Adidas Wilson's Blog, page 178
March 21, 2017
Artificial intelligence powers marketing
Marketing is undergoing dramatic change, driven by shifts in technology and the availability of digital data. Among the most significant changes is the heightened ability for marketers to discern what customers and potential buyers care about and then act on that information.
Marketers today are watching as buyers leave digital tracks – the web pages they view, buttons they press on mobile devices, comments they leave on Facebook or Twitter. By observing how consumers act, marketers can learn what buyers care about and what is important to them.
By aggregating this digital data, and applying the right algorithms, marketers can recommend products, deliver interesting offers, and create personalization to segments of one rather than to batches of thousands.
Machine learning is well-suited to this type of data aggregation, analysis, and recommendation. To learn more about the role of artificial intelligence in marketing, I spoke with two experts. Sameer Patel is the CEO of Kahuna Software, and Andrew Eichenbaum is Kahuna’s head of science.
This conversation was episode 209 of the CXOTALK series of discussions with the world’s most important and prolific innovators.
If you care about the future of marketing, AI, and machine learning, then dig into this discussion.
Watch the video embedded above and read an edited transcript below. Or hop over to CXOTALK and check out a complete transcript from the entire 45-minute conversation.
What is Kahuna Software?
Kahuna software is a B2C marketing automation provider. We have built a real-time platform that allows brands to be able to understand the interests and preferences of their consumers. Literally within seconds, and put meaningful offers in front of them. This is the new way of using artificial intelligence to engage with your consumers on the right device at the right time.
We look at convergence and the need for consumer brands to rethink how they engage and transact with the consumers.
We’re in this new era, where you can market to anybody, probably 14-16 hours a day. People are that connected to their cell phone, it’s always there, there are multiple channels to reach out to them, and that’s all through one device. This connectivity has become ubiquitous, at least in the US market, over the past five years.
Now that being said, it’s easy enough to spam them, and nobody wants to do that because people have become hypersensitive to spam. So, it’s not just not sending them spam; it’s knowing what to send them when to send to them, how you send to them because there’s a range of things. What message do you want to send to them? And, it just extends out.
We’re now in an area where we can think about trying to increase the expected long-term value of all my customers. I want to increase their overall engagement stake, and this is what marketers can now reach to. It was a nebulous goal before but is now something we can move forward and try and act on.
Is this just marketing automation?
Marketing automation was created a decade ago. How does stack up? The market’s over ten billion dollars in size, yet there is over two hundred and eighty billion dollars of goods left in abandoned shopping carts every single year. Two hundred eighty billion dollars.
That’s how much you and I go, and we almost buy, and we put it in the shopping cart, and we leave it there. You’re effectively nudging the consumer to the finish line, or providing them with handholding, information and research that might persuade them to finish buying.
The conversion rates are 2-3% on e-commerce. That’s how bad it is. All this investment in what seemed like the right offers lead to 2-3% of conversion.
Source:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/artificial-intelligence-powers-marketing/
Why do many people hate successful people?
The reason is because it implies you are generally more competent than they are, and should be paid attention to more. They are jealous and afraid they are going to lose attention from their friends to you because you have more to offer in terms of wisdom.
It really is that simple. Jealousy is an ignorant, worthless emotion.
A well rounded person who is funny, intelligent, attractive (as much as they can be), caring and successful probably will get attention and there isn’t much you can do about it. However, such a person doesn’t really want to hurt you or take things away from you anyways. They can only choose one mate, and only have a certain amount of time to interact with friends. And for people like this, generally the more the merrier (more funny comments, attractive people around etc) They want you to be successful to so they can have more successful friends and resources.
If a successful person is lacking in these other traits, you can call them out on it (to their face) and totally be in the right. Honest confrontation (not an outburst of anger or petty rumor-mongering) is the best course of action in that case.
How is it we can constantly be exposed to profound characters in media (movies, tv, books and even news) in this information age and yet petty insecure rumor-mongering behavior that is ridiculed in such media is still considered valid in real life?
