Building an 'open library' on the Internet

Here's an idea: A library with every book in the world. Not just every book book that's in-print and out-of-print, but every book. Metadata about every book ever written, and direct access to its content when possible.

Organizers of The Open Library say it will be:

A product of the people: letting them create and curate its catalog, contribute to its content, participate in its governance, and have full, free access to its data. In an era where library data and Internet databases are being run by money-seeking companies behind closed doors, it's more important than ever to be open.

Builders of The Open Library have been working with a copy of the Library of Congress card catalog, data from publishers, and a new database system for dynamic records. They wrote a wiki to let users input data and search through everything.

Here's more information and a site demo.

---------------
If you like my articles, click the orange button to subscribe:

Steve Weber is author of Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors

Q&A: How can I sell my e-book on Amazon?

QUESTION: I can't find a traditional publisher for my book. But I believe people would buy it because it has valuable information for readers, and I can price it affordably. Is there any way an unknown author like me to put his eBook up for sale on Amazon.com?

ANSWER: Yes, any unknown author can put his eBook up for sale on Amazon.com who meets three basic requirements:

1. You own the rights to the book (your question implies that you do, and have not sold the rights to another entity).

2. You must supply an ISBN (International Standard Book Number). You can purchase an ISBN for $125 by printing and mailing this application form. Or, you can get a discount by purchasing a block of 10 or more ISBNs through Bowker, the U.S. ISBN agency.

3. You must open an account with Amazon's eBook subsidiary, MobiPocket, and use their software to convert your file into their proprietary format.

It goes without saying that if you're publishing a book, you're operating a business -- and you need to report income from that business to the IRS and pay the required taxes.

I'll provide more background on getting started with MobiPocket below. But first, let me ask this: Why are you limiting yourself to an eBook? Your question implies that you want to get your book to market quickly and/or limit your cost and risk. However, you can simultaneously publish a paperback edition of your book for modest setup costs and time investment.

The vast majority of book buyers still prefer physical books, so if you produce only an eBook edition, you're limiting your sales unnecessarily. For setup costs of around $200, you can also offer a paperback edition of your book on Amazon using print-on-demand technology, and Amazon will handle the shipping and customer service. I'd estimate that your paperback sales would outnumber your eBook sales by at least 20 to 1.

To get your paperback on the market, I would suggest that you open an account with Lightning Source Inc., which will print your book and supply copies to Amazon and other online retailers as the orders come in. And, if demand for your book proves strong, your book will also be available for stocking at brick and mortar chains like Borders and Barnes & Noble through Lightning Source. If sales of your book really take off, you can lower your printing costs by switching from print-on-demand technology to offset printing.

I would also suggest that you read my book Plug Your Book!: Online Book Marketing for Authors to get more details on self-publishing and Internet promotion strategies.

Now, some additional detail on MobiPocket:

In 2006 Amazon stopped selling Microsoft Reader and Adobe-format books to focus on selling e-books through its wholly owned subsidiary, MobiPocket. The free MobiPocket Reader software allows users of PDA handheld computers to view e-books in the Mobipocket format.

MobiPocket books will also be sold through other online retailers. The promise, especially for self-published authors, is the potential to reach millions more readers at low cost.

To join MobiPocket, register at its publisher portal, eBookBase, and follow the instructions:
www.Mobipocket.com/eBookBase/en/homepage/apply.asp?Type=Publisher

After Amazon receives your signed publisher agreement, the Mobipocket team will notify you via e-mail of your account activation. Then you can log into eBookBase to start uploading and selling your e-books.

To convert your books to the Mobipocket format, you can download a free copy of the necessary software, Mobipocket Creator, Publisher Edition. You’ll be able to upload directly from the Mobipocket Creator software or using the eBookBase Web interface.

For more information, join the mailing list of Amazon’s Digital Text Team by sending an e-mail to DigitalBooks@Amazon.com.

Lastly, one caveat: Amazon is still in the process of switching over to MobiPocket. So it may be a while before your eBook is actually available for purchase on Amazon.

In addition to MobiPocket, Amazon offers another eBook option to its customers: "Amazon Upgrade" provides buyers with immediate online access and searching of physical books they’ve already purchased. There is no downloadable file, but users can print a certain number of pages. To upgrade their books, readers pay about 10 percent to 20 percent of the book’s original price, and Amazon splits the revenue with publishers.

Amazon Upgrade is designed to appeal to buyers who want to receive a physical copy of the book, but are also willing to pay a bit extra for immediate online access and searching. Buyers view the book online through the Amazon Reader, the same interface used for Search Inside the Book. Amazon users can view which previous purchases are available for Upgrade by browsing here.

Amazon hopes Upgrade will appeal to publishers concerned that online access to books might cannibalize sales of physical books, cutting publisher revenue. With Upgrade, any purchases result in added revenue for publishers, since readers have already purchased the hard copy.

To be eligible to purchase upgrades, readers must buy the book directly from Amazon. Upgrades aren’t available for books bought used or new from third-party Amazon vendors.

Printed page is obsolete, Gates says

Microsoft's Bill Gates is a pretty smart guy, but a lousy fortune-teller. He's predicting that the printed page will be toast in five years.

Why? For one thing, the advertising is better online, Gates says.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer blog quotes Gates as saying:

Reading is going to go completely online. We believe that as we get the smaller form factor, the screen has gotten good enough. Why is reading online better? It's up to date, you can navigate, you can follow links. The ads in the online reading are completely targeted as opposed to just being run-of-print, where many of the readers will find them completely irrelevant.

