Is Amazon Publishing Books Now?

Question from the e-mail Elizabeth Eagan-Cox asked:

Recently, a neighbor who received an Amazon Kindle for Christmas (he knows I'm an author and has purchased my books) asked me if I planned on having "Singles" on Kindle. which I will not bother you with because there is lots of fine print involved.

This caught me off guard, I’ve heard of "Singles" on Kindle/Amazon but I confess, I’m ignorant about "Singles" what they are and what it entails.

So… I went to Amazon and on a page of information about "Singles," it lists the criteria (see below)… and a whole lot more information,

Anyway, the criteria for "Singles" are listed below, I took it from Amazon and I have the long link printed below it.

At first glance, this seems like vanity publishing (an author can submit a manuscript directly to Amazon)… Is it?

　

Elizabeth Eagan-Cox

Kindle Singles Criteria

• Length: 5,000 to 30,000 words
• List price: $0.99 to $4.99
• Original work, not previously published in other formats or publications
• Self-contained work, not chapters excerpted from a longer work
• Not published on any public website in its entirety
• We are currently not accepting how-to manuals, public domain works, reference books, travel guides, or children's books.

Answer: Amazon is helping customers Self-Publish AND incidentally providing themselves with a list of "Bargain Books" to offer to Kindle readers at very low cost. Is this Self-Publishing??? Absolutely!

I will do another blog about this when I get time to explore the fine print a bit more. Meanwhile, here's what I think I know about it now. Amazon is definitely aiming for the "self-published" market here. That means the books receive no vetting, no editing, and have no publisher, so no one gets paid except the author, hence the low prices. Authors do any work that gets done and make all the money, and that sounds like a very good deal to most of them. They can write whatever they like, however they want to, no one says, "Hey, there's no such thing as a fit of 'peak,'" and they never get a return. There is a whole new movement within authors' groups encouraging them to "keep control of the product" rather than seeking (and sharing earnings with) ANY publisher.

Some Self-Published Authors, like J. R. Rain who knows how to exploit the system, are doing Very Well with this. And not just with amazon. You'll find their books on most distributor sites. They spend many hours uploading all the books to sales outlets and tracking sales, a job publishers mostly do for you, and so on. They are very well informed about Internet technology.

But for self-published authors, who don't have Rain's techno-saavy, many will opt for the one outlet. Most of the other books listed this way are crap. A good many people are tiring of the "low priced book" phenomenon already (See Newton Love's Facebook comment yesterday. Newt, if you see this, you might want to post that comment again, here.)

Even "successful" self-published authors produce books where people "peak" at each other, look "threw" windows, and cut material with a "pear" of scissors. I have bought bargain books with all those errors in them and EVERY bargain book I've bought has many editing problems that will never be addressed. I laugh, but then I'm a stickler. Readers either don't know or don't care. Precision with words was once the pride of the publishing world. Sadly, I read a hard-cover Knopf-published book last week that had two errors that even spell-check should have caught. So much for paying proof-readers. Carelessness in such matters are, becoming the standard.

Some self-published authors, like Rain, are good story-tellers and know how to boost their visibility by setting the price at $0.00 for a week or weekend, then blasting the news on social media and offering prizes to fans who "share" the information." They tend to "go viral" and hit amazon's best-seller list while the price is nothing (sales are counted in number of downloads, not in earnings). Rain has thousands of downloads in a weekend and regularly tops amazon's best-seller lists. They also develop new fans that way. Some of them are good earners and actually make a living off e-book sales. One good ploy is to offer the first in a series free for a short time.

On the other hand, without publishers there is no one to "catch" any of the text and editing errors. Amazon certainly doesn't look at content and they will let anyone self-publish a book without even an ISBN. The only time they complain about content is when customers complain to them about the product.