Source:
https://www.quora.com/Why-do-many-people-hate-successful-people
Internet Saathi: How Google is connecting women of rural India to the Web
The Internet in India is not just a commodity now, it has become a part of our lives so much so that it transcends from a tool to an emotion. Right from the days of dial-up connections to Reliance Jio, the Internet is something that the country has adapted to in a much aggressive way. India is among the top five countries of the world with an active Internet user base of more than 367 million and post-Reliance Jio, it has only risen.
While all these numbers hold to be true, they do not give us the whole picture. Most people in India actually don’t know the power of the Internet neither they have the means to harness it. Rural India holds an estimated population of more than 906 million but only has 17 percent active Internet users. In comparison, the urban populace has been clocked at 444 million with 60 percent active Internet penetration. Sadly, for every 10 male internet users in rural India, there’s just one woman who gets to use it. This is where Google’s Internet Saathi comes into play, which was originally announced back in 2015 by its CEO Sundar Pichai.
Google invited PCMag India to a trip down to Sewa Ka Pura village in Dholpur district of Rajasthan where it is running its Internet Saathi programme. Here we managed to capture a snapshot on how this programme is connecting the women of rural India to the world wide web.
What is Internet Saathi?
As the saying goes by, when you teach a man, you’re only teaching a single individual, but if you educate a woman, you’re empowering a family, a nation. Under Google India’s Helping Women Get Online initiative, the Internet Saathi programme was launched in July 2015 and is backed by Tata Trusts. The programme is aimed at connecting women of rural India to the Internet while bridging the digital gender divide in the country. Google provides resources such as the devices and training while Tata Trusts ensures that the programme reaches the right village and oversees its implementation.
Through Internet Saathi initiative, women ambassadors also known as ‘Saathi’, train and educate women across Indian villages on the benefits of the internet in their day-to-day life. Google says that the programme has already helped over 2 million women covering ten states and 60,000 villages where its active, get online. From teaching them about how to use a smartphone to helping them search online, Internet Saathi opens up a new window for the women in rural parts of the country.
How does the Internet Saathi programme work?
The whole process begins with the identification of potential villages where the programme can be introduced. Next, Google along with Tata Trusts identifies women who have basic reading and writing capabilities along with a curiosity to know more. After narrowing down to the potential Saathis, Google begins their training which lasts for two to three days. After the training, these Saathis begin to train other women, first across their own village and afterwards moving to the villages in the neighbourhood.
During the course of their training, the Saathis are introduced to the world of Internet and smartphones. They’re trained to hold the smartphone correctly, to power it on and off, to lock and unlock it, go about the interface, to use the camera, to use the calculator, to search for anything using Google Chrome and even text through WhatsApp.
“I saw a smartphone for the very first time during Internet Saathi training. At first, I thought, I might get an electric shock, that the phone would get damaged. I was scared and held the smartphone the wrong way, first time I picked it up,” remembers Parvati Khushwa, an Internet Saathi from Sewa Ka Pura village in Dholpur district of Rajasthan.
“Previously, my husband had a phone with buttons,” she says, referring to feature phones, “ but he did not let me touch that phone because it might get broken and said what could I do with the phone anyway?”
Google, in their training, encourages the women to learn more and more about the benefits of the Internet and smartphone in general and lets the Saathis adapt to it.
In what way do the Internet Saathis use Google’s services?
Rural areas in India are mostly focused on two things — cattle farming and agriculture with women managing the household chores as well. With Internet, there’s a whole new world out there waiting for these people. Parvati saw a paper plates making machine on the Internet and thought that as Ram Niwas (her husband) who was now recovering from his illness, couldn’t work out in the fields, maybe buying the machine would help them make some money. She sourced the plates making machine from Agra in Uttar Pradesh and bought it. Both of them learned how to make plates from the machine by watching videos from the Internet.
Parvati also taught a couple to use the internet which led them to discover about various different food recipes. The couple has now setup a food stall at their village where they sell different varieties of snacks which more than makes up for their survival.
