Month: September 2011

Categories
Self Publishing

2011 Kindle – Kindle Reader, Kindle Touch – Free Kindle eBooks are Going to Be Hot in 2012

Kindle 2011 - Kindle Touch - Kindle Keyboard - Kindle - just cool
My Kindle 3 WIFI now known as a Kindle Keyboard - on Vacation

OMG – Amazon has done it again – they have, in one stroke pretty much destroyed the paper back publishing industry, at least in my part of the world where a paperback can easily cost over US$25!  Yes there is a new Kindle out in time for Christmas 2011 (shipping late November I believe) – and its called … well there are four of them: Kindle, Kindle Touch, Kindle Touch 3G and Kindle Fire.

Kindle 2011 - Kindle Touch - Kindle Keyboard - Kindle - just cool
My Kindle 3 WIFI now known as a Kindle Keyboard - on Vacation

So why am I buzzing around telling you to go and check out the new Kindles now?  Well obviously I want my Amazon sales to boom at the end of the year.  Because, frankly, at $79 – why aren’t you giving everyone a Kindle?  I am certainly thinking that my partner needs to stop borrowing mine! And no,I wouldn’t pay for a teenager to have an expensive, fragile tablet – but I would consider the tablet version called Kindle Fire  at under $199.

No its not the cute new Kindles that have me excited – its the fact that when the Kindle 3 came out (the current one, why don’t they like version numbers?) last year,  the sales for Indie e-book authors went through the roof.  You see what do you do when someone gives you a new Kindle – yes – you spend the holidays buying books, cheap books,  that Indie’s put out for 99c – not the outrageously priced ones from the traditional publishers.

So if you want to check out the new Kindle models (you can still buy the “old” one too – which is the only one that now comes with a keyboard, here you go:

So now I REALLY have to get my act together and get the next five books I have in my head out into the pixels… This is going to be huge – and not just in the US. From what I can see I can get Amazon to deliver the new Kindle for less than I can buy them downtown.  They are also releasing some models through the  UK store for UK Kindle Store shoppers.

Why You Need To Buy a Kindle in 2011

And for those of you who haven’t got  e-books and Kindles yet.

Why the Kindle is cool:

  • you can read it in bright sunlight – try that with your iPad or netbook;
  • you can read it in bed without causing yourself or your partner concussion or hand cramps – try that with the latest 400 page trade paper back;
  • you can read it without glasses because you can dial the font up to super-size – try that with a cheap book with crap typography;
  • people who have serious sight loss can read it (or listen to it-  they will talk to you as well) – without paying a fortune for the very limited selection of large print books published;
  • you can listen to it read your book while you are stuck in traffic – did I mention the battery life is still about 1 month?
  • you can get the book immediately – you click its on your Kindle – I’ve read more books in the few months that I’ve had the Kindle  than I’d read in the previous year;
  • once you have bought someone a Kindle – you never need to think of a present again -just buy them an Amazon gift card.

Why eBooks are cool:

  • they are removing the gatekeepers – you don’t need an agent and a publishing contract to publish your book – you need a free Amazon publisher account and a free Smashwords account – just like iTunes did for music;
  • the price of books are coming down, seriously down – while the percentage that (self-published) authors are going up – a lot.
  • e-books mean you can take 3500 books with you on vacation and still pack light;
  • you can read trashy novels, erotica or Shakespeare on the c0mmute – and no one knows;
  • you can subscribe to a newspaper or magazine and be able to read it standing up, on-handed on the Tube (seriously that’s why the Brit’s buy them);
  • you don’t even need a Kindle to read them – or any form of e-Reader – Amazon has free Kindle software for Macs, PCs, iPads, iPhones, Android and few others I never heard of.
Categories
Rants

Bullying Online is NOT OK – Even for “Adults”

Tropical Beaches - the only one's worth swimming on!

If you’re bored with the making an income online – you are bored with life in my opinion. Normally I stay out of the day to day online dramas – but hell – what the heck – so here’s my thought of the day.

Don’t Let the Bullies Win

Today a blogger (and I’ll get to that term later) – wrote to me and said he’d removed a post, that I’d commented on. The post was written celebrating that he had resigned from a job that was “sucking the life out of him” – it rang a very loud bell with me – so I commented. Then he deleted the post – because the company that he hadn’t named was threatening to withhold his final pay (and his name isn’t on the site either). Now he probably shouldn’t have posted until he had the final check cashed, but either way the company was bullshiting – and he fell for it – it happens a lot online.  Bullies win, because people think they need permission.  I hope he puts the post back up once he has his final pay banked.

I don’t like bullies, I’ve mentioned that before. Its one of my trigger points, bullying.  My bet is that anonymous blogger’s boss was a bully in primary school too.

But online bullying is hard to do. Because bullies work by playing on people’s fear. The victim wants everything to go away – unless they stop and think, and realise that the free speech is a what most of us think is the basis of a decent society.

And writing your opinion of what you think about a product or service, on your own blog, is the right of anyone really.

Here are some of my opinions:

  • MacDonald’s makes bad food;
  • there’s no point swimming in water colder than 24C;
  • rugby sucks and Rugby World Cup is a complete waste of my (taxpayer) money;
  • Ken Evoy Googlebomb are three words that go together.
You may chose to disagree – but I warn you now – any pro-rugby comments will be deleted forthwith!
Tropical Beaches - the only one's worth swimming on!

