As a new resident of New York City, I am learning how to be safe when I walk the streets. In California, pedestrians reign — that’s not how it works in New York. Recently, a colleague warned me about looking left and right when crossing the street, even when I have the right of way — “you are going to get killed, it happens all of the time.” I argued that I had rights — he said, “get over it.” Read more…
With GalleyCat posting the Association of American Publisher’s net sales revenue figures on Friday showing eBook sales surpassing hardcover for the first time, we have continuing evidence that readers are rapidly shifting from paper to screens. Some readers decry the loss of the “book experience” but we’ve long been committed digital first readers—the reading experience as a minimally intermediated flow between written word and understanding brain gets closer to seamless with digital books. The mobile phone and table interestingly are Read more…
There’s a famous adage: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. When we’re creating eBooks there are some design elements we can’t control — the most important of which is text size. One of the hallmarks of eBooks is that readers can resize the text to suit their needs. For readers like me, this is great; I prefer to my eBook text is just a bit bigger than usual. Read more…
Computer hardware follows a predictable path: it gets lighter, simpler and more elegant. The first commercially available computer weighed one ton and the first portable computer, the Compaq Portable, weighed 28 pounds. The Apple Air weighs 2.5 lbs., is more elegant and offers access to tens of thousands of features — compared to a handful in the original Compaq. Like the weight of a bike is to an enjoyable ride or a lighter suit case is to mobility, the weight Read more…
Yesterday, author Andrew Hyde wrote a blog post titled “Amazon’s markup of digital delivery to indie authors is ~129,000%.” Hyde had discovered — the hard way — a clause in Kindle Direct Publishing that stipulates a charge of $.15/MB for downloads of books from KDP. To those authors familiar with KDP — or ePublishing platform creators who have spent years struggling with arcane distribution terms — this charge comes as no surprise. To a new author it could seem like Read more…
EPublishing represents a vast opportunity for content holders—if you have a Website with traffic and articles and reader eyeballs, you’ve probably got what it takes to be an exceptional digital publisher. Under the purview of Michael Wolf, GigaOm realized that opportunity yesterday when it launched GigaOm Books; a digital-only publishing effort that went to market with five titles, which they used Vook to create. GigaOm’s a perfect candidate for digital publishing: They have a trusted brand, smart, agile writers, an Read more…
by Joey O’Connor If you are a first-time author or small publisher and you’ve worked hard to complete your very first Vook, you may be scratching your head a bit and saying, “Cool…now what?” Unless you have an established audience of thousands of people following your blog or thousands of dollars to throw into marketing or thousands of hours to spend finding the most strategic way to get your Vook into the hands of readers, you’re not alone. People, time Read more…