Source:
Google and Levi’s smart jacket shows what’s coming next for wearables
Google and Levi’s showed off this week a new joint project: a $350 smart jean jacket. While this jacket literally puts tech on your sleeve, it does it in a subtle way that doesn’t require putting another screen on your body. In doing so, it offers a glimpse of what smart fabrics can do and of the evolution of the wearables market — one in which consumers won’t have to wear a clunky accessory that screams high tech.
The smart Commuter jacket, which was introduced over the weekend at SXSW in Austin, is aimed at those who bike to work. It has technology woven into its fibers, and allows users to take phone calls, get directions and check the time, by tapping and swiping their sleeves. That delivers information to them through their headphones so that they can keep their eyes on the road without having to fiddle with a screen. The jacket should hit stores this fall.
Its smart fibers are washable; they’re powered by a sort of smart cufflink that you’ll have to remove when you wash the jacket. The cufflink has a two-day battery life.
While the idea of a smart jean jacket may not appeal to everyone (especially on a hot summer day), the existence of such a jacket is telling about where the market may be going.
“I think that the commuter jacket from Levi’s is really perfect because it’s focused on a single consumer audience. It has the cyclist in mind and is targeting what their needs are,” said Sidney Morgan-Petro, retail editor at trend forcasting firm WGSN.
She said that what makes the Commuter jacket different from other wearables — and even other smart clothing — is that it’s not necessarily marketing the tech as its main feature, but rather using it to solve problems that everyday people have. Many smartwatches and even other smart clothing can feel like solutions in search of a problem to solve. The Commuter jacket, she said, stands out as a type of wearable for a more everyday consumer who may not be that interested in the tech, but likes the practical features that come with a stylish jacket.
Wearables are expected to be a $19 billion industry by 2018, according to Juniper Research. Products including Fitbit fitness trackers, Android Wear watches and the Apple Watch have helped fuel a rise in mainstream awareness of wearables for the past several years, even leading Fitbit to go public in 2015. But the market for wearables has taken a bit of a tumble in the past few quarters. Fitbit in January announced it had missed earnings expectations and starting cutting jobs because sales were lower than expected.
It’s hard to say exactly what has caused the cool-down in wearables, but one possibility is that the market for uber-techy wearables that try to put a smartwatch on your wrist is pretty saturated. Analysts have pointed to a shift in the market away from the super-functional smartwatch toward gadgets that are a little more focused and better looking to boot.
Source:
http://www.denverpost.com/2017/03/20/google-levis-smart-jacket-wearables/
March 20, 2017
Are We on the Verge of Immortality?
Identifying high-probability, high-profit opportunities among small-cap stocks all over the world is the reason for Wall Street Daily’s existence.
That’s a big universe of companies to track.
Further complicating the project is the fact that many are cutting-edge innovators in esoteric, highly sophisticated technologies.
So we think you’re likely to benefit from a little assistance in separating the mere great ideas from actual solutions to real-world problems.
The way we get to what’s real – technologies that translate into revenue, earnings and share price growth – is a process that starts with “primary due diligence.”
Yes, that’s a fancy phrase that basically means research. But it’s a very specific type of research that’s crucial to establishing a competitive advantage in the market and making profitable investments.
In addition to reading 10-Ks, 10-Qs, conference call transcripts, and roadshow presentations, we like to go to the sources ourselves. We make visits to company headquarters, talk with executives, and observe day-to-day operations.
This also means picking up the phone and speaking with customers or related parties that have some insights into a company. Insights that wouldn’t be available anywhere else.
And it involves identifying other sources – including academic and industry-specific journals and blogs – that provide in-depth coverage of stuff like nanotechnology and the biomedical revolution.
We’re still in the “tell” phase of our research, identifying the startups and getting a grip on their specific contributions to a technology that may, as American futurist Ray Kurzweil suggests, allow us to increase life spans to the degree that we may eventually be able to live as long as we want.
Of course, an infinite existence will require a lot of money.
And we hope you’ll someday see significant profits from companies that are already building the nanobot factories that will make immortality possible.
Nanotechnology, nanorobotics, and nanobots will one day allow us to “transcend the limitations of biology,” helping us fight pathogens as well as cancers.
“You and I are gonna live forever.”
