Kindle Authors Get it In the Neck.

One thing Kindle Readers have whined about is the fact that they can't loan books to other people.

Well, Amazon listened and now they can. For free.

So a Kindle author who's trying to earn a living can now see his or her books being leant to anybody...thus losing a sale.

Of course Amazon didn't ask us small press publishers if that was alright with us. Just as with arbitrarily dropping down our blog prices in half, they just went ahead and did it. However, it is possible to opt out if we so desire, so that's something, anyway. (I'd rather be presented with the option of opting in.)

Dear Publisher,

We are excited to announce Kindle book lending (http://www.amazon.com/kindle-lending). The Kindle Book Lending feature allows users to lend digital books they have purchased through the Kindle Store to their friends and family. Each book may be lent once for a duration of 14 days and will not be readable by the lender during the loan period.

All DTP titles are enrolled in lending by default. For titles in the 35% royalty option, you may choose to opt out of lending by deselecting the checkbox under "Kindle Book Lending," in the "Rights and Pricing" section of the title upload/edit process. You may not choose to opt out a title if it is included in the lending program of another sales or distribution channel. For more details, see section 5.2.2 of the Term and Conditions.

For more info on how Kindle Book Lending works, see our FAQ here: http://forums.digitaltextplatform.com/dtpforums/entry.jspa?externalID=581

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Subscribe to our other blogs on Kindle:
Seaborn: Oceanography Blog
Star Trek Report: Space Sciences
Volcano Seven: Treasure and Treasure Hunters
Rush Limbaugh Report

Time to go back to books

I continue to vacillate on what would be the best use of my time - writing 30 blogs or writing 5 blogs and working on some books.

I'd had great hopes for The Lady and the Tiger Moth, and while I had two quick sales, nothing since. So that's been a great disappointment.

My "Your Goverment in Action" series tanked as well.

So I'm going back to blogs...right now working on some bibliography blogs for military activity, revolutionary war, WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam. I'll give them until after CHristmas to see if they take off.


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Subscribe to our other blogs on Kindle:
Seaborn: Oceanography Blog
Star Trek Report: Space Sciences
Rush Limbaugh Report

Pulling up your socks and getting on with it...

Well, I've published a handful of books to the Kindle...and all have bombed.

Still, I'm persevering. I've got a fiction book called The Golden Helmet that I'd totally forgotten I'd completed, many years ago. (I always remember writing it, but I hadn't remembered that I'd finished it). So I'll be publishing that shortly.

And I'm redoubling my efforts with blogs. Even though my rage incandesces every time I see the price of my blogs and realize I've been cheated of half my income (as have all other bloggers, of course), there's no denying that if you get some popular blogs, you can make money - and I'm making a helluva lot more money than through my books, which aren't selling.

I'm doing the types of blogs where I can write 15 posts - M, W, F for a whole month - in one day - so even though I've got dozens of blogs, I can keep up with most of them easily.


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Subscribe to our other blogs on Kindle:
Seaborn: Oceanography Blog
Star Trek Report: Space Sciences
Volcano Seven: Treasure and Treasure Hunters
Rush Limbaugh Report

Don't lose heart

I published my first book, The Lady and the Tiger...Moth on Amazon over a month ago, and have had no purchases yet. Heart breaking.

Of course, although I announced it to the various Kindle message boards, I haven't had much other chance to market it. I've been traveling with relatives for the last month, so the website I should have done for it has been hanging fire.

I'm still at a relative's house, and won't be home for good until Wednesday. Then I'll get my girdle in gear and get the websites finished - for the book, and also for all of my blogs.

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Subscribe to our other blogs on Kindle:
Seaborn: Oceanography Blog
Star Trek Report: Space Sciences
Volcano Seven: Treasure and Treasure Hunters
Rush Limbaugh Report

Needs must when the devil vomits into your teacup

As Blackaddder used to say.

A couple of weeks ago I published my first full-length novel, The Lady and the Tiger Moth (under the pseudonym Caroline Miniscule.) Reaction? Nil.

Two people have bought it - but only because they were Kindle publishers who presumably wanted to see what a graphic novel on Kindle looked like.

I posted the news of the event in various Kindle-centric message boards, to no response.

I had priced the book at $4.99, because I had had to pay an illustrator $750 to create the initial 30 strips that I used to open the book, and I thought a $3.00 royalty on each book sold was fair.

But no one bought it.

So I decided what the hell, since no one was buying it, make it really cheap. A 30 cent royalty was better than no royalty.

So I tried to drop the price of the book down to 99 cents, so I could submit it to all these Kindle blogs that rave on about free and 99 cent books on the Kindle, but for some reason I couldn't, the lowest they'd let me drop it down to as $1.99.

So, that'll be the price in a couple of days when the price change takes effect. I'll only make 30 cents royalty, but now at least maybe someone will buy it.


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Subscribe to our other blogs on Kindle:
Seaborn: Oceanography Blog
Star Trek Report: Space Sciences
Volcano Seven: Treasure and Treasure Hunters
Rush Limbaugh Report

Time to Work on Books

Well, I'm not bothering to do much work on my blogs anymore. It's just too depressing to see how many subs I'm getting from those 2 blogs that used to cost $1.99 and are now 99 cents. So damn annoying.

I'm working on a book called The Lady and the Tiger...Moth. About a year ago, I created a comic strip with that title, featuring a female pilot as the main character, and hired an illustrator to draw 30 strips for me. I submitted this to the King Syndicate, and never got any response. So, I decided to convert it into an ebook. I broke down each strip into single panels, and I'm in the process of writing a sequel to it, which I hope to have finished tomorrow.

I will then publish it, and market it, and recount my sucesses here.

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Subscribe to our other blogs on Kindle:
Seaborn: Oceanography Blog
Star Trek Report: Space Sciences
Volcano Seven: Treasure and Treasure Hunters
Rush Limbaugh Report

Amazon does the dirty on us

My Rush Limbaugh Report blog, price $1.99 since its inception 3 months ago, has almost 200 subscribers. Things were going great.

Today, without warning, I see that the price has been lowered to 99 cents!

I've got over 150 subscribers with new subscriptions daily, and they lower the price on me!

I am soooo pissed off!

Amazon Associates Can Now Advertise Kindle Books

I got this notice in my email today. (I'm an Amazon Associate as well as a DT publisher and a blogger.)

Dear Amazon Associate:

We're excited to announce Amazon's launch of Kindle for the Web Beta. This new feature is our newest addition to our free reading apps family and will enable customers to sample Kindle books without leaving the browser.

Kindle for the Web Beta is designed to be embedded on our Associates' websites and blogs. Embedding this new feature will allow you to display samples of best-selling Kindle title to your readers in an attractive and inviting fashion. Your readers will be able to initiate their Kindle book purchase easily from this feature.

