Web Hills: a webpreneur's blog - lessons and insights from one web entrepreneur's e-commerce journey

The cost of digital books

rob — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 00:14:05 +0000

Why do digital books cost so much, sometimes more than a hardcopy?

1) They don't. the cost of production of a hardcopy book - even if you only order one single on-demand copy, is $1 - 3 for paperback, maybe $5 - 10 for hardcopy or colour. For production runs if thousands it is even less.
Digital books don't have a zero cost of production. We're IT people, we know better than that. The infrastructure and staff for a secure ecommerce site costs a fortune, I'd say a lot MORE than a printing press and a warehouse.
So I think we're lucky that ebooks cost as little as they do :)

Lulu loses Amazon

rob — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 06:29:57 +0000

Dear Lulu User,

We have been alerted to a change in the Amazon Marketplace's requirements that directly impact one or more of your titles' ability to be sold through this channel.

Due to this change, Lulu will no longer be supporting the MarketREACH distribution offering. Effective January 10th 2012, all titles listed under "Lulu Press" in the Amazon Marketplace will be removed. We are hard at work with our partners at Amazon to minimize the impact of this change. No immediate action is required. Only listings in the Amazon Marketplace channel will be impacted.

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Converting Word docs to Kindle

rob — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 07:25:28 +0000

What a pain finding out how to get your book onto Kindle. Nearly as painful as doing the actual reformatting. Kindle is like reading your book through a toilet-paper tube with a black-and-white filter in it. here's how I did it:

You could convert files to .epub format using Stanza http://www.lexcycle.com/desktop, except that:

Word docs retain all your fancy index entries, cross references etc as hideous looking text.
PDFs retain all the page numbers and other page headings embedded in the text - go figure.
RTFs just never finish loading.....

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great way to promote a book

rob — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:41:16 +0000

courtesy of Seth Godin: free books to the first n readers of the blog who donate to a designated charity... and who live in the USA. i think you could do international readers too if you take the shipping out of the donation, i.e. sell at cost and donate whatever is left over

Entrepreneurship is about hanging in there... and failure

rob — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 23:55:52 +0000

Harmonix' founders revolutionized the gaming industry with Guitar Hero and Rock Band -- but first, they nearly went broke. Repeatedly.
How 'horrendous failure' led to Rock Band

providing a tool or an outcome?

rob — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 23:32:35 +0000

Successful webpreneurs sell an outcome not a tool to get there. WHy is it that peopel will pauy me a five figure sum for three weeks work onsite advising them but I can pour a year into something like CoPr and nobody wants to know, or three years of ideas into The IT Skeptic and hardly anyone buys a twenty buck compilation? Because on the websites I'm providing a tool to help them but I'm not giving them the result on a plate.

Blogging is theatre

rob — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 20:00:22 +0000

Blogging is a weird form of journalism and journalism is an odd from of theatre.

All three are one small part art, a large measure of craft and a big focus on bums on seats or eyes on pages.

My host is WestHost

rob — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 23:11:13 +0000

After three years of this blog there's someone I should thank: the folk at WestHost who have kept it running almost without a hitch all that time. I've run this blog on virtual servers and real ones, all hosted in Utah by the nice WestHost folk. The service has been impeccable, from real live humans who are invariably polite, patient, responsive and helpful. There are slightly cheaper deals out there but not much and with a lot more unhappy customers on the forums: I think WestHost is a great deal. We've had a couple of glitches over the the years, only one of which was their fault as we moved from one server to another and the domain didn't come along. They jumped to fix them both times. The rest of the time it has chugged quietly away, the technology upgrading from time to time, backups backing up and servers serving. I'm a very happy customer.

Learning notes from publishing on CreateSpace and Lulu

rob — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:52:59 +0000

This page is a work in progress. Last updated 7th May 2009. These are not detailed instructions just tips -currently in not much order. All these things were learned the painfully hard way:

The winning formula on the internet

rob — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 20:54:23 +0000

When I started the “IT Skeptic” I little realized I had blundered into an empty niche. The Web craves novelty, and Google rewards the incumbent. First up best dressed on the internet. I’ve built a dozen other sites but none of them do well because none of them are original. I’m passionate about most of them, I have some knowledge, and I even have one or two original ideas. But I wasn’t there first.