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F. Paul Wilson’s SciFi Classics from the LaNague Federation Series Get the Exclusive Treatment in the Kindle Store, for Just $2.99 Each!

Amazon has just announced that the five science fiction classics that comprise F. Paul Wilson’s LaNague Federation series are available for the first time in ebook format, and will be found exclusively in the Kindle Store for one year.

And here’s Amazon’s news release:

New York Times Bestselling Author F. Paul Wilson Makes Electronic Editions of Five of His Books Available Exclusively in the Kindle Store
 
Previously out-of-print and award-winning LaNague Federation series available for the first time electronically
 
SEATTLE, Mar 23, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced that renowned horror and science-fiction author F. Paul Wilson has decided to make the five books in his LaNague Federation series available exclusively in the Kindle Store (www.amazon.com/kindlestore). This is the first time any of these books have been available electronically, and the five books will be exclusive to the Kindle Store for one year. Wilson chose to use Amazon’s self-service Digital Text Platform to upload these books and make them available to Kindle customers around the world. “One of the great things about Kindle is the ability for authors to make previously out-of-print titles available for their readers again,” said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President, Kindle Content. “For the first time ever, F. Paul Wilson’s fans will be able to discover their favorite titles electronically, and new fans can find these previously out-of-print titles more easily than ever before.”
The titles from the LaNague Federation series are:

  • “An Enemy of the State,” winner of the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
  • “Wheels Within Wheels,” winner of the first Prometheus Award
  • “The Tery”
  • “Dydeetown World,” on the American Library Association’s list of “Best Books for Young Adults” and on the New York Public Library’s recommended list of “Books for the Teen Age”
  • “Healer,” winner of the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award

F. Paul Wilson is a New York Times bestselling author who has won the Stoker, Inkpot, Porgie and Prometheus awards. He has written more than 40 books in genres that include science fiction and horror, and his books have been translated into 24 languages. His work has been adapted for film and TV: his novel “The Keep” was made into a 1983 film directed by Michael Mann, and many of his stories have been adapted into teleplays that have aired on Showtime and the Sci-Fi Channel (now called SyFy). 

“I’m thrilled that I’m able to make all five novels of the LaNague Federation series – including an additional five bonus short stories – available for the first time in digital, and for the first time all together as a series,” said F. Paul Wilson. “The result is a giant roman à thèse exclusively for Kindle readers. It’s wonderful that Kindle and the Digital Text Platform provide a convenient channel for authors like me to reintroduce classic titles to a whole new audience.” 


The Kindle Store now includes over 450,000 books and the largest selection of the most popular books people want to read, including New York TimesBestsellersand New Releases. Over 1.8 million free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books are also available to read on Kindle, including titles such as “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” “Pride and Prejudice” and “Treasure Island.” 


Kindle is in stock and available for immediate shipment today at www.amazon.com/kindle. Amazon’s Digital Text Platform can be accessed at http://dtp.amazon.com.

About eBook Prices and Author Royalties: Price Elasticity and the Demand for Books

By Stephen Windwalker
Originally posted March 2, 2010 – © Kindle Nation Daily 2010

Chris B, a reader from the Dallas area, got right to the heart of one of the challenges of thinking about the effects of the ebook pricing controversy on authors in this comment left yesterday on my post The Math of Publishing a Book in Print or Electronic Format:

When you put the “author royalties” of the 9.99 version as 2.50, realize that few authors ever make more than a few thousand dollars on a book. A $3 difference in sale price is not going to decide whether a book hits the NYT bestseller list (and makes some real money), but it might make a difference in feeding the author’s kids for another month.

I don’t want to see Kindle books go up in price, but we have to be realistic about it. We’ve always known Amazon was selling books at an artificially low price to do that.

Believe me, I do not want any authors’ kids, including my own, to miss their three squares a day. In fact, I think it’s important to save some authors from themselves here. While Motoko Rich’s New York Times piece and my post drill down on the pricing and costs of an individual book as they might play out for a hardcover print run of 15,000 copies, it’s impossible to think intelligently about the effects of these economics on an author without serious contemplation of the number of copies sold.