We'd like to invite you to learn more on Kindle for the Web Beta by visiting our information page at http://www.amazon.com/kindlefortheweb . Recommending books has never been so easy, interactive, and attractive.

cascade

Amazon pays up to 8.5% in advertising fees on each qualifying Kindle book sale the Associate refers. Embedding is easy:

* Find the physical book you would like to recommend and click on "Read first chapter FREE" button to launch Kindle for the Web Beta.
* Click on the "Embed" button on the right
* Customize the window size and add your Associate tag
* Copy the line of code and add it to your website

In addition to being eligible to earn advertising fees on the advertised Kindle edition, Associates may also earn advertising fees on qualifying sales of other Kindle devices, books, accessories and magazine, newspaper, and blog subscriptions.

We want to thank you for your continued participation in the Amazon Associates Program, and invite you to start or continue advertising Kindle devices and Kindle books. Stay connected by following us on Twitter and finding us on Facebook .

If you have any questions or feedback on this promotion or the Associates Program, please contact us via the contact form. We want to hear from you!


Sincerely,

The Amazon Associates Program

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Subscribe to our other blogs on Kindle:
Seaborn: Oceanography Blog
Star Trek Report: Space Sciences
Volcano Seven: Treasure and Treasure Hunters
Rush Limbaugh Report

The best laid plans...

I'd checked into a hotel early today, in order to get caught up on all my blog work including Kindle Publisher. But the room was the room from hell, except we didn't find out about it until after we'd brought in all our luggage, and my mom was too tired to want to move - even though I'd do all the heavy lifting.

So anyway, I can finally get on the internet now - 4 hours later - and I just don't have the energy to do any work today. (I won't even talk about the problems with the TV, the toilet, and the very loud refrigerator!)

Tomorrow, I will. Promise. (Assuming I get a hotel room with working internet first crack out of the box!)

Book publishing on the Kindle

As I posted several weeks ago, I've been putting together the public domain schedules of the President, Vice President, and the Secs of Defense, State and Treasury, and publishing them for a mere 99 cents on the Kindle.

To date - no purchases.

Pretty disappointing.

But, that's the joy of publishing on the Kindle - at least I didn't have to print hundreds of pamphlets, at the cost of bookoo dollars, only to see them lay on the shelves for years and years.

I'll continue to compile these pamphlets throughout December. If I get no takers by then, I'll give it up for good.

I've got lots of other pamphlets/books in the idea hopper, but I won't have time to work on them until probably November, as I'm about to move cross-country, and that's turning out to be an incredible hassle, and I haven't even started the drive yet.



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Subscribe to our other blogs on Kindle:Seaborn: Oceanography BlogStar Trek Report: Space SciencesVolcano Seven: Treasure and Treasure HuntersRush Limbaugh Report

Daily Blog Report for the Kindle

For the fourth straight day, the daily report that shows how many subs you have for each of your blogs, has been updated.

The time has changed - it used to be updated at about 11.30, now it seems to be at 1 to 2 pm. But regardless of the time, the fact that it is updated daily is the important thing.

And of course, that's what makes it so frustrating. (I know I harp on this.) We will get daily updates for a week, maybe two....then it will drop off the grid for a week or two or more. And it just doesn't make sense. If it can be daily, why isn't it always daily?

Frankly, I suspect that some little minion of Amazon, somewhere, has to run the report manually each day, and sometimes he or she forgets for a couple of weeks. That's all I can think of. Because every other report - for Kindle Associates and Kindle Advantage, and DGT publishers - our reports are updated daily, and never miss a day!


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Subscribe to our other blogs on Kindle:Seaborn: Oceanography BlogStar Trek Report: Space SciencesVolcano Seven: Treasure and Treasure HuntersRush Limbaugh Report

Book Publishing Update

I posted a few weeks or so ago that I had published my first two "pamphlets" for the Kindle - Your Government in Action July and Your Goverment in Action August.

Well, it's been 20 days, and no one has bought a single book!

Well, I'll be publishing schedules for Sept, Oct, Nov and December, and put them on a website and do a bit of marketing, but if I get no sales, I'll give it up in the new year.


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Subscribe to our other blogs on Kindle:
Seaborn: Oceanography Blog
Star Trek Report: Space Sciences
Volcano Seven: Treasure and Treasure Hunters
Rush Limbaugh Report

Shock! Daily Report Updated!

For three days in a row now, the daily blog report has been updated. This after a period of at least 20 days, when it was not updated.

The time of the report's updating also seems to have changed. It used to be updated by 11 am eastern time... then it was more like 11.30 eastern time. For the last three days, it has updated at about 12:30 pm.

Of course, the time of the update is a moot point - it's that it is updated daily that is the important thing.

UK Blog Report
I emailed the help desk requesting that the UK subs and US subs be separated out. I don't know that this will ever happen, but it still seems so ridiculous to me that it doesn't happen. It's only common sense that we bloggers would want to know how many subs we have from each country. Especially since the UK pound is worth more than the American dollar, so we should see more money from them.

I am very interested to see my next "Remittance Advice" - or email that tells me money has been put into my checking account, and how much. I am hoping that the note that comes with that email will separate out the two sums of money, so we can get some idea that way.

Short-lived joy / News on blogs published in UK

One day after the "daily report" updated - for the first time in 30 days, it doesn't update again.

Certainly makes it tough for people to know whether a blog is worth continuing or not, or, even if the blog is worth continuing, whether a certain "campaing" or "story line" is worth continuing. Without prompt feedback it is very hard to know what to do!


UK Blogs
Our blogs are available for subscription on the UK Amazon site. And two of my blogs are doing relatively well over there.

But I don't know how many actual subscriptions I have, and apparently Amazon/Kindle doesn't think I need to know! I emailed their help desk directly to ask this question, and was told that there were no separate reports - that the numbers on my "daily" report reflected both American and UK subscriptions.

Moreoever, if I receive my payment by check - I'd be receiving two checks, one made out in dollars for US subs, and one made out in pounds for UK subs. (Okay, I suppose that would be a way of knowing how many subscriptions are actually from the UK, but it's ridiculous). More ridiculous is the fact that they can't send peope a check made out in pounds sterling - at least, they'd better not - because a person's bank would charge the person a fee for converting that money into dollars. Unless they want to use that as a ploy to force more people to use the direct deposit option (which is what I use, anyway.)

So, I guess I'll wait to pass judgement until I get my "remittance advice" for this month, and see if the payment there is separated out into dollars and pounds converted into dollars. The reason I find this annoying is that the pound is worth more than the dollar, so I should be making more money from British subs than American ones. Unless Amazon intends to skim off that extra money as a fee for converting pounds to dollars...

We shall see!

Blog "Daily Report" Finally Updated!!!!!

Hallaleuhah!

It's only been 21 days...

