Amazon Kindle Owners Direct Publishing Select (KDP Select) Lending Library Review

Posted on January 25, 2012 by admin

Kindle Select is a program wherein publishers give Amazon the exclusive digital rights to make their products available through Kindle and by default incorporated into the KOLLP (Kindle Owner’s Lending Library Program…”where it will earn a share of a monthly cash fund when readers borrow it”.

When you read the fine print in the terms and conditions this is where things get interesting. Basically, the royalty program is a very inventive crapshoot that Amazon has concocted to deal with the “royalty problem” of digital file sharing through Kindle.

This program is fundamentally established to provide an ongoing incentive to publishers to continue publishing through Kindle Direct. When I buy a DVD from Target and loan it to a friend, the movie company receives no royalty for that exchange.

Amazon has now set up a program where authors and publishers receive royalties when their books are loaned. In other words, they have made a way for you as a publisher to get ongoing royalties when your work is “checked out”. Pretty cool.

The reason this is an experimental crapshoot is because when you look at the fine print in section 2.3 below: …

2.3 KDP Select Fund. We will establish a fund on a monthly basis and you will earn a share of that fund for each of your Digital Books included in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library Program. Your share will be calculated as the number of times that the Digital Book has been borrowed during the month as a percentage of the number of times all KDP Digital Books have been borrowed, multiplied by the fund amount we establish for that month. This share is your total Royalty for borrows of that Digital Book through the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library Program. For example, if the fund for a particular month is $500,000, your Digital Book is borrowed 1,500 times, and all participating Digital Books are cumulatively borrowed 100,000 times, your Digital Book will earn $7,500 ($500,000 x 1,500/100,000 = $7,500). We will determine in our sole discretion the criteria for determining which borrowing events qualify for this calculation. A maximum of one borrowing per customer will qualify. We may publically announce the top Digital Books borrowed, including the author, publisher, number of borrows and KDP Select fund royalties earned.

… What we find is that Amazon is pulling numbers out of thin air because they really have no idea how this KDP Select Fund Royalty thing is going to work. At this point it is an experiment.

There is no relationship (yet) between:

“Participating Digital Books”
“cumulative borrowed”
And how many times “Your Book” is loaned out
“the Fund Amount”.

Essentially what happens here is that Amazon holds out a carrot that your e-book might be loaned out and if so you will get a royalty based on an unknown percentage of total Kindle e-book loans from an unknown ongoing fund amount of whatever Amazon decides. Amazon in return gets up front exclusive digital content.

Right now no one knows if it’s a good deal or bad deal but at least it’s something. If you have personal experience with this program post a comment and let us know how it is working out. Thanks.

Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing Royalty Options Reviewed 35% vs. 70%

Posted on January 25, 2012 by admin

The AKDP opportunity is great for any publisher desiring to leverage Amazon’s growing digital distribution network based on the Kindle reader format.

I wanted to quickly address how to make a decision between the royalty formats.

There are a couple of underlying issues to understand with Amazon.

You are paying for their bandwidth to “deliver” the digital content. They are getting their money for that one way or the other.
Amazon favors the Anglo-Saxon / Continental “Sales Territories” of the Northern Hemisphere with the seemingly more favorable 70% royalty rate. This rate applies only to those countries that are using the US Dollar, Euro, or British Pound. Notice how royalties from sales to New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, India, other former British Colonies along with the entirety of Asia and the Arab World revert to 35%.

Taking all of that into consideration which royalty rate should you choose?

The 35% rate is a simple flat rate. It is lower because Amazon incorporates their fees for tax and download bandwidth into their 65% margin. This rate is ideal for those publishers producing large file size e-books AND / OR anticipating large volume.
The 70% rate is favorable to publishers who anticipate low to moderate volume purchases and small file size products COMBINED with a buying market paying in either dollars, euros or pounds.

For the majority of users I recommended going with the 70% royalty because it will revert to the lower rate (or nothing) based on your buying market and Amazon’s sales channels anyway.

Read about all the specifics here: https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A29FL26OKE7R7B

(Google+) Search plus Your World Changes Search Results

Posted on January 24, 2012 by admin

SOCIAL ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

This month Google introduced “Search plus Your World”. This new development completely upends traditional front page organic search results. Users who have Google+ profiles and are “signed in” to their accounts while searching will see vastly different results.

Google+ is Google’s newly launched “Facebookesque” social networking platform. What happens is that when you type in your keyword phrase for search the results that appear prioritize content from your GPlus profile – people and pages from your circles – YouTube videos and posts.