-Oasis
The cool thing? The future is, well… now.
(And it was foretold by the well-received 1966 cinema classic Fantastic Voyage, with Raquel Welch and Donald Pleasence, and the 1987 remake Innerspace, with Dennis Quaid, Martin Short and Meg Ryan.)
We’re already making tiny biological machines – “designer microbes” or “genetically modified bacteria” – that are helping to make pharmaceuticals and “sweat” biofuels.
Pretty soon, nanobots will clean up pollution and perform microsurgery.
According to Kurzweil, “What is now a trickle of clinical applications will be a flood in 10 years, when these technologies are again 1,000 times more powerful. They will be 1 million times more powerful than they are today in 20 years.”
Is it really only a matter of time until technology overcomes age-related diseases?
“We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better, stronger, faster.”
-Oscar Goldman
If we’re to see the day when technology adds more than a year to our life expectancy every year – that, folks, is what we call “immortality” – it’s possible that one, two, or all three of the following companies will be among the innovators that make it happen.
All three “synthetic biology” companies are building factories to produce designer organisms as the race to commercialize the ones that provide real-world solutions to real-world problems accelerates.
They’re all privately held right now.
~ Zymergen: Founded in 2013, Zymergen is using “big data” and robotics to evaluate thousands of microbe strains. Its calling card is cool, way-out-there technology for DNA-manipulating robots.
According to Zymergen CEO Josh Hoffman: “A lot of lab automation is built with [testing] in mind. What we do that’s unusual – and as far as we know, we’re the only people in the world to do it – is we use robots to assemble all the DNA, put it together and stick it across the cell membrane and into the bug itself. And then it integrates.”
One expert in the bio lab field, IndieBio partner Ryan Bethencourt, said that Zymergen “has the potential to become the Google of strain optimization.”
~ Ginkgo Bioworks: The Boston-based firm, founded in 2008, is using automation to manipulate yeast DNA to make fragrances.
Its organism engineering foundry – the world’s first – integrates advanced software, robots and biology to design, build and test bespoke synthetic organisms.
Ginkgo is working on more than 20 organisms for customers looking for a yeast strain for animal feed, a new sweetener for beverages, and an organic pesticide.
~ Synthace: The company’s Antha factory combines expertise in biology, chemistry and computer engineering, anticipating a future in which designing synthetic organisms is as simple as writing code.
The London-based company was recently named a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer – an acknowledgment that it’s one of the world’s most innovative companies.
Antha’s open-source operating system for building synthetic organisms should drive rapid productivity growth for bioengineers.
And that’s how Kurzweil’s vision of the future will come to fruition.
Old Things New
It’s been 10 years since the profane and beautiful period show Deadwood prematurely ended its run on HBO.
Word on the street is that HBO has given series creator David Milch the green light to write a script for a two-hour movie that will tie up the story’s loose ends.
Historical characters, including “Wild Bill” Hickok and “Calamity” Jane Canary, are humanized. Other, lesser-known real people who shaped that Gold Rush camp, such as anti-hero Al Swearengen, played by Ian McShane, are assayed in colorful nuance.
Milch, who also wrote many Deadwood episodes, made the creative decision to use modern foul language as opposed to the vernacular of the time. He was concerned because in early rehearsals, everyone “sounded like Yosemite Sam.”
So the faint of heart should be prepared for a fair share of “colorful” dialogue.
But Deadwood is a pretty cool meditation on anarchy and community in a camp built on Black Hills land that had been granted to the Lakota Sioux in the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie.
Over the course of 36 episodes, Milch et al. trace the evolution of order from lawlessness due to the ruthless pursuit of self-interest to the eventual entry of dominant establishment power in the form of George Hearst – yes, the father of “Citizen Kane” William Randolph Hearst.
Smart Investing,
Source:
https://www.wallstreetdaily.com/2016/07/29/medical-nanotechnology-biology-immortality/
Mars exploration dreams get closer as NASA tests HUMANOID ROBOTS to explore the Red Planet
Days after the US President released details on the space agency’s new budget, developments of the robots with “highly-level” capabilities emerged.
