Piracy

I am so frustrated right now. My newest book came out last week under my imprint of Emerald Arch Publishing. My book's in Kindle Unlimited and therefore exclusive to Amazon.

BookBub sent out its newsletter announcing it to my followers there. Good thing I follow myself. Look what I noticed in the email.

Say what? iBooks? It's exclusive to Amazon--you can get into lots of trouble with the Zon if you've got a book in KU that can be bought somewhere else. I clicked the link, and this is what I found.

Notice the publisher isn't my imprint.

I saw red!

I managed to find a number for iBooks (that was no easy matter). It took a while because the first person I spoke with wasn't sure what to do. Eventually, I got to someone who was able to register my challenge and sent me an email with a link to submit it officially.

I also had to track down a  number for Amazon to let them know the situation and that I was working on getting that pirated copy down.

And I submitted that url to Blasty to notify Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and the site hosting the infringing content.

I also took to social media to let others know. My book is one of three that were written in this world and released that day. One of them is also on iBooks under that publisher, so at least now she knows and can take action too.

I then took the afternoon off and came home to submit the copyright for that and three other books that I'd been meaning to but hadn't gotten around to. FYI--your work might be "copyrighted" as soon as you write it, but if you ever need to challenge it in court you'll need it official with the Library of Congress. I found this out when Rachel Ann Nunes began her (unfinished) journey against plagiarism.

Resources:

Submit a Copyright

How to Submit a Copyright Under a Penname

Indie Author Self-Defense: Piracy, Plagiarism, and Impersonation (Part 1 of 3)

Rachel Ann Nunes Lawsuit

I'll keep you updated.

What Is Whispersync?

Whispersync is Amazon's technology that lets readers switch “back and forth between a Kindle book and Audible professional narration - without ever losing your place.” The way it works is that you first buy the Kindle book, and then for Whispersync enabled books you can add the Audible audiobook to the purchase.

I've actually noticed this even when listening to an audiobook at home and then I decide to download it at work. It opens up right to where I was at.

Why do I bring this up?

Because if someone owns that Kindle book, the Whispersynced audiobook is substantially reduced. For example, the audiobook for A Change of Plans has a list price of $19.95 (which Amazon will discount, of course, if you buy from them).

BUT if you own the ebook, you can purchase the Whispersynced audiobook for $1.99.

I don't know about you, but I think that's kind of a big savings.

I hear from a lot of people that they don't simply listen to the audiobook but prefer to follow along with the ebook.

Because this week has been a celebration of the release of Torn Canvas's audiobook, the ebook is on sale for $.99. That makes it easy to get the Whispersynced audiobook which is $1.99.

So, for $2.98 you can have both the ebook and the audiobook.

So, check out some of your favorite ebooks if you're even the least bit curious about giving the audiobook experience a try. 

Snow, Top 100 Lists, and Giving Books for Christmas

I had quite the snowy weekend with frigid temps. This is a side-garden picture from my bedroom window. Brrrr

I'm so ready to be headed to Hawaii on Sunday for a family visit.

Have you seen author Heather Moore's Guest post about hitting the top 100 on Amazon?

Every time someone searches a category, the top sellers show up, and if you’re on the list, your exposure increases. But how do you get to the top of the lists? Or, in other words, how do you rise in rankings? You may have heard of Reddit, which is a social media news source entirely dependent on user submissions and views. The articles with the most views work their way to the Reddit homepage. This is a bit how Amazon category rankings work, but with the books with the most sales working their way to the top of the rankings. (If your book isn’t getting sales, Amazon will mercifully notify viewers that your book has at least been viewed by other customers searching similar terms. But rising in rank is about sales.)

You can read more about it here.

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Don't forget the "Give Books for Christmas" bloghop. I'm giving away TWO ebooks!

For details about the giveaway and other participating blogs and the books they're giving away, click here.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Marketing

Author Marsha Ward and I are members of ANWA (actually she started  it many years ago), and earlier this week one of the members who's a new author posed a question about marketing. Marsha's response was great, and I'm so glad she shared it on her blog, so I can let you folks know about it.

What's the best approach to marketing my book?

So many times, that's a question I hear from first time authors. Here's my answer, and you may not like it, but it's really the truth:

After you have announced your book to your friends via your email contacts, social media sites, and twitter, and have a short "signature" below your name in your email account, the best thing to do in the marketing arena is to write the next book and get it out there.

Yeah, I know that sounds weird, but I cannot emphasize this enough. Too many people with one book available are spending prodigious amounts of time trying in vain to influence sales, instead of writing the next book.

The thing is, the availability of multiple books/short stories/novellas is what seems to drive sales better than anything. And when someone spends all their time drumming up sales for their ONE book (and thus making a pest of themselves), what's the good of it if--when someone reads it and wants more--there is no more work available?

