Battle of 9.99

Here's another interesting tidbit for all of you"

Publishers Weekly has also published the book The Battle of 9.99, a book about the now infamous price setting at Amazon. I know that some of you remember this. Some might even remember getting into an argument on either side. For those who don't immediately remember, here's the story in a nutshell:

Amazon wanted to set their ebook prices at $9.99 to entice readers to their then still newborn Kindle e-book reader. It meant that they were taking a deep price cut in their profits, but they were really pushing for these readers to succeed since let's face it: previous attempts by other companies to market e-readers had failed spectacularly. This didn't sit well with many of the big publishers, who threatened to pull their e-book contracts with Amazon if they didn't reset the prices to what the publisher specifically wanted. Now the messed up part is that the publishers supposedly didn't lose any money coming in, Amazon did. However according to this book, what really scared the pants off of the publishers was really the idea that Amazon would undermine the industry.

As many know, this sparked widespread condemnation of first Amazon (with people assuming that they changed it voluntarily) and then later the publishers themselves. People petitioned, posted negative reviews, and some even railed against the authors, many of whom were actually for the lower price setting. This price war brought a lot of attention to the ebook world and to the idea of ebook prices in general, regardless of how you stood on the matter.

So now Publishers Weekly has put out a 58 page book about the whole shebang from the viewpoint of Andrew Albanese. It's going for $1.99 on Amazon, if anyone's interested. I might give in and buy it myself so I can give it a whirl.

Further Reading:
*'The Battle of $9.99,' a PW Original E-book
*Amazon page
*ebooks: Apple is Guilty in The Battle of the $9.99

James Frey & the Young Adult Fiction Factory

Want to get into YA writing? More importantly, do you want to write things that are meaningful for you & possibly the reader? Well, then don't sign up with James Frey or his company Full Fathom Five.

Everyone's heard of James Frey via his now infamous "biography" that never happened. Now Frey is back in the media & just like last time it's not for anything good. Recently Frey has come under fire for hiring hopeful authors in search of a break, then giving them one of the worst gigs ever.

In what is quite possibly his sleaziest move yet, Frey hires these authors (most of whom might be unaware of what they're getting themselves into), pays them a pittance to churn out books- books they don't even have any rights to. I'm not talking about some newbie coming on to help write the new Fear Street book or something along these lines. Nope, this is about some newbie coming on & writing their own original stories & characters, then losing all right to said stories & characters because under the agreement it belongs to James Frey's company.

I'm going to quote NY Magazine on this:

"Veteran publishing attorney Conrad Rippy said he had never seen anything like it:

It’s an agreement that says, “You’re going to write for me. I’m going to own it. I may or may not give you credit. If there is more than one book in the series, you are on the hook to write those too, for the exact same terms, but I don’t have to use you. In exchange for this, I’m going to pay you 40 percent of some amount you can’t verify — there’s no audit provision — and after the deduction of a whole bunch of expenses.”"

I can only hope that no new authors sign onto this company.

NaNoWriMo & Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards

Happy NaNoWriMo!!!

Everyone, celebrate this month by either spending it writing or by encouraging your favorite authors to keep plugging away on their own books. Know someone who wants to write & is doing NaNoWriMo? Feel free to mention them in the comments!





When you (or someone you know) is finished with the next big book, why not prepare it for submission to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards? This is a wonderful contest where an unpublished author can submit his or her book in the hopes of getting it published by Penguin or by one of the other companies out there! Many people have gotten published after being in this contest & getting lots of praise from their peers & reviewers rating their books, so this can be a wonderful opportunity for potential authors!


The #1 requirement is that your manuscript not be previously published. If it is a self-published book, you can still submit it- just make sure to stop offering it for sale during the time of the contest. (Here's the wiki entry for ABNA, which contains info about all of the steps to the contest.)

Down in the ABNA forums you'll find tons of people who will be more than happy to help you with your writing & with the pitch you'll have to write for the contest. The next contest isn't until next year, but the earlier you start with this stuff the better.

I hope to see you in the next ABNA contest!