Michael Patrick Hicks's Blog, page 76

Convergence and the Path to Publication Part V: On Promotion

[Previous installments on the Path to Publication: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV]

Last month, when outlining my five-year plan, I wrote in part three that I wouldn’t begin playing around with price promotions until the three or four-year mark. This idea was mostly because I wanted to wait and build up a significant back-list of titles that could be co-promoted or discoverable by those bargain buyers and new readers. The theory being that, with only one title available it’s less of a draw to bring in readers and keep them hooked.

On the other hand, one of the benefits of being an independent author-publisher is that I can afford to be flexible and no plan or price need be set in stone.

Since releasing Convergence in late February, sales became a bit flat. I had a solid opening month with the bulk of my sales happening in March and April. In May, my book got picked as a Kobo Next Read which came with a nice boost thanks to a mention in their newsletter. But, by June it had stalled out on that platform, as well, and hasn’t pushed a single unit since. June saw only a few sales overall, but July hit an enormous speed bump that drew any forward momentum to an absolute halt.

By mid-month, I decided I needed to something to incentivize sales, and with my next title not due until the fall, it came down to this decision: do I grin and bear it, and let my book just sit there for months on end, potentially not finding any kind of readership, or do I try a promotion just for the hell of it?

Naturally, I went with the latter. I held a week-long 99 cent promotion for Convergence and spent $5 on a bknights promotion through Fiverr. By the end of the week, I was pretty well convinced I’d made the right choice and had the best sales since March. I went from six units sold through the entirety of June to 6 units sold in a handful of hours at the start of the promotion.

Can you tell when the 99 cent promotion went into full swing?

The 99 cent promotion also had a significant impact on my author ranking at Amazon.

My numbers may not be too impressive to some (we all have to start somewhere!), but for an unknown indie with only one title and virtually zero brand recognition, I can’t help but be a bit floored.

The first day of promoted sales netted me seven customers (I’d sold three copies in the day prior to the unadvertised promotion), and experienced a slight incremental fall-off in sales over the next few days. What started as seven sales went down to six, then down to five, and then right down to two. I had a small uptick over the DetCon1 weekend, which got me three more sales as I tied the promo price into the sci-fi convention with the DetCon1 hashtag, and the convention’s official twitter account was kind enough to retweet the sale info. A few author acquaintances were also very kind enough to retweet some of my promo tweets.

Although the promo was aimed primarily toward Amazon customers, since that is bknights primary focus, the deal extended to my other platforms as well, and I saw a nice handful of sales on Nook. I was also able to reach out to Indie Author Land, who ran news of the promo and featured the title a few times, and sent out numerous tweets on my behalf. Solid folks there, so be sure to check out their site, too!

Unfortunately, the cheap price tag still wasn’t enough to draw Kobo readers back to my fold, and the Smashwords Summer Sale has done absolutely nothing for me. In fact, it was mostly out of frustration with the Smashwords sale that ultimately led me to running this promo on my own, and the benefit of that decision is pretty plain to me. Although my title is still enrolled in the Smashwords sale and can be bought for only $1 with the code SSW75, it really makes me question the benefit of that platform at all.

All in all, I sold more than 30 copies of Convergence, the bulk of them at the Amazon US store. I did get a few sales at their UK and Canadian outlets though, and Nook, as previously mentioned.

My big hope now is for some more reviews to come in from these new readers!

Lessons learned from this promotional effort? First off, it’s perfectly OK to experiment, and in fact, should be encouraged. It’s also got me thinking a bit on what steps I should take in launching my next title. My previous promotional effort was through eBookSoda, and while that wasn’t successful, I tend to think it was more of a disconnect on my end than theirs, and I treated it more as a release announcement than any sort of promotional venture, so there was no reduced price, and thus less incentive to buy. When I release Consumption, I intend to keep it at a permanent price of 99 cents, which will make future advertising easier by cutting out the necessity of manual price adjustments, but also help make it more eye-catching and hopefully attract some impulse purchasers. I intend on giving eBookSoda another shot, and I will definitely be employing the services of bknights one again, as well. It’s also given me a bit of food-for-thought on how I should launch Emergence next year, and what the role of Convergence will be in terms of advertising and exposure.

