NetGalley at BEA: giveaway update & more!

Oh my goodness folks, BookExpo America is just around the  corner!

If you’re already a NetGalley member, you probably got our email last week about our BEA plans. We have an exciting update, so I wanted to share the details of our promotion with all you “follow the readers.”


“LIKE” NETGALLEY AT BEA & ENTER TO WIN A READING DEVICE!

By BEA, NetGalley will have over 26,000 registered members and 100 publishers–which we think is something to celebrate! Our theme for NetGalley at BEA will be “COUNT ME IN” and we hope you’ll join the fun.

We’re bringing our Facebook Wall to life by asking all of you to come by booth #3718 to “like” our booth wall using the cute “I heart NG” sticker you see here and below.

Plus it’s your chance to enter our drawing to win one of three eReaders! That’s right, now we’re giving away 3 devices:

Just announced: a NOOK Color—The Reader’s Tablet (thanks  to our friends at Barnes & Noble)

a Kobo eReader (thanks to our friends at Kobo)

and a Kindle!

Of course we want the fun to extend online, so you can also pose for a picture with your sticker on the booth wall, and we’ll post the pics on our NetGalley Facebook page.


CAN’T ATTEND BEA? WE STILL LOVE YOU!  

Show that you love us too by putting this sticker on your blog.

 

Plus, if you comment on our Facebook page during BEA Week (May 23-27), you’ll also be entered into the drawing for one of the eReaders!

And one last friendly reminder:

DON’T MISS US AT THE BOOK BLOGGER CONVENTION!

I’ll  also be on the Technology for Blogging panel at the Book Blogger Convention (at the end of BEA).

See my guest blog post for the BBC here. Follow the updates on Twitter @bookbloggercon.

If you’ll be there too, make sure to say hello!


Can’t handle waiting another whole week for all this fun to start?

In the meantime, check the NetGalley Features page for links to our BEA FICTION Preview and BEA NONFICTION Preview to see which galleys will be promoted at BEA. Request them now for a sneak peek.

That’s it for now–thanks, as always, for all your support. See you soon!

–Lindsey, Digital Concierge, NetGalley

Read Full Post »

We’re back!

We must apologize for the absence of new posts over the last few months. As you may know if you’re a NetGalley member, your Digital Concierge (me, Lindsey) went on maternity leave earlier than expected in late November, and this blog went on leave right along with me! Luckily we found great help in Sarah, who served as your Digital Concierge while I was out. Now I’ve returned to my post at NetGalley and we’re ready to give you an update.

Here’s what NetGalley’s been up to over the past few months:

• Bringing more publishers into our catalog. There are more than 85 publishers now signed up with NetGalley. Here are a few we’ve welcomed in the new year: Oceanview, Hyperion, Candlewick, Fox Chapel, PR By the Book, Thomas Nelson, HarperCollinsCanada, Chelsea Green — and as just recently announced, Penguin Group (USA).

• Finding new ways for you to read digital galleys. Thanks to the Aldiko Book Reader app, Android users can now read NetGalley files on their devices. Have questions about using your iPad, iPhone, Kobo, Literati, Nook, Sony Reader, or other device with NetGalley? There’s a page for that!

• Telling you about new titles. Currently we have more than 940 titles listed in NetGalley’s public catalog, and new galleys are added all the time. We send out periodic updates about our new titles, so make sure you’re signed up to receive our newsletters for your favorite genres. Plus, you can now view past and forthcoming newsletters on our NetGalley Features page. We’ll soon be announcing the Most Requested titles, so check back to see if it’s your favorite!

• Helping your requests get approved. We asked publishers what criteria they use to determine whether to approve or decline galley requests. Wondering what publishers are looking for? Check out this new page BEFORE you request to better your chances of getting the galleys you want.

• Getting to know you — our members. We closed out 2010 with 15,353 registered members of NetGalley (today, just three months later, we’ve surpassed 20,000 members!), and we took some time to look at what that number means:
  • Reviewers – including bloggers – make up almost half of our members (49%). Another 16.5% are librarians, and 11% are part of the media. Booksellers make up an additional 11% of our member community, while educators accounted for 9.7%.
  • When new members join NetGalley, we ask them to indicate which genres they’re interested in. Literature & Fiction is the most popular, but only by a little bit – Teens & YA is close behind. Mystery & Thrillers, Science Fiction & Fantasy, and Romance are next, followed by Nonfiction.
  • NetGalley members made 80,945 requests to view galleys in 2010. It’s probably not too much of a surprise to say that reviewers made most of those requests – 63.9% of them, to be precise.
  • Our members downloaded 45,422 galleys last year. Almost half (46.9%) were DRM-protected files downloaded with Adobe Digital Editions. 29.1% were sent directly to members’ Kindles, and 11.2% were DRM-free files.
  • And the result of all of those readers, requests, and downloads was a mountain of reviews sent to publishers via NetGalley: 7972, to be precise. That’s a 17.6% return on approved galley requests.

