Tag Archives: kindle

(Re)Making Love: A Sex After Sixty Story

Kelly Abbott | July 16, 2010 - 7:53 am

Because I know you care, here’s the backstory.

(Re)Making Love: A Sex After Sixty Story

A while back we decided to dip our toes into the ePublishing business. It came first with the offer to help Gina publish her book, The Complete Guide to Google Wave, in as open and free-as-in-freedom way as possible. As it were, Gina wanted help turning the page on the traditional publishing model. Who are we to blow against the wind?

But Gina’s is a tech book. I come from creative writing stock. Indeed, Jon and Trish are avid readers of fiction and non-fiction as well. So in our collective affinity for the humanities I reached out to see if there would be any writers interested in turning the page on traditional publishing outside of the tech world.

And then came Mary.

Mary L. Tabor is by all counts free. Free-thinking, free-loving, free-wheeling. Free. She’s a graduate of The Ohio State University’s Creative Writing Program (my alma mater as well) and having shucked a past life behind the corporate veil, she’s now proudly living in the ivory tower of creativity. As the title of her book would suggest, she’s older than we are, but challenges us in her youthful understanding of the world. And by youthful, I don’t mean naive. I mean un-blemished. I mean optimistic. I mean joyful and carefree and without pretense or fear. Mary is a breath of fresh air.

Here’s my blurb for the book:

Mary has written a memoir of the highest quality. Her experiences and the way she brings them to us remind us why we bother to read in the first place: empathy is better than callousness, trust more rewarding than cynicism, adventure food for the soul.

A few months ago I was going through the process of helping edit Mary’s memoir and it suddenly occurred to me how important her work was. If you buy the book (and I really hope you do) you’ll see straight away how strange a thing this eBook is. It is, by all counts, a book written in the current times. You’ll be struck at how current the events surrounding her life feel because they didn’t happen too long ago. You’ll be struck at how intimate the memoir can be when it’s raw and recent and un-filtered. And you’ll also be struck at how candid Mary is with her life because, as I mention in her blurb, she has the voice of an adventurer who believes with every gray and flowing hair on her sixty-plus head that there is no fourth wall for empathy. That we are publishing an eBook with her name on it is really the whole point. The medium allows for this kind of recency and intimacy. You should see for yourself.

(Re)Making Love: A Sex After Sixty Story

Available on Kindle, iPad, Sony eReader, PDF, Print, and more.

Posted in on publishing, our books | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The eBook vs. Print Book Numbers

Kelly Abbott | April 26, 2010 - 12:21 pm

Ken Auletta in last week’s New Yorker covers the growing dilemma publishers have in migrating their business models toward the inevitable (eBooks) and away from the past (print books). It outlines how the iPad helped publisher put greater demands on Amazon. It also details (in words) some interesting data about the publishing industry. Being interested in this world from both an eBook entrepreneur and a consumer, I thought I’d throw together some pie charts to help tell the story visually.

When a book sells, how much is left over for the publisher?

Of the print book's retail sale price, who gets what?

Of the eBook's sale price, who gets what?

What percentage of print books get returned to the publisher?

How large are the print and eBooks markets, comparitively?

Sad, but true.

Of eBooks sold, how many we purchased from Amazon?

If we include the iPhone as an eReader, who's got the most popular device?

Who's got the most popular device?

What percentage of all book sales go to the largest six publishers?

The big six publishers are:

  • Random House
  • Macmillan
  • Simon & Schuster
  • HarperCollins
  • Penguin
  • Hachette

Random House is the only publisher on this list to not have signed the 1-year agreement to sell books on Apple’s iBooks store.

Posted in on publishing | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

How Do I Get My Book Published on Amazon.com?

Kelly Abbott | April 5, 2010 - 8:32 am

This is a short, quick post about how to get your book published independently on Amazon.com. Amazon does a poor job of explaining this and in my research there did not seem to be a consensus answer for this one simple question:

How do I get my book published on Amazon.com?

There are three ways.

  1. Createspace
  2. Digital Text Platform
  3. Advantage

Here are their key differences:

Createspace is the “atoms and bits” solution to getting your creative works for sale on Amazon.com. Caters to books, music and film.

Digital Text Platform is the Kindle channel only. If you want your book on the Kindle and that’s all you care about, use DTP.

Amazon Advantage is the place where a publisher would go to selling and distributing their physical books on Amazon.com – you can ship from your own warehouse and ship them a palette of books to ship for you.

