Lost Symbol – More in Kindle – Clarification

So my earlier post about Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol selling more in Kindle than print needs clarification.  Yes, The Lost Symbol spent more time on Amazon’s print bestseller list but this was due to the print edition being available for preorders, something that was not offered with the Kindle version.

This is also the only reason that the book was selling more in Kindle than print.  When Amazon made this conclusion they excluded the print’s preorders.

The Lost Symbol – Dan Brown (More in Kindle than Print?)

For all those Dan Brown non-lovers (“haters” is such a strong word) I’m sorry but I had to post something about The Lost Symbol. I must admit that I’m not a fan myself and only made it partway through The da Vinci Code.

This book is the number one seller in the biggest bookstore in the world – Amazon – in both Kindle and print formats. Forget the fact that it has only received 3 1/2 stars from reviewers, anyone who loved The da Vinci Code (80 million copies sold) is going to have to read the sequel.

So – back to my main thought – there’s an article that looks into the question of The Lost Symbol possibly selling better on the Kindle than in print. According to Amazon’s rankings yesterday, the Kindle version was outselling the print version.

The sky is not falling yet – while this book may be the “first electronic book blockbuster” the Kindle is not outstripping print yet. There are not enough Kindles out there.

And while one set of Amazon’s rankings show favor to electronic, its other set gives glory to the print. The hardcover of The Lost Symbol has been in Amazon’s top 100 bestsellers for the past 150 days. The Kindle version – only in the top 100 for 2 days.

Main point – the electronic age is coming up fast – but we already knew that.

Dear Amazon, your “hypocrisy is breathtaking.” Sincerely, The Author’s Guild

On Wednesday the Author’s Guild accused Amazon of trying to control the e-book industry by ”routinely selling e-books at a loss.” Which the Guild acknowledges won’t be the case for long: ”Eventually, when enough readers are locked in to its Kindle, everyone in the industry expects Amazon to squeeze publishers and authors.”

This statement was made in response to Amazon’s claim (in a filed brief in the Google case) which “claim[s] that someone else might gain a monopoly in bookselling.” (Author’s Guild)

Google Books hopes to archive millions of titles.  There is a lot of conflict in the industry about whether this is a good thing (I think it is for the public) or whether Google will be eating up too large a piece of the public domain pie.  Then there’s the question of “orphan works” in which Google would go ahead and digitize if they can’t find the copyright holder.  For Google’s take on their settlement with the Author’s Guild, click here.

For a breakdown of Amazon’s brief (which isn’t actually brief at 49 pages), click here or here (the latter offers Google’s response: “‘The Google Books settlement is injecting more competition into the digital books space, so it’s understandable why our competitors might fight hard to prevent more competition,’ said Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker in an email.”).

The cut-off date for authors to opt out of Google Books (which means they do not want their books digitized by Google) was Friday, September 4.

-Kristina

Ahoy, matey! Ye be illegally downloading protected content!

Arggghhhh! I'll be partin' you from your intellectual property now!

Yesterday FreakBits  shared a list of “The 10 Most Pirated eBooks of 2009″.  I’m not exactly sure where/how they gathered this information, but thought I’d share it anyway. 

According to the post, “All (e)books in this list were downloaded between 100.000 and 250.000 times.”  Yikes, that’s a lot of lost sales if it’s true.

Four of the books on the list have to do with sex/nakedness (in all fairness, one is about nude photography, which I wouldn’t consider to be “about sex”).  And, yes, the complete Twilight Saga made the list.

If you could/were inclined to illegally download an ebook (not suggesting you do… that’s ILLEGAL), what would it be?  I’d probably download some of those stupidly expensive textbooks that are required for class.

-Kristina

Sony’s Wireless Reader

Yesterday Sony unveiled it’s new wireless e-reader, a step up in their competition against Amazon.  Although it’s priced at $399, it boasts a touchscreen (seven-inch) and will work on At&T’s 3G network.  Even better, you’re not relegated to purchasing books from one place (read: Amazon)!

Some interesting parts of their new plan:

Indie booksellers will be able to sell e-content in the EPUB format and (hopefully) by this Christmas season will be able to sell Sony e-readers in their stores.

They will be partnering with libraries that will allow readers to “rent digitized books from their local library for free by downloading available e-books for 21 days.” (Publisher’s Lunch)

A new social networking site WordsMoveMe.com (takes a few seconds to load, but kind of a nice concept, even if it’s not entirely well-executed–maybe you can use it to look for a literary tatoo… check out the words that have moved others.)

Oh, and I almost forgot… if you preorder the new reader you’ll get a free copy of Dan Brown’s new book.

Thoughts?

P.S. You can go here, here, or here for more articles/editorials about the new Sony Reader!  And for a play-by-play of the conference: here.

-Kristina

Kindle Cage Match

The Challengers

Ok, not actually a CAGE match, but it caught your attention didn’t it?

Actually touted as the “Tour d’ World Championship Cup Open Ultimate Decathalon Challenge Cage Match,” the folks at Green Apple Books have forced the Kindle into a showdown with actual books.  Go here to see the first 2 of 10 tongue-in-cheek videos. 

So… what does the Kindle do? … It does what it does.

Which does NOT include selling books back for cash (where’s the book, indeed), nor is it very easy to hand sell with it’s warning of electrical shock.

