Hagens Berman, a consumer rights class-action law firm, today announced it has filed a nationwide class-action lawsuit claiming that Apple Inc. is guilty of illegal price fixing related to the Agency Model for pricing e-books. HarperCollins, Hachette, Macmillan, Penguin and S&S are also named in the suit.Read the rest here: New US Lawsuit Accuses Apple of E-Book Price Fixing
... investigating claims that several large e-book publishers are under-reporting the number of e-books sold, paying authors less than their share of royalties.
E-book authors typically receive royalty statements, which report the number of e-books sold in a specified time period. The authors are paid based on these sales numbers.
According to reports, the so-called “big six” e-book publishers may be using an outdated accounting systems to track the sales of e-books. As a result, some authors have reported various accounting errors on their statements, including the under-reporting of sales of the e-books.
With those caveats, it appears Hagens Berman is developing a practice that’s focused on big publishing. In the majority of cases, the losses of any single author from something like ebook royalty under-reporting would not justify the cost of mounting a lawsuit to collect royalties. What PG suspects is happening is Hagens Berman is collecting information and possible plaintiffs for a class-action suit on behalf of all authors who have been harmed by ebook royalty shortfalls.
If PG is correct, this is good for authors and bad for big publishers.
What are the implications for authors besides being paid proper ebook royalties? If the agency pricing suit and a class action suit on eroyalties move forward, big publishers will be spending serious money on legal fees and, quite possibly, settlements. We’ve already heard numerous reports that advances are down and we know publishing contracts are becoming more and more onerous. Serious lawsuits accelerate, but don’t change that trend.
If, as PG believes, big publishing is in a financial death/downsizing spiral because of indie publishing, ebooks, Amazon pricing pressure, death of physical bookstores, etc., that spiral will grow tighter if it has large losses in class action suits. You’ll see some consolidation, so unwary authors may end up publishing with a different house than the one who gave them their contract. Bankruptcy is also a possibility, so unwary authors may end up having their books unpublished or poorly published and their copyrights in a legal limbo.
there are around 2500 downloads per month of new and old episodes. 60% of the listeners are in the US, with 15% in China and 14% in UK and the rest spread between Australia, Germany, Canada and some other countries.Joanna's tips:
Just start, even if you don’t know what you are doing. My first interview was with 4 Ingredients author Rachael Bermingham who is HUGE in Australia, self, published and has sold millions of books now. I did it on the landline phone, I held a recorder next to it. I edited in Audacity and loaded the file to my very new and pretty ugly blog (which has since been redesigned). I didn’t know about mics, or Skype or Pamela/ecamm or hosting or anything. Things have changed and here’s how I do it now.
Fear and nerves will always be there. Just do it anyway. I am still nervous before phoning anyone. I have to force myself every time. My heart races, my mouth is dry and I go to the bathroom three times before starting. I also do public speaking and its the same thing with that. But we need to get our ‘breadcrumbs’ of content out there, so it has to be done.
I credit the podcast with the growing success of The Creative Penn because of my ability to network and offer something that many blogs don’t offer i.e. multi-media interviews. I get requests all the time and other people promote the blog because of it. All the people I interview link back to their show so the incoming links have helped my SEO ranking. I have connected with you as listeners – you have heard my voice and laugh and mannerisms and annoying tics for years now. I know some of you have bought my books for which I am very grateful. I am also personally fulfilled by being useful and I feel this is useful to people, so I love to do it. I love to get emails from people who have found the information helpful.
You can learn from everybody. Podcasting is a great way to learn about writing, publishing and book marketing. It’s also an amazing way to network. The people I have had on the podcast I have connected with and got to know more. There is a widening circle of mutual support. I also firmly believe in no snobbery – you can learn from everyone. It doesn’t matter what they have written or done, you can’t underestimate anyone’s experience. You also never know where they will end up.
This cover [the first one, above] is from her publisher and the fuzziness in this clip-art paste-up by somebody who just learned Photoshop is obvious in the original – click here to go to Amazon, then move your mouse to the cover to bring up Look Inside and choose the front cover view. You’ll note how the sophisticated professionals at the publisher got the cover proportions all wrong on Amazon as well.
Here is Grace’s reaction to her first cover: “Fuzzy, pixelated picture with day-glo blue outline on a font design that looked like I was advertising for Dippin Dots Ice Cream.”
