It's an all voicemail episode! Hopefully everyone who's had questions or comments will have them answered here.
Voicemails: Web Genii has begun gushing on Twelve by Jasper Kent, and wonders if there's some unwritten rule that forces publishers in each region to begin the typography for a book from scratch, or if they could or would share; Trampas weighs in with his opinions on the Kindle, Nook, and Android; new listener Blair asks a few questions on ISBNs and first-time author ages; Kurt asks Stackpole for an iPad follow up report; John Dodds asks ebook publishing, particularly about sales tracking from publishers (hint: you can do it yourself!); Gary congratulates Mike, Mike and Dragon Page on it's 9th anniversary; Sean from Edwards laments that his local library is only open 3 days a week, and are soliciting ideas to generate revenue and keep their doors open more; Bionic Geek asks about ways to do notes and highlighting in PDFs in ereaders; Sean asks what might be the best way to rerelease a revised edition of an ebook that previously wasn't ready for public consumption;
Josh comments on the old MFA program discussion; Birder asks what ebooks Mike and Mike have that he can go get; Rift in Bucks Cty runs down the features of the devices that he makes use of and why, since many people are going to need more than one device for everything; Sean from Edwards broke down and will be buying an iPad this year; Rift asks if the guys have heard about Dorchester publishing ebooks they didn't have rights for; Arkle complains that Mke got him in trouble at work; Kevin from NC realized he was avoiding all the books with sexy women in skin-tight leathers, bare midriffs and heavy weaponry because he doesn't like urban fantasy, and that's what those covers scream;
Sandra is one of those rare folks that will read a book and watch TV at the same time (Summer used to do that a lot before she had 50 websites to babysit!); Jason from Denver thanks the guys for the Steampunk'd recommendation, and he wants more Chance Morrigan tales, and where to find more steampunk in general; Redshirt doesn't enjoy the color screen ereaders; Jason in TN thanks the team for having Pamela Sargent on the show; Ben in Tampa wonders if illustrations might make their way back into ebooks; Trampas asks how the process of getting a book in Kindle format works; Sean from Edwards reports that Electronic Arts reported that digital game sales exceeded physical game sales
Listener comments: If you have any suggestions or comments, please let us know!
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Promo: Dragon's Fire, Wizard's Flame by Michael R. Mennenga
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Wow, I forgot I sent in some of those voicemails, it has been a while, sorry there were so many from me.
You can open any drm-free mobi or pdf on the kindle. You can convert from epub to mobi with Calibre (it supports page numbers!).
Saying that it's impossible to audit ebooks is just factually incorrect. It may not work like a traditional book audit, but it is absolutely possible to audit either your publisher or the vendor, or both. I should know, I have been doing computer audits for over a decade now. 🙂
Have a nice day guys!!
I think Mike meant it's impossible under the current accounting systems set up at the publishers. He'd mentioned in an earlier episode about the prohibitive costs of updating their systems to more accurately track sales, so while it can be done, general consensus is that the older/larger houses are stuck for the time being using outdated methods that don't even contain the data needed to provide what most people would consider accurate numbers for ebook sales 🙂
At least, that's how I understood what he was saying, when describing the ebook sales discrepancies he was seeing with his own titles.
Actually Mike has mentioned this several times (I have been listening to old podcasts lately) and he isn't talking about accounting systems. His statement is that because the products are digital they are impossible to audit, whereas physical products are. This simply isn't true.
Actually off the top of my head I can think of several ways to audit Amazon/B&N on a technical level. To audit publishers would be even more simple because you have a relatively small number of outside revenue "inputs" (Amazon/B&N/Kobo/etc.), and if you compare inputs/revenue to output/royalties, you can calculate how much is missing.
FTR, not long afterwards I did get fired from that job that I had when I called in, but that was sometime after, and it had nothing to do with angry southern guy. 😉