Nate Hoffelder

It may have taken Amazon about eight years longer than it should have, but earlier this month Amazon added Arabic support to its digital publishing platform, KDP.

They sent out an email to authors on the 14th (I did not get it). According to the email and the relevant page on Amazon’s site, authors can sell an ebook in Arabic and earn a 70% royalty.

From the way the page is phrased, it appears authors can only get the 70% royalty if they agree to give Amazon exclusive sale rights to said Arabic ebook by putting it in Kindle Unlimited. Otherwise, authors would only get a 35% royalty.

I do not know for certain that Amazon has imposed that restriction, and I am waiting for clarification.  (Amazon imposes similar restrictions for ebooks sold in  Brazil, Japan, Mexico, and India.)

I can tell you, however, that according to one source on Twitter the Kindle itself has supported Arabic ebooks since at least March. He thought the font was "an outright crime against an entire culture".

ArabNews

Over on Wired David Piece asks the same slightly ridiculous question outside pundits ask every so often: why  Amazon has failed to change books as an art form as much as it has changed the book market.

If Amazon wanted to, it could with a single act bring a new form of book into being. That’s because Amazon has more or less vertically integrated the entire book industry within its walls, building a complete reading universe of its own making. Lots of authors now write books especially for Amazon, which readers find on Kindle Unlimited and Prime Reading, read on their phone and tablet, listen to through Audible or your Echo, and then talk about on Goodreads. Amazon has tools that help you write your book, format the manuscript, design the cover, file the right metadata, publish to the right places, and get paid the right amount. Want to make a comic book, a kids' book, or a textbook instead? Amazon can help there too.

Over the years Amazon has tried to experiment with form a bit, with the not-quite-book-length Kindle Singles and the periodically-delivered Kindle Serials. If you look carefully, there are even a few Choose Your Own Adventure-type books lurking in the store as well, but they’re third-rate romance and fantasy stories you’ve never heard of. And Amazon’s executives express an interest in continuing to push the medium forward in new and interesting ways.

But so far, Amazon’s contributions have stayed on the margins.

The thing is, Amazon has invented new-ish forms of books: The Kindle apps support audio and video embedded in an ebook, and last year Amazon also debuted the Kindle in Motion format.

So Amazon has invented the new format; it’s just that the new stuff never took off (judging by the many failed enhanced ebook startups, it is probably because consumers don’t want it).

The thing that many outsiders keep missing is that Amazon won the ebook market by giving consumers exactly the same stories they were already reading, only in a new package. Yes, Amazon invested huge sums in making the Kindle platform friction-free, but when you come down to it the content being delivered was the same as before – the only change was the medium it was delivered on.

And that is why it succeeded where previous attempts faltered. Amazon gave consumers the content they already wanted, only on a new medium that let readers carry hundred of books at a time.

And yet here we have David asking Amazon didn’t invent a new form of books.

Well, Amazon did, but even so just asking the question is slightly absurd. It is like if Apple had taken the music market from vinyl to Mp3s, only to be asked why they didn’t invent a new form of music which mixed in, I don’t know, tactile sensations.

I am not understating the case.

What David is really asking in his post is why Amazon, as a deliverer of an existing form of art, has failed to invent a new form of art.

The new form of books that David asks for aren’t the same art form as has been produced over the past millennia, and yet he wants to know why Amazon hasn’t invented them.

Do you see how ridiculous that sounds?

Amazon started sending out emails today to a select number of authors, inviting them to participate in a beta:

We invite you to take a special sneak peek at the beta of Amazon Author, the new Author Central experience.

Amazon Author offers a one-stop solution for personalizing your Amazon Author Profile, managing your books, and more around the world. Log in once and you’ll be able to update your Amazon Author Page in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, India and Japan with biographies in each language. With a new-and-improved site design, Amazon Author works beautifully on your smartphone and tablet as well as your computer.

During the beta period, you’ll still access some features, such as Sales Rank, U.S. Nielsen BookScan sales data, and Customer Reviews, via Author Central while we work on migrating each to Amazon Author.

