Month: November 2009

This post, from Stephen Windwalker, originally appeared on his Kindle Nation Daily blog on 11/15/09, and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

Kindle, how do I blog thee? Let me count the ways….

In the past few months I’ve had numerous writer-blogger-publisher friends and colleagues ask me how to publish their blogs and other content as Kindle Blogs.

• Or how to take the short stories or social commentary that they have been writing for other media and make it come alive on the Kindle.
   
• Or, in the case of some very talented people who write everything from business marketing material to political content to community organizing campaign literature, how they could re-purpose the publications that they or their organizations are already doing as Kindle blogs so that they could begin to reach a wider audience.
   
• Or how to take those steamy stories they’ve been writing for years and connect them with the thousands of Kindle readers who appear — from Kindle sales rankings — to have an appetite for erotica and like the fact that the Kindle does not require a brown paper bag.
   
• Or how to turn Kindle owners on to the wonderful services or products that their businesses provide to the public.
   

Those of us who tapdance on the keyboards come in so many different shapes, sizes, and settings.

At first, back in June when I had just begun to make Kindle Nation Daily available as a Kindle edition blog, I might have answered, "Don’t bother." Although I had plenty of independent confirmation of wide and growing readership, I was skeptical that significant numbers of people were going to pay for the goat when I was already giving away the goat’s milk for free.

With monthly summaries that show up a couple of weeks after the end of each month, Amazon is slower to report Kindle blog subscription and revenue data to its publishers than any other of its formats, which generally report in something close to real time when they are working. But based on the data that I could gather, it seemed that very few Kindle blogs were thriving. When my own numbers began to come in — with 7 subscriptions in May and even with 150 for June and 201 for July — well, it was nice to have some paying readers, but at 30 cents a pop as my monthly royalty for each 99-cent-a-month subscription it certainly did not seem like a business model. I now have over 7,500 people reading my posts each week in their several free formats, and I certainly don’t expect the number of paid readers ever to catch up with the number of free readers.

But as the "installed base" of Kindle owners has continued to grow dramatically each month, and promises to keep growing, I’ve changed my mind about the usefulness of the Kindle blogging format, and I would no longer say "Don’t bother" to anyone with useful information or creative work to share. Granted, the number of Kindle owners who subscribe to Kindle blogs remains very small: my educated guess is that there are somewhere south of 10,000 regular Kindle blog subscribers among roughly 2 million Kindle owners at present. My own subscriber numbers keep growing — from 201 in July to 346 in August, 494 in September and 778 in October — but while the percentages of increase are astonishing, the actual numbers and revenue figures are tiny. It’s great to be the #1 blog in the Kindle Store this morning, but the fact that somewhere in the ballpark of 99.96% of Kindle owners do not read my blog certainly constitutes a cold splash of reality.

Or should I see it as opportunity?

To extrapolate based on my recent month-over-month subscription growth rates yields laughable results (the last four months’ figures are 56.64%, 67.02%, 36.82%, 58.12%, or so says my handle little Google Docs spreadsheet), yet even the act of plugging in seemingly "conservative" growth rates in the 5 to 10 percent range yields projections that are wild enough both to concentrate my attention and to suggest to me that, with an 11-year-old son who I am probably not going to talk out of going to college, I should continue to make Kindle Nation Daily a priority even if it weren’t so much fun.

What are the real parameters for potential growth in subscribers for the Kindle edition of my blog or anyone else’s in the future?

I certainly believe that Kindle ownership will continue to grow dramatically in the next few years. People far smarter than me are suggesting that there will be as many as 25 million or more ebook readers by the end of 2013, and that a large percentage of these will be Kindles of some sort. So, even if I had 25,000 subscribers by then, something over 99.97% of all Kindle owners would not be subscribers.

Will the percentage of Kindle owners who read blogs on their Kindles increase significantly in the future? As with anything else, it probably depends on convenience, the importance and value of the content being delivered, and the relative terms of price and convenience under which such content is available elsewhere. Although blogging as a zeitgeist phenomenon may be beginning to seem, well, "so 2005," it has the potential to gain real force as other content formats and sources fall away and creative content providers find new ways to use the incredible simple blogsite architectures to deliver fiction, poetry, other narrative, and other forms of business, cultural, and political comment.

Those of us who read blog content on the Kindle find it a very convenient, portable feature, and it is great to have new posts pushed regularly to my Kindle so that I don’t have to remember to go looking for them. I subscribe to about 10 blogs on a range of subjects including technology, news, sports, and creative content, and whenever a blog is refreshed and moves to the top of my home screen, it takes me only a few seconds of peeking at its Table of Contents and an initial sentence or two to decide if there is something new that I want to read or flag for future reading.

