A new FCC filing has brought my attention to a new ereader (and related tech) startup called Team UC.

This company just sent a Netronix ereader through the FCC, and for some strange reason they hid all of the interesting details. Luckily, the Netronix model number lead me to the listing on Netronix’s website which gave away all the interesting details.

The E60QR2 is a 6.8″ ereader that runs Android on a 1GHz CPU with 512MB RAM. The stock design comes equipped with both a capacitive touchscreen and an electromagnetic stylus, and it would appear to also have a frontlight.

This ereader has Wifi but not Bluetooth, and its screen resolution is 1440 x 1080 (265 ppi). While I don’t know the dimensions, the listing does say the battery capacity is 1.5Ah.

There’s no word on when it will reach the market.

I have contacted Team UC for more info, and I also asked them about the digital signage products mentioned on their website. They are showing E-ink’s 32″ screens as products they carry, and I hope that means we can actually buy them.

FCC

It looks like Amazon is losing interest in opening new bookstores. It has recently either abandoned or adapted three Amazon Books locations, raising questions whether Amazon is going to continue opening new bookstores.

This story came to my attention this morning when I read in the Idaho Statesman that Amazon had let its plans for a bookstore outside of Boise, Idaho, fall through. The store had been announced in March when Amazon filed the initial permits, but Amazon never followed through on completing the paperwork, and according to the landlord is no longer interested in the location.

This reminded me that about a month ago Amazon opened an "Amazon 4-star" store outside of Denver. According to what I found back in March, the location was going to be an Amazon Books location (and I reported it as such) but apparently Amazon changed its mind.

And then there’s Atlanta.

Last November I reported that Amazon was opening a bookstore at the Lenox Square Mall. Amazon had filed construction permits for that location for an Amazon Books store, but I confirmed this morning that public records show Amazon never followed through on completing the permits, nor have they opened the store.

Once is an anomaly, twice is a coincidence, but three times  – well, that is a trend.

Amazon opened its first bookstore in Seattle in 2015.  It currently lists 18 16 open and 2 planned Amazon Books locations on its website. The newest store opened in Bethesda, MD, in June, and the two stores under development could very well be Amazon’s last two bookstores.

Update: Amazon has updated their site since I published this post. They changed the list of Amazon Books locations, which is why I crossed out the sentences above. Also, the Cherry Creek Amazon Books location in Denver is not yet listed. Amazon won’t discuss it, so this might be the 4th bookstore Amazon cancels.

Bookstores are no longer the apple in Amazon’s eye; instead, the retailer is focused on opening cashier-less Amazon Go stores. There are reports that Amazon is meeting with multiple airport authorities to discuss putting Amazon Go stores in airports (FOIA requests are wonderful).

These stores would almost be upsized versions of the vending machines Amazon first started installing in airports and malls four or five years ago, and they might even carry a few books. But they won’t be bookstores.

Amazon was queried before this post was written, and I will update this post if they say anything interesting.

image by anokarin via Flickr

Bowker likes to claim that their ISBN book serial numbers (the ones that come with a free side of credit card fraud) can be used to count the number of indie titles published each year. This obviously isn’t true, but their annual report is good for one thing.

It’s a good way to track the decline and fall of Author Solutions, the vanity press that Penguin Scamdom House sold off in 2016. Given that all Author Solutions package deals include one, ISBN registrations is a good way to estimate its activity.

As I reported a couple years ago, Author Solutions has been in a decline since 2011. As indie authors rose, Author Solutions fell, until they were only registering half as many ISBNs in 2015 as they did in 2012.

And according to the Bowker report released last month, things have only gotten slightly better for Author Solutions in the past two years. Following a brief spike in ISBN registrations in 2016, Author Solutions' ISBN use fell in 2017 to within 5% or 6% of their figures for 2015.

Looking at the print and ebook charts, it’s clear that the resurgence was entirely in ebooks.  Author Solutions isn’t registering nearly as many ebook ISBNs as they did at their peak, but they did register more in 2017 than in 2015.

