Authors online

Letters from the fans

Many fans from all over the world admire the authors of their favourite books so much, that they want to contact them and share their appreciation. However, this is not the only reason. Some of the fans want to just express their opinions about their favourite books, ask questions or simply find out more about the ordinary life of the writers.

In the past, this was more difficult, as the only possibility was basically the ability to write a letter and then wait, if the author will have enough time or will to reply. Some writers, for example L. Frank Baum (author of the children series The Wizard of Oz) were kind enough to care about their fans, listen to their feedback and even reply to them. Baum appreciated this very much, often including an extra introduction in his books thanking children for their letters and answering their frequently asked questions.

Authors heading online

Nowadays, digital media made the communication between the authors and fans a lot easier. Probably the most preferable tool for this is Twitter, where you can find many celebrities sharing information about their lives with their fans. It enables ordinary people to write something on their profile page and then simply wait for an answer. Some of the authors not only write about their everyday life, but include some additional information about the books they written or about the ones that are just in the process of writing. How cool is that? Don’t you feel that it brings you closer to the writers and in some way connects you with them?

Examples

Well, let’s use some of the examples to illustrate how authors can communicate with their fans.

Veronica Roth, author of famous “Divergent” series:

In London! Excited to go to the UK premiere of Divergent tomorrow. See you there!
— Veronica Roth (@VeronicaRoth) March 29, 2014

George R.R. Martin, author of the "Game of Thrones" posts mainly jokes about his books on his Twitter account:

The pen is mightier than the sword pic.twitter.com/85NazaWcgv
— George RR Martin (@GeorgeRRMartin_) April 23, 2014

J.K. Rowling, author of the "Harry Potter" series:

As you may have heard, I have a new book out later this year. Very different to Harry, although I’ve enjoyed writing it every bit as much.
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) February 24, 2012

Feel free to comment on any of my articles, follow me on Twitter to find out about the new articles on the blog :) Follow @robo_kandrik

Goodreads: What to read next?

What is Goodreads.com?

This is a very interesting webpage, that is certainly worth your attention. It is neccessary to note, that it is not a social network, nor a book store. The official category it falls into is called "social cataloguing" site. You probably know the Internet Movie Database. So you can consider this to be the IMDb's friend, who is interested more in books, than in movies.
Goodreads.com was launched in January 2007 and by now, their user base has grown up to 20 million users. Because of its great functionality and popularity, it was acquired by Amazon in 2013, which directly incorporated this webpage into their new Kindle Paperwhite model.

source: amazon.com

How does it work?

It is very simple. You register and create your own profile. Goodreads asks you about the books you have already read. After you finish your own personal list of books that you already read, the webpage recommends some other stories you are likely to enjoy. This is based on the similarity of the books or on the other people, who read similar novels than you. This can be very useful. You can discover many interesting books that you enjoy and you therefore no longer need to search the bookshop and read every book's description to find something interesting to read next.

Rating system

You are asked to review every book that you've read. It is not obligatory, but user feedback helps to find out, how the general public views every book. 5 star rating can help you recognise the quality of the book and what you can expect from it. Reading the comments can be sometimes helpful, but sometimes absolutely useless, because a lot of negative feedback is based on the subjective opinion of the reader, which doesn't have to correspond with your own. 

Updating your status

This webpage has some of the features that are similar to the ones of social networks. You can update your progress, even the webpage you are on. You can add friends, who can then see which books you read, which you are planning to read , and which you are currently reading. This is particularly useful, because if you find out, that some of your friends is reading a book you were planing to read, you can read their review and ask them about their opinion.

The social media were always used in order to connect people. Goodreads does just that. Connects you with your friends - through books. Maybe next time it will motivate you to engage in conversation with someone about your favourite book.

Feel free to comment on any of my articles, follow me on Twitter to find out about the new articles on the blog :)
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Self-publishing: Sell your book online. It's easy peasy!

Are you interested in writing a book, or have you already written one? Well, nowadays it is not so difficult to share it with the world. Whereas in the past the only possibility was contacting the publishing house and it was quite difficult to actually print your own book. But what about now? Digital media brought many new possibilities, right?

