Important: Expose Your Book to the World

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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What is Meta Data?

 

Search by Metatags

We are in an age of search.
The riches of the internet (and our own wealth) are built on search. If you want to be sought as an author, you first have to make sure you can be discovered. Metadata is the way we do that on the most basic level. 

When you publish a new book or e-book, assign metadata to your work that will travel with descriptions to:

 

• libraries
• book catalogs
• book listings
• book sales pages
• any place books are displayed
• In search results in response to a search query

Metadata is all of the information associated with your book or publication that is used to produce, publish,distribute, market, promote and sell your (e)book. This includes very simple things, such as

• author
• the title
• cover
• format

to much more complicated data, such as the rights information, print run, sales data, reviews, etc. It is usually  a database file that contains all this information.

Metadata is a tool that everyone can use to help make a book a success.  As a self-publisher or author with just a single book you can deliver your Metadata directly to Bowker’s Database, this way your book will be exposed to international markets. The best thing is is FREE and easy to set up. How you can do it will be explained in one of the next blog posts. Stay tuned!

 

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

… “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

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

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

 

Music on e-Books

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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?

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Pingate

 

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…

 

 

 

Part II of Free Image Sources

I am only on page 15 of about 3,000 pages of free photos and have downloaded dozens of beautiful images that I can use for websites, books and yes, also for this blog. This is the best of all websites I found so far:

http://www.morguefile.com

An amazing hidden treasure on the internet, ten, no hundred thousands of free images (260610 to be precise) and you are allowed to copy, distribute, transmit and to adapt the work. No “accounts” necessary as on other websites, just go to “free photos”, choose an image and download it.

Some of the photos are in such a high resolution that you can use them for your book cover image. A real treasure trove!

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I did not have the time yet to browse these more common websites that have royalty free images at low prices and even some free ones too. Have a look:

http://www.istockphoto.com

http://www.dreamstime.com

http://www.shutterstock.com

http://www.fotosearch.com/

 

 

As you browse, pull any images that catch your eye. Don’t assume you’ll be able to return to that page later. Chances are, you’ll never find it again. (They’re tricky that way.) Just save the ones you like and cull them later.

 

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“Old School” Comment on BEA

BEA Review from a Different Angle:

Here are some almost amusing excerpts from an article about the last BEA (my inner comments in brackets)

… to witness the digital revolution turn yesterday’s “gentleman’s business” of publishing into everyman’s global printing press. (Now we have to deal with the plebs)

The lines are blurring between what used to be called “gray publishing” (nowadays e-books and self-publishing) and traditional publishing such as trade, academic, scholarly and professional books.

Software companies, suppliers and distributors held prominent booth space near doors and at the end of aisles.  Many larger publishers either didn’t attend, or had private curtained rooms at the side of the show floor.  I hadn’t seen that hideaway routine at earlier shows. (Are they hiding from their customers, writers or from the digital progress?)

Well, I liked the expression “gentleman’s business” best, it sounds so wonderful old-fashioned arrogant.

 

 

Where to find free photos and illustrations?

Even though I am an avid photographer, taking often several hundred images a month, from time to time the need for a certain motive arises, that I cannot take myself.  The question was, where can I find inexpensive photographs?  A lot of research brought up a handful of online offers that I like to share with you. Maybe you need a certain image for your website, your blog or your book.  Please see some websites below that provide good deals on royalty-free photographs or even free ones.

Search for free photos

But what is the difference between free, royalty-free and rights-managed?

Free images can be downloaded without any rules or agreement and are in the public domain. The creator offers his work public and free, there are no legal rights or restrictions for his or her work and it can be duplicated.  Images which have been copyrighted can still be considered as free when they are explicitly announced by the artist to be used, copied, distributed or modified.

Royalty-free images are given the right to use. There is an agreement that the licensee can use the photo without paying additional royalty charges, but it does not mean that the licensee can use the image for what ever he/she wants.

Rights Managed images means a contract between the licensor and licensee, regarding licensing the rights to use photographs, specifying to use the content in a certain way. This can include the length of time, the medium, the size, the format and the location of use. Unlike images under royalty-free licenses, the licensor is in control or has history of the rights granted involving the image. This is a positive for the licensor as he or she can earn more by creating more offers to the licensee such as exclusivity within a specific region or industry.

FREE IMAGE SOURCES

www.Flickr.com
is one of the largest collection of user generated photography on the web. One finds literally anything on Flickr. Sign up at the Flickr website and open a free account.

www.Freedigitalphotos.net
offers digital art images that are free for web. Higher resolution versions for print can be purchased. No registration is required and you can sell your own images as well. Lots of graphic art, icons and illustrations.

www.deviantArt.com
 is a huge community of (photo) artist – very distinguished from other (commercial) photo websites. Displayed are artistic photos, textures, backgrounds, illustrations etc. Some are free, the rest requires payment Photogen.com contains free photos for personal or commercial use. Register to download these professional images.

More tips for free and inexpensive images in a later post.

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Your e-Book on Flickr

 

Traumberuf Pilot?

