Thinking of having a promotion or a sale on your website to help you sell some books? Now think again, for any attempt to promote your own business might cost you one of your deepest revenue streams.Amazon's latest 'our way or the highway' policy involves independent third-party sellers on their European websites. The same stranglehold Amazon has on publishers is now being placed on independent booksellers. Amazon's New Rule:Any book listed on Amazon must be sold at the same price or cheaper than it appears on any other website including the booksellers' own websites.Any bookseller found in violation is subject...
Is the E-Reader Price War Next?
The way the current online price war between Wal-Mart, Amazon, Sears and Target is shaping up there is a chance one of them might be paying me to read one of their featured books by Christmas.It started as a shot off the bow by Wal-Mart to wake up the populace to their online life. Pre-order the top upcoming releases for $10 and free shipping but before you could click the buy button Amazon joined the party and matched the deal. Soon after Target joined the fray. Now less than a week later the price sits at $8.98 at Walmart, $8.99...
Amazon Tightening Its Grip on the Book World
Last month, in his post "The End of Indie," Richard Nash proclaimed: "Indie doesn’t mean anything anymore. It’s dead. Which is OK, because it won...So now the phase of indie is over, now that the monopoly on the production and distribution of knowledge, culture and opinion has been broken, what next, a new phase..."A week later Amazon released their updated terms of service which essentially, forces the hand of the many websites and companies that use their API to provide data to their users. The gist of the new terms is that if you use Amazon's data, then you must...
Free Kindle For Tweeters
To promote the release of her new book, Perseverance: True Voices of Cancer Survivors, author Carolyn Rubenstein and publisher Forge Books, a division of Macmillan, are giving away a Kindle wireless ebook reading device on Twitter each day from August 18 through August 21 to four lucky tweeters.This will be an interesting exercise in marketing books, using an ebook reader to promote the sale of an actual book and whether the strategy will cannibalize sales of physical copies of the book. Ms. Rubenbstein’s website page for the promotion has a link to Amazon which is offering both the hardcover and...
Kindle in a Book
"Love your Kindle but miss the feel of holding a real book?"BustedTypewriter has the perfect solution. An altered book that holds your Kindle. Mind you, it's not just any book but a copy of “Buying In:The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are” by Rob Walker. A perfect fit. For the more sensitive among us; also available is a copy of “Compassion and Self-Hate” by Theodore Isaac Rubin M.D.These Kindleized books, along with other altered books to carry your various technologies, are available here. Kindle not included.Thanks to Design Observer for the lead.