So, fair warning:

 Discussion of Price Elasticity Ahead

The economic law of demand states basically that “if the price of a product increases, the quantity demanded decreases, while if price of the product decreases, its quantity demanded increases.” This price elasticity of demand is most pronounced when it is accompanied by three conditions:

  • the product represents a discretionary purchase rather than a necessity;
  • the product is one out of many choices available to consumers to meet a particular interest or want; and 
  • the product is available to consumers without much marketplace friction, i.e., it can be purchased without significant outlay of travel, shipping, time, or other accompanying expenditure.

With millions of titles available in multiple formats, it is obvious that books meet these conditions about as well as any type of product, for most consumers. And all marketplace friction vanishes completely once a consumer has access to ebooks either through ownership of a Kindle or competitor’s ebook reader or by being able to run a Kindle App on a PC, BlackBerry, iPhone, iPod Touch, or other device.

The result is that readers pay close attention to what they have to pay for books. Many wait for paperback availability of their favorite authors’ titles rather than pay a premium for the opportunity to read those books in hardcover a few months earlier. For those trade paperback copies, the author’s royalty is usually little more than a dollar per copy, far less than half of the average hardcover royalty of $3.90 referenced in the Motoko Rich piece. So that’s one form of price elasticity of demand.

Another kind of price elasticity of demand comes into play where ebook prices are concerned.

The recent Winter 2010 Kindle Nation Citizen Survey showed evidence that Kindle owners have become more price-conscious as a result of the recent ebook pricing controversy and are very resistant to paying more than $9.99 for an ebook: 75 percent of the 1,892 respondents identified with the statement that “I’ll pay over $9.99, but only rarely when I simply must have an ebook.”

As of this morning there are 102,160 titles priced at $10 and up in the U.S. Kindle Store, or about 22 percent of the overall total of 451,317 ebooks in the store. None of those $10-and-up titles are currently ranked among the top 40 Kindle bestsellers, and only four are ranked between 41 and 100. 13 of the top 100 are priced at $9.99.

So, if an author’s royalty is $2.50 for a Kindle book priced at $9.99, and $3.25 for a Kindle book priced at $12.99, let’s do the math. If the book sells 30 percent more copies when priced at $9.99 than it sells when priced at $12.99, the author’s royalties are at break-even and her readership — people might buy her other books — is significantly larger. Indeed, from what I have seen, the sales differential is probably more like 50 to 100 percent, and some of the most successful Kindle authors are making far more than the “few thousand dollars” referenced in Chris’ comment by pricing their books below $9.99.

Of course, the same percentages and competitive-pricing benefits that are available to authors ought to apply to publishers, were it not for the likelihood — evident from the industry sources quoted in Rich’s article and in numerous comments by publishing insiders throughout the recent ebook pricing controversy — that publishers are trying to reverse the Kindle Revolution. As publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin told Rich: “The simplest way to slow down e-books is not to make them too cheap.”

If that’s the case, it also seems likely that an increasing number of those midlist authors — those of us who have to pay close attention to “feeding [our] kids for another month” — will be forced to consider another offer that Amazon has put on the table for us: the possibility of receiving direct royalties of 70% by going “around” the publisher and dealing directly with the Kindle platform for ebooks priced between $2.99 and $9.99.

Curious about Kindle sales numbers?

Monday, June 15, 2009


Curious about Kindle sales numbers?

If so, there has been plenty to chew on in the last few days.

Let’s just establish up front that, in the long run, the most important Kindle sales numbers involve calculations of how many Kindle books — or any other e-books, for that matter — are being purchased and downloaded. Those are the numbers that are going to make a difference to authors, publishers, readers, and booksellers of every variety. For instance, it may be a good thing for Sony that the company has sold XXXX units of its ereaders in Japan, say, or globally. But until I see evidence that publishers and authors are experiencing significant sales of their ebooks to Sony device owners, those hardware unit sales numbers won’t have traction for me.

