ebooks

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Our New Blog Theme

Published by Chalita Majang on 4 December 2020 Permalink

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:59 — 1.0MB)

Musings on our new blog theme — Buying a new blog theme

We decided to buy a new blog theme.

The previous one was seven years old and the designers had stopped keeping it up to date several years ago. Therefore, as WordPress developed, certain key features had ceased to work.

The result was that it was becoming tedious to update.

I, and my colleagues and friends chose the new blog theme that you see before you at this moment. The designers have produced it especially for authors and publishers just like me 🙂

We set our new blog theme up quite quickly, although that is not to say that this new theme is without its problems, not the least of which is the slow response from the support desk and the lack of a clear, easily referenceable manual.

Blog Support

In these days of Covid-19, support must be difficult, since call centres are all closed, or should be, I imagine. Either that or they are running at one-third to a quarter capacity. Anyway, the support team does answer eventually, but it can take days, which seems like years, if you are anxious to get a new blog theme up and running!

If they had a comprehensive or even just a decent manual for the theme, I am sure that my friends and I could have sorted it out for ourselves much more quickly. However, the guide, such that it is, is on line and nothing more than a bunch of hyperlinks. After clicking on a few of them, I don’t know where I am any more.

My biggest mistake with the new blog theme was to impose it directly on top of the old one. I advise you to open a fresh instance of WordPress somewhere, and practise there until perfect. That way, you won’t lose your blog for a couple of days, like I did.

What a panic that was, I can tell you!

The new theme is huge though. My blog is quite large anyway for a one-man band, Owen Jones, the former owner, had created nearly three thousand entries. Two thousand of them were posts and pages! Still, I was stunned to find that the blog had swollen to 4.4 GB after applying the new theme!

Theme Features

To be honest, I have only set up the barest blog from the resources available in this theme. I am aware of what else it can do, but time has so far prevented me from learning how to implement more. Features, such as the direct sale of books (without paying Amazon, Apple or anyone else); the rental of blog space to advertisers such as authors, publishers or just about anyone; and so much more.

In fact, I have just decided that the next feature I want to implement is ‘the shop’. I am going to call it ‘Megan’s Market’, where I intend to sell readers’ and writers’ paraphernalia. It will also be able to handle the sale of ebooks, my own and those of others.

I hope that you will support me in these ventures, especially the direct sale of ebooks. If you are a regular visitor, you will notice me adding these extra features to our new blog theme over the coming month(s) 🙂

On the other hand, if you would like to purchase your own copy of this theme, called ‘Publisher’, or one like it but geared in a different direction, the owners are currently, as I write, offering a discount of 45%!

Here is the link: New Blog Theme

Daddy’s Hobby – The Story of Lek, A Bar Girl In Pattaya

Our sister blog: The Amiable Dragon

Filed under: Blogging, General, My Reviews, Promotion and Marketing, Publishing, Ramblings and Tagged: blog theme, ebooks, features, publisher

When a Book Costs Less Than a Drink…

Published by Owen Jones on 17 August 2018 Permalink

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:27 — 720.1KB)

A Night in Annwn – one of the free audiobooks on MPS

When a Book Costs Less Than a Drink…

I will admit it straight from the off! I am a writer with an axe to grind and I cannot understand people who complain that books are too expensive. Most books, in the form of ebooks, cost less than the price of a drink!

My ebooks cost an average of 8p or 10c per 1,600 words, which means that a coffee costing £2.40 is the equivalent of a 48,000-word book! Let’s call it 50,000 words… because many writers use that as the norm these days.

Mine are usually 80,000 to 112,000 words long or about the same as a coffee and a slice of cake!

Now, I’m sure that you don’t need me to tell you that a coffee and cake is normally consumed in twenty to thirty minutes, but most people would spend a week or two reading a book of 90,000 words!

So, where is the expense?

Not only that, but the coffee will soon be forgotten, but a good book could be remembered forever and even change your outlook on life, something that a coffee, no matter how good it is, will ever do.

People just don’t think much any more… their priorities have been skewed the wrong way. It is very sad.

I talk to a lot of people every week about reading and books, and it still saddens me to hear someone announce proudly that they haven’t read a book since leaving school… and I hear that several times a week!

The even more depressing problem with this sad state of affairs is that parents who don’t read much raise children who don’t read either. This has nothing to do with education, or at least, very little. It has to do with parents encouraging their children to fantasise with a good book.