So that’s the latest from the NetGalley world. I look forward to connecting with you!

Happy Reading,
Lindsey

Digital Concierge
NetGalley

Read Full Post »

Publishers: boost your viral marketing with digital galleys

One of the biggest challenges for publishers is tapping into the web’s inexpensive viral marketing while preventing the loss of sales and content due to theft. Oh, is that word too harsh? Theft? I bring that up because on one side of the coin, publishers don’t want to make their valued readers feel like potential criminals. But, on the other side of the coin, publishers are entrusted with authors’ content and don’t want it to lose potential profits either while sending out ARCs for review.

Let’s look at airport security for a second. It’s analogous. Airlines’ passengers, the very people who they rely on for business are treated much like criminals when poked and prodded through airport security.

Readers, who publishers rely on for reviews and buzz, may feel just as hassled and put out as airline passengers when they receive digitally rights managed (DRM) galleys. First, they have to figure out the type of DRM galley they’ve been sent. Maybe they have a Sony Reader but the DRM galley they received only works on Kindles. Or, they’re sick of reading things on their computer but the DRM galley can only be read on their computer and is not downloadable to their Kindle.

One way to avoid this is to survey your readers. Know your audience, right? Their reading habits have changed with the times. Find out if the majority of your readers use a Sony Reader, Kindle, Nook, iPhone, or other reader then offer those reading options. If you don’t already have a survey service, http://surveymonkey.com/  is great for a quick, free survey.  And, if you use NetGalley, then work with our Digital Concierge, Lindsey Rudnickas, to make sure your titles have the appropriate reading options available for your readers.

Another route to go, if you’d like to offer DRM-free, or open ARCs, so that they can be more easily passed from one person to the next, is to provide just the index and a few chapters of a galley, to get the benefit of generating buzz without all the risk. Digital galleys, unlike traditional printed ARCs, which are passed around as well, give publishers more control over how much of the content readers can view.

Let’s not forget our friends the excerpt. HTML excerpts are another way to give readers a taste of what a book has to offer without throwing the content to the wind. Just remember to use it as you would all marketing material with a call to action at the end. What would you like interested readers to do? If you’re a member of NetGalley you could provide a link to your title and suggest that interested readers request the galley now, or email the excerpt to a friend.

If you’re thinking, that’s fine, but a tad dull, add some video and or author audio clips to the DRM-free PDF you send to readers.  No matter how you dress up an ARC, it’s hard to include video and audio as easily and inexpensively as you can with a PDF (http://www.totalwebvideo.com/pdfmedia/pdfmedia.html). The benefit of digital galleys is that they can plug into so much more than their analog counterparts. 

With a little creative thinking publishers can use digital galleys to generate more buzz more easily and inexpensively than with printed galleys, without feeling like they’re giving away content for free.

 Additional Resources

E-Reader Matrix and supported formats: http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix

Adobe Content Server (ACS4) can provide DRM galleys for a number of devices including the nook and Sony readers. To see a complete list: http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/devices/

Read Full Post »

Paper or Plastic: Why Not Both?

Paper?

Is it just me, or have you noticed that there are some bookish types who like to pit electronic against paper as if it’s an either/or proposition? And have you also noticed that more often than not, discussions about utilizing new publishing technologies, quickly become polarizing arguments where one must supposedly choose: paper or plastic? Consider, for example, the Green Apple Bookstore videos poking fun at the Kindle — funny? Yes. silly? Yes. But, many a truth is said in jest, and a lot of people seem to think digital means the demise of the paper book.

I just want to say, for the record that: e- does not stand for “evil.”

Nor does it stand for “enemy.”

For anyone intent on finding enemies of the book, they need look no further than the traditional publishing model which goes something like this: Over-saturate market with hundreds of thousands of titles printed in paper, a few of which will be blockbusters, the rest of which will be returned to publishers. Repeat (until the money runs out).