Thus, results that you would normally see if you are not signed in to GPlus get pushed off page one. Users can turn off profile search and get regular results but the question is will the majority of people make the conscious effort to turn off profile search? Probably not.

The implication here is that if you are working hard to do effective SEO and getting good results on page one the results of search are now completely unpredictable. Basically, the foundational best practices of good SEO still apply; the results, however, are dependent upon whether or not someone is logged into their Google+ account.

Search is going social and Google is at the forefront. The implication here is that the emphasis will be for businesses to ramp up their GPlus pages and profiles for their industries and niche in an attempt to “show up” on the map of unpredictable and personal search.

In other words, getting broad exposure and reach on Google+ has suddenly taken on much greater importance.

One strategy will be for companies to set up multiple GPlus pages and profiles focusing on each specific area of their business – this will require multiple Gmail accounts with multiple circles and multiple everything. We will see how this all plays out.

Let me know what you think. Steve

SEO, WordPress, Content Development, Training and Consulting

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Organic Search – The Basic Strategy

Posted on January 24, 2012 by admin

SEO, WordPress, Content Development, Training and Consulting

We’ve never before been at a point in history when the use of words has been so critical to the success of your business. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is nothing more than applying language to content structure for the purpose of creating, maintaining and expanding the boundaries of your virtual real estate.

And that is exactly what it is. Just as you purchase a piece of land and put a fence around it and then populate your land with crops, cows and a home; so too, you purchase a “name” (domain) and use words and other social tools to demarcate and populate your space.

URL, TITLE and META TAGS

Create meaningful page titles between the <title>Meaningful Page Name</title> tags for each page in your site.
Write a short but accurate page description for the <meta name=”description” content=”Accurate description of the meaningful page name”> tag.
Create URL’s that use words that describe the page. For example http://yoursite.com/meaningful-page-name.html. If you are using WordPress you can modify the permalink structure to achieve this result and make your posts very SEO friendly.
Provide easy to follow navigation. This gets back to farming your plot of land. Tomatoes go in one row labeled as such, then Carrots, etc.
Create and submit a site map. What is this? It is an XML document that basically lists the structure and URL’s of your entire site. The purpose is to make it super easy for Google and other search engines to find and index your site.

ORIGINAL CONTENT

OK so that is a very brief technical overview. The next important piece of SEO is your actual content on the page. You have to have quality and original content and something meaningful to put on your page. Google honors quality and craftsmanship. See, the virtual world honors what the real world used to. The blacksmith, the shoemaker, the tailor, and woodcarver. You have to become a wordsmith and get back to daily Content Production 101. That is it. That is the sum total of web and social media success.

This is why good SEO goes way beyond understanding the technical issues.

ANCHOR and IMAGE TAGS

Just as above, all you are doing in every element is putting up a road sign. “Here is what I’m about. Here is a description and I’m going to take you over there”. Simple.

When you produce a link make sure it looks like this: <a href=http://yoursite.com/meaningful-page-name.html” title=”Meaningful Page Name”>Meaningful Page Name</a>

When you produce an image do two things. First, name your image what it is. Don’t name a picture of your tomatoes “dsc000123.jpg”. Instead name it “tomatoes.jpg”. Second, make your link to the image look like this <img src=”tomatoes.jpg” alt=”Tomatoes”>. Name the image file itself what it is. Use the “alt” tag to describe what the image is.

HEADING TAGS <H1>,<H2>, etc.

Finally, current web standards dictate the use of tableless coding practices and CSS. What this means as well is that the strategic use of “heading tags” is very important for good index results. Heading tags 1-6 are essentially the same as a descriptive outline. <H1> is the most important. For example, in your page code you would want this at the top and it would be much the same as your page title.

<H1>Meaningful Page Name</H1>

<H2>Accurate Description of the Meaningful Page Name</H2>

…and so on.

Contact me if you have any questions about how to do this. steve@stephenpaine.net

The main point I want to communicate is that we are creatures who use language. Adam’s task in Eden was to name the animals. Your task in your virtual garden is to do the same. That is the strategic idea behind good Search Engine Optimization practice.

WordPress Web Solutions for Small Business

Posted on January 20, 2012 by admin

“I’ll show you how to set up a terrific Word Press website for your small business along with auto posting to micro blogs and social networks to generate back links for search enhancement.”

There is no reason to reinvent the wheel. I use and recommend the Word Press platform because it’s powerful, easily customizable, effective and highly search optimized.

The only significant source of advantage on the internet is well-written keyword rich CONTENT. Word Press provides a world class content management and publishing platform to showcase and market your small business’ products and services.

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