According to reports on KBoards and Facebook,  the new author portal lets users easily edit the author page on each of Amazon’s websites, saving authors the bother of visiting each website one at a time.

The updates go live almost instantly, while the soon-to-be-replaced Author Central portal reportedly took 10 to 15 minutes.

Passwords are both the most discussed security measure and the least secure.

Motherboard reports that a study of passwords leaked over the past year show that many users are recycling the same bad passwords they have been using for years and years:

SplashData estimates that nearly 10 percent of people have used at least one of the 25 worst passwords on this year’s list, and almost 3 percent used the worst password, ‘123456’. ‘Password’ was the second most popular password.

Other numeric passwords that weren’t new to the list were ‘12345678’ in third place, ‘12345’ at number five, and ‘1234567’ in seventh place. But there were some new, more creative (or, you know, not) variations: ‘123456789’ (in sixth place), and ‘123123’ in 17th.

Additional repeat offenders include a handful of very obvious words: ‘qwerty,’ ‘football,’ ‘‘admin,’ ‘welcome,’ ‘login,’ ‘abc123,’ ‘dragon,’ ‘passw0rd,’ and ‘master.’ But there were some new passwords on the top 25 list this year, including ‘letmein,’ ‘iloveyou,’ ‘monkey,’ ‘starwars,’ ‘hello,’ ‘freedom,’ ‘whatever,’ ‘qazwsx’ (from the two left columns on a standard keyboard), and ‘trustno1.’ The new passwords replaced 2016’s ‘123456790,’ ‘princess,’ ‘1234,’ ‘solo,’ ‘121212,’ ‘flower,’ ‘sunshine,’ ‘hottie,’ ‘loveme,’ ‘zaq1zaq1,’ and ‘password1.’

Many people wrongly assume that adding a zero instead of the letter O will make their passwords more secure, but, as SplashData CEO Morgan Slain is quick to point out in a press release, “hackers know your tricks, and merely tweaking an easily guessable password does not make it secure.” Additionally, Slain points out that attackers are quick to use common pop culture terms to break into accounts online, in case you thought you were the only Star Wars fan.

I think part of the problem is that people have heard the password mantra so many times that they have tuned it out. Instead, as time went by and users had to set up accounts on more and more sites and had to invent (and remember) more and more passwords, they just stopped caring.

Rather than lecture everyone on choosing secure passwords, it would be more productive to push them to use a secure password manager which will solve the issue for them without bothering anyone.

That way they will be more secure, and yet won’t have to put any work into it.

That’s the best of both words, don’t you think?

P.S. The top 25 most common passwords of 2017 were:

1. 123456
2. Password
3. 12345678
4. qwerty
5. 12345
6. 123456789
7. letmein
8. 1234567
9. football
10. iloveyou
11. admin
12. welcome
13. monkey
14. login
15. abc123
16. starwars
17. 123123
18. dragon
19. passw0rd
20. master
21. hello
22. freedom
23. whatever
24. qazwsx
25. trustno1

image  by Worlds Direction

Amazon’s payout for Kindle Unlimited rose for the fourth straight month in November, and so did the funding pool.  Amazon paid out $19.8 million (up from $19.7 million in October 2017), plus bonuses, at 0.46288 cents per page.

• US: $0.0046 (USD)
• Germany: €0.0032 (EUR)
• UK: £0.0036 (GBP)
• Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy: €0.0046 (EUR)
• Canada: $0.0040 (CAD)
• Brazil: R$ 0.1120 (BRL)
• Japan: 0.5737 (JPY)
• Australia: $0.0040 (AUD)

P.S. Here’s a list of the monthly funding pools. It does not include the bonuses paid out each month.