You know that place where there are lots and lots of unsold, unread paper books, and lots and lots of out-of-work book industry folks? We’re so there.

or Plastic?

So, why demonize digital when digital appears to be a really viable part of the solution? And why suggest that any one format will ever be the solution? The way I see it, the only real solution is to have many solutions all working simultaneously to make available a diversity of content, a diversity of distribution alternatives, a diversity of formats and pricing, and even a diversity of features. Oh, and paper books are a part of this many-solution solution.

This same many-solution solution is a solution where publishers print POD if conditions call for it; gigantic print runs should that make sense; and lovely gorgeous full color hardbound books with gilded edges if that’s what the market demands — Yup, all of these options are part of the solution.

Paper is fabulous. Lots of people love it. Some swear by it. Heck, some of my best friends even sell paper (@permanentpaper).

Other readers love reading on plastic, and will have it no other way. Though, even they can not agree with one another on the best format or delivery mechanism for their electronic literature.

Many of us like to read different ways at different times. Sometimes we find it most pleasurable to read paper books– all manner of paper books: board books, pop-up books, mass market, hard cover, picture books, trade paper, (why, I’ve been known to read cereal boxes and I don’t see those going e- any time soon) — and sometimes we like to read ebooks – we will read them in a car, we will read them at the bar. We will read them on a Kindle, on a nook, on our computers, on our iphones, on our Play Stations — no doubt someone somewhere right this second is reading an ebook on their television.

And that’s okay. You see, one need not eschew the hand bound letter press book in order to enjoy a digitally delivered novella via their iphone. Theoretically, we can have it all.

Consider Follow the Reader’s sponsor, NetGalley. NetGalley allows professional readers and industry folks to read the book in digital form, prior to its paper debut, thus saving the costs – both financial and envirornmental, that would otherwise be spent on printed ARCs, galleys, and BLADs. For those reviewers who prefer the printed version of an ARC, publishers can offer that via NetGalley,  as well. In this case, the e-option can work beautifully alongside the printed paper book. Everyone goes home a winner. And that’s just one example where a digital version of a book is not necessarily a substitute for a finished paper book, but offers an alternative solution for the reader’s specific needs or preferences.

So, stop worrying about the death of paper books. Digital doesn’t mean the end of paper. It just means more opportunities for more readers to read “books” in the ways that are best suited to them.  And, by the way, I know I’m far from alone in believing the form of a book should fit its purpose and/or a reader’s preferences, and that there’s room for all kinds of books to live together peacefully.

Because, a book by any other name is just as sweet.

Read Full Post »

The Day It All Changed

OK, sounds dramatic, but trust me, mark down October 19, 2009 as a day to remember.

Rarely, in my career have I been “blown away” by a demonstration.  Tonight, “blown away” doesn’t even begin to describe it.  I should have seen it coming, but, I didn’t.  I was completely blindsided.  I was blindsided by the vision of Brewster Kahle, the raw brilliance of his team, and the entire group of individuals and companies who played a role in Brewster’s “convocation”.

Brewster Kahle

What I saw, was many of the dreams and visions of e-book aficionados everywhere becoming a demonstrable reality tonight.  I say ‘demonstrable’, because by Brewster’s own admission, it’s not ready for prime time, but the demonstration was enough to make my head spin with the possibilities.  But you don’t really want to know that, so let me do my best to just report what I saw.

Let’s start from the beginning…

Tonight, Brewster Kahle, Internet Archive Founder and Chief Librarian, introduced what he calls his “BookServer” project.  BookServer is a framework of tools and activities. It is an open-architectured set of tools that allow for the discoverability, distribution, and delivery of electronic books by retailers, librarians, and aggregators, all in a way that makes for a very easy and satisfying experience for the reader, on whatever device they want.

Now that may sound fairly innocuous, but let me try to walk through what was announced, and demonstrated  (Please forgive me if some names or sequences are wrong, I’m trying to do this all from memory):

• Brewster announced that the number of books scanned at libraries all over the world has increased over the past year from 1 million books to 1.6 million books.

• He then announced that all of these 1.6 million books were available in the ePub format, making them accessible via Stanza on the iPhone, on Sony Readers, and many other reading devices in a way that allows the text to re-flow if the font has been changed.

• Next he announced that not only were these files available in ePub form, but that they were available in the “Daisy” format as well.  Daisy is the format used to create Braille and Text to Speech software interpretations of the work.