Own Your Own Website

There’s an awful lot of people out there who are looking for a work from home opportunity – it seems quite a lot of them can write passably well. So they believe that they can make money writing for revenue share sites such as Suite101, eHow, Squidoo, HubPages. Scam  or for real?

I used to promote HubPages on this site – as a way to make money -because I earned my first online money with them.  Now I don’t. Because they have made changes to their site and their terms and conditions, which I don’t like. And there is not a darn thing I can do about it.

And don’t just own your website (hosting and domain name) – make sure you own the technology behind it. For example if you use a proprietary site builder like – hmmm, let me think,  Site Build It!, and for any reason you decide to leave the program – you will have to move onto another technology (I’d recommend WordPress). This is of course entirely possible – if you are pretty technically able, which you probably aren’t as a newcomer. You will have to pay someone to do it right, and if they aren’t very careful you will lose quite a lot of your rankings. If your site is large, you might even find that paying $300/year for your site’s hosting with Ken Evoy, will be cheaper than moving to to your own hosting.

Commentators – Read This First

Let’s get this very clear. I am bored to tears with SBI!, sitebuildit, Site Build It and related keywords. I’m not writing this,2 1/2 years AFTER my first post on the topic, to re-kindle the fires.

Dr Ken Evoy did that. Read the first link to Ken Evoy Googlebomb. Let’s be clear – I really don’t care if Evoy has declared war on Google, let’s face it, Google probably doesn’t care either.

What I care about is that Ken still doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand that the reason that my original post has dropped into obscurity, its nothing to do with the original post – its because of the appalling behavour of his hit squad that descended on my site. This is, and has never been, about the post – its about the comments.

I thought maybe he’d figured it out – after all he’s a smart guy. But apparently not.

He is rallying the troops again. The same goon squad is currently forming in the private SBI! Forums and he’s telling them to start attacking my social media profiles and to write pro Site Build It Reviews and link to them. The reviews I don’t care about.

Though there has always been plenty of positive SBI reviews out there – that was what started this whole saga – there were ONLY positive reviews.

Because of Ken’s – shut down the opposition policy.

Still I don’t give a shite – but it bothers me that third parties are scared for me – scared enough to contact me and warn me, genuinely.

Its still bullying guys – and it still doesn’t work.

Sending me pornographic suggestions doesn’t work – frankly I enjoy sex – and some of your suggestions are interesting …

Abusing how I look – why would I care? I have spent nothing on my appearance ever – I think I’ve had good value for money.

Praying that I or my family die of cancer – yeah sweet – confirms everything I’ve ever thought about the religious fringe – glad they are not on my side – don’t want to spend eternity with you either.

So fill free to comment, but I may delete you comment without warning – or I may copy it and send it to anyone I feel like. Might even tweet it …

Oh and yeah – maybe before you do anything your favourite guru tells you to do you might want to watch this:

Debate is fine – bullying is not – its not hard to tell the difference – discuss.

Categories
Self Publishing

Second Month’s Sales: Indie Travel Book

Busy doing research, Krabi, Thailand

Now those of you who live in the other hemisphere might not realise that the Australians and New Zealanders get a bit competitive with each other – like its OK so long as the Kiwis win – of course – so the Ozzie chick’s update on her book sales has me kinda bummed – she won 🙁 – but not by much and there will be a comeback!

Also I was really, really busy last month:

Busy doing research, Krabi, Thailand

So what happened while I ignore my sites and my outsourcer added some low value BMR links links to them?  (I did do some random blog commenting as well, but not much).

Books sold:

  • Smashwords 1 (5 in July);
  • Amazon US 16 copies (9 in July)
  • Amazon UK 3 copies  (0 in July)

Nothing exciting about my affiliate sales through the site – but as the sales are spread out through the month I have hope that some of these are “real sales” ie to strangers!  Especially as the Smashwords sales collapsed (real people buy through Amazon not some website they never heard of). Mind you I might have sold zillions through Barnes and Noble and iBooks as I was approved for Smashwords “premium” distribution so my books are apparently available through places that I’m not even allowed to buy as a Kiwi LOL!

So apart from coming second to an Ozzie I am pretty happy with sales.

Now if I could just get my arse sat down to write the next four books! I think I had post-holiday (vacation) blues! I’ve been back a week and written less on my forthcoming Thailand travel books than I did when I was on the beach in flipping Thailand!  Well I have it all planned -the outline is even written down – now I just have to fill the gaps in!

While I haven’t been doing (enough) actual writing – I have been thinking about this new thing called marketing – but luckily I don’t have to think about it anymore because James over at TheAverageGenius – just released a free report on how to do all this marketing stuff . Yes there is something you have to do to get it – which is part of the plan – and yes this is like real information from someone who has actually done it – not just some stuff he read somewhere, re-written.  Oh and its quite long – and its not in 33 pitch font so there is some reading to do. Oh yeah, and James, sorry about declining your  request for guest posting here – but I really don’t do guest posts – my readers would flee in droves if I published anything more regularly than twice a month!