Later this month BookRix will be launching an ebookstore where member authors can sell the fruits of their labors, and BookRix is also going to offer to distribute those ebooks to Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Sony, and iBooks.

But also like BookCountry, this doesn’t look like a very good deal for authors.

BookRix is charging  both an upfront fee (like BookBaby) and an ongoing commission (like Smashwords). The initial charge is $40, which is not so unreasonable – until you combine it with the commission. BookRix pays authors 55% of sales from their ebookstore, and 43% from 3rd party bookstores. By any standards, that is ridiculously low.

Perhaps I shouldn’t use the word ridiculous, but let me give you  yardstick. Smashwords pays a higher commission (both on ebooks they sell and vi 3rd party sellers), and they don’t charge a fee. BookBaby charges a higher fee, but they pay 100% to the author. (They don’t charge a commission, but there is a small yearly fee per title.)

Now, some might argue that BookRix offers a useful service, and that the ebookstore builds upon it. This is true. BookRix does let authors develop their work with community feedback, surrounded by over 400 thousand enthusiasts. And being able to sell your work to the community of readers around you is a good thing, yes.

But BookRix isn’t the only book and writing community that does this. Have you looked at Wattpad?

They are even bigger than BookRix, and they have offered ebook distribution options since July 2010. That’s when Wattpad formed a partnership with Smashwords. Rather than try to handle distribution themselves, Wattpad signed with what was the best self-pub platform at the time (still one of the better options). Wattpad also has Lulu as a partner, thus giving authors print options as well.

For the life of me, I don’t see why anyone would sign up to distribute their ebooks via Bookrix.  The terms of the deal  are simply terrible; this is one case where virtually any other option is better.

BookRix Expands into Ebook Distribution

Specifically, they won’t carry any of the books distributed by HMH under the New Harvest imprint. This imprint was launched as part of an expansion of Amazon’s partnership with HMH. And yes, this is a stupid move.

When B&N made this decision, they did it out of the principle of having the same titles available both in print and digital. They have a huge ebookstore with a significant chunk of the US ebook market, and there is some sense in defending it this way. By refusing the books, B&n struck back at their strongest competitor. It’s only a moral victory, but it is still a victory.

BAM, on the other hand, doesn’t have an ebookstore worth mentioning. BAM is not one of the big 4 US ebookstores (Kindle, Nook, iBooks, Kobo); they are one of the many that when combined make up about 5% of the market. What’s more, BAM doesn’t even sell their own ereader; they sell the Nook.

BAM has no ebookstore to defend, so there’s not much of  reason to decline Amazon’s books. This move looks more like a general cluelessness than a principled stand. It’s also coming from  less than healthy company, and I suppose that we might now know why BAM has been losing money these past several years.

BAM Plans to Cut Off Nose to Spite Face

Update: Jason says that he’s already talking to authors. The first bundle should be out this spring, and more bundles should follow bout once every other month.

The company is just launching now, and about all there is to it right now is the website, Twitter, and Facebook account. I’m waiting to hear back from them, but in the meantime here is what the website says:

We give you a handful of ebooks (about five or so) for a low price that you choose, all DRM-free, delivered to your ereader.

We only choose quality independent authors so you can be sure what you’re buying is good. Plus, you decide how much these books are worth. Great reads delivered cheaply without killing a single tree? That’s something everybody can feel good about.

This might not look like such  great deal for authors, but the app bundles suggest that it might be worthwhile. I’ve bought a couple, and they usually included older games (like an author’s backlist) with the occasional newer game thrown in.

The current Humble Indie bundle has earned $578 thousand in less than a week, and it includes 4 titles. Iif we assume that everyone went with the default split then the app developers ended up with over $300 thousand to split between them.It’s not a whole lot per copy sold, but the possibility of making $70 thousand or more from a single tile in a short period of time should make this option very attractive.

