“Lovers of print are simply confusing the plate for the food.”
― Douglas Adams
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Amazon going after short shorts
*sigh* Amazon, I really mean you no ill will but you are really working hard to be a dick. ~ eP
Today I received an e-mail from Amazon about one of my short stories (the shortest one I have ever written). The email was as follows:
Hello,
During a quality assurance review of your KDP catalog we have found that the following book(s) are extremely short and may create a poor reading experience and do not meet our content quality expectations:
<Name of Short>
In the best interest of Kindle customers, we remove titles from sale that may create a poor customer experience. Content that is less than 2,500 words is often disappointing to our customers and does not provide an enjoyable reading experience.
We ask that you fix the above book(s), as well as all of your catalog’s affected books, with additional content that is both unique and related to your book. Once you have ensured your book(s) would create a good customer experience, re-submit them for publishing within 5 business days. If your books have not been corrected by that time, they will be removed from sale in the Kindle Store. If the updates require more time, please unpublish your books.
This is causing some lively debate online. What are your thoughts?
Value of Book recommendations
According to data from Bowker presented by the company’s vice president of publishing services Kelly Gallagher at the Digital Book World Discoverability and Marketing:
- Andrew Gelman of Columbia University writes in The New York Times: Despite the large number of acquaintances, most Americans know just 10 to 25 people well enough to trust them.
- Almost half of book purchasing decisions on Amazon were made before a customer visited the Amazon site … They talk with their friends just like we do, they listen to the views of those they respect just like we do, they get together with like minded people, just like we do — they use Google as a 6th sense just like we do. Source
- Family and friends are the primary source of book discovery for Americans 16 and older, especially so for suburban (66%) and urban residents (66%). Some 60% of rural residents say they get book recommendations from family and friends. Similarly, city dwellers (25%) and suburbanites (24%) are more likely than rural residents (18%) to have gotten recommendations from book stores they visit. Source
- Number 1 way online shoppers discover new books: in-person, personal recommendations (~15% of new books discovered this way).
“We’re shifting our platform more and more to the digital side – PS4 will be similar to PS Vita in that every game will be available as a digital download, and some will also be available as a disc,” he said. “Because of the flexibility of the digital distribution scheme, we can have more small games that might be free or available for a couple of dollars, or different services like free-to-play or subscription models.
“As more and more services and contents become available digitally, we’ll have more of an option to create attractive packages. So hypothetically we can look at different models – like a cable TV company. We could have gold, silver or platinum levels of membership, something like that. We can do subscription services when we have more content – especially now that we have the Gaikai technology available.
“With one subscription you have access to thousands of games – that’s our dream.”
Shuhei Yoshida, President of Sony’s Worldwide Studios for Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
Look for console games to begin to publishing more like books and comics with smaller, cheaper games released more frequently rather than large blockbuster movie style all or nothing releases. Video games, TV, Movies, Music, and Books continue to march toward a single content stream that acts like a utility that we expect to have full access to just like out phone, water and electricity. ~ eP
Bindworx.com could be mecca for fan fiction authors
At Bindworx.com consumers can not only purchase eBooks in full, by chapter, page or paragraph but also drag and drop content portions from different publications into a new, personalised compilation with maximum value from the first ‘page’ to the last.
For a truly personalised creation, enriched by their imagination, customers can upload their own multi-media content and interweave it with pre-published and licensed blog content.
Among consumers who listened to music on Pandora and other free music-streaming services, 41 percent reported that owning music was important to them; in fact, many free streamers attributed buying more downloads to their discovery on a radio or via an on-demand service.
The NPD Group in a recent press release about their Annual Music Study 2012
…but what is the radio of books? Easy - Libraries. Think about that publishers who still don’t sell ebooks to libraries. ~ eP
I woke up with 8,058 books in my nook library: The Case of Schrodinger’s eBook
So here is the question: If you have 8,058 ebooks on your ereader that you never intend to read - and they cost the publisher $0 and the author was never going to get a royalty for them in the first place - did a crime actually take place? Do these ebooks actually exist or are they just literary packing peanuts? What if this person reads Carl Sagan’s Cosmos soley because it showed up unexpectedly and then seeks out Sagan’s other work legitimately in print because of it? Is this now marketing? What if this person decides to rent Girl With A Dragon Tattoo from Netflix because of this? Is this now promotional?
