Yesterday I mentioned the importance of pricing to e-book sales, using the example of a 1992 novel that shot to the top of e-bestseller lists after going on sale for 99 cents. However, 99 cents is not always the right answer. Publishers Weekly has a post looking at ten pricing rules that Vook has come up with after studying what elements make e-books and apps successful. Vook determined that it was not simply a matter of price, but also category. Proper categorization helps books get discovered and in turn contributes to what Vook calls "lift...

On The Next Great Generation, Julia Dawidowicz discusses her experience with e-book reading. She starts with her relationship with paper books, both as reading material and as physical artifacts. (It seems quite a few people can’t seem to divorce the word from the material it’s written on, and those tend to be the ones with the hardest time adopting to e-books.) But to be fair, Dawidowicz did decide to give e-books a chance—but when she did, she ran into the same problem about which both Joanna and I have ranted at length: the tyranny of the typo. ...

Is Amazon the new Wal-Mart? On Wired, Tim Carmody discusses a comparison by a Morgan Stanley analyst who noted that Amazon’s recent earnings show a similar revenue pattern to Wal-Mart’s in 1991. Carmody suggests there are other similarities as well, pointing to Amazon’s pricing policies and relations with overseas manufacturing partners. He also brings up a comment by Steve Jobs from 2002, comparing competitors such as Dell to Wal-Mart and saying they were not innovating (at least in terms of what Apple considered innovation). Amazon, on the other hand, basically “innovated” the entire modern e-book market into being with...

There seems to be a commonly-held attitude these days that self-publishing is a road to success, and that all you have to do is price your book at 99 cents and you’ll sell a zillion copies. (I will admit that from time to time I can come fairly close to buying into that perception myself.) Futurebook has an amusing article by Amazon self-publishing author Walter Ellis who shows the other side of that coin. Says Mr. Ellis, “I publish, therefore I am invisible.” Having written a couple of successful nonfiction books and a historical fiction thriller,...

Micropayment for on-line content is one of those ideas that sounds great until someone actually tries implementing it. For some reason, it never ends up taking off, but every few years its siren call entices another generation of web content developers who are absolutely positive that this time it’s going to work. Publishing Perspectives has a piece by writer and editor Amanda DeMarco that’s a great example. Calling it “an elegant solution to a widely acknowledged cultural problem” that “we all ignored”, she suggests that it might actually work this time—not as the cure-all panacea that some have made...

Joe Konrath had an interesting post last week about the growing global marketplace for ebooks, where he suggested that it's time for serious self-publishers to consider translations: Find translators. They're expensive, but it's a sunk cost, and ebooks will sell forever. Or... Let your estributor handle the translations. I have enough work on my plate just deal with English-speaking countries. If my agent, who is assuming some estributor responsibilities for me, can handle the translations and uploading to foreign territories, I'd offer more than 15% for that service. Although translation doesn't come cheap, Konrath calls foreign markets—like Kindle and Kobo in Germany, and the forthcoming...

Kids will lead the coming surge in ereader adoption, suggests the Boston Globe in an article this weekend: "This is a generation of kids that have learned to communicate, search and purchase on very small devices, like mobile phones," said James McQuivey, Forrester Research media analyst. "This year is a guinea pig year, next year the move will be en masse." In addition to being seen as non-threatening by kids, ereader prices are dropping while their capabilities continue to increase, and publishers are aggressively expanding their children's and YA ebook catalogs. Read the full article at Boston.com. ...

The five alert services (all free) discussed are: 1. Track New Book 2. Book Buzzes 3. Any New Books 4. Author Alerts 5. Wowbrary A service many of you are probably familiar with. Wowbrary alerts users to new books at numerous public libraries around the U.S. Like many services on the WWW, the four mentioned in the MakeUseOf article are all (with the exception of Wowbrary) variations on a theme. Since the price is right (free), sampling all of them is easy to find the one(s) that might work best for your info need. Read the Complete MakeUseOf.com Article: "5...

When it comes to e-book sales, price can matter a great deal. PaidContent takes a look at the case of The Black Echo by Michael Connelly, a 1992 novel that has suddenly shot to the top of the Kindle and Nook bestseller charts. After the publisher dropped its price from $7.99 to 99 cents at the end of June, it went from the mid-three-digits up to #2 on the Nook and Kindle bestseller charts, and #13 on Kobo’s. PaidContent calls this an example of “big six” agency-model publishers beginning to experiment with running sales on their books. ...

E-ink e-book readers are really taking off. E Ink Holdings, the manufacturer of the screens used by most e-ink readers today, has just adjusted its production estimates upward. The company now estimates that by the end of 2011, it will have shipped 25 to 30 million screens this year. Can you imagine that? Potentially 30 million new e-ink e-book readers could be manufactures by the end of the year using screens from just this one company. Hard to believe that just a few years ago we were all wondering if e-readers would ever take off. (Found via eBookNewser.)...

The lines between authors, agents, and publishers used to be very clear and bright. Each one had certain things it did best, and the idea of authors or agents jumping into publishing themselves was all but unheard of. But with the rise of e-books and e-publishing, many authors have gone into publishing for themselves—and now a number of literary agents are doing so as well, for backlist titles traditional publishers have been less willing to touch. The Bookseller has a feature looking at some of these agents. For example, Ed Victor has branched his literary agency out into offering...

Version 2.0 of the iPad magazine app Zinio was released yesterday, Engadget reports. (Video overview embedded below the cut.) The app includes in-app purchasing of magazines (presumably forking over 30% to Apple) and adds some new content preview options including free articles from a number of publications. It also offers improved performance and new functionality such as in-app shopping. (Social networking features are reportedly on the way.) But, as Engadget points out, the prices of Zinio e-magazines are still in line with what you would pay for a physical newsstand copy. Too bad about that. ...