The Baby Boomers are the first generation of working class writers, and their parents were the first generation of working class readers, so that was not all that long ago, but we need to keep the momentum going forward, but I can’t help thinking that we are going backwards.

It is very sad to witness and the remedy costs no more than the price of a coffee… with or without cake.

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: When a Book Costs Less Than a Drink…

Filed under: Audiobooks, General, My Books, Podcast, Ramblings and Tagged: beer, book, coffee, drink, ebooks, read

Pirated eBooks – Writers

Published by Owen Jones on 21 July 2018 Permalink

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:50 — 835.2KB)

Pirated eBooks – Writers

There seems to be two schools of though amongst writers concerning pirated ebooks: those who think it’s a good thing or irrelevant and those who would have pirates walk the plank. I am in the latter group after discovering that one site was claiming to have given away 1,755 copies of one of my books when I have sold less than a hundred. That is just one ebook, I have fifty and that is just one pirate company and there are hundreds.

If you don’t believe that search for ‘Pirated eBooks’ on Google. They are promoting hundreds of pirates and thousands of articles telling readers where to download free copies of copyrighted books and which the best download sites are. Thank you very much, Google!

Google was a good firm when it started but they have been absolute tossers since Panda (look it up – they closed millions of small Adsense accounts so that the big ones could make more money (so they have to write fewer cheques)).

Ebook Pirates

Anyway, if you hate the ebook pirates too, what can you do about it? There are two effective approaches:

1) Google ‘pirated ebooks’ and check the sites for your books; or Google ‘mybook free pdf’ where ‘mybook’ is the title of your book, and then issue a DMCA with Google for every instance where you discover a link to pirated content. Google will ask whether you have asked the company to desist from promoting a free ebook download link to your book. Just say ‘Yes’, but don’t bother writing to them. They ask for so much evidence that you are the true author that it’s a joke. If they reply at all.

2) Join Blasty. It is still free at the time of writing. They will find pirated copies of your book and issue a DCMA to Google for you at the click (or two) of your mouse. The process can even be automated. I have been with them a few months and have issued 1,198 DCMA’s and there are 398 in the pipeline. All free. The link is below.

An important point to note about DCMA’s is that they do not force the pirate to remove the reference to your book, but they force Google to stop promoting it. However, to be honest, if your stuff is not on Google, you might as well close shop.

So, there you have it: three options: ignore the piracy, combat the problem yourself, or let Blasty do it for you.

Here is the link to Blasty

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All the best,
Owen

Podcast: Pirated eBooks – Writers

Filed under: General, Help, My Books, Ramblings and Tagged: book, ebooks, illegal downlowd, Pirated eBooks, pirates, writers

December – My Month of Disk Work

Published by Owen Jones on 29 December 2017 Permalink

December – My Month of Disk Work

December is a strange month for selling books, I have always thought. I have tried to rationalise it many times…

Many people try to get all their presents ‘out of the way’ before Christmas Eve, so paperback sales are governed by the postal service. In general, that means that there will be no to minimal paperback sales after about the fifteenth. Some authors hope for ebook sales after this point, but I, personally, would never give anyone an intangible present for Christmas, although I would buy one for myself.

I think that a lot of older people might buy themselves an ebook for Christmas. However, whatever goes on, up to three years ago, I was selling about three hundred dollars worth in December, but that has now dropped to about a hundred dollars, despite the fact that I now have fifty novels on sale and then I only had three!

Seventeen times more books sells a third as much as before.

It doesn’t make sense to me, but the trend has continued for the last three years… cutting ever deeper.

Anyway, that is why I don’t bother to do a lot of promotion in December, especially the second half. There will be millions of owners of new e-readers, and trying to get into them is worthwhile, but there is no need to do more than a little promotion from the 23-25th – a few hours…

From the fifteenth of December, for a month, I basically concentrate on cleaning or Spring Cleaning my hard drive, polishing any books that I think might need it, and developing a rough sales strategy for the forthcoming eleven months.

In short, it is the nearest I get to having a ‘down time’ – I can’t remember ever working on a book during this period, although I might write the odd article, like this one 🙂

For me, Christmas and the New Year are periods of reflection, cleaning and planning… a time to let the batteries of creativity fully replenish themselves. After all, you cannot draw from a well that has run dry.

