Here’s something new I learned at the Computers in Libraries conference this week.

Google may claim to have indexed a million or more results for the term you’re searching for, but they can’t actually show you more than a tiny fraction of the results. Gary Price, founder and publisher of InfoDocket, told me that Google now limits the actual number of search results it shows you to anywhere between 300 and 400.

I’ve tested it, and he’s right. My searches petered out after the 330th, 349th, and 307th result. The other million or so search results that Google claimed to have found may as well never have existed.

It appears this state of affairs has existed since August 2016, but this is the first I have heard about it. I’ve rarely gotten as high as the 150th result before, much less 300.  Usually I give up by the third page and instead refined my search terms to narrow the search.

How about you? Do you think we’re missing out on hidden gems?

When Amazon launched the new entry-level Kindle (2019) a couple weeks ago, the press release mentioned that the new device would let you sort your library by read and unread ebooks (this is a feature that Kobo already had years ago).

I think that feature has started to arrive on older Kindle models.

I just read over on MobileRead that Amazon has released a new firmware update for the Kindle Paperwhite (2018). The firmware version number is 5.11.1, and the firmware has only been released for the waterproof Kindle Paperwhite. A quick check has not turned up firmware updates for any other model (at least, not by the time I published this post).

Since I don’t have the waterproof Paperwhite, I can’t tell you what features were added. But here’s what Amazon said in the press release:

The all-new Kindle helps you go beyond a book with Amazon’s newest reading features. Now, when you finish a book, it will automatically be marked as read in your library and synced across your reading devices including Kindle, Fire tablet, and the free Kindle apps for iOS and Android. With just a few taps, you can filter to see which books you’ve read and which you haven’t, so organizing your library has never been easier.

Additionally, last year, we introduced a new home experience making it easier to find your next great read. We’re continuing to add to the experience and now you will find more recommendations based on your reading history, including new and trending titles in Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle Store.

These features will be delivered as a free, over-the-air update to the all-new Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite Gen 6 (released in 2013), and newer devices in the coming months.

If you install the update, please do let me know what changed. Thanks!

Amazon

The tail end of Apple’s launch event for its new Apple TV Plus! service included an announcement that might be of interest to readers.

It seems the partnership that Apple and Oprah announced last June is bearing fruit. Oprah revealed that she will be producing two documentaries for Apple’s streaming service, and starting a new book club. The first documentary is called Toxic Labor about workplace harassment, and a second will be a multi-part series focusing on mental health.

Oprah also said that she will  be using Apple TV Plus! for “building the biggest, most vibrant, most stimulating book club on the planet… I want to literally convene a meeting of the minds connecting us through books.”

We don’t know when the book club will launch on Apple TV Plus!, but she did mention plans to host live streams with authors directly on the platform.  “There has never been a moment quite like this one,” Oprah said during the announcement. “We have this unique opportunity to rise to our best selves in how we use and choose to use both our technology and our humanity.”

Apple TV Plus! is expected to launch some time this fall as a monthly subscription. The price has nt been revealed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=A-j8QaoTeWU

CNN, image byDavid Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Remember how InstaFreebie re-branded last year as Prolific Works with the apparent goal of launching new services?

That has so far proven to be a nothing burger, but Prolific Works' competitor BookFunnel has been considerably more active. On Friday BookFunnel announced that authors can now add buy buttons to their landing pages:

Build a sales landing page and point readers to your direct sales link, to a reader’s favorite bookstore, or to both! You tell us where your book can be purchased, and we’ll take care of the rest. Quick and painless.

And, as with all things BookFunnel, you control all of the messaging on your book page. …

Want a sales page that features your entire series? A “series page”, if you will? Build a private book bundle offering your free reader magnet (usually the first book in your series or prequel) and also the links to buy the rest of the series in bookstores. And now the reason for adding cool layouts way back in 2017 is revealed! Muah-ha-ha…

Speaking as someone who only just started using FB pixels on landing pages a couple months ago, this is a pretty cool idea. It’s also an idea that would be fairly easy to copy and use with other landing pages services (although you may need more coding skills).

I was just looking at my newsletter landing page, which is hosted by Mailerlite, and I can see how easy it would be to add an an upsell section that included text and a buy button that lead to Gumroad. (I would be selling non-fiction, so I’d sell a PDF through Gumroad, but fiction authors might want to link to Kindle.)

