing
estimates from the Association of American Publishers. By eliminating printing and shipping costs, digital
versions generate higher profit margins than physical copies.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-11/u-s-files-antitrust-lawsuit-against-apple-hachette.html
Traditionally, publishers sold books to retailers for roughly half of the recommended cover price. Under that "wholesale model," booksellers were then free to offer those books to customers for less than the cover price if they wished. Most physical books are sold using this model.
"Agency Model" by Steve Jobs is violating federal antitrust laws.
It isn't the first time the Justice Department has taken action against Apple for allegedly colluding with other companies. In 2010, several technology companies agreed to settle Justice Department allegations that they colluded to hold down wages by improperly agreeing not to poach each other's employees.
Publishers set the price of the book and Apple would take a 30% cut. Apple also stipulated that publishers couldn't let rival retailers sell the same book at a lower price. "We told the publishers, 'We'll go to the agency model, where you set the price, and we get our 30%, and yes, the customer pays a little more, but that's what you want anyway,'" Mr. Jobs was quoted as saying by his biographer, Walter Isaacson. The publishers were then able to impose the same model across the industry, Mr. Jobs told Mr. Isaacson. "They went to Amazon and said, 'You're going to sign an agency contract or we're not going to give you the books,' " Mr. Jobs said.Contracts such as Apple's prevent publishers from selling books to other buyers at a cheaper rate. Such terms, known as "most favored nation" clauses, have drawn the scrutiny of the Justice Department in recent years in the health-care industry because they can sometimes be used to hamper competition. The U.S. Feds and the The European Union are investigating.
2012 Some big-six publishers refuse to sign new contracts with Amazon
http://paidcontent.org/2012/04/10/big-six-publishers-refuse-to-sign-new-contracts-with-amazon
Zaitchik told me a “source within the publishing journalism industry” and a contact at a major New York publishing house alerted him to the dispute. Zaitchik wrote:
For the first time, the “Big Six” publishers — HarperCollins, Random House, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, Penguin and Macmillan — have refused to sign Amazon's latest annual contract. The main sticking point is exorbitant increases in “co-op promotional fees” for e-books that the publishers see as an illegal gouge by another name. One person familiar with the details of the proposed 2012 contracts that Amazon has submitted to major New York publishers described them as “stupifyingly draconian.” In some cases, he said, Amazon has raised promotional fees by 30 times their 2011 cost.
2012 Apple Inc and four major publishers have offered to let retailers such as Amazon.Com Inc
sell e-books at a discount, in a bid to end an EU antitrust investigation, the European Commission said on
Wednesday. EU regulators have been investigating Apple's e-book pricing deals with Simon & Schuster, News
Corp unit HarperCollins, French group Lagardere SCA's Hachette Livre, Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck,
which owns Macmillan in Germany, and Pearson Plc's Penguin group. Apple and the publishers, with the exception
of Penguin, have offered to settle with the Commission, which began its inquiry last December.
"For a period of two years, the four publishers will not restrict, limit or impede e-book
retailers' ability to set, alter or reduce retail prices for e-books and/or to offer discounts or
promotions," the European Commission said in its Official Journal, detailing the offer under
consideration.
The Commission said the publishers and Apple also offered to suspend "most-favored nation"
contracts for five years. Such clauses barred publishers from deals with rival retailers to sell e-books at prices
lower than those set by Apple. The EU watchdog said third parties have a month to provide feedback on the
proposals. If the response is positive, the Commission will end its investigation. HarperCollins, Simon &
Schuster and Hachette reached a settlement with the U.S. government in April with similar proposals. According to
analysts at UBS, e-books account for about 30 percent of the U.S. book market and 20 percent of sales in
Britain, but are still negligible elsewhere.
2011 E-book sales more than doubled to $970 million
according to a survey of 77 publishers conducted by the Association of American
Publishers.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203961204577267831767489216.html
MAKING MONEY Books and CD's should be as cheap as Ms. Hocking's books.