Author Solutions' print ISBN usage continues to decline, however. They only registered half as many in 2017 as they did in 2012.

While it is pleasing to watch a scammer’s decline and fall, I’m still meeting a lot of authors at book fairs who were fleeced by Author Solutions.

Clearly there’s a need for a more aggressive public awareness campaign.

Let me see what I can do about that.

P.S. Remember a couple weeks ago when I said I decided to start giving a damn again? This is me giving a damn.

image by Leeber via Flickr

One of the favorite pastimes of the publishing community is sharing author income survey reports, and wringing hands over the results. The reports are usually bullshit for various reasons (more on this in a later post), and usually wildly misinterpreted.

Both generalizations are true in the case of The Writers' Union of Canada annual report on its members' income.

The TWUC’s report was publishing last month, but it only crossed my desk last night when the CBC covered it.

It’s a story as old as the craft itself: an impoverished author, serving coffee or scrubbing floors while writing what would become a seminal novel.

Except in Canada today, tales of financial hardship extend to writers who are established, have published several books and even those who have won major prizes.

When the Writers' Union of Canada recently surveyed its members about their incomes, the results were sobering: an average writer made $9,380 a year from his or her writing. That’s 27 per cent less than what writers made three years ago, and a whopping 78 per cent less than they made in 1998.

The problem with this report is the makeup of the survey group.

If you go download the report from the TWUC website, you’ll see that, of the 1,499 respondents, 62% are  over the age of sixty (another 20% of the survey group were in their fifties).

The thing about this age distribution is that only about 31% of Canada’s adult population is over the age of 60 (Wikipedia).

What’s even crazier is that 31% of the survey group were over the age of 70, while at the same that age cohort only makes up about 14.4% of Canada’s adult population. This population is over-represented in the survey group even though they are statistically more likely to be dead than working.

This survey is not a representative sample of the population, and should not have been published. Then again, the same can be said for just about all surveys on author income.

The problem with these surveys is that they are conducted by groups living in the past. All of these groups share the assumption that author income is controlled by external forces when in reality author income is market-driven. Writing is a skill and writer and author are both professions.

An author’s income is dependent on how good they are at marketing their work, but do you ever hear one of these reports being framed in those terms?

Nope. Every time one of these reports is published, the group behind it always talk about somehow changing the external forces that supposedly control authors' incomes. They never talk about this business matter in terms of authors learning to be better business people; oh no, authoring is a noble calling, and it cannot be sullied with crass commerce.

Any group that feels this way has achieved the zenith of irrelevancy, and should be allowed to continue to wither away into nothing.

Next!

image by waferboard via Flickr

As promised, Amazon’s Black Friday deals start today, and they are so good that they are well worth tearing yourself away from the table.

Amazon doesn’t have either of their newer Kindles on sale, but they did put the older Kindle Paperwhite on sale as well as several Kindle Fire models. Amazon also knocked $80 off the price of the 2018 iPad (I would get one to replace the iPad I misplaced 3 years ago, but I missed out).

Kindle deals

• Fire Tablet 7 ($20 off) – $29
• Fire HD 8 ($30 off) – $49
• Fire HD 10 ($50 off) – $99 

• Paperwhite 4 – $129 (it comes with 6 months free, Kindle Unlimited)
• Paperwhite 3 – $79
• Paperwhite 3 essentials bundle ($60 off) – $119

• 3 months Kindle Unlimited – $0.99

Other eReader deals

• Kobo Aura 2 ($30 off) –  $99
• Sony DPT-RP1 Digital Paper ($100 off) – $599
• Sony DPT-CP1 Digital Paper ($100 off) – $499
• Kobo Clara HD  ($30 off) – $109 CAD

I’ve never been one to mark the anniversary of this blog. I started it in January 2010 on the spur of the moment, and generally maintained that attitude of "hey, now that’s a cool idea – let’s do it". This tended to get in the way planning things like anniversary celebrations (and back when I attended CES in the first week of January every year I didn’t really have the energy for a celebration, anyway).