• July 2014: $2.5 million (Kindle Unlimited launches early in the month)
• August 2014: $4.7 million
• September 2014: $5 million
• October 2014: $5.5 million
• November 2014: $6.5 million
• December 2014: $7.25 million
• January 2015 – $8.5 million
• February 2015: $8 million
• March 2015: $9.3 million
• April 2015: $9.8 million
• May 2015: $10.8 million
• June 2015: $11.3 million
• July 2015: $11.5 million
• August 2015: $11.8 million
• September 2015: $12 million
• October 2015: $12.4 million
• November 2015: $12.7 million
• December 2015: $13.5 million
• January 2016: $15 million
• February 2016: $14 million
• March 2016: $14.9 million
• April 2016: $14.9 million
• May 2016: $15.3 million
• June 2016: $15.4 million
• July 2016: $15.5 million
• August 2016: $15.8 million
• September 2016: $15.9 million
• October 2016: $16.2 million
• November 2016: $16.3 million
• December 2016: $16.8 million
• January 2017: : $17.8 million
• February 2017: : $16.8 million
• March 2017: $17.7 million
• April 2017: $17.8 million
• May 2017 :$17.9 million
• June 2017: $18 million
• July 2017: $19 million
• August 2017: $19.4 million
• September 2017: $19.5 million
• October 2017: $19.7 million
• November 2017: $19.8 million

Self-Publisher Bibel

image by Got Credit

Best-seller lists are easy to game, which is why the term has almost no real meaning other than as a marketing gimmick. Now Spiegel wants to cash in.

Starting after the first of the year, this weekly German news magazine is going to charge publishers for the use of its official logos. Spiegel is going to charge 250 euros per title for the use of logos in previews and advertisements, and another 250 euros for using the logo on a book cover. There is also a premium package "Spiegel Bestseller Platz 1", but customers only get the price on request.

They’re framing this in terms of standardizing their branding, telling Boersenblatt that "several dozen different variants of our bestseller logos were found in our own research," but this is clearly an attempt to monetize their brand. Spiegel thinks their list helps sell books, and they want their cut.

Publishers  have a different opinion, however. Several have already stated that they will not pay. For example, both Diogenes , one of Switzerland’s largest publishers, and Random House Germany have declined, and Bonnier Media has even gone so far as to question whether this is legal.

This is probably legal, but it is certainly not wise. By licensing the use of the logos, Spiegel is adding the appearance of a financial incentive. It has cast doubt on whether books made the Spiegel best-seller list in the future on their merits or because Spiegel wants to sell licenses.

That list had value to consumers because it was impartial. Now that publishers can buy the logos, can anyone really trust the list’s legitimacy?

Meedia, Boersenblatt

James Patterson has to keep finding new co-authors in order to continue publishing so many thrillers every year, but given the speed that AI is improving he may soon be able to do away with the need for collaborators.

Take Harry Potter, for example. A team of engineers at Botnik just published part of a Harry Potter fanfic that was written by an AI.

The story is only four-ish pages long, but if you didn’t know better you might think you were reading the work of a person:

The castle grounds snarled with a wave of magically magnified wind. The sky outside was a great black ceiling, which was full of blood. The only sounds drifting from Hagrid’s hut were the disdainful shrieks of his own furniture. Magic: it was something that Harry Potter thought was very good.

Leathery sheets of rain lashed at Harry’s ghost as he walked across the grounds towards the castle. Ron was standing there and doing a kind of frenzied tap dance. He saw Harry and immediately began to eat Hermione’s family.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve read worse commercially published fiction.

You can read more on the Botnik website, and once you’re done giggling you might want to check out the autocomplete bots that Botnik made.

Botnik has uploaded a couple (one, two) of the "predictive keyboards" they used to write the fanfic. The bots work a lot like the autocomplete on your phone, and will suggest ways to complete what ever sentence you type in.

They’re a lot of fun to play with, but you might have to wait; Botnik’s servers are struggling with the load.

O O O

As a matter of fact, this is at least the second AI-authored Harry Potter fanfic. The last one was revealed in July, and was developed by a researcher by the name of Janelle Shane.

Shane worked from fanfic rather than the original novels, so like the source material her bots tended towards shipping Harry Potter characters rather than telling a longer story. Here’s a sample of the output:

The Perfect Party by iamisaac
Draco has been left alone, and Ginny confused must learn and who has his best friend. They were breathed by a love that didn’t become his grounds and the flowers begin.

