Author of The Four-Hour Workweek Timothy Ferris offers his own detailed analysis of how most authors currently make money from their books, and includes some sensible advice for those considering their options. In his case, though his book has ranked high in the Kindle store and is one of the ten most highlighted Kindle books, on his end of 2009 royalty statement, ebooks comprised a grand total of 1.6 percent of units sold. He does know people who publish digital-only quite successfully–but “the downside is that you need to be a world-class marketer and understand affiliate and CPA advertising better […]
eNews
Lippman’s eBook Bestseller
Harper gets WSJ coverage for noting that in its first five days on sale, Laura Lippman’s I’D KNOW YOU ANYWHERE has sold more ebooks (4,739) than hardcovers (4,000). Frank Albanese says, “This is the first book of ours of any consequence that has sold more e-books than hardcovers in the first week. What we’re seeing now is that if a book gets a good review, it gets a faster lift on the digital side than it does on the physical side because people who have e-readers can buy and read it immediately.”WSJ While bloggers will certainly make something drastic or […]
Another Cheap Color “Reader” On the Way, with Kobo Store: I Got Mine from Sharper Image
It’s official: the batch of knockoff eInk ereaders that never appeared this spring and summer has turned itself into a wave of faux-tablet LCD color readers landing this fall. We reported earlier on the two models headed for CVS and Copia’s repositioning of their not-yet-released line, and now Sharper Image has announced their own version of the same concept, the Literati Reader. With a $159 price tag, it’s slated for release in national chains including Best Buy, Macy’s, Kohl’s, and Bed Bath & Beyond. (The units actually come from MerchSource; the Sharper Image brand is just that–a licensable name.) Like […]
Wylie’s Odyssey: Behind the Deal and Across the Business
Following yesterday’s announcement of the resolution of the dispute between Random House and The Wylie Agency over the electronic rights to 13 titles published by Andrew Wylie’s start-up Odyssey Editions (see below for the full text), the publisher has said publicly that the Wylie Agency was not offered preferential terms and the deal is “consistent with agreement we’ve reached with other literary agencies for other backlist e-book rights.” And indeed, sources confirm to us that the royalty rates agreed to between Random House and the Wylie agency are no greater than what the publisher has agreed to for other titles […]
Random House Tames The Jackalope; Wylie Drops Amazon Titles
The company released this statement from ceo Markus Dohle on Tuesday afternoon: “We are pleased to announce that The Wylie Agency and Random House have resolved our differences over the disputed Random House titles which have been included in the Odyssey Editions e-book publishing program. These titles are being removed from that program and taken off-sale. “We have agreed that Random House shall be the exclusive e-book publisher of these titles for those territories in which Random House U.S. controls their rights. The titles soon will be available for sale on a non-exclusive basis through all of Random House’s current e-book customers. Random House is resuming normal business […]
eNews Today: More Cheap Readers/Tablets; Open Textbooks Rise; Connecting People Through Books
On their web site, Borders is taking pre-orders for two units from Micro Cruz in the mode of the recently-panned Pandigital unit. One is color touch screen ereader that looks like a tablet; the other adds an Android operating system to actually work as a cheap tablet.Borders Also taking the cheap-looks-like-a-tablet route is drugstore chain CVS. According to advertising materials found by Engadget they intend to sell a different 7-inch color ereader for $179 from LookBook. The store for the reader is powered by Kobo. It will be interesting to see whether this new wave of machines expands the market […]