-Kristina

Ads in E-Books

Ad Age recently ran a story about advertising in e-books, which I found fascinating.  I’ve often wondered why book publishers didn’t try to sell ads in their titles, especially huge properties.  I had pretty much just decided that there was some sort of ethical dilemma going on in publishers’ minds regarding literature and advertising (is my naivety showing?) or perhaps they couldn’t convince authors to sell-out to advertisers. 

But now, it seems as if ads are finding their way into our realm.  While the ads are not “in” the books (as in banner ads above the text, or even (gasp!) product placement within the story), it seems as if sponsoring a book is becoming acceptable.  Here are some highlights from the article:

• “While the big players figure out how to wrap advertising in and around digital books, a few start ups are already merging the two,”
• “Wowio is giving readers several entrees to its catalog of e-books, allowing them to pay for the books, which start at 99 cents per title, or download the free advertiser-sponsored PDF versions.”
• “The first page of a sponsored book reads: “ITaggit is proud to sponsor this e-book for [registered user]” and includes a link to iTaggit’s website. There is no additional advertising in the book.”
• Other Wowio advertisers: Verizon Wireless and jeweler H. Stern
• ” ‘It was an experiment. This was a tactical opportunity and a way of doing something creative at a reasonable cost,’ Mr. Stern said, adding he would consider using e-books again as a promotional vehicle.”
• ” ‘They’re just exploring all the multiple ways you can monetize content, so you can offer a customer a full-priced book at $9.99 or you can offer them a half-priced book that’s partially underwritten by advertisers,’ said Mark Coker, founder of e-book seller Smashwords.”

-Kristina

More on E-Book Timing (and stupid quote of the day)

In relation to my earlier post about delaying e-book releases… today The NY Times covered the issue, listing a number of other publisher who are delaying, or at least considering delaying, best-selling authors and titles as e-books.

Probably in the stupidest quote ever, Mike Shatzkin, the founder of the Idea Logical Company (a digital issues consultant) said, “People who read e-books don’t buy physical books, and people who buy physical books don’t buy e-books.”

I mean, c’mon… before they were e-book readers they were p-book readers and if they can’t get their hands (their e-hands?) on a digital copy and they want it bad enough, they’ll shell out the extra cash.  It’s a question of supply and demand.  It’s like saying people who read paperback don’t read hard cover and vice versa.  Am I wrong here?

I DO find it interesting that this takes some power away from Amazon.  When publishers refuse to make a product available to the seller they are directly impacting the industry in ways they didn’t before.  Even MORE interesting (to me at least, since I didn’t know this)… “For now, Amazon is taking a loss on each e-book it sells because it generally pays publishers half of the hardcover list price on new releases. So publishers who delay releasing e-books run the risk of losing sales, for which they are now getting higher margins than they are on print books” (NYT).

I’m having trouble in my head right now distinguishing whether the numbers add up to make it matter to publishers.  I mean, if they know they can sell a million hard cover copies will the loss of the e-book sales hurt them when they know the $9.99 price point will still be there a few months down the road?  I doubt it.

-Kristina

Delaying the E-Book, How Publishers Can Get Around Amazon’s Pricing

Sourcebooks is getting lots of attention for delaying the e-book release of one of their big YA titles.  (Kaleb Nation’s BRAN HAMBRIC: The Farfield Curse)  They’re said to be waiting at lease six months after the hard cover release before allowing the book into e-format. 

Dominique Raccah, Sourcebooks CEO, says, “Hardcover books have an audience, and we shouldn’t cannibalize it …it doesn’t make sense for a new book to be valued at $9.99.”

Agent Robert Gottlieb at Trident Media Group (no relation to the above mentioned title) has said that he “doesn’t allow any of his authors’ books to be published simultaneously as an e-book when [he] can prevent it.” He tells the Wall Street Journal, “It’s no different then releasing a DVD on the same day that a new movie is released in the movie theaters. Why would you do that?”

Sourcebooks, however, is not anti-e-books… they recently allowed a number of their romance titles to be available from Smashwords, the digital publisher.  These digital romances are priced at $6.99 and are available in nine different ebook formats.

I think Sourcebooks is doing a good job of taking a stance against Amazon’s $9.99 price point.  While I understand the consumer oriented pricing from Amazon’s point of view, as a publisher it’s SO costly to lose the additional revenue from a brand new title.  For a highly anticipated title/author, it seems to make sense to delay the e-book and try to make as much on the hardcover as possible–people will pay the additional $5-10 in order to read the next Stephanie Meyer (or insert more high-selling literary author here) as soon as it’s out. 

Your thoughts?

-Kristina

E-Readers in Hotels

Well – it’s no King James Bible in the nightstand drawer, but certain hotels have now started offering guests the use of Kindle’s and Sony Readers.  The Epic Hotel in Miami and Gansevoort hotels are two, specifically, that have adopted the practice.

The procedure differs depending on where you go – Gansevoort has it on a first come, first serve basis.  At Epic, the reader comes with several excerpts and one complimentary title but if you want to read more you’ll have to pay.  Not only will it cost you the price of the book but a small download fee as well. (Of course, Epic will donate the download fee to charity as part of their “Epic Page Turner” program to promote reading).

 Bottom Line? Cool. Great. Now, if I could only afford to stay in the hotels that do offer guest e-readers. (Read the full story on Crave)