As Shane explained, "Those familiar with Harry Potter fan fiction will not be surprised to learn that the neural network really likes to generate ships; pretty much every combination of characters is represented (some of the more unusual combinations being 'The Snow/Voldemort', 'The Ministry/Draco Malfoy', and 'Voldemort/Random Quidditch Child')."

Which do you think is better, Botnik’s story or Shane’s shipping bots?

Any system that is important enough to be measured is going to be gamed by cheaters, and Amazon’s reviews section is no exception to that rule.

Amazon has fought back by suing over fake reviews, deleting reviews where the buyer appeared to have a relationship with the author,  filing for arbitration against scammers, and putting a cap on the number of reviews you can post without buying the product.

Now Amazon has revised its reviews policy yet again, this time to target scammers who open new Amazon accounts just to post a review.

To contribute to Customer Reviews or Customer Answers, Spark, or to follow other contributors, you must have spent at least $50 on Amazon.com using a valid credit or debit card. Prime subscriptions and promotional discounts don’t qualify towards the $50 minimum.

It’s good to see Amazon continue to fight scammers, but I don’t know that this will have much impact. After all, a scammer can always buy the products they were hired to review and then charge their clients for a verified review.

This is basically a game of whack-a-mole, but fortunately, this time around authors won’t get caught up in Amazon’s fight against scammers.

For the longest time now B&N has been annoying their few remaining loyal customers by charging a higher price in store than on their website. This negated most of the value in buying a book in a bookstore (hence the ever declining same-store sales ).

B&N has not removed that policy, but they have revised it. A source told me, and I have confirmed with the B&N store in Manassas, that starting today B&N is matching the prices on its website for purchases made in store.

This is not an advertised sale, so there won’t be any signs or emails. But I was told that it is only available to B&N club members when they request it, and that this special will only run through the tenth of December.

So if you are one of the hundreds of remaining B&N club members (membership costs $25 a year), now is a good time to go shopping.

Coincidentally, Amazon has a very similar policy in its bookstores; Prime members get to pay the online price when shopping in an Amazon Books, while everyone else pays list.

Amazon is using this to promote its $99 membership program, but it’s not clear what motivates B&N. If Barnes & Noble were really interested in boosting sales then they would have done this ten years ago.

Goodreads is about to launch a new service where authors can give away ebooks – but there is a fee, of course.

From the GR blog:

Today, we’re announcing our new U.S. giveaways program, with two packages offering new high-impact features to drive increased book discovery and reader reviews. The new program is designed to deliver additional marketing benefits that authors and publishers have been asking for, including more ways to reach the author’s readers, and automatically adding the book to the Want-to-Read lists of anyone entering the giveaway. And for the first time, Kindle Direct Publishing authors can run giveaways for Kindle ebooks—a feature previously only available to traditional publishers. All of these benefits are included in the Standard package which costs $119 for up to 100 copies (either Kindle ebook or print book). The new Goodreads Giveaways program, which replaces our current Giveaways program, will go live on January 9, 2018, and will initially be for giveaways open to U.S. residents.

We’re also introducing a Premium package, offering special “Featured” placement on the highly-trafficked Giveaways page, as well as all the benefits of the Standard Package. The Premium package is $599 and is available for either print books or Kindle ebooks.
To celebrate the new Giveaways program, we’ll be offering special introductory pricing of $59 (save 50%) for all Standard giveaways and $299 (save 50%) for all Premium giveaways created between January 9, 2018, and January 31, 2018.

Goodreads had initially launched this program last May, but it was restricted to publishers. The terms were essentially the same, though.

It is SOP in 2017 for authors to buy space in a BookBub or other sales promotion email so they can boost their ebook sales, but given how Amazon is letting its bots run amok authors might want to reconsider.

There are numerous reports on KBoards from authors who have had an ebook "rank-stripped" within minutes of a BookBub promotion email arriving in readers inboxes.

For example:

Our VEIL KNIGHTS series promo got rank stripped on a 99c BB promo just a few weeks back.

and

Welp, I had a bookbub today for a 3 year old permafree wide book. I was at maybe #475 in the free store at the start of the day, before the email went out. I’m already rank stripped. Fingers crossed that my ranking is restored.

and

I have a Bookbub today. I was at #4 free. This is the only time really that I check ranking.