Is Gates predicting the demise of physical books too? It seems his comments were directed at newspapers and magazines, and he didn't address "e-books." But he did say "reading is going to go completely online."

That didn't sit very well with most of the people who commented on the blog. Here's a sample from Monty McCoy:

While no one can argue about the right calls Mr. Gates has made in the past, his technology calls recently have been more than suspect. "Reading is going to go completely online. We believe..." Who is this "We"? The same "We" who predicted that the Zune would give the iPod a run for their money? The January 2004 call of his that "Two years from now, spam will be solved" leads this reader to be highly skeptical of his biased, pro-MS approach.

Marketing your book with Amazon Shorts, Part II

As explained here, Amazon Shorts are one way to use impulse purchases on Amazon to bring attention to your full-length books. Amazon Shorts are e-books that cost readers 49 cents.

But for some authors, the book sales are merely gravy because customer acquisition is the name of the game. For example, perhaps the most prolific Amazon Shorts author is business consultant Lonnie Pacelli, who has 16 bestselling Shorts. The Shorts are cross-promotional tools for his two business hardcovers and 13 full-length downloadable books sold on Amazon for $4.99 apiece. All these e-books help publicize Pacelli’s fee-based seminars conducted on the Web. His most popular Amazon Short is The Perfect Brainstorm.

Shorts can also be used to test ideas for full-length book ideas or expanding into new topics or genres. It’s possible to use Shorts as a full-blown author laboratory, testing story concepts and soliciting feedback from readers. For example, fiction writers can give an update on characters from a book series, give hints on what might happen in the next hardcover installment, and use reader comments as a free focus group test.

The recommended length for Amazon shorts is 2,000 to 10,000 words, and the work is supposed to be exclusive to Amazon for six months. Amazon splits revenue 60/40 with the author, and Amazon covers the costs of payments transactions and customer service.

Some other interesting work with Amazon Shorts:

• In A Man and His Luggage, Stuart Woods departs from his tried-and-true mystery technique for a humorous essay on his wish to find the perfect travel companion. (ASIN B000A0F6JA).
  

• In Bubble After Bubble in the Ongoing Bubble Boom, (ASIN B000A0F6Q8) Harry S. Dent updated his 2004 economics bestseller The Next Great Bubble Boom. Six months later, he published an updated edition of the hardcover.

There's no copy protection for Amazon Shorts, the PDFs can be printed or copied and forwarded via e-mail. When viewed as an HTML document, the text of Shorts can be
copied and pasted into a word processor.

To apply for participation in the Amazon Shorts program, send an e-mail to Amazon-Shorts@Amazon.com. To be eligible, you must have at least one book currently for sale on Amazon.

You can browse the available Shorts here.

Using Amazon Shorts to promote your book

Electronic books, or e-books, haven’t gotten much traction with consumers. People don’t enjoy reading extended passages of text on a computer screens, and there’s no popular e-book reader devices yet. Prices of e-books haven’t been discounted much from the price of hard-copy books, giving price-conscious consumers little incentive to switch. In the meantime, though, free and low-cost e-books and downloadable excerpts are a valuable as a way of generating more awareness for your book.

Amazon Shorts are a potential vehicle for authors who want to publicize new books or promote previous works. Each Short is available only on Amazon, costs 49 cents, and can be downloaded immediately in plain text or printed or viewed as a PDF document.

For example, historian David McCullough used an Amazon Short to help promote his 2006 hardcover 1776. His Short was the 1,700-word essay “Faces,” an interesting sidebar that never made its way into the book. The Short was launched just before the hardcover became available, calling more attention to it and McCullough’s long list of previous works. You can view the detail page for McCullough’s Amazon Short by searching Amazon for B000GFRBEM, the story’s ASIN.

At the bottom of Amazon Shorts appears a short author biography and photograph, and below that are links to other full-length works available for purchase on Amazon. So Amazon Shorts is inexpensive way for readers to discover new authors. The low price encourages readers experimentation and impulse buying.

Other authors have used Shorts to serialize works, or to update readers on new stories or create an entirely new story about a popular character.

Some nonfiction authors have used Shorts to generate new customers for consulting services or seminars. In one longtime bestselling Short, Why Authors Are Cranky (ASIN B000A0F6FO), author Bruce Holland Rogers promotes his own Web site, where readers can pay $10 for an annual subscription to his new short stories delivered via e-mail. The Web link in Rogers’ Amazon Short is live, so interested readers can jump right to his site, ShortShortShort.com.

Sell more books by giving them away

Great article in Forbes by author Cory Doctorow. He posted the entire text of his first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, for free downloading on his Web site. That was three years ago, and the book is in its sixth printing. More than 700,000 copies of the book have been downloaded.

Most people who download the book don't end up buying it, but they wouldn’t have bought it in any event, so I haven’t lost any sales, I’ve just won an audience.

A new competitor for Amazon.com?

One of the overlooked bits of news to come out of last week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was Google's suggestion that it would get into the online bookselling business.

The search company's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, said inclusion in the store would depend on permission from copyright owners. Apparently the new initiative would be a premium version of Google Book Search, in which users would pay for downloading part or all of the books that publishers have approved for inclusion in Google's index.

Google has gotten lots of bad publicity from the Book Search initiative, but publishers interested in selling their content online haven't been shy about signing onto the program. And Google maintains that the program is all about preserving knowledge.

Meanwhile, Amazon.com has said it's already working on a similar program it calls "Amazon Pages."