On the subject of U.S. ebook sales, let me suggest the following very interesting and informative posts and links….

Joe Konrath’s A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing: You may already be familiar with Joe Konrath (or his alter-ego-de-plume Jack Kilborn) via Kindle Nation Daily, but in addition to being a fine author of suspense and horror fiction Joe is engaged very actively in experimenting with and thinking and writing about the world of book publishing from an author’s perspective here in 2009. Joe has shared more information about actual Kindle edition sale and royalties, overall ebook downloads, and his approach to marketing and promotion than any other author writing today, and there’s plenty to learn from what he has to say in his posts Ebooks and Free Books and Amazon Kindle, Oh My; Helping Each Other and Amazon Kindle Numbers.

Morris Rosenthal on Kindle Sales Rankings: On another front, the guy who has done more than any other commentator to parse Amazon Sales Rankings and their meaning over the past decade, author and indie publisher Morris Rosenthal of Foner Books, has turned his attention very useful to the meaning of Kindle Store Sales Rankings in a recent post entitled How Many Kindle eBooks Are Selling Based On Amazon Sales Ranking. Although I believe Morris is off by about 600,000 in speculating that there are about 600,000 Kindles currently in use, his overall calculations and research are very well-founded and they strongly suggest that Joe Konrath and I will soon be joined by hundreds — and eventually thousands — of other authors for whom revenue from Kindle sales alone begins to provide something like a livable income. Morris also makes a fascinating argument that, among those of Amazon’s top bestselling titles that are available both in print and Kindle editions, there is now a 1:1 ration in sales units between the two. When seen in an overall context wherein this ratio moves strongly in favor of print editions as sales numbers decline out the long tail, this model seems generally consistent with Amazon’s recent (and, at the time, stunning) announcement that, looking back over an unspecified historic period, Kindle editions sales had accounted for somewhere between 26 and 35 per cent of all sales when both print and Kindle editions were available. If you want to be present and accounted for as the ebook revolution continues to unfold, I highly recommend you follow Morris’ posts.

Indie Authors and the Kindle Bestseller Lists. Even among bloggers who write about all things Kindle, there is occasional some confusion about, well, all things Kindle. Among those who commented on the above posts by Joe Konrath, one blogger focused on what Joe’s success might mean for self-published authors. (Joe, by the way, is not a self-published author, although he is certainly one who is taking the bull by the horns and restructuring the traditional hierarchical relationship between authors and publishers). Trying to focus in on whether “self-published” authors could earn “a decent living” publishing for the Kindle, the author of the iReaderReview blog asked his readers “Do you think by 2011 self-published authors will be able to hit the Top 25 [in the Kindle Store sales rankings]?”

Not to crow, but it’s worth mentioning here that my self-published guide to the Kindle 1 spent 17 consecutive weeks in the #1 position in the Kindle Store during the Spring and Summer of 2008 before going to paperback in late August, and my Complete User’s Guide To the Amazing Amazon Kindle 2 spent some time in the top 15 when it came out earlier this year. There have, along the way, been other self-published titles in the Kindle top 25, and they have not only been books about the Kindle. But while it will continue to be interesting to plot the progress of individual titles, I suspect the more interesting sea changes will be those involving the kind of publishing perestroika that I write about in my Beyond the Literary-Industrial Complex: How Authors and Publishers Are Using the Amazon Kindle and Other New Technologies to Unleash a 21-Century Indie Movement of Readers and Writers, including its chapter “Rebel Distribution and Amazon’s Marketplace of the Mind: You Need a Publisher Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle.” As these sea changes evolve, the “self-published” label will cease to exist in any meaningful way except inasmuch as it means “smart,” and will be replaced a kinder, gentler sense of “indie author” and “indie publisher” that is embraced by readers, by authors who previously had chosen traditional publishing routes, and, of course, by the DIY renegades among us.