Slow Cooker, Venison Chile - recipe

1 15 oz can red kidney beans
1 1/2 cups thick-sliced celery
1 cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 pounds ground venison or venison sausage
(If your family didn't get a deer this year, you can substitute hamburger, or even turkey burger, but it's not as good.)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 cup toasted oat cereal
2 teaspoons dried oregano leaves
1 teaspoon cumin
2 tbsp Chile powder*
1/2 teaspoon red pepper
1 can (15 oz.) no-salt-added tomato sauce
1 can (14.5 oz.) diced tomatoes with green chile peppers
1 can (14 oz.) reduced-sodium chicken broth
Chopped tomatoes
* Those who like it hot can add chopped jalopenos to taste
Fat-free sour cream (optional)

Directions

1. In 4- to 5-quart crockery slow cooker place canned beans, celery, onion and garlic (and any optional peppers).

3. In large skillet quickly brown ground venison burger, half at a time, in hot oil. Place burger on vegetables in crockery cooker. Sprinkle with oat cereal, and seasonings.

4. Pour tomato sauce, undrained tomatoes and broth over mixture in crockery cooker. Stir. Cover and cook on low-heat setting for 8 hours. Ladle into serving bowls. Top with tomatoes and sour cream, if desired.

Easy to do ahead and have ready and waiting after a day of play outside in the snow.

E-Book Pirates

Question from the E-mail: I’m seeing more and more about e-book Pirates and it concerns me. I found one of my own titles on a site that was giving it away. Free! How can that happen? I am sure you didn’t give them permission to give away my book. Why do they give away books, anyway? There are HUNDREDS of titles on their site. Where do they all come from?

Answer: I can’t speak to how they got hold you’re your title, but I can mention some of the ways pirates are able to “find” material to give away and why they do it.

Some publishers, not me, but some, put the PDF up at Bowker’s Books in Print when they register the ISBN. As a protection to our authors, Write Words does not send the whole PDF there, Or to Google’s “search inside the book” or anywhere else except sales sites where we actively participate. Bowker’s security is good, but no Internet Security is infallible.

Authors get tons of spam all the time. One ploy is to offer “free advertising” to authors by e-mail and ask them for one free copy to use for promotional purposes. If the author sends them ONE PDF book file by e-mail attachment, they can then give it away hundreds of times and they can claim to have your permission to do so as it was sent willingly. I don’t know that this is how they got your book, but it DOES happen. A Lot. You would also get lots more “offers” from them to buy advertising on line.

Now all our authors get PDF copies of their books and so do authors with most other publishing companies, and they are then free to use them for promotional purposes, send them out for review copies and so on. That’s what they are for. “Free Advertising” sounds like a great deal to most authors, who are trying to get the word out any way they can, and they do have copies to give away...soooooo...when someone comes along asking for ONE free promotional copy, most of us will bite. But One Copy can be duplicated electronically HUNDREDS of times....

There are also e-book “trading” sites where people who have purchased titles can “swap” their previously purchased copy of your book for someone else’s “used” book. It doesn’t occur to them that there is no such thing as “recycling” a used e-book. The book is copyrighted material. Giving it away is illegal as you still have your original copy. MANY people will argue that they have the right to Sell Used E-Books just the same as paper. NOT the same thing at all! Making a copy to SWAP is just as illegal as copying a Movie, or Musical recording. It is a violation of the U.S. Copyright act and a Federal Offense, according to the FBI.

Bottom line: You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. That works fine with paper books. If I trade a book with you, we each have one book. But if we swap an electronic book, both of us will end up with Two Book Files. And either of us can make hundreds more copies. It’s just not fair.

I can’t say I’ve never made a cassette copy of a musical CD. I do it to hack around in my car with, so the original will not be lost or discarded by mistake when I’m cleaning out the trash. But I wouldn’t do it to SELL a copy. When you “swap” a title at a “used book” site, they are going to use it to MAKE MONEY. There is no other reason for those pirate sites to exist.

