Amazon offers subscriptions to blogs within their Kindle platform. Every day when your readers wake up, your new content is waiting on their Kindle. Since the Kindle home screen’s default setting is to show newest content first, you could be the first thing they see every time they look at that home screen. How’s that for visibility?

And there isn’t much competition in your niche yet.

Unlike on the web, blogs must be registered to show up in the Kindle blog listings. Whereas a Google search for “arts & entertainment blog” returns 438,000,000 results, on Kindle, there are just 3, 481 titles.

Top-Level Category Blog Statistics

This is your competition today (Feb 11, 2011)

All Blogs: 11,734 titles

Arts & Entertainment: 3,481 titles

Business & Investing: 2,151 titles

Humor & Satire: 1, 535 titles

Industry Focus: 1,753 titles

Internet & Technology: 2, 963 titles

Lifestyle & Culture: 5,592 titles

News, Politics & Opinion: 2,754 titles

Regional & Travel: 1, 107 titles

Science: 760 titles

Sports: 934 titles

Since Amazon lists these titles by largest subscriber numbers, it would be a very smart idea to register your blog and start promoting it now. This will ensure your place on the first page of results.

Do it now, while the competition is still scarce!

Kindles aren’t just for books. People also subscribe to blogs on their Kindles. It usually costs around $1.99 a month (the price is set by Amazon) and is a great way to

• offer your content to all those new Kindle owners
• monetize your blog
• increase the prestige of your blog (‘available through Amazon’ automatically makes you sound professional)

When readers subscribe, every new post you make is delivered to their Kindle (no need for them to remember to check your blog!). You are paid 30% of the fee Amazon charges.

How To Get A Kindle Blog

If this sounds like technobabble, let me help

Register With Amazon’s Kindle Publishing Program

It is cost-free and simple to register with Amazon’s Kindle Publishing program. If you do not already have one, you will need to create a vendor account, which is different from your regular Amazon account.  Read through the terms, because you are agreeing to obligations on pricing, content, timing and termination details. You will agree to terms for both the US and European markets.

At the end of the registration process you will be given a Vendor ID and Amazon will have all your payment details. You’re in business!

Add A Blog

When you have finished registering you will be taken to you dashboard. Click the “Add A Blog” link on the top right hand corner. This is where you fill in all the information that will let both Amazon find the posts from your blog and send them to your readers’ Kindles.

Filling In The “Add Blog” Page

Find Your Feed

If you aren’t familiar with RSS and feeds, don’t worry. Most blogging platforms (not to mention Twitter and Facebook) use feeds to distribute your content. It’s usually easy to findGo to your blog and look for the RSS symbol (possibly in the address bar of your browser) and click on it. It will take you to a page that has an address something like “http://yourdoman.com/feed”. Copy that, and paste it into the first box on the Add A Blog page. Click ‘validate feed’ to make sure Amazon is looking in the right place for your blog.

Enter Blog Information

If your blog didn’t have a snappy title before, now’s the time to give it one. Your blog is going to be competing with thousands of others for Kindle readers’ attention. Just calling it “Julie’s musings on writing” isn’t going to cut it. In fact, you might want to add a tag line too. (for example, the blog I listed is my Story A Day blog, aimed at creative writers. I use a tagline there that addresses a  ’pain point’ for my potential readers — aspiring writers who wish the could write more: “Write Every Day, Not “Some Day”.

Blog Description

Make your description snappy and to the point. Tell the readers what they are going to get out of paying for your blog every month. What concerns are you addressing?

Screenshots & Logo

Upload a couple of pictures, one a screenshot of your blog and the other your ‘masthead’ or logo. People are extremely visual, but remember that most people reading on an actual Kindle device are only going to see these things in black and white. Try to keep the contrast high and the images clean.

If your eyes are glazing over, let me help

Website Info

Very important: enter your website address! You want  your new fans to be able to find your website, don’t you? You’re not going to get rich selling Kindle blog subscriptions (unless you get insanely popular) so the whole point of publishing here is to expand your reach. Let people know where to find you!