In all solutions, you as the publisher set the price, but Amazon takes 45% of the retail price.

Posted in lessons learned in the trenches, on publishing | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

iWant Relief

Kelly Abbott | January 28, 2010 - 9:28 am

I want 3 iPads. One each for me and my wife – to use a Kindle-like device. And one for my son, who’s two years old, to use as an ebook reader/portable video player/personal gaming device. Say what you want about parenting with high-tech – the kid is going to be a hacker by the time he’s four whether we try or not. Still, I worry the iPad it’s not rugged enough for him – as he’s prone to destroying anything that’s not nailed, wedged, or firmly fixed in place. In the battle between his CAT earth mover and the iPad… Let’s just say the winner will be wearing Carharts.

For me and my wife, I worry that we’ll get into the habit of buying our books in the iBookstore only to not be able to take our books to the beach. Living in San Diego, this is a more practical lament than a fleeting one. We have a pile of magazines and newspapers we gratefully read and then recycle. The books we keep. I’ll miss filling my shelves with spoils from trips to the used bookstore.

Talking with a colleague this morning, he asked me if I would buy an iPad. I told him yes, for sure, at least one. After that, I’m not so sure.

“Why?” he asked.

Inner monologue: To have at home. It’s a fun device. I can imagine using more apps, reading books, and not having to fire up the laptop to surf the web. I’ll have to test it with David to see if he’s ready for one. But I think he’d love it too for the movies.

But when it comes down to it, I just said, “I really just wanted a better Kindle.”

I don’t own a Kindle. I’ve wanted to own a Kindle. But I couldn’t get past the form factor. What a drag to use, I thought. I’m the guy waiting for Apple to make eBook readers fun and more than just a reader. Yeah, that’s me.

“So you’ll spend $500 for the iPad but you won’t spend $250 for a Kindle?”

Guilty as charged. I won’t pay a penny for something that I don’t want. But if you show me something I want, I can be relieved of much more.

Posted in product reviews, the internet as we see it | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Complete Guide to Google Wave – the eBook published by 3ones

Kelly Abbott | November 17, 2009 - 4:52 pm
Book Cover

Book Cover

With much pride in our work, we announce the arrival of our first published eBook, the Complete Guide to Google Wave, by Gina Trapani with Adam Pash. It’s the first book published about Google Wave. The book is also free to share. Free as in freedom. Free as in, download, share, copy, recycle, re-mix and re-factor. It’s  yours, yours, yours, and yours. You’re all welcome.

Published the Wiki Way

The guide went live a few weeks ago as a wiki first. Gina and Adam continue to write it and edit it. Which is to say, it’s no longer just a book but a truly collaborative book that exists online. If you buy a PDF copy, download it to your kindle or desktop and enjoy. If someone loans you a copy, do the same. But remember…

Credits:

If you think our work was valuable, show it by contributing to the wiki, buying the eBook, or both.

Watch this Space

We’ll be using our site to tell the complete story behind the Complete Guide to Google Wave. We have planned releasing four editions over the next twelve months. As we explore the economics of this open publishing model during that time we’ll share our insights into the business of book publishing in the eBook/Wiki era.

Enjoy!

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Kindle and the future of reading : The New Yorker

Kelly Abbott | September 22, 2009 - 12:47 pm

It takes me about a month to read any given edition of the New Yorker. Given that it’s a weekly periodical, there is no satisfaction in “completing” an issue. Instead of turning the final page and throwing it in the recycle bin, I find them stacking in the nooks of my house and work wherever they happen to be when I finish a particular passage. While there are a few parts of each new yorker I don’t particularly care for (original short fiction, for example) I find myself engrossed in just about everything the editors there have for me to ponder. Unlike Wired Magazine, which is so closely related to the work we do at 3ones, The New Yorker is a respite from the daily grind here and, as such, rarely reminds me of what I should be doing with my time other than enjoying a really good, relaxing read. That is, until today. I stumbled upon a month-old article on the Kindle. It’s a critique of sorts on the trajectory of word-loving. But more than that, it’s a researched treatise on modern day product development. It has insights for geeks and PM’s alike. And it proves an excellent touchstone for product developers who want to change, break from, and/or revolutionize time-honored traditions. I won’t spoil the article by telling you its conclusion. It rewards the effort of diving in and not coming up until you’re done. But I will say this:

There’s a fine line between loving and killing a thing.

Enjoy Kindle and the future of reading.

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