November 5, 2014
by InstaScribe
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By InstaSribe
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November 4, 2014
by punjacked
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November 3, 2014
by Jandré
2 Comments
I run a Facebook page about the Sex life of the Common South Sea Snail. It is a popular page and can safely be classified as the most popular page of its kind anywhere on the Internet. Mom and I often add witty comments and like each other’s posts.
Every time I add a new post, Facebook tries to lure me into a deep dark hole via the “Boost this Post” sticker. Basically you pay some money, and Facebook makes a watery promise that between x-thousand and y-million people will see that particular post. The minimum they ask for this kindness is $5.00.
Why would you want to use Facebook to advertise something? After all it is a place where people post pictures of their kids, dogs and generic funny pictures that everyone else reposts. Also its filled with scams and lies, not to mention women who send you private messages that your Profile Picture (in my case a particularly large Oyster Mushroom) has convinced them that you will be their forever love.
In spite of this, research paints a completely different picture. Let us look at some figures. Facebook has more than 1.3 billion users– real users not dead accounts. Of these, 20% have bought something because of a Facebook ad. (Just so that you know, 20% of 1.3 billion is 260 million.
Mr Youth polled 4500 adults about, amongst other things, how Facebook influences them when it comes to buying products. 90% of this group have either made or received a recommendation via Facebook from a friend or family member. 65% of these then went on to buy something. Furthermore, 80% of the people who interacted with a social media response made by a brand went on to buy something.
This clearly indicates that Facebook can be an effective marketing place. Brands with a social presence are trusted 36% more than those without an online presence.
Facebook logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Facebook allows you to target a very specific audience. Do you want to target specific countries, or just one city? That makes great sense because why would Tony’s Take-Aways in Tenerife want to advertise to people in Peru? Why would you want to expose your book to people who do not even understand English?
You can specify gender, age, and interests. During the Second World War they used a “let’s drop as many bombs as possible, so that one or two may hit the target” approach. Carpet bombing, I think it was called.
Today they use smart bombs. (They only explode on impact!) Theoretically, one bomb could hit and destroy a WMD factory without hitting a maternity hospital or the local tax collector’s office.
Indie Authors will immediately see the attraction of this feature for Indie Publishers. Instead of spending thousands of dollars on a marketing campaign blowing everything out of the water, why not spend a few bucks on Smart Bombs?
The system allows you to be super specific. If you want, your ad will only be shown to people who have indicated an interest genre. Or you can specify interest in specific competing authors, or even those who have expressed an interest in your work.
So far it really sounds like a perfect solution. Tiny capital outlay, huge potential return. Why not do it? Is there a downside?
On Kboards.com, we stumbled across a discussion between a bunch of authors discussing this exact issue.
“Let me use my super-Zen abilities to summarize this discussion for you,” intervenes Zen Scribe: “Some say: Yes it works. Others say: No it does not work. And the rest say: What an interesting discussion, we sure would like to know if it works!”
Those who have been successful say that you should be extremely specific in your targeting. You can do it. Don’t just target someone with “Reading” under their interests. What do they like to read? Bumper stickers? Classical Novels? History?Science Fiction? And even choosing “Science Fiction” is too wide a genre. There are so many sub-divisions. Trekkies don’t like and don’t read Star War stuff. ET buffs don’t like V.
I am stealing this specific example from the Kboard discussion: if your book is about serial killers, target the current bestseller(s)’s fans. Until I found Aqua Fresh, I was a Colgate man.
You see, you have to be specific. If you aim at 10 Million people, your ad will lose its impact. It’s like mixing one packet of Raspberry Kool Aid with 1000 gallons of water. You are not going to taste it.
The truth is that the odds are stacked against Indie Authors. The odds are not impossible to beat, but just highly not in their favor. The Indie Author will have to become a marketer as well, and a skilled one at that.
There are millions of marketing resources out there for guys and girls like you. Choose wisely which three or four you are going to use to reach your customers. If you try to use Facebook, and Twitter and your own website, and the local newspaper and andandandandandandandandandandandandandand we are back to the Kool Aid scenario.
Consider getting a specialist on oDesk of Fiver to set up your first Facebook Page or …. campaign and then use that as a guideline for your future DIY campaigns.
And remember what Zen Scribe say: You can just do it!
