The Digital Reader
News and tech help for the indie author
Morning Coffee ? 17 August 2018
by Nate Hoffelder
16 Aug 2018 at 9:32pm
Here are a few stories to read this Friday morning. Here are some truly weird things that library patrons have asked for from librarians. With Amazon winding down Createspace, it's time to move your books over to KDP Print. The EFF is suing to invalidate the DMCA and free security researchers from bogus legal threats. Do you think they'll succeed? Did you know you can build and play a game of Battleship using only CSS?
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Amazon to Open Two Bookstores in Denver, Could Buy a Movie Theater Chain
by Nate Hoffelder
16 Aug 2018 at 12:17pm
Brick and mortar retail is dead, they say - so dead that Amazon continues to open bookstores, and is now rumored to be bidding on a small chain of movie theaters. Business Den reports that Amazon has chosen a second location for an Amazon Books in the Denver region. Amazon has settled on a spot in Cherry Creek for its bookstore. The online retail giant plans to open Amazon Books on the ground floor of Financial House, the eight-story office building under construction at the northwest corner of 2nd Avenue and Detroit Street, according to tenant finish permit applications submitted to the city. The company will occupy the building?s sole retail unit, which is approximately 5,000 square feet. When rumors first broke about Amazon opening a bookstore in Denver, the location was said to be in Cherry Creek. A few months later Amazon announced they would open an Amazon Books in a different part of Denver, but now it seems the earliest rumors were true all along. When it opens, the second Denver Amazon Books location will be either the 19th or 20th Amazon Books store. That will hardly be a newsworthy event; however, the same cannot be said for today's [...]
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German eBook Market Estimated to Exceed 100 Million Euros in First Half of 2018
by Nate Hoffelder
16 Aug 2018 at 10:13am
GfK Entertainment and the German publishing trade group Boersenverein have released their estimates for the German ebook market in the first half of the year. The projections are based on a GfK consumer survey with a total of 25,000 respondents. The results for the first half of 2018 include: Rising unit sales: Sales of ebooks increased by 16.4% to 16.7 million units. Falling prices: The average e-book price drops by 4.3%. Increasing sales volume: The higher demand with falling prices resulted in an estimated sales growth of 11.3%. At 100.6 million euros, sales for the first half of the year exceeded the 100 million euro mark. Growing number of ebook buyers: The number of customers who purchased at least one ebook increased by 6.1% to 2.7 million in the first half of the year. More frequent purchases: eBook buyers bought an average of 6.2 ebooks, an increase of 9.7% from the same period last year. There is currently no publicly available data on which retailer has what market share. Tolino used to release new estimates on a regular basis, but they stopped a few years ago when their market share started to decline. The current best guess is that Amazon has the largest share, with Apple and/or the ebokstores that [...]
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Kindle Unlimited Funding Pool Grew in July 2018 While the Per-Page Rate Fell
by Nate Hoffelder
15 Aug 2018 at 2:41pm
Amazon announced on Wednesday that the Kindle Unlimited funding pool grew to $23.1 million in July (plus bonuses), up from $22.6 million in June 2018. At the same time the per-page rate royalty fell to $0.00449 in June, compared to $0.004460 in June and $0.00454 in May 2018. US: $0.0045 (USD) UK: £0.0034 (GBP) Germany: ?0.0029 (EUR) Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy: ?0.0045 (EUR) Mexico: 0.0748 (MXP) Brazil: R$ 0.0111 (BRL) Japan: 0.5569 (JPY ) India, Canada, Australia: unknown Here's a list of the monthly funding pools. It does not include the bonuses paid out each month. July 2014: $2.5 million (Kindle Unlimited launches early in the month) August 2014: $4.7 million September 2014: $5 million October 2014: $5.5 million November 2014: $6.5 million December 2014: $7.25 million January 2015 - $8.5 million February 2015: $8 million March 2015: $9.3 million April 2015: $9.8 million May 2015: $10.8 million June 2015: $11.3 million July 2015: $11.5 million August 2015: $11.8 million September 2015: $12 million October 2015: $12.4 million November 2015: $12.7 million December 2015: $13.5 million January 2016: $15 million February 2016: $14 million March 2016: $14.9 million April 2016: $14.9 million May 2016: $15.3 million June 2016: $15.4 million July 2016: $15.5 million August 2016: $15.8 million September 2016: $15.9 million October 2016: $16.2 million November [...]
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Making a Literary Clock from a Hacked Kindle (Video)
by Nate Hoffelder
15 Aug 2018 at 2:12pm
We've seen a Kindle turned into a weather station, thermometer, fridge magnet, a display for the Raspberry Pi, and a monitor. And now, if you have a spare Kindle lying around, you can turn it into a literary clock. Instructables has published detailed instructions that explain how you can do the deed. The first thing you'll need is a hacked Kindle, and a modicum of programming skills so you can install the hack. Once you do, your Kindle will show a new quote on the screen almost every minute of the day, with the time of day displayed in bold letters so it can be easily read. As noted in the instructions, it wasn't possible to find a quote for every single minute: I worked around this by using some quotes more than once, for instance if it can be used both in the AM and PM. More vague time indications can be used around a certain time, so this quote from Catcher in the Rye is used at 9.58AM: "I didn't sleep too long, because I think it was only around ten o'clock when I woke up ... Even with that limitation, this is still a neat project, as you can see [...]