Yes, it is right. Internet is a perfect place where everyone can express themselves without any doubts or complications. You can create a blog, just like this one, or just a simple webpage where you publish a digital version of your book. Many young writers still lack the motivation to write "for free". And that is understandable. If you are good and you spend countless hours writing something, why would you do it for free? Thanks to the digital media, this has changed so much. Not very many people realise, how easy it is to earn some cash just by sharing what you write and not keeping it to yourself. It is amazing also for the readers. Imagine how many great cheap books you can choose from. Their quality can surprise you and you can find the titles from amateur authors much better than actual books that got published. The prices are low, but by paying one or two pounds, you support the author and believe me, money are a great motivation for them to continue writing.

Well, let's look at the possibilities you have to get the most out of your book.

1. Lulu

This is a private self - publishing company from California. They already published over million titles by authors from all over the world and have a very professional image. They let you upload your work and everything is free. You can pick a price and your book is made available to the public via Lulu Marketplace. Their partners Barnes and Noble and iBooks may also publish your ebook so that your potential audience is increased even more. What is more, your book can even get its own ISBN for free.

There are some paid services, which you should consider as well. If you are not experienced in marketing or advertising, and you are willing to pay, you can let Lulu do the hardest work for you. For 149 pounds you can even get your book into print.  

2. Smashwords

The logo and slogan of Smashwords

Maybe even an easier possibility is Smashwords.com. This is another self-publishing web, where authors simply upload their ebooks in Microsoft Word format, which is then converted to many other digital ebook formats, such as ePub, PDF or mobi and therefore it is made available for readers to read more easily on many platforms. Smashwords proudly announce that they are the largest and most favourite platform for indie authors and they also offer many free services such as free ISBNs, ebook conversion or marketing of your book. You can choose the price of your book for free as well. 

3. Kindle Singles and Direct Publishing

Now this has become a quite popular way of ebook sharing and self publishing. Amazon uses their popular online platform to promote their own way of self publishing, and there are actually two possibilities.

Kindle Singles is the one that is more prestigious and you can find there mostly the books that are written by professional writers, journalists etc. And there are much more complications with self publishing, when compared to the other services I mentioned. Amazon team doesn't really let anyone sell their books on the Kindle Singles Store. Your ebook must meet their requirements, such as genre (some are not allowed) or word count (your book has to be at least 5000 words long). Amazon will also take much more profit from the actual sale of the ebook if you compare it with other platforms. Moreover, your ebook has to be approved by the people from Amazon, which can take a very long time and according to the reactions online, this is not so easy as you would expect.

Online discussion about Kindle Singles - click on it to
enlarge the image

So does Amazon really hate amateur authors? Nooo, not really, dont worry. There is still another service you can use. Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing which does exactly what it promises in the title, directly publishes your work. You can also charge for your book, with Amazon taking just a smaller part of your actual sale. And it is all free as well. The only disadvantage over Kindle Singles is, that it is more difficult to find readers on Direct Publishing. But why not try to do both? While you publish your novel on KDP, you can still try to apply for Kindle Singles and see, how much you can get out of it. 

This video was uploaded to the official Kindle Youtube channel and it pretty much sums up the whole article.

As you can see, the digital media, whether it is Kindle Singles, Direct Publishing, Smashwords, Lulu or any other self-publishing service made it easier to share your book with the public and brought lots of new possibilities for the authors and readers as well.

Even more information about self-publishing can be found on my friend's blog. She writes about User Generated Content, click here to find out more.

Feel free to comment on any of articles. You can look forward to more articles in the next few days. Follow me on Twitter to find out about the new ones after they have been posted. :)

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Kobo: a strong competitor from the north

A good second place

A nice, simple logo and a short
slogan of the company

I already mentioned two of the biggest players in the electronic book market. The last one I am planning to menion is Kobo, a strong company from Canada, providing users with cheap ereaders and a nice bookstore. Thanks to a quality products and good marketing campaign, they managed to beat Barnes and Noble and sucessfully adapt on the market. Their sales and popularity has not overcome Amazon yet, but with a bit of effort, they can easily become the strongest player.
A nice logo, many types of e-readers and relatively low prices all motivate people to choose this company over the others. Customers have a large variety of devices to choose from, such as Kobo Glo, Touch, Aura, Mini etc. Many interesting articles comparing Kobo with other devices, but this is not a blog about ereaders, so let's move on to some other facts.

Marketing is the key

For a company to gain success, it is essential to first let the potential customers discover the company. The key is to use the budget clever enough and capture the attention of people. There is not many competitors, so this shold be easily done. And it really is. Just a simple commercial without any special motive can be helpful. Kobo came up with this video commercial in May last year and they managed to capture the moments spent by reading in a really nice way. Check it out:

It is also important to find customers, who are not very active online and enjoy reading real books. These are mostly older people, who can also appreciate this new, modern way of reading. Kobo sucessfuly made a deal with WHSmith in order to make sure, a real book fans will find a way to their products.