As I said, or at least alluded to in my Five Year Plan posts, flexibility is key and there’s always room for reexamination of one’s goals and adapting to those changes in the market and personal plans. My own plan, as is it stands, is more of a rough outline than a specific road-map, and, of course, your mileage may vary considerably.

Author-publishers – what kind of promotions have you found successful? Any tips or comments? Let’s hear them!

CONVERGENCE is available for purchase as an eBook on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, and other retailers, or as a print copy here.

Pig & Whiskey 2014

The last time my wife, Maureen, and I attended Pig & Whiskey in Ferndale was two years ago, so we were a bit overdue for a return. This festival is the highlight of July in Michigan, as far as I’m concerned, and namely because it involves two of my favorite things: whiskey and pork products.

The temp was a fairly comfortable 80 degrees, a nice breeze blowing, and the sun was shining. Certainly a perfect day to partake in some barbecue and booze.

Unfortunately, the ticket prices and our budgeting didn’t line up exactly, but we still got to sample some damn fine stuff. Among the highlights were Woodward Avenue Brewery‘s candied bacon, Vinsetta Garage‘s Macon Bacon slider with a cup of bannoffee pudding (a small meal that I happily recalled from 2012), Ole Smokey Moonshine, and The Smoke Ring BBQ food truck served up a truly marvelous pork belly sandwich – absolute dynamite!

I’d never had moonshine before, but they had multiple flavors on display, in addition to the straight-up ‘shine. The menu listed blackberry, which caught my eye immediately, but they were out, so the wife and I split a strawberry and, later, apple pie moonshine. Unfortunately, Maureen liked them so much that I didn’t get much more than a taste of either. Still, the sample was more than enough to sway me and we’ll be on the lookout for this during our next shopping trip. Dangerous stuff, that moonshine, but so damn delectable!

I was really surprised by the Black Velvet Reserve. This was my first time trying the brand at all, and I found the drink to be incredibly smooth and mellow, with a solid bit of oak, but not overpowering or unpleasant. Jack Daniels, Southern Comfort, and Woodward Reserve were on hand, as was Red Stag, and a few others, but I wanted to focus on some new brands I hadn’t had the pleasure of tasting previously. I did have a SoCo cocktail that was made with a jalapeno syrup that was tasty, but didn’t quite have the heat I was looking for.

The festival had expanded to take over a couple additional blocks then the last time we’d attended. I’d expected more distilleries to be on display given the expanded territory allotted to the festival, but maybe the bigger turnouts were on Friday and Saturday and we just missed them. There was also a large array of music acts scheduled, and I can’t recall what the line-up, if any, was like during our previous attendance. We weren’t too focused on the musicians, though I managed to catch a few snippets of The DeCamp Sisters, and it sounded like they’ve got some nice vocals. I may need to check out their music a bit more later on.

One great thing about the additional space for all the revelry was  that it provided lots of extra room to maneuver, and lots of tables and seating made for easy access comfort, something we struggled with a few years ago. If I had one complaint it would be directed toward the almost incessant badgery of Uber salesfolk; we managed to get stopped three times by three different salesman trying to sell us on the app with reward incentives, but that’s not what we were there for. Even though we promised to find an alternate route through the lot, just to avoid the Uber tent, we somehow always managed to find ourselves passing by it anyway and eventually just kept on walking while they tried to flag us down. I hate to be rude, and I know sales is a tough business, but after a certain point there’s little other recourse. To top it off, we had even less need for Uber than usual thanks to the accompaniment of our sister-in-law, fellow pork enthusiast, and designated driver (thanks again Jenn!!!).

Regardless, it was a lot of fun and I’m already looking forward to next year’s festival. In my opinion, this is, hands down, one of the best events to occur in Michigan (maybe because I’m not much of a car guy and the annual international auto show does little for me? Either way, it seems really hard to go wrong with Pig & Whiskey, far as I’m concerned).

Here’s some pics I took on my iPhone, so excuse the quality and click to embiggen:

Word of advice upon entry, not that it was needed…

Aftermath.

Adding the finishing touch to the paella.

The Macon Bacon Slider from Vinsetta Garage. So good! Also had a small serving of banoffee pudding – very tasty.
http://vinsettagarage.com/

Candied Bacon, courtesy of the Woodward Avenue Brewery.
http://www.thewabferndale.com

The DeCamp Sisters playing on the Jack Daniel’s Main Stage.

The DeCamp Sisters playing on the Jack Daniel’s Main Stage.

