At the same time, Amazon has recently revealed that for every 100 books sold on its site, it sells 115 Kindle ebooks. Kindle allows new authors to upload their books directly, thus offering mass international distribution. As literary agent Robert Gottlieb recently warned, “Publishers are frightened to death of the e-book market, because they see the opportunity for authors that they did not have before.”

With publishers reluctant to take risks on new authors and with these new channels now available to everyone, it begs the question: do authors still need traditional publishers?
Russell Grandinetti, vice president of Kindle Content, believes that the death of traditional publishing is a foregone conclusion, stating that “the only really necessary people in the publishing process now are the writer and reader.”

Publishing a book, however, is rather more complex than just uploading a Word document to Kindle and hoping people will buy it. Whether it is e-publishing, print-on-demand or the more traditional printing and distribution model, many important processes are needed to turn a raw manuscript into something people are going to want to buy.  It will need editing, designing and proofreading prior to launch. It will also need a sales and marketing campaign behind it to attract readers. Industry specific expertise is critical for all in the process.

With this in mind, Oxford-based independent publisher Infinite Ideas has recently launched a self publishing business, Infinite Authors. Authors can access a range of publishing services in order to self publish both printed and e-books. By accessing the company’s publishing expertise authors can self publish books of bookshop quality from as little as £695. Infinite Authors offers direct access to the biggest bookselling platforms and is democratising the publishing process for authors around the world.

If an author self publishes, he can expect to make a profit of 30% of the cover price of his printed book and 70% of the retail price of e-book sales. By comparison most conventional publishing contracts give the author a royalty of 10% of net receipts. On a £10 paperback that can be as little as 35p a book. On an e-book the author may receive 25% of net receipts (although e-book royalties do vary greatly) which may generate £1 per sale. By self publishing, however, authors can put their books up on all e-book platforms including Amazon, Google, Kobo, Sony and Apple and have physical copies available through online retailers and wholesalers. So self-published authors now have direct access to quite literally millions of readers the world over.

Tim Moore, Marketing Director at Infinite Authors, explains:

“Mass consumer channels such as Kindle offer authors unprecedented direct access to their readership. Our sister company Infinite Ideas has had huge success in generating viral campaigns for key authors. Some of their titles have had in excess of 100,000 downloads. We know how to generate interest and we share this expertise with our self-published authors. For a very small investment authors can now publish their own books internationally in multiple formats.”

Moore continues: “In traditional publishing two-thirds of sales take place in the months before Christmas. For the e-book market, the busiest sales are from Christmas Day onwards because this is when people who have been given e-readers as presents begin to download books. This offers authors huge opportunities to sell substantial quantities of their books direct.”

UK sales of digital book products grew by 20% last year, according to the Publishers Association. Yearly sales now stand at 180m, around 5% of total book sales. With the latest generation Kindle selling for a mere £89, the gap between the author and the reader will continue to decrease. Infinite Authors aims to bring authors and readers closer together by providing real publishing expertise to help authors bridge that gap.

Keeping up with the latest available technology can be an impossible and sometimes thankless task, but is a necessary evil in this day and age, if only to be able to compete in the business market and keep one step ahead of your rivals.

Unless you already have a basic understanding of what you need to learn it is always a good idea to either pick the brains of a colleague or friend who is familiar with the product or employ someone that is capable of leaving you fully understanding what they have taught you.

Under no circumstances should you seek help from someone who is not able to explain the process in plain English themselves and certainly never even consider employing the services of someone like Brian Badonde as you can see from this following video clip!

Thank God that Brian Badonde is a fictional comedy character, the roving art critic on TV’s Facejacker who is being used to promote this series of video clips sponsored by Bing that show one mans ignorance toward the Art of Technology.

Badonde is in fact on a mission to find out how he can embrace the latest tecnology available and how it can be used to enrich his already extravagant lifestyle.

In future episodes of this hilarious series Bandonde will cause his usual mayhem by taking control of a class of adults on the first step to learning about how to use a computer and learning to ride and race on a Segway vehicle in Los Angleles.

You can see the whole series by visiting the You Tube Art of Technology here.

Sponsored by Bing

The social network software that is available online has meant that however comfortable you are using the internet and the products that are found there, you can still take advantage of the benefits that are on offer. Whether you have the confidence to create the ideal network for yourself all on your own, or you could do with a helping hand every step of the way and wouldn’t dare to create anything online all on your own, you will find that the services that are available will give you the correct level of assistance that you require.

