I’ve been a huge proponent of the Amazon Kindle, but today I attended a class about the Barnes and Noble Nook, which is a slightly different platform. Less a dedicated ereader and more a mini-tablet, the Nook uses the Android operating system. Here’s what B&N rep Mark Hollingsworth had to share about publishing for this device:
PubIt! Is the new Barnes and Noble online, digital self-publishing platform. Independent publishers and authors can upload their ebooks and make them available for sale on bn.com.
Uploading and selling is a 3-step process through pubit.com. Setup an account, upload your ebook and cover art, let More >
Russell C. Conner spoke on ebooks today, revealing some of his personal experience with the format. He’s actually found his self-published ebooks outselling his hard copies by 8-to-1!
The two C’s of electronic media:
- Convenience—it must be easy to download and customizable
- Cost—the price must be lower than its physical counterpart
Compare, for instance, the price of a book at Amazon:
- Retail hardback: $27.99
- Audiobook: $26.39
- Discounted Price: $14.50
- Kindle Price: $9.99
Even if you sell your ebook for $6.99, your royalty per book is $2.45—much more than you’d get through a physical book!
How to set-up a quick-and-easy ebook:
- Use Times New Roman, no bigger than 16pt font
- Use center, bold, More >
I’m as giddy as can be.
A few days ago I received an email from American Airlines, notifying me that my AAdvantage miles were about to expire. I shrugged. I haven’t flown American for years (read: I just had three kids in a row). Plus, I had tried cashing out my airline miles before for a free ticket, seat upgrade, hotel discount, etc, but found it VERY frustrating. It seemed every option had so many strings attached that it was never worth it.
Nonetheless, I went to their site to see if there was anything I could do. They suggested I pay More >
Compiled these statistics about ebooks, reading, the Amazon Kindle and the Apple iPad the other day for a project and thought I’d share:
Ebooks
- Ebook sales grew 177% last year. Source
- 53% of those who buy ebook readers state that they now read more books than they did before. Source
- 51% of e-reader owners increased their purchases of e-books in the past year.
- 9% of consumers increased their purchases of hardcover books in the past year.
- 2.6 Average number of books read by e-reader owners in a month.
- 1.9 Average number of books read by print-book readers in a month.
- 176% Increase in U.S. electronic-book sales in 2009.
- 1.8% Decrease in More >
Recently, I’ve been enjoying author Frank Viola’s blog posts, especially as he’s been engaging more and more with those who follow his writing on the Internet. If you’re not familiar with Frank (the author, not the baseball player), he’s the author of a series of some extremely thought-provoking and faith-stirring books including Pagan Christianity?, From Eternity to Here and others. Today, he posted an interesting article on The New Roman Road. As someone who believes in the power of social media, I can’t help but repost. He says:
Many scholars and historians have speculated that one of the reasons why God chose More >
Every writer needs a website and if you know how to install it, I think there’s no better way to create a website than with WordPress.
Once you’re up-and-running, you need some good plug-ins to really enhance your site and differentiate it from the crowd. Here is my highly subjective list of the Top 10 WordPress Plugins for authors and writers. I’m using Digital Nature’s Mystique theme which is pretty intensive, so I opted for light-weight plugins when possible so as not to increase load time.
Here are the plug-ins that work for me and work great with Mystique, in no particular order:
All More >