Ole Smoky moonshine was the surprise hit of the Pig & Whiskey festival for Maureen & I. Dangerously delicious stuff. I recommend drinking it straight from the jar whenever possible.

Beer Barrel Bourbon – nice and smooth. Didn’t get to sample the Zeppelin Bend, but it comes highly recommended by the wait staff. Supposed to have a very chocolatey taste, so we’ll be on the lookout for this one.

Review: Blightborn, by Chuck Wendig

About Blightborn

Cael McAvoy is on the run. He’s heading toward the Empyrean to rescue his sister, Merelda, and to find Gwennie before she’s lost to Cael forever. With his pals, Lane and Rigo, Cael journeys across the Heartland to catch a ride into the sky. But with Boyland and others after them, Cael and his friends won’t make it through unchanged.

Gwennie’s living the life of a Lottery winner, but it’s not what she expected. Separated from her family, Gwennie makes a bold move—one that catches the attention of the Empyrean and changes the course of an Empyrean man’s life.

The crew from Boxelder aren’t the only folks willing to sacrifice everything to see the Empyrean fall. The question is: Can the others be trusted?

They’d all better hurry. Because the Empyrean has plans that could ensure that the Heartland never fights back again.

Chuck Wendig’s riveting sequel to Under the Empyrean Sky plunges readers into an unsettling world of inequality and destruction, and fleshes out a cast of ragtag characters all fighting for survival and, ultimately, change.

About the Author

Chuck Wendig is a novelist, screenwriter, and game designer. He’s the author of BLACKBIRDS, DOUBLE DEAD and DINOCALYPSE NOW, and is co-writer of the short film PANDEMIC, the feature film HiM, and the Emmy-nominated digital narrative COLLAPSUS. He lives in Pennsylvania with wife, taco terrier, and tiny human.

Website: http://terribleminds.com/

My Thoughts

[This review is based on an advanced copy received by the publisher through NetGalley.]

Blightborn, the latest release from the ever-prolific Chuck Wendig, and second in his cornpunk The Heartland Trilogy, follows swiftly on the heels of Under The Empyrean Sky‘s conclusion.

With the world building out of the way, and many of the main cast’s rivalries set up in Empyrean, Blightborn allows Wendig to go hog-wild and blow stuff up, upend expectations, and expand on the premise of The Heartland series in fine fashion.

When last we saw the intrepid crew of the sky ship Betty

- spoilers for Under The Empyrean Sky - 

Cael had learned that his father was illegally growing fresh produce and had killed the mayor. His girlfriend, Gwennie, was a lottery winner and elevated, along with her family, to live aboard one of the Empyrean’s floating cities and escape the hardscrabble life of the dirt-farming Heartlanders. Needless to say, Cael wasn’t going to let that happen without a fight, and he and his teenage crew of Blue Sky Scavengers set out to cross the desolation of the Heartland and, somehow, win her back. Unfortunately, that ticked the hell out of his Obligated bride-to-be, and the dead mayor’s son, and rival to Cael for Gwennie’s affections, had an awful large score to settle.

Returning to these characters in Blightborn, Wendig delivers fully on the conflicts established at the close of book one, and creates even larger obstacles for his cast to contend with, while driving new wedges between them. As expected, the Empyrean’s lottery is a double-edged sword: the promise of elevation too good to be true, and it comes wrapped in the caul of class-warfare. As Gwennie quickly learns, life in the Empyrean sky is hardly a joy, and even less so for a pure-bred Heartlander like she and her family, who are separated, exiled, and forced into labor.

Beneath the floating flotilla, Cael and his friends are trying to make it to a loading depot, with grand designs of boarding a sky ship (after losing Betty in the previous book) and making their way upward. Along the way, they are beset by raiders, Boyland’s crew, a murderous hobo who wants to catch the wanted trio (they’re considered terrorists by the Empyrean overlords and have a hefty bounty hanging over their heads), and the blight, a ravenous disease that stems from the genetically modified corn fields that cover the Heartland. All of this ties neatly into a bit family history that Cael is unaware of and provides some terrific background to his now-absent parents, which helps to fuel and shape his own quest and place in the Heartland.