That reminds me, I really need to go remake my landing page; while it is effective (30% conversion is nothing to sneeze at) it’s not as pretty as the stock templates.

BTW, when was the last time you worked over your landing pages?

Since 2015 Blasty has been offering an anti-piracy service where they automatically scanned the web for pirated copies of an author’s work and gave authors the option of automatically sending DMCA notices with a single click.

Edit: To clarify, Blasty submits DMCA notices to Google to get allegedly pirated content de-listed from Google’s search results. They use this route to respond to piracy because you can’t always get a pirate site to actually remove the content, and making it unfindable in Google is the next best thing.

That all changed last week when the service inexplicably went silent.  The site went down, and no one was answering emails. The only part of Blasty that seemed to be working was the payment processing, which is a problem because there was no way to disable an automated payment and we had no way to tell whether service would be restored. There were even authors talking on Facebook about canceling their debit cards in order to stop the payments.

Now that the website has been restored, they will have the option of canceling their service. Since we currently have no word as to whether Blasty is still scanning for pirated content, they might be wise to do so.

I reached out to Blasty for comment, but have received no response.

Overdrive announced on Tuesday that it is partnering with the German digital distribution service provider Libreka to bring its ebook and digital audiobook catalog to public libraries in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Libreka is one of the largest distributors in Germany representing over 40,000 publishers and more than 1,000 domestic and international trading partners. This news was announced during Library Congress and Book Fair in Leipzig.

“We are pleased for the opportunity to combine Libreka’s market experience and expertise with the power of OverDrive’s platform and digital book knowledge of our global team,” said Claudia Weissman, Vice President, Global Library & Education at OverDrive. “With their established presence in the DACH region, Libreka brings a unique and valuable understanding of the ebook market as well as a strength in serving customers.”

For those who are about to head to Google, "DACH" is the term given to part of Europe consisting of German-speaking countries (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland). It is an acronym that consists of 3 country names (Deutschland, Austria, and Confoederatio Helvetica) in 3 different languages (German, English, and Latin).

OverDrive’s partnership with Libreka offers many advantages for public libraries and publishers in the DACH region. Established in 2006, Libreka has gained technical knowledge of the ebook industry and the DACH area which together will enable them to deliver quality service for OverDrive’s library customers. Libreka’s experience with publishers and deep knowledge of German-language content will also serve customers well.

image by fdecomite via Flickr

The reader analytics firm JellyBooks has quietly launched a new cloud Reader app for the web browser. It is based on Readium 2, I am told, and supports English, German, and French, with Spanish coming soon.

Jelly Books' app builds on the work put into the NYPL’s SimplyE app which launched in 2016, and if you would like to try it, here is the full-featured German version. Here’s a public domain title in English which doesn’t have all the features yet (just a matter of a few more weeks, I’m told).

JellyBooks offers what is essentially a focus-group service for publishers. It provides readers with free ebooks in exchange for collecting data about their reading habits.  (This is the same data that Amazon, Kobo, and the other ebook platforms collect but do not share.)

Apple disappointed analysts in their recent quarterly report, and today they responded in their usual fashion.

They launched a new tablet model.

The new iPad Air is a 10.5″ tablet that falls somewhere between the cheaper iPad and the iPad Pro. It’s powered by one of Apple’s A12 Bionic CPUs, making it more powerful than the iPad with its A10 chip but still a step down from the iPad Pro. The new iPad Air also has 8MP and 7MP cameras (compared to the 8MP and 1.2MP cameras on the iPad) and generally better specs than the iPad, including optional support for an Apple Smart Keyboard.

The new iPad Air is listed for pre-order at $499, about $170 more than the current iPad.  It should be in stores next week.