• There were other statistics he cited related to other mediums such as 100,000 hours of TV recordings, 400,000 music recordings, and 15 billion (yes it’s a ‘b’) web pages that have been archived.

• He then choreographed a series of demonstrations.  Raj Kumar from Internet Archive demonstrated how the BookServer technology can deliver books  to the OLPC (One Laptop per Child) XO laptop, wirelessly.  There are 1 million of these machines in the hands of underprivileged children around the world, and today they just got access to 1.6 million new books.

• Michael Ang of IA then demonstrated how a title in the Internet Archive which was available in the MOBI format could be downloaded to a Kindle – from outside the Kindle store – and then read on the Kindle.  Because many of these titles were in the Mobi format as well, Kindle readers everywhere also have access to IA’s vast database.

• Next up, Mike McCabe of IA, came up and demonstrated how files in the Daisy format could be downloaded to a PC then downloaded to a device from Humana, specifically designed for the reading impaired.  The device used Text-to-speech technology to deliver the content, but what was most amazing about this device was the unprecedented ease at which a sight impaired person could navigate around a book, moving from chapter to chapter, or to specific pages in the text.

• Brewster took a break from the demonstrations  to elaborate a couple of facts, the most significant of which was the fact the books in the worlds libraries fall into 3 categories. The first category is public domain, which accounts for 20% of the total titles out there – these are the titles being scanned by IA.  The second category is books that are in print and still commercially viable, these account for 10% of the volumes in the world’s libraries.  The last category are books that are “out of print” but still in copyright.  These account for 70% of the titles, and Brewster called this massive amount of information the “dead zone” of publishing.  Many of these are the orphan titles that we’ve heard so much about related to the Google Book Settlement – where no one even knows how to contact the copyright holder.  (To all of my friends in publishing, if you let these statistics sink in for a minute, your head will start to spin).

• Brewster went on to talk about how for any digital ecosystem to thrive, it must support not just the free availability of information, but also the ability for a consumer to purchase, or borrow books as well.

• At this point, Michael came back out and demonstrated – using the bookserver technology – the purchase of a title from O’Reilly on the Stanza reader on the iPhone – direct from O’Reilly – not from Stanza.  If you are a reader, you may think that there is nothing too staggering about that, but if you are a publisher, this is pretty amazing stuff.  Stanza is supporting the bookserver technology, and supporting the purchase of products direct from publishers or any other retailer using their technology as a delivery platform.  (Again, friends in publishing, give that one a minute to sink in.)

• The last demonstration was not a new one to me, but Raj came back on and he and Brewster demonstrated how using the Adobe ACS4 server technology, digital books can be borrowed, and protected from being over borrowed from libraries everywhere.  First Brewster demonstrated the borrowing process, and then Raj tried to borrow the same book but found he couldn’t because it was already checked out.  In a tip of the hat to Sony, Brewster then downloaded his borrowed text to his Sony Reader.  This model protects the practice of libraries buying copies of books from publishers, and only loaning out what they have to loan. (Contrary to many publishers fears that it’s too easy to “loan” unlimited copies of e-Books from libraries).

• In the last piece of the night’s presentation, Brewster asked many of the people involved in this project to come up and say a few words about why they were here, and what motivated them to be part of the project.  The sheer number of folks that came out were as impressive as the different constituencies they represented.  By the end of this the stage was full of people, including some I know, like Liza Daly (Three Press), Mike Tamblyn (Shortcovers), and Andrew Savikas (O’Reilly).  Others, I didn’t know included Hadrien Gradeur (Feedbooks), the woman who invented the original screen for the OLPC, a published author, a librarian from the University of Toronto, Cartwright Reed from Ingram, and a representative from Adobe.

After the night was over, I walked all the way back to the Marina district where I was staying.  The opportunities and implications of the night just absolutely made my head spin.  I am completely humbled to be asked to be here and to witness this event.

In one fell swoop, the Internet Archive expanded the availability of books to millions of people who never had access before, bringing knowledge to places that had never had it.  Who knows what new markets that will create, or more importantly what new minds will contribute to our collective wisdom as a result of that access.  In the same motion, Brewster demonstrated a world where free can coexist with the library borrowing model, and with the commercial marketplace.  Protecting the interests of both of those important constituencies in this ecosystem.  He also, in the smoothest of ways, portrayed every ‘closed system’ including our big retail friends and search engine giants, as small potatoes.