On a related note, authors will need to be careful about the ebooks they offer via StoryBundle. If the same title is available via Amazon when it goes on sale at StoryBundle, Amazon will send their death squads after you.They take ebook prices seriously, and they will not let you undersell them elsewhere.

Kidding aside, in the past Amazon has matched sale prices found elsewhere, but I don’t know quite what they will do here (it’s complicated). They might even drop the price of your ebook to nothing. I’d still go for this, but do be careful.

StoryBundle

Update: StoryBundle to Offer “Pay What You Want” Ebook Bundles

Well, The Bookseller followed up on this and they have some stats for the UK Kindle Store, and the news is mixed.

This is the oldest of Amazon’s local Kindle Stores, so it offers an interesting snapshot of how the Kindle is doing. Amazon reported that they sold 5 times as many Kindle ebooks in Q4 2011 vs the same period in 2010. They also saw  doubling of Kindle sales in that quarter (compared to a 177% worldwide).

Those numbers are awfully thin, but a 5-fold increase in ebook sales is impressive. It’s also more than anyone else is willing to claim. But the doubling of device sales is another matter. You would have expected to see  bump in sales over the Christmas season, and given that the new Kindle launched in the UK on October that would also account for a spike. Put the 2 together and the increase isn’t as impressive as it first appeared.

So Amazon saw a huge jump in ebook sales but only a moderate increase in device sales. As I said, the news is mixed.

The Bookseller

Amazon Saw a 5-Fold Increase in UK Ebook Sales

But have you considered that Waterstones might not be the best choice for a first partner? I know it sounds crazy, but I think Indigo, the largest bookstore chain in Canada, might be a good alternative.

I’m sure you’re thinking that Indigo is involved with Kobo, so there’s no reason for them to go in a different direction. But Indigo also sold off their interest in Kobo a while ago, so now Kobo is only a partner like WH Smith, Whitcoulls, or Pearson Australia. (Indigo is probably also tied to Kobo by  contract, so this post is likely irrelevant. But that won’t stop me.)

Now, Kobo is said to be the dominant ebookstore in Canada, so one might assume that Indigo would want to stick with it. But have you considered how Kobo got that position? It’s not through looks or personality, but because Indigo was the largest Canadian bookstore chain. In store support adds a lot of value; just ask B&N. But it would add value to any device supported by Indigo, not just Kobo.

So if Indigo formed a partnership with B&N, there would be value in it for B&N, right? That seems like a good reason for B&N to try to recruit Indigo, if you ask me. At the very least, it puts Indigo in  position to negotiate a better deal with Rakuten – assuming B&N is interested, of course.

What’s more, B&N is already selling ebooks in Canada, so expanding to have a real presence up north would make sense.

On the other hand, I could see B&N expanding into Canada without Indigo as a partner. I’m sure that it would be nice to have a bookstore, yes, but B&N is already absent from a good chunk of the US anyways. And several of B&N’s current US retail partners also own chains in Canada, so negotiating new agreements wouldn’t be that difficult. Tech support also wouldn’t be that much of  problem; it would have to be online and phone but B&N already does that. The only major change would be the legally mandated support for French, but that is a minor issue.

In any case, I foresee Canada being B&N’s next market. They might even announce it at the same time as the Waterstone’s deal.

image by brewbooks

Indigo Would Make A Great First Partner for Barnes & Noble

Earlier this week they posted an infographic which compared the Top 100 titles in the Nook and Kindle stores. Amazon bet B&n in several ways, including lower average price ($6.48 vs $8.94), s well as having far more titles under $2 (35 vs zero). It’s fascinating comparison.

The infographic is after the break.

via eBookNewser

Amazon Still Beating B&N on Price

Netherlands based bookseller Libris will be carrying the KT on 30 January, with  retail of 129 euros. You”ll be able to find the KT both on their website and in stores, long with  selection of covers. They will also be Kobo’s ebookstore partner in the Netherlands.