If you are a seasoned developer then you can choose to go it alone and select the DIY method, where you can set up your network and have it running smoothly and efficiently and the way you want it to. Once you have had a look at the benefits that are on offer and the simplicity that is part and parcel of creating and setting up your own network, you can choose your own web address and get cracking right away.

There is always help on hand in the form of a help desk that is open to answer your questions right around the clock, whilst the video tutorial library can be accessed before you start so that you can get an idea of what work is required from you. If you are still left feeling out of your depth then you can decide to get some assistance setting the network up, or you can go even further and get the five star treatment, where the network is designed for you.

If you feel that you need help setting up a business social network then plenty is available, as an expert can work with you to setup, design and launch your social network. If you don’t have the time to spare setting up a social network or would just like the task completed for you, then you can take advantage of the concierge service where all the work is done for you for a small fee.

Whatever level of assistance you require the choice is up to you, but whichever path you take you will still end up with the same result. A slick looking, ultra professional social network will be the result of the personal support given and consequently you will have a unique and fully customised social network, where you can draw in and build your network of business clients.

All UK businesses are looking to cut costs, spend less and hang on to their customers. But while certain expenditure can most certainly be contracted or cut altogether, whether a corporate golf day or lunch time visits to Marks And Spencer, there’s one area that many businesses look to cut when I recommend they increase their budget spend, especially in times like these.

Internet Marketing will help your business by attracting more customers through visibility.

Furthermore, as businesses stop trading you will need to be accessible, easily found on the web and listed high in Google, if you are going to capitalise on gaining their clients.

For those of you without a company website – where have you been?

Your business not only NEEDS a website but a professional looking, highly functional website should be at the hub of every business marketing plan.  Not having a company website is almost as bad as having a badly designed website!

For those businesses with a good website, you need to promote it with an internet marketing strategy. Internet Marketing should be responsive to your business and sector requirements, but must always include a strong strategic link building focus and an emphasis on ranking as high as possible in Google for your specifically targeted keywords.  Inbound links, topic relevancy and site authority all go towards ranking your website higher.

Now, if you are already employing an internet marketing consultant or company to manage your online marketing but are not getting a ROI (Return On Investment) or new business from this service, then it’s time to question whether they are doing a good job!

Many so-called SEO companies have sprung up in the past 2-3 years in the UK are not experts in the field of web marketing.  Most use automated tools and send pages of next to useless data showing SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), but this is not going to help you or your business without a managed strategy and analysis.

What your business needs is an internet marketing program being managed by experts who manually monitor and recommend what is right for your business to acquire more visibility, more traffic, more leads, and ultimately more customers; and the most important consideration is to analyse the results.  To do so, your online marketing strategy will need to harness the power of web analytics.

Armed with a good website analytics tool and an expert internet marketing team to build, monitor, manage and offer recommendations, your internet marketing program will help you  to beat your competitors and survive the recession.

To help start the year off on the right path, here is some free internet marketing advice to help you get and stay ahead of your business competitors.

Free Advice Free Offers
Entice your website and blog visitors by offering special incentives; and there’s no better way to grab someone’s attention than to include the word FREE!

Offer free advice, free postage, free information.  Things you know your competitors are charging their customers for.  Be honest, and traffic will grow.

Search Engine Optimisation is vital to your business success in 2009

You need to constantly market your business online.  Keep regularly updating your website and business blog. Fresh content keeps both the search engines and potential customers interested and aware of your products and services.

Set up regular Google Alerts for your company name and any products and services with recognisable or trademarked names.  This way you can monitor what is being written about your business, good or bad!

Similarly, www.IceRocket.com & www.Serph.com are websites that allow you to track who is publishing copy that may affect you, your name and your business.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
An ongoing SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) program is vital in 2009.  Don’t think a one-off ‘makeover’ is going to be enough.  The search engines are looking for your website and blog to continually add relevance, authority and good quality in-bound links.

Furthermore, once you start to receive high ranking for popular keywords, your competitors will also be attempting to leapfrog you in the rankings.

Target Potential Customers
Always target Google, and continue to use Google as a focus, for all your SEM (Search Engine Marketing) but never forget there is a target audience waiting for you on other search engines and directories such as Yahoo, MSN, DMOZ, AllTheWeb, Ask, Alta Vista and AOL, to name a few.