Category & Keyword Information

Category and keywords are going to be very important in helping people find your blog.

If you don’t know what keywords to use: steal.

Go to a successful blog online that covers the same topics as you. From your browser’s toolbar select View / Page Source of View Source. A whole bunch of HTML will open up in a text window. Don’t worry too much about it. Just look for the line that says “meta name=”keywords” and then you’ll be able to see what that site is using. Take your inspiration from that (don’t actually steal. That was a joke.)

Language & Frequency

Select your language and tell Amazon how often you’re going to post. Be conservative (you can update it later). If you are new to blogging and/or the sole author on your site, don’t promise daily posts. Unless, of course, you have an airtight plan for how you are going to churn out seven awesome posts a week.

Almost Done

If you’re too busy to do this, let me help

At this point you can save your work and generate a preview of how your blog will look in the Kindle store. (This takes a few minutes, and is optional)

If you’re happy with how everything looks, press “Publish” and wait the 48-72 hrs they say it’ll take to get you set up in the store (in reality it took less than 24 for mine to appear).

Tell People About Your Blog

Kindle blogs are listed by category. Within each category the default view is “most popular” blogs at the top.

Your blog, on its first day, is not going to be there. You’re going to have to tell people it’s there, so they can subscribe and help you move up the charts.

To find your blog: Go to the Amazon store and search for “Your Blog Name” and the word “Blog”. This should bring you to your blog’s sales page.

Copy the address (use an affiliate link if you like) and then go forth and promote.

Good luck!

And don’t forget, you don’t need to do this yourself. Let me help

Amazon’s Digital Text Platform (DTP) program allows you to compete on a level playing field in the ebook space, even if you have never spoken to a traditional publisher about your title. If you have a business book, a recipe collection, a memoir, a romance about vampires and wolverines, Amazon says, simply upload your title and get it out there.

(Don’t know how? Read my guide to creating Kindle-ready files. Not sure what all the fuss is about? Read my guide to the Kindle. Not sure if you want a Nook or a Kindle? Read a comparison here.)

New Pricing

Recently Amazon announced that content providers (publishers, authors, who ever holds the rights to a title) can opt in to their new pricing scheme that returns 70% of the purchase price to the content provider.

This is way better than the 50% which has been standard fare for ebooks until now.

Of course, this being the book business, all is not as simple as that. There are a few wrinkles:

1. Your book must not be priced over $9.99.
2. That 70% is off the price the book actually sells for. Amazon could discount it and your 70% would be of that discounted price.
3. You, the content provider, pay $0.15 per megabyte as a delivery charge (which saves Amazon or the reader from footing the bill).

Now, before you allow publishing industry professionals to get your peeny in a panic ¹ let’s stop and think about what this means from the perspective of the reader and the independent content provider (AKA self, or small-publisher).

The $9.99 Price Point

I have a Kindle, and let me tell you, it rankles when publishers price ebooks at or above the price they charge for a large-format, beautifully typeset trade paperback book.

The Kindle early-adopters let Amazon know, loud and clear, that they were not  happy when publishers started insisting Amazon price the books above $10. In fact, there was an impromptu boycott a few months back.

Amazon listened.

²

Traditional publishers were appalled. Some of them took their balls and ran away home, or over the fence to where Apple, playing with its shiny new iBooks store and promised to yes, price books at $14.99 if that was what the publishers wanted. Who cares what iPad readers wanted? If they want the books badly enough, they’ll pay, said Mr Jobs and the publishers from their plinth on high.

Amazon, however, responded to YOUR READERS’ CONCERNS by keeping the price of the books low. knowing full-well that few people want any particular title badly enough that they are willing to pay more than they consider ‘normal’ for it.

If you think you need to charge more than $10 for your book, then consider Amazon a place where you offer a deeply-discounted preview and go sell the higher priced version somewhere else. It’s not an exclusive program. (You can check out the terms and conditions here).

70% Of What?

Book people are rarely numbers-people, I think we can all agree on that ³. Nobody goes into the book publishing, editing, agenting or selling business because they love accounts and the concept of percentages.

