Apple releases iPhone SDK 3.01 beta to developers

iPhone SDK 3.1 beta and iPhone OS 3.1 beta are now posted to the iPhone Dev Center. These versions are for development and testing only and should be installed on devices dedicated to iPhone OS 3.1 beta software development. Please read the iPhone OS Pre-Install Advisory and the iPhone SDK 3.1 beta release notes before downloading and installing. Use the Apple Bug Reporter if you discover compatibility or functionality issues while testing with the iPhone OS 3.1 beta release.

Copyright © 2009 Apple Inc. 1 Infinite Loop, MS 303-3DM, Cupertino, CA 95014. All Rights Reserved / Keep Informed / Privacy Policy / My Info You are receiving this email because you are a Registered iPhone Developer that has opted-in to receive marketing or technical information. If you have any questions, or if you would prefer not to receive future communications from the iPhone Developer Program, please contact us or go tohttp://developer.apple.com/contact. ---------------- Steve Weber is author of ePublish: Self-Publish Fast and Profitably for Kindle, iPhone, CreateSpace and Print on Demand and Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors --------------- If you like my articles, click the orange button to subscribe:

Amazon kills fast-shipping offer for niche paperbacks

Amazon today dropped its decade-long practice of offering overnight shipping on most niche paperbacks. In a new warning displayed on its Web site, the online bookseller is warning shoppers that most of these titles will take an extra day or two of "processing" time.

The warning applies to the vast majority of paperbacks manufactured via Print on Demand (POD). Starting today, Amazon began displaying the warning in two places on book detail pages. First, in small, black type at the top of the page:

This item is not immediately available to ship. (In stock but may require an extra 1-2 days to process.)

And again, in large green type, directly under the retail price:

Price:$17.05 & eligible for free shipping with Amazon Prime
In stock but may require an extra 1-2 days to process.

Until now, Amazon had offered one-day shipping on POD titles. The vast majority of those titles were printed by Lightning Source, a unit of Ingram. Usually the books were shipped from Lightning Source in an Amazon box, making it appear the book was shipped from Amazon's warehouse.

With POD, paperbacks are printed only after a customer orders and pays for the book. Amazon still offers overnight shipping on a relatively few POD titles -- those that sell so briskly that Amazon stocks copies in its warehouses. Here is one example of a POD title that sells more than 200 copies per week on Amazon, yet is not stocked at the company's warehouses and is subject to the delay.

UPDATE FROM AUTHOR: This afternoon, Amazon removed the two messages regarding delayed shipping from the affected POD titles. As an experiment, I signed into Amazon with a non-Prime account and purchased one copy of the title mentioned above, eBay 101, and paid $17.98 for overnight shipping. However, when I view the tracking for this order on Amazon's Web site, the estimated delivery date is July 3, about three days from now. I hope Amazon will give me a break on the $17.98 if delivery actually takes three days.

Ironically, Amazon has been urging publishers to switch to its in-house POD services, BookSurge and CreateSpace. A policy statement on Amazon's Web site suggests that requiring publishers to use Amazon printing services would enable the company to prepare shipments within two hours. But the warning about shipping delays appears with most BookSurge and CreateSpace titles.

POD expert Morris Rosenthal speculates that the warning about shipment delays might be Amazon's response to complaints about long shipment times for POD books. Subscribers to the company's Prime shipping deal are offered overnight shipping for only $3.99.

Publishers have increasingly turned to POD. According to Bowker Inc., POD titles exceeded the number of offset-printed titles for the first time this year.
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Steve Weber is author of ePublish: Self-Publish Fast and Profitably for Kindle, iPhone, CreateSpace and Print on Demand

and Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors

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Q&A: Should I publish my Amazon Kindle eBooks with Mobipocket?

QUESTION: It seems that eBooks published with an account at Mobipocket automatically appear in Amazon's Kindle Store, and are also available to Apple iPhone and iTouch users. What are the advantages and disadvantages of publishing through Mobipocket, instead of directly through Amazon?

ANSWER: In theory, there's no reason not to list a book with Mobipocket. I get a few sales a month through them -- for every 25 Kindle sales, I get one or two Mobipocket sales.

Mobipocket is a Paris-based eBook company that Amazon bought a few years ago. Its eBook format is the underlying language for the eBooks in Amazon's Kindle store. Books listed with Mobipocket automatically show up as Kindle editions, as long as the publisher selects Amazon as one of the authorized retailers.

So, for publishers outside the U.S. without a U.S. bank account, Mobipocket is a convenient backdoor to the Kindle store. By contrast, if you sign up as a Kindle publisher like most individuals, through Amazon's digital text platform, you need to have a U.S. address and bank account.

