Store

Wow, this is horrible news for Borders shareholders. What a sad, desperate company it has become. Sell.

Borders Hopes for 8th Day Film Deal - 7/15/2008 12:48:00 PM - Publishers Weekly

[Borders pr] said CEO George Jones and executive v-p of merchandising and marketing Rob Gruen “are managing the film rights.” (Jones and Gruen both have backgrounds in retailing; Jones previously ran Warner Brothers studio stores, and Gruen worked at Target and at Warner Brothers.) The statement added that even with the potential film sale, Borders will continue to focus on its core book business and in executing its cash flow and expense reduction initiatives.

District of Columbia et al. v. Heller: Supreme Court Establishes an Individual Right to Bear Arms

The full text is available now in paperback at the link above.

I thought I would share with you the results of an analysis I did of my (historically low) efficiency at monetizing my web site via Amazon Associates.

• Google Analytics page views 1/1/2008 - date: 26032
• Associates clicks 1303
• Associates unit sales 14
• conversion rate 0.0107
• Associates referral revenue $10.04
• revenue/month $2.26
• NB after royalties revenue for referred titles 40
• Total imputed revenue (referrals + publisher comp)= 50.04
• Imputed revenue/month $11.29
• imputed $/page view $0.0019
• imputed $/1000 page views $1.9222
• imputed $/click $0.0384
• imputed $/conversion $3.5743
• bandwidth used (GB) 56.259
• GB/month 12.69
• max GB/month 200
• days covered 133
• months 4.433
• Imputed revenue/GB $0.89
• overage charge per GB $1.99
• Cost of High Volume Plans per GB $0.19
• possible ^ in usage w/o incurring additional bandwidth charge 15.76044129
• possible ^ imputed revenue by ^ usage x15 w/o additional BW charge =15 x imputed rev /month = $177.89 /month
• possible ^ imputed revenue by ^ conversion rate x 5 = $889.46

what all this tells me:

* I could increase the usage of my website by a factor of 15.7 before I hit the bandwidth threshold for my account at Pair
* assuming that revenue increased in linear proportion, and that I could improve the conversion rate, I could increase my Associates & Associates-driven revenue into the several hundreds of dollars per month
* increasing usage by x 15 would be hard work, there are other things I could do that would increase revenue more (i.e. publish more or better books)

My website has always been a bit of a mess because I use it as a combined blog and bookstore. It would be better to have a single purpose store. Right now the website is under construction as I experiment with new Amazon Associates widgets.

Things I have not seen explained yet in the press, or would like to see someone ask Amazon:

• What happened to Amazon’s selection promise — how can you be “world’s greatest bookstore” if you remove tens or hundreds of thousands of titles from your catalog at a stroke because they are supposedly “too hard” to acquire for your customers (via 24-hour POD ??)
• How exactly Amazon proposes for Booksurge to handle the load of 400,000 or more new POD titles that took LSI 10? years to put in print. it is fair to say that booksurge does not have a reputation for operational excellence. not that they couldn’t fix that, but so far they have not said or done anything to indicate that they are serious about accommodating all the business they’re asking for.
• Why won’t Amazon convert books from other POD formats into Booksurge’s — after all, Amazon is a technology company — let them do the work of reformatting tens of thousands of books — much more efficient to do it at the chokepoint programmatically than for thousands of publishers to do it individually. worst case is they have to buy a few extra printing machines and learn how to work ‘em. Not hard for a company with the resources of Amazon.
• Why can’t Amazon just do a deal with LSI to put LSI printers in Amazon fulfillment centers?
• Are your BookSurge reps ever going to be able to threaten anyone with Buy Button removal again, given that there will be an immediate viral response in the blogosphere if they do? given that the Buy Button threat is effectively inoperable — thanks to the power of the InterWeb — why don’t you just withdraw it?

It looks to me as if Angela Hoy is emerging as the heroine of this story. Apart from having the courage to speak out in the first place, which was huge, she is doing the best job of covering all the developments on a rolling basis.

