Now you can launch your dream business- with the newly published “Small Business Rocket Fuel: Launch“!

Staring at your idea scribbled on a napkin or on your computer screen may feel overwhelming. But, by following a step-by-step method that focuses only on what is most critical to get a small business up and running, your dream can become a reality.

When I started my company almost 7 years ago, I had lots of questions. I spent many hours chasing down pieces of information, talking to people and reading books. This was despite my already having started-up a successful division for a venture capital backed former employer.

Now, many people are trying to find this same information, asking themselves, “How do I lauch?” “How do I go from paper to action?” I felt there had to be a better way where writers, entrepreneurs and small business owners could benefit from the experience of someone who had been in their shoes and succeeded in launching a profitable business (or two)! This “better way” become my newest book in the Small Business Rocket Fuel series: Launch. By focusing only on what is critical to know and cutting out all the excess nice-to-know fillers, this compact and easy to read book gets you started quickly.

The book includes key topics like insurance (including “errors and omissions” also called professional liability for writers), selecting a legal business form (LLC versus Inc), assessing your product’s competitiveness, financing, and more. The book is especially useful for medical writers and other writers as well as consultants.

The book is currently available on Amazon (link below) and will be available on Barnes and Noble within a week.

http://www.amazon.com/Small-Business-Rocket-Fuel-ebook/dp/B007N33QMG/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332363775&sr=1-4

An interesting interview with Joe Konrath was just published (see link below). Here he further expounds on his results as a self-published author. He cites significantly better earnings by self-publishing books for a low price while at the same time devoting less time to marketing than he had for this traditionally published novel. He states that publishers take over 52% of the cover price while authors receive only a bit more than 17%.

The article is definitely worth reading. One caveat though is that nowhere in the article does Joe mention his release with Amazon’s new imprint Encore. This leaves me wondering, if self-publishing is so fantastic, why sign a deal with what is ostensibly another publisher? Sure Amazon isn’t a traditional publisher per se, yet it aspires to be one. That is one question I’m sure many writers would be interested in hearing the answer to.

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/j-a-konrath-responds-our-interview-with-jamie-raab_b46413

http://elitzr.com/is-amazons-konrath-concession-a-sign-of-things-to-come/

Yes, the e-book has evolved from a mere pest underfoot or perhaps a curious novelty into a giant in only a few years.

In doing so, it has upset the entire apple cart that is the publishing industry. Authors can now publish and manage their own books and communicate more directly with readers. Even better, e-books are finally starting to wake up to their potential.

From the start, I envisioned a whole new world for e-books that would make them far different from paper books. With the power of electronics’ magic, e-books can become entertainment powerhouses melding many forms in one (images, video, audio, and so much more.) With all these exciting visions dancing in my head, it was somewhat of a let down to find that even inserting images into a Kindle e-book was challenging. At the time I published, the colorful photos I’d taken were only viewable in black and white. Now they are in full color (thanks, Kindle Fire!).

My hope for 2012 is that it becomes feasible for me to do even more than put some photos and web links in my books (without spending a fortune and thus driving up the price for readers).

While e-books have huge potential, challenges have grown as the number of authors has rapidly expanded. It has become much harder to identify quality writing from experienced and knowledgeable authors. On Kindle forums, I see readers complaining about this challenge. Authors must work even harder to demonstrate their skills and show readers why their books are worth the time to read.

Despite the challenges, it has been exciting riding the rising surge of a wave of change in publishing. In 2012, publishing promises to continue the fireworks show. Every author will need to navigate a world changing by the minute. I will be right there with my fellow authors, trying to decide what is best for my books in a shifting world.

Here’s a link to 2012 predicitions for publishing:

http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2011/ten-bold-predictions-for-book-publishing-in-2012/

As promised, Amazon has now made Kindle Books available in libraries. This means you can now read “Small Business Rocket Fuel: Marketing Tools to Boost Revenue” at your local library. I know my library has Kindles that you can borrow as well so you can get the whole package there. If your library doesn’t have my book, be sure to ask if they can get a copy.

Happy Reading!

