Word-of-Mouth Top Book-Buying Decision according to Publishers Weekly

Felicia Pride wrote an article for the February 11th Publishers Weekly stating the results of a survey conducted by Global Market Insight Inc. It states that "Among African-American consumers, 33% buy five to 10 books a year and they generally decide what to buy through word-of-mouth, according to an e-mail survey of 1,285 consumers."

Read the entire article here: Word-of-Mouth Top Book-Buying Decision - 2/11/2008 - Publishers Weekly

HarperCollins Publishers Promotion to Make Select Books Available Online for Free

According to Seth Godin at the O'Reilly TOC conference this week "Authors are really idea merchants. The ideas that spread best win. Free ideas spread better than paid ideas. The way you monetize this is to sell 'souvenirs'.... It's not a new way of promoting, it's a whole new business."

This was part of his take on HarperCollins new program to offer complete online access to a select group of books for a month at a time. They are also providing "sneak peaks" of selected books by activating online access (limited to only 20 percent of the text) two weeks before the on-sale date. The files can only be viewed via the web and cannot be downloaded or printed.

Author and marketing guru Godin sees the Harper announcement as a typical traditional book publishing mentality attempting a new initiative: "They took all the [viral marketing] things that work--that make it spread--and they're turning them off." His idea is that marketing is "trying to start conversations, and if that conversation takes place the ideas spread."

Godin may be correct, but the big houses are scrambling to recreate the old publishing paradigm within the expanding internet universe. Tor Books is now offering a program with "free digital books from bestselling and award-winning SF and fantasy authors" through a newsletter sign-up on their website. Random House has announced "a pilot project to sell individual chapters of a book online."

HarperCollins Publishers Promotion to Make Select Books Available Online for Free: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

Amazon's Kindle is Sold Out! Is it the iPod of Reading?

I waited a bit before I bought my first iPod. While I love all things tech, I also have a healthy bit of experience with being an early adapter and that's enough to put the brakes on 'gotta have it first' spending.

I thought the iPod was a marvelous device (and still do), but I scanned the geek sites for bugs and actually waited for the storage to go up and the price to come down. That definitely worked out. So I didn't have the instant subway cache of white wire hanging from my ears for almost two years.

I'm wondering if Amazon's new wireless reading device the Kindle, is going to be the next big thing I have to save for (especially at its price of $399). It's a 10.3 ounce, 7.5" x 5.3" x 0.7" (hmm . . . paperback sized), wireless (Sprint's national high-speed EVDO), handheld book reader and Amazon shopping cart.

That's right - Buy a book from Amazon and it is wirelessly delivered to your Kindle for free. Supposedly within one minute. It has a 6" display it calls E-Ink® that is gray scale with 600 x 800 pixel resolution.

As a complete 'bookaholic' I've got to admit that this does sound plenty tasty. While traveling I can scan blogs, check my webmail, read newspapers and magazines, along with instant book gratification. However, I think I may stay in 'wait-and-see' mode for a bit longer. The pros and the cons have quite a bit to battle out:

• According to beta testers, the battery life is more than decent and the screen is easy to read.


• Books have DRM (digital rights management, that's content or copy protection to you partner). Will I even own the book after ten years?


• Book purchases are stored at Amazon.com to be retrieved if the Kindle is lost, broken or stolen. Other files should be on an SD memory card so they can be easily backed up.


• It doesn't read PDF file format (rats!). However, you can use another program (Mobipocket Creator 4.2 - free) to convert PDF's to Mobi format, then upload to the Kindle.


• Wow! Imagine having all of your school books on one device. That would make it worth it's wait in gold. The lack of Quasimodo backpack shoulder alone is priceless.


• Oh no! Not another device? It took me awhile to combine my Tungsten pda with my cell phone. My handbag was (is) filled with electronics - iPod, pda, phone. Let's just use a rolling suitcase from now on, huh?


• What if, after reading the book on the Kindle, you want a hard copy? Will there be a discount on the actual book? Or maybe, buy the book and get Kindle file free?


• Will we ever be able to download files from libraries? For free? Or will it be forever married to Amazon?


• On that same tip, what does this mean for independent book stores? Will they make the shift and sell more ebooks on CD (ugh)? Or find a way to upload their own supply?


• The price really isn't that bad when you take in account the monthly cost of EVDO (at least $40 a month). All wireless is free on the Kindle.


• Editors and other professional readers will not be able to site pages by fixed page numbers. The fluidity of the pages makes this maddening. Editors will have to a search for text or a phrase or sentence, much like searching for data on a webpage or site. Perhaps this will be addressed in future versions.


• This may be a boon to self-published authors. An ISBN isn't even needed to sell your book on the Kindle platform.


• There have been some complaints of flimsy construction.


• Here's one of my favorites: If you buy more than one Kindle (on the same account), then anything you buy for one will be automatically downloaded to the others. Up to 6 Kindles can be dedicated to a single account. Ha! Now all I need is a special husband-wife/family discount. Come on Mr. Bezos. Just this once, for me . . . Please?

Okay, so what am I really waiting for? Let's see . . . I'm waiting for the iPhone to be offered with my carrier Verizon and perhaps a '2.1 version of the Kindle.

The war may be over before the battle begins - it already has it's own 'noun-verb' . . . kindling.

Check out Toni Morrison's take on the Kindle.