Curious about Kindle sales numbers?


Curious about Kindle sales numbers?

If so, there has been plenty to chew on in the last few days.

Let’s just establish up front that, in the long run, the most important Kindle sales numbers involve calculations of how many Kindle books — or any other e-books, for that matter — are being purchased and downloaded. Those are the numbers that are going to make a difference to authors, publishers, readers, and booksellers of every variety. For instance, it may be a good thing for Sony that the company has sold XXXX units of its ereaders in Japan, say, or globally. But until I see evidence that publishers and authors are experiencing significant sales of their ebooks to Sony device owners, those hardware unit sales numbers won’t have traction for me.

On the subject of U.S. ebook sales, let me suggest the following very interesting and informative posts and links….

Joe Konrath’s A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing: You may already be familiar with Joe Konrath (or his alter-ego-de-plume Jack Kilborn) via Kindle Nation Daily, but in addition to being a fine author of suspense and horror fiction Joe is engaged very actively in experimenting with and thinking and writing about the world of book publishing from an author’s perspective here in 2009. Joe has shared more information about actual Kindle edition sale and royalties, overall ebook downloads, and his approach to marketing and promotion than any other author writing today, and there’s plenty to learn from what he has to say in his posts Ebooks and Free Books and Amazon Kindle, Oh My; Helping Each Other and Amazon Kindle Numbers.

Morris Rosenthal on Kindle Sales Rankings: On another front, the guy who has done more than any other commentator to parse Amazon Sales Rankings and their meaning over the past decade, author and indie publisher Morris Rosenthal of Foner Books, has turned his attention very useful to the meaning of Kindle Store Sales Rankings in a recent post entitled How Many Kindle eBooks Are Selling Based On Amazon Sales Ranking. Although I believe Morris is off by about 600,000 in speculating that there are about 600,000 Kindles currently in use, his overall calculations and research are very well-founded and they strongly suggest that Joe Konrath and I will soon be joined by hundreds — and eventually thousands — of other authors for whom revenue from Kindle sales alone begins to provide something like a livable income. Morris also makes a fascinating argument that, among those of Amazon’s top bestselling titles that are available both in print and Kindle editions, there is now a 1:1 ration in sales units between the two. When seen in an overall context wherein this ratio moves strongly in favor of print editions as sales numbers decline out the long tail, this model seems generally consistent with Amazon’s recent (and, at the time, stunning) announcement that, looking back over an unspecified historic period, Kindle editions sales had accounted for somewhere between 26 and 35 per cent of all sales when both print and Kindle editions were available. If you want to be present and accounted for as the ebook revolution continues to unfold, I highly recommend you follow Morris’ posts.

Indie Authors and the Kindle Bestseller Lists. Even among bloggers who write about all things Kindle, there is occasional some confusion about, well, all things Kindle. Among those who commented on the above posts by Joe Konrath, one blogger focused on what Joe’s success might mean for self-published authors. (Joe, by the way, is not a self-published author, although he is certainly one who is taking the bull by the horns and restructuring the traditional hierarchical relationship between authors and publishers). Trying to focus in on whether “self-published” authors could earn “a decent living” publishing for the Kindle, the author of the iReaderReview blog asked his readers “Do you think by 2011 self-published authors will be able to hit the Top 25 [in the Kindle Store sales rankings]?”

Not to crow, but it’s worth mentioning here that my self-published guide to the Kindle 1 spent 17 consecutive weeks in the #1 position in the Kindle Store during the Spring and Summer of 2008 before going to paperback in late August, and my Complete User’s Guide To the Amazing Amazon Kindle 2 spent some time in the top 15 when it came out earlier this year. There have, along the way, been other self-published titles in the Kindle top 25, and they have not only been books about the Kindle. But while it will continue to be interesting to plot the progress of individual titles, I suspect the more interesting sea changes will be those involving the kind of publishing perestroika that I write about in my Beyond the Literary-Industrial Complex: How Authors and Publishers Are Using the Amazon Kindle and Other New Technologies to Unleash a 21-Century Indie Movement of Readers and Writers, including its chapter “Rebel Distribution and Amazon’s Marketplace of the Mind: You Need a Publisher Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle.” As these sea changes evolve, the “self-published” label will cease to exist in any meaningful way except inasmuch as it means “smart,” and will be replaced a kinder, gentler sense of “indie author” and “indie publisher” that is embraced by readers, by authors who previously had chosen traditional publishing routes, and, of course, by the DIY renegades among us.