Amazon's Kindle Blog Report Has Been Delivered

It's here about 5 days earlier than I expected. I doubled my income, which was nice, but it wasn't as much as I'd hoped for, so I'm still disappointed. Well, that's human nature.

The infuriating thing is that this report should not have come as a surprise. But it's been about 3 weeks - 21 days - since the daily Kindle blog report was updated.

Another irritating thing is that for at least a month, the UK has been offering our blogs - and yet we have not been told where to go to see our reports, or to find out how much we're earning. It's extremely irritating!

Can you tell I'm irritated?

As I've shared here before, I'm an Amazon Associate, and that report is updated daily. My Desktop Publishing report is also updated daily!!! So why is the Kindle Blog report not only not updated daily, but not updated for 3 bloody weeks!

Frustration just mounts and mounts

Well, the "daily" blog report has not been updated for 20 days now.

I am so.... well...angry is the only word to describe it!

I'm an Amazon associate. And my info there is updated on a daily basis.

And yet they can't update the Kindle purchases/unsubscriptions on a daily basis? That's ridiculous!

Yes, on one hand I shouldn't grumble. They dont need to offer this service at all, and I wouldn't be making any money if they didn't, since no one reads my blogs "on the outside", they only read them on the Kindle.

But having said that, it is ridiculous that you can't get a report updated in over 20 days!

People have complained about this on the Official Kindle boards, with no results to date.

Why can't the "Help Desk" Give You Help?

I have several blogs offered on the Kindle. Whenever you publsih a blog, you have to upload a screencap - a picture of the screen, and a masthead - a title for the blog, as well.

Now, about half the time, when the blog is eventually published, the screencap and the masthead don't show up.

Questions on this had been asked at the Kindle Blog Publishing Help Boards, and we were told by someone there to send the images to a certain email address, and he (or someone at that email address) would upload them.

So, following that instruction, I sent the screencap and masthead for one blog to them, to see if it would work. The screencap was a PNG, the masthead a JPG. (They should have both been PNGs or JPGs, but for some reason I did one each.)

Anyway, just got back an email from the person who'd been handling my issue. This was his response:

On researching further, I see that the images were rejected as they did not meet the specifications.

Please make sure that your screenshot image follows the specifications listed in the URL given below:
https://kindlepublishing.amazon.com/vendor/members/kindle-blogs/static/blog_screenshot.html

Please make sure that your banner image follows the specifications listed in the URL given below:
https://kindlepublishing.amazon.com/vendor/members/kindle-blogs/static/blog_masthead.html

Okay, he's the help desk, and he's supposedly just researched my specific problem. So he must know *why* my images didn't meet specifications, why not just *tell me why* instead of making me go read these instructions which are probably two pages long and somewhere, buried in all the verbiage, is what I need to know.

This is a tendency of "help desks" and people who are supposed to help you that I've noticed more than once. They *know* the answer, but instead of saving you time and telling you what you need to know, they say, "Go read the answer here. " SO then you've got to waste twn to twenty minutes reading some manual, usually poorly written so you can't even find what you're looking for even though you've been told it's there.

I'm not going to bother to read the specifications, I think I do know the problem. Sometimes I've uploaded PNGs as opposed to JPGs, and I think the system doesn't like PNGs. But if that's the case, the images should be rejected right away, not uploaded, and shown on the screen, as if they were going to work! And you only find out they don't work when the blog is published and you find out they aren't there.

However, the last time I uploaded a blog, the PNG images were actually rejected, so it looks like they've got that problem fixed.

Well...we'll find out. ; )

Book publishing: Your Government in Action: July 2010

A few days ago I published a Pamphlet to Kindle, called Your Government in Action, July 2010.

In it, I took all the schedules from President Obama, VP Biden, and SoS Clinton and sorted them by date. Obama and Biden's schedules only started around July 15 or 16 or so.

I charge 99 cents for the pamphlet, and have sold no copies.



But I am not despairing, for I have a plan.

A pseudonym I have used for many years is Caroline Miniscule. My intent is to turn that into a brand. Specifically, Miniscule Guides.

This pamphlet, which I call Your Goverment in Action, will come out each month. (Well, I'll do it for three or four months at the most. If after four months no one is buying it, I'll stop.) The more of these I have on offer, the more confident I am that people will see them, and those who have an interest in politics will buy them.

(The schedules are from official government websites, and thus are public domain. When I published them, I chose the public domain option, which means I'll only get 30% royalites instead of 70%. And that's why I'm only charging 99 cents for them, also.

So, we'll see if this plan works.

Blog publishers were paid Aug 26, 2010

If you earned over $10 last month, and get paid via Direct Deposit, you should have received a payment on Thursday. I did!

"Daily" report is the report to watch

A few weeks ago I said, "Don't pay attention to the daily report. It's two months behind the times."

Of course I was very wrong. It is the daily report that tells you what you need to know, even if it isn't all that daily.

When I received my monthly report for July, a couple of days ago, I learned the sorry truth. My fiction blog, that in the report for the month of June had shown 20 past-two week subscribers and 128 free subscriptions, actually did not mean that I had 128 more subscribers who were just waiting to be folded over into my past-two week number. It meant that of the 148 people who had subscribed to my blog during the month of June, 120 had subscribed before their 2 week trial period was up.

So that was pretty heart breaking. I was watching the "sales rank" on the Amazon page, which was always active and always between 2,000 to 4,000, and of course that turned out to be meaningless. Sure, people were subscribing, but they were then unsubscribing at about the same rate.

So, at the end of looking at my report for July, I learned that the daily report actually had the numbers correct.

So there again, even though sometimes that report is updated daily and sometimes it takes a week or more before it updates, that's the report to watch because that will tell you how much money you're going to make at the end of the month.

Kindle Blog Report For July has now arrived

and I am extremely disappointed, and a bit irritated, with the news it tells me.

I doubled my earnings for this month, but that is no big deal. Still less than $100, and I was expecting much more than that.

THe report gives you two pieces of info for each blog

Trial subscriptions
Active subscriptions.
A subset of the active subscriptions is how many people unsubscribed.

I had assumed that the trial subscriptions number were actual subscriptions of people who were still subscribed, but just hadn't gotten past that 14 day mark.

But that can't be possible. What it must mean, are that those are the amount of people who subscribed to the blog in one month, and unsubscribed during the two week trial period.

I say this because I was watching the "daily" report very closely, and for the 23 days that my Rush Limbaugh Report was available for subscription in July, I was getting subscriptions every day, and the report didn't show that anyone was unsubscribing. All the numbers were always going up, never down.

Come to see this report, and I had 7 active subscriptions, 73 trial subscriptions, and no unsubscriptions. There is no way that can be unless those 73 trial subscriptions weren't recorded as unscribers in the daily reports.