NASA has developed four six-foot robots named Valkyrie to build the necessities for humans before their arrival on the Red Planet.
The robots, costing around £1.6 million ($2 million) each, will also be able to help the colonization of Mars by assisting astronauts with tasks in space.
A spokesperson for NASA’s tests in the summer said: “In the not too distant future, R5 [the robot] will arrive on Mars along with supplies ahead of a human mission.
The University of Edinburgh, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northeastern University in America were institutions chosen to refine the robots NASA developed.
Researchers were required to test how the robots operate in hostile environments and extend their capabilities.
A PhD student at Northeastern University told TechCrunch that their developments have enabled the robots to “autonomously make decisions, move around and accomplish tasks”.
Trump vowed to “unlock the mysteries of space” in his inauguration speech and called on NASA to focus on space exploration not climate change during the election campaign.
Last month, the Trump administration ordered NASA to research whether it is possible to fly astronauts on the debut flight of the agency’s heavy-lift rocket, a mission currently planned to be unmanned and targeted to launch in late 2018.
Trump recently set out £15.4billion ($19.1 billion) for Nasa research to get to Mars. Although it is slightly smaller than Obama’s last year, it is still a substantial amount of funding for the space agency.
NASA’s goal is to send humans to the Red Planet by the 2030s – a goal authorised in 2010.
Lockheed Martin, a global security and aerospace company, predicted that a base camp will be built around Mars by 2028.
The company added: “Mars. It’s humanity’s next giant leap. And we’re closer than we’ve ever been.”
Source:
Here’s How Apple Could Bring Augmented Reality to the iPhone
Apple is ramping up its plans to pursue augmented reality, according to a new Bloomberg report, which provides some detail on how the company may incorporate the technology into the iPhone.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based company is said to be exploring features that would allow iPhone owners to change the depth of photographs taken with the phone’s camera after they’ve been captured. Another potential implementation would let users isolate a specific object in an image, such as a person’s head, and tilt it 180 degrees, the report says. Apple is also developing a feature that would make it possible to overlay virtual effects and objects onto a photo, similar to Snapchat.
The report cautions that Apple may not roll out these features, but that the company has iPhone camera engineers working on them. Apple’s iPhone 7 Plus has two cameras, one specifically tailored for better zooming, which allows the phone to shoot images that sharpen a subject against a slightly blurred background.
Apple has reportedly assembled a team of experts specializing in augmented reality technology, camera sensors, 3D video production, and wearable tech hardware. This group reportedly includes Mike Rockwell, who previously ran the hardware and new technologies team at Dolby, as well as Cody White, who was formerly a lead engineer for Amazon’s Lumberyard VR platform. Last year, The Financial Times also reported that Apple was building a secret team dedicated to developing virtual and augmented reality products.
The iPhone maker is also said to be working on a pair of augmented reality glasses, as Bloomberg previously reported. This new headset combined with the upcoming iPhone camera features could put Apple in direct competition with Snap Inc., which released its first pair of glasses in September.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has previously said that augmented reality is an area of interest for the company, although he hasn’t discussed plans for future products. “I think AR is extremely interesting and sort of a core technology,” Cook told The Washington Post in August. “So, yes, it’s something we’re doing a lot of things on behind that curtain we talked about.”
Source:
http://time.com/4706491/apple-iphone-ar-rumors/
The New Era of Ebooks in India
The ebook market in India is at the cusp of a major revolution. By 2030, India will be amongst the youngest nations in the world, with nearly 140 million people in the college-going age group, as per a report by E&Y. India has become the second biggest smartphone market in terms of active unique smartphone users, crossing 220 million and surpassing the US market, according to a report by Counterpoint Research. Going by global analytics, these numbers will lead to interesting synergies for ebook publishers in India.
The “India Book Market Report” released by Nielsen at the Frankfurt Book Fair valued the print book market in India, including book imports, at $3.9 billion. India ranks third in English language publishing, after the US and UK. And although ebooks currently account for less than 10 percent of the topline of publishers in India, this figure is expected to grow to about 25 percent by 2020.