Kobo has in fact been carrying Dutch ebooks since mid-2011, and they have been selling them since December 2011. That makes today’s launch a tad anti-climatic.

I would appreciate it if someone could check the Dutch Kobo store and tell me how many titles are available; their website won’t show them to me because I’m in the US.

Update: Kobo has a policy of not showing ebooks to customers if the customer cannot buy them. That is wht I ws referring to.

Kobo Touch Available Soon in the Netherlands

Most of WHSmith’s customers saw their accounts switched over to Kobo. But this was a less than complete process, and at least some of us were moved to another service, only this one is no longer associated with WHSmiths. I’m not completely sure why this happened, but I do know that my account was moved over and I hate the name.

It’s called Uncuva, and it’s supported by WHSmith’s old ebookstore partner, Mobcast. It’s sharing the same servers as Mobcast’s other partners, including Orange, T-Mobile, Vodafone and Singapore Telecom.(Mobcast runs their ebookstores.)

Is it just me, or does that name sound like an infectious disease?

Snide comments aside, Uncuva launched earlier this month. Mobcast will be supporting this ebookstore in the UK market, and they have already released an Android app that works with it. An iOS pp is in the works, too. This ebookstore will offer the same selection that WHSmith used to have, and all ebooks that had been bought via WHSmith before the changeover should still be in your account.

Uncuva

Mobcast’s New Ebookstore Sounds Like a Disease

In addition to the new iBooks, Apple also announced today that iTunes U, their educational audiobook and video section of iTunes, now has its own app. The app was actually released yesterday, but clearly we all missed it.

Now that I’m looking at it, I can see that it’s a lot more than the old iTunes U. The few times I’d looked t it before, it appeared to be just an iTunes section for educational videos. Now it is a complete educational app. You can use it to use 1 of 500 thousand recorded lectures, videos, books, and other resources on thousands of subjects from Algebra to Zoology.

But you can also use it to actually take a course. That includes tracking completed assignments as well as any updates posted by the instructors. This pp also promise integration with the new iBooks.

Okay, this is the bombshell of the day. I don’t know yet if Apple tried to overturn the textbook cart, but they certainly accomplished that goal with classwork. To be fair, there already was a growing Open Ed movement. But now that Apple is behind it, we could see some real change in academia.

iTunes

Apple Launches iTunes U app

Sorry, but given the excitement this will generate I thought it best to puncture the hype.

Well, that was a short beta test. Amazon only first mentioned KF8 back in October, shortly before the Kindle Fire shipped. And I’ve only had my hands on the beta for just over a month. And now everyone has it.

(For more details on Kindle Format 8, click the 2 links above. )

Amazon is now going to let you submit an ebook with more complex formatting, but to be honest they’ve been doing that for over a year. Back in the fall of 2010, amazon distributed a new version of KindleGen that (whenever the source was Epub) started hiding the Epub in the back of the AZW file it made. At the time we all guess that they were planning ahead for something, and the Epub supporters were hopeful  that Amazon might switch over to the better format. Well, we know that’s not going to happen.

By all means, start learning how to use it.  But when you do adopt it, it’s going to mean an increase in some people’s workloads in the short term.

Back when I converted ebooks for a living, I leveled out my Epubs at about the same level of formatting found in the Kindle format.  Doing a second ebook for the more sophisticated Epub format would have added more to the cost than most authors wanted to pay (and I mainly did novels, which don’t usually have complex formatting).

If you start using the new features found in KF8 now, you’re going to have to also continue to make a less complex AZW file, because none of the apps or devices support the new features. If you don’t then your ebooks will look bad to most of your readers.

In any case, here are the download links:

KindleGen

Kindle Previewer

Kindle Publishing Guidelines

If you’re in a hurry, just get the previewer. It can make a KF8 file from an Epub. And once you have the tools, please come tell me what you think. I want to hear your opinion.

via

Kindle Format 8 Now Out of Beta – Go Get it!