April 4, 2006

For the record, my mother, Barbara Lamar, is a lifelong Democrat and regularly makes substantial contributions to Democratic causes. Check up on your own mother by using FOLLOWING THE DOLLARS.

Woof (n)

1. vocalization uttered by dogs when waiting plaintively outside a door to be let in. Generally, any plaintive cry of putative helplessness.

2. vocalization uttered by dogs just prior to biting the hand that feeds them. Generally, any act of ungrateful and unwarranted hostility.

Dick Francis’ 39th Novel Due in Fall - Yahoo! News

NEW YORK - Best-selling mystery author Dick Francis is ending a six-year hiatus and publishing his first book since the death of his wife and collaborator, Mary Francis.

This fall, G.P. Putnam’s Sons will release “Under Orders,” his 39th novel.

“I am delighted that … my family has talked me back into the literary saddle,” the British author, 85, said Tuesday in a statement.

Francis, author of such popular works as “Come to Grief” and “Wild Horses,” had worked closely with his wife, who served as his editor, researcher and even co-author. For decades, he averaged a book a year, but had released nothing since her death, in 2000.

“Speaking for everyone here at Putnam, I am thrilled that Dick Francis has returned from his hiatus and delivered such an exceptional new work,” Putnam president Ivan Held said in a statement.

Wow. This is huge news for book-lovers. Francis had said he was retired for keeps after the death of his wife. This is your basic must read.

Former Celine Dion Translator Tackles Sexual Obsession and History in Romania

“I’ve got nothing against Celine Dion,” remarked Benderson. “In fact, I think she sounds pretty good when she sings in French. But putting her saccharine autobiography into English during a long, sizzling summer in Bucharest to support a lazy lover wasn’t exactly a garden party.”

Woof.

A good month for Nimble Books. Returns were down, a lot, and after this month, there will be no more (I switched all my books to non-returnable status last fall). Gross sales were up by a factor of about 2 and net publishers comp was up even more. As usual, the Harry Potter book accounted for about 70% of revenue by title, and e-books accounted for about 25% of revenue by medium. One interesting surprise was that my Google AdSense books started to sell.

I managed to put my Harry Potter and Dan Brown books in front of several good foreign rights agents, and they all passed. I think the moral is that these books really aren’t very well positioned for rights sales. They are very personal, idiosyncratic, and idiomatic, and the PDF update/”living book” approach doesn’t transfer well either. I will have to think about whether making future books look more “standard” might pay off in terms of rights sales.

Google Book Search announced that they will offer full paid on-line access to digital titles, with a 70/30 revenue split between publisher and GBS. I am pricing my 17 GBS titles just like e-books so the net revenue per sale should be about the same as with my current e-book distributor. My most optimistic assessment is that GBS on-line access will be essentially another e-book “superstore” along the lines of Amazon, which might mean up to a 25% bump in total revenues. My more realistic assessment is that a 5% bump is more likely. It will be interesting to see what happens when GBS turns on the on-line access.

This website continues to support itself. One quite remarkable discovery was that it appears that about 80% of my referrer traffic is coming from images.google.foo — Google’s Image Search in various countries. Who knew the images were so popular? As a result, I improved the 404 page to make it easier for users to find the images. This resulted in a higher AdSense clickthrough rate for the site as a whole but a lower revenue-per-click, since apparently “Airbus 380″ has a lower CPM than the typical ad content of the Nimble Books home page! Nevertheless, the changes are worthwhile: Google Analytics shows that users are indeed finding what they’re looking for much more efficiently.

Next month: mostly maintenance.

Beta Books at A P R E S S . C O M

Apress betaBooks give you access to the newest programming topics straight from the author, via weekly PDF chapters and updates, all before the final printed versions are published. Eight weeks before the book’s final publication—and before other books on the topic are released—the first several chapters of an Apress betaBook become available. After that, available updates or new chapters are delivered weekly to your inbox.

These betaBooks are a bargain since the price includes a copy of the entire finished eBook. At this time, betaBooks aren’t intended to solicit feedback or shape a final book. Instead, the main function of a betaBook is to give you two-month head start on technology that may boost your career success.

This is a clever use of electronic publishing, and another step along the path towards living books.

DEBKAfile - The “Thousands” of US Mistakes in Iraq and the Next Israeli Government

uring her British tour, Rice twice repeated that she did not expect to run for the presidency. She did say she expected to correct many research papers on the Iraq war when she is back teaching at Stanford University.

Not encouraging for Condi v. Hillary fans.