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...

From the Vook blog: Today, we made a very exciting announcement: We have 47 titles available for sale in Apple’s iBookstore. In the short time since our launch there, we’ve surpassed all players in the digital publishing space to become the largest and fastest growing publisher of enhanced eBooks in the iBookstore. In fact, we’re progressing so fast that by the time the press release hit the wires, we had 57 titles in iBooks.   Not only are we moving at the speed of light, but our titles are being received incredibly well. Reckless Road:...

From the Vook blog: Summers can be hectic. We kick it off with Memorial Day, scramble for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and in a few short weeks, we’ll be throwing a party for America’s birthday. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a day for You? We think so. So we’re declaring June 23rd “You Day.” To celebrate, we’re making four of our iPad apps free. The Autobiography of Ben Franklin Franklin wrote the most popular autobiography in history, and it’s even more awesome with expert commentary in videos. Dracula’s Guest Dracula’s Guest is the short story that Bram Stroker wrote before Dracula made...

Fellow NAPCO blog Appletell links to a story on iPadInsider (which in turn links to a story on Paid Content) which offers a first look at what “e-books” might look like on the iPad, courtesy of Penguin. I quotate “e-books” because I don’t think I would necessarily call what Penguin had to display “e-books” in the traditional sense. Penguin Group’s CEO John Makinson had some interesting things to say at the FT Digital Media & Broadcasting Conference in London: “We will be embedding audio, video and streaming in to everything we do. The .epub...

I went into New York yesterday to attend Publishing Point's Vook meetup. Their presentations have been getting more and more interesting, so if you are in the New York area take a look. The presentation was made by Brad Inman, Vook's CEO. Basic concept: filmmakers and authors come together. Filmmakers come from a network set up under the name of Turn Here. Feels that Apple will give tools to creators to make new things that go over and above ebooks and enhanced ebooks. Apple already did this with graphic design and music. Very interested in the education...

CNet has an article about Smartwords, an idea from start-up company Wordnik that sounds terrific but sure seems hard to describe succinctly. As Smartwords’s website puts it: Smartwords is a lightweight, easy-to-use standard for retrieving and publishing real-time, contextually-aware information about words. It took reading through the CNet article a couple of times to figure out that it might better be described as “an integrated dictionary on steroids.” Existing e-book apps with dictionary support (such as eReader) are largely limited to clicking on a single word to get a definition. Wordnik wants...

Robin Wauters at TechCrunch notes that independent book publisher Author Solutions (ASI) has entered a distribution agreement with e-self-pub site Scribd. New ASI titles will also be made available for sale via Scribd, and part of its 120,000-title backlist will go up as well. Authors will receive 50% of their titles’ net sales, and can choose to set their own price or leave it with the default of $9.99. Brad Stone at The New York Times’s “Bits” blog notes that multimedia e-book publisher Vook has raised $2.5 million in venture capital funding. Vook’s founder, Brad Inman, is planning...

Vook has signed up with the boutique literary agency Janklow & Nesbit Associates. As part of this Janklow & Nesbit announced that its first Vook will be a story from Anne Rice. Vook is a multi-media platform that blends text, images, video and animation. No details about the Vook-enabled story were given in the press release. But given the type of stories she writes one can imagine that there is plenty of room for a mulitmedia presentation. ...

You’ve been asleep hundreds of years. Awake at last, you’re the richest man on earth, thanks to the powers of compounded interest. You’ve got a few Issues, however. You’re a zealot of a socialist; and, in real life, your dreams have gone awry. As summed up at Manybooks.net, that’s the premise of  The Sleeper Awakes, which H.G. Wells published in 1899. I’m reading Sleeper now on my iPod Touch---and listening to it, too, via my Kindle’s text to speech feature, when I tread or walk---and I would recommend hanging on despite the slow start....