Pubit! Author Services

At an all-time low.
Barnes & Noble Pubit!, which has never been good at communicating with their authors, has sunk to a new low. Books uploaded to the site in September are still "processing" with no information about  a remedy for problem forthcoming from BN.

But then, BN doesn't have a support department for the Pubit! system. GITP has written them several times about an apparent glitch in the processing, only to be told Pubit! doesn't have a tech staff and, basically, "get over it.".

Today the squawk line in the Community forum--the only meager contact with Pubit!--is really buzzing, with a few "how do I remove my books?" questions.  The crux of it all lies in the never-ending "processing" procedure, that has no explanation and doesn't seem to be ending soon.

And Pubit! really expects to compete with KDP and KOBO? Even Apple responds better than this.

Ebook Pricing Lawsuit?

How are ebooks priced? Not those titles produced from the many Indie Authors, but those from traditional publishing houses--especially the Big Five? It's been a mix of super-high prices (with ebooks costing more than their paperback counterpart) and occasional deep discounts. How is it all determined?

In 2010, a breakdown of costs comparison was done at Gizmodo. It seemed there were a lot of pro-publisher stats. First they took the hard copy edition as the model to work with, then stated the bookseller gets a 50% discount (At Amazon...40% is the standard for other outlets, with 3% to the distributor); and the publisher pays 15% royalty to author (they didn't mention this happens only after the author has sold 10K copies or more)...

Considering the majority of what they call "real" books sold are trade paperbacks, NOT hard copy editions, the information given didn't tell the whole story. Then the ebook distributor they modeled was Apple--which, in 2010, was the most demanding and the hardest for which to format an ebook. They also didn't consider that once the ebook is formatted the costs to produce it for different readers drops off.

Another 2010 article inThe New York Times stated:

"In fact, the industry is based on the understanding that as much as 70 percent of the books published will make little or no money at all for the publisher once costs are paid."

(This begs the question of why the publishers don't go to POD to reduce costs.)

Now, two years later, after all types of back-and-forth, blah-blah-blah in blogs and forums, there seems to be some official follow up. Read about it in this CNET report and the Wall Street Journal. The Justice Department is now involved, and behind-the-scenes Apple information is revealed.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Read an eBook

Here are two very different selections you could make for Read an eBook Week (March 4 -10). From GITP Author connections we present:

Linda Sandifer's western romance Desire's Treasure.

Disguised as a nun, Paris McKenna hides her father's treasure map in her saddlebags and sets out to find the legendary lost mission of Santa Isabel and its fabled riches. But lawless Arizona Territory is no place for a beautiful woman alone. She needs a guide as mean and tough as any outlaw, and she gets her wish in dangerously handsome bounty hunter Nate Brannigan.
Brannigan is willing to do just about any job if the price is right. He's prepared for what the desert has to throw at him, but he isn't prepared for a treasure protected by a curse, a gang of thieves hot on his heels, and a whole lot of unholy thoughts about "Sister Frances." But Nate Brannigan is no saint. And when he finds out Paris is no nun, their treasure hunt takes them on a wild ride across untamed borders of desire they've never crossed before.

Available for Nook and Kindle.

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Jeff Gibson's novella, Last Rites of Passage.

Two "gracefully aging gentlemen" embark on a trek into the wilderness to visit again the special places of their youth. Increasingly threatened by unpredictable weather, bodies that aren't what they used to be and serious injury, the gentlemen push on, until they find themselves battered and nearly immobilized in a mountain basin two miles high.
For one of the men, the trip stirs memories of a time half a century gone, when he and another boy vied for the affection of a girl named Till; a time of joy, adventure, youthful exuberance and life-changing events the man still struggles to understand.
A coming of old age story and more, briskly paced, adventurous and humorous.

Available for Nook and Kindle.

More Events for March

Beginning today: it's Read an eBook Week, March 4-10, 2012. Click on the GITP Authors in the side column to get some ideas. All have interesting ebooks to delight and educate. Mysteries, Westerns, nonfiction and more.

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The fifth annual Women of the World Poetry Slam will be held in Denver this year on March 7-10, 2012.

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EPIC's EPICon will be held 15 – 17 March in San Antonio. EPIC (Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition) was established in 1998 and holds it’s annual CON each year in a different city.

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30 - 31 March is the 6th Annual Northern Colorado Writers Conference, at the Fort Collins Hilton, Fort Collins, Colorado.

Amazon Kicking Up Dust

Another brouhaha brewing. This time around the Kindle Owners' Lending Library. Borrow books for free, says Amazon (if you have Amazon Prime). However it seems some publishers are upset by this.

Here's a the skinny in a good overview from the LA Times.

KindleTag Misuse

A lot of conversation ensues about Amazon's decision to remove tags from Kindle pages. Tags--you know, those descriptive one to two word entries that are supposed to refer to what's in the book. Blogger calls them "labels"; the Internet search calls them "keywords." Whatever, Amazon has removed them from the Kindle pages, and they aren't available for indie authors to use on the publishing page.

An overview of this can be found at Taleist; and I agree, there have been a lot of bad practices regarding tags, including authors tagging each others' works that they haven't even read. I've also noticed bad tagging practice over at netgalley.com where publishing houses give their titles all sorts of tags that don't apply. Using "romance" is almost across the board by many houses, since they feel that's a hot item. "Thriller" is another. Unfortunately, the plan backfires with me, as I'm not interested in romances or thrillers; I see those tags and move on.

It's a shame the system has been misused so abundantly that Amazon has changed the format. It is also a shame that publishers and indie authors can't be satisfied that the descriptions of their work will draw in readers. With so many other social media and networking ways to promote a book, misusing tags seems silly.

Read an E Book

Electronic books now have their own week. March 6 - 12 is Read and Ebook Week, and the site has some interesting information about this not-so-new gadget.

Right in time for this event, I've completed a 2-book set for the SF series, Gem of the Galaxy. It will be available for Nook and Kindle on the 8th at the bargain price of $4.25 (buying the books individually would be $5.98). It has its own web page, too, for more information.

Ebook Sales

Many reports have come out about the rise in eBook sales, especially in this 3Q of 2010--a jump of more than $30 million wholesale since 2Q!

Interesting fact: the $119.4 million reported is probably only a third of actual sales. The report by Association of American Publishers (AAP) and International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF); are compiled from data from "approx. 12 to 15 trade publishers", and only in the US. These figures do not include indy authors, who are retailing their eBooks independently, nor the many small presses that produce eBooks.

That’s a lot of $ flowing on Internet sales.

Richard S. Wheeler - Book 8

Richard S. Wheeler's The Fields of Eden will go live on Kindle this weekend. This is the eighth OOP title Wheeler has republished in Kindle format. His publishers have Kindled many of his titles, too; if you visit his Amazon page and wonder which are his efforts, just look for the ones with the smallest price tag.

GITP formatted the conversion. Wheeler didn't have an original, final text copy of the manuscript so he had a company scan a copy of the print book and put it in .doc format. Problems with this technique include missing chapter breaks, odd rendering of non-standard fonts, several letters that will indiscriminately show up as something else: f becomes t, ie becomes n, and so on.

But close scrutiny by Wheeler and GITP resolved the issues.

The cover is a blend of graphic design and a couple of clip art pieces. It was fun to do.

About the book:

In the 1840s, Americans rushed to the new Eden--Oregon Territory--a lush land claimed by both Great Britain and the United States. Here is the epic story of those who struggled across the little-known continent, and the one man who could help them settle in Oregon, the White Eagle, Dr. John McLoughlin, chief factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Check out Wheeler's Web site for a list of his 50+ published titles.