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A Good Book Now!
-Since 1994-
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Boson Books: Newsletters
The Boson Books Newsletter: Fall, 2007 We reported in the July letter that commuters in Japan were already reading entire novels on their mobile phones. An update to that note appeared January 20 in The New York Times: Until recently…cell phone novels had been dismissed in Japan as a subgenre unworthy of the country that gave the world its first novel, The Tale of Genji, a millennium ago. Then last month, the year-end best-seller tally showed that cell phone novels, republished in book form, have not only infiltrated the mainstream but have come to dominate it….Whatever their literary talents, cell phone novelists are racking up the kind of sales that most more experienced, traditional novelists can only dream of. Amazon's Kindle appeared on the market about the time the National Endowment for the Arts released a report finding that Americans of all ages are reading both less frequently and less well than ever before. A January 27 article in The New York Times discusses the Kindle, Amazon’s first iteration of an electronic book reader: Introduced in November, it weighs about 10 ounces, holds more than 200 full-length books and can display newspapers, magazines and blogs. It uses E Ink technology…that produces sharply defined text yet draws power only when a page is changed, not as it is displayed….The Kindle has a feature that neither Sony nor many e-reader predecessors ever possessed: books and other content can be loaded wirelessly, from just about anywhere in the United States, using the high-speed EVDO network from Sprint [which is provided for no monthly charge]. Your books, through Amazon's purchase of Mobipocket one of our long-time distributors, are sold at Amazon for Kindle, except for books heavily laden with images or special formatting—those cannot be converted to Mobipocket/Kindle use. All Boson's books are formatted in PDF, however. PDFs, we have heard, can be teased onto the Kindle, but we suggest waiting for Kindle's second-generation product, unless you like to tinker with this kind of communication tool. We will have a new policy beginning with the next accounting period ending July 31, 2008: we will hold royalty payments until the royalty total is at least $10.00. But, if an author wants to receive payments, whatever the amount, every six months, we will honor that request. The keyword is request, as in let us know, or be in touch with us on this matter. Thanks! Our sales are flat for the past accounting period. If the talk of economic recession is accurate, our expectations are for sales to remain flat for another six months. You can help sell your books by creating websites with pointers to Boson. Mobipocket does not pay us until a threshold determined by them is met. We have and do elect to post Mobi's sales and pay you in anticipation of receiving funds from them. Starting with this report period, these postings are indicated by double asterisks (**). In the statements you are receiving this period, some distributors indicate who bought the book. Some indicate which format was sold (PRC: Mobipocket, MS: Microsoft Reader, PDF: Adobe Acrobat Ebook). Distributors differ on which formats they sell, when they pay us, and how much discount they require, as well as the rounding algorithm applied and the currency exchange rate in their reports over the accounting period. Hence, you may notice (or have already noticed) a variation in the amount received for individual book sales. Note that book income as posted from the UK is based on the exchange rate at the time of the deposit. Returns on print books require us to cover not only the royalties already paid, but also the books' print costs. From you we deduct only the royalties. There is consternation in the academic ranks over the cost of textbooks, even used ones. Schools are starting to note the gouging and are suggesting ways to evade publishers' high textbook prices. A primary way is to move to ebooks. If you have friends who write textbooks, suggest that they contact us. We are able to publish highly technical ebooks, in color if color is needed, for considerably less than publishers' current prices.
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