October 31, 2014
by InstaScribe
1 Comment
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October 30, 2014
by Jandré
0 comments
When it comes to e-readers, there seems to be a lot of pessimism. Note that we are talking about e-readers, not about e-books, books, writing or reading.
Let us enter our custom built time machine and travel back to iPod days. I remember my first iPod. It was white with a whole Gigabyte of memory. How wonderful! No matter where you went, people were using their iPods or similar mp3-player devices to avoid talking to other people.
And then they just disappeared! It is true that they are still for sale and that Apple is still actively marketing them, but if you compare their popularity now to a few years ago, it is figuratively accurate to say that they have disappeared.
The omnipresent iPod made way for smartphones and tablets. These are small too, small enough to fit in your pocket or backpack when you are jogging or out on an invigorating hike.
Now, let us take a more detailed look at the e-reader world. The original online bookstore Barnes & Noble is busy selling their Nook division. You can hardly blame them. Profits from these devices dropped nearly 25% during the last quarter and by more than a third during the last financial year.
Sony has exited the e-reader market. Their reader was unable to challenge the market leading Kindle. Sales were very low and slow, forcing them to stop manufacturing the Sony e-reader. There are no plans for designing or producing a follow-up device.
E-Ink holdings–the guys who manufacture the actual displays that Kindle, Kobo and the rest use– has also reported a sharp dip in sales of the displays. The logic is clear, less displays being sold, less e-readers being sold.
E-Ink reported a 46% drop in sales during 2013. If you look at all these facts together, it is clear the e-reader market is shrinking. Mashable’s statement that the e-reader is going to follow the way of the iPod is understandable. Millions are reading on their phones and tablets. All the major bookstores offer some kind of reading app.
It seems, however, that Kobo either did not hear the news that e-readers are slowly becoming less popular or they know something that we don’t.
various e-book readers. From right to left iPad (Apple、2010) kindle DX (Amazon、2009) kindle 2 (Amazon、2009) kindle 1 (Amazon、2007) PRS-505 (Sony、2007) PRS-500 (Sony、2006). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In early October 2014, Kobo CEO Michael Tamblyn announced that Kobo has decided to focus on e-readers and apps in the future and is not going to continue or expand the existing tablet range. Kobo will, obviously, continue to support these devices. Furthermore, Kobo will take over Sony’s existing e-reader business. This will garner them a whopping 25 000 new clients. In the future, Sony devices will have Kobo readers pre-installed.
What does Kobo know that Sony and Nook don’t? Figures seem to indicate that Kobo is more popular than generally thought. It has about 50% of the market in Canada, and 20% of the global market in spite of its poor showing in the USA where it has only as 3% of the market.
In 2013, figures suggest that Kobo doubled its market share.
Why is Kobo achieving success while the other e-readers are failing? One thing that should be remembered is that nearly all e-readers use the open source EPUB format. That means that Kobo, Nook and Sony are direct competitors. Kindle uses Amazon’s proprietary format and therefore is an indirect direct competitor. A what? The one bunch runs on diesel and the other on gasoline. It is a crude comparison, but you get it.
One possibility is that Kobo is just mopping up those who do not want to, for whatever reason, switch over to Kindle and Amazon.
I have used the Swiss Army knife example elsewhere. As a multi-purpose tool it is pure genius. As a knife it is ok. As a screwdriver its usability is limited. It does not make for a great pair of scissors. The saw is sharp but unwieldy.
The fact that it can McGyver you out of a bind is great. The fact that you do not have to carry ten different tools on a hike is great, but if you really need a saw use a real one.
For reading, an e-reader is much better and nicer to use than a multi-purpose tool, e. g. phone, phablet or tablet. Yet it is much more practical to carry just one tool with you, like a tablet, on the way to work, or on a trip.
Reading won’t die. I contend that the majority of readers read to escape. In spite of better high speed Internet connections, more TV shows, etc., books provide a unique place of solitude and peace.
So, I am guessing that in X-years time there will be much fewer dedicated e-readers on the market, but that their users will on the whole be more dedicated to their devices. As long as Kindles cannot read EPUB, Kobo or some other e-reader player will exist.
October 29, 2014
by InstaScribe
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By InstaSribe
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October 28, 2014
by punjacked
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October 27, 2014
by InstaScribe
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At last, after hours, days, weeks and months of hard writing, editing, rewriting and some more writing, you have at last finished your historical novel on the sex life of the South Sea clam. You cannot wait to get it out there. It is, after all, going to be a huge hit!
