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BB eBooks Newsletter – April 08, 2014

Dear Friend,

Hope all is well wherever you are. We’re gearing up for Songkran here in Thailand, an annual celebration where everyone in the country gets wet and intoxicated. While we prep for that, please have a look at a roundup for the last two weeks on news in the eBook industry, plus some tips for your front and back matter from our General Manager, Paul.


Amazon Publishing’s Expansion into Foreign Territories

According to Jeff Belle, Amazon Publishing’s VP, the company plans to hire 70 more staff in 5 major cities and several positions ranging from editorial to business development. They also plan to publish 200 more books in German and 500 titles in the UK. Amazon Publishing has actively launched several imprints: Kindle Worlds, Jet City Comics, Waterfall Press, StoryFront, and Day One. Apart from publishing more books and adding them to their catalog, the company acquired the rights of two novels, Cath Quinn’s The Thief Taker and Mark Edwards’ and Louise Voss’ From the Cradle through literary agents. One of the reasons why Amazon picked the former book is its fast-selling record of 150,000 copies sold in the US and UK last year. Digital royalties are among the motivation why Quinn’s agent sold the rights to Amazon Publishing.

For clients interested who have been asked to partner with Amazon Publishing, please proceed with caution. One of our clients, who shall remain anonymous, mentioned that the contract was less than favorable upon inspection.

Speaking of the expansion, there is a possibility that Amazon Publishing is looking into buying Quercus, who has been looking for a buyer. Quercus was in the limelight when the publisher acquired the rights of Steig Larsson’s hit Millenium series.


Better Control for Better Luck in Sales

If you are let down by the sales you have been working so hard to getk, Joe Konrath’s comparison between traditional bookselling and an indie model can help better control your luck and improve your success rate. Comparing selling books to buying lottery tickets, if authors have no idea what the strengths are in their books, they will keep writing and hope that readers will support them enough to earn a living. However, being a self-published author, there is a lot of work to be done given the fewer factors that they depend on. Joe suggests to stop comparing yourself to others and start analyzing your strengths and weaknesses. Don’t be worried about the external factors that might jeopardize your sales and lessen your book’s discoverability. To look on the bright side, he recommends that indie authors simply develop an encouraging mindset that “a whole lot of people need to buy your books.” There are many areas in the publishing process that you can adjust and control; for example, cover, formatting, advertisements, etc.


Can Apple Become the second Largest eBook Retailer in the US?

With generous royalty payments and commitment to adhering to the open-source EPUB standard, is Apple ready to take crown off the second largest contestant, Barnes and Noble, anytime now? The question still does not have an easy answer since most eBook distributors do not disclose information regarding their market share. Breaking publishers into 4 smaller categories can shed light into what is happening in the eBook market. Among large publishers, although Nook’s operational losses are evident, Apple spokesperson’s silence still makes it hard for analysts to determine who’s winning or losing. Interestingly, Google is a dark horse in the race and has built their reputation and grown their market share. For medium publishers, it is a close call between Apple and B&N as they may sell well for certain books and genres in certain months. Apple’s marketing strategy, in the eyes of small publishers, seems to do well in terms of book sales promotion.

However, the antitrust settlement might be a tip of the iceberg that can change the eBook sales scenario when readers buy eBooks on other retailers. Given that Apple might have to pay close to $1 billion for damages, things are not looking good.

Last year Google did something extraordinary when their infographic showed that they had published more than 5 million eBooks in their official blog! Although they have not mentioned about the growth of Google Play this year, we are sure that 5M+ is still the kind of number that surprises many. Last but not least, browsing some foreign eBooks this morning helps us find eBooks written in Thai and Chinese with flowing text (yeah!) and scanned pages (boo!).


The Unexpected Dissolution of Diesel

For those of you who keep tabs on the eBook market place, the closure of the Diesel eBookstore might not come as a surprise. But for regular customers, this news can be fatal requiring that they back up their purchased eBooks as soon as they can. Their official website was not available last time we checked as there was no landing page or anything redirecting readers to solutions. Unlike Sony’s closure, Diesel does not provide detailed instruction how their customers can transfer their eBooks to other systems. For authors who are distributing their eBooks via Smashwords to Diesel, their premium catalog interface has remained unchanged bearing the now-defunct names of Sony and Diesel. Smashwords blog has only acknowledged the closure of Sony store so far.


Best Practices – eBook Metadata

Most people don’t know this, but metadata is contained in every eBook. It contains significant information that any eBook cannot live without. Typing in correct, relevant metadata at the eBook platforms that reflects your subject matter can greatly enhance your book’s discoverability. There are also ways to embed metadata directly into the eBook itself (please note: we do this for all our clients). The only problem is the way that each eReading app makes use of metadata is different, as well as the requirements of the different eBook vendors.

We list all the common metadata that eBooks of EPUB2, EPUB3, and MOBI/KF8 must include, as well as some metadata that is optional but is recommended to be included in any eBook project. With the newer EPUB standard (EPUB3), publishers are allowed to enter more information about the book relating to its series edition. Needless to say, metadata typos are dangerous errors that can go unrecognizable without close inspection.

As previously mentioned about different eReading apps displaying the metadata, here is a sample list of how various apps handle metadata:

• Kindle app puts the title metadata on top of every page

• iBooks puts the author metadata on the left page and title one on the right; they follow the same tradition as running heads in novels

• On Readium, Readers can access the publication date, identifier (ID), and publisher metadata

• Calibre shows both the description and keyword metadata

To make sure your metadata is correct we always provide this service for our clients during the conversion.


Best Practices – Back Matter: Endnotes

Although footnotes and endnotes are nothing new, they can be used in eBooks in new ways. For eBooks, they may not be necessary since hyperlinks can be incorporated directly into content (similar to a blog). One of the main differences between footnotes and endnotes is where they appear in the book. While the former appears at the bottom of the page, the latter shows up at the end of the chapter or in a section in the back matter entitled Notes. Since there isn’t really a “bottom of the page” in eBooks, endnotes are the way to go.

For books that do not have a lot of endnotes which require a complicated numbering scheme, you can use the following characters for citation in the endnotes: asterisk (*), dagger (†), and double dagger (‡). For eBooks with large number of citations, you can use a numbered sequence for the endnotes starting from 1 at the beginning of a chapter/section. The citation number formatting should be different from regular content so that readers know where they can click to read a particular citation: citations should be hyperlinked and superscripted. With this hyperlinked capability, readers can go back and forth between the page they are reading and endnotes in the back matter.

Yours sincerely,

The BB eBooks Team


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