All in all, the hardware goes a long way to justify the extra cost, but I’m still not sure the iPad Air is worth it. This tablet runs iOS, which is still only about half an OS compared to Windows or Android. You can get a powerful Windows tablet for under $500, and then use the OS to do four or five times as much as you could with the iPad Air. (And that’s not just me, but also what I hear from Apple fanboys on Twitter.)

iPad Air (2019) specs

• Screen: 10.5″ LED display (2224 x 1668)
• CPU: Apple A12 Bionic
• Storage: 64GB to 256GB
• Camera: 8MP (rear), 7MP (front)
• Connectivity: Wifi, BT, optional 4G
• Security: Touch ID/fingerprint sensor
• Battery: 30.2 Watt-hour
• Dimensions: 9.8″ x 6.8″ x 0.24″
• Weight: 456 grams

The Association of American Publishers reported Thursday that publisher reported revenue fell in  the first month of 2019. Combined revenue for trade (consumer) books was $543.8 million in January 2019, down 3.2% from January 2018. The adult books category fell to $352.5 million, down 7.3%, while kids/YA rose 4.3%, to $131.8 million, and religious presses rose 8.1%, to $53.8.

By format, revenue from sales of hardback books fell 7.8%, to $185.3 million, while paperback sales fell 5.7%, to $190.5 million. And ebook sales were down from last year, of course. They totaled $79.7 million.

press release:

In January 2019, publisher revenue for trade (consumer) books was $543.8 million, down -3.2% from January 2018, according to the Association of American Publishers StatShot Monthly report. Among the three trade book categories, increased revenue for Religious Presses (8.1%) and Children’s/Young Adult (4.3%) in January 2019, partially offset a decline in Adult Books (­-7.3%) for the same period in 2018. Revenue for trade books includes sales to bookstores, wholesalers, direct to consumer, online retailers, etc.

Overall participating publisher revenue was $1.06 billion in January 2019, down from $1.11 billion in 2018 (-3.8%) for all tracked categories (Trade, PreK-12 Instructional Materials, Higher Education Course Materials, Professional Publishing and University Presses).

Trade Publishing

January Trade Book Revenue (in millions)

The decline in Adult Books was largely due to a decline in revenue from hardback books. However, within Religious Presses, revenue for hardback books increased 19.0% from the prior year, while revenue for paperback books and eBooks declined. The Children’s and Young Adult category had increases in hardback, paperback, and board books in January 2019, accompanied by a decline in eBooks for the same period.

Downloaded audio remains the format with the highest percent revenue growth (36.1%), with double-digit increases in each of the three trade categories. eBook revenue continues to decline from prior years, down -4.9% in January 2019 from the same period in 2018.

January Trade Revenue by Format (in millions)

Education and Scholarly Publishing

Revenues for participating education and scholarly publishers declined in all categories (Higher Education, PreK-12 Instructional Materials, Professional Books and University Presses) for January 2019 as compared to 2018.

January Education and Scholarly Publishing (in millions)

Publisher net revenue is tracked monthly by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and includes revenue from about 1,375 publishers, with participation subject to change over time. The StatShot Annual, Higher Education Annual, and PreK-12 Annual reports for 2017 are available for purchase; additional information about them can be found here.

image by gidlark via Flickr

So as you may know, I used KDP to list a couple of my workbooks in the Kindle Store last fall. I wasn’t expecting to sell a lot, and I really saw the effort as background research that would enable me to help clients. (Plus, having my workbooks in the Kindle Store meant I could also set up an author page on Amazon.com).

That investment has borne unexpected fruit.

I just got an email from Amazon informing me that the retailer has added a new section to KDP called the eBook Quality Dashboard.  This is where Amazon will communicate any formatting issues. complaints, or errors reported by users.

I can’t see that page right now (neither of my workbooks have problems ATM) but I get the impression from the related help page that the EQD is intended to make it easier for those who have dozens or hundreds of titles in KDP to respond to multiple bug reports. The EQD will let users sort and filter the reported issues by attributes like:

• Title
• Author
• Status (e.g., suppressed, warning)
• Issue type (e.g., eBook content, metadata)

Users can then respond to an issue by clicking one of three buttons: "Cannot fix", "I will fix", and "Not an issue". The process for fixing an issue is of course the same as before; depending on the issue. a user will either have to upload new content or change a book’s metadata.

I have attached the email below.

Did you get it? What do you think of the new EQD?

Email

Hello,

As a valued KDP publisher, we’re including you in an invite-only release of our new eBook Quality Dashboard. Starting today, this dashboard is the way we’ll communicate alerts about your eBooks' quality issues.