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Morning Coffee ? 15 August 2018
by Nate Hoffelder
14 Aug 2018 at 9:55pm
Here are a few stories to read this Wednesday morning. Just looking at this used bookstore has me sneezing in reflex. Someone released a nifty automatic bibliography-making extension for Chrome. A white male English author is trying to justify writing about a young female African ISIS member. When writing non-fiction, you should write in terms the audience can understand. This is not necessarily the same as writing what you know.
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Download Sherrilyn Kenyon?s ?Acheron? by 18 August
by Nate Hoffelder
14 Aug 2018 at 7:29pm
The next installment in the Tor.com eBook of the month club is from Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunter series. Here?s the description for the book: Eleven thousand years ago a god was born. Cursed into the body of a human, Acheron spent a lifetime of shame. However, his human death unleashed an unspeakable horror that almost destroyed the earth. Then, brought back against his will, Acheron became the sole defender of mankind. Only it was never that simple. For centuries, he has fought for our survival and hidden a past he?ll do anything to keep concealed. Until a lone woman who refuses to be intimidated by him threatens his very existence. Now his survival, and ours, hinges on hers and old enemies reawaken and unite to kill them both. War has never been more deadly? or more fun. You can download the ebook until Saturday for free. Tor.com
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Riggio Has 99 Problems, But Saving B&N Ain?t One
by Nate Hoffelder
14 Aug 2018 at 5:54pm
B&N moved out of this building in 2012, and Amazon moved in in 2017. That says it all, I think. Remember last Friday when I described B&N's road map as "throw ideas up against the wall and see what sticks"? Apparently my snark struck home. The NYTimes published a piece on B&N on Sunday. It was rather thin on details concerning B&N's future plans, but it did say that Riggio had 5,00 ideas on what to do next: Some publishing executives privately express hope that Barnes & Noble will be sold, perhaps to Indigo. Mr. Riggio didn?t rule out the idea of a sale, although he said he didn?t think ?this is the time to sell the company.? ?We?ll be responsive to our shareholders,? he said. ?We always have to entertain offers that come along.? ,,, Mr. Riggio said he still hopes to retire someday. In the meantime, he has about ?5,000? ideas for how to lure customers back to Barnes & Noble. ?I want more people to buy and read books,? he said. It is looking more and more like Riggio's real plan is to maximize his profits while running B&N into the ground (exactly what a reader suggested [...]
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Amazon Changes Payment Terms for German Distributors
by Nate Hoffelder
14 Aug 2018 at 3:55pm
Amazon has quietly changed the terms offered to several German ebook distributors, bringing them into line with most other ebook distributors. SelfPublisherBibel.de reports that ebooks distributed to the Kindle Store via Bookrix, Neobooks, or BoD will now earn royalties similar to the rates offered through KDP. eBooks priced under 2.99 euros or over 9.99 euros will receive 35% of the net sales price, while ebooks priced between 2.99 and 9.99 euros will earn 70% (less Amazon's fictional "transmission costs" fees). The rates mentioned above are what is paid to the distributors; authors will get less. Bookrix, for example, takes a 30% cut of an author's earnings. image by aresaubur via Flickr
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Millennial Reading Habits Have Changed the Definition of a Classic , and Othe...
by Nate Hoffelder
13 Aug 2018 at 6:40am
Millennial-bashing is popular among the media, and this is a problem not just because it's lazy writing but also because sometimes it distracts from what is actually going on. Quartz, for example, published a clickbait piece last month where they claimed that adults under 40 had killed off the "classic novel" (found via The Passive Voice). he era of the ubiquitous classic is behind us. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Ragtime, and Slaughterhouse-Five have had their time in the sun. What would their modern equivalents be? The reason it?s harder to name such tomes is because there?s quantifiably less options to choose from, despite having more books to read. Since its first publication in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye has sold over 68 million copies, roughly moving a million copies for every year it has lived. In 2007, A Thousand Splendid Suns was published to great acclaim, similar to the reception of J.D. Salinger?s magnum opus. But by comparison, Khaled Hosseini?s novel has only moved nearly 6 million copies, averaging over 500,000 copies per year?half that of Salinger?s. So what sends J.D. Salinger?s 69-year old novel still flying off the shelves and shrinks a novel that was just as well-received upon publication? The answer could be adults under 40. Adults under 40 may [...]
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Morning Coffee ? 13 August 2018
by Nate Hoffelder
12 Aug 2018 at 9:45pm
Here are a few stories to read this Monday morning. As expected, authors could benefit from Trump's fiscally irresponsible tax cuts. Did you know you can embed a video in a book listing on Amazon? The UK wants the rest of the world to go away, or at the very least not come to the UK as a guest of a book festival. Why social media is broken. Even when content is paid for, we're still not paying for content. Here's a dozen useful Gmail hacks. Kris Rusch has a fascinating post on how creators should focus on what they want to get from a deal and let the experts handle the finer details.
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