Well, the ranking is gone.

Thanks, Amazon.

The problem is automation run amok.

Amazon’s bots can’t tell the difference between an author running a legitimate promotion and a scammer who is gaming the system. As a result, Amazon is punishing authors for the crime of promoting their books.

Edit: "Rank-stripping" is the term for when a book is removed from the best-seller lists. This hurts the author by reducing their visibility, and thus costing them sales.

Some books are only punished for a few hours, but not all, and to make matters worse, Amazon waits a week before telling authors they’ve been punished for using BookBub.

If your rank isn’t returned in a couple of hours and it’s really strip-stripped, the 'naughty' mail won’t come for another WEEK. Unless you’re proactive. Then they’ll send you boilerplate naughtiness in reply.

I contacted Amazon before starting this post, and have not received a response.

Some have tried to justify the punishments by saying that Amazon doesn’t want sales spikes, but that makes no sense given that Amazon has a competing email promo service run by Goodreads. (Curiously, there are no reports of a Goodreads-promoted title being de-ranked.)

While Amazon might not have intended to punish authors who use BookBub, that is the result of the system Amazon built. And frankly, it is an inevitable result given that Amazon is a firm believer that they should never hire a person if a bot can fill the role.

Obviously that concept just is not working, but there is little chance of Amazon responding to the fundamental problem and hiring more people to run the Kindle Store.

Edit: Amazon has responded:

Amazon monitors a variety of activities to detect efforts to manipulate sales rankings. While we don’t disclose the methods we use to detect this type of abuse, our focus is on suspicious activity, not any particular promotional program that publishers and authors may use. As always publishers and authors are responsible for any third-party marketing activities used to promote their books, and so are strongly encouraged to make sure these activities don’t manipulate our services. If a publisher or author believes there has been an error, they should contact us directly and we will investigate.

image by Micah Sittig

Publisher trade revenues decreased 11.7% in July, bringing down revenues for the year. eBook revenues  were down 5% and ,paperback revenues fell 1.7%, while revenues from hardback sales increased 2%. Downloadable audiobooks revenues were of course up.

As much as I would like to mock MSM and declare "print is dead", the most likely cause is the 2016 election cycle. July 2016 marked the beginning of the final phase of the campaign, and that could have caused an uptick in nonfiction sales as people read more about the topics of the day and a an increase in fiction sales as people tried to avoid the topics of the day.

Press release:

After several months of increases, publishers’ revenues (sales to bookstores, wholesalers, direct to consumer, online retailers, etc.) declined by 11.7% in July 2017 compared to July 2016. Revenues for Jan. – July 2017 were relatively flat, up by 0.2%, according to the most recent StatShot data from the Association of American Publishers. Tracked categories include: Trade – fiction/non-fiction/religious, PreK-12 Instructional Materials, Higher Education Course Materials, Professional Publishing, and University Presses.

Revenues for trade books (fiction/non-fiction/religious) declined in July, and were flat (down 0.3%) for the year-to-date, compared to the same periods in 2016. The only category to see growth in July 2017 was Religious Presses, which saw a 4.4% revenue increase in July 2017 compared to July 2016; despite that growth, the category remains down year to date. The only format that saw growth in July was downloaded audio, which saw 23.8% revenue growth compared to July 2016.

Total Trade Net Revenue by Category (in millions)*

Trade Book Formats

Despite the overall revenue decline in trade, downloaded audio had another strong month with revenues up 23.8% in July 2017 compared to July 2016. Revenues for eBook and most print book formats declined, the exception being children’s board books which saw revenues increases of 2.6% in July.

Total Trade Net Revenue by Format (in millions)*

Education and Scholarly Publishing

Higher Education and PreK-12 publishers saw revenues decline during July, down 10.7% and 8.0% respectively compared to the prior year. From Jan. to July 2017, Higher Education saw slight 1.6% revenue growth and PreK-12 was flat at 0.1% growth.

Professional Books declined by 6.2% and University Presses were flat at 0.2% in July 2017 compared to 2016.

image by Got Credit