Savvy Writers & e-Books online

Unfortunately, many accomplished published authors skip this powerful marketing tool – or don’t know about it. Once your book goes live on Amazon you are eligible for an Amazon Author Central Account.  Best of all: There is no advertising on the site, just a (great large) image of your book, your reviews and the book description.

Not only get your website a very high page rank, Author Central tools are very effective in marketing your Kindle books and promoting yourself as a published author.

How to set up your Amazon Author Central Account

Once published, expect to receive an email from Kindle Direct Publishing announcing the news and inviting you to create your Amazon Author Central Account.  Note your book ASIN enclosed in the email. You will need this to locate your book later and associate it to you as the author.

You need separate accounts for the…

View original post 292 more words

06880

Westporter Richard Marek is no stranger to publishing.

He spent 40 years in the business, including a stint as president and publisher of E.P. Dutton. He discovered Robert Ludlum, edited 4 books by James Baldwin, and published people like Peter Straub and Richard Condon.

But when he and his wife, social commentator and author (The Erotic Silence of the American Wife) Dalma Heyn wrote their 1st book together, more than a dozen editors had strong suggestions.

All of them different.

Change the hero, one said.

Change the heroine, advised another.

Add more sex.

Take out some of the sex.

Exhausted, Richard and Dalma put A Godsend: A Love Story For Grownups in a drawer.

They thought there was a market for this tough-to-classify “love story for all of us who are no longer kids,” but the people who offer contracts and actually publish books were not so sure.

A year…

View original post 313 more words

Il lettore digitale

Poche settimane fa avevo dedicato un post al Kindle Touch a quando sarebbe arrivato in Italia ecc., proprio ieri ne avevo scritto un altro al dispositivo di Amazon e al suo sistema chiuso. Oggi Jeff Beozs mi stupisce annunciando lo sbarco dell’ereader per eccellenza in Italia non solo nella sua veste Touch ma pure in quella Touch 3G gratuita.

Se volete conoscere tutti i particolari io ho letto l’articolo di Antonio Larizza sul “Sole 24 ORE”: “Amazon svela il Kindle Touch 3G con connessione a internet gratis. In Italia dal 27 aprile” oppure andare a sbirciarne le caratteristiche su Amazon, cliccate qui per la scheda dell’ereader sempre connesso offerto a 189 euro. Inutile dire come sia allettante una proposta del genere? 😉

Ho sempre trovato importante – non decisiva, altrimenti non avrei comprato il mio Kobo Touch – la disponibilità ad accedere a internet anche senza un…

View original post 46 more words

Booktalking #kidlit: Anastasia Suen's Blog

Picture Book of the Day

Big Little Brother
by Kevin Kling (Author) and Chris Monroe (Illustrator)

Booktalk: Being an older brother has its benefits, of that there’s little doubt. But how would you feel if your little brother grew to be bigger than you?

Snippet:
It’s my own fault.
I wanted a little brother.

BONUS! See the video!

_____________________________________________________________________

Chapter Book of the Day

The Faerie Ring
by Kiki Hamilton (Author)
352 pages

Booktalk: The year is 1871, and Tiki has been making a home for herself and her family of orphans in a deserted hideaway adjoining Charing Cross Station in central London. Their only means of survival is by picking pockets. One December night, Tiki steals a ring, and sets off a chain of events that could lead to all-out war with the Fey. For the ring belongs to Queen Victoria, and it binds the rulers of England and…

View original post 277 more words

At the BookShelf

The link below is to an article that reports on the clash between interactive books being sold as either iBooks or Apps by Apple. An interesting read on an issue that may impact ebooks into the future.

For more visit:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1826105/apple-ipad-ibooks-app-store-corona-amazon-horse-magic-bats

View original post

love.laugh.read

When was the last time you came across a book or a publishing company’s ad campaign?  I’m not sure if there are even campaigns that advocate the art of reading.  What would it look like?  If I had the honor, I’d probably get a big piece of white paper and write READ in bold stencil all across it.  How original.

  A lasting impression of a reading-related campaign I ever saw was by Penguin Books.  Looking beyond their success of publishing millions of bestsellers globally, one of the biggest factors that has continued to contribute to its success, in my opinion, is their branding.  Considering that it’s merely a tiny logo that barely gets prioritized as a consumer’s purchasing decision, Penguin Books has evolved into an internationally recognized icon.  Not a lot of publishing companies spend on marketing campaigns.  I think they assume that they are automatically put on the…

View original post 117 more words

authentic learning

I have blogged about Singapore’s FutureSchools projects in the past, and this latest clip from Edutopia would seem to indicate that serious progress is being made. The true success of this initiative, of course, will be the extent to which these practices will be rolled out to all schools in Singapore, and in this respect, professional development will be critical.

An interesting point to emerge from this video is that the approach taken to professional development in the FutureSchools project is to embrace the same participatory learning culture they are nurturing in their classrooms. Using technology, there is group peer observation of class sessions with the dual objective of learning from one another and providing constructive feedback.

More formal education and training in the use of ICTs in the classroom (in K-12 or higher education) is not that widely available. The Asian International College in Singapore is aiming to fix…

View original post 14 more words

Safari Books Online's Official Blog

By Liza Daly, Vice-President of Engineering at Safari Books Online

IBM DeveloperWorks has posted my article on designing ebooks in the latest version of the open standard for ebooks, EPUB 3: Create rich-layout publications in EPUB 3 with HTML5, CSS3, and MathML.

Summary: EPUB 3.0, which is the latest revision of the industry-standard XML e-book format, jumps into modern web technology by embracing HTML5 and CSS3. It retains its focus on XML-driven toolkits by requiring XHTML serialization and adding supplementary XML vocabularies, such as MathML and SVG. EPUB 3 offers a variety of options for developing advanced, digital-native publications. In this article, learn to create rich-layout pages using some new features in EPUB 3.

Some implementation details not included in the post:

• While a MathML example is shown running in iBooks, iBooks doesn’t yet fully support all or even most of MathML. Originally I had assumed this was a…

View original post 552 more words