A survey by any other name?

The Pew Research Group recently released the results of their study of reading habits of Americans. The Pew post was headlined "E-Reading Rises as Device Ownership Jumps." The first sentence of their overview pretty much sums up the results: "The proportion of Americans who read e-books is growing, but few have completely replaced print books for electronic versions."

The study got a lot of web coverage, but interestingly, the same study produced many different headlines:

Just Four Percent of Americans Read eBooks Only (Motherboard)

eBooks surge as devices multiply but print holds firm (NBC)

In this age of ebooks, print still alive (Des Moines Register)

Americans prefer print over ebooks (PBS)

Pew, Princeton study shows e-reading up (Teleread)

eReading is Risng But It's Not Replacing Print, Pew Research (Galleycat)

Headlines are, of course, meant to grab the reader's attention, but it is interesting to me that these headlines are so different, with the Motherboard one giving only a single stat, the PBS headline flatly ignoring the increase in e-reading, and the Teleread headline ignoring any preference for print. Of course, all of them have more info in the posts than in the headlines

I find it interesting that the Des Moines Register calls today "the age of ebooks." Personally, I think the real age of ebooks will start in 10 to 20 years from now. Until then I agree that print is still going to be necessary for true sweeping success, which is why, as I said in my last post, I plan to move to print and ebook publishing.

Paper is not dead to me!

I don't hate print books!  I prefer digital reading because of the convenience of having my library in my purse, and the fact that I can make the fonts whatever size is comfortable for me. But one reason I have only published in ebook form to date is that it takes a lot more time to publish in print; you have to format the book and make sure the pages look good. However, I have decided that with Saronna's Gift I'm going to try to do a simultaneous print and ebook release, using Amazon's CreateSpace print-on-demand (POD) service.  That means that Amazon customers will be able to order the book in print or read it on their Kindles or Kindle apps.

This is going to take me a little while longer to do, but I am hoping I can get both versions ready at the same time. Wish me luck as I make myself into a POD person (if you got that reference, you are probably not a millennial; if you didn't get it, check out this write up of Invasion of the Body Snatchers).

Goodbye, 2013!

It was a pretty good year, but I have high hopes for 2014.  The Google Doodle for today shows 2013 partying in a 70's style disco while a 4 waits in the wings, ready to make it 2014, That's about the way I feel, except I never liked disco that much.

Happy New Year to all!

It's almost Christmas!

I won't be blogging in the next several days, so I want to wish everyone Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy Solstice, have a wonderful Kwanzaa! Whatever holidays you celebrate, I hope they're wonderful!  In the case of Hanukkah, that would be a past tense wish. :)

Finally, a draft at least!

The cover for Saronna's Gift has been plagued by problems. This is my first cover that used an actual model, and the photographer had technical difficulties that required a reshoot.

Anyway, it's only a draft, because the colors aren't right and the typography is missing, but here is (more of less) what the cover of Saronna's Gift will look like.

Kindle finally has web-based collections!

Something interesting has happened. The Kindle currently lets you create "collections" (i.e., you can label your books and see all the books with a given label) but the set of collections you create is specific to that single device. Ergo, if own a Kindle and create collections on it, and then you buy a new Kindle, you have to import all the books you want to appear in collections onto the new Kindle and then import the collections from the first Kindle. This will label all the books currently on that Kindle. But if, after you import the collections, you later send one of your older books to your newer Kindle, it will not arrive with the collection label it had on the first Kindle.  This was tedious!

However, Amazon has announced that you store collections in your Cloud Reader, too, and the Cloud collections can be imported to any Kindle.

The Cloud reader is really just a browser-based app that lets you read all your Kindle books from a PC, but since all your Kindle books (or possibly all your Kindle books from a specific date; I am not certain) go into your cloud reader, it should mean you can label the books once then import them to how every many Kindles you have.

I am very hopeful this will be as handy as it sounds! I had not yet created any collections on my Paperwhite so now I think I will create them in the Cloud and see how this works.

