October 14, 2005

Ken’s Meme Deflector: XBlogThis!: An Extended BlogThis! Button:

XBlogThis!: An Extended BlogThis! Button

If you keep a with Blogger, you have probably come across the BlogThis! button. It is small bit of Javascript that you can add as a button to your bookmark toolbar that generates a post from the text that you have highlighted on a page.

Crucial.

A busy month with a major revamp of my websites and work proceeding on two new titles. Let’s review status.

I completed the first update for UNAUTHORIZED HARRY POTTER BOOK SEVEN NEWS, released the PDF version to customers, and requested a proof of the new paperback. I will send out a batch of review copies next month. I postponed the pub date for UNAUTHORIZED A FEAST FOR CROWS ANALYSIS to Dec. 15.

Product sales continued to show a satisfactory degree of diversification. Net unit sales included a stronger-than-usual showing from a sentimental favorite, my first publication, Basic Documents about the Treatment of Detainees at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

Higher-than-expected returns of The Solomon Key and Beyond were an unpleasant end-of-month surprise. Overall, a down month … all my available products are at down points in their demand cycles. I can only work to make sure that they are properly positioned for the likely upswing.

By far the most cost-effective marketing technique that Nimble Books has used has been to take position its products in the Ingram and Amazon.com catalogs so that they will take advantage of major publicity events driven by third parties (MPE) such as the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It costs me almost nothing in out-of-pocket cash marketing $ to position my products appropriately, and MPE such as publication date announcements have been observed to increase monthly sales by an order of magnitude or more, so the ROI is on the order of 1000%.

Assuming that MPE will occur as expected, and that they will continue to drive potential customers towards my properly positioned products in on-line bookselling catalogs, it follows that the most cost-effective places for me to invest my efforts are:

• increasing the number of products offered
• improving the conversion rate on items in the catalog

In other words, the focus for next month will be on finishing books, and optimizing catalog metadata.

Ancillary revenue streams contributed proportionally less to revenue this month than last month.

Google Print still has four of my titles “pending,” where they have been for six months plus–despite the fact that all four titles are available electronically to Google via an LSI-Google partnership! Not worth spending any time on Google Print until they dramatically improve their throughput.

I added nicer-looking Amazon “buy this book” links to all my blogs which produced a minor but noticeable increase in Amazon.com Associates revenue.

The website reorganization has cost me AdSense revenue as I moved a lot of content off-line, but switching content management systems has made it possible for me to understand AdSense behavior more analytically. I know now that the best performing channels are Tech Fun, The Solomon Key and Beyond, and What’s New for Book-Lovers. Over the course of the month, What’s New for Book-Lovers drew away from the pack as the channel that is growing fastest, earning most in AdSense revenue, and has the most potential to grow into a significant revenue contributor.

The Solomon Key and Beyond gradually outpaced the “root” Zimmerblog, finishing a strong second among all channels and establishing a distinct user community. Books I Won’t Be Reading struggled with poor usage statistics, although it had a high volume of what I thought were funny posts. I suspect the title is creating a big obstacle to casual readers! I think I will fold it into What’s New for Book-Lovers.

As I look back at the month, I realize that the bottom line is that POD publishing is a much better business model than affiliates program.

• Every time I have “success” in AdSense (a click-thru) for What’s New for Book-Lovers, I receive an average of $0.25.
• Every time I have “success” in Amazon.com Associates (a referred purchase), I receive around $1.10.
• Every time I have “success” in book-selling (fulfill a book-seller’s order), I receive between $5.00 and $15.00.

Onward!

Hilarious outtake from the Motley Fool:

Breaking Up With Google Is Hard [Fool.com: Motley Fool Take] October 14, 2005: “So where does Comcast fit into all this? Good question. You can almost sense the negotiations going down a little something like this, re-enacted by the San Dimas High drama club:

Microsoft: Oooh, baby. I can’t wait to hold you and those delicious eyeballs, my sweet AOL.

AOL: Not so fast, Mr. Softy. I haven’t broken up with Google just yet.

Google (knocking): Open up, AOL. I know you’re there.

AOL (opening door): Man, this is like totally awkward.

Google: Don’t leave me, sugar.

AOL: Well? Hey! Who brought that Comcast kid here?

Google: Don’t worry, darling. He’s cool. He’s with me.

AOL: Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t leave you?

Google: Haven’t I been good to you, cupcake?

AOL: Yes, but –

Google: Microsoft’s a stranger, pookie. He’s inexperienced. You don’t know what you’re going to get if you run off with him. You know that, don’t you?

AOL: Yes, but my parent wants me out of the house.

Google: TW wants you out, but think about the clicks. We had something great, doll.

Microsoft (coughs): Ahem, AOL? Will you marry me?

Google: Comcast? The ring please?

No. Comcast isn’t just the ring boy. It’s also a content and marketing titan. One would also think that Comcast wouldn’t mind converting the 20 million AOL dial-up subscribers to its broadband connections, though apparently America Online’s flagship service itself is not part of the deal.

That’s why Comcast may be an odd wingman for Google, especially with Google looking to devalue Comcast’s broadband business by proposing to blanket pockets of the country with free ad-supported Wi-Fi access.”

My take on Google’s “sotto voce” to AOL:

We want you and your customers, even though we think you and they are obsolete dinosaurs.

USATODAY.com - ABC’s use of college interns for investigation angers colleges: “At Kansas State, officials anticipated the visit; word had gotten around the small nuclear research community that reporters saying they were students had approached facilities. The students were given a tour anyway, even though this was later cited by ABC an example of a potential security risk.

The interns flirted with security officers to try to get in, said Ken Shultis, Kansas State’s nuclear energy program director. The guards flirted back, since they were trying to get the interns to pose for a picture they wanted to provide to the FBI.”

Beyond awesome: a must purchase.

The Complete Peanuts: “Charles M. Schulz - The Complete Peanuts

50 Years of Art. 25 Books. Two books per year for 12 1/2 years. Fantagraphics Books is proud to present the most eagerly-awaited and ambitious publishing project in the history of the American comic strip: the complete reprinting of CHARLES M. SCHULZ’s classic, PEANUTS. Considered to be one of the most popular comic strips in the history of the world, PEANUTS will be, for the first time, collected in its entirety.

Each volume in the series will run approximately 320 pages in a 8” x 6 1/2” hardcover format, presenting two years of strips along with supplementary material. The series will present the entire run in chronological order, dailies and Sundays.

“Sisyphus in a striped shirt.” —Chicago Reader”

Publishers Marketplace reports: “Robyn Young’s BRETHREN trilogy, set on the eve of the last Crusade, the story follows a young knight as he is initiated into the Templars, and his subsequent discovery of a mysterious book that belongs to a secret organization within their ranks, to Julie Doughty at Dutton, for publication in August 2006, simultaneously with Hodder & Stoughton in the UK, in a significant deal,”

Sorry, but I won’t read anything more about Templars.

NASA has a new blue marble.