Connecting With Authors...

Reading can really pay off - not just in the educational and “you look more brilliant” type of way but you can also win a lot of free stuff.  All you have to do is follow your favorite authors and post reviews for their books on websites like Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Goodreads.

I was fortunate enough to read a book by Bella Andre’s called The Look Of Love, if you haven’t read it yet – do – if you like romance like me!  I read her book as an ebook and I away make sure I go until my Kindle tells me I’m at 100% of any book because you never know what you’re going to find at the end.  I’m glad I did because in this book she had a contest.  All she asked was you write a review for her book and post it to any site then send her an email with where you posted it and the user name you did it under.  I did this for her book and sent her an email.  I woke up on April 6^th to an email telling me I WON a Kindle Fire!!!  If you were a fly on my wall that morning you would have had to cover your little ears.  I was beyond excited to find out I won new Kindle!  So see…it pays to read!

Pretty much ever author out there now has some way for the reader to connect with them.  Most of them have 4 or 5 different outlets that let you connect with them to find out what they are up to.  Most of them have a website of some sort that lets you know what they are working on, give-a-ways like bookmarks and stickers and if they are involved with any type of book tours, hops, review.   These three things all sound the same and they can be or they can be very different.  Cathy C. Hall of Cathy C’s Hall of Fame breaks it down into how they are different but yet similar.  A book tour is where an author’s book goes to a different authors sign and that person basically interviews the author on how they came up with the idea, what they like to do and what they’re going to do next.  A blog hop (which I think is the greatest because you can get A LOT of free books on some of them) is usually centered on a theme – Halloween, romance, vampire.  Here the authors posts a blog on their page and encourages people to post comments at the bottom of the page and answer a question or just leave a random comment with their email address and then send you on to the next authors page.  Get it; it’s a hop so you jump from page to page.  The author then uses your email address and sends you the free ebook that they were promoting.  A book review has nothing to do with the author themselves.  Their book is sent to a blogger and that person is asked to read the book and write up a review as to what they thought about it.

Authors are up-to-date when it comes to social media.  I haven’t found one yet that isn’t on Facebook and Twitter.  They not only use social media to promote their work but to connect and interact with their fans.  I know the ones that I follow (and yes I follow a lot of them) don’t just sit on the sidelines and watch what their fans are saying but actively engage them and respond with comments and suggestions.  Bella Andre’s on her Facebook page yesterday (April 23^rd) put “Have I mentioned recently how much I love my readers?!  I heart all of you!! : ) Thank you so much for the sweet notes and messages : )” To this comment alone she received 15 comments and 73 likes.  Other authors that are constantly talking with their fans and chatting back-n-forth are Michelle Madow, Lacey Jackson Weatherford, Belinda Boring and Brenda Pandos.

Another way that authors connect with their readers is by using a site called Goodreads.com.  This is a site that is used like a virtual bookshelf and book club.  It is where you can list the books that you have already read, the one you’re currently reading and what you are planning to read in the future.  This site is a site that a lot of authors use and you can get book recommendations from them and if you have a lot of authors that you follow you can get their latest blog posts all in one location.

Following authors is a GREAT way to find out what’s coming up next as well as getting incite one what their reading and if it’s any good and worth taking a look at.  If you have favorite authors that you like I highly suggest you find out if they have a blog, Facebook page, Twitter and Goodreads accounts.  It’s worth the effort to be in the know!

Another one of my favorite author Chelsea Fine who wrote Sophie & Carter thanking readers for all the comments they left her and just for reading the book...also giving updates to what she's up and directing them back to her blog for current updates!

IT’S FINALLY HERE!!

Ok so I’m beyond excited right now.  Pottermore has FINALLY opened and I received by username!!!  So if you need anything this weekend…sorry I won’t be around but you can come find me at Hogwarts!!! See you there!!!

~  LUMOS ~

Your Personal Gateway Into Pottermore!

Update -

Yeah I got my wand...

Price Fixing on eBooks…

This has been a HUGE week for electronic books and the pricing war that has been going on between Amazon and Apple.  The Justice Department has sued Apple and several large name publishers claiming ebook price-fixing.  The publishing houses that are part of the lawsuit are CBS Corp's Simon & Schuster Inc., News Corp.'s HarperCollins Publishers Inc, Penguin, Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group, and Pearson and Macmillan.  Hours after the filing of the lawsuit HarperCollins and Hachette decided to settle with the DOJ instead of battleing it out in a courtroom unlike the Penguin Group and Macmillian who both decided to fight the DOJ.   The lawsuit was brought about after a two year probe into how Apple and the publishing houses were try to change the pricing model that Amazon brought on, where the price of nearly all ebooks would be no more than $9.99.  The Department of Justice said that they believe that people have paid millions of dollars more for some of the more popular books on the market.