I will have to post again about the implications of all this, but people smarter than me – many of whom I was able to meet today, will be far more articulate about what just happened.  I’m still too blown away.  I know this, it was a ‘game changer’ day.  It may take a couple of years to come to full fruition, but we will be able to pinpoint the spot in history when it was all shown to be possible.  I need to thank Peter Brantley for inviting (or should I say tempting) me to be there. Wow.

Read Full Post »

Proliferation and Pricing Wars for eReaders and eBooks (#FollowReader Summary)

Shhh! No one seems to have a clue about ebooks...

Well, I apologize. Events have made this a much busier summer than usual for all of us at Follow The Reader. Therefore, I am even more behind on my posting than normal. However, as promised, here is a summary of our #FollowReader “twittersation” from July 9th on Ebook pricing and Ereading device proliferation.

Spurred by that week’s flood of announcements regarding ebooks, ereaders, the pricing of both, and the never ending menace of DRM, this #FollowReader discussion was in a word, LIVELY.

Over the course of an hour and a half (many stayed past the usual hour mark, and kept on chatting until almost 5:30PM EST), many opinions were shared, along with links to articles, statistics and other information. We had more than 80 participants and well over 600 tweets.

I’ve highlighted a few of the discussion comments below, but for the full conversation, you can search here using hashtag “followreader” and dates July 9, 2009 to July 11, 2009.

Read Full Post »

Kindle Publishing for Blogs: A Double-Edged Sword for Bookish Bloggers?

Joe Wikert's blog on Kindle

Last week Amazon announced a few things.
One, Amazon Encore, a program that rewards successful self-published titles, and the other – Kindle Publishing for Blogs in beta: a fast track self publishing tool to upload your blog for sale via the Kindle Store. In a nutshell, via Kindle Publishing for Blogs, bloggers can create an account, login and then add blogs for publishing to the Kindle Store. After review, there are chances the blog will be published in 48-72 hours (it could initially take longer because of the initial rush). Amazon will define the price based on what they deem is a fair value for customers, and bloggers will (eventually) be paid 30% of the monthly blog subscription price for every subscriber to their blog. (For more details, read the FAQ’s here.)

“Hmmm,” I thought. “I blog. I know bloggers. This sounds like something worth looking into, thinking about, researching, perhaps.” Because, you know, I’m one to hold a grudge (I’m working on this – therapy helps) and am still a little bit miffed about Amazon’s lack of interest in community relations during and after the whole #AmazonFail kerfuffle. And, to be honest, as a small press publisher (on many occasions, in past and future lives) AND as a book marketer for publishers and authors big and small, I’ve always had mixed feelings about the equity in relationships between Amazon and content providers.  No one can argue that Amazon doesn’t offer unequaled wide-reaching distribution, but their terms tend to lean largely in favor of Amazon.

I know, they’re in it for profit and what should I expect? Amazon’s “odds in the house’s favor” policy is exactly why they’re enjoying life aboard the good ship Amazon, while the rest of us in the book publishing ocean are fighting over the last remaining life rafts.

Yes, Amazon is very good at what they do.  Anyway, this isn’t exactly my point, or points — trust me I have one or two. And, I’ll get there eventually, but let’s get back to the story…

I was curious to find out more. I wanted to read Amazon’s agreement and perhaps flesh out what I could discern about what Amazon was offering to bloggers, and what bloggers were possibly giving up in exchange. So, I took a gander at that agreement.

I started reading.

And, I got confused after the second sentence.

And,  as I always do when I get confused – I went to my Bookish Tweeps. Surely someone in Twitterland was twittering about Kindle publishing for blogs, and they’d be able to offer a fair and balanced view of the pros and cons… Okay, that’s just not true. Honestly — I just couldn’t wait to read what I assumed would be defiance from my upstart, renegade bookish blogging tweets. Surely they  would be up in arms about this. “30%? HAH! Who does this Bezos think he is, anyway?” Yeah. I was looking forward to some indignant railing against the man.

Wow.

Was I wrong. Instead of protests and jeers, I was quite surprised to find that some of the people I wouldn’t have expected in a million years to sign up for anything even remotely related to Amazon, were jumping quite readily on the Kindle blog publishing bandwagon. Yup. They were signing their blogs up for Kindle distribution, and they appeared to be not only willing, but also gleefully excited at the opportunity to do so.