Just as important, both for myself and for other bloggers, we are finding ways to include the Kindle editions of our blogs in a symbiotic loop wherein each kind of subscriber, reader, or visitor is more likely to visit other associated venues. Not only does my Kindlized blog help make interested readers aware of my Kindle books, but it also drives visitors to my free blog, the free weekly email newsletter that I publish with the help of Constant Contact’s growing suite of complementary services, and even to my telephone or my email inbox if they want to engage me in helping them in their efforts. Most of these other centers of activity, in turn, also build my base of Kinle edition subscribers: proof again that what goes around comes around. And what works for me is working for many other authors, publishers, businesses and organizations as well.

Kindle blogs may be the ultimate long-tail phenomenon, so they only make sense from a business point of view if they require little or no investment either by Amazon or by the bloggers in question. That’s the situation here. I spend plenty of hours each month posting to my blog, but the total amount of time I spend maintaining its Kindle edition architecture amounts to less than 5 minutes.

Initially, though, it took me about three times that much time to get up and running.

Yep, 15 minutes.

If you have blog content that you want to make available on the Kindle, all you need is a U.S. bank account and an existing blog. Here’s how, in 21 easy steps:
 

1. Get the RSS feed address for the existing blog that you wish to publish on the Kindle and paste it into a text file so that it will be ready to paste in the appropriate place later in this process. Have your blog’s main page open in another window or tab as you proceed. You can bring up the RSS feed address by clicking on the little syndication icon at the far right of the URL field for your blog’s main address near the top of your browser when you are looking at the blog’s main page in that other window or tab. For this blog, whose address is http://thekindlenationblog.blogspot.com, the RSS feed address is http://thekindlenationblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss.
    
2. Go to the Kindle Publishing for Blogs Beta page, which is compatible with both Windows and Mac operating systems, and click on the Create a New Account link.
    
3. Create your account using an email addresss that is not associated with an existing Amazon account. (You can always set up a new email account, free, with Gmail and have the new account’s incoming mail sent to an existing email address, including one that is associated with an existing Amazon account.)
    
4. Choose and answer your security questions and affirm that you have read and accept the program’s Terms and Conditions.
    
5. Click on the "Add new blog" link in the upper right corner of the "Dashboard" display that appears on your screen.
   
6. Enter your contact and bank account information on the next screen. This will allow Amazon to pay you royalties for your blog subscriptions. Monthly royalties are 30% of the monthly subscription price for actual subscriptions. You don’t get paid for the 14-day free trial that precedes any subscription. Once your bank account’s routing number and account number as well as your social security or tax identification number are successfully entered, you will be able to have royalties deposited electronically in your bank account, usually in the second half of the month following the subscription revenues on which you are being paid.
    
7. On the "Add Blog" page which appears next on your display, paste in your blog’s RSS feed address from Step 1.
    
8. Type or copy and paste the blog’s title, tagline, and blog description directly from your blog’s main page. This metadata will appear in the Kindle Store so it should be worded in an attractive way and conform to the material already on your blog. You may find it beneficial to include a descriptive subtitle such as my blog’s "The inside scoop on all things Kindle." Why? Because everything you do to package and market any content on Amazon should reflect your awareness of the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) within Amazon’s, and the web’s, architecture. I have also found it beneficial to include some search keywords in a blog’s tagline.
    
9. Enter your name or pen name of the name of your publishing company, business, or organization as the blog’s publisher.
    
10. Take a screenshot of your blog using COMMAND+SHIFT+4 on a Mac or the PrintScreen key on a PC, and then use Preview or Paint to save the image as a GIF, JPEG, TIFF, or BMP file. You may find it beneficial here to select a particular post with attractive above-the-fold graphics and overall presentation and bring that post onto your screen for the screenshot.
     
11. Click on "Upload image" to browse, select, and upload your screenshot to the "Add Blog" page.
     
12. Follow a similar process to upload a masthead graphic. This should be a simple icon image; it will appear, in a tiny image, at the head of each post in the Kindle’s rendering of your blog.
     
13. Enter the actual website address for your blog where indicated; this is not the RSS feed address that you have already entered above.
     
14. Select your blog’s language and choose three categories from the list of 10 offered. You may easily change these categories in the future.
     
15. Enter search keywords to help Kindle owners to find your blog in the Kindle store or the overall Amazon website. This process, again, is all about SEO, and it may prove helpful to check out similar or other blogs in the Kindle Store and scroll down to the section headed "Tags Customers Associate with This Product."
     
16. For the "Blog Post Frequency" pulldown menu, be conservative. If you post 4 or 5 times a week, choose "2 to 5 times a week" rather than "Daily," and if you post 10 times a week, choose "Daily" rather than "Multiple times a day." Readers get annoyed if you do not delivered what you promise, and that annoyance can be reflected not only in your subscription sales but in lethal negative reviews. It may also be true that the "Multiple times a day" option, even if true, might actually drive away some potential subscribers if they are concerned that they may be inundated with posts.
     
