René O'Deay gBlog

"Want us to sell your books? Then you'd better let us print them, says Amazon. And oh, by the way, this is not an ultimatum."

Amazon pulls a Microsoft | Computerworld Blogs: "According to a Wall Street Journal story today, Amazon is demanding that any publisher that uses on-demand printing in publishing its books use Amazon's BookSurge print-on-demand services if they want their books sold on the top-ranked book e-tailer's Web site."

Some POD publishers have already had their "Buy Button" pulled on Amazon.

Authors and small press publishers are in shock. A veritable firestorm is brewing on the web as threats of boycotting Amazon spring up on blogs and websites of publishers and authors. Some of the sites blogging or posting about this include several Yahoo groups: SelfPublishing, Pod publishers, with a response from Amazon's CEO , on WritersWeekly , which has a growing list of other online posts, such as "Amazon Deletes Competition", "Use BookSurge or Die!"

PublishAmerica is first to feel the shock as many of their "Buy Buttons" have been replaced by "See All Buying Options" button.

Check results on Amazon by publisher, author or book title at Aaron Shepherd's amazing tool: SalesRankExpress.

What is dismaying is how poor BookSurge and CreateSpace sales rankings are on Amazon. Researching a POD or small-press publisher, use the SalesRankExpress tool for fast results.

What is amazing is some of the authors who do show up now using BookSurge or CreateSpace. Mostly for their Long tails/backlists.

All this clarifies what POD publisher to use for my first books. CreateSpace has little or no novels on their list yet. Maybe I'll be the trailbreaker.

René O'Deay

New Orleans Time-Picayune at NOLA.com is the top online news site:

A national organization called the Media Audit has just ranked The News’ two Web sites (buffalo. com and buffalonews.com) fourth in the nation among newspaper Web sites, based on the percentage of adults who have visited in the past 30 days. The top sites are those of the New Orleans Times Picayune, the Washington Post and the San Antonio Express News.

Source: buffalonews.com

See the Media Audit Nov. 2007 newsletter about it.

Tags: New Orleans | San Antonio | Washington | achieving | days | Hours | minutes | news | Site | Technology | Web

In Search of Adam
Caroline has incredible journey to publication of her book "In Search of Adam".
She launched her website and a very personal blog in August, 2006, which got the attention of an editor of a new publisher, Fridays Project, from the UK not long after starting. Six Weeks?

And then! They offered her a contract! All this within a couple months!

Her book, In Search of Adam, is coming out in June 2007 in the U.K. Not only that but foreign rights are also being sold, just in: the newest, an Italian publisher: Newton Compton Editori, has bought the rights and will publish and translate in Italian.

Wow! What's her secret?

What did she use for keywords, site description, and how did she get readers/bloggers to comment?

Check out her site and her blog to follow her incredible success story: her blog