PS: Here’s the link to Amazon’s announcement:

http://www.amazon.com/forum/kindle/ref=cm_cd_dp_rft_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx1D7SY3BVSESG&cdThread=Tx2DJ89JW5QORC8

I have been wondering how to sign books for my readers since my new book (Small Business Rocket Fuel: Marketing Tools to Boost Revenue) is currently available as a e-book only. To my surprise I found two companies have recently been started to allow authors to sign e-books for their readers. The first is Authography and the second is Kindlegraph. Authography has no pricing information on it’s web site but seems to be focusing on deals with publishers. Kindlegraph is free, but requires authors to allow Kindlegraph access to their Twitter accounts including reading their tweets and monitoring who they follow. This seems a bit “big-brotherish” to me. I got to thinking how could authors just sign on their own like they used to do with paper books.

How to get your Autograph: I came up with a solution that allows the communication to be solely between my readers and myself. Any one who has purchased my book (Small Business Rocket Fuel) can e-mail me using the address shown in the “About the Author” section. (You can find it easily by clicking on the link in the Table of Contents at the beginning of the book). After I receive your e-mail requesting an autograph, I will create a personalized page for you digitally signed by me. Your page may contain a short poem, digital images, colors and various design elements along with my autograph. I will then e-mail you the page to whatever e-mail address you provide.

All it takes to create these digital signatures is MS Word, Adobe Writer and some imagination. Shhh, don’t tell anyone else or they may decide to skip Kindlegraph and Authography too.

On Thursday (July 28), all day long, come to Romance University to learn how to boost revenue for your writing business. I’ll be there giving free advice on ways writers can develop and use a business mindset.

If you’ve never visited Romance University, I recommend you stop by (link below) any time. This is a robust site filled with writing craft, business advice and just fun writer’s life discussions. The amazing thing is that the ladies who run this site don’t charge anything for it. It’s easy to take free for granted on the Internet. But if you look around free and quality aren’t that easy to find nowadays even on the Internet.

To thank and celebrate everyone who joins me at Romance University (plus my blog readers) I’ve timed my summer sale to correspond with my appearance on RU. My new book, “Small Business Rocket Fuel: Marketing Tools to Boost Revenue”, is now $6.99 discounted from the regular price of $8.99. That’s a discount of 33%! The book is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble under the e-books, business books section (links below).

Although Amazon and Barnes and Noble don’t have a mechanism that allows me to show the sale end date (or the regular price), I’m letting you all in on the secret that the sale will end when real summer does- that is when school starts, the sale ends. On September 1, the price will rise again to the regular price of $8.99.

Happy Summer!

http://www.amazon.com/Small-Business-Rocket-Fuel-ebook/dp/B005AXY472/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1310220277&sr=1-1

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/small-business-rocket-fuel-candice-hughes/1104197103?ean=2940012843357&itm=1&usri=candice%2bhughes

http://romanceuniversity.org

It’s official, last week e-book sales surpassed those of paper based books for the first time.

The Financial Times (April 15, 2011 by Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson) reported that in February 2011, e-books sales tripled reaching $90.3 million compared with adult paperback book sales of $81.2 million. That means 9.1 million more e-books were sold than paper back books.

The numbers also showed that in January and February, e-book sales increased 169% compared with a decrease of 24.8% in paper based book sales.

The trend looks firmly entrenched especially given the ever increasing types of devices that readers can now use to view e-books including new tablets as well as the Kindle, Nook and others. RIM just announced a new tablet to compete with the iPad and a Sony tablet.

These changes will ripple throughout the publishing industry and all book related organizations. Even libraries are struggling to keep up. My library just sold off their entire CD collection in a move to digital. One wonders if books are next and if so, how will libraries transform?

Any change is sure to be gradual. One road block is that Amazon allows only limited sharing of books on the Kindle. Thus libraries can’t share books for the Kindle currently.

Even if books are eventually primarily digital, I think libraries will survive because they are so much more than book lenders. My library, like many others, is a community hub. Students meet with tutors, citizens come to hear lectures by authors or attend computer training classes, or teens just hang out.

For authors these are roller coaster times. The challenge is to adapt to e-books. Yet still profit. Perhaps e-books can even improve profit for authors. Perhaps authors will simply be lost in a tsunami of content. It seems too early to tell. The exciting part is to be in early on change and hopefully to shape change into a helpful, rather than mischievous sprite.

Not long ago I posted a summary of comments on the cost of book production by Lee Child.

Here’s another source showing how little it actually costs to produce a physical paper-based book (just in terms of printing).