The Internet is global but don’t forget local business is as important, and in some cases easier to convert. Local search strategies should include geo-targeted paid search and natural search engine optimisation campaigns. Geo-targeted keywords restrict campaigns to consumers in specific areas where your company is looking to improve its reputation and increase sales. Include ‘landing pages’ that are specific to campaigns and promote single products and services to increase conversion rates.

Website Traffic Analysis
All focused internet marketing and website development activity will need to be analysed if you are to maximise the results.  The more information you can gather using website traffic analysis, the better.  Many traffic analysis software programs are free.  But many of these programs offer very little in the way of useful information.

We offer clients a free website stats program by AWstats but employ a much more powerful tool for serious in depth analytics.

Internet Marketing Plan
Finally, it is very important to have an internet marketing plan that you can  refer to, whether you undertake the work yourself or outsource to an internet marketing consultancy such as Buzzin Fly.

An internet marketing plan should set out the aims and goals of the program.  I also recommend a quarterly meeting that should discuss the program and provide results and recommendations for the next quarter.

2009 is going to be a difficult year for many companies, especially small businesses and SMEs.  But if you are looking for more revenue consider an internet marketing strategy as an  essential part of your marketing budget spend.

While I was talking to him, I was checking the shop he had problems with. I wouldn’t have bought from it. Here’s how I checked it:-

1. Check the Page

Open the front page of the site in one browser window and then use another window to get to a page that ought to be secure (the payment/checkout page is my usual one). Look at them both. Do either of them show any logos from well-known payment (Barclays, RBS, Protx, …) or security-checking services (thawte – who else?)? That’s not entirely reliable, but it’s usually a good sign because those companies attack people using their marks without permission.

Look at the payment/checkout page – does the address in the address bar start “https”? If so, is the padlock in the browser status bar (usually bottom right) closed? That usually means it’s encrypted with a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate.

2. Check the Certificate

Open the certificate details. In Firefox-based browsers, double-click the padlock, then click the “View Certificate” button. Then pick “Subject” in the second list box. Usually, it looks like this:-

Basic Certificate Screenshot

Some shops now use Extended Validation certificates and give a bit more information. Here’s one from a train company:-

Extended Validation Screenshot

3. Check the Registrations

By this point, the payment processing and actual transaction are looking pretty good. Finally, I check the recipient. Find the business details on the web shop. Does it include a geographic address? If it contains a company registration number, look it up on the Companies House website.

Then I find the business details on the domain names – you can use CoolWhois to look up domain names. If any of the addresses or numbers don’t match (Website, SSL Certificate, Whois), then I call them to ask why their website says they’re based in Bristol but their domain name is registered to Bolton. If they don’t answer messages, or – worse – the domain name says “Non-trading Individual” and the address has been omitted from the public listing, I give up on them and look for another shop. There’s no point securely paying someone that you can never reach if there’s a problem.

4. Buy Stuff and Check the Statements

All being well, I then buy stuff and check my credit card statement each month before I pay it. I think any web shop owner (or webmaster – I help some people with this sort of thing) should be taking care of the basics above. Do your shops measure up?

Despite the above checks, I can only remember not buying something online once in the last year. A couple of times, I’ve worked through the above steps and it’s changed which shop I bought from – and I’m pretty sure it saved me from losing £400 on one purchase.

For the technically-minded, Changes in Spam Levels this week Posted by simonw illustrates the level of disruption and may grow an interesting discussion from server managers – it seems the reduction is less than the 75% reported in some news services, but still significant.

This is great news for all good internet users. It’s disappointing if the spam hosting service won’t have to pay any of the costs they’ve inflicted on other computer users in some way. The only practical negative that I’ve noticed so far is that much of the stopped spam was pretty easy to identify and filter out, so the reduction in spam reaching my “unsure” mailbox hasn’t been anything like 50%. Still, less spam hitting the filters means less computer power used, which means less electricity and network data transfer used, which means lower costs for us. Yippee!

And finally, I smiled at this comment over on the WebmasterWorld discussion:-

“Our spam email has dropped so much in the past 2 days that I was beginning to wonder if there was something wrong with our email accounts.”

In general, it’s a little disappointing when you get a “null pointer” from a private company, but it’s particularly annoying from a university. University mistakes like “technology transfer programmes” (that stop software becoming free software available to social enterprises) are justified by a need to get more money – but clearly this particular university has money to waste. How about others?