You know from the beginning that following the self-publishing route will mean extra work. As the author-publisher you will be much more involved in the technical aspects of the book. This includes layout, font, and e-book format.
Or perhaps you are a reader and are weighing up your options w.r.t. buying an e-reader. What format will benefit you the most in the long run?
At InstaScribe we are proponents of the EPUB format. But there are several formats in which an e-book can exist. Let’s try to understand the advantages of each.
These are proprietary formats that belong to Amazon used on their Kindle devices. Initially you could only read it on a Kindle device, but now this format is available on a wide range of devices (including i-Devices, Android devices and a range of smartphones). Amazon has released apps for these devices to increase their reach. The Kindle Reading app is available for free for Android, Windows, Apple and Black Berry phones.
The AZW-versions are more compressed and have better encryption than the older Mobi version. This means it takes less space on your device. For example, Kindle 3 can hold about 1500 books. But AZW files can only be obtained from the Amazon online bookstore.
One of the disadvantages of using AZW is that it has limited support for typography and layout. AZW files also can’t be created from scratch. Amazon’s proprietary Kindlegen software needs to be used to create the files.
AZW can be created from PDF. But one thing about PDF compared to other formats is that everything is fixed—fonts, graphics, text, etc. The resultant AZW may not be as pretty.
You could also convert from a TXT file, but you would still end up with a bland, featureless document.
EPUB could be an ideal format to have before conversion to AZW. Unlike PDF, which is a fixed page, EPUB provides reflowable text, ie. a page layout that can adjust itself to a device’s screen-size. If you are an author, getting a well-designed, well-coded EPUB should be your focus.
AZW works well for most types of e-books. However, photobooks or books that rely on color and layout for information may not work very well on AZW.
PDF is a popular e-book format since software support for this format exists for a lot of devices. There are plenty of PDF viewers in the market like Adobe Reader, Foxit Reader, Nitro PDF reader, PDF-XChange Viewer, Xpdf, etc. Granted PDF indeed has a lot of great features, it still is not always suitable for e-books.
The act of reading a PDF-document on an e-reader like the Kindle, with its small and low resolution screen, is more of an exercise in scrolling and zooming than anything else. The big problem is that on these devices a PDF is very much like a picture. The reader must adapt to the document’s restraints and shortcomings since it does not have reflowable text like many other formats.
It is also extremely difficult to convert a PDF to another format. Quite often it is a hit and miss affair that requires a lot of time.
While it is technically true that you can move a 10-ton load with a wheel-barrow, it would be ludicrous to say that it is the equivalent of a 10-ton truck.
When it comes to mainly text PDFs and e-readers, PDFs are like the wheel-barrow.
TXT documents too can be a format for e-books. You don’t need any technical expertise to work on a TXT document and there is no platform on which a TXT file can’t be read. It is universal!
The major disadvantage of TXT files, however, is that they do not allow for any formatting whatsoever. This means that great technological achievements like BOLD, UNDERLINE, and ITALICS cannot be displayed in a TXT document. It will all be the same. BOLD, UNDERLINE, and ITALICS.
However, TXT files are small and easy to work on. Are you willing to pay the cost?
The EPUB logo. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
EPUB or Electronic Publication “is a free and open e-book standard by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF).” One of the design criteria of this standard was that the content be reflowable so that it adapts to the specific reader.
This means that text will be displayed optimally on each and every reader, whether it has a comparatively tiny display like that of a smart-phone, or a huge 21” display on your desktop.
The truth is that if you compare the abilities of EPUB with those of AZW/Mobi, it is extremely difficult to see a big difference. No clear winner emerges.
The great advantage of EPUB is that it is an open standard. It does not belong to a company. This means that if the retailer you bought your content from goes bankrupt tomorrow, you do not have to worry about your content.
On EPUB content producers can use cascading style sheets, embed fonts, and include multimedia files.
At this point, layout heavy books such as photo books, comics and graphic novels, which need to be read from panel to panel, don’t mix well with EPUB. These can be read on a computer with PDF format for a better experience. We contend that this is partly an e-reader issue. No e-ink reader can recreate the colored art work of comics. Neither can it fit a normal A4 sized page onto its screen. When it comes to graphics or any other graphic format, PDF outperforms EPUB and AZW. Apps like Madefire, Komik Reader, Comics, Perfect Viewer, etc., can be used to read comic books on mobile devices.