So, I am disappointed, not only by the lack of money I earned but also because I've just discovered that most of the people who subscribe to that blog over the last month and a half unsubscribe before their 2 weeks are up. And I just find out about it now.

So I'm not happy.

Still, it's income, so I've got to persevere. Thank god at any rate that I now earn 60 cents per subscription instead of 30 cents (although my blog review blog is still at 30 cents) because this wouldn't even be worth it if I was only makign 30 cents per subscription.

Disappointed, unhappy.

Guess I better go have a Dairy Queen.

Bye bye, under-producers

I've got a lot of blogs, only 3 of which sell very well, the rest of which, some 5 or 6, sell not at all. One, two, three, four subscriptions at most for each one.

Up until a couple of days ago, I had persevered with these blogs. If someone had done me the honor to subscribe to one of my blogs, I owed it to them to keep writing in it.

But I finally decided that I just didn't have time, to put in the amount of work needed to update these blogs, when they weren't bringing me any income.

So I bit the bullet. Two days ago I posted I was removing the blogs from Kindle - just to let my Kindle readers know in advance that that woudl happen, and the next day I removed the blogs from the system.

I certainly enjoyed writing the blogs, even if only 4 people were reading them, but I had to make myself realize that my time was better spent working on the 3 blogs that were selling well, to ensure that they would continue to sell well.

Each of these three blogs requires a lot of work in themselves, so it only made sense.

Now, I have the time to work on the book I'm writing, which I hope to publish next week, so that I can finally start giving book publishing tips here instead of just blog publishing tips!

Where's the &%%$#@( report???

I had expected to find the Kindle Blog Earnings report to be ready on August 11. It is now August 13, so it's two days late.

This has got me really annoyed.

I am an Amazon.com associate, which means I offer Amazon books for sale on my websites. That system is set up that I receive a report the very next day telling me what sold (if anything) how much commission I got for it, and so on.

I don't understand why they can't do the same things for blogs. After another month, for example, my daily blog report still has my Blog Review Blog at 69 subscriptions, when the Earnings Report I'd received, on July 11, had my subscriptions as double that -- for the month before. So the "daily" report is not two weeks behind the times, not a month behind the times, but two months behind the times. Very frustrating.

How To Make Sure Your Complete Blog Entry Feeds to Kindle

I've noticed that about 1 in 10 blog feeds at Kindle do not share the entire entry, but just the first bit of it. Some of them give you the option to "click more", others don't, all you get is a paragraph and that's it.

I asked a techno-head blogger to explain why this happens and how to fix it, and she put together a video that explains what you need to do.

(The author also offers web writing services, so check that out if you're a mind too: http://www.guerreroink.com/2010/07/26/how-to-fix-your-blog-syndication-on-kindle-video/)



Here's an explanation that a Kindle rep provided at the Kindle forums, specifically for those who use Feedburner. (It's in the video above, but since my Kindle subscribers can't watch it, you need text!) I do suggest that you go to the above website and watch the video there, if you're having problems and aren't using feedburner. She explains how to fix that, too.

1. Log into feedburner.com
2. Click on the feed title in the "Feed Title" list
3. In the page that comes up, click on "Optimize" tab
4. In the left panel, "Summary Burner" will be listed as the last option. Check if there is a tick mark beside it.
5. If so, click on summary burner option. In the right panel, there will be a "deactivate" button. Clicking on that will turn off summary only feed option.

Blog Publishing: Now Available in the UK

I got an email a few days telling me that I could now offer my ebooks at Amazon's UK website...and that my blogs would be available also.

The blogs became available 2 days ago, on August 6.

So, I just checked the numbers today, August 8, and 2 of my blogs are already doing quite well, in the 3,000 sale range. The numbers aren't connected to the American numbers, they stand on their own.

So, the numbers for UK blog sales won't show up in the July report, which I hope will be sent to me on Aug 10. So that'll give me 30 more days to wait until I find out how much money I'll be earning from the UK. The costs are the same, 1.99 and 99, but that is pounds and pence, not dollars. So the income should be a third higher, 39 cents instead of 30 cents, 90 cents instead of 60 cents.

Of course, since the UK blog store has just opened, the sales numbers might not necessarily be as rosy as they appear. The numbers are probably coming from a much smaller sample size.

Interestingly, the Rush Limbaugh blog hasn't sold yet, but my blog review blog is doing very well,as is one of my fiction blogs.

So, I'm quite pleased....

Blog Publishing: Now Available in the UK

Apologies For Sporadic Postings

Up until a week or so ago, I thought I was moving from York County, VA to Cheyenne Wyoming sometime next year. I found out a week ago that the schedule has been speeded up, and I'll be moving within the next two months. And since I've got five rooms, each one filled to the rim with books, I'm doing my packing now to get it out of the way.

I'm a bit obsessive compulsive that way. Now that I'm supposed to be packing, I have to devote all my energy to it, which doesn't leave enough energy for my real work - which is of course these blogs - and my publishing soon-to-be-empire.

I should be done packing in another few days, and then I can get back to work on this blog.

So, please hang in there!

My Remittance Advice Has Arrived

I've never bothered to check, but I wonder if Amazon, or whoever handles the payouts for the blogger section of their business, are located in England? I mean..."Remittance Advice" indeed.

I got my June payment from my blogs today. I'm expecting to get my July blog report around August 10th or so. In fact I'm looking forward to that a great deal. For the past few months my blog income has been so low as to hardly be worth talking about, but with the introduction of my Kindle Blog Report, I started getting some decent subscriptions. (Albeit, it took three months for that one to build its audience.) I expect to have at least 200 subscribers to my Rush Limbaugh report after only a month (on the other hand, my Barack Obama Report and Sarah Palin report have utterly tanked.) I also have a fiction blog that should have over 100 subscriptions, as well.

So, as you can perhaps tell, I am extremely excited, but of course a little apprehensive, to see that August 10 report. By keeping track of the numbers on each blog's Amazon page, I can tell that the blogs are being subscribed to in great numbers. But of course it's impossible to tell if they are being unsubscribed to, just as rapidly.

On the other hand, the "daily" report that I receive has each of these blogs in positive numbers, even though it is a couple of months behind the times. For example it still has my Kindle Blog Report at 11 new subscriptions / 80 total subscriptions, when in last month's monthly report, the one with the "real" numbers on which you get paid, I had over 128 subscribers.

So, 7 more days to go. Ah, I must possess my soul in patience.

Amazon Kindle Discussion Forums

Keep your blogs and books in the public eye by establing a presence on the Kindle Discussion Forums. I'm not telling you to do any spamming. But make it a point to respond to discussions in the general Kindle forums and in any community forums that interest you, and just have your book or blog titles hotlinked in your signature.

(and make sure you distinguish between books or blogs, so people know what they're clicking on before they click on it!)

Blog Publishing: My Success Keeps on Succeeding!

For various reasons I still haven't been able to get back to my book project, but soon, very soon.