Wendig is an author who has been on absolute fire of late. His Miriam Black books are among some of the finest paranormal thrillers I’ve had the pleasure to read, and Mookie Pearl from The Blue Blazes (watch out for subtle nod toward that book early on in Blightborn!) was a fun new character whose return I’m greatly looking forward to later this year in The Hellsblood Bride. The Heartland series is a wonderful departure from either of those previous series, and, in some ways, proves to be a bit darker and deeper. While Miriam’s visions of death and ordeals with serial killers isn’t exactly light-weight stuff, there’s a buoyant flippancy to that series, thanks in large part to her natural sarcasm that lends for a natural sort of humor. There are far less funny shenanigans, wry observations, or witty back-and-forths in this cornpunk entry, but that’s life in the Heartland.

Wendig is focused more on exploring the struggles of a violent class warfare and food politics. That’s not too say the read is dry and dreary – far, far, far from it. Rather, it simply strikes me as, tonally, a more serious work, and that tone grows naturally from the characters and the world they inhabit, as well as the threats they face. It’s dark story of survival and impossible odds.

One thing I appreciated was the increased focus on the female cast members, particularly Gwennie and Cael’s sister, Merelda. The two find themselves on opposite ends of the social spectrum, with the latter having become the mistress of the flotilla’s chief security officer and hiding her true Heartlander roots. Their roles are necessarily expanded after having gotten a bit of a short-shrift in the previous book, but they shine nicely in Blightborn, and it was great to see Gwennie so prominently in on the action (especially since she’s the one who taught Cael how to throw a punch!). I won’t spoil her role in the book, but she does carry a lot of the thematic weight mentioned earlier in regards to the class struggle, and it’s juicy stuff.

Blightborn is a heftier, more serious work than its predecessor, and Wendig is clearly crafting an epic trilogy of terrific scope with this series. It’s also quite a bit darker, which is pretty common in middle entries – the stakes are higher and the threats more formidable. The Initiative, which is teased a bit before finally being revealed in the book’s third act, is a horrifying manipulation that perfectly illustrates the evil and grandiose ego of the Empyrean rulers, and their sense of entitlement. Wendig has also planted a good number of compelling seeds that will bear beautiful fruit come book three. I’d expect the conclusion of this story to release next year, but damn if that’s not going to be a long, brutal wait. Alas, that’s life in the heartland.

Buy This Book

Last Chance: Convergence Sale

So, lots of you may know Convergence has been on sale this week for only 99 cents. But, lots more may not know that at all! And since the sale has proved to be pretty healthy, I’m extending it an extra day to cover the full breadth of the DetCon1 weekend.

Even though DetCon1 is happening nearby, I, unfortunately, will not be able to attend. I’ve already committed myself to some family fun with our town’s Founder’s Festival and the annual Pig & Whiskey.

I’m hoping to attend next year’s DetCon1, though! In the meantime, please enjoy Convergence at the nicely (I think) risk-free price of 99 cents throughout the rest of this weekend (and bonus-points for supporting a local, metro-Detroit author, too!).

| Kindle | Nook | Kobo |

 

The vitals:

An Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award 2013 Quarter-Finalist
A Kobo Next Sci-Fi & Fantasy Reads Selection, May 2014

Jonah Everitt is a killer, an addict, and a memory thief.

After being hired to kill a ranking officer of the Pacific Rim Coalition and download his memories, Everitt finds himself caught in the crosshairs of a terror cell, a rogue military squadron, and a Chinese gangster named Alice Xie. Xie is a profiteer of street drugs, primarily DRMR, a powerful narcotic made from the memories of the dead. With his daughter, Mesa, missing in post-war Los Angeles, Everitt is forced into an uneasy alliance with Alice to find her.

Mesa’s abduction is wrapped up in the secrets of a brutal murder during the war’s early days, a murder that Alice Xie wants revenged. In order to find her, Jonah will have to sift through the memories of dead men that could destroy what little he has left.

In a city where peace is tenuous and loyalties are ever shifting, the past and the present are about to converge.

Publisher’s Weekly* called CONVERGENCE a “smart splice of espionage and science fiction. … frighteningly realistic. Well-drawn characters, excellent pacing, and constant surprises make this a great cautionary tale about technology and its abuses.”

“kept me on the edge of my seat the WHOLE friggen time! The writing is tight. The world building is incredible, and the story itself is pretty compelling! A+”

-Melissa “Book Lady” Caldwell, Must Read Faster

“Not only is it original and fresh it makes you think