Publishing Perestroika in the Age of the Kindle: You Need a Publisher Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle


Curious about Kindle sales numbers?

If so, there has been plenty to chew on in the last few days.

Let’s just establish up front that, in the long run, the most important Kindle sales numbers involve calculations of how many Kindle books — or any other e-books, for that matter — are being purchased and downloaded. Those are the numbers that are going to make a difference to authors, publishers, readers, and booksellers of every variety. For instance, it may be a good thing for Sony that the company has sold XXXX units of its ereaders in Japan, say, or globally. But until I see evidence that publishers and authors are experiencing significant sales of their ebooks to Sony device owners, those hardware unit sales numbers won’t have traction for me.

On the subject of U.S. ebook sales, let me suggest the following very interesting and informative posts and links….

Joe Konrath’s A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing: You may already be familiar with Joe Konrath (or his alter-ego-de-plume Jack Kilborn) via Kindle Nation Daily, but in addition to being a fine author of suspense and horror fiction Joe is engaged very actively in experimenting with and thinking and writing about the world of book publishing from an author’s perspective here in 2009. Joe has shared more information about actual Kindle edition sale and royalties, overall ebook downloads, and his approach to marketing and promotion than any other author writing today, and there’s plenty to learn from what he has to say in his posts Ebooks and Free Books and Amazon Kindle, Oh My; Helping Each Other and Amazon Kindle Numbers.

Morris Rosenthal on Kindle Sales Rankings: On another front, the guy who has done more than any other commentator to parse Amazon Sales Rankings and their meaning over the past decade, author and indie publisher Morris Rosenthal of Foner Books, has turned his attention very useful to the meaning of Kindle Store Sales Rankings in a recent post entitled How Many Kindle eBooks Are Selling Based On Amazon Sales Ranking. Although I believe Morris is off by about 600,000 in speculating that there are about 600,000 Kindles currently in use, his overall calculations and research are very well-founded and they strongly suggest that Joe Konrath and I will soon be joined by hundreds — and eventually thousands — of other authors for whom revenue from Kindle sales alone begins to provide something like a livable income. Morris also makes a fascinating argument that, among those of Amazon’s top bestselling titles that are available both in print and Kindle editions, there is now a 1:1 ration in sales units between the two. When seen in an overall context wherein this ratio moves strongly in favor of print editions as sales numbers decline out the long tail, this model seems generally consistent with Amazon’s recent (and, at the time, stunning) announcement that, looking back over an unspecified historic period, Kindle editions sales had accounted for somewhere between 26 and 35 per cent of all sales when both print and Kindle editions were available. If you want to be present and accounted for as the ebook revolution continues to unfold, I highly recommend you follow Morris’ posts.

Indie Authors and the Kindle Bestseller Lists. Even among bloggers who write about all things Kindle, there is occasional some confusion about, well, all things Kindle. Among those who commented on the above posts by Joe Konrath, one blogger focused on what Joe’s success might mean for self-published authors. (Joe, by the way, is not a self-published author, although he is certainly one who is taking the bull by the horns and restructuring the traditional hierarchical relationship between authors and publishers). Trying to focus in on whether “self-published” authors could earn “a decent living” publishing for the Kindle, the author of the iReaderReview blog asked his readers “Do you think by 2011 self-published authors will be able to hit the Top 25 [in the Kindle Store sales rankings]?”