According to the lawsuit "Each Publisher Defendant desired higher retail e-book prices across the industry before '$9.99' became an entrenched consumer expectation. By the end of 2009, however, the Publisher Defendants had concluded that unilateral efforts to move Amazon away from its practice of offering low retail prices would not work, and they threafter conspired to raise retail e-book prices and to otherwise limit competition in the sale of e-books. To effectuate their conspiracy, the Publisher Defendants teamed up with Defendant Apple, which shared the same goal of restraining retail price competition in the sale of e-books."

The late Steve Jobs had a meeting with publishing house and said, "We'll go to [an] agency model, where you set the price, and we get our 30%, and yes, the customer pays a little more, but that's what you want anyway." 

That may be the way the publishing houses want it but that is a FAR cry from how the consumer wants it!  I remember when it was announced that several of the big publishing houses were going to start charging upwards of $12.99 for new releases.  The forms on Amazon and book sites like goodreads.com went crazy.  People were outraged and a lot of them started to boycotted books that were published by those companies.  In reality this is probably what helped so many of the independent authors get their books and name out.

Tom Neumayr of Apple released this statement on the lawsuit, “The DOJ’s accusation of collusion against Apple is simply not true. The launch of the iBookstore in 2010 fostered innovation and competition, breaking Amazon’s monopolistic grip on the publishing industry. Since then customers have benefited from eBooks that are more interactive and engaging. Just as we’ve allowed developers to set prices on the App Store, publishers set prices on the iBookstore.

Again remember I’m a huge Amazon Kindle supporter so this lawsuit is great in my eyes.  There are so many books out there that have inflated prices because Apple with its iPad didn’t think it could win a war against Amazon and the Kindle.  They finally found something that they were not #1 at and tried to attack the entity that was winning…too bad for them it didn’t work and the DOJ stopped them.  I know that I along with millions of other Kindle owners, Nook readers and Google downloaders are looking forward to the lower prices on books!

eBook Reading...

I personally was not an avid reader until I bought my Kindle in April 2009.  There's something about holding a 400 page book that seemed overwhelming to me.  Whereas holding that same book on a 1/2 inch device seemed more appealing.  For me the idea of reading was mind or over matter.  Today I'm happy to say that I'm now an avid reader and since I received by Kindle I've read over 300 books!

Amazon announced in January 2011 that for the first time the sales of ebooks has surpassed that of paperbacks.  In a statement the company announced "Amazon.com is now selling more Kindle books than paperback books.  Since the beginning of the year, for every 100 paperback books Amazon has sold, the company has sold 115 Kindle books.  Additionally, during this same time period the company has sold three times as many Kindle books as hardcover books."  From these numbers it looks like more and more people are getting on board with reading on an ereader versus the traditional route of paperback reading.

But why are people making the switch.  One of the biggest reasons that people are making the switch to ebooks is that they have the ability to change the size of the font and zoom the text.  On an Amazon form there was a discussion on which people liked better, ebooks or paperbacks, Jody talked about why she prefers ebooks, "first of all it is because I can't adjust the font size on paper books.  Since my eyesight is affected by diabetes, there are many days I have to have very large fonts to read, and other days I can see with medium-large - but never the small font in paper books any longer.  For a person who read voraciously since I was about 3 years old, not being able to read would be devastating to me."  Another huge reason people are making the switch is the ability to carry multiple books with them anytime, anywhere but also having all those books on one little device gets ride of the "clutter" of books lying around the home.  With ability to carry around over 1800 books on one device it doesn't matter where you are you or what you're in the mood to read, you will always have options!

Or they could be just like me and the thought of trying to get through 1440 pages of War and Peace scares the living day lights out of them!

There are still some books that are at times better viewed in the traditional paperback/hardback form such as textbooks.  But as time goes on those too are being changed and updated to be better viewed on electronic devices.  Textbooks are starting to be written so that when they are viewed with a device there are videos embedded within the text so if the chapter is on lions living in the wild in Africa they could have videos attached showing how they hunt in pacts, the group family dynamic and the environment in which they live.

Ebooks have started to take off and even the most reluctant authors are publishing their works as ebooks now.  Just look at J.K. Rowling with the Harry Potter books.  She was adamantly against publishing her work as an ebook for over 10 years and sadly she paid a huge price in terms of piracy because of it.  But on March 27th, 2012 she released all her books as ebooks for the world to LEGALLY buy.  That shows the power of ereaders and ebooks.  People want to read, so let them...don't limit how it's done but enhance it by offering it in as many ways as possible!