But as I sit here today, it is two months and eight days until this blog’s ninth anniversary, and I have decided I am going to do something different.

This time around I am going to celebrate the anniversary of the blog, and also its relaunch.

To put it another way, I have started to give a damn about the blog again.

I don’t know if you noticed, but for the past year and a half or so I have regarded this blog as a failed project. I looked at the falling weekly traffic reports, and counted the ever-declining number of comments, and grew depressed about the inevitability of site traffic eventually dwindling away to nothing. This belief came to be reflected in the care (or rather, the lack of care) I was putting into things like proofing blog posts. (After all, why bother investing in something that is going to die anyway?)

The reason I bring that up is that I don’t believe that any more.

One of the things I did this past week was to try to quantify what exactly is a good conversion rate for a site’s mailing list when compared to page views. I still don’t have an answer to that, but looking at my monthly traffic stats made me realize that this blog still has a lot of traffic compared to a lot of sites.

I now see this blog as being the metaphorical glass half-full rather than half-empty. (As I said, I have started to give a damn about the blog again.)

So, the anniversary.

I’m going to spend the next couple months thinking about what should be done with this blog. I’m also going to be thinking of how I can thank readers, commenters, and contributors, including those who have been here since the beginning and those who read the blog now.

My current plan is to give away Kindle Fire tablets in contests. (Or is that too generic, do you think?)

For example, I’ll hold a raffle which you can enter by telling me the original name of the blog. I’ll also give away a Kindle Fire tablet to the longest running active commenter (or maybe not; I don’t think my very first commenter – who I hope is still following the blog – would want a Kindle Fire).

Those contests are just ideas at this point; I’m still in the throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks phase. But I am looking at having several contests, and thus several prizes (where several is defined as being between three and seven).

Oh, I know that I will have at least one contest that you can enter by making suggestions about what I should cover on the blog. I have always valued feedback and input but I don’t know that I have really made it clear, so I hope this contest will show that I am putting my money where my mouth is.

Anyway, this was me running my keyboard off.

What do you think?

We’re five days away from the official launch of Gutenberg, the new WordPress post and page editor, and I finally have an answer to one of the most important questions:

No, WordPress.com users will not be forced to use it (at this time).

Mike Cane tipped me to the news that Gutenberg is being promoted to WordPress.com users. Users have the option to switch between the Gutenberg and what is being called the WordPress.com "classic editor".  Yes, you can switch, and those of us who prefer the traditional WordPress admin menus can still use those menus. (See the FAQ for more detail.)

For those who are just hearing about this for the first time, Gutenberg is the name given to the new WordPress post editor. It is intended to make it easy for you to make richly formatted pages and blog posts, and has been under development for about 18 months now. On WordPress.com, it will look something like this:

Gutenberg has been a contentious topic in the WordPress community. Support for Gutenberg comes primarily from above, while a significant minority of users have pushed back and pointed out that we are quite happy with the features of the existing editor. In fact, the "Classic Editor" plugin that is intended to disable Gutenberg actually has almost as many users as the official Gutenberg beta-testing plugin.

If you have a WordPress site, you should familiarize yourself with Gutenberg and decide whether you want to use it:

• Gutenberg, WordPress, & You: the What, the Why, and the How
• Gutenberg Will be Released with WordPress 5.0 on 19 November – Here’s What You Need to Do

My recommendation is that you avoid it for now, and wait for the developers to wrk out all the bugs.

When I reported two weeks ago that due to a bug ebooks were being automatically removed from sale in the Kindle Store, I used a "don’t panic" graphic. I figured Amazon would fix this issue within a few hours, so there was no reason to jump up and down about it.

I was wrong.

Not only has the problem continued, a significantly larger number of authors are being affected. What started as only a handful of reports two weeks ago has grown to scores if not hundreds of authors reporting, all in the past couple days, that Amazon has taken one or more of their books down from the Kindle Store.