17. Click on the "Generate Blog Preview" button to make sure that everything looks right. Your preview will take a few minutes to format and load, then you can click "View Preview" and a Kindle-sized display of your blog will appear.
     
18. If so, check the box showing that you accept the "Terms and Conditions" (after you’ve read them, of course), click on the "Save" button.
     
19. The orange "Publish Blog to Kindle" button will then become live on your screen. Click it, and you’re done. All you have to do from here on out is keep posting to your blog, and each post will be delivered directly to subscribers’ Kindles within an hour or so of your posts.
     
20. Amazon will set the price of your blog between 99 cents and $1.99. It’s probably better for you if the price is 99 cents, since that’s the price for many of the most popular blogs in the Kindle Store, but it is out of your control.
     
21. Subscribe to your own blog, if you have a Kindle, so that you can keep a close eye on how it looks on the Kindle and trouble-shoot any problems. If you don’t have a Kindle yet, and you don’t want to spring for the $259 to buy a new one, you can buy a refurbished Kindle 1 for just $149.99 by clicking here. But you do not need to own a Kindle to publish your blog in the Kindle Store.

I know, I said you could do all this in 15 minutes, and it probably took you a little longer because we writers are careful people. Or should be. And I didn’t mean to include the time it took you to read this post in the 15 minutes.

In any case, I wish you good luck, and I hope that you will stay in touch with me at KindleNation@gmail.com to let me know how this goes for you.

(If you’d rather have me set this up for you for a one-time fee of $49, just click on the Buy Now button [at the bottom of the original post, here] and send an email to KindleNation@gmail.com with Kindle Blog Publishing Package in the subject line and your blog’s URL and an email address and phone number so that I contact you in the the main body. I’m not looking for the extra work, but it may be easier for me than for you and I don’t want to see you blocked from participation if I can help.)
 

Cartoon reprinted with permission from We Blog Cartoons.

Just as Thomas Nelson did about a month ago, Harlequin has announced it is partnering with Author Solutions, Inc. (ASI) to form a self-published books imprint. This new imprint is called Harlequin Horizons (HH), and according to a Harlequin press release:

Through this strategic alliance; all sales, marketing, publishing, distribution, and book-selling services will be fulfilled by ASI; but Harlequin Horizons will exist as a division of Harlequin Enterprises Limited. Harlequin will monitor sales of books published through the self publisher for possible pick up by its traditional imprints.

So in other words, they’re basically just lending the Harlequin name to ASI for use in providing the same services it already provides via such vanity and subsidy outfits as AuthorHouse, AuthorHouse UK, Inkubook, iUniverse, Trafford, Wordclay and Xlibris. Some of these outfits have raised both hackles and eyebrows over at Writer Beware!

Right in its press release announcement, Harlequin makes it clear that their involvement here is strictly limited to lending their name and monitoring sales, every other aspect of the publishing process for HH, from editing to marketing, will be handled by ASI. But wait, that’s not entirely true. There is one other area where Harlequin will be involved in the HH process: “acquisitions”.

First, Harlequin will refer authors whose manuscripts they reject to HH. Second, Harlequin will monitor sales of HH titles with an eye to re-publishing any big sellers under the Harlequin imprint.

This new HH imprint clearly has the potential to earn Harlequin a lot of money, given that they will be taking a cut of ASI’s proceeds on every HH publishing package and service bought by self-publishing authors. Given that HH standard publishing packages range in price from US$599 to $1599, and HH “VIP” publishing packages run from US$2299 to $3499, there’s most definitely gold in them thar hills.

Compare these rates (and services) to those on offer from Xlibris, iUniverse, Author House or any of the other subsidy/vanity outfits working with ASI, and you can easily see there’s nothing special or unique about HH. The services and pricing offered are on par with what you’d get going through any of ASI’s other outlets for self-publishing, and since ASI is actually handling the pre-publishing work, publishing, distribution and even marketing (assuming the author elects to pay for these services), you’re getting the same product as well. The only difference with HH is its affiliation with Harlequin and the implied promise that self-publishing through HH gives your book higher visibility among Harlequin editors—which carries the implied promise that your self-published HH book is more likely to be picked up by Harlequin for regular acquisition. While I’ve always warned indie authors away from subsidy and vanity publishing, I have an even greater concern with this new wrinkle. 

For those of you who are wondering why I advise against working with a subsidy or vanity press, the reasons are numerous but primarily boil down to an economic argument. Such outfits are notorious for their high-priced “publishing packages” which bundle together all manner of services plus one to two dozen “free” author copies of the finished book, depending on the package selected. Very often, the author must sign away some or all of her publication rights to the vanity/subsidy outfit for a set period of time as well.

