You are here:
Sean McManus's Blog
Amazon Kindle: an opportunity for self-publishers?
15 April 2008
I blogged about Amazon's Kindle, a new ebook reader, when it launched. But I didn't look at the opportunity for self-publishers then.
I've published a few ebooks in the past. My ebook 'Journalism Careers - Your questions answered' is sold as a PDF file designed for comfortable on-screen reading. I previously published a guide to putting sound in webpages and a Javascript tutorial through Fatbrain, which was an online ebook store. That folded years ago, and it looks like Barnes & Noble has bought the domain name.
So what's the opportunity at Kindle? Not much for me, it seems. You need to have a US postal address and US bank account details before they will let you publish any content. You can't even publish content for free and use Kindle as a promotional outlet (ebooks must be priced between $0.99 and $200, and you still need to be in the US). Given how slow Amazon's been in internationalising other features like Amazon Honor System, none of that is likely to change any time soon.
My friend John went through the motions of setting up a publication anyway, and has blogged about that experience.
There are a couple of terms that might worry some self-publishers. Firstly:
3. Digital Books; Marketing and Promotion. You agree that we may market and promote your Digital Books by making chapters or portions of your Titles available to prospective customers without charge, and permitting prospective customers to see excerpts of the Digital Book in response to search queries. Amazon will not owe you any fees for the marketing and promotional efforts described above. The Program may include features that allow users to print one or more pages of your Titles.The short version of that is: Amazon can distribute content from the book and allow users to print it, without charging for it and without paying you for it.
The 'permission to print' seems to go beyond the deal Amazon's already struck for 'Search inside this book' for promoting printed books on its website. It's essential for authors to give away some preview content to demonstrate the value of their books. Indeed, similar terms are usually a part of a conventional publishing contract. But Amazon's a shop, not a publisher. Authors and publishers should decide what material is promotional, and what material is only available for sale. Amazon wants the right to give away whatever content it wants, albeit with the implied motive that it will try to pick content that will help the book sell.
For reference works, the value could be significantly eroded if Amazon allows excerpts to be printed without any payment. We can only hope that Amazon is working on a way of administering micropayments so that people can buy book excerpts and authors can be rewarded appropriately.
Also, Amazon will keep 65% of the retail price. By comparison, Lulu charges a fee of 25% of what you get (which is then added to the sale price, so it's actually less than 25% of the ebook price). If you're a self-publisher, 35% is probably not too bad a return given that there's no work to do with moving printed books and there's no cost to incur in creating them, but it's far from competitive. It also seems to overstate the costs incurred in operating the infrastructure and underestimate the costs involved in creating content.
10. Technology. You acknowledge that we will be entitled to utilize DRM technology in connection with the distribution of Digital Books but are not obligated to do so. Accordingly, there may be no technology or other limitation imposed by us on copying or transfer of any Digital Book we distribute.Personally, I don't approve of digital rights management technology. But when publishers are selling ebooks, they'll want to know what rights they're licensing and what controls will be used to enforce them and this term seems somewhat vague. There 'might or might not be DRM' isn't really a good basis for making a decision about whether you want to sell through Amazon, particularly if piracy or consumer rights is something you feel strongly about.
The use of the words 'irrevocable licence' set off alarm bells, but it seems this is about protecting consumers and ensuring that they will be able to download content they've bought easily in future. The irrevocable licence does not extend to making the ebook available for sale (so you can withdraw it later).
If anyone's actually self-publishing through Amazon Kindle, I'd be interested in hearing about your results in the comments.
Labels: journalism, marketing, publishing, technology, writing
How the music press works
06 July 2007
According to the NME, Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas has denied reports that she will mention Candie's clothes in song lyrics as part of a sponsorship deal.
The NME says: "It had been suggested she had signed a deal with clothing brand Candie's that would involve her including the fashion line in the lyrics of her songs."
Where had that been suggested? Well, this curiously blank page, for a start, which on Monday 2 July had the headline 'Fergie signs product placement deal' and the RSS subheading 'Black Eyed Peas star Fergie has signed a new deal to promote products in her songs'. It said: "The deal is a first in pop music - rather than namechecking the Top Shop-like brand, Fergie's contract states that she will write songs from scratch that specifically promote Candie's."