AC Nielsen conducted a survey of around of 2,000 adults in urban cities for their India Book Market Report 2015. Interestingly, 56 percent of the respondents bought at least one ebook. According to another global survey conducted by Nielsen, 54 percent use their smartphones to read books at least some of the time. This number is up from 24 percent in 2012. The survey, released in December, also suggests that the percentage of those reading mainly on e-readers, such as Amazon’s Kindle, dropped from 50 to 32 percent over the same period.
In a 10-country sample survey conducted in early 2012 by Bowker’s “Global E-Book Monitor,“ it is estimated that 2 percent of the Indian population has purchased an ebook during the period of the study. The study also revealed that the typical ebook buyer in India is a college graduate, working full time and living in a city.
Academic and Education
Ebooks have had almost a decade-old run in India. Before the Kindle came to India, ebooks were highly limited and mostly available through local online retailers like Infibeam and The Wink Store. Although most ebooks available at that time were import titles from international STM publishers with little exposure for trade, a majority of the ebook sales in India traditionally came from the likes of Springer, Taylor and Francis, Wiley, Elsevier, Sage, and Cambridge University Press, to name a few.
Moving forward, a large part of the growth in ebooks will continue to come from the K12, higher education and academic spaces. As per data released by MHRD, India has more than 650 universities and 30,000 colleges. This segment will be the major driver of growth in ebooks.
Moreover, strategic- and policy-level initiatives, like the National Mission on Education, through ICT from the government of India to promote digital literacy and provide access to digital content at schools and colleges, are likely to drive creation of more digital content in general and ebooks in particular.
Publishers have been responding to the demand for digital content through products like “MX Touch,” a tablet-based education solution for Indian schools designed by Pearson Education India. Similarly, Cambridge University Press has designed “Hot Maths,” a comprehensive blended mathematics learning system. Compliant with the school syllabus, these platforms give students access to rich digital content.
Furthermore, there have been interesting initiatives in the B2B ebook space. Multi-publisher ebook platforms like Videeya.com provide the latest collection of ebooks to institutions to enhance the online resources available in their libraries.
Trade
There has also been a flurry of activity in the trade ebook space over the last five years. India’s leading online retailer, Flipkart, forayed into this space with Flyte. Landmark, the country’s leading retailer of books, launched an ebooks app. Leading international publishers like Pearson started their own initiatives, too. In 2012, Penguin India, announced ebook editions for more than 200 of its titles. Hachette and Random House have also been experimenting with this market, as have Rupa and HarperCollins.
Companies like Rockstand and NewsHunt are also capturing this market and eyeing the customers in the Tier 2 and 3 cities through their smartphone apps and free ebooks in English and other regional languages. There have also been some really interesting developments in multilingual children’s book publishing. Tulika Publishers and Pratham Books have rolled out e-reader apps for smartphones to facilitate this trend.
Road Ahead
With ebooks pegged at less than 10 percent of publishers’ topline in India, the projection that bets on ebooks reaching a 25-percent market share sounds a little too optimistic. However, rapid development in the area of education infrastructure in India is likely to fuel growth in academic ebooks. This, coupled with the smartphone revolution and some devices likely to be available at less than 11 USD—a key driver for fiction and regional language ebooks—does make this figure achievable. It might not be an exaggeration to say that these trends are likely to usher in a new era in ebook publishing in India.
Source:
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2016/the-new-era-of-ebooks-in-india/
London book fair: UK publishers cheerfully splash cash as sales rise
On the eve of the London book fair, publishers were excited by news that sales of physical books were up for the second year in a row – 7% more than in 2015. And, following Waterstones’ return to profit for the first time in years, there was also good news for bricks-and-mortar bookshops, with a 4% rise in purchases across the UK. Meanwhile, ebooks declined by 4%, the second consecutive year digital book sales have fallen.
Is this the start of a trend? While it was too early to tell at this year’s book fair, more than one publisher was whistling a happy tune as they entered the Olympia exhibition centre on Tuesday. With print books having a higher average price point than ebooks, and with a weaker pound benefitting exporters – German publishers in particular bought big this year – the mood among the hundreds of publishers was optimistic. As an industry that works 18 months ahead of the reader, the future of publishing looks bright.