High street newsagent and bookseller WH Smith is throwing down the gauntlet to US internet firm Amazon with a rival ebook reader it hopes will be a "Kindle killer".Its chief executive, Kate Swann, has struck a deal with Canadian firm Kobo to sell its eponymous e-readers, costing from £89.99, and a library of 2.2m books from next week. The retailer will receive a share of the profits on all the Kobo ebooks bought in the UK.The partnership would give the retailer a presence in a developing market and "complement its traditional books business", Swann said.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/oct/13/wh-smith-launches-ebook-reader-deal

The moving books

The webpage Kobo.com is, in my opinion, the nicest one of all three mentioned companies. It is not too complicated or simplistic, a nice design is combined with a crawl in the middle showing the interesting book choices moving from one side to another. The search box is right in the middle and is probably the most important part of Kobo's webpage asking the visitors what they can find for them. 

I found this webpage less chaotic then the one of Amazon with the fact that after you choose one category (e.g. Fiction) Kobo let's you choose from a variety of sub-categories. This is easy and handy when it comes to finding a new reading tips. On the other hand, the amount of books available, in comparison to Amazon, is limited.

Other interesting section of the Kobo's webpage is certainly a trivia competition anyone can join with a motivation to win discount,  Kobo device or 1000 dollars. Check out the competition here.

Building a community

It can be very difficult to build a successful fanpage with many followers, but a good campaign, activity on the social network can help increase the sales. In terms of online fanbase, Kobo is on the 3rd place actually, but activities such as trivia contest, book recommendations etc. can be really helpful and if customers are happy with the company, they will try to find them on the online networks and certainly help them by spreading the word, commenting, sharing or retweeting. You can do the same. :) Here are the links for online networks:

@Kobo

Facebook fanpage

This is the last company I am planning to review on this blog, but you can look forward to some new articles mentioning other aspects of this new "electronic reading" phenomenon. Feel free to comment on any of articles on this blog and follow me on Twitter to find out about the new ones after they have been posted. :)

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Nook, Nook! Who's there? - Barnes and Noble!

Adapting to the new age

Barnes & Noble Bookshop originated in 1886 in New York. Throughout the history, this company struggled many times to remain on the market, but nowadays it is considered to be very sucessful and one of a few bookstore chains in the States. 

One of the most significant steps in their history has been the introduction of their e-reader Nook. This happened just on time, barely a year after Amazon introduced their Kindle. The sales started slowly rise and after a few years the price was reduced and the popularity hugely increased. This company has sucessfully found a way to survive in this strange age of digital media.

Paying for simplicity?

What does their webpage look like? The first thought that comes to your mind is certainly - simple. In contrast to for example Amazon Kindle Store, BN.com is not completelly filled by charts, ratings, recommendations and small thumbnails. A simple menu helps you browse the genres of books you are really interested in. While for someone this is easier and less complicated, some readers can consider the page as dull and uninteresting, lacking some bonus information. 

What is probably more important then the design of the online bookstore are actually the prices of ebooks. In general, these are more expensive then the same ones Kindle users buy. 

The average ebook prices are relatively higher on Barnes and Noble page, than on Kindle Store

It is important to note, that the price of the paperbacks and real books is higher in Barnes and Noble bookstore than on Amazon, so this can have an influence on ebook prices as well.

How to compete?

It is important to bring special features, that other companies did not come up with yet. This can serve as an advantage of the product, which can influence the customer's choice of the bookstore. Barnes and Noble chose different ways to differentiate itself and here are a few of them:

When Barnes & Noble launched the Nook e-book reader late last year, the company said it would offer unique features such as e-book lending, free in-store streaming of many titles, and Android apps that would run on the color touch screen at the bottom of the device.

Read more: http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/b-n-delivers-meaty-nook-update-teases-ipad-app/

Apart from this, Barnes and Noble incorporated some games into their e-reader, such as Chess or Sudoku.

The position of BN with its Nook e-reader is currently a 3rd place. Even though they adapted quite sucessfully, they still find it hard to win over their competitors.
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Amazon: the strongest player in the game

A short history of ebooks

As far as electronic books are concerned, the market leader is certainly Amazon. The reason for this can be the fact, that it was Amazon Kindle, that became the most popular and favourite e-reader and served as a great advertisement for the Amazon online archive of e-books.