I won’t name names (it would take too long). But, a LOT of book bloggers have signed up for Amazon’s Kindle blog publishing beta program. To paraphrase, the reasons blogging buddies are signing up for the Kindle program are all quite reasonable and run the gamut:

• To claim one’s blog feed as their own rightful property (you see, a rather large loophole was/is still? allowing just anybody to claim just any blog as their own and sign it up to the program. See TechCrunch’s article: “How The Kindle Now Lets You Steal This Blog” to learn more about this.)
• Make some income off of their blogging efforts.
• Gain access to a huge potential audience of readers.
• Just curious to see how it works.

But, I needn’t have completely despaired–a bit of banter on Twitter revealed that not everyone was jumping on board. Some individuals were joining me in my cautiously skeptical approach. Among the reasons for refraining from signing on that dotted line:

• Amazon’s murky Digital Publishing Distribution Agreement including open-ended phrasing such as: “You grant to us, throughout the term of this Agreement, a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide right and license to distribute Publications as described in this Agreement.” Sure, the “nonexclusive” part sounds good, but “irrevocable and worldwide” are rather broad terms. Oh, and this part is also a little daunting: “We reserve the right to change the terms of this Agreement at any time.”
• Keeping one’s blog free. (One blogger said, ” I don’t want some users to have to pay for it. I’d much rather optimise it for mobile use so people can read it on their phones.”)
• And, as expressed by Eoin Purcell: “the locking in of revenue splits.” In his post, Bloggers: Amazon will eat your lunch, Eoin states, “One of my major concern is that if bloggers agree to this completely uneven deal from Amazon now, it will persist. This will give Amazon an enviable position and allowing even their competitors to take hefty slices of the distribution chain value even while offering better terms than Amazon itself.”

Myself, I have all sorts of crazy ideas about the longer-term effects of bloggers jumping on board with Amazon’s blog publishing to Kindle program. I think Amazon stands to gain a lot more here than the rights to distribute blogger content. They are also:

1. Gaining access to very valuable customer data, and
2. Gaining access to high-quality, trusted reviews of products (e.g.: books, movies, music, water heaters, etc.) that they also happen to be selling on their world-wide web of a global marketplace.

With this new program, Amazon will have access to data on who is paying for blog content and what content they are paying for. That data is incredibly valuable. Even more so than mere web-based traffic analytics. Because, not only will they be able to track who the blog customers are and what they are interested in topic-wise, but they can use that data to make decisions about what products would most likely be the best bets to offer for sale in their big world-wide-web super store.

Add to that the potential to aggregate and repurpose blogger content (the high quality, trusted reviews I mentioned before) on Amazon product pages, and Amazon sure has a lot more going for them in this deal than a mere 70% of blog subscription sales via the Kindle.  Amazon has already scored big points with their customer reviews, and they license some “professional” review content, but with the Kindle Publishing for Blog program, they will be in a position to aggregate and post the most-highly read blog reviews for books, movies, virtually any product they sell — AND they’ll be getting passive income from the sale of the content to Kindle to boot. Smart!

So, it is the proverbial double-edged sword. While bloggers will no doubt enjoy some immediate benefits, they will also be aiding Amazon’s efforts to be conquer the world, er I mean become  even stronger in the online marketplace. Bloggers may not care so much right now, but in the future they might find themselves in the unenviable position of competing against Amazon for a share of that market. And, that my friends, is one heck of losing proposition.

Of course, bloggers are getting SOMEthing. Wider possible readership, and revenue (albeit not much) where they had none before.

So, I open up the floor to you — you Book Bloggers, you. What’s your 2 cents (i won’t take 70%, I promise) on this issue?
Have you signed up for Kindle’s Blog Publishing Program? Why, or why not
Do share!

Luv,

Kat

Also on the Web re: Amazon’s Kindle Blog Publishing:
HOW TO: Publish Your Blog on the Amazon Kindle (Mashable)

Amazon Puts Any Blog on the Kindle, for a Price (PC World)

Bloggers: Amazon will eat your lunch (Eoin Purcell’s Blog )

Note to FOFTR (that’s “Friends of Follow the Reader” – acronyms have never been my strong point): Please join this week’s publishing discussion on Thursday May 21 from 4-5pm ET. We’ll be on Twitter at #followreader, a day ahead of our usual Friday timeslot because of the Memorial Day holiday in the U.S. This week’s topic is the connections between librarians/publishers/authors/readers. To follow to our discussion in real time, go to Twitter Search and type in #followreader. To join in the discussion, follow @charabbott and @katmeyer on Twitter, and include #followreader into your responses.