If there was a way to subscribe to email or blog news of their research publications, I probably would have subscribed. Instead, I’ve just ranted here (without rewarding them with a link) and now I’m going to recycle the flier. I’ll probably have forgotten the three-letter acronym by next week. It’s simply bad marketing. It’s paper spam. Please, if you are putting things into conference handout packs, ask yourself why? What are you hoping to get out of it? How are you going to measure its success?

In most cases the design company have delivered exactly what they had agreed to do.  Most website design companies are simplt that – design companies.  They don’t offer or include any form of post-launch marketing, and is some cases the ‘design’ of a website doesn’t even include much time or consideration to the correct development of a commerically viable website.

Therefore, it is very important that when considering your budget for a new website – be it a redesign or brand new, always set some money aside for online or internet marketing.

Marketing your website is essential if you want to attract visitors and get noticed.

There are many low cost techniques you can use to drive traffic to your website, including getting listed in the search engines, advertising to a mailing list or exchanging reciprocal links with other websites.

It’s no good spending £1,000 or £10,000 on a company website if potential customers cannot find your website or are completely unaware of your website or business.  Whether you’re launching a new website, or just want to increase traffic to your existing website, it’s important to plan your marketing activities.

Always allocate a Website Marketing budget & plan for online business success

Choose the marketing techniques which will be most effective in meeting your objectives.

Here are 3 online marketing techniques to consider:

Paid Inclusion – Buy keywords on search engines.  This is the only way to guarantee your website will be listed on the first page of major search engines such as Google

Email Newsletters – Run an email campaign if you want to alert customers to a new product or promotions. But be aware, it is illegal to send unsolicited emails to personal email accounts.  If you are looking to boost sales from existing customers then an email newsletter is a good way to encourage repeat visits and build excellent customer relationships.

Blogs – Start a business or corporate blog.  Write honestly and openly about your business sector.  Try not to overly promote your own products and services but develop an informative channel offering an independent view.  In time, due to the quality of your blog, you will receive traffic and a loyal following; a percentage of whom may then become customers.

I strongly believe that every business can prosper from having a professional website and that either writing for a blog or promoting their business products and services on other blogs will increase awareness and sales.  But to generate online business success you must consider marketing your website or blog as well as building one.

As early as the mid-1990s I was taking part in meetings and presentations with a company called MAGEX who was attempting to sell their idea and ultimately their software, to the music industry.  The software allowed someone to legally buy an mp3 and download the file to a specific computer.  The track would not play on another device and therefore once bought, could not be copied or shared.

This concept had its limitations but the main essence was to get the record industry to stop wasting their time and money fighting illegal downloading of music, and concentrate on how best the music industry could embrace the Internet and the phenomemnon of peer-to-peer sharing sites such as Napster.

Remember, this was a time long before MySpace, YouTube and other social networking sites.

Universal, Sony and BMG were among representatives at those meetings who simply couldn’t see past how much money they were losing, and not what they could gain, and moreover, didn’t want to consider what would happen to them in the future.

I beleive what I witnessed in the space of one year or so, was successful businessmen not wanting to step outside of their comfort zone.

The result was that the music industry chose to ignore the changing patterns of music consumption; and only recently, ten years later, are they embracing the Internet through social media websites and free downloads; a lead that was given to them by small independent labels and artists who, if truth be known, need the money more than they do!

I felt engaged to write this post after reading that Mick Jagger, lead singer with The Rolling Stones, has been invited to help the European Commission (EC) to draw up a report on e-commerce and online shopping.

Jagger will be part of a committee (including Steve Jobs of Apple) who will advise the EC on the issues surrounding the online shopping sector, including a particular focus on online selling and downloading of music through eCommerce websites.

Neelie Kroes, a European Union competition commissioner told the BBC that one of the points to be raised will be why it is not as easy to buy music files online as it is to have a CD shipped around Europe will be under investigation.

To tie this in with the purpose of this blog – how to generate online business success – the business lesson I learnt by way of my first-hand experience with MAGEX and the music industry in the 1990s was that if you are successful in business there are at least two reasons why you should look for change and not stagnation:

1. Success should breed more success – look for other ways to expand your business and increase your success further instead of allowing your competitors to gain the upperhand.

2. Every millionaire I have ever spoken to always has a story to tell of when they made a ‘make or break’ decision.  They NEVER tell the story of how they played safe and took no risks or that once becoming a millionaire they are not looking to increase theor wealth.

And if your business is a success you may want to reward yourself with a cruise holiday?