Small Press Blog

Clearing the Sales Channel

As I noted yesterday, the second edition of Complete Guide to Online High Schools will be available within the next couple of weeks. This availability will include both the print and digital versions.

So what am I doing now?

Yesterday I sent an email to my rep at Lightning Source letting her know to suspend availability of the first edition. I don't want any further print copies sold now because I would prefer that people buy the new version. It will be better and more inclusive of the number of available schools now.

Part of the reason for closing down Lightning Source early is that there are sellers on Amazon still selling my book (although you will note that it is no longer available from Amazon). Where do they get the book from? From Lightning Source, for the most part. Some copies are used. I want that stopped because it is now all about sales for the second edition.

I also went to Payloadz.com to suspend sales of the digital version of my book. Truth be told, the second edition will never make its way there. It will start on Amazon in Kindle form and then, in a few months, I will push it out for sales elsewhere.* The world has changed a great deal since I began using Payloadz. To my thinking, there are now better ways to do digital. More on that later.

No turning back now.

The Amazon Smack-Down

This was rather predictable. The State of California needs money. They decided to get some of that money from online sales by attempting to tax folks. In particular, they were looking at Amazon. Governor Brown signed legislation that allowed for this.

Amazon, of course, retaliated by shutting down the accounts of all of the California-based affiliates. This is in the neighborhood of 100,000 companies, charities, and individuals.

I do get California's point. They need money and local businesses can't compete with online sales (in part because what makes the online sales cheaper is the lack of sales tax). That being said, Amazon was very specific about what they were going to do if the legislation passed.

As it happens, I am one of those Amazon affiliates and my account has indeed been shut down. In my case, it was a relatively small amount of money per quarter. Still, every little bit helps. However, I know of a number of businesses that are predicated solely on being Amazon affiliates and selling books as an affiliate. I can only imagine what this will do to their ventures.

If it were me, I would be considering a relocation to Nevada. Perhaps ten feet across the border!

New Book, Day 1

So the time has come to work on the second edition of my Complete Guide to Online High Schools. The first edition has sold well, but it is horribly out of date. Also and importantly, the field has changed. There are many more schools and what made sense just a couple of years ago, no longer makes sense.

What am I going to do differently this time?

• Focus on selling the book. I certainly missed some opportunities for sales.
• Understand that it does not need to be "Truth." It does need to be true.
• Work on the design aspects, but not overly so.
• Have more extra copies available for sales and as freebies.

What am I going to do the same?

• Still going to use Lightning Source as my printer and supplier. It is a model that has worked well for me.
• Increased use of digital versions. In addition to the PDF version from the first edition, I will certainly have a Kindle version.
• Outsource the design work, but in a frugal manner.
• Focus on Amazon sales.

How do I get started? It's time to update the database. Yes, it would make good sense to always have it updated, but that is just one thing too many for me to accomplish. Thankfully, I have my website from which to draw much of that information.

Daughter #2, who is always looking for a way to make a few bucks, is going to be doing some work for me on that project. She is only 13, but certainly can print out school listings.

I am going to make the attempt to check in with you on a weekly basis and let you know where I am in the process.

Increasing sales by driving traffic

This summer I am working on a second edition of my Complete Guide to Online High Schools. I hope to be finished by the middle of August, but it will have about twice as many schools, so this is a much bigger project than the first time around. The hope with this book has always been that I publish a new edition no further apart than two years. And, yes, that means I need to publish it this year!

In anticipation of that publishing, I have begun to ponder how to have greater sales with the second edition than I did with the first.

One of the things that I have learned about book sales, at least my book sales, is that I need to drive traffic toward the book. In this case, I have a website that is the largest website in its niche. I sell many books using that website. Truth be told, near as I can tell, it is my top "store."

While being the largest in that niche, I readily admit that this week it is not a large niche (although it is growing by leaps and bounds). I decided this week that others will soon decide to stake out part of my niche, so I need to pursue a preemptive strike. I purchased nine domain names that I will be populating with WordPress blog software. Why WordPress? Because I thought it was something that I was capable of learning in a reasonable enough fashion not to embarrass myself and my book.

You can see the first two here:

California Online High Schools

Wisconsin Online High Schools

Not great and I will be adding more as I go, but I put up both those sites today. You will note that there are three ways that I can earn money from the site now. They are:

• Google Adsense. I will adjust the ads somewhat, but there are some up now.
• Amazon ad for my book.
• Many links to Best Online High Schools website that also has Google Adsense and my book.

As I have said time and again, small publishers are successful who have multiple revenue streams (and, yes, that could be multiple books). One book does not get you there.

Booklocker vs. Amazon, part 3

And I had barely uploaded that last post and I received an email from Booklocker (which, by the way, you can receive as well by going here and handing over your email!) concerning an article about those very documents. Publisher's Weekly has done a very nice job of synthesizing the information from those documents.

In particular, I was drawn to part of Amazon's argument here:

Amazon contends that its changes to its POD policy are aimed at improving the efficiency of its supply chain as part of its vertically integrated business, and that “antitrust laws simply do not prevent Amazon.com from making unilateral changes to its supply chain.”

To say that this is disingenuous would be to give Amazon a pass. You all know that I supply my books to Amazon through Lightning Source. I know that, in terms of that supply chain, the books get to the customer quite quickly. Why? Because they never go to Amazon. Lightning Source ships the books directly to the customer for Amazon using Amazon boxes.

