Archives for August 2011

Important: Expose Your Book to the World

Sell your book worldwide

Sell your book worldwide

FREE LISTING: How your book or e-book will be exposed to international markets.

A great chance for self-publishers and publishers alike is to attach metadata to a new book is through BowkerLink, and it’s incredibly important to use it.  You may know Bowker from ordering your ISBN numbers, but they are also the provider for Books In Print and Global Books In Print that contain listings of bibliographical information for international titles available in the USA or internationally.

In addition, Bowker sells its products worldwide to retailers and libraries, so your titles are exposed to many facets of the book industry through a single web application including other Bowker products like inventory status checks, library catalogue information, and sales data reporting services. Your data is circulated to all of these customers free of charge. To market you book successfully worldwide you need to have it listed worldwide! Their website http://www.bowkerlink.com

Setting Up A New Book on Bowkerlink is easy, just fill in:

ISBN
Title
Subtitle
Translated title
Number of pages
Number of illustrations
Binding type
Language
Subject (1 or 2)
Contributors names and functions
Length, Width and Height
Weight
Year of copyright
Year of original publication
Library of Congress Card Number
Annotation (description)
Country of Sale
Imprint
Title status
Publication date
Price
Price type
Currency
Target market
Age range of the readers

Items in bold are required, the others optional. You should try to fill as many of these fields as possible, as completely as possible, in order to be found easily.

Why register with BowkerLink?
Listing your titles is absolutely free. The BowkerLink Publisher Access System allows you to announce your new release titles, as well as price and status updates to a wide audience of book, audio and video buyers. Your titles are exposed to many facets of the book industry through this single web application.

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Hyper Smash

Part IV Free – Inexpensive Photo Sources

 

 

 

 

 

 


I am sure you have read my former blogs about totally FREE images, today’s listing is starting with 
very inexpensive photo sources, down to the mid- and high-end photo providers. At the end of todays blog see the explanation for “royalty-free” and “rights-managed” images.

http://www.bigstockphoto.com
An inventory of more than 2 million images is a good place to search for photos. Prices are very low if you buy purchase credit blocs, starting at $0.99 or $2.99 for purchases “as you go”.

http://www.dreamstime.com/
Their site is available in several languages, such as German, Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese and it says: “Search among 11 million photos”. Images are ranging from free – although very few – to $5 or more. If you buy their credits in bulk, photos can be as low as 20 cents an image.

http://www.fotolia.com
Fotolia has access to more than 14 million images, subscription photos start at $ 0.16 for very small photos or as a single purchase from $0.75.

http://www.jupiterimages.com
2,5 million royalty-free stock photos, retrieved from more than 50 images sites including Getty images. The site is available in eight languages, even in Japanese, and with prices in their currency. http://www.istockphoto.com High quality images in a huge selection. Most images are between $1-$5 and you can buy credits in blocks. They have royalty-free stock photos, illustrations, videos and website backgrounds.

http://www.clipart.com/
By subscription only!!! For $15 one can download up to 250 images per week, a 1-year subscription is only $160 = more than 12.000 photos! They have more than 10 million pieces of royalty-free photos, clip art, Web graphics, illustrations and fonts that are available via subscription.

 

And here are the mid- to high-end prized photos:

http://www.fotosearch.com
10 Million rights-managed and royalty-free photographs and illustrations from more than 90 publishers around the world.  Images start at $50 and go up from there and are available on CD or via download.

http://www.gettyimages.com
They were the first stock photo company going online in 1995 with its catalogue and images. Getty Images has an inventory of more than 24 million images and is a source for many newspapers and media outlets, but also has affordable stock photography beginning at $50.

http://www.matton.com
Outstanding photographs for the higher end digital media market, even so their value images start at $15 and many of their royalty-free images can be purchased for use on the web, starting at $50. They also offer a great variety of maps as images.

Royalty Free Images
These images are images can be used multiple times, for almost any usage Royalty-Free image pricing is based only on size (not usage) and there are never additional fees for using the image.

Rights-Managed Images
Means: licensed for a specific use. The fee for these images is calculated from several factors including size, placement, duration, and geographic location. Rights-managed images are licensed for a specific use and cannot be used for any other purpose, e.g. if you bought them for a book cover, you cannot use them for a magazine article.

 

Kathryn Stockett: Millionaire after 60 Rejections

The Help

The Help

… “A year and a half later, I opened my 40th rejection: “There is no market for this kind of tiring writing.”  That one finally made me cry. “You have so much resolve, Kathryn,” a friend said to me. “How do you keep yourself from feeling like this has been just a huge waste of your time?”  That was a hard weekend. I spent it in pajamas, slothing around that racetrack of self-pity—you know the one, from sofa to chair to bed to refrigerator, starting over again on the sofa. But I couldn’t let go of The Help.” Read the whole story:
http://www.more.com/kathryn-stockett-help-best-seller

And then there is J.K. Rowling
Describing her life before Harry Potter as a “mess,” Rowling lived with her daughter on welfare in a run-down council estate apartment while writing the book that started it all. Now she’s even wealthier than the Queen. To all the publishers who turned down her whimsical manuscript: You missed out on a fortune.
http://www.more.com/rags-to-riches-stars

Leave a comment: 
How many rejections did you get so far? More than 60? I am wondering how many bestsellers the big publishers missed. Wouldn’t it have been easier to self-publish (ebook and print) and better for Kathryns self-esteem – and then be picked up for bestsellerdom, making more money from the very beginning?