What’s new:

• If you have quality issues to review, you’ll see a yellow bar with a link to the Dashboard at the top of your KDP Bookshelf.
• On your Dashboard, you can see all issues for all your titles and fix them.
• For any new suppression or quality warnings, we’ll send you an alert email as soon as possible.
• Every Monday you’ll receive a weekly notification email for any open quality issues, and will no longer have to manage individual emails for each eBook.

What’s not changing for you:

• The information we provide to understand and locate quality issues.
• The options to resolve each issue.
• You can still contact KDP Customer Support for any questions or to follow-up on an open issue.

To learn more about the eBook Quality Dashboard, check our Help page:

https://kdp.amazon.com/help/topic/GWCUU33VBJHFSRYN

Please contact KDP Customer Support to provide feedback or ask questions.

Best,

Kindle Direct Publishing

I was hoping to present at the Writer’s Digest Conference in NYC this August, but now it looks like the conference could be canceled.

Forbes reports that F+W Media filed for bankruptcy last week.

F+W Media, facing near-term liquidity issues with only about $2.5 million in cash available and $105.2 million in outstanding debt, yesterday filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy code, citing in various documents a perfect storm of secular industry decline, poor investments, and even mismanagement.

The New York-based company, one of the country’s largest publishers of specialty and enthusiast media, said it plans to sell its businesses while continuing to operate, in order to "maximize the value of their estates for the benefit of all their stakeholders."

F+W Media also launched and ran the Digital Book World Conference for 8 years between 2010 and 2017. The conference was shut down following a drastic decline in attendance in 2017, and was later sold off.

Other assets were also sold during that period, including a knife show, a quilting e-commerce business, and others, but neither the sell off nor a reorganization could stem the bleeding. F+W was unfortunately still mostly a publisher of special interest magazines, and like many it saw both its ad revenue and subscriber count shrink over the past decade. Subscribers left because they could find similar content elsewhere (Youtube, forums, niche interest sites) and of course advertisers flocked to Google and Facebook.

F+W now owes money to just about everyone. The filings show that it owes somewhere between $100 million to $500 million to an estimated 1,000 to 5,000 creditors.

In comparison, its assets were estimated at $50 million to $100 million.

Basically at this point the company is dead, and the only thing left is to sell parts of the corpse in the hopes that the parts can live on.

image by mikecogh via Flickr

When Amazon opened its first pop-up store in 2013, one might have assumed from the name that the stores would be temporary. That didn’t prove the case in the long run, with some of the stores remaining in the same location for four years or more (the one closest to me has been there for a couple years).

But all things do come to an end at some point, and that includes Amazon’s stores.Amazon has told me that they are closing all 87 pop-up stores:

Across our Amazon network, we regularly evaluate our businesses to ensure we’re making thoughtful decisions around how we can best serve our customers. After much review, we came to the decision to discontinue our pop-up kiosk program, and are instead expanding Amazon Books and Amazon 4-star, where we provide a more comprehensive customer experience and broader selection. We look forward to opening additional locations of both stores this year. We are excited to introduce even more customers to these in store shopping experiences where they can discover highly rated books, toys, games, home and kitchen goods, electronics, Amazon devices and more.

The stores typically occupy a few hundred square feet of space in high-end shopping malls, and showcase Amazon’s gadgetry such as the Echo, Kindle, and Kindle Fire. All locations are expected to close by the end of April.

Bookbub has launched a new deals service  to sell publisher audiobooks. On Tuesday they announced they had partnered with Findaway to launch Chirp, a site where you can buy discounted audiobooks.

The deals featured on Chirp are supplied by authors and publishers and curated by the same team of BookBub editors behind our ebook Featured Deals. To make it easy for selected partners to get their audiobook deals onto Chirp, we’re now a supported retailer at Findaway, a company that provides audiobook distribution services to the industry.

Early responses from readers testing Chirp have been overwhelmingly positive, but the service is still in beta. Only a small percentage of BookBub’s millions of members have been invited to join so far. We anticipate a broader rollout over the coming year and expect the platform to evolve as we make improvements based on early user feedback.