Self
publishing writer becomes million seller
An entrepreneur has turned the writing world upside down by becoming the first author to sell more than a million
electronic books without a publishing deal. He saw that many successful authors were charging almost $10 (£6) for
a book and decided that he would undercut them - selling his own efforts for 99 cents (60 pence).
"I've been in commission sales all my life, and when I learned Kindle and the other e-book
platforms offered a royalty of 35 per cent on books priced at 99 cents, I couldn't believe it," he
said.
READ: Ebooks and Self-Publishing - A Dialog Between Authors Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath
HOW DID AMANDA MAKE MONEY?
2011 Amanda Hocking is getting rich!
20 million people read e-books in 2010. Somehow, someway, her audience found out about her. Ms. Hocking works it
via social networking: She's written nineteen books. But this is an unheard of success story. And she
did it all herself.
TP: What has been your strategy for marketing and publicizing your books?
AH: I didn't really have a strategy. I think one of the advantages I have is that stuff considered marketing is stuff that I do a lot anyway. I've been active on social networks and blogs for years. I did publish books through Lulu but I sold zero copies then went to Kindle in April.
I also send ARCs [advance review copies] out to book bloggers. Book bloggers are a really amazing community, and they've been tremendously supportive. They've definitely been a major force that got my books on the map.
When I first published, I did do a bit of promoting on the Amazon forums, but they're not really open to that, so I haven't really interacted there much at all in months.Hocking's version of the truth: Hocking credits her success to aggressive self-promotion on her blog, Facebook and Twitter, word of mouth and writing in a popular genre.
Three of my full length novels are priced at $.99 in ebook, and my novella is priced at $.99.
The other five books are priced at $2.99. All my paperbacks are priced at $8.99 and $9.99 purchase from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, and Smashwords.I hang out @ Goodreads :
The Goodreads Author Program is a completely free feature designed to help authors reach their target audience — passionate readers. This is the perfect place for new and established authors to promote their books.
Book Mapping! Goodreads has the data to generate some interesting visualizations of reading habits tied to location.
Then How to Lie With Maps. also Follow Goodreads and Kindleboards Facebook, Twitter, and I blog. And that's about it.Book Reviewers -- Book Bloggers Can Help you sell your books
What happens after your book is reviewed. If you submit a book for review, no matter how they review it - even if its a scathing 1-star review - your only response should be: "Thank for you taking the time to read and review my book. I appreciate the time and work you put into it." That's it. That's all you can say.
Warning: The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy
These were marketing reviews, not editorial reviews."
Instead of trying to cajole others to review a client's work, why not cut out the middleman and write the
review himself? "The wheels of online commerce run on positive reviews," said Bing Liu, a data-mining
expert at the University of Illinois, Chicago, whose 2008 research showed that 60 percent of the millions of
product reviews on Amazon are five stars and an additional 20 percent are four stars. "But almost no one
wants to write five-star reviews, so many of them have to be created." Mr. Liu estimates that about one-third
of all consumer reviews on the Internet are fake. Yet it is all but impossible to tell when reviews were written
by the marketers or retailers (or by the authors themselves under pseudonyms), by customers (who might get a deal
from a merchant for giving a good score) or by a hired third-party service. The Federal Trade Commission has
issued guidelines stating that all online endorsements need to make clear when there is a financial relationship,
but enforcement has been minimal and there has been a lot of confusion in the blogosphere over how this affects
traditional book reviews. One of Mr. Rutherford's clients, who confidently commissioned hundreds of reviews
and didn't even require them to be favorable, subsequently became a best seller. This is proof, Mr. Rutherford
said, that his notion was correct. Attention, despite being contrived, draws more attention. The system is enough
to make you a little skeptical, which is where Mr. Rutherford finds himself. He is now suspicious of all online
reviews - of books or anything else. "When there are 20 positive and one negative, I'm going to go with
the negative," he said. "I'm jaded."
GETTING A BOOK DEAL THE TRADITIONAL WAY
Self-publishing is done without the involvement or vetting of an established publisher and uses a publishing
system such as Lulu, Smashwords, Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing or Barnes & Noble's PubIt! Many
traditional media outlets do not review self-published books.
