indieKindle: Beta Bonanza: Number of Kindle Store Blog Titles Triple as Blog Sales Sink

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Beta Bonanza: Number of Kindle Store Blog Titles Triple as Blog Sales Sink

You may have noticed, in just the last few days, a tremendous explosion in the number of blogs available in the Kindle Store. The number of Kindle Blogs has nearly tripled in the past week to over 4,000, all as a direct result of the fact that Amazon has -- finally, some would say -- launched a beta program allowing anyone to upload a blog. When the Kindle first launched the blog listings were dominated by major corporate blogs (New York Times, Associated Press, etc.) and Amazon only gradually began opening the door to the individuals that we might ordinarily think of when we think of bloggers. Now, the floodgates are open.

It will be interesting to see how all of this plays out. As Kindle owners have become increasingly savvy about how to get free online content onto their Kindles -- a process for which Kindle Nation happily takes some of the credit -- it has become apparent that Kindle sales of blogs and newspapers have declined relative to the Kindle editions of books. Not by just a little, either. As I write this on Tuesday, May 19, here are the latest sales rankings for the three best-selling blogs in the Kindle Store:

Amazon Daily - Price: $0.00 - #18,181 in Kindle Store
The New York Times - Latest News - Monthly Price: $1.99 - #43,879 in Kindle Store
Huffington Post - Monthly Price: $1.99 - #51,897 in Kindle Store

These are titles that have spent significant time among the top 100 overall in the Kindle Store in the past, so I have to admit that the phrase "sink like a stone" comes to mind. And the word "Wow." This can't be what those "bloggers" were hoping for, or what they expected. These sales rankings translate into just a handful or two of units per week.

It's too early to say how the new blogs are doing, since none of them will emerge from their 14-day Free Trial Period or, consequently, have sales unit reports or trackable sales rankings for another week. Prior to the beta launch last week, only 92 Kindle blogs had been introduced in the previous 90 days, and the bestseller among them, a New York Times called Laugh Lines, showed a lackluster sales ranking of #96,998 in the Kindle Store.

Unlike Kindle Books, Kindle Blogs have standardized prices set by Amazon with no negotiation between the blogger or publisher and Amazon. When I made Kindle Nation Daily available as a Kindle Blog, Amazon unilaterally set its price at $1.99 a month. While I will certainly endeavor to make it worth that price, my hope had been to set its price 99 cents per month, but I failed in my efforts to get Amazon to bring the price down. Although I was disappointed at the response that I received under the salutation "Greetings from Amazon Blogs" -- "I'm sorry, but please note that Amazon will define the price based on what we deem is a fair value for customers" -- I am certainly willing to grant the possibility that this is the best approach for Kindle owners, in that it should mitigate against some of the mixed signals and Wild West atmosphere that have developed with Kindle Book prices. (Mind you, I am a strong believer in free-market pricing for discretionary items, but the Kindle Books pricing market is not a free market, given Amazon's deep discounting intervention to try to keep as many books as possible at $9.99 or under).

As these thousands of newly offered Kindle Blogs begin to acquire sales rankings after Memorial Day, we'll see what relationships seem to emerge between prices and sales rankings. For my own part, I took some encouragement from the message I received from one Kindle technical account manager, who researched the issue for me on Day 1 of Kindle Nation Daily's life as a Kindle blog and reported back: "I was told that we don’t negotiate the pricing with the blogger at this time, but personally feel that the $1.99 stamp is kind of a compliment. (As in, we feel that your blog is so cool that customers would pay more for it.)" Oh well, don't think I don't know when I am being sweet talked; it's just that I like it.

Another difference between Kindle Blogs and Kindle Books involves the royalties paid by Amazon to the rights holders. Kindle Book royalties for books uploaded via the Kindle Digital Text Platform or Amazon's Mobipocket subsidiary range from 35% up to 87.5% of the actual proceeds (price paid by the customer) or 35% of the suggested retail price set by the publisher. Since Kindle Blogs are not discounted, Amazon pays a set fee of 30% of the retail price to all bloggers and blog publishers.

For an insightful analysis of the economics of blogging for the Kindle, and whether it makes sense, I recommend an article entitled "Is Amazon Kindle Publishing For Blogs Beta Program a good deal for bloggers?" on the GeekMBA360 blog.

One last note on all of this, upon which I've touched before: The relative demise of Kindle Store sales of blogs and newspapers, compared with Kindle Books, is certainly due in some small (or large?) part to rising use of the Kindle for iPhone (and iPod Touch) App, since the App does not allow for the purchase of periodicals from the Kindle Store.

(And yes, stay tuned for some discussion of the blogs that I am publishing for the Kindle, what they provide, and why, as well as a guide to other new Kindle blogs).

Cartoon Credit: Thanks to Dave Walker and We Blog Cartoons for permission to use the great cartoon above.

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Free Books and Other Content for Your Kindle

The Kindle store is the best place to buy many books, articles and periodicals, but it is also worth checking out the free content you can acquire through the links below. Then scroll down for Kindle information, guides, accessories, links, and a look at the latest in fresh fiction from some of the Kindle Store's hot indie authors!