“Printing a 9-by-9-inch, 334-page hardcover book in China costs about 44 to 45 cents now, with another 3 cents for shipping, says Goodwin. The same book costs 65 to 68 cents to make in the U.S.” He goes on to explain that US printing obviates the need for an additional 30 days of shipping time- plus the extra 3 cents cost.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100708/ap_on_bi_ge/as_china_cheap_no_more

Thus, the cheapest cost for China is 47 cents versus the most expensive cost for the US 68 cents. Will an extra 50 to 70 cents more or less  prevent anyone from buying a paper book (over say an e-book version)? Because that ‘s the real cost difference unless vendors artificially lower e-book prices by cutting pay for writers or publishers or sell at a loss to themselves. In fact, the difference is likely even less because there is still a cost for programming to develop and maintain software allowing e-books to be uploaded and viewed.

These numbers further demonstrate that most of the cost of a book is content development (ie: the writer sitting in the chair fingers to keyboard for months or years and the editor polishing the text up) plus some marketing/sales costs so that readers can find and obtain a copy of a new book and don’t have to hunt the Internet for obscure web sites to buy a poorly or non-promoted book. Thus, most costs do not change regardless of whether the book is delivered in electronic or print format.

E-books are a great option, but keep the price honest.

The agency model for e-books is out of the gates and off and running as of yesterday. As many expected, there have been some bumps in the road. Some publishers are still working with Amazon. This is all to be expected given how quickly deals had to be put together.

My main concern is communication with customers. This morning I checked the Amazon Kindle blog and noticed a number of customers complaining about the price changes. Some felt that publishers were price-gouging, getting more because they could, etc. To quote one customer “I’m really tired of these publishers jerking me around. Ebooks are almost pure profit since they don’t have to pay anyone to print or ship…”

Very few customers posting recognized or understood that authors need to be paid fairly for their work. The focus was heavily on publishers and lawyers writing up contracts as well as the low costs of producing an e-book versus printing. The truth is that without authors sitting in a chair, fingers to keyboard for months or even years, pouring their heart and imagination out onto their hard drives, there would be no e-books (or any other form of books). The truth is that like other products (cars, jewelry, clothing) some products may have a higher intrinsic value than others.

I believe most people are willing to pay fairly for what they buy when they understand the value of what they’re buying. Few expect to buy a shiny new BMW car for the same price as a Kia.

Of course, why should readers realize or understand the monumental effort that goes into writing a book unless authors, publishers, agents and others in the community engage them in conversation? We are not explaining our side of the story. We’re letting Amazon and others put their side of the story out leaving readers feeling confused.

Yes, e-books are cheaper to produce. But they are part of the set of products an authors produces. In fact, an ever greater part. The pay (or salary, if you will) that an author receives in exchange for sitting at their computer for months and years is based on what all these products (e-books, hardcover, paperback, etc) earn. Artificially lowering the price of e-books to “one low price fits all” means that no matter how hard an author works, no matter how good they are in crafting a story, they’ll earn the same base amount.

Naturally, Amazon and other companies that make the hardware needed to read e-books want low priced content. They want to sell their hardware (e-book readers) for as much as they can. In order to do that, they need to offer customers a carrot. The carrot is low cost content. Their pitch to customers is, “yes, you’ll pay hundreds of dollars for this reader but after that you’ll hardly pay anything at all for using the device.” Fair valued-content brings up the total cost proposition of owning the e-reader. Some customers may then want to pay less for the reader.

E-readers and e-books need each other. Like any relationship, there are ups and downs as well as power-struggles. I believe the agency model is basically fair to both sides. Readers also win because they will keep getting fantastic stories to read in any format they like (print books or e-books).

After reading about the iPad for several weeks and (finally) watching the Apple demo, I can see that it doesn’t quite match my lofty expectations. It is a cool, new twist on a computer or iPhone (or something half-way in between really). As a multi-media device, it would be fun to play with.

My focus though was how is it as an e-book reader.  Here I believe the iPad doesn’t quite make it. The most glaring lack is that the screen is a standard type computer screen. As such, it’s subject to glare and hard on the eyes. It definitely doesn’t replicate reading on paper. The e-ink screen appears to me to better simulate the reading experience. Although of course it doesn’t yet provide color.

The other drawback I see is that the iPad appears delicate. Is this device going to survive being stuffed into a loaded backpack? What if it’s lying on your table and your kid comes home and dumps a pile of books on top of it? Or you’re reading it at the kitchen table when your spouse spills a cup of coffee? For now, my newspaper or paperback can survive all these scenarios (with a few dabs with a towel or blasts with a hair dryer after the coffee) better and it’s much, much cheaper.

Sorry Apple, I’m holding out for now. But thanks for working with the publishing houses to provide realistic pricing models on e-books.