And the publisher of that page? The NME.
Is that what qualifies as a correction? Zapping the error-prone post out of history and then publishing a post that talks about 'media reports being wrong', without saying where they started? And to think, I was going to use NME as a credible source for a story I'm writing.
Labels: journalism, music
Prince and the price of music
29 June 2007
Desperate times make for strange allies, which is why Prince is partnering with the Mail on Sunday. His new album 'Planet Earth' will be given away free as a covermount with the conservative tabloid on 15 July 2007, before the album has even been released in the shops. I can imagine the two million readers spluttering tea all over their croissants as they catch snippets of Prince's bad-boy lyrics. The paper has reportedly stumped up half a million pounds for the rights to the album and is encouraging Prince fans to pre-order the paper. The deal has royally teed-off distributor BMG, which has pulled out of its deal to distribute the album to UK shops as a result.Prince has also made his new single 'Guitar' available as a free download [link no longer available] in a promotion with O2 for a limited period. And that's free as in 'no money' and free as in 'no controls' too - it's an MP3 with no restrictions on how you can use it. O2 took out a quarter page full colour advert in Metro to advertise the promotion.
For Prince, these are smart deals. It's a long time since he had anyone putting any serious money into promoting his work. The last couple of albums had great distribution, but that just made it easy for existing fans to buy it. They didn't reach out to many new listeners, even though they marked something of a return to form following a few years of patchy output (albeit touched by genius, at times).
Prince could just upload his music to the web and give it away, but then who's going to pay for the cost of producing an album and sustaining the artist during its creation?
With this deal, Prince can afford to give his album away to as many people as possible. To give an idea of scale, this deal will put at least 2 million copies of his album on the street on day one. His greatest creative achievement 'Lovesexy' has only sold 4.82 million in nearly 20 years, according to Wikipedia. (His bestselling album 'Purple Rain' shifted 22.8m units, according to the same source).
Does this devalue the music? Undoubtedly. Most free CDs end up in landfill unplayed, I suspect. It's hard to argue that people shouldn't copy music if you're giving it away with the telly pages. Since there's no distribution deal in the UK for the album at the moment, these free CDs will probably trade briskly on Ebay for a penny plus postage.
Does this deal devalue journalism? Yes, it probably does, also. The Mail on Sunday, in common with most newspapers, seems confused about what business it's in. Clearly, publications are in the business of distributing advertising and this could be seen as advertising. But increasingly, newspapers foist unwanted films and CDs onto listeners who have no choice but to bin them. With this move, the Mail on Sunday is basically conceding that it doesn't matter what their writers produce; what sells papers is a good covermount. While this deal might introduce some Daily Mail readers to Prince's music, it seems unlikely many who buy the paper for the CD will become regular subscribers.
But these are desperate times. At work, we're mourning the loss of our local Fopp, after the chain announced it was closing. It's becoming hard for record shops to survive. They can't compete with the range and pricing of Amazon, and the bargain basement of second hand back catalogue CDs on Ebay. I bought many albums in Fopp, including several that I heard for the first time in the store and wouldn't otherwise have considered buying. Without record shops, brand is likely to become even more important when it comes to shifting units online because you can only sell what people already want. People don't browse just to see what's there in the way they do in a store, and you can't force shoppers to listen to the lastest releases online.
Prince has shown he can build his brand in today's ailing music industry. He's taken a first step towards changing the economics of his business, earning money through concerts and giving away music to build demand for tickets. But he might just have burned some bridges along the way. It remains to be seen whether the record industry or Prince has the more sustainable model in the long run.
Labels: journalism, music, music promotion
Slow news day?
22 June 2007
So in my BBC RSS feed this morning, sat between 'Stagecoach wins railway franchise' and 'Bomb strikes UK patrol in Basra', is the headline 'Shot kitten's leg was amputated'. The subheading reads: 'A kitten is recovering after its leg was amputated after being shot with a pellet gun in County Antrim.'
This heart-rending story is so important, it is also in the third place on the Northern Ireland news homepage at the time of writing, with a photo.
It is a distressing story, but what's going to keep me awake at night is that the reporter didn't find out the name of the cat.
Labels: journalism, writing
