DOES E-PUBLISHING PAY?

Hell, yes.

Friend and fellow blogger Rick Spilman of OldSaltBlog sent me a link to an absolutely gripping blog post by Joe Konrath (pictured) . . . who reports e-book sales topping one hundred thousand smackers -- for out of print books! -- and tells you how he did it.

Wrote Rick,  "Have you been following Joe Konrath's exploits with e-books by any chance? He is thriller writer I met a few years ago at a writer's conference. Nice guy. He has written a lot of thrillers, many of which were dropped by his publisher. He turned around and republished them as e-books and is doing remarkably well."

"Kindle sales are interesting," he goes on to reflect.  "Over the summer, Amazon announced that they are selling more Kindle books than hardcovers. I have been following Alaric Bond's sales of his three books on novelrank.com . He is selling roughly twice as many books in Kindle format than in trade paperback. Bernard Cornwell's latest book, "The Fort" is also selling better in Kindle format than in hardcover, though not by quite the margin as Bond's books."

Bernard Cornwell selling better on Kindle?  Lordie me, it sure is a changing world we live in.

It's fortunate that it is fascinating, too.

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2:45 PM | 0 comments

Amazon To Buy LivingSocial: Groupon Rival

After Google conspiracy to buy Daily Deals website Groupon now Amazon also comes up with their strategy to compete in market of daily products and deals.

Amazon soon going to buy Groupon most successful rival LivingSocial. Amazon.com swooped in Thursday with a 175$ million investment in LivingSocial, Groupon's most successful competitor. As we know Google always in search of some unique kind of products and service to buy and provide better option to their customers all over the world. LivingSocial is currently booking average daily sales of more than $1 million, and is projected to top $500 million in revenue in 2011, the company said. Based in Washington, D.C., the site has 10 million subscribers in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Ireland and Australia.

LivingSocial plans to use Amazon.com's massive e-commerce heft to fight off its older and larger rival.

"To be the biggest player in the local commerce space there is no one better to work with than Amazon," co-founder and CEO Tim O'Shaughnessy said in a prepared statement.

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1:36 PM | 0 comments

SELF-PUBLISHING AND BOOK DISTRIBUTION

My good friend Jacqueline Church Simonds of Beaglebay Inc. is interviewed today in the first of two blogs by The Book Designer. 

As blogger Joel Friedlander comments, people who have just self-produced their first book have a lot of trouble visualizing just how to (a) get that book out onto the market, and (b) get that book noticed.  Jacqueline, who began as a self-published author herself, and went on to publish books by other authors, describes her personal voyage, imparting many invaluable hints along the way.

What impressed me about this interview is that it was one-on-one, with Friedlander composing his questions in response to the previous answer.  With remarkable skill, aided by an honest, experienced, and candid interviewee, he elicited a discourse of tremendous value to anyone who contemplates self-publishing a book.  Better still, the information is as up-to-date as today's freshly baked bread.

And here (hot off the press) is the second instalment, which includes a commentary on the digital age.

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1:15 PM | 0 comments

Greatest Hits MP3 Album in 6$: Amazon Music Sale

Amazon offering Music Sale for Greatest Hits Album of all time new and old ones for your Christmas and New Year Events. Now you can get your all time favorite Mp3 Music Albums of your choice in cheap price less than 6$.

These music albums include most popular old and popular singers and movies songs including Dean Martin, Dierks Bentley, Boston, Cyndi Lauper, Blood Sweat and Tears and lots more. So get your following MP3 Albums of your choice and load your iPod and iPhone with some old and new music for Christmas and other events.

You can get following popular MP3 Music Albums in less than 6$ each.

• Greatest Hits by Boston
• Christmas Greatest Hits by Dean Martin
• Greatest Hits of 2008 by Dierks Bentley
• Essential Cyndi Lauper by Cyndi Lauper
• Blood Sweat & Tears - Greatest Hits by Blood Sweat & Tears
• Disney's Karaoke Series: Disney's G.H. by Disney
• Icon by Bryan Adams
• James Taylor at Christmas by James Taylor
• Merry Christmas by Maria Carey
• Sky Is Crying by Stevie Vaughan
• Merry Axemas - Guitar Christmas by Various Artists

This Cyber Week is going to be crazy with lots of new stuff with Discounted Price. So Keep in touch for lots more upcoming products and events. :)

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1:05 PM | 0 comments

WikiLeaks Back With New Domain URL

The most controversial website for leaking U.S Documents Wikileaks.org was shutdown before, because it was facing massive cyber attacks. But now Wikileaks came back online with a New Domain URLs.

"WikiLeaks moves to Switzerland," the group declared on Twitter, although an Internet trace of the new domain name suggested that the site itself is still hosted in Sweden and in France.

The original wikileaks.org domain was taken offline at 0300 GMT Friday by its American domain name system provider, EveryDNS.net, following reports of massive attacks on the site.

A WikiLeaks Spokesman has said that Assange had to remain out of the public eye because he had faced assassination threats.

Now you can access Wikileaks on its following New URLs.

• WikiLeaks.De

• WikiLeaks.Fi

• WikiLeaks.Nl

• WikiLeaks.Ch

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12:23 PM | 0 comments

THE NYT TOP TEN LIST

As of yesterday, the New York Times list of top 10 books of the year is no longer a subject of speculation.  It includes just three of their individual critics' top 10 lists, which makes one wonder who decides on the final line-up.  For the second year in a row, critic Dwight Garner's nonfiction-focused choices were left out of the overall top 10, which must cause him some reflection. The fiction list is surprising for its inclusion of two collections of previously-published stories, which is perhaps a comment on the quality of the top runners this year.

And here it is:

Fiction

Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen

The New Yorker Stories, by Ann Beattie

Room, by Emma Donoghue

Selected Stories, by William Trevor

A Visit from the Good Squad, by Jennifer Egan

Nonfiction

Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet, by Jennifer Homans

Cleopatra: A Life, by Stacy Schiff

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981), by Stephen Sondheim

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson

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11:24 AM | 0 comments

ANNE FRANK STORY RESTYLED TO REACH A GREATER AUDIENCE

The School Library Journal reports an interesting new outreach to reluctant young readers, a move that is backed by the Anne Frank House.

Together, Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón have been creating comics for nearly 50 years. Most recently, their efforts have focused on creating nonfiction graphic novels that go a long way to help a more general understanding of historical events and the roles that key individuals played.

Now, commissioned by the Anne Frank House, in Amsterdam, they have created Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography, a deeply researched but widely accessible account of Anne's life and death, and the world she experienced.

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12:20 PM | 0 comments