But even at that it is amazing how convoluted they manage to make the numbers in the publishing and bookselling industry.

Traditionally, publishers offer authors something like “10%”. That sounds pretty poor compensation for someone who put all the actual creative work into a book, but then you realise that what the author is actually offered is 10% of the net proceeds (that’s the money that publishers get after everything is paid — all the promotion and costs to produce the book — and all the discounts applied. With big-box retailers demanding 55% discounts, that 10% royalty comes out to pennies a copy. ⁴

Amazon is offering  70% of the net proceeds

Yes, they may offer your title at a discount and yes you may make less on each copy. Are these numbers you can live with?

100% of list price: 70% of $9.99 = $6.99

25% discount: 70% of  $7.49 =  $5.24

50% discount: 70% of $5 = $3.50

That $0.15/MB Delivery Charge

This is new.

One of the things that confounds non-Kindle readers, when I whip out my Kindle and attempt to convert them, is the idea of how the books get to me. Do I have to attach it to my computer? (No, it’s wireless). Do I have to sign up for a wireless plan (No, Amazon covers the cost of their Whispernet wireless transfers for me)

Well, now the content providers are going to shoulder some of that cost.

If you chose the 70% plan, you will also pay $0.15/MB out of your profit every time someone downloads your book.

For the numerically challenged, Amazon uses this example:

If your book has a file size of 0.400 megabytes and a List Price of $8.99, the Delivery Cost will be $0.06 (0.400 MB x $0.15 = $0.06), and your Royalty will be $6.25 (($8.99 – $0.06) x 70% = $6.25).

Richard Curtis at eReads says they had a look at their books and had:

determined that a typical book is about 2 megabytes: a large one might be 3 MB.

Something to consider.

The Original Amazon Plan, Still An Option

You can still opt for Amazon’s 35% of list price program too, if you can stomach that 35% number.

In this program you get 35% of the list price, no matter whether or not Amazon offers your book at a discount. It’s a lower percentage, but it never varies.

Depending on your circumstances, that might work for you. ⁵

Not The End of The World. The Start Of Something New.

Most people who get worked up about this stuff in media old and new, are people in the publishing business – either publishers, authors or booksellers.

You rarely hear regular readers getting their proverbial peenies all knotted up over distribution deals and rights issues.

Readers simply want to spend a few hours reading a good book, and still be able to afford another book when they’re finished.

To me, as a reader, and a content provider and someone who has been invited into publishing’s gated community for a few cocktail parties but no more, I think Amazon has done a good thing here and I’ll certainly be opting for the their 70% model.

How about you?

Barnes and Noble have released a new eReader, which looks suspiciously like the Kindle with a few “Look I’m Different” features.

(I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. Not at all. I just wonder why it has to be white and rectangular and look like a clone. Surely there are other designs?)

Here’s a side-by-side comparison, based on B&N’s site comparison and a Kindle user’s experiences (mine!).

I’m glad there’s competition, because it means that Amazon will have to improve the Kindle and someone else might invent something that breaks the mold and is wonderful. Of course, as an early adopter I’m rolling my eyes at the prospect of that, but I went into this with my eyes open!).

As a reader, I think it’s a good thing, because it probably means that more books will be available in ebook format and in multiple ebook formats. There seems to be a move towards making ebooks multi-platform and maybe more hardware will encourage that.

I’m also not sure if I should be concerned that the booksellers are now also the manufacturers of the device that holds the books AND, in many cases, the publisher of the content as well.

If you’re lucky enough to have a Kindle or a Kindle 2, there is no need to go spending good money to put your own content on there.

If you have PDFs, HTML docs, word processor documents that you’d like to carry around on your Kindle, you can either pay 10c a doc to have Amazon convert and email them to your Kindle OR you can use this handy, free method.