Meantime, I'm very pleased with how the Rush Limbaugh Report blog is doing. I continue to get what I estimate to be at least 5 subs a day. Of course my job must be tempered with the knowledge that while I know approximately how many people are subscribing, I won't know how many people subsequently unsubscribe for another 20 days. The next report won't come out until August 10 or so.

The "daily" report continues to annoy me. Sometimes it will be updated every day, then after 3 or 4 days it will lie un-updated for several days. Just doesn't make any sense why it is so inconsistent. I know it doesn't matter, that the info there is at least 30 days out of date, but it still is annoying.

Blog Publishing: One Success, One Failure

A few days ago I started the Rush Limbaugh Report blog. As far as I can tell, it's been a success. I dont' trust the daily Blog info, which tells me I have 10 subscriptions after seven days or so, as I know that runs behind for some reason. But I'm keeping track of the numbers at its Amazon page and there's proof there that I'm getting subscriptions on a regular basis.

I won't know for absolute certainty just how successful it is until August 10th or so, when the report for July's blogs will come out.

But, I'm calling it a qualitative success.

Contrast that to my newest blog, which I'm about to pull the plug on, Barack Obama Day by Day. That has had no subscriptions.

So I'd be curious to know. Why are people looking up blogs featuring Rush Limbaugh, and subscribing to them, yet no one is interested in the doings of Obama? (There's a blog by an Obama supporter, Today With President Barack Obama, that does what I'd intended to do with my blog, and no one subscribes to it, either.....)

So are my Rush Limbaugh Report readers supporters of Limbaugh, or opponents of Limbaugh? The blog itself is pro-Limbaugh.

I won't find out until the middle of August, when I see how many people actually did subscribe, vs how many unsubscribed...

I so wish the Daily Report could be trusted to be accurate, it would help my decision making if I had real time data and didn't have to wait another 30 days to figure out if the Limbaugh Report really is the success I think it is...

But it's that anticipation and hope that keeps all bloggers going!

Blog Publisher Tips: Keep Records and Backups of Blogs

I had a question about something that has happened on one of my blogs - the "search ribbon" at the top has disappeared and I can't figure out how to get it back - so I went to Blogger's help forums to ask about it.

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger?hl=en

Because I use blogger for all my blogs.

After asking my questions, I browsed around other people's questions, and came across someone frantically trying to figure out why their blog had been deleted without warning, without explanation.

This struck a chord with me, because I used to have a Google Adsense account. I'd had it for three or four years. And for three or four years I was gradually increasing my income, so that last year - when the events I'm relating happened - I was actually making some good money with Adsense and beginning to believe I could make a living online with my websites, because of it.

Then one day I tried to sign on to my account...couldn't do it. Without warning,my account had been terminated. I desperately tried to find out what had happened, and why, but never could do it. I never violated TOS, and I emailed them and told them so, but never got a response.

So that was four years of hard work down the toilet. That was my income, down the toilet! I was pretty depressed after that for several months, I can tell you.

Not to mention furious. I had not broken TOS. Even if I had broken TOS, they had my email. Why couldn't they email me, say, "You're doing this against TOS, clean it up or we'll have to suspend your account." Instead, nothing. No reason, no explanation, no appeal.

Well, after that rant let me get back to the purpose of this post.

Turns out, Blogger will do the same thing to your blog account. If they see something they don't like, they will suspend your account without warning! You have to submit a request to "review blog" and while you're waiting for them to review it, if they ever do, your blog is down.

Of course for most people that's not a concern - we dont break TOS, we follow the rules... but if my experience with AdSense is any judge - sometimes that just doesn't help you.

So, my advice is that if you use blogger, or indeed, any free blogging software, like Wordpress, and you compose your blog entries onlie, as I do, neverthleess make sure you post a copy of your blog into a word document and save it on your computer. And go back into your archives and save all those entries as well.

Just to be on the safe side.

In addition, depending on what your blog is about, I'd recommend keepig an Excel file with title and topic and date posted, for all your blogs. It will help you go back in and find a certain blog (if you've got hundreds and hundreds of entries) and there's always a use for it!

Do You Blog? Turn Your Blog Into A Book

I write a variety of blogs. Some are just of ephemeral interest, others contain material that will always be relevant.

I'm being paid by Amazon once, for subscriptions to my blog.

And I want to be paid by them again, for books published from those blogs.

In the same way that authors who write essays for magazines will then have those essays collected into book form. (Isaac Asimov was the grand master of this. Wrote over 300 essays for the magazine of fantasy and science fiction, and every year from 1960 to the day of his death, Doubleday would put those 12 essays into book form and he'd get paid for them again.

I've spent the last several entries talking about blogging, tomorrow I'll talk about the digital press - book publishing aspect.

Blog Publishing: New Blog

A couple of days ago I started a new blog, which I called the Rush Limbaugh Report. My intent is to discuss each day's news, and compare that with what is covered on Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly.

Well, not each and every one every day...I'd love to do that but it would be way too time-consuming. (On the other hand if this blog takes off I may sub-contract out the writing of it - www.elance.com is a good place to go for that ).

In order to get a popular blog there are a few formulas. You need to talk about a popular subject - the New York Yankees will sell better than the Seattle Mariners, unfortunately (oh, my poor Mariners), controversy like Rush Limbaugh sells better than no controversy...like ...well, I can't think of a single Liberal radio host.... but then, I don't listen to liberal radio...

Anyway, so I am gambling that a blog that talks about political controversy, with Limbaugh as the focal point, will draw a lot of readers. Of course, I am pro-Limbaugh for the most part -- I believe in American exceptionalism, and the American way, and embracing immigrants but rejecting illegal immigrants, but I'm also an atheist, a feminist, pro-abortion, pro-gay right to marriage, an environmentalist of sorts...

So, we'll see how it goes.

But here's the thing. I put the blog up for subscription yesterday, and it was available to subscribers today. At 12.30 (EST), I purchased the first subscription. (I'll unsubscribe tomorrow. I just wanted to get the ball rolling as regards subscription numbers, so people who visit the blog will see that someone has subscribed!)

At 2.30 pm (EST), I've got my ranking. #21,545.

Now I'm pretty sure that's from just one subscription - I doubt if anyone else has subscribed to it in the last two hours.

So now the watching game begins. Will its rank go higher and higher, into the 100,000s which means no one else is subscribing, or will it go lower, which is what I'd really like to see.

But the point I'm making is, an initial ranking, even one as good as #21,545, means nothing. I'm assuming that perhaps on this particular day, 21,545 blog subscriptions have been purchased...and that's about all it means. Or does it mean, 21, 545 blogs in the three topic areas I chose - politics, arts and entertainment, and ...science.

Blog report for June has arrived.