Writers & Writing Links & Blogroll

Independent Publishing Resources and Links - in Progress

BowkerLink Publisher Access and ISBN System

American Booksellers Association

Book Industry Study Group (including BISAC Subject Headings List)

International Standard Book Number Agency

Joe Wikert's Publishing2020 Blog

Dan Poynter's ParaPublishing.com

indieKindle

John Kremer's Book Marketing Blog

Reviews of Independently Published Books - Foreword Magazine

Small Press Blog

Small Publishers Association of North America

The Independent Book Publishers Association (PMA)

Amazon's Digital Text Platform for Kindle Publishing (beta)

CreateSpace - high-quality, inexpensive publishing with seamless integration with distribution channels and no setup fees

Believer

McSweeney's Internet Tendency

The Sun Magazine

Grub Street

Poets & Writers

Narrative Magazine

PEN New England

National Writers Union

Sunday, March 23, 2008

A season of renewal

Just a quick drop-by to wish an hour, a day, a season of renewal and new energies to my visitors here. I have been hard at the work of finishing my book about independent publishing -- part how-to, part anthem, about publishing both on the Kindle platform and more generally -- and haven't been here as much as I wished to be, but I'm moved this morning to re-purpose a paragraph from the manuscript and share it with you here:

By heralding and thus extending the life of the good work of others, as readers, writers, and citizens, we are casting bread upon the water. We writers have had to face up to the fact that our initial hopes, that we might happily pursue our writing lives in a Garden of Eden, assured of a loving audience as large as we had any cause to imagine, forgiving of our flaws, where all our needs would be fulfilled, turned out to be delusional. We have been banished to the real world and cursed, like Eve and Adam, to work hard for a living. But it is work that we can do, and be happy to do.
Cheers to each and all,
Windwalker

Friday, March 7, 2008

Indie Author Review Program

att'n Indie Authors: You've published a Kindle edition of your novel, memoir, how-to article or history, so now what?

If you would like to have it reviewed by one of Amazon's Top Reviewers, we can help!

We have been rounding up top 100 reviewers and others who are interested in receiving reading copies of indie work for review purposes, and building a data base by reading interest areas.

If you would like to participate, just send an email to indieKindle@gmail.com with the link to your book's detail page, a brief bio, and a reading copy of your book attached as (preferably) a Word document. Please include "Indie Author Review Program" in the subject line, and include a link to any free excerpts and your website if applicable.

Your content will be only shared with participating reviewers, whose participation will be kept confidential (until and unless they publish an Amazon review). Be aware, of course, that positive reviews are not guaranteed - reviewers will post honest reviews.

Building an audience of readers

On November 19, 2007, Amazon introduced its new ebook reader, the Amazon Kindle. Although it is yet another in a series of ebook devices, it is also much, much more than that. The Kindle sold out in 5 1/2 hours, and Amazon's production process still has yet to catch up with the demand. Whether or not you can ever imagine yourself reading books or journals on a 6-inch e-ink screen, you owe it to yourself, as a writer or publisher, to give serious consideration to what this device can do to help you connect with readers.

More than any other technological development in the past decade, the Kindle will help to provide audience for quality writing of all kinds:

* First, if you follow the steps in the articles that are available to your left, they will enable you to publish books and other content on the Kindle Publishing Platform at zero expense;

* Second, these steps provide a guide to walk you through a seamless, user-friendly process of marketing and promoting your books and other content through a powerful keyword and category search environment that Amazon has created within its "Kindle store," and the cost of this marketing power is, like the cost of publishing on the Kindle Publishing Platform, is zero; and

* Third, and most importantly, by publishing your work for the Kindle now, you will be getting in on the ground floor of the fastest growing segment of avid readers for years to come.

I am, personally, extremely resistant to the notion of telling any writer or publisher that he will ever get rich doing anything related to writing. It is not why we do what we do, and the only paths to prosperity that I know of are paved with passion. So I am not going to talk money here. It makes much more sense for you to do your own thinking on this topic.

But here are some basic building blocks for whatever thinking you may do.

* I published three short-form articles on the Kindle Publishing Platform in December 2007. In the first 15 days they were up, they sold over 15 copies. I did nothing to market them other than fill in keywords and categories for the Amazon search engine. No big thing, in and of itself, until one begins to make logical extrapolations. By the end of the month they sold 50, and another 50 in the first two weeks of January 2008.

* Whatever the small number of Kindles in circulation in December 2007, it is a no-brainer to project that there will be 20 times as many Kindles in circulation one year later, and 50 times as many in circulation a year or so beyond that. Amazon does not roll out its biggest product in years without serious market-testing and a tight plan for ramping up production.

* Can you see where this is heading? Authors who publish directly to the Kindle Platform receive, in effect, a 35% royalty and may set any price they believe the market will bear for their work. They may publish as many books, articles and excerpts as they wish. Ultimately, readers will provide the best filter to determine the success and popularity of the work that is published for the Kindle.

Whether you see the Kindle publishing opportunity as a chance to connect your work directly with readers, as a way to market-test a book project by publishing an excerpt to test response, or as a creative way to build the kind of numbers that might persuade a conventional publisher to give you a book contract, it is time for you to get started. I hope that the articles available at the left will give you a big assist with that process.

You don't need to own a Kindle to publish books or other content for the Kindle. But if you get to work with the publishing process, you may find that your royalties pay for a Kindle sooner than you would expect.