Such sites DO give the books away, but Ask You to fill out a “registration” form, to be eligible to “join” the site. It will say sign in, or Join Our Site, or something, but what they want is Your Information. Once they have it, they can send spam to your e-mail address, Pfish your addressbook , and innundate you with all sorts of Trojans and other e-nuisances by e-mail.

Then they sell all the e-mail addresses in your computer to people who want to advertise things and people who want to send out spam. This is HOW folks get those fake messages from you that says you’re in England and had your passport and wallet stolen and will they just wire you some money to help you get home? Because you’re desperate. You’d be surprised how many people fall for this one as the message is sent to people whose names are in their personal addressbook. The message looks like it comes from You and you are Someone they Know, so it looks legitimate. If someone wires them money, they don’t have to be in England to collect, either. They can go to any Western Union, worldwide, claim to be you, and pick up a nice piece of change.

It’s also how people receive viruses and Trojans and software that tracks everything they buy, from THEIR e-mail address. It looks as if YOU sent it. And anyone who reports the spam, reports it under YOUR name as the Sender, Not the Real Culprit. Because they can easily type your name in the “reply to” blank and it looks exactly as if it came from YOU.

Some of those “sign in” registrations ask for your Credit Card info, too. Especially the ones who give books away and sell other goods...and if you fill in the CC info, they then can steal your identity pretty easily. They can order goods or get cash advances sent to a different address “as a gift,” but give your CC number, telephone and home address and you will be hip deep in unauthorized charges that look just like you made them.

BAD things can happen through this seemingly “free book fun” site.

E-book piracy isn’t about the books, anyway. It’s about money. Many authors shrug it off, saying, well, at least maybe some new fans will find me and look for my other books. And that can happen. But if you see your book being given away, call it to the attention of your publisher. Report the abuse everywhere you can.

Because however it happened, it’s Not Free Advertising. It’s costing you sales and every copy they give away, is one copy you might have collected royalties on.

Catching UP!

New Books were posted to the site on Jan. 1:

New Paper:

LOOKING FOR MIDNIGHT, by Helen Chappell, a stripper staying at an artist's colony while writing a tell-all book is murdered.

FIRST WALTZ, by Terry L. White. A sergeant from upstate New York falls for a local girl, while guarding German prisoners of war in Cambridge, MD.

ON WINGS OF TRUST, by Anna Dynowsky. Cupid Cat, the Harmony Village matchmaker, is back at work in the fourth of the Christian Romance series.


New e-books:

LADYSLIPPERS FOR MY LADY: First in the Coverton Mills Series, by Lynette Hall Hampton.

Whether it is coincidence, fate , or predestination, 53-year-old author, Heather Masterson’s life changes in Asheville, NC, when a man lays a book in front of her and says, “Please sign this to the real Alex Hargrove.”

THE MIRRORED WORLD, by Meghan Roos.

In this whirlwind adventure encompassing two best friends’ race to the truth, Rebecca and Riley discover the shocking power time holds through its influence on history – and how one mistake can threaten to send the lives of an entire civilization into chaos.

DEADLY RECEPTION, by C. M. Albrecht.

Chef Merle Blanc, he has the nose. And when millionaire Bernard Goldberg dies during his wedding luncheon in the chef's restaurant, Chef Blanc's nose, he smells murder!

MURDER BY BEST-SELLER, by Gabriel Timar.

Matching wits with competent criminals is the forte of Detective Sergeant Eva Wyatt. In this fast paced story, her quick thinking bags a contract killer, but to find the person who hired the shooter is a hard nut to crack.



PRINT BOOKS that went to press, or back to press, this week: None

E-BOOKS that went to press, or back to press this week: None

GALLEYS that went out or went out again this week: None


YEAR END bookkeeping and corporate tax info is complete and with the accountants. 1099s will be sent to all who earned more than $600 in sales.

PAYROLL for the last quarter of 2011 has begun and should be complete in a week or ten days.