Blog Publishing on Amazon

The monthly report for blog publishing is available on or about the 11th of the month.
The monthly report for digital book publishing is available on the 15th of every month.

I received my monthly blog report today, the one that told me how many subscriptios I had during the complete month of June, and how much I was going to get paid --around July 28 ---for the month of June.

And it was a bit of a shock.

In the sense that I now have it confirmed that the Kindle subscriptions shown on the daily Blog Report (that sometimes updates daily, sometimes every two weeks!) is at least two weeks behind the times.

Each of my blogs - the blogs I have that sell! - had over 50 more subscriptions by the end of June than is shown in that daily report.

So while I have one blog that now says I have 67 subscriptions, according to my report by the end of June that blog had 128 subscriptions. (100 of which were in the two weeks free period). And since there were only 2 "unsubscriptions" listed, I'm going to assume that now I actually have at least 128 paying subscriptions. And since this is a $1.99 blog, that makes $76 a month from them (for July, to be paid in August).

I'm still not sure, however, whether the numbers on the actual Amazon pages themselves are current, or also two weeks or more behind the times. In the past I have purchased a subscription for one of my blogs, and then unsubscribed (just to get it into the numbered realm rather than to leave it blank) and the number would appear after an hour or so, so I always assumed those numbers were "real time."



Whether they are or not, they do provide a bit of a guideline to see how active your blogs are.

I have several blogs, only 2 of which have respectable numbers of subscriptions. However, I enjoy writing the others - one on oceanography, one on space exploration - and so I will continue to do so even though they have only a couple of subscriptions each.

And that is the main thing about putting blogs up for subscription on Kindle. You must enjoy writing your blog anyway, and not look to get rich on Kindle - it's gravy if that happens.

But if you do start a blog, you must not get discouraged if there are no numbers on Amazon showing that people are subscribing. They will, if you give them time. But many's the time I've subscribed to a blog, to review in my Kindle Blog Report (one of my best selling blogs) to find that it hasn't been posted in for over a month. Sometimes the author has changed his blog URL and never bothered to update the blog feed.

Here's a blog that interviews Kindle authors

http://kindle-author.blogspot.com/

In preparing my blog entry yesterday about ways to advertise your Kindle book, I went to the Amazon message boards and found a thread begun by an author who has a Kindle blog where he interviews Kindle authors. Something I'd intended to do, but he beat me to it.

There's room for two or more such blogs, of course - there are a lot of authors out there - but I've decided the niche for The Kindle Publisher will focus only on writing skills and publishing do's and don'ts. Interviews with authors may remain the domain of others.

Here's how to get an interview. I take the liberty of posting a paragraph from his thread.

I'm a Kindle author myself and I've started a new blog. I'm looking to interview authors who have self-published on Kindle.

The interviews will be published on my blog with links back to your Kindle book on Amazon and to your author website.

If you're interested, please email me at David_Wisehart@hotmail.com (subject line: "Kindle Author") with a link to your Kindle book. I'll send you a short list of interview questions about your book and your experience as a Kindle author. Send me back your answers, and I'll post them to my blog, with links to your Kindle ebook.

Clarification on the Goals of this Blog

This blog will discuss two of the three forms of publishing on Amazon currently available to the average person.

1. Publishing blogs
2. Publishing ebooks

(The third way is to publish print books and have them for sale on Amazon. The people who do this are Amazon Advantage members. A fourth way is to place advertisements for other people's books on your website. These are Amazon Associate members. I am an Amazon Associate, as well as an e-book publisher and a blog publisher.)

If you want to publish your blog - or as many of your blogs as you like - on Kindle, here is the URL to get started:

https://kindlepublishing.amazon.com/gp/vendor/members/kindlepubs/common/landing-page?originatingURI=/gp/vendor/members/kindlepubs/blogs

If you want to publish your own ebooks on Amazon for the Kindle, here's the URL you'll need:

https://dtp.amazon.com/mn/signin

From now on, at the top of each of my posts, I'll indicate if the post is intended for bloggers or ebook publishers... or both.

Advertising Your New Kindle Book

If you've published a book on Kindle, you may be wondering where you can advertise it.

Typically, the New York Times, the Minneapolis Tribune, et al, are not going to review a book published on the Kindle - or any e-reader - unless it is also published as a print book as well.

But Kindle readers have taken care of that themselves.

If you're going to publish books on the Kindle, you must become a presence on the Kindle message boards. However - you mustn't spam, that just annoys people. Take what they give you.

There are two Kindle message boards.

One is actually a website:

http://www.kindleboards.com/

The other are the message boards on Amazon itself.

http://www.amazon.com/tag/kindle/forum/ref=sv_kinc_6

There are several threads for authors to advertise their new books - just find one in the right category.

Of course - make sure your book is properly formatted before you put it up for sale.

I'll discuss formatting books for the Kindle tomorrow.

The Importance of Descriptions on Amazon

When you first upload your blog or book to Amazon, it may appear within a couple of days, but the description of it always takes a few days more - an idiosyncrasy that I find annoying.

But eventually that description will show up, but it's not going to do you any good if its not a good description.

I've found this problem mostly with books in the public domain, but I've seen it with a few others - those self-published.

In your description, you need to throw in everything, and the kitchen sink. A table of contents, a list of characters perhaps, at the very least a synopsis of the plot!

And like everything else you write, after you've written your description, let it "set" for a day or so, then come back to it, and if it still sounds good, then use it.

Whenever you write something that's going to go for sale to someone else, or is going to advertise something you have for sale, you need to ensure that there are no spelling or grammar errors, and that it says exactly what you want it to say.

Kindle Blog Income Paid Monthly

It's June 20, the last day of the month, and I just got paid my income for last month (May).

As long as your income is over $10, you will be paid on a monthly basis. I your income is not above $10, the money will be accrued until you reach that amount.

It takes time to build up a readership. Don't despiar if it takes more than 3 months before you start getting a decent readership.

If you've got a blog that you'd like reviewed, email me.

Learning by bad example: The Clocks

Agatha Christie is one of my favorite authors, and 10 or so of her 60 books are masterpieces. But as she aged, her writing diminished. The Clocks is an example of a really bad book.

If you want to learn how to pad a novella into a book, this may be the template to use.

Christie weaves two plots together. Colin Lamb (actually the son of Superintendent Battle, although for some reason Christie never comes right out and says this) is a spy catcher, and he is walking along Wilbraham Crescent looking for the address of a possible spy for the Russians. (The 1960s were all the rage for such folk as Kim Philby and Guy Burgess, defecting to Russia and bringing secrets with them).

He's standing outside a house when a girl rushes out screaming - a man is lying dead in the sitting room and she found him.

So we have two mysteries - the spy mystery and the murder mystery. We have two narrators - an omniscient narrator when Detective Inspector Hardcastle is investigating, and Colin Lamb in the first person when he's working on his own case.

