Sony Reader Revolution Cam #10: SMOOCH!

My timing is perfect. 7:40PM EDST tonight:

The Smooch heard round the Internet!

More hot action at the Sony Reader Revolution cam.

Google Book Search: Medialoper FTW

The Google Book Search Deal: Winners and Losers

Two items. I didn’t realize this:

Google: It’s hard to overstate how important this agreement is for Google. Google has essentially acquired the digital rights to the long tail. At least the portion of the long tail that’s locked up in out of print books. That’s a VERY long tail.

Emphasis added by me.

And I didn’t know this bit at all:

Amazon: Amazon’s 190,000 Kindle titles look puny compared to the millions of books Google now has access to. Granted many of those Kindle titles make up the big head of consumer demand, as opposed to the long tail. Still, Google now has the ability to monetize millions of books Amazon can’t, if for no other reason because they’re out of print. What’s more, under the new agreement Google has the right to sell printed copies of those books via print on demand. And I have a sneaking suspicion that Google still has a few more surprises in store for us. Android may turn out to be more than just a mobile phone platform.

Emphasis added by me.

Holy cow. Millions of out-of-print books are now POD candidates!?

Yes, that’s good for Google, but now all those contracts in the hands of the dying dinosaurs of print will never, ever be prised from their greedy, grasping claws!

Amazon lost, yes. But writers have just been screwed again!

Google Book Search: Now Legal

I don’t have to link to the settlement stories. Besides, the only one that really matters comes from the Non-Suit Suits over at Pan Macmillan who are — just like Suits — on the ball when it comes to the dough:

[. . .] the settlement money will partially be used to fund an independent, not-for-profit Book Rights registry which will work towards ensuring authors and publishers receive the money they are owed under the agreement, and the revenue split between the rights holder and Google is set at 63-37 respectively, which is surely the right way round.

Emphasis added by me.

Unlike Amazon’s criminal split: 65 to Amazon and 35 to be fought over tooth-and-nail between dying dinosaur print publisher, writer, and writer’s agent (or simply given as chump change in one paltry coal lump to a writer who direct publishes).

I noted Google Book Search once before.

Then I noticed what it was doing to writers — and I stopped.

Now I can go back to linking to it, since it will mean money in the pockets of writers.

This is going to take some getting used to for me.

And all of this puts Google one more step closer to crushing Amazon’s eBook monopoly ambitions.

Book Trailers: Um, No.

Weekend Chat: 3 Reasons Why Book Trailers Don’t Work

Every week I receive and search for great book trailers to promote on Christian Fiction Blog. In the beginning I was excited about what I found. It was a new concept, so I was game. However, after a few months of posting book trailers and reading others I’ve come to a conclusion. Book Trailers Don’t Work and here’s why:

She’s right.

I have in my Bookmarks a site that collects book trailers. I rarely go there.

What’s better than a book trailer?

Video of an author reading an excerpt of his work, like Christopher Fowler does here.

Audio of an author reading his work, as Cliff Burns does here.

Look what audio did for Mark Jeffrey:

His first podiobook, Max Quick 1: The Pocket and the Pendant, has received over 2 million downloads to date.

Go on, point me to a book trailer with as many views!

I was initially excited about the idea of book trailers too. But the more I saw, the less I liked them. So many are just so bad, I can’t see how they can generate any interest in the book being flogged.

Plus, the very idea of watching a video for something to be read seems, to me, just bizarre. A local talk radio station once spent a great deal of money advertising on TV. That seemed bizarre to me too.

I believe there is a hierarchy:

Reading
Audio
Video

And each one competes against the other. I’d rather read a book than listen to it. I’d rather listen to radio than see it. I’d rather watch video for stuff that’s best suited to it. (On this last point, how many of you have read a book based on a TV series and came away with the uneasy feeling that something was simply … missing?)

Also, since most books being sold have free excerpts available to read, why settle for someone else’s poor video advertising interpretation instead? Why, in fact, run the risk of repelling people from a book? Attention is precious on the Internet.

The money being spent on book trailers could be better used hiring a temp to do nothing more than go through the Internet day after day and find likely blogs to market books to via email invites. I really doubt that people going to YouTube, Vimeo, Veoh, et al, are there to find something to read.

Hmmm … and you know, even hiring a temp isn’t cost-effective. Why should each publisher reinvent the wheel? This is a business for someone sharp out there. (And if such a business already exists, the people running it aren’t very sharp. Why the hell hasn’t my email box been swamped with book stuff? I receive tweets from three publishers. But have they even tried to follow-up with emails? Noooo!)

Generating interest in eBooks as eBooks is going to be even more difficult because the most likely way people will encounter them is via an eBookstore, a promo email from such a store, or a website or blog. There are no shelves to browse. On the Internet, the shelves are invisible.

Just before I was about to post this, I got this via Twitter: Study: When it comes to influence, bloggers beat friend lists

Half of all those surveyed who identify as “blog readers” (people who read more than one blog per month, a fifth of total survey respondents) say that blogs are important to them when it comes to making purchasing decisions. But they don’t necessarily find them to be all that reliable: only 15 percent of blog readers, and five percent of all those surveyed said that in the past year they had trusted a blog to help them make a purchase decision.

That’s still higher than the number of people who said they used social-network recommendations, though: ten percent of “blog readers,” and four percent of all those surveyed.

I have a MySpace account. For a time, I used it daily. Now, hardly ever.

I disagree with the philosophy of such aggregator sites. MySpace has gotten singularly annoying, outright censoring links that are passed on to me via MySpace Mail or Bulletins. Plus, MySpace pages tend to be bloated as hell and I dread clicking links because I never know if that click is going to freeze up my browser and force me to crash-restart it.

I can see the appeal of such sites for those who really want to network with people they actually know. But beyond that, it becomes a very annoying marketing machine with a very high noise-to-signal ratio.

I know that writers and publishers are on MySpace. I’m beginning to think that’s a mistake. I don’t see it being a good strategy for eBook awareness except to that limited MySpace audience. And if you’re going to put that amount of effort into MySpace, why not the larger Internet?

Sony Reader: More Distribution

Hmmm … Sony PR needs to get on the ball here and put me on their email list. I’m finding major Sony Reader news in rather obscure places!

Zondervan distributes Sony Reader (scroll down)

Zondervan is a major in its field. It’s clear now that the eBook reading device most Americans are bound to encounter in person is the Sony Reader.

Abominable Kindle And The Oprah Effect

Kindle fanboi site* says: Oprah Effect on Kindle confirmed by Google Trends – Oprah creates highest Kindle interest since launch.

Which, gee, the uninformed might be very impressed by seeing.

However, let me dispel that malarkey.

This first chart is Google Trends for Kindle vs. Sony Reader for all time periods across the entire world:

Click = big

Notice how the Sony Reader is no laggard and has massive interest outside the United States!

OK, well those scores mean nothing, Kindle fanboiz shout, because the Sony Reader has been out longer.

Fine. Let’s compare around the world for the just the past thirty days:

Click = big

Again, the daily searches for Sony Reader outpace the Kindle!

And finally, let’s just do within the United States for the past thirty days:

Click = big

And there’s the Oprah Effect. Without it, the pace would have favored the Sony Reader.

But has the Sony Reader been trumped by Oprah?

No. I’ll come back to this chart in the days after Dave Farrow emerges from the DataVision window.

Let’s see The Farrow Effect.

I expect the Sony Reader to be higher and the Kindle to have plummeted back to earth.

*(He characterized me as a “Sony Reader fanboy” — but who’s the one with an entire site devoted to one device, hm?)