Here’s a simple checklist for a digital marketing campaign for selling ebooks, and for selling printed books online. It’s from my online marketing course at Digital Publishing 101 where you’ll find detailed information on each step in the plan. [note color=”#FFFFE0″]Head over to Digital Publishing 101 where there’s a complete digital marketing course for how to sell books and ebooks… Continue reading Checklist: How to sell books and ebooks online
eReport – Digital Publishing and Ebooks
A Bad Week for New Zealand Publishing
It’s been a bad week for New Zealand publishing. On Tuesday, Pearson Education announced the imminent closure of its New Zealand office. The global publishing giant is restructuring to focus on ‘core’ and ’emerging’ markets, and New Zealand is neither. And yesterday, Harper Collins joined the exit, announcing its plan to move most of its New Zealand… Continue reading A Bad Week for New Zealand Publishing
How to use metadata to sell ebooks
I’ve written a post over on DigitalPublishing101.com to briefly explain how and where metadata is used to help sell books online. It provides a little bit of background on how metadata works with search engines and with algorithms like Amazon’s recommendation engine, and offers a few simple tips — follow them all and you’re (almost) guaranteed… Continue reading How to use metadata to sell ebooks
Smartphones surprise by outstripping tablets 9:1 for ebook reading
Smartphones are dramatically ahead of tablets when it comes to time spent reading books, according to a new study which tracks usage of the 1 billion smart devices now active in the world. According to mobile app researcher Flurry, almost 90% of time spent reading books on these devices is done using smartphones. This finding is… Continue reading Smartphones surprise by outstripping tablets 9:1 for ebook reading
A lesson from tech history points to a thriving future role for bookshops
In a recent American study by book data specialist Bowker, bookstores were second only to favourite authors as the most important source of new book discovery. Few booksellers would find this surprising. What perhaps is surprising is that bookstores achieved this ranking with just 19% of book buyers nominating them. Bowker’s study identified 44 sources… Continue reading A lesson from tech history points to a thriving future role for bookshops
Clean sweep for Kobo in the New Zealand market
Kobo pulled off an almost-clean sweep of the New Zealand market when it announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair this week partnerships with the two major bookstore chains Whitcoulls and Paper Plus, and the independent bookseller members of the Booksellers Association. The deal could see Kobo tying up well over 80% of the bricks and… Continue reading Clean sweep for Kobo in the New Zealand market
Five years of eReport
This blog started five years ago today, a couple of weeks before Amazon launched the game-changing Kindle and a couple of months after the industry had placed its hopes for a smooth transition to digital on its own open format, EPUB. It's hard to remember or imagine but at that time Sony was the hot… Continue reading Five years of eReport
How publishers can stay in the game
I’ve just read and listened to a lucid analysis of what might be the biggest challenge facing publishers and, most importantly, a practical solution to it. If you’re one of the many publishers who is convinced that publishers have a future, but you have a disquieting feeling from not quite knowing what it will be,… Continue reading How publishers can stay in the game
Tune your website for digital marketing
In spite of the hype surrounding social media, a website remains the central hub for most digital marketing. But its effectiveness depends on it being properly set up for this purpose. Often it’s not. So here are a few ways to make your website more effective as a marketing tool.Anyone can access it, it’s visible to… Continue reading Tune your website for digital marketing
Update: PressBooks adds new features, pricing and distribution plans
A few weeks ago, I reviewed PressBooks, one of a new breed of online ebook production tools. PressBooks founder Hugh McGuire just announced a handful of updates and some planned changes to the PressBooks business model. Together, they represent a significant improvement to the PressBooks offering so it’s worth recording them here. I’ve run the… Continue reading Update: PressBooks adds new features, pricing and distribution plans