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: December – My Month of Disk Work

Filed under: General, Help, Promotion, Ramblings and Tagged: books, Christmas, december, Disk Work, ebooks, sales

How Many People Profit From A Book?

Published by Owen Jones on 5 December 2015 Permalink

A Night In Annwn – NaNo Winner

How Many People Profit From A Book?

I was thinking about how many people profit from a book yesterday and it was quite a revelation, and I am not even sure that I came up with the full list, so if you want to shed any light on my thoughts, please feel free to use the comments box below.

It is difficult to know where to start because there are many chicken and egg scenarios within the process, which comes out looking more like a treadmill than a linear process. For example, there would be far fewer writers selling their books if it were not for computers and the Internet.

So, the writer composes his story using a computer, which he has had to buy, rent or borrow. That means that the computer and the software are overheads, and millions of people are employed designing, manufacturing, marketing, selling, delivering and repairing them worldwide. The delivery systems take similar steps to the computer manufacturers, in that they need planes, trains and trucks, drivers and repair shops.

We writers then upload our formatted work to a publisher, although some employ others to proofread, format and deliver their book for them. The publisher uses unique software that they have (had) developed by highly skilled programmers on expensive, fast servers. Then the copy is checked for flaws by humans and machines.

When it has passed all the tests, it is published online. However, at this point, only a few people actually know that the book exists, so it has to be promoted, usually by the author. However, he may choose to employ others to help or completely take over the process, which is labour-intensive and involves using several websites like Twitter and Facebook. These are free to us, but paid for by advertisers and they also employ thousands of people.

Print books involve foresters, loggers, paper mills, ink-manufacturers, printing machines, copiers, photographers, graphic designers, printers and operators.

There are also firms that specialise in providing platforms from which authors can promote and sell their books. These have to be paid for by the author and are another overhead, as is the Internet Service Provider, the website host and registrar and all the governing bodies that regulate them and tax them.

Finally, a few ‘lucky’ authors get to earn enough money to pay tax, which helps pay the fat salaries that our politicians so richly deserve, and those of the civil servants who enforce their will.

It’s quite a bunch, isn’t it? Yet you can get a book for a fiver, and finally, hopefully, the reader will profit from having read it.

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: How Many People Profit From A Book?

Filed under: Diary, My Books, Publishing, Ramblings and Tagged: authors, books, ebooks, internet, printing, Profit, writers

Amazon Prime

Published by Owen Jones on 19 July 2015 Permalink

The Misconception

Amazon Prime

I am going to do something I’ve never done before: recommend a product. You’ve all heard of Amazon, I mean, who hasn’t, but they have a newish experience called Amazon Prime, which I have the logo of before, because I use Amazon a lot, but I never checked it out until today. Don’t ask me why, if you are already a convert, because I couldn’t tell you, but I wish I’d looked at it before.

Amazon Prime is currently available for a free 30 day trial, so allow me to tell you a little more about it.

Everyone is taking more photos these days than at any time since photography was invented, right? Well, as an Amazon Prime member, you can upload an unlimited number of images to Amazon’s computers and view or send them to anywhere in the world!

Not bad, eh?

There’s more. Amazon is famous for books and films, right? As A member of Prime, you get access to over 500,000 free books from the Kindle library. Isn’t that amazing, or what?

And access to 40,000 free films from their catalogue, all free and unlimited!

As well as being able to download and play, free of charge, any of the 1,000,000 songs and items of music available to Amazon Prime members.

All that clinched it for me, because I live in a remote village in a country where English-language items are hard to come by, so this is perfect for me. I can also use my laptop to play the films and music through my wide-screen TV.

However, it doesn’t stop there; there are what would be fringe benefits to me, although they could well mean much more to you. Like the free 2-day delivery on all items purchased; the 20% off Pampers and the thirty minutes early warning.

No, not of a terrorist strike, the guys at Amazon aren’t that good yet 🙂 but I’ll let them tell you about that themselves.

And the bottom line?

After the free month, it will cost £63, or $99 a year, which is a little over £5 or $8 per month.

Follow this link to prove to yourself that what I have told you is true, and begin your free one-month trial before they take the offer down.

I hope you enjoy your free trial,

All the best,

Owen

PS: you can also check out Amazon Prime by clicking the large advert on the bottom left of this screen.

Filed under: Diary, My Reviews, Publishing and Tagged: Amazon Prime, ebooks, kindle, music, photography, photos

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