Get Your Virtual Currency with Amazon Coins – Now Live

Amazon announced back in February that they were intending to launch a new virtual currency program, called Amazon Coins. This allows the public to forgo using traditional greenbacks and using coin stacks. If you tend to use the Amazon Android Market or have a Kindle Fire, this is something you may want to look at. You can buy in-game features, enhancements or just use your coins to buy a paid app. All existing Amazon users now have 500 free coins, which carries a monetary value of $5.00. You can purchase more coins with various incremental values, and get discounts the more you spend. App
Developers are encouraged to integrate coins into their Amazon apps and will earn 70% commission on any in-app or app purchase customers make with coins.

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Could Android replace Windows?

Suggesting that another operating system could fill the shoes of Windows sounds crazy, it certainly isn't going to happen in the near future, desktop Linux still hasn't managed it. What about the much longer term though? Android is surprisingly well-placed to take on the mantle of the Redmond behemoth. Don't believe me? Keep reading to see why.

 The idea of a mobile operating system replacing a desktop operating system would have been ludicrous just a few years ago. However, Microsoft has firmly pinned it colours to the mast with Windows 8. It, like everyone else, sees that the future is mobile, and has started morphing the world's staple operating system into something more mobile-friendly.

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Be The Best Of Whatever You Are

Be The Best Of Whatever You Are

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Be The Best Of Whatever You Are

If you can't be a pine on the top of a hill
Be a scrub in the valley, but be the best little scrub on the side of the hill
Be a bush if you can't be a tree,
If you can't be a bush be a bit of the grass
And some highway happier make.
If you can't be a muskie, then just be a bass,
But the liveliest bass in the lake.
We can't all be captains, we've got to be crew,
There's something for all of us here.
There's big work to do and there's lesser work, too,
And the thing we must do is the near
If you can't be a highway, then just be a trail.
If you can't be the sun, be a star.
It isn't by size that you win or you fail.
Be the best of whatever you are.

Douglas Maloch

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Bookmarklet to add totals to Kindle sales stats

If you’re selling e-books through Kindle Direct Publishing, did you ever wish Amazon would put totals at the bottom of the month-to-date sales statistics?
Well, they still haven’t done that, but I’ve created a bookmarklet that will do that for you.

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Apple Losing Out To Rival Samsung

Apple AAPL +1.7% smartphones have been losing out in the sales war with rival Samsung from South Korea and first quarter sales show the gaping divide.  Part of the reason may be because Apple hasn’t introduced any new versions to its hand held device segment yet.  But while Apple is the costlier and more trendy of the two brands, Samsung’s mass market, lower cost appeal has beat out Apple in the smartphone shipments race in the first quarter.

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Half the new titles received from a publisher don’t sell a single copy within a month of their arrival in the bookstore

Consider this data provided by a friend who owns a pretty substantial bookstore.
Looking at the store’s records for a month, 65% of the units sold were singles: one copy of a title. Only 35% were of books that sold 2 or more. (I didn’t ask the question, but that would suggest that 80-90 percent of the titles that sold any copies sold only one.)
Then, the following month, once again 65% of the units sold were singles. But only 20-30 percent of them were the same books as had sold as singles the prior month. Upwards of 70% of them were different titles. And upwards of 70% of the ones that sold one the prior month didn’t sell at all.

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A Little Competition for Smashwords?

When the free ebook distribution platform Smashwords was created, critics claimed that it was nothing more than  a portal for lousy ebooks to flood the market while supporters countered that it was the first genuine concept in stripping away the artificial barriers to publication. The founder, Mark Coker, stated quite freely that if a horrible ebook–horrible in terms of the writing, the formatting, or both–was published, the readers would be the ones to decide not to buy it. But for Coker’s vision, book publishing was for everyone who wanted to invest their time and talent in the process.
A few million ebooks later, Smashwords is a widely-respected and highly-profitable company that has launched a number of authors and has had a surprising number of titles distributed through their platform reach the bestseller lists. It has developed partnerships with the major online retailers to distribute vetted books to those retail marketplaces with the click of a button, and its model continues to be popular with authors, both indie and traditionally published.
Now, a new company has arrived a little late on the digital publishing scene and claims to be the solution to the problems created by Smashwords. Draft2Digital, who issued a press release stating that it was the “long-awaited alternative to Smashwords,” offers… exactly the same service.

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