Betamax lost out to VHS despite the fact that it was technologically superior. If you read the history of this incident, you will see that Sony (the people behind Beta) had the opportunity to switch over to VHS right at the beginning.
They had the opportunity to address the needs of the consumer w.r.t price and recording length, but opted for technological superiority and not customer satisfaction.
Even if EPUB gets replaced by a newer and better format, your data is not at risk, since EPUB is an open format.
We also know that e-books will develop further. Graphic content is a big issue that still needs to be addressed satisfactorily. So too, the interactive feature that paper books allow. You can make notes, underline and kill a fly, in a way that is beyond the most advanced of e-readers.
EPUB, like power, belongs to the people.
– Written by Jandre Le Roux and Srishti Punja
October 24, 2014
by Jandré
0 comments
What is Wattpad? Yes, I know that 99% of the InstaScribe readers are highly intelligent, highly educated and paragons of virtue, but let’s be nice to the other one %, OK?
Wattpad is an Internet community which facilitates writing and reading. It often happens that “facilitating writing and reading” is the goal of a community filled to the brim with writers, but there is no one, at least not enough nobodies, to read what is being written, not unlike your blog. (The reason is that everybody is over here, reading InstaScribe.)
What is Write On? Write On is Amazon’s version of the reading and writing community. It is brand new. In fact it is still in Beta Mode and Zen Scribe had to use a lot of his karma to get us an invite.
Wattpad
“Writing it does not mean that they will come!” says Zen Scribe, mangling a Field of Dreams quote.
It was, partly with this in mind that Allan Lau and Ivan Yuen started what aims to become the “world’s biggest reader and writer community.”
Wattpad has 25 000 000 members and 40 000 000 stories.
“Reminds me of my bank account. All those zeros.” says Zen Scribe.
The good part is that there seem to be many more readers than writers on the platform, which means real feedback for the writers.
One little Wattpad story attributed to Allen Lau by Margaret Atwood, yes, she of The Blind Assassin, The Handmaid’s Tale and many other literary gems, is a thank you letter from a remote African town.
This town has no bookshop, library or high-speed internet connection. It does, however, have a cellphone through which they could access Wattpad. An old man wrote to Wattpad thanking them for the reading available to him and the others in the town.
If you look at these numbers, the reactions of people all over the world, you can understand why it has been called the Youtube of writing. Wattpad is effective at enabling people to make their writing available to others.
Is Wattpad working? The answer is a clear and resounding yes. Before we look at why it is working, let’s consider who uses Wattpad.
One automatically tends to think that you will only find wannabes and failures on Wattpad. This does make sense, because a lot of these, uhm, so called writers are looking for a jumping-off point to fame, first class flights and fortune.
The truth is that Margaret Atwood publishes here and so does Paul Coelho, author of the extremely popular and extremely successful The Alchemist. The Alchemist really turned into gold. It even holds a Guinness World Record for the only book of by a living author translated into eighty maximum number of languages.
Even the clever Zen Scribe does not know how many popular and successful published writers use Wattpad, but we are sure that there are more than two. Do your bit and further enlighten our enlightened Zen Scribe.
What we can conclude from the presence of Atwood and Coelho is that the world of publishing is changing. Success won’t exclusively be measured by a publishing contract from Hachette, Penguin or Harper and Collins. Case in point: Amazon and its mighty e-book publishing business.
Margaret Atwood
Considering Wattpad has 25 million members and 40 million stories, and has been with us for a quarter of the existence of the Internet, even Einstein would have agreed that it seems to have made a quantum-like impression on the world of writing.
“What do you mean by ‘quantum-like impression’?” demands Zen Scribe.
“Shut up!” says Jandre, that’s me. “Who is writing this? Me or you?”
Enlightened smiles work too.
Why are people using Wattpad? Some because they primarily like writing and others because they primarily like reading. (All authors love reading!)
Wattpad provides you with 25 million people who want to read. This is great! Where else are you going to find an audience like this?
But this is so much more than a captive audience! Interaction with the author is encouraged. Monthly in the order of 5 million comments are made by readers.
Generally writers crave feedback, real honest feedback. “Mom and Dad” feedback does not really help, except the bit where they suggest you go to bed, because you probably do need to sleep.