Surprisingly, of the 30 or so reviews on Amazon, 15 give it 5 stars, 14, 4 stars. Just goes to show that you can't trust those ratings, the book is abysmal and full of padding. And of course, while coincidences certainly happen in real life, they shouldn't happen in books, and this book has a humongous coincidence...which really leads me to believe that Christie had intended the story to end one way, and then was forced to add another 20,000 words or so and forgot to wind up that plot thread.

I'll go further into this tomorrow.

"This blog not available for sale"

I was very annoyed today, when I signed on at about 4 pm, to see that all my blogs were unavailable. I would have been very frightened as well, thinking Amazon had decided to end the Kindle blog program without bothering to tell anyone, except this had happened on June 8 at well.

(I know precisely when this happens because I'm a bit obsessive compulsive and I check the rankings of my blogs throughout the day. So if the system is down, I know about it, and this hadn't happened since June 8.)

No one at Amazon Blog Help ever answered my question, posted on June 8, as to why this had happened. I can only assume they are doing system wide maintainence and have to shut down the system for several hours.

Nevertheless it is extremely annoying, because of course that's 8 hours or so when no one is subscribing to my blogs!

Anyway, if you ever try to check the ranking of your blogs, and get a similar response, no need to panic.

Ranking of blogs
If you check your blog on an hourly basis, you'll find that its ranking changes, either up or down. It's hard to know how many blog subscriptions have been purchased, however my best estimate is that if someone subscribes to your blog, it will go down about 1,000 points.

Well...it really depends. If your ranking is 80,000 and 1 person subscribes, it will go down to 40,000. If another person subscribes, 20,000 or so, and if another does, 10,000. After that, when someone subscribes, it will drop on average only about a thousand points.

My post popular blog has been steady at varying between 3,000-6,000 for the last several months. So I think I must get 3 subscriptions a day. Another of my blogs goes from about 12,000 - 28,000. This one therefore, I think averages one subscription every couple of days.

How does this correlate with the number on your Blogs Report?

Well, when I first signed up and started creating blogs 3 months ago, I know - I know - that this report updated on a daily basis. But now, it only seens to update every two weeks. Very frustrating, especially when Amazon Affiliate updates daily. If they can do it (book sales) why can't blog sales also be daily? But for whatever reason, they're not.

However, I tell myself to not get too angry. I'm making money, and if Amazon didn't have this feature - I wouldn't be making any!

Amazon drops the price of the kindle

I see in the news today that Amazon dropped the price of the Kindle 2 by $70, to $189. Hopefully people who just bought one within the last few days will get a refund. Or they can just return it, then buy one at the new price.

Oh - and if you would like one now...



I also finally recieved KIndle operating system version 2.5.5, which has the ability to put your books into folders, which the previous versions did not have.

Those who buy a Kindle new might not have this system on their Kindles, but it will eventually be sent directly to your Kindle, you need do nothing.

The Importance of Titles on Amazon

Titles are all important.

The title itself
If you're not a well-established author, titles that are in-jokes are no good. For example, I could entitle a mystery blog, Le Cafe Singe Bleu, and that would make total sense to me, because I grew up in the decades when Charlie Chan movies were ubiquitous on TV, and lots of people would have seen Charlie Chan in Paris and known that Le Cafe Single Bleu was the name of the restaurant in the movie where we got to see a rather cool Apache dance, and then the murder of the female dancer.

But now that Charlie Chan movies can't be shown on TV anymore (thanks to a misplaced view of racism on the part of Asian activists, but that's a rant for another time), not enough people would get the reference.

How You Type it in Amazon
One of my other blogs is The Kindle Report, which is an example of a poor name, for a start. But then, I'd originally intended to review both books and blogs, and it was only after a week or so that I decided to focus only on blogs, and by then it was too late to change it.

But I just had to find a blog called BiblePlaces, and I typed in Bible Places in the search box on Amazon, and nothing came up. It was only when I actually typed BiblePlaces, without the space, that the blog appeared.

Most people I think separate the words when searching for a blog. So even though in your URL you have no spaces, when giving the title on Amazon - always provide spaces. In the keywords is the place to put the title all run together without spaces.

Tomorrow I'll discuss the importance of keywords.

Examples of poor writing #1 - Excessive use of similes

Yesterday I commented on how poor a writer Cussler is.

Poor writing does not necessarily mean the book is unreadable. Cussler knows how to get the reader interested in the story. But, when a book is uninteresting as to plot and all you have our characters, and the writing is terrible, then you typically lose readers.

(Then there is the other side of the coin, people who read Cussler thinking he writes excellent prose, thus blunting their ability to recognize good writing. Much as people who listen to rap or heavy metal will probaby never be able to recognize actual music.)

Reaading through Cussler, it is not as if every sentence and paragraph is actually bad. It's more his use of conventions - in describing things he always compares them to something else, as in a metaphor - but usually a poorly chosen simile. And occasionally he uses the wrong word entirely.

First, some definitions:
Metaphor: a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance, as in “A mighty fortress is our god.”

or:

A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison, as in "a sea of troubles" or "All the world's a stage"

Simile:
A figure of speech in which two unlike things are explicitly compared, as in “she is like a rose.”

or:
A figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared, often in a phrase introduced by like or as, as in "How like the winter hath my absence been" or "So are you to my thoughts as food to life"
Here are examples from Cussler:

From Polar Shift, a Dirk Pitt novel written with Paul Kemprecos:
First off, the first two paragraphs which show exactly how overboard the author goes with metaphors:

The Mercedes-Benz 770 W150 Grosser Tourenwagen weighed more than four tons and was armoured like a Panzer. But the seven-passenger limousine seemed to float like a ghost over the cushion of new fallen snow, gliding with unlit heeadlights paat slumbering cornfields that sparkled in the blue light of the moon.

As the car neared a darkened farmhouse that lay in a gentle hollow, the driver gently touched the brakes. The car slowed to the speed of a walk and, approached the low-slung, fieldstone structure with the stealth of a cat stalking a mouse.

I don't think a four ton car is going to float over a "cushion" of new fallen snow, to begin with. And "slumbering" cornfields?

More similes:
The ships lined up three miles apart and combed the area like a search party looking for a lost child in the woods.

The arrow-slim kayak flew across the sapphire of Puget Sound as if it had been shot from a bow.

Perhaps not so bad taken on their own, but when you read the books and every other description is of this nature, it simply becomes wearing on the nerves.

Clive Cussler - great formula trumps lousy writing

I have written a few times about how bad Clive Cussler's writing is, and that it hasn't improved since he's gotten ghost writers for each of his series (the Dirk Pitt, Oregon Files and Kurt Austin books.) (Well, technically they're not ghost writers since their names appear on the covers, but I think it's pretty obvious they do all the writing...Cussler probably just provides the ideas.)

