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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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