The bundled packages are bad news because you’re limited to working with their staff editors and designers (as opposed to hiring your own individually, to ensure their skills and working styles mesh well with your project), they typically include (and charge for) services you don’t want or need, and also typically overcharge for products and services you can obtain on your own at a fraction of the cost, or even for no cost at all. For example, as of this writing it costs $35 to register a U.S. copyright online; HH/ASI charges $204 for this same service. That’s a 583% markup, and all HH/ASI is doing is taking information you provide them for filling out the form, then filling out the form for you. Why not just provide your information to the U.S. Copyright Office directly and save yourself a fast $169?

You can bet you’re overpaying for virtually every service offered by HH/ASI, because there are two layers of middlemen with their hands out: ASI and HH. Even if you’re the type of author who would rather pay someone else to get your book ready for print, published, distributed and marketed, does it really make sense to pay both the actual service provider and a “services packager” like HH, iUniverse, Xlibris, etc.?

Here’s where my second major objection to the Harlequin deal comes about: self-publishing authors are being led to believe that they’re actually getting something of value in exchange for paying the HH layer of middlemen, and they believe that “something” is greater visibility, a greater chance of having their self-published book plucked out of the great unwashed masses of self-pubbed books for the full Harlequin treatment. But here again, they’re paying for something they can already get for free.

If your self-published book is selling in great enough numbers to garner the attention of a mainstream publisher, it doesn’t matter how, or through whom, you self-published. The mainstream will want to acquire the rights to your book. Having published via HH doesn’t make this outcome any more likely than if you’d self-published through Lulu, Createspace, Lightning Source or elsewhere.

You may be protesting that per the quoted press release, “Harlequin will monitor sales of books published through the self publisher for possible pick up by its traditional imprints,” but this is a paper tiger at best. Among the likely thousands of titles to be released under the HH imprint, perhaps the top 10% in terms of sales would merit further attention from Harlequin staff, and even then, only if the top 10% are selling more than a couple hundred copies a year.

You could publish via any author or publishing services provider, save yourself a LOT of money by being a smart shopper and not paying for services you don’t need or for which you’d be overcharged by HH/ASI, then invest some of your savings in the distribution, marketing and promotion options that make sense for you and your book, and sell as many (or more!) copies as you could sell of the same book published under the HH imprint. Self-published books that sell well attract publisher attention regardless of who published the book, or how.

If it’s really worth an extra 500% in fees to get an HH logo on the spine of your book, knock yourself out. But I’d argue that if that’s your position, you’re not a very savvy self-publisher.

UPDATE: THIS JUST IN (to me, anyway) – yet another reason not to go with HH is this: in addition to all the upfront fees you must pay for HH to publish your book, they also intend to keep 50% of your net royalty on every copy sold (scroll down to comment #18, in which Harlequin Digital Director Malle Vallik says so)!! 50% of gross would be exorbitant since the standard bookseller cut is 40% of the retail price, but 50% of net is simply beyond the pale. And if you’re handing over 50% of your net royalty AFTER paying HH hundreds or thousands of dollars for its services, that’s just financial rape. Without even buying you dinner first.

Just in case that comment #18 from Harlequin Digital Director Malle Vallik on Dear Author should become unavailable at some point in the future, I’m copying and pasting it here:

1. Will rejected submissions to Harlequin indeed be “informed” that they can “opt-in” to Horizons? How do you assuage the stated concerns that this is a predatory process?

Malle: A writer receiving a standard reject letter will find a line included about self publishing. The writer, if she wants, can then contact HH. The writer will never be cold-called or contacted unless she has opted in.

2. Will Harlequin Horizons hold the ISBNs and pay out royalties from the sales, if any? How does this differ from the “vanity press” model? How does it compare to the “self-publishing” model, in which the author holds the ISBNs and keeps all money from any sales?

Malle: The content is completely owned by the author. Royalties are 50% net from both eBooks and print. [emphasis added]

3. If an author chooses to go to Horizons for a “keepsake” or a “gift”, what does Horizons offer (except for the Harlequin name) to distinguish it from much much cheaper services such as Lulu?

Malle: It is any writer’s choice as to what self-publishing option she choses to purchase or if she wants to self-publish at all.

4. If an author chooses to go to Horizons, do they lose “first publication” rights? How will that affect any effort to gain an agent or traditional publisher with their “bound copy”?

Malle: I’m not sure I completely understand this question. The author owns her content. How would she lost first publication rights? She has published it herself. Whether she is giving it away as gifts or marketing it, is up to her. Yup, clearly I don’t get your question.