Sign up at the Flickr website and open an account (free). 
www.Flickr.com

Take the cover of your e-book in several versions and sizes and load them up at the Flickr website.  Write lots! of good tags to describe these photos of your e-book. Flickr  allows you to up to 75 tags to each photo. Which means: 75 possibilities for people to find, and learn about your e-book.

Tags for e-book photos could be for sample: E-Reading, Kindle, Sony, Kobo, Nook, ereading, e-books, ebooks, ebook online, book cover, digital display, electronic book, information medium, publishing, reading, text, textbook, internet, author, technology, books, education, literature, paper, media, writer, self-publishing, e-Reader, writing news, tablet computer, iPad, e-book conversion,  … and most important: the title of your book and content words (tags) in various versions.

For even more exposure of your e-book photos (but only if the cover is really professionally designed and in high-resolution) join the FotoVotr.com Amber Group.

A free and easy way to show your e-book to the world!

P.S. The book cover image above is a (German) title that I wrote years ago and very successfully self-published and marketed. I will publish it as an e-book next month.

 

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The Truth about POD “Publishing”

 

“Currently unavailable.” When you read this on Amazon’s website you can be sure it is a POD Book…
Amazon assigns many of those out-of-stock books on an availability status of 2-3 weeks. And no one wants to wait that long when ordering on the internet.

POD (Print on Demand) services call it “self-publishing” – but there are important differences between a POD service and true self-publishing. They are in fact VERY EXPENSIVE PRINTERS – NOT PUBLISHERS!  POD printers are producing the book only when ordered. What are the differences?

Rights
TRUE self-publishing:  all rights remain with the writer, who has full ownership of her work, including the ISBN number.
POD services:  mostly owns the ISBN and the author has a very limited claim on digital and/or electronic publishing rights.

Control
TRUE self-publishing:  the writer controls all aspects of the publishing process, cover art, print style, pricing etc.
POD services:  choices are typically limited to their service package

Book Sales
TRUE self-publishing:  the author keeps all proceeds from sales.
POD services:  they keep most of the sales proceeds to cover printing costs, and pays the author a small percentage of royalty, usually from the books NET price.
 

The POD Cons:

• Books from POD services are expensive and may be of poor physical quality.
• There are lots of extra fees, such as renewal fees, distribution fees, extra charges for non-template cover designs, charges for proof corrections etc.
• Royalty income may be less as it is mostly based on the books NET PRICE,  the retail price less discounts and/or all the publisher’s overhead.
• Your book will receive only wholesale distribution, and mainly sold online, Booksellers don’t like dealing with POD services. 
• You do not get an advance – YOU have to pay an advance to the POD company, it just doesn’t make sense economically
• Marketing consists often only on listing on the company’s website and with various online booksellers, sometimes in a wholesaler’s catalogue.  Many POD services offer “marketing packages or media kits” for an extra (high) fee – a total waste of money!

POD Pros:
It is only recommendable if you:

• need galleys, or for short-run publishing and specialty markets
• want to print small non-fiction projects such as lectures or workshops
• want to create a recipe book, a family memoir, genealogy etc.
• bring back out-of-print books into circulation

Who is the publisher?
It is the one who owns the ISBN for a book. If the author applied for and paid for the ISBN in his or her own name, then no matter who produces and sells the book, the author has become the publisher of record, an authentic self-publisher.

Listen to the truth behind POD “publishing” or read more articles about this topic:
http://www.writersandeditors.com/self_publishing_and_print_on_demand__pod__57417.htm
http://beforeyoupublishyourbook.com/2011/07/22/the-truth-about-print-on-demand-publishing/

Do you have any experiences with POD publishing and how much was each soft cover book you ordered from them?

 

 

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The Very Short History of e-Books

E-Readers were not exactly a hit when they were introduced in the 1990s – maybe to a general skepticism about the technology, maybe to their high prices and clumsy technology?

Only after the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader with their more book-like appearance thanks to e-ink technology, were launched in 2007, that the device and subsequently with it, e-books really took off.

 

Kindle and Hardcover Book

From then on sales of e-books rocketed more than 1,000 percent over the next  years, from only $32 million in 2006 to $441 million in 2010, to more than $1 billion, prognosed for 2011. If it would not be for some of the big publishing houses with their reluctance to e-books and fixed-price requirements in countries like Japan or Germany, the numbers could be double already.

Now book stores and publishers are going to have to reinvent themselves, as every book ever written being stored at virtually no cost and delivered instantly on demand. Why would consumers need all the hassle of limited store hours, crowded parking lots and out-of-stock titles.  And why should stores return almost half of new books, just because they are not sold in big numbers within a few months? Imagine the impact on resources and the environment that was caused by this practice within the last 60 years.

Why do authors need a publisher? Why don’t they just sign directly with Amazon, cutting out the middlemen – as more and more bestseller authors are doing –  and receiving ten times the royalty? Or even one step further as J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series does, offering the e-books on her own website, yielding 100% of the e-book proceeds.