Not to crow, but it’s worth mentioning here that my self-published guide to the Kindle 1 spent 17 consecutive weeks in the #1 position in the Kindle Store during the Spring and Summer of 2008 before going to paperback in late August, and my Complete User’s Guide To the Amazing Amazon Kindle 2 spent some time in the top 15 when it came out earlier this year. There have, along the way, been other self-published titles in the Kindle top 25, and they have not only been books about the Kindle. But while it will continue to be interesting to plot the progress of individual titles, I suspect the more interesting sea changes will be those involving the kind of publishing perestroika that I write about in my Beyond the Literary-Industrial Complex: How Authors and Publishers Are Using the Amazon Kindle and Other New Technologies to Unleash a 21-Century Indie Movement of Readers and Writers, including its chapter “Rebel Distribution and Amazon’s Marketplace of the Mind: You Need a Publisher Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle.” As these sea changes evolve, the “self-published” label will cease to exist in any meaningful way except inasmuch as it means “smart,” and will be replaced a kinder, gentler sense of “indie author” and “indie publisher” that is embraced by readers, by authors who previously had chosen traditional publishing routes, and, of course, by the DIY renegades among us.

June 15 deadline approaching for $4,000 Narrative Prize

The $4,000 Narrative Prize is awarded annually for the best short story, novel excerpt, poem, or work of literary nonfiction published by a new or emerging writer in Narrative.

The deadline for entries for each year’s award is June 15.

The winner is announced each September, and the prize is awarded in October. Notices of the award, citing the winner’s name and the title and genre of the winning piece, will be placed in prominent literary periodicals. Each winner will also be cited in an ongoing listing in Narrative. The prize will be given to the best work published each year in Narrative by a new or emerging writer, as judged by the magazine’s editors. In some years, the prize may be divided between winners, when more than one work merits the award.

Click here to submit your work. (See our Guidelines.) Or go to http://narrativemagazine.com/node/421

Narrative Prize Winners

Scribd Beta DIY Launch for eBook Authors and Publishers Looks Viable


San Francisco-based startup Scribd has just launched the beta version of a potentially exciting new opportunity for authors, publishers, and readers. I hesitated before including the DIY label in the subject line because it may be misleading, given that Scribd has done some business with major publishers such as Random House, according to today’s New York Times piece, “Scribd Invites Writers to Upload Their Work and Name Their Price.” But Scribd’s roots are all about document-sharing and a Youtube-like DIY approach for those who understand that uploading is the new downloading.

Scribd stands out among innovators in the arena of connecting digital text authors and publishers with digital readers, because (1) it offers some compelling reasons for faith that it could actually work; and (2) it is not Amazon.

By “actually work,” I mean that it could actually lead to significant sales and exposure for ebook authors and other content providers. By “not Amazon,” I am getting at the notion that, if it proves viable, Scribd could actually provide authors and publishers with an effective counterbalance in a marketplace where Amazon currently threatens to establish such hegemony that the rest of us could end up feeling as if any effort to influence pricing, royalties, sales, and important issues such as Digital Rights Management (DRM) and copyright is utterly ineffectual.

Scribd will allow authors and publishers to upload their content, establish their own approach to DRM, and keep 80 per cent of the proceeds from content sales. That’s not a bad start, and these claims from the Scribd site go even further:

  • “Tens of millions of people visit Scribd every month; your work could be discovered by the world.
  • Every document on Scribd gets frequently indexed by Google, which means better audience targeting for your work.
  • Your documents will be viewed the way it was meant to be – with its unique fonts, graphics, and other details.
  • Check out detailed stats on viewers, ratings, downloads, and more.
  • Take your document anywhere; just copy the embed code and insert it into a blog or website.”

The site also provides user-friendly uploading tools for Mac as well as PC users.

Naturally, I’ll want to have my cake and eat it too: to upload content to Scribd and to be able to read it on my Kindle. No doubt there will be a number of ways to do this, and we’ll be posting more about them in the future.