It’s all how you look at it, right? If you have the type of zombie that sits around all day and moans, then you might just may have found a good listener.
Category: books
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Web site gods
Cartoon of a nerdy guy next to an old PC. The caption says, “Ernie was the Greek god of web pages.”
It feels romantic whenever you take something modern and bring some mythology to it. That’s why I have always loved comic books. It takes the mythology of old and brings it into the modern age. The most obvious example is Thor, the Norse god of thunder and lightning. Then there’s The Flash. That guy is Mercury, the Roman god, in tights.
I have admired web coders and designer for quite some time. I drew this cartoon as part of a book entitled “The New Riders Yellow Pages.” At the time I drew this, The Internet had taken over the public. The web bubble had not burst yet. web designers and coders were almost looked at as gods, even if their name was Ernie!
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ICRS First Impressions
Before I begin, I must note that these are my personal opinions, not those of my employer.
The last two days have been a flurry of activity in preparing for the International Christian Retail Show. I haven’t been to one as an exhibitor for a while and I almost forgot the work and energy that goes into making something like this a reality.
One noticeable difference from ten years ago are the flood of flat-screen TV’s and monitors that are in each booth. Screens are so lightweight now, you can add them practically anywhere in a booth. Of course, that means a book trailer isn’t as impactful at one of these shows as they used to be. Now hundreds of TV screens will be competing for attention!
One thing I also almost forgot is the amount of work that goes into these shows. As an author, I’ve heard the many complaints about publishers not putting enough marketing effort into their books. But when you’re on the other end, you realize it takes an enormous amount of time and money to be at one of these shows.
This reminds me as an author to consider how much work an editor or marketer has to do to make any book get noticed. It takes creativity, elbow grease and a lot of vacuuming to even be noticed at a book expo. (The dust in a convention hall is incredible! There is also no heat or air-conditioning until the exhibits are fully installed. Eek!)
So if you get a chance, you may want to thank your publisher when they go to one of these expos. It may ease their sore muscles from toting those flat-screen TV’s, building and tearing down their area, and smiling for twelve-hours on end. Seriously, I never knew you could pull a muscle from smiling. It can be done!
What can I say? Pictures make a book more interesting. And I bet you agree with me too. It’s sad that society reasons you must have nothing but text on a page. Don’t get me wrong. Book design is an art unto itself and takes a lot of work to make it look perfect. But still, books without pictures have always looked boring and inaccessible.
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Pricing in an Ebook age
I read an article from Digital Book World this morning about recent price reductions in Harper Collins ebooks and the seemingly little effect it had on sales. Thanks to the Department of Justice ruling (United States), Amazon and other ebook sellers were able to discount ebook prices. The article by Jeremy Greenfield had this interesting quote:
If an ebook’s price is lowered from $10 to $8, for example, it needs to sell about 25% more copies to maintain the same level of revenue. I didn’t observe any sales rank bumps that would indicate a 25% bump in sales.
My conclusion from the article is that it doesn’t appear price is a major factor in a buyer’s decision. Of course, there will always be readers that will gravitate towards the free ebooks. But a two dollar difference in an ebook doesn’t seem to encourage or discourage sales.
So the question I have is this: Why discount ebooks if you are not going to make up the amount in increased sales?
Are we witnessing a paradigm shift in book discounting?