 

Part III of Free Image Sources

Back to free images!
When you browse these sites, download any images that catch your eye. Don’t assume you will be able to find that page later. You might never find it again. Save the ones you like and sort them later.

Map Long Island NY

Map Long Island NY

http://www.photogen.com
Roughly 1,500 free images to choose from and to download.

http://www.imageafter.com/images.php
Not really easy to navigate, but this is the direct link to their free photos, raw photos that is.

http://www.stockvault.net/
Easy to navigate due to categories and sub-categories, pages are framed by offers from Dreamstime, images are free for download. No registration is required and you can share your photos, too.

http://www.sxc.hu/
This site belongs now to Getty Images, and offers a large selection of free stock photos and some illustrations. The site has evolved into a massive community; there are over 2,500,000 registered users and around 400,000 photos online. Sign up to share images and give them credit as the image source as this is their term of use, a fair and civilized habit anyway.  

Let me know of any other free-image-websites you can recommend – for the benefit of all readers and bloggers here, thanks.

 

Your Earnings for e-Books

 

e-book on the beach

e-book on the beach


Royalties at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Apple (iPad) e-book distributors / sellers:

All prices in US Dollar, percentage is from the e-books list price.
None of the Distributors pay royalties for free books or those over $200.

Amazon’s relatively strict pricing structure, which is meant to keep competitive in the e-book market, encourages that digital book prices are between $2.99 and $9.99, as well as 20% cheaper than the same book in paper-and-ink form.

 


AMAZON

$ 0.99 – 2.98 = 35%
$ 2.99 – 9.99 = 70% (minus $0.15 for each MB transfer)
$ 10.00 – 199.99 = 35%

BARNES & NOBLE

$ 0.99 – 2.98 = 40%
$ 2.99 – 9.99 = 65%
$ 10.00 – 199.99 = 40%

APPLE iPAD

$ 0.99 – 2.98 = 70%
$ 2.99 – 9.99 = 70%
$ 10.00 – 199.99 = 70%

700g iPad instead of 17 Kilo Paper for Pilots

Airplane landing

United Airlines, Continental and Alaska Airlines are replacing the hefty flight manuals and chart books its pilots have long used with 11,000 iPads carrying the same data.

The 0.7 kilogram iPad will take the place of about 17 kilograms of paper instructions, data and charts pilots have long used to help guide them, parent company United Continental Holdings said.

The popular tablet computer will carry the Mobile FliteDeck software app from Jeppesen, a Boeing subsidiary which provides navigation tools for air, sea and land.

Read more:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10747192

Heavy Pilot Case

Heavy Pilot Case

Music on e-Books

 
Music for iPad

Music for iPad

A survey conducted by Cathedral Rock Publishing, including 105 individual participants, were asked what type of content would appeal to them in an e-book.  More than three quarters of respondents (77%) identified music as a desirable addition, while 19% answered “other types of audio.” 56% said they would like video in e-books and 58% were in favor of color graphics.  The survey also asked people to consider how they want to use multimedia content embedded in the e-book. More than three quarters (76%) wanted to be able to import music and video into iTunes.

In the film versions of Jane Austen’s classic novel “Pride and Prejudice” the music jumps and swells at the right moments, heightening the tension and romance.  “It’s difficult to imagine a movie with no soundtrack. Yet, until today, the technology did not exist to synchronize music and sound within an e-book,” Paul Cameron, said Booktrack’s co-founder and CEO. Can it be done in an e-book edition?

Booktrack, http://booktrack.com/home.do  a New Zealand start-up, now with an office in New York, is planning to release e-books with soundtracks that play throughout the books, an experimental technology that its founders hope will change the way many novels are read. The software has the backing of tech heavyweights, including early Facebook investor and billionaire Peter Thiel, Facebook’s director of global creative solutions Mark D’Arcy and New Zealand entrepreneur Derek Handley.

Read more:

http://www.businessinsider.com/booktracks-2011-8#ixzz1Vz2q0RIX
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10747316


What do you think, would you like to hear music while reading your e-book?

 

Surprising Book Contract News

John Locke, the e-book millionaire, has signed a deal with Simon&Schuster, one of the New York major publishers – but only for his print books. Locke keeps the rights and handling of his e-book versions at Amazon, racking in 70%, rather than the meager e-book royalties that publishers pay.

Author Tom Tivnan writes in his blog:

“Simon&Schuster is splitting print and digital rights here. This has probably made a lot of agents and authors sit bolt upright, with visions of a far bigger slice of the digital pie dancing in their heads.  I would hesitate to say it is a precedent-setting moment, but when a major US player splits rights, at a time when digital royalty rates seem to be creeping upwards, it certainly gives authors and agents a bit more ammunition.”

Bestseller Author Robert Muchamore commented recently: “Mainstream fiction publishers are in the same position as Polaroid photography was, when digital cameras came to the market.”

Read also J.A. Konraths blog post on this topic http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/08/end-is-nigh.html

I am wondering if these “gentleman publishers” agree with John Locke somewhat tacky cover images…

 

 

Freelance Writing Offer

 

California Flag

California Flag

Living in the Bay area?

Have a look at this Freelance Writing offer:

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/wri/2552723356.html