Here are two comments. They are both on the book Tough Love by Halia Harley. (This book was randomly chosen.)
Comment #1 by heidimelki “work in the nypd, army, cia etc and you’ll understand the word ‘sir’ comes before and after addressing your captain.”
Comment #2 by ohmagosh1D “My friend told me about this story I’ve heard so much! 1st chapter and I’m already in love :)”
The correction of a factual error and real honest encouragement. Don’t you agree, this is a great feature that will encourage writers, weary from slogging away without knowing what others think!
You are immediately connected with like minded people. You can read the work of other writers in your genre(s) and contact them. A bit of cross pollination might do you a world of good.
You will also be able to build relationships with readers. You might be one of those writers who hope to publish your work sooner or later. Building a network of contact of people who have read you and are aware of you will greatly benefit you in the future.
Wattpad offers various competitions. This is one of the ways they create internal awareness of books on offer.
You can also become a featured writer. This means that Wattpad will promote your work on their site for free.
There are also a whole bunch of different competitions. They might be specific to a genre or a free for all. Even if you do not win, you will surely gain some new readers.
One issue that goes hand in hand with publishing is plagiarism. As you would expect, there are cases of one Wattpad user copying pieces of another user’s story and using it as their own.
It has also been reported that whole books have been “imported.” Hunger Games is one example.
Allen Lau, founding Wattpad member has said that they are aware of this problem. In a move to combat this, they cooperate with publishers. Using the provided metadata, it is easier to catch plagiarists.
In the case of user on user plagiarism, due to the absence of this metadata, Wattpad primarily relies on the input of their “passionate” community to make them aware of cases like this. They then claim to remove the copied texts.
“It’s called Write On by Kindle, and it’s a community where readers and writers come together around the creative process to make good stories great and great stories better.” says Nina.
Currently you still need an invite and these seem to be scarcer than good governance in Africa.
The guys at TechCrunch who have actually seen the platform said, “It isn’t very full-featured – it’s more of a blogging platform right now – but it looks to be well populated with indie titles.”
Signing up is especially easy if you already have an Amazon account. Basically all you have to do is upload a pic and choose a nom de plume.
The system seems to be functioning well. If you have a look under the “I need Help” and “Known Issues” headings on the forums, you see normal growing pain issues and normal user “mistakes”.
To create the cover, the title, etc., for a new book is very easy. Writing a book stays a challenge. Currently you cannot upload a pre-formatted file. Either you write it online and save all your work on Amazon’s servers, or you cut and paste via a text file. Cutting and Pasting via Word causes some formatting issues at Write On. Write On allows you to upload a TXT file. In both cases you will have to add the formatting online. This can be a quite tedious process.
The kind of comments you see on Write On seem to be of a higher standard than those on Wattpad. I quote what J.T. Stoll has to say on the book Loose Changeling by Andrea Stewart,
You have a really great voice. Good characterization (i.e. Owen doing things without really thinking about them). Great story description. Even really good cover. Good hook, though the “woman finds husband in bed with another woman felt a little cliche. But turning the other woman into a mouse was kinda cool.
One thing really pulled me out of the story:
If the woman was lying in the bed right there, why didn’t they notice her shrinking or vanishing? One moment, she was there. The next, they’re just wondering where she went. This seemed a little unnatural. She needs to get out of their direct eyesight to turn into a mouse. Otherwise, it seems like they’d notice the transition. They seem pretty casual about someone vanishing into thin air.
Great job, keep it up! How much of the story do you have written, so far?
Unless you have a Write On account you probably won’t be able to see it. Take my word, please.
Remember that Write On’s members are a bunch of selected individuals, and a few gate crashers like me. This, probably means, that the ratio of writers are much higher than on Wattpad. This should change over time, and then I guess the kinds of comments will be more comparable.
It will be interesting to see how Write On handles the exclusivity of publishing rites in the future. Currently, as mentioned, they appear to allow you to have a multitude of publishing partners, but what will happen when Write On considers itself mature enough to cast off the Beta tag?
Another thing is that you will access to a potentially massively huge audience. Sure not all Amazon’s readers will join, but it is possible that they might outstrip Wattpad, depending on their marketing.
It seems to me that Wattpad’s secret is the interaction between writer and reader. If Amazon can get this conversation going, then it will be very interesting to see who goes all the way!
October 22, 2014
by InstaScribe
0 comments
By InstaScribe
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