We wanted to let our partners know this new venture was in the works, but being in beta also means we aren’t yet able to work with all authors and publishers, though our aim is to get there as quickly as possible. In the meantime, if you are interested in having your audiobooks featured on Chirp in the future, or if you want to hear more about Chirp as it develops, please join our partner waitlist.

The site is in beta, which in this case means that buyers are welcome but publishers are only being allowed to join in limited numbers. Or at least I assume buyers are welcome because I signed up and got in right away.

I’ve been browsing the site this afternoon, checking out the deals. The selection is sparse, which was to be expected on launch day. There were only 74 titles available, and from what I could see all were either public domain titles or audiobooks from traditional publishers such as HarperCollins, Penguin, or S&S.

The audiobooks are priced from $0.99 to $4.99. I found a couple $3 deals I wanted, and bought them. Strangely enough, I had to buy them one at a time, but once I did they were both listed in my account.

Listening options include Android and iOS apps, or streaming via the website. (There was no option to download the audiobooks so I can listen to them in another app.) The streaming page is basic but workable, and offers a speed range from 2x to 0.2x.

O O O

It’s not clear whether authors will benefit from Chirp (Bookbub has shown that they would much rather do business with publishers) but buyers will come out ahead and so will Findaway.  Since Findaway is handling the tech side, anyone who wants to offer a deal through Chirp will first have to sign up with Findaway. That makes Chirp a quiet but potentially very effective disruptor in a market dominated by Amazon/Audible.

Chirp is what audiobook retailers like Libro.fm wish they were; a service that beats Amazon by offering something that both buyers and publishers want, and which Amazon doesn’t offer (while Audible does have deals, they really aren’t very good at promoting them). *

Of course, there is a downside; you can’t buy the audiobook deals inside the app, and you can’t load the audiobooks into another app. This means you can only buy via the website and are forced to carry around yet another redundant app.

That tiny bit of grit in the gears could have a major impact; it makes it harder for buyers to make full use of Chirp, thus giving them an incentive to stay with the app they are already using.

This is something Bookbub will need to address if they want to really trounce Amazon.

Assuming, of course, that Audible doesn’t simply match the prices. I could not find out their policy on this; do you know?

QAnon, for those who don’t know, is a conspiracy theory that makes Pizzagate look sane and rational. According to QAnon, the world is run by a Satanic cabal lead by Hillary Clinton, and that President Donald Trump and Special Counsel Robert Mueller are secretly working in tandem to eliminate the cabal. (There are more nuances and intricacies to the conspiracy theory, but after seeing FB moderators being radicalized by the content they are moderating, I’d rather not look further.)

The reason this has come up on this blog is that one of the several dozen books on Amazon that espouse QAnon beliefs has recently started climbing the charts on Amazon.

From NBC:

The book, “An Invitation to the Great Awakening,” is currently No. 9 in all books about politics, and No. 1 in all books about “Censorship,” one slot ahead of Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” and immediately followed by classics “Lord of the Flies,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and “Of Mice and Men.”

The paperback, which cost $17 at press time, features outlandish claims, sometimes written in rapid succession with no evidence. On one page, the book baselessly claims that the United States government created AIDS, polio, Lyme disease, some natural disasters, two Indiana Jones movies and the Pixar movie Monsters Inc.

…

The book posits that Monsters Inc. shows off a government plan to collect children’s blood “that gives [government figures] some form of high or youthful looks.”

When I first found the book’s listing on Amazon this morning, it ranked at #50 in the books category on Amazon. As of writing this post, the book has risen to #30. This was mostly due to all the press attention and a highly effective marketing campaign.

The only thing that separates this book from conspiracy theory books about "The Protocols of Zion" is the amount of publicity it’s getting (well, and the topic).  This type of book has been around for decades, but they’ve never gotten this much attention before.

This is an expected result of online communities forming their own networks for sharing what is important to them. In this case, most of the attention is probably coming from videos posted on Youtube.

For example, YouTube conspiracy theorist JoeM, who has more than 127,000 YouTube subscribers, claims to have contributed to the book, and several other anonymous YouTube and Twitter conspiracy theorists who have pushed Qanon in the past have claimed credit for writing chapters of the book.

All of these Youtubers have been heavily promoting the book to their audiences since it launched a week ago, so it is really no wonder that it ranks this high on Amazon.

image by PJ Nelson via Flickr