INDUSTRY NEWS

Barnes & Noble Mulls Splitting Nook Business And Selling “Dead Tree”
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Two bits of news crossed the wire this morning, neither of them good for traditional publishing. First, Barnes&Noble has reportedly put their publishing arm<http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970203513604577140973038330902-lMyQjAxMTAyMDAwNDEwNDQyWj.html>, Sterling Publishing (their vanity press function), up for sale, a company it bought in 2009 for $115 million. Sterling produces puzzle, game, and crafts books for kids and adults. Not as big a deal as it sounds, but it still points to a reduced
interest in paper-based sudoku.

Second, B&N is mulling the spin-off of the Nook business, a move that will shelter the burgeoning epub business and, more important, pull it out of the listing ship that is B&N proper (the Brick and Mortar Stores). The company reported a loss of $6.6 million this quarter, down about half from last year, but the Nook business has thus far been quite lucrative, leading the company to “pursue strategic exploratory work to separate the NOOK business.”


The Nook generated most of B&N’s online sales for a total of $327 million in revenue, an increase of 43%. Quote a B&N press release, “This increase was driven by continued growth of the NOOK business, offset by a decline in online physical product sales.” All nook sales brought the company $448 million, with an increased potion of that coming through third-party retailers – a point that doesn’t look good for the actual book stores.

In all, they sold 70% more Nook devices over last year.

Eastern Shore Oyster Fritters -- recipe

A neighbor brought us a quart of oysters the other day.

I made some 0f Barfer Robinson Stew with half of them and will make oyster fritters with the rest. This is my great-grandmother's recipe, but it works just as well if you substitute vegetable oil for lard in frying.

1 pt. shucked large oysters
6 tbsp. cream (half & half will also work)
1/2 cup oyster liquor
3/4 c. pancake mix
1/2 c. self-rising corn meal
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper

1/2 cup lard for frying. Add more if needed.

If batter becomes too thick from standing, thin it with more of the oyster liquor.

Drain oysters reserving liquor. Put oysters in bowl. Mix in cream and liquor. Add pancake mix, cornmeal, salt and pepper. Mix well. (Batter will be thick).

Heat lard in 10 inch fry pan until smoking hot. (If using an electric fry pan set at 360 degrees and wait until it is fully heated.

Drop batter into hot oil by tablespoon making sure to include 1 oysters in each portion. Cook until brown on 1 side, for 1 to 2 minutes. Turn carefully and brown the other side.

If there is batter left-over after all the oysters are fried, you can fry that, too, and serve it to toddlers or people who are squeamish about eating whole oysters.

My books disappeared -- writing tip

Question from the e-mail: I sent a friend to Mobipocket to buy my books and she couldn't find them. I checked and they are not listed. They were there before. Any idea what happened...?

Answer:

Thanks for the heads up.

Mobi was bought by amazon several years ago. Just now they are revamping the site with new software. They have dropped their entire past inventory and are in the process of picking up their available titles from the Kindle store at Amazon and converting that information to Mobi format. Amazon is also in the process of opening new International stores in Italy, France, Germany, etc. for folks with Kindle devices who want to buy in Euros.

Your titles are both listed for Kindle. All the Kindle titles will be available on Mobi, so your book will "return" there whenever the software catches up.

Black Eyed Pea Soup -- recipe

Happy New Year, Everyone!

Maggie Dix’s Heart-Healthy Black-eyed Pea Soup

2 ½ cups dried Black-eyed Peas
2 tbsp. vegetable oil
1 tbsp. imitation bacon flavored pieces
1 handful of dried cholesterol-free (No Yolks) dumplings
Dash of salt (Garlic salt is good, too.)
Pepper to taste

Water to cover plus one inch. If water has cooked away, add water to cover plus 1/2 inch and bring back to a simmer before adding dumplings.

Place all ingredients except dumplings in a 2 quart pot. Cover with water. Simmer until peas are tender. Add dumplings. Cover and Simmer 10 more minutes. Serves four. If you believe in old wives's tales, double the recipe for New Years.

Maggie Dix .