1. Make your opinion known
2. Link like crazy
3. Write less
4. 250 Words is enough
5. Make Headlines snappy
6. Write with passion
7. Include Bullet point lists
8. Edit your post
9. Make your posts easy to scan
10. Be consistent with your style
11. Litter the post with keywords
1. Make your opinion known
People like blogs, they like blogs because they are written by people and not corporations. People want to know what people think, crazy as it sounds they want to know what you think. Tell them exactly what you think using the least amount of words possible.
2. Link like crazy.
Support your post with links to other web pages that are contextual to your post.
3. Write Less
Give the maximum amount of information with the least amount of words. Time is finite and people are infinitely busy. Blast your knowledge into the reader at the speed of sound.
4. 250 is enough
A long post is easier to forget and harder to get into. A short post is the opposite.
5. Make Headlines snappy
Contain your whole argument in your headline. Check out National newspapers to see how they do it.
6. Include bullet point lists
We all love lists, it structures the info in an easily digestible format.
7. Make your posts easy to scan
Every few paragraphs insert a sub heading. Make sentences and headlines short and to the point.
8. Be consistent with your style
People like to know what to expect, once you have settled on a style for your audience stick to it.
9. Litter the post with Keywords.
Think about what keywords people would use to search for your post and include them in the body text and headers. make sure the keyword placement is natural and does not seem out of place.
10. Edit your post
Good writing is in the editing. Before you hit the submit button, re-read your post and cut out the stuff that you don’t need.
Honestly, I think both apps are great. PlainText has better organization and Dropbox integration, but Writer has a more focused environment and better typography.
A struggling writer landed a book deal with a major publisher after putting her novel online for 96p a copy and promoting it by using social networking.
Louise Voss, 42, shot to the top of the Kindle charts after publishing the book in digital form herself after being rejected by literary agents.
It attracted the attention of publishers HarperFiction, which offered her a six-figure, four-book deal.
As a result, her ebook Catch Your Death will also be printed and stocked in bookshops in the traditional way.
It’s still about visibility, but today’s approach has changed. The New Author Platform requires a focus on developing an unobstructed back and forth between authors and their readers, with the authors — not the publishers — controlling the flow. Now it’s the author, not a publicist, who inspires readers to buy the book. The New Author Platform allows not only well-established authors, but unknown, first-time beginners to do an end run around the conservative gate-keepers and reach readers directly.
Personality
Successful authors today are designing websites filled with their work-in-progress, writing frequently updated blogs, tweeting, and shooting home-style, brief videos to post on their sites and on YouTube. They’re offering original content in samples and chunks, with invitations for feedback, and taking every opportunity to comment and join forums and other online venues on topics that relate to their own work.
In this way, they’re creating a public face that represents who they are and what they want to say.
Authenticity
Readers like to know and trust an author before buying their book. An artificial, smiley-face false front won’t do the trick. Instead, authors need to extend their literary skills to create a genuine bona-fide online persona that has human quirks, dimension, and nuance. You can be funny, cranky, indignant, nostalgic, didactic.
As long as you’re honest and persuasive, you have a better chance of getting potential readers interested to the point where they make the final commitment and put their money down.
Expertise
Authors don’t need to be full professors at Harvard to contribute useful comments and information online. Post brief sections from your book, and take social networking seriously by commenting and tweeting to build your reputation and visibility. This is true whether your subject is science and technology, history and biography, food and cooking, parenting and relationships, really any subject in any genre, and whether you’re a fiction or non-fiction writer.
Consider yourself a public service resource in the field you’re writing about. Your reputation and expertise will flourish in proportion to the value of the content you offer.
Subtlety
A cardinal rule of the new author platform is never to actually ask people to buy your book. Rather promulgate your work by making an enduring connection. Establish an authentic online personality, offer valuable information, analysis, opinion, and inspiring entertainment.
These are the elements of the New Author Platform that will ultimately sell your book.
Building a tribe is not a matter of a miracle, instead, it’s about converting tiny groups of people at a time, leading them, connecting them, building an audience. When a self-published author does this, she has a new job. Not the author part, the publisher part. She’s not putting a book into the universe and hoping it will be found. She’s not even putting a book in a journalist’s hands and hoping it will be hyped. No, she is engaging in a years-long journey to build a platform. It might take a decade to become an overnight success, but if you keep it up, if you keep building, the odds keep getting better and better.
That’s why it’s silly to compare the two ways of making a book happen. If you can get a great deal from a publisher and you’re into the spin, go spin! If you want to control the building of the platform, get your hands dirty and avoid the whims of fate, then the other path makes a lot more sense, no?