Read Full Post »

Free Sony Readers for Book Reviewers

Chasing down the gossip that a consortium of big publishers are brewing a new strategy for distributing Sony Readers to book reviewers brings to mind that REO Speedwagon song:

Heard it from a friend who/ Heard it from a friend who/ Heard it from another you’ve been messin’ around.

Everyone I called admitted to thinking about getting other publishers to do the nasty, but no one wanted to be publicly identified or quoted on the record.

Of course, this is an idea that has made the rounds repeatedly in various forms over the last few years.  But now the moment just might be right - since e-readers have become almost as indispensible as Blackberries to sales reps and executives at Hachette, Random House, Simon & Schuster and other publishers, and the Kindle has become such a hot consumer commodity.

Some Quick Caveats

Before we go any further, bear in mind that no one is proposing that print galleys will immediately become archaic or that the Sony Reader is the only e-reader option. The main idea is to get e-readers into the hands of key reviewers, as an incentive to become more familiar with the advantages and (let’s be honest) the disadvantages of e-readers and e-galleys, given that they will almost certainly co-exist with print galleys for many years to come. I’m assuming here that most publishers will opt for the Sony Reader, since it doesn’t carry the charged political symbolism of the Amazon Kindle for them.

Why distributing Sony Readers to book reviewers is a good idea from the reviewer perspective:

• Instant Access: no more days spent waiting for a print galley to arrive while a deadline looms
• Portability: e-galleys are easier to work with on the go
• Reduced processing costs: e-galleys are easily opened, stored, forwarded, read and archived or deleted than print galleys, which have to be shucked of their mailers, sorted and stored, mailed to other reviewers in some cases, and eventually boxed up for recycling, donation or destruction
• Waste reduction: though designed for temporary use, print galleys are still made of trees, and shipping them around only increases their carbon footprint. Anyone who works with galleys shares in the responsibility for this.

 Why it’s a good idea from the publisher perspective:

• Cost reduction: each galley costs $ 12 – $20 to distribute (e.g. $6- $10 to produce and $6- $10 to ship)
• Waste reduction: see above
• Focus on e-reading can’t hurt the e-book market
• Proof positive that publishers are technologically forward-looking and solution-oriented

How can we prevent this from becoming a good idea that a consortium of publishers will never agree on?

Let’s take a look at the issues around distributing e-readers from the publisher standpoint, in the interest of overcoming them:

• Are e-readers worth supporting? The jury of publishers is still out on this basic question, which includes whether electronic readers encourage more reading as print outlets diminish, and its corollary: do e-readers diminish the attention given to printed books?
• How to maximize cost efficiency? What’s the best way to allocate minimal dollars to a maximum number of reviewers?
• How to determine a reviewer list? Different houses favor different reviewers, after all.
• How to navigate hierarchies of reviewers? Is it better to target the assigning editors at a publication or the freelancers who write for them? Is reaching out to some reviewers over others going to create ill will?
• What about indie publishers? Will indie publishers in the consortium be able to attract enough respect and attention from the designated reviewers to make it worth the expense?
• What about booksellers? Will reaching out to reviewers create resentment in other quarters – e.g. will booksellers demand their own initiatives?
• What about platform and security issues? How to cope with the limitations of the Sony Reader or any other e-reader?

Has anyone formally asked the reviewers how they feel about all of this?

Rather than speculate about what reviewers are thinking , I’m going to stop here and open this discussion to comments from them, with the aim to get back to you, dear readers, with a synthesis of the responses within the next week or so, so we can keep this discussion going.

Questions for reviewers to consider as you respond:

• Is it an unacceptable influence on the review process if publishers underwrite the cost of such a valuable professional tool?
• Would it help if e-readers were loaned to reviewers, rather than granted outright?

And for those who can’t wait until the deliberations end

Here are a couple of contests you can enter to win a Sony Reader:

• Until May 30, 2009 – Purchase key fiction titles from White Rose Publishing and enter to win. Details: http://ow.ly/2Wnn
• Until June 9, 2009 - Purchase key romance titles from Wild Rose Press and enter to win. Details: http://ow.ly/2Wk3

Read Full Post »