Before the torrent download none of these works may have even been in the consciousness of the reader. Since the download the latent potential for a positive commercial impact has been increased 8,058 times. Withing this torrent file the infinite vastness of the internet that competes with a book like Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 for attention shrank to just 8,057 competitors. For this reader has this torrent just become one of the greatest book discovery engines available today? ~ eP
I torrented a kindle library final and I had no idea how much was in it. Wow what, I could never read all these books in a lifetime. Like I have my own personal library. I checked my nook and it has about two thousand of them on it and they all work, I feel like I’m in a dream…
Unless we embrace the future, the sector will for sure fall behind, overtaken by more forward-looking and dynamic parts of the world; overtaken by those who can look ahead and grasp the future. Then we will let down our economy, our people, and our cultural heritage.
Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda
In Europe ebook sales make up less than 2% of total book sales. Many factors go into this including a large part of fear - not only fear of change but also fear of letting US based retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble take over their book industry. On top of that add excessive VAT taxes and confusing and uncertain rights issues that can make book inaccessible depending on what country they are in. The time is ripe for a risk taker in Europe but with the economic crisis straining the European Union and laws on commerce and taxes anything but certain is anyone courageous enough? ~eP
The Return of the Serial Novel (Wall Street Journal)
As television moves to subscription services like Netflix and Hulu it is becoming closer to novels and movies, consumed in single sittings one episode after another. One thing that a subscription model can do for novels is to allow just the opposite - the episodic distribution of the serial novel. Readers herded onto sites like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, and LibraryThing have the opportunity to collectively share in the gradual telling of stories and the collective reveal of plot twists much like the nation follows and shares television shows. Serial novels allow for entire nations of synced readers to share in “who shot JR” moments. All of us can now morn together events like the death of Beth in Little Women or jump collectively at the end of a Stephen King chapter. TV series-like reading with regular weekly release of chapters can make subscription book retail models more attractive and in a world where new books can take as long as a year to create a sequel can bring new product to market faster than ever before. ~ eP
Saga No. 12, Gay Sex, iOS apps, and Apple reaping what they sow
Comic book fans downloading comics through iOS apps for a time could not download issue No. 12 of Saga, Brian K. Vaughan‘s critically acclaimed series with Image Comics. This was due to two postage stamp size images of gay sex.
It turns out comiXology had told Vaughan the images would not fly at Apple and would likely get the issue rejected but had never actually heard from Apple. In the heat of the ensuing shit storm among comic fans and censorship groupies Apple let comiXology CEO David Steinberger know their opinion of all the sudden attention and Mr. Steinberger was forced to issue a clarification.
But here is what the take away for Apple should be:
If publishers are assuming you are a censorship happy authoritarian dictatorship and content creator fear of your arbitrary but draconian response is so great that they would rather self censor than chance the wasted time, effort, and expense of guessing your mood on that day lest they be sent to an iOS gulag, then perhaps - just perhaps - you may have a much bigger branding problem than you think.
Telling people what is for their own good with regard to technology where ultimate functionality is the product the customer is looking for guarantees the delivery of said functionality . But telling people there is content you don’t want them to have when all they want to use their device for is to look for content - you are simply telling your customer ‘no’ every time they experience your brand.
The “functionality” of the content business is search and access. The iBookstore as a searchable ecommerce site is all but useless and Apple’s restrictive and arbitrary content rules mean everyone assumes Apple does not provide access to as much content as apps run on Android devices. From a brand standpoint you have gone from “what the cool kids are using” to “your parents saying you can’t see an R rated movie”. Is there anything more uncool than that?
Methinks the Emperor is beginning to show a little too much skin …and if you are not careful that will get you kicked out of the app store.
SHOWROOMING BOOKS: Adapting to the ways people shop
Brick and mortar retailers have to begin reacting and adapting to an ecommerce world and make things like showrooming a feature and not a bug.
There are ways that BN could make price comparisons a feature, not a bug. Rather than use corporate resources to keep up with Amazon (or others) on price, BN could introduce an in-store search function with an “instant coupon”. Doing so could give BN the ability to keep the price-sensitive customer without discounting the entire store.