There was a lot to be cheerful about. The boom in celebrity memoirs appears to be over, a shift many publishers spoke of with glee. Despite a slew of deals announced at the fair, the starry names attached to books were rock royalty rather than reality TV or soap stars. The only name familiar to the gossip columns was model-turned-actor-turned-author Cara Delevingne, who has lent her name to a YA novel called Mirror, Mirror (“exploring the themes of identity, sexuality, friendship and betrayal”) that will be co-written with author Rowan Coleman.
After David Walliams, Russell Brand, Frank Lampard and Pharrell Williams, Delevingne is the latest in a long line of celebrities choosing to write children’s books rather than a memoir. However, Jeremy Trevathan, publisher at Pan Macmillan, said this change is recognition that fame alone does not make sales. “These books are still in evidence,” he said, “but there has to be more to them. Longevity or a real connection with readers seems to be the order of the day.”
Famous names with book deals announced at the fair were notable for their connections to 80s and 90s pop music, following the success of autobiographies by Bruce Springsteen and Smiths frontman Morrissey. But, though serious money changed hands for titles by musician and DJ Goldie, Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker and Suede’s Brett Anderson, the advances were “sensible” high five- and six-figure sums, rather than stratospheric seven-figure ones, which may now be a relic of the past.
Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2017/mar/17/london-book-fair-book-sales-up-ebooks-down
How authors could double their royalties without costing their publishers a cent
My latest Publishers Weekly column announces the launch-date for my long-planned “Shut Up and Take My Money” ebook platform, which allows traditionally published authors to serve as retailers for their publishers, selling their ebooks direct to their fans and pocketing the 30% that Amazon would usually take, as well as the 25% the publisher gives back to them later in royalties.
I’ll be launching the platform with my next novel, Walkaway, in late April, and gradually rolling out additional features, including a name-your-price system inspired by the Humble Bundle and the Ubuntu payment screen.
Selling your own ebooks means that you can have more than one publisher — say, a UK and a US one — and sell on behalf of both of them, meaning that readers anywhere in the world come to one site to buy their books, and the author takes care of figuring out which publisher gets the payment from that purchase.
It’s all an idea whose time has come! My UK publisher, Head of Zeus, is just launched a very similar initiative for authors who don’t want to host their own stores: BookGrail.
Buying an e-book from a website and sideloading it onto your Kindle will never be as easy as buying it from the Kindle store (though if the world’s governments would take the eminently sensible step of legalizing jailbreaking, someone could develop a product that let Kindles easily access third-party stores on the obvious grounds that if you buy a Kindle, you still have the right to decide whose books you’ll read on it, otherwise you don’t really own that Kindle). But a bookstore operated by an author has an advantage no giant tech platform can offer: a chance to buy your e-books in a way that directly, manifestly benefits the author.
As an author, being my own e-book retailer gets me a lot. It gets me money: once I take the normal 30 percent retail share off the top, and the customary 25 percent royalty from my publisher on the back-end, my royalty is effectively doubled. It gives me a simple, fair way to cut all the other parts of the value-chain in on my success: because this is a regular retail sale, my publishers get their regular share, likewise my agents. And, it gets me up-to-the-second data about who’s buying my books and where.
It also gets me a new audience that no retailer or publisher is targeting: the English-speaking reader outside of the Anglosphere. Travel in Schengen, for example, and you will quickly learn that there are tens of millions of people who speak English as a second (or third, or fourth) language, and nevertheless speak it better than you ever will. Yet there is no reliable way for these English-preferring readers, who value the writer’s original words, unfiltered by translation, to source legal e-books in English.
Amazon and its competitors typically refuse outright to deal with these customers, unable to determine which publisher has the right to sell to them. Most publishing contracts declare these nominally non-English-speaking places to be “open territory” where in theory all of the book’s publishers may compete, but in practice, none of them do.
Source:
http://boingboing.net/2017/03/16/launching-with-walkaway-apr-25.html
