Apr 28 2011
Thursday Midday Links: Another self pub author scores big deal
Another self publishing author scores big. Stephanie McAfee, author of the NYT bestseller Diary of a Mad Fat Girl, sold a three book deal to Danielle Perez at NAL in a “preempt”. McAfee, who has almost no twitter presence and who started her blog only in December reports that sales of her book reached over 50,000 at the end of March. McAfee’s self published book was on the NYTimes list for over 6 weeks.
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I have been excited about Notion Ink’s Adam tablet for quite some time. The idea behind the Adam tablet was that it would contain a pixel Qi screen which allows for viewing out of doors without reflection. Notion Ink’s tablet, however, has been in prototype forever. Unfortunately, I think the project is dead. According to Mike Cane’s blog, the Pixel Qi screen never lived up to the hype. Better off having the iPad and an eink device if you really want to read outside and enjoy tablet computing. At least until Apple comes out with its dual screen device, as this patent application suggests might be forthcoming.
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Pearson, the parent company of Penguin, is having another robust quarter. Digital book sales are also booming with sales in the first quarter of 2011 doubling the first quarter of 2010. The Pearson financial reports indicate that the ebook sales were about 4% in 2010.
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Barnes and Noble pushed out an update to the Nook Color on Monday and it was supposed to be awesome. Unfortunately, something happened in the update that affected the wifi of the unit and reset the unit back to factory. Now there are many Nook Color owners who do not have access to their books (being reset to factory wipes out all your books). The issue seems to have resolved itself now but just remember that if you have a device that has automatic updates, you may want to either turn that feature off or back up your device regularly.
This can be done by plugging your nook/Kindle into your laptop and dragging over the My Documents or Kindle Documents folder onto your harddrive.
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I really loved this short animation that is totally un book related. It’s an advertisement for Bloomberg Financial news, but the ad says that hedge funds managed by women are outpacing hedge funds operated by men by 55% in the past 9 years. We need some hedge fund managing heroines!
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In developing news, Red Sage is being sued for non payment or underpayment of royalties in small claims court in Florida by author Koko Brown. There is no official comment from either parties.
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Apr 28, 2011 @ 11:22:58
That short is awesome, especially in light of the articles I’ve read online about the lack of women on Wall Street.
Apr 28, 2011 @ 11:59:40
About the nook color: being set to factory only temporarily wipes out your B&N books (you can re-register and get them back, only it appears that there were issues with the registration server being swamped and nonresponsive, which is not suprising). However, you permanently lose your shelves and any sideloaded files that were not backed up. This is a real PR problem for B&N–if I had a nook color I would be pissed off because even though my files are backed up, I have over 500 books on shelves and that number of books also takes an eternity to download.
Apr 28, 2011 @ 12:01:58
By the way, the another way to backup nook books and Kindle books is to get their PC/Mac apps and download your content that way. You may need to move Kindle books out of the archived area on the app.
Apr 28, 2011 @ 13:04:15
@Joy: This is what I do. I figure I have all my books on my reader, on my PC, and “in the cloud”.
Apr 28, 2011 @ 15:09:07
Sad to here about Pixel Qi.
If Penguin would do away with Agency pricing their ebook numbers would go up. I do buy some of my favorite authors at agency price (I am weak), but “just say no” to so many new-to-me authors and books I’m just not sure about.
Apr 28, 2011 @ 21:09:02
I would just be happy if B&N would send out my replacement charger cord for my color Nook. When my cord died, I called customer support three times and each time they promised a new one was on its way. It still hasn’t arrived. On a side note, my Nook library was wiped out…twice in one day. Thank goodness I had my books backed up, but it did take me a while to transfer them all back over. At this point I’m wondering if maybe I shouldn’t have gone with a Kindle.