Many of the reports sound like this:

I woke up this morning and two of my ebooks have been pulled for sale from Amazon.com. I checked my competitors as well as ebooks in other categories and they have also been pulled down too. There are ebooks in the top 100 charts that have been pulled too. I checked my KDP account and the ebook status is 'live', but when I click the link to the ebook on Amazon.com, there is no buy box for the Kindle edition — only for the paperback edition.

If you think that report was scary, try this one on for size. Amazon is apparently showing only a random selection of each author’s ebooks to each visitor, and leaving the rest hidden.

Yesterday, I had friends outside of my country (I’m in Canada) check the status of my books. Rhode Island, could see half my books, but not the other half or they said unavailable for purchase. Florida couldn’t see any of the kindle books for sale. Ohio could see and buy them all. Australia could only see half.

What this report means folks is that even the authors who think they are unaffected can never be 100% sure that they escaped Amazon’s ebook massacre. For all they know their ebooks are being hidden from the next customers.

And to make matters worse, there are also reports that the trick of "republishing" an affected ebook doesn’t always solve the problem. At least two authors I know tried the trick and their ebooks are still affected.

Now is the time to panic, folks.

Amazon was contacted before the previous post was published, and did not respond.

Update: Amazon finally acknowledged the issue. This was posted on the KDP support forums:

Hello,

We’re experiencing an issue that has made some eBooks unavailable in the Kindle store in different marketplaces. Our engineers are working to solve this issue as quickly as possible. We’ll update this post to keep the Community informed once this issue has been resolved.

We appreciate your patience and understanding in the meantime.

Regards,

Kindle Direct Publishing Team

When ex-CEO Demos Parneros filed suit against Barnes & Noble in August, he mentioned that another  bookseller nearly bought B&N earlier this year.

Now the WSJ is reporting that the mystery retailer was WHSmith,

For months, people in the publishing industry wondered about the identity of the mystery would-be buyer.

People familiar with the situation say it was WH Smith PLC, a U.K. retailer that sells books, stationery and other products.

A spokeswoman for Barnes & Noble declined to comment. The company said last month that it is evaluating a possible sale and noted it had received interest from multiple parties, including executive chairman, Leonard Riggio.

Representatives for W.H. Smith didn’t respond to requests for comment.

I don’t think WHSmith was really that interested – not after it got a look at B&N’s books, anyway – but this story is quite plausible. After walking away from the B&N deal, WHSmith announced it was paying $148 million for InMotion, an airport retailer with 114 stores in 43 airports.

With annual revenues around $1.6 billion, it’s not hard to guess why WHSmith  passed on buying B&N.  Not only is B&N significantly larger, it is also financially unhealthy and is run by a management team that is given to turning what should be well-kept secrets into embarrassing public spectacles.

If B&N interacted with WHSmith with the same nasty infighting as B&N is now conducting itself in public, no wonder WHSmith backed out of the deal.

image by Shardayyy via Flickr

When I reported 3 days ago about MyIdentifiers.com’s extended downtime, I made an offhand reference to a report about credit cards being stolen on the site. I didn’t really trust that unconfirmed story, but it was later confirmed by another author, and now Bowker admitted that due to their sloppy website security, they were indeed hacked.

From Bowker:

Bowker was recently made aware by the payment card networks of patterns of unauthorized charges occurring on cards after they were legitimately used on Bowker’s website, www.myidentifiers.com. We immediately launched an investigation and engaged a leading forensic firm to assist. Our investigation has identified unauthorized code that was added to the checkout page on our website. Based on currently available evidence, our investigation is focused on determining if the code was active from May 1, 2018 through October 23, 2018. However, because our investigation is continuing, complete findings are not available and it is too early to provide further details on the investigation. We anticipate providing notification to any affected customers as we get further clarity about the specific timeframes and orders that may have been affected.