Amazon.com–Print on Demand

Open letter to interested parties:

We wanted to make sure those who are interested have an opportunity to understand what we’re changing with print on demand and why we’re doing so.

One question that we’ve seen is a simple one. Is Amazon requiring that print-on-demand books be printed inside Amazon’s own fulfillment centers, and if so why?

Yes.

Full bumpf available here

Amazon: you are a technology company. Do not make publishers reformat their entire backlist to conform to Booksurge specs. It is patently unreasonable to ask publishers to reformat thousands of books into Booksurge’s proprietary spec format. If you want to “own” POD, then man up and do the work. Or better yet, do a deal with LSI to put LSI machines in your fulfillment centers.

Amazon: what happened to your promise of  being “the world’s greatest bookstore?”. Are you seriously telling your own customers that if a POD book takes 24 hours to ship to you, it is too hard for you to acquire it for your customers?

wfzimmerman's review: "Disappointing -- a potted version of modern financial history. No unique sources or perspectives."
PublicAffairs (2008), Hardcover, 256 pages

After much experimentation with formats, page lengths, and styles over the past few years, we think we have found a “sweet spot” that delivers good value for money.

This new format for “nimble” books is color interior, 32 to 120 pages long, 8 x 10. For examples, visit the Nimble Books store. (I should add that we are entirely willing to entertain proposals for “traditional” format books.)

The price to the customer varies with page length, but we use a pricing algorithm that results in author compensation of about $3 per book. (Here is our standard contract).  Of course, sales vary from book to book, so  royalties do too.

The manuscript should be 7,000 to 40,000 words long minus approximately 400 words for each image. Excluding the front and back matter, that works out to 23 to 111 pages for the body of the manuscript (including images, which are typically presented in full-page format). The sad truth is that many (if not) most full-length books today are padded. Sometimes it can be more artistically effective to work within constraints.

Images must be 72dpi resolution or greater; color, if at all possible; and provided with either explicit permission to use from the owner or with a strong “no copyright” rationale.

To be clear, the availability of color images is not a requirement; it’s a nice-to-have. This format does work with straight text or with B&W illustrations, but color helps differentiate the book and add value for the customer.

The “content package” that seems to motivate purchase best is a substantial number of beautiful images plus pointed, insightful commentary on a topic that is attractive to enthusiasts.

These are some of our series and titles (current and planned):

• COOL AIRCRAFT — the X-47
• COOL MAPS — Afghanistan, Baghdad, Cuba, France, France’s Overseas Territories, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq …
• COOL SCIENCE — Our Colorful Moon, Our Splendid Sun
• COOL SHIPS — CVN-68 Nimitz, CVN-69 Dwight D. Eisenhower, CVN-70 Carl Vinson, CVN-76 Ronald Reagan, CVN-77 George H.W. Bush, CVN-78 Gerald R. Ford, DDG-81 Winston S. Churchill, SSN-23 Jimmy Carter
• CURRENT AFFAIRS – Sovereign Wealth Funds, Should Barack Obama Be President?
• MILITARY HISTORY — Borodino: Why It Matters Today; BB-67 MONTANA, U.S. Navy Battleship: Why She Matters Today
• POPULAR CULTURE– The Solomon Key and Beyond, Reread THE DEATHLY HALLOWS Today, The New Harry Potter Quiz Book
• TECH FUN — Cool Web Graphics

Ideas for other topics are quite welcome.

The important thing to understand about the financial side is that this is micropublishing. I will be quite happy with a book that sells 10 copies a month. This is not a way to get rich; I would suggest that you think about it more like adding a revenue stream to your blog. By that measure this approach stacks up pretty well. Each book purchased (anywhere in the world) is like a $3 ad click. There are no fees to the author, ever, and we bear all costs of publication.

Incidentally, I have no objection if you wish to compose your book as a series of blog entries, then turn a manuscript over to me for “nimble” publication. Our standard contract gives Nimble exclusive rights to publication in book form, but all other rights are reserved to the author.