Sony Librie from 2006

The ebooks existed long before the Kindle was introduced, but they never became really very popular. The readers could download them in HTML or PDF format and use their computers or mobile phones to read them. That was rather impractical and that was the reason why ebooks started to be really popular shortly after e-ink readers were introduced. Even though the very first ebook readers were introduced by Sony in september 2006 called Librie, it never became as popular as Amazon's product.

Since 2007 many things have changed, but Amazon has not been beaten by any other company yet. Two years later, they started to sell Kindle internationally, which caused almost a revolution in book reading. Barnes and Noble released their Nook, which forced Amazon to lower the price of their product.

With the popularity of the device, Amazon Kindle Store, serving as a main source of ebooks, published many books, digitalising vast majority of publications. Magazines and newspaper are not an exception.

In 2011 Amazon started to claim that ebooks are already outselling real books.

Four years after the launch of electronic novels, the firm announced it has sold 105 e-books for every 100 printed books over the past six weeks.

While e-book sales have previously outsold hardback books, never before have they exceeded sales of all books, in both hardback and paperback forms.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1388779/The-end-paperback-Kindle-ebook-sales-exceed-print-sales-time-ever.html#ixzz2yFcOq3qw

The hits of today

The cover of a special Kindle
edition of Hunger Games trilogy

Nowadays, many new novels, especially directed to the younger generation, gained a huge success as ebooks. A great example is Suzane Collins' Hunger Games that was considered to be as a huge hit in Kindle Store, before it reached the cinemas. 

The Hunger Games trilogy has sold extremely well in ebook format: Collins was the sixth author and first YA author to be named to Amazon's Kindle Million club, which means a million copies of her books had been sold to Kindle users. And in March, it was announced that she is the bestselling Kindle ebook author ever.

Read more: http://www.tampabay.com/features/books/ebook-sales-key-in-harry-potter-vs-hunger-games-battle/1247651 

Amazon even claimed that this book sold more copies than Harry Potter, but this does not concern print sales, where J.K. Rowling undoubtedly wins. Her saga was made available online via the special webpage Pottermore created together with her. It is now not possible to buy Kindle ebook of Harry Potter directly on Amazon.com. This will be mentioned on my blog in a special article in a few days.
Another sucessful novel on Kindle Store was Fifty Shades of Grey, written by E.L. James which originally started as a fan fiction. This novel have been so popular on Kindle Store, that it already sold more than 1 million ebooks online.

What is the future?

It is difficult to predict what the future of Amazon Kindle Store will be, but even though their sales were not completely optimistic lately, the ebooks are almost certainly going to continue to spread and their popularity will not fall. Amazon with a huge archive of digitalised books and the best selling ereaders does not have to worry. The prices for Kindle books are mostly lower than prices for the paperbacks or hard copies, but that is completely understandable as there is almost no production cost of an ebook. 

Let's see what the future holds. Feel free to express your opinion in the comment section. :) In a few days, we will look more closely on some of the other parts of Amazon online store, such as Kindle Worlds, Kindle Singles and Kindle Direct Publishing. Stay tuned for more information!

Until then you can find more information about Amazon and Kindle Store on Twitter or Facebook:
Follow @amazon
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How digital media change the way we look at books.

My name is Robert Kandrik, I study Media in Robert Gordon University. This is a blog created for the Digital Media Platforms and Practices and it is going to discuss the impacts of digital media on books. Digital media have changed how we read, what we read and not only that. Books existed many years before, but now, ever since the internet was invented, everything has changed. While the digital media provided many other possibilities, people still did not forget about the "good old books". To make sure that books do not lose their popularity and significance, we need to use digital media and internet as an advantage and enhance the reading experience.

Many companies have realised that if this is done in the right way, it can be very profitable for them. A good example is Amazon. They released their First generation Kindle in 2007 and it was sold out in a few hours. Since then they managed to sold a huge amount of ebooks. That's why I will start by analysing this company and later on i'm planning to talk about companies such as Barnes and Noble and Kobo. There will be an article about fan fiction, mentioning how digital media provide a space for amateur writers to share their works with other fans. You will find many articles discussing the current situation of digital books, interesting webpages about digital books etc.

Social media create a possibility for authors to communicate with their readers and this topic will also be mentioned later on this blog. Digitalisation, audiobooks, self-publishing and many more. Follow this blog and find out more information about how to enjoy reading books even more using the digital media.