However, there are a few snags you can run into by going directly through Mobipocket:

• It takes considerably longer for each title to appear on Amazon's site after you've uploaded it. Exactly how much longer, I'm not sure -- perhaps 10 or 20 days additional. This isn't a deal-breaker in itself, but it can be a problem -- what if you spend several days trying to figure out what the "problem" or delay is, when there wasn't a problem in the first place? It's just a hassle. And there is no publisher support at Mobipocket or Amazon's site, dtp.amazon.com. So even if you post an issue or problem at one of these official support boards, it's very, very unlikely that any tech support people will read or answer your message.
  

• Amazon will contact you for additional documentation. If you upload the books through Mobipocket and you are in the U.S., Amazon will contact you via e-mail and ask for you to provide your bank information, even though you have already provided all this information to Mobipocket. Why? So that Amazon can report and pay royalties on sales of Kindle editions in the United States through Amazon, not Mobipocket. So, essentially, they are getting you to set up a Kindle publisher account, even if you don't sign up through DTP. I am guessing that they do this as a method of preventing authors or publishers who might intentionally (or unintentionally) avoid paying income tax on eBook sales. However, no real explanation is given in this e-mail Amazon sends, so it's confusing. Some people don't receive the e-mail, and some people think it's a scam, which is understandable.

One little perk at Mobipocket: you can price your books below Amazon DTP's minimum of 99 cents. This can be handy if you want to get exposure for an excerpt.

Steve Weber is author of ePublish: Self-Publish Fast and Profitably for Kindle, iPhone, CreateSpace and Print on Demand



and Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors

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Glitch at Amazon Advantage sends bogus order cancellations

A technical glitch at Amazon's Advantage program yesterday sent an erroneous order cancellations to all the program's participating members. Advantage is Amazon's consignment program for small- and midsized publishers.

The text of the e-mail:

Greetings from Amazon.com Advantage,

Please be advised that the Advantage Operations team is in the process of suspending orders for a number of titles that have either:

1. Been ordered, but not confirmed, or

2. Been ordered and confirmed, but never sent to Amazon.com

If any of these items have become avaiilable (sic), you can reactivate them in your account by clicking on the 'Items' tab and selecting 'Update Item Status' on the green tool bar. Alternately, you may contact Advantage Vendor Services via the 'Contact Us' link (located at the bottom of every page in your account) to re-activate your suspended item(s). Please include the ASIN/ISBN/UPC.

Additional steps that you should take:

1. Review the items in your Advantage account. Notify us via the 'Contact Us' form of any which are no longer available.

2. Take note of those items which are listed in your account under an old ISBN/UPC number. If any of these items is no longer available, please ask us to close them from your account.

3. Add any new titles - ISBNs/UPCs - to your account. You may enroll them individually through the Advantage web interface, or in bulk by Excel spreadsheet - both found under the Items tab of your Advantage account.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

The Amazon.com Advantage Operations Team

Apparently the same message went to all publishers with Advantage accounts, even those without active titles. Amazon has posted the following update:

Earlier this morning we sent out an email in error regarding the suspension of titles in your account. This was supposed to go to only a select few accounts, where the outstanding purchase orders had not been confirmed. Due to a glitch, it was sent, in error, to all advantage members. Don't worry, your account is still fully functional and no titles have been suspended. No action is required on your part.

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Q&A: How can authors market their Kindle books?

Question: I've read Plug Your Book, which discusses online marketing of physical books. Now that e-books are available on Amazon via Kindle editions, how has online book marketing changed?

Answer: The more things change the more they stay the same. Online book marketing works just the same with Kindle editions, except that e-books give you a few additional possibilities.

E-books have some obvious advantages for authors and publishers -- lower productions costs, the ease of updating/revising, incorporating reader feedback and suggestions.

Kindle editions give authors the same marketing advantages that you get with traditional books. In a nutshell, free exposure.

For example, where I recommend that you give away "free samples" or excerpts of your book -- the Kindle gives you more possibilities. You can publish sample chapters or anthologies/compilations of your work. In the Kindle Store, some books are sold for 99 cents per chapter instead of the customary $10 or $15 per book.

All the regular advantages of Amazon exposure -- the way your book can work itself into the recommendations system, and gain word of mouth -- works with Kindle editions just as well as it did with paper books. For authors who aren't famous, self-published or otherwise, Amazon is an automatic book marketing system.

Having said this, Kindle sales are still a small percentage of paperback sales, at least in my experience. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has stated that about 35 percent of book sales are via Kindle. But this doesn't square with common sense -- there are more than 80 million paperback book buyers on Amazon, and less than 1 million (perhaps less than 500,000) Kindle owners. While I can believe Kindle owners buy more books than the average book buyer, I don't believe they're buying THAT many more books, and it's certainly not reflected in my sales reports.

On the other hand, digital editions are an expanding part of the publishing business, while paper editions are flat or declining. So, it's a good idea to get involved with Kindle editions and to be on the lookout for Kindle competitors and alternatives.

I also believe that the terms for Amazon's Digital Text Platform are terrible -- only 35 percent of revenues go to the author/publisher? Very Scrooge-like on Amazon's part.

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

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