Addendum: Sigh. Not nearly as useful as I had hoped. You still have to create the collection on the Kindle Paperwhite, which means all the books you want to label have to be downloaded to the Paperwhite first.   If you have just bought a Kindle Paperwhite, this is a great feature. If you're on your 5th Kindle, like me, not so much.

Happy Thanksgiving, 2013!

I am thankful for many things, first and foremost being my family. And right now I am thankful that Saronna's Gift is back from the copyeditor. I hope to be thankful for a cover soon.

But in the meantime, I am cooking a turkey for 18 people this year, so I won't be posting again any time soon.  Here's a painting of the somewhat mythical first Thanksgiving, to remind us all to give thanks for our modern appliances as we prepare (and clean up from) our own feasts.

eBooks Down Under now includes a Kindle store

Amazon just opened a Kindle store for Australia! My books are all there, although, sadly, The Sixth Discipline is $1.03 AUD instead of being free. If you have an Australian account with Amazon, do us all a favor and click the link that says “Tell us about a lower price,” and then report the link for that book in iBooks in Australia, where it's free. You can add a link for it being free in the Kobo store for Australia, too, if you like.

And g'day to you, too!

Bragging

Let me just say that I appreciate all reviews. Even low-star reviews mean the person at least read the book, and cared enough to comment. But of course, positive reviews are more fun to read, and glowing reviews that praise the story or the writing are a real mood enhancer. Plus, it means instead of actually bragging, I just have to point to the good reviews!

Recently, an Amazon customer who goes by the online handle of Mara gave my two newest books 5-star rave reviews:

Here's what Mara said about The Nostalgia Gambit:

This woman can WRITE! 

What a good story! Masterful writing with such a brilliant plot. The characters become real enough to want to talk with and the story is completely enthralling and flawless. It's also a story to make you think about ethics and how scary it is that it might soon be something that could really happen; it will stay in my mind for a while to come.

For King of Trees, Mara has this to say: 

A favourite author

This isn't a simple story but, my gosh, it's a good one!
An alternate world with a history that diverged sometime after the Roman conquest of "Albion", two generations after a small group of modern people managed to settle in London. The world building and character development is wonderful as Bardolph and Melissa struggle to find their way together through their different cultures.So good! Really well worth reading.

Whoo hoo! Color me tickled pink!  And let me just say that Mara is no relation and has several hundred reviews to her (I assume) credit. 

A wonderful new feature for KDP Select

Amazon might be reviled by some as a disruptive force in publishing, but they are certainly committed to offering opportunities for self-published authors. They just announced a new feature for Kindle Select books called Kindle Countdown Deals, and it looks like a great idea!

Basically, if your book is in KDP Select, and has been in it for 30 days or more without a price change, and the price is between $2.99 and $24.99, you can put the book on sale for up to a week; you can even have it go on deep discount to start and then incrementally go back up during the week.

Of course, any KDP author can change the price of their book any time, but this new feature has some real advantages. The biggest is that Amazon customers see the original price and the sale price and know it's currently discounted and how long that discount will last. The second is that if the “real” price of the book is eligible for the 70% royalty rate (which means it has to be at least $2.99 but not more than $9.99 in the US store), then the author keeps that rate even when the price drops during the promotion. So if your book is on sale for 99¢, you still get 70% of 99¢ instead of 30% (i.e., 69¢ per books instead of 30¢). It looks like right now Countdown Deals might be available only in the US and UK Kindle stores because those are the only stores for which price ranges are listed, but I don't know if that's certain.

There's also a special website for book browsers to see what's on sale, and there's a new Promotions link on the KDP Reports page to show more elaborate reporting of  Countdown sales, letting you see how each price point is doing.

I don't have any KDP Select books at the moment, but once I launch Saronna's Gift, I plan to use this new feature.

The KDP Reports page also added a way to search the current month's reports for specific books, which I don't find terribly useful since it seems to apply only to the selected Kindle store. Now if it searched for a specific book across all the Kindle stores, that would be helpful. There's a View All link but it doesn't seem to look at all the stores, either so I don't see it as helpful at all. 

All in all, this is a positive development. It would be mush more useful if it weren't limited to books in KDP Select, but Amazon's commitment to authors extends only as far as they think it will make money for them. It's important to remember that.