[UPDATE 1/3/12 - Amazon has announced the latest Kindle format will move away from the Mobi format. Find out more at the Amazon Digital Publishing site]

STEP 1
Download the free Mobipocket eBook Creator software. Install it and fire it up. (Update 1: Txvoodoo, in the comments, suggests downloading the Publisher version rather than the Home Version. That’s the one I used. It gives you more options, and of course a little more complexity, but it’s still simple to use. Update 2: Just discovered calibre for ebook conversion and library management. I like it. Read my thoughts on Calibre).

STEP 2

Select the file type of your original document (Word, PDF etc.) from the top right group ["Import File Type"].

Browse to the file on your computer, then click on ‘Import’,

Mobipocket imports the file but you’re not quite done yet.

STEP3

After importing, you should arrive at a screen like this:

Your publication’s title appears in the main pane. In the left sidebar are links to things you can change about the ebook: you can add a cover image, table of contents, and metadata (that is, information that is not printed in the book, but will show up in libraries and on readers, such as publisher, author, publication date, etc). You should modify as much or as little as this as you need. If yours is a document for your own use, and this is your first time through, just make sure it has the right title and author in the ‘metadata’ settings and move on.

STEP 4

On the same screen as Step 3, click on “Build” in the top tool bar. The program will give you this screen:

You can choose more or less compression and you can choose to encrypt or password protect your book if you want. First timers/Personal users: just use the default settings and click “build”.

STEP 5

All going well, you should end up at a screen like this.

Make sure “Open folder containing eBook” is selected and click “OK”.

In that folder you’ll find various versions of the file. The one you need for the Kindle is the one with the PRC extension.

Make note of where this folder is (so you can find it again), plug in your Kindle and drag the PRC file from this folder over to the ‘documents’ folder on your Kindle.

NOTES

Pay attention to the formatting after you create your eBook, especially if you are creating documents from your own content that you intend to sell. Sometime formatting issues creep in, and you’ll need to check for odd line-breaks and page breaks etc.

On Tuesday, Feb 24, Amazon will release the Kindle 2, the second version of its Kindle ebook reader, and the media are already full of stories about ebooks. The time has never been better to release your content digitally and, to capitalize on the news, to release your content in a Kindle-ready format.

What Is The Kindle | Who Are Kindle Readers | How Do I Do This?

What Is The Kindle?
The Kindle is an ebook reader, a stand-alone gadget, that allows readers to download content wirelessly (via Amazon’s free Whispernet wireless network) to the gadget, and begin reading within minutes.

The important things about Kindle are that a, the screen uses eInk technology and really looks as good as paper, and b, that Amazon makes it so easy for readers to buy content. Hear about a book? Whip out your Kindle, look it up in the Amazon store, download a free sample chapter, finish the chapter and, if you liked it, click on the ‘buy the book’ button. The content is on the Kindle in minutes, and stored in the reader’s Amazon digital ‘locker’ forever, for easy access.

The novelty of the device makes this a great time to get your content into the marketplace. Amazon is converting content and adding to the catalogue, but it is still incomplete. By making your content available to a hungry audience before the store is fully stocked, you stand a greater chance than ever of being noticed.

While Amazon hasn’t disclosed how many Kindles have sold, analysts estimate that half a million Kindles sold in 2008. The launch of the Kindle 2 should see another boom, as buyers who were holding off for the next version scramble for their Kindle. So, while it’s not a huge market yet, it is high profile.

Who Are Kindle Readers And Should I Care About Them?

Amazon has said that Kindle readers tend to buy 1.76 Kindle titles for every print book they buy, with no decrease as yet in the number of print books they buy. Also, crucially, the Kindle costs $359, so Kindle owners are readers with discretionary income to spend. Shouldn’t they be spending it on your content?

How Do I Make My Content Available?

There are two ways to get your content onto a Kindle. One is through the Amazon Digital Publishing Program. You set the price and receive 35% of that price every time someone downloads a copy through the Amazon store.

If you like to keep more control over your content, and don’t mind inconveneiencing your customers a little, you can convert your files to Kindle format and offer them at your website. Kindle owners will then have to plug their Kindles into their computers and drag and drop the file onto the gadget. (You should be very sure that your content is irresistible to chose this option, because one of the things Kindle owners love is the freedom from the tyranny of their computer).