There IS no good that can come of that situation. After the reader exhausts their search engine capacities and their patience and doesn't find anything else by you, your name is then forgotten--once the distastefulness of the frustrating episode fades away.

DO make sure you . . .

Sorry. Go visit Marsha's blog to see the rest.

Harry Potter Ebooks--a New Trend in Marketing?

I have a Nook Color and got it before the Kindle Fire came out. I love it. I have a huge library of books on my Nook. I either downloaded them from Barnes and Noble, or I downloaded them from Smashwords as epubs.

I believe in competition. I don't want Big A (either them) to be the only places we have to go to purchase.

But I digress.

Yesterday I bought an iPad. I've wanted one for a long time because I attend a lot of conferences (both for my day job and as a writer), and the iPad--with its little keyboard set that makes it a mini laptop--will be much easier to carry around and take notes on.

But I also want it to be my ereader of choice. I'm giving my Nook to my hubby to use for church books, so I need to move all the books I've downloaded from B&N and a handful of Kindle books I've downloaded to my laptop but haven't read yet.

I wish they didn't make it so hard!

If you haven't had a chance to read the article "What Book Publishers Should Learn from Harry Potter" by Matthew Ingram, you should check it out. He discusses the model that Jo Rowling and Pottermore have developed for the new release of the Harry Potter ebooks.

Imagine! You can download EIGHT digital copies of each book for the multiple digital places you want to read them or for lending. One of the reasons I've continued to buy paper books is because it's hard to lend digital books, especially if your friends have competing readers.

I love this quote from the article:

"Charlie Redmayne, who left HarperCollins to become the chief executive officer of Pottermore, said that all of these developments and enhancements for users stem from a single principle:

My view is that the one thing we should learn from the music industry, is that one of the best ways of fighting back against piracy is making content available to consumers at a platform they want to purchase it on, and at a price they are willing to pay, and if you do that most people will instinctively want to buy it.

Redmayne is right, and if book publishers could only learn one thing from the Pottermore launch, it should be this: that one of the biggest drivers of piracy is the inability to find or consume the content that a user wants in the format or on the platform or at a time they wish to consume it . . . ."

click the picture

Jo gets it.

Why don't the others?

What's With That?

The Give Books for Christmas Giveaway Hop is still going on. 
Click here to remember the details.

Have you seen this article in the Huffington Post about Amazon's new Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)? It's been getting a lot of talk among folks in my writing organizations.

The implications are huge.Whether you've ever considered self-publishing or not, this is something to watch.

Is this a good thing for publishing? What do you think?

Mother of all Book Bombs

Author Larry Correia is doing a book bomb today, November 10th. You can read the details on Larry's blog here.

What's a book bomb? Larry explains it:

What is a book bomb? Well, Amazon has its own bestseller list. It is calculated hourly and you are given a sales rank based up on how you stack up against the other six million books on there. It is some sort of strange rolling average algorhythm, but what it comes down to is, the more books that are purchased during that particular time frame, the higher you rank. The higher you rank, the more of their top 50 or top 10 lists you show up on. The more of those you show up on, the higher you go, the more attention you get, the more books you sell.

Who's it for?

Robinson Wells
You can check out his blog here.

What's the book?

This is from my post on October 19th.

But I just finished listening to Robison Well's book Variant. Oh, my freakin' heck! I LOVED it! Kept me right on the edge of my chair all the way through. Crisp writing, lots of action, but it really got me into the characters, which is a big deal to me.


From amazon:

Benson Fisher thought that a scholarship to Maxfield Academy would be the ticket out of his dead-end life.

He was wrong. 

Now he’s trapped in a school that’s surrounded by a razor-wire fence. A school where video cameras monitor his every move. Where there are no adults. Where the kids have split into groups in order to survive. 

Where breaking the rules equals death. 

But when Benson stumbles upon the school’s real secret, he realizes that playing by the rules could spell a fate worse than death, and that escape—his only real hope for survival—may be impossible.

You so have to check out this book.


I'm just sayin'!

This is a great cause and an excellent book to be pushing. One of my sons struggled with anxiety attacks a few years ago. It's a miserable thing to experience.

Amazon link to Variant:  http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=monshuntnati-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0062026089&ref=tf_til&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr

I've ordered to more copies that I'll be giving away in the next couple of weeks (continental U.S. only--sorry). I've already purchased the audio and given a hardcover of it as a prize for the Third Campaign.

I've got a favor to ask. If you were thinking of buying this book, I strongly encourage you to do so today. Whether it's for yourself or as a gift for the upcoming gift-giving season. Not only is the purchase for a good cause, it's a great read. 

If you're not in the position to make a purchase, I would ask that you tweet, Facebook, email, and whatever else to get the word out about this cause.


Thank you!!