Bowker has not said when their site will be online again, but they did say that you can still buy a single ISBN through a different site. You can also buy a block of ISBNs by downloading an order form and faxing it in.

BTW, did anyone else notice they didn’t tell anyone about the hack until two days after I first reported it? Does anyone else think they would never have said anything publicly if I hadn’t already posted my scoop? (I do)

P.S. This is why I continue to blog; I love being two days ahead of the official announcement.

The latest chapter in the three-month-old soap opera which began with B&N firing CEO Demos Parneros arrived today in the form of a counter-suit.

From Reuters:

Barnes & Noble Inc on Tuesday filed a countersuit seeking damages from the former chief executive officer it fired in part because of claims he sexually harassed a female employee.

The largest U.S. bookstore chain said Demos Parneros breached his duties of loyalty and good faith by sexually harassing the female employee, bullying subordinates, and attempting to "sabotage" a potential sale of the New York-based company.

…

In its countersuit, Barnes & Noble said Parneros' lawsuit "downplays what occurred," and that the company should recoup his salary, bonus and other benefits during the period of his "disloyal conduct" and cancel his outstanding equity awards.

Barnes & Noble said the female employee reported two incidents in which Parneros allegedly subjected her to unwanted touching or comments of a sexual nature.

It said that in the second incident, Parneros allegedly pulled the employee toward him so their faces touched, and as she tried to pull away he said she seemed like someone who "would put out" if he "wined and dined" her.

Barnes & Noble also said Parneros derailed a takeover that would have cost him the CEO role, after portraying the company as an "ugly mess" that had "no realistic prospects for success" in a June meeting with executives of the potential acquirer.

According to the countersuit, Barnes & Noble has received "additional complaints about Parneros' inappropriate behavior toward women" at the company since his termination. Barnes & Noble declined to elaborate.

Parneros has denied B&N’s allegations.

What an utter mess – exactly what B&N doesn’t need right now.

Whether or not the allegations are true (the situation is so muddled that at this point picking a side  says more about one’s biases than the case) this case is the exact opposite of what B&N needs right now.

B&N needs to portray the image of competence and professionalism so as to allay fears about its downward spiral. Instead, this case makes the senior management look like jackasses. It is putting the question in everyone’s head that if B&N can’t even manage to fire its CEO without causing a scene, can we really trust them to run a company?

That is not the question you should want your creditors asking.

image by jjbers via Flickr

Amazon’s Kindle platform is fraught with bugs and inexplicable behavior. When it’s not blocking ARC reviews, it’s ignoring the final version of an ebook and instead sending out a draft copy.

And when it’s not deleting reviews because authors engaged in the SOP marketing practice of connecting with their fans on social medial, it’s removing ebooks from sale for literally no reason and with no notification.

Over the past couple days numerous authors have discovered – quite often by accident – that their ebooks have been removed from sale on Amazon.com. The ebooks have not been deleted, and in many cases the title is still available in other markets, but on Amazon.com the buy button has been replaced with this notice:

I have read about this bug in a couple Facebook groups, and on KBoards. It is reportedly a widespread problem affecting a lot of authors, but Amazon has elected not to notify affected authors.

One author on KBoards explains how they discovered the bug:

Last night, I got a message from a reader that one of my books was unavailable for purchase. I thought the customer just had the wrong link, but I confirmed that when I go to the book’s page, it says "this title is not currently available for purchase" instead of the price. In researching this, most people who report the problem have just uploaded their book and are told to wait. In this case, the book has been available in the Kindle store since August and I’ve been selling copies all the way up until yesterday evening. I checked in the Dashboard and it still lists the book as live, even though the actual store says it’s unavailable.

With authors only learning they had been impacted after  meticulously checking their listings, it is hard to say how widespread this bug is.

Fortunately, one author has identified a possible solution. They reported that making a minor edit and then republishing the ebook is enough to restore it to available status.

It remains to be seen whether that will help all affected authors, however.

image by Sarabbit via Flickr