Bookstores return 40% of hardcovers they buy.
When you write under a work-made-for-hire contract, you are no longer the owner - the publisher
is.
In 1985, the Supreme Court considered a case against The Nation magazine for publishing unauthorized portions of
former President Gerald Ford's forthcoming memoir from Harper & Row. The court found that The Nation stole
the memoir in advance of publication and demonstrably hurt Harper's sales revenues and was therefore liable
for damages. Who own's the story? Harper & Row. The legal conclusions from the Supreme Court is the law.
Entertainment content is now the largest US export, and information is the basis of more than half of US gross
domestic product. Publishers are contractually responsible to the author for the defense of the copyright that
they have licensed as the publisher.
Tracking Indirect Sales
Online Computer Library Center bibliographic database Go to
http://www.abebooks.com. Enter the name of a title of
interest, but misspell a key word. This will get you to the next screen, which suggests that you try to find the
title in a library, since it's not available on the " abebooks" site. After clicking on this option,
enter the correct title and you'll be able to find out which libraries worldwide carry the title in question,
and you can follow an increase in library sales.
WAYS TO LOSE MONEY - BOOK RETURNS
Books Are Returned a sale is never a sale. . Publishing houses, accept almost
any returns, even though many of them aren't really salable. Seemingly arbitrary reduction in annual invoicing
claimed by some of the big chains for "short/damaged" shipments. There is no entry into the book trade
without cost and pain. The trick lies in volume and margins. If you don't have those, don't bother. There
are other ways of accessing sales without going through bookstores. Bookstores return about forty per cent of the
hardcovers they buy; this accounts for 5.20 per book."
The lesson: "Own Everything." Since no one can
know for certain in advance what is going to become a successful project -- or when -- or in what format or medium
--, waking up every day with the goal of owning the intellectual property rights to all the versions and
derivative works based on the underlying original work is the key to the success of making money with your
intellectual property.
Final Chapter in E-book Selling
The results of their work suggest that "whenever sales in the electronic channel lead to a negative
effect on demand in the traditional channel, e-tailers prefer to set up platforms, whereas when sales in the
electronic channel lead to a substantial stimulation of demand in the traditional channel, e-tailers prefer
reselling contracts with manufacturers." Furthermore, "this preference is moderated by competition among
e-tailers - as competition between them increases, e-tailers prefer to set up platforms." The researchers
note that platforms have become widespread in industries as varied as consumer packaged goods (Alice.com), travel
(Expedia, Travelocity) and vintage goods and arts (Etsy.com), as well as the "market-places" on Amazon
Marketplace and Marketplace at Sears.com. They warn marketers, however, that "online retailing is
still in flux," and that although the agency model has "become a pervasive phenomenon, the
understanding of this phenomenon is limited."
Adapted from China Knowledge@Wharton, http://www.knowledgeatwharton.com.cn.
RESOURCES
Exit Plan - Bury your Dead Dot With Diginity when you are Done
Extensive Compiliation about CopyRight and CopyLeft
Digital Rights Management <> Concerns, Issues, Resources
Knowledgespeak news service reports on the STM publishing industry, on a daily basis.
Google Books will offer free downloads of these and more than one million more public domain books in the EPUB format, a lightweight text-based digital book format that allows the text to automatically conform (or "reflow") to these smaller screens. And because EPUB is a free, open standard supported by a growing ecosystem of digital reading devices, works you download from Google Books as EPUBs won't be tied to or locked into a particular device. EPUB is designed for reflowable content, meaning that an EPUB reader can optimize text for a particular display device. EPUB also supports fixed-layout content. The format is intended as a single format that publishers and conversion houses can use in-house, as well as for distribution and sale. It supersedes the Open eBook standard
Set up a password-protected area on your website and charge for access with "Account Manager Pro 2.0 by CGI Elite.
Short article explaining the difference between wholesalers and distributors and how they work with you and each other.