This format should work for you if:

• You have pointed, interesting text in hand that you want to “repurpose” or try out in print, or
• You have beautiful color photos or art in hand, or
• You pick a topic that is easily illustrated with high-quality public domain images (e.g. space, navy ships, history before 1922)

and …

• You have a blog or some sort of platform that gives you the ability to drive traffic or…
• You pick a topic that is keyword-friendly or …
• You pick a topic that is beloved by enthusiasts.

Our Nimble Books Marketing Playbook provides advice on how to maximize your online sales.

Submit a Proposal for a Nimble Book

1. Your Name(required)
2. Email(valid email required)
3. Website
4. Proposal Title
5. Book Series Cool Aircraft Cool Maps Cool Science Cool Ships Current Affairs Military History Popular Culture Tech Fun Other
6. Message
7. Sample chapters or book proposal

 

cforms contact form by delicious:days

Dear readers, I am pleased to welcome you to the Amazon detail page for BB-67 MONTANA, U.S. Navy Battleship: Why She Matters Today This is one of my favorites in the ever-growing Nimble Books list. The cover looks terrific--very realistic, just as if the Navy had really built the U.S.S. Montana! The interior of the book includes:

• pictures and information about the various design concepts that were explored
• the specifications of the final Montana design
• color pictures of a beautiful 1:700 scale model of Montana by Imre Somogyi
• a beautiful color painting of Montana by author and artist Wayne Scarpaci
• a picture of her never-built 1920's predecessor, BB-51 Montana
• an essay on "Why She Matters Today"; and
• a discussion of Senator Jon Tester's efforts to get the U.S. Navy to name a capital ship after his home state of Montana.

In short, this presents a unique package of art and text devoted exclusively to one of the most interesting hypothetical ships ever designed. I'm very happy to see that this book is selling well. I hope you enjoy it. Cordially yours, Fred Zimmerman Publisher, Nimble Books LLC P.S. if you are interested in reading other stuff about Montana, I recommend two major studies of U.S. battleships: U.S. Battleships: An Illustrated Design History by Norman Friedman and Battleships: United States Battleships, 1935-1992 (Battleships) by Garzke. Both of these books rely on archival sources to give a highly technical history of the ten or twenty different designs that were considered for Montana. My book's different in that I tackle the issue of "why do we care about this today" head-on. [gallery=3]

Dear readers,

I am pleased to welcome you to the Amazon detail page for

BB-67 MONTANA, U.S. Navy Battleship: Why She Matters Today BB-67 MONTANA, U.S. Navy Battleship: Why She Matters Today 

 This is one of my favorites in the ever-growing Nimble Books list. The cover looks terrific--very realistic, just as if the Navy had really built the U.S.S. Montana!  The interior of the book includes:

• pictures and information about the various design concepts that were explored
• the specifications of the final Montana design
• color pictures of a beautiful 1:700 scale model of Montana by Imre Somogyi
• a beautiful color painting of Montana by author and artist Wayne Scarpaci
• a picture of her never-built 1920's predecessor, BB-51 Montana
• an essay on "Why She Matters Today"; and
• a discussion of Senator Jon Tester's efforts to get the U.S. Navy to name a capital ship after his home state of Montana.

In short, this presents a unique package of art and text devoted exclusively to one of the most interesting hypothetical ships ever designed.

I'm very happy to see that this book is selling well.  I hope you enjoy it.

Cordially yours,

Fred Zimmerman
Publisher, Nimble Books LLC

P.S. if you are interested in reading other stuff about Montana, I recommend two major studies of U.S. battleships:

 U.S. Battleships: An Illustrated Design History by Norman Friedman and
  Battleships: United States Battleships, 1935-1992 (Battleships) by Garzke.

Both of these books rely on archival sources to give a highly technical history of the ten or twenty different designs that were considered for Montana.  My book's different in that I tackle the issue of "why do we care about this today" head-on.