This is really all about Amazon increasing the amount of money it makes. Pure and simple, it is greed.

Read the Publisher's Weekly article here.

Booklocker v. Amazon, Part 2

If you are following the Amazon lawsuit with Booklocker.com and would like to see the official filings, they are located here:

The Complaint

Amazon's Motion to Dismiss

Booklocker's response to Motion to Dismiss

I am so very impressed with Booklocker for taking on Amazon. They are clearly in the right, but sometimes that just isn't enough. However, I am hopeful in this case.

How much for free again?

In March, I wrote about how much to give away for free. At the time, I was offering very little free information on my online high schools website. As loyal readers know, that website is one of the major ways that I sell my book, Complete Guide to Online High Schools.

My theory was that the greater the traffic, the more the money. As you might recall, I earn money in three ways from that website:

• From sales of the book; and
• From Google Adsense ads; and
• From Featured Ads.

Book sales on that site are all driven to Amazon (which is part of my marketing plan). Traffic for the first year of the site was about 30,000. In the four months since I began to give away more information, the number of hits has been 60,000 (for a total of 90,000 this week).

What did I learn? I learned several things including:

• The more pages of good content on a website, the more likely to ding the Adsense bell. The amount of money the site makes from Google Adsense has tripled in just a few months.
• The more pages of good content on a website, the more likely to ding the Amazon bell. The number of books sold through Amazon doubled in just a few months.
• The more pages of good content on a website, the more likely to ding the Featured Schools bell. In that short period of time, the site added five new featured schools. Most of those schools came to me (as opposed to me usually having to go to them).

Thus, while I think you need to be careful with how much you give away, the Internet is driven by information. You absolutely need to have something worth reading and, importantly, something worth exploring.

New Kindle in the fall?

Bob Martin sent me this link about a new Amazon Kindle in the fall. It should be interesting, but no information on price as of yet.

Angela & Richard Hoy on the Amazon Lawsuit

Angela and her husband, Richard, are the driving forces behind Writersweekly.com, the largest writers' e-zine, and Booklocker.com, the print-on-demand publisher of many titles. They have stepped forward to take on Amazon.com in the wake of Amazon's decision to pressure small publishers to use only its BookSurge print-on-demand facilities. They were gracious enough to answer some of my questions on the topic. I encourage you to go to their website (see link below) and to follow this as it unfolds. This directly affects you. It certainly affects me.

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1. Can you give us a brief synopsis of what Amazon has done?
BL: Earlier this year, Amazon began contacting publishers using print on demand (POD) technology telling them they need to pay Amazon to print their books or their active buy buttons would be removed from Amazon.com. These weren't just self-publishing service companies. They also included some traditional publishers, including University of Pennsylvania Press.

2. Why is this a bad thing for independent publishers?
BL: Publishers should not have to pay the world's largest online retailer to print their books...as a condition of having those books sold directly by that retailer.

3. You have sued Amazon. What can you tell us about the lawsuit?
BL: A time-line of events, a copy of our lawsuit filing, updates, and comments from authors, publishers, and book buyers can be seen here:

Amazon BookSurge Information Clearinghouse

We believe Amazon's practice of requiring POD publishers to pay Amazon to print their books in order to have Amazon.com sell those books directly to customers is an illegal tying arrangement and a violation of anti-trust laws.

4. The ultimate question: Why you? There are many companies that could and should be doing what you have chose to do. Again, why you?
BL: I have to be honest with you. I was stunned when none of the big guys, our largest competitors, stepped up to the plate to take this on for everyone in the industry. After speaking to a few of them, it became clear that everyone was waiting for someone else to step forward and lead the fight. Why us? Heck, I thought, why not us? We'd already publicized Amazon's covert shenanigans, which forced them to issue a public statement about their activities, so we weren't on their good side anyway.

We were happy to take the reins and we're proud to be a part of the growing public sentiment against Amazon's power push against small and independent publishers.

5. Where do you see all of this going?
BL: Well, once things hit the courts, they start to crawl, as you probably know. While we'll have to wait awhile, I'm confident that either Amazon will come to its senses and withdraw their ridiculous plans to take over the printing of POD books, or that, despite Amazon's pretty verbiage, the court will see the company's recent actions for what they really are.

Amazon Kindle price drops

This spring I mentioned that I thought that:

• the Amazon Kindle was likely a good book reading tool; and
• the Amazon Kindle is horribly over-priced.

Apparently, Amazon has agreed with me on the price and has now knocked it down to $359.

It does make me wonder, though, what is driving the drop in price given the short time the Kindle has been on the market. If you recall, Amazon supposedly ran out of them quite quickly and it was impossible to buy one for a while. Or so they said.

I said it then and I will say it now: If Amazon wants the Kindle to succeed they either need to drastically drop the price of the Kindle or drastically drop the price of the books. Amazon's problem was that they got greedy. They want to make money by overcharging on the Kindle and by overcharging on the books. Sorry, but you need to pick one.

My price-points:

Kindle = $99

or

Books = $5.99

That being said, I will not buy a Kindle until it is under $100.

Conversely, if Amazon chooses to send me one for free, I promise to review it here! :)