Tag Archives: Amazon
The Secrets Issue 136: Serendipity

The Secrets Issue 136: Serendipity

I just released the most recent issue of my newsletter, The Secrets. This issue is titled Serendipity. In it I go through the thought processes that shaped my recent story Chance Corrigan and The Tick-tock King of the Nile. (It will be coming out some time this year from DAW—I’ll post on its availability when […]

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Authors Can Be Stupid: Price War Motives

Authors Can Be Stupid: Price War Motives

It has been suggested that the battle between publishers and Amazon over ebook pricing actually had two motives. The first was to prevent Amazon from establishing a “monopoly” over ebook sales. The second was to create a “sustainable price model.” I’ve suggested a third motive: greed. Monopoly: Amazon never had a monopoly, wasn’t going to […]

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Authors Can Be Stupid: Agency Model Pays Authors Less…

Authors Can Be Stupid: Agency Model Pays Authors Less…

An excellent post by April Hamilton over at Publetariat.com got me looking at the actual numbers on the money paid to authors under the old system for the Kindle, and the new Agency Model. Under the old model, ebook royalties were still connected to the cover price of a physical book. Under the agency model, […]

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Authors Can Be Stupid: $500 ebook design for free!

Authors Can Be Stupid: $500 ebook design for free!

One of the things that keeps being said about self-published ebooks is that they lack professional book design. This is short for “they look like crap.” As you are aware, I have two ebook readers, and I’ve purchased commercially available ebooks from traditional publishers. Those designers are no great shakes, for reasons I can’t fathom. […]

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Authors Can Be Stupid: The Self-publishing Stigma

Authors Can Be Stupid: The Self-publishing Stigma

There’s a stigma to self-publishing, and we all know it. Why? Because, in the past, self-published books have sucked. A lot of self-published work today sucks. And when I use that word, it’s a technical term. Face it, most self-published books are a pig-in-a-poke. Looks good, but you can’t be sure. If it’s a physical […]

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Authors Can Be Stupid: Doing the Ebook Math

Authors Can Be Stupid: Doing the Ebook Math

One of the things that keeps being bruited about in this discussion over digital books and pricing is a question of how much digital books really cost. The base cost of a book, of course, determines its final price. Repeatedly people have come out and said that the production costs of an ebook is fairly […]

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Authors Can Be Stupid: I Just Want To Write

Authors Can Be Stupid: I Just Want To Write

One of the laments that is oft heard concerning the coming changes in the industry is this: “Look, I just want to write.” The whole idea is that the writer in question enjoys writing. All they want to do is just to turn out stories. They don’t want to have to learn HTML. They don’t […]

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