And the ironic thing is of course that Cussler is a multi-millionaire because of his books, although it was his third book, Raise the Titanic, that set him on the patth to fame and fortune, because people in the 1970s were fascinated with the Titanic, and the thought of being able to find and raise her...everyone's dream! (Unfortunately in real life the ship broke apart as it sank...still, it would have been so cool...)

Which just goes to show that as far as guys are concenred...they'll read anything as long as there is a lot of specificity about the types of toys in use (the kinds of cars used and their history, the kinds of watches, the clothing....the vast attention to detail that Ian Fleming was so fond of for his James Bond character. Plus of course the guns, transport such as cars and tanks, aircraft and so on.)

ANd frankly, that's why I read the books. As a woman I prefer more nuanced writing, but I'm also into cars, planes, trains and automobiles, not to mention history. That's another part of Cussler's formula. Most of the books befin in times long past, with a certain artifact that will turn out to be of valuable use in the present day. For Raise the Titanic it was a type of fuel that would render the US energy-independent, for Night Probe it was a treaty signed during WWI that would cede Canada to the United States, and so on.

I'll share some examples of bad writing - and how they should have been written, tomorrow.

The Kindle Blog Publisher

Amazon has a variety of programs with which people can make money.

Amazon Advantage allows publishers of print books to sell their books on Amazon.

Create Space is their on-demand print publishing arm.

The easiest program of all to use is their Kindle ebook publishing system.

It's also possible to sell your used books or DVDs on Amazon. However, this costs $39 a month, and you can do it much cheaper on Ebay.

In this blog, I'm going to concentrate on the Kindle ebook publishing, and blog publishing programs.

However, if you want to check out all money making opportunties:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/seller-account/mm-summary-page.html?topic=200257910&ld=AZSOAMakeM

You must proofread your books, and edit them too

I read the blog of a man who writes and self-publishes his books through Authorhouse. His blog is actually about other stuff - his main employment is as a soundtrack producer - but when he's working on a book project he blogs about it.

And one thing he says is that he has three proofreaders who read each of his books. And yet, once the book is published, he always finds a typo or two that they - and he, in his own reviews, missed.

One reason for this may be that too many cooks spoil the broth. If you've got three different sets of corrections to make (he gives them print copies to read rather than electronic copies) whose to say that the person inputting the corrections doesn't miss one or two?

But the point is, he goes to the expense of having his book proofread not by one person, not by two, but by three of them. That may seem overkill, but really i's the professional way to do it. If you're going to self-publish your book, you have to do all the work that any publisher would do - what any professional publisher would do.

One thing this gentleman doesn't say is whether or not he uses an editor too. But he does have someone he calls a "muse" who reads his books and to whose suggestions he listens, so I suppose we can call her an editor.

Proofreaders and editors. If you don't employ them, then what you've got to do is set your book aside for at least a couple of weeks. Then, re-read it as if it were a new book, something you don't even remember. That allows you to look at it more dispassionately, to see any flaws, and be able to correct them.

Passive vs Active Income

What person doesn't dream of sitting on a beach, enjoying the sun and a soft drink, while the money in their checking account grows and grows, without them having to lift a finger.

That's what passive income is. Money that comes in while you're busy doing something else.

That's the kind of money you'll receive as an ebook publisher. The more books you have on offer, the more money you'll make.

Active income, on the other hand, means that you have to work at it every day. Any income from blogging is active income. Most people expect a blog to be updated every day, or every other day at worst. If a blog is updated only once a week, they don't feel as if they're getting their money's worth.

A blog can produce passive income also, of course. If you become an affiliate of google ad sense and Amazon (in my opinion, don't bother with Ebay!) people surfing hte web can come across a blog post you made years ago, and be attrached to one of these ads, which are always current. But most blogging inome will come from Kindle subscriptions.

Publishing E-books
The more quality books you publish, the more money you make. Isaac Asimov is an excellent example. For twenty years, as a science fiction and science writer, he produced over 200 books. None of them made the best seller lists, but in the aggregate they sold enough to make him a comfortable living from the royalties. (When he went back to science fiction after a decade's long absence, his new book, a Foundation novel, did hit the best seller's list, but that's a different issue entirely.)

Once you publish a book, it's true that's not enough. You need to publicize it as widely as possible, using email blasts, arranging author interviews and so.

Publishing Blogs
I publish several blogs, and truth to tell only a couple of them have any kind of web presence. 99% of my readership from the other blogs comes solely from subscribers via Amazon.

The keywords you choose when you initially put your blog on Amazon are therefore extremely important - it's the main way your blog will be found. (Another way is to ask for a review from my Kindle Blog Report.)

If someone subscribes to a blog via the Kindle, they receive a couple of pages to five pages of back posts. If the first post they see hasn't been updated for over a week, chances are they'll unsubscribe immediately.

In addition, be very careful what URL you use for your Kindle offering. If you have the type of blog that only shows a paragraph of text, and requires the reader to click on a "read more" button, there is a special URL you need to use for the Kindle, so that the complete article is fed over. Otherwise, the Kindle reader only gets that first paragraph, and is forced to go to the web to get the rest of the article, which typically they don't like to do. Or, even worse, the link might not even appear, and all they have is that first paragraph with no way at all to see the rest of the article.

Ask your blog provide which URL, or "feed" to use to ensure this doesn't happen.

Sacred Poet Press

As the owner of this blog, I'll be covering all aspects of writing and publishing, from a general standpoint. I'll also talk about my own publishing company -- Sacred Poet Press. The name comes from an essay written by Isaac Asimov, in which he makes the point that what people actually do doesn't come down to us through history...it's what writers write about what they do that does. Everyone needs a "sacred poet" to tell their story.

To date I've published one book - not written by me.



And I have a list of 20 books that I intend to write and publish myself. They are non-fiction books, on subjects that interest me. I am in the process of researching the first one, and hope to have it ready to go within another week or so.

Unfortunately, like writing, it's easier to "have researched" then to actually "research". But the internet makes things so much easier for the researcher than they used to be.

In this blog, I'll be covering all aspects, including the growth of my own publishing company, Sacred Poet Press. I won't share the history of each of my books until they've actually been published, as I don't want anyone to get the jump on me in that regard!

Help For Publishers Without A Kindle

If you've published a book on Kindle, but don't own a Kindle, so you can't see if it is formatted properly or if there are any typos hiding anywhere within its pages, drop me a line at Nocturne_CVS@yahoo.com and ask me to review your book in that regard. (So, it's not a book review, it's a formatting and typo review).

If you'd like to give this a try, email me at the address above and we can finalize details.

Manifesto

This blog is designed to help people who want to self-publish their work on Kindle - from blogs to books.

We'll discuss how to format media for the Kindle, and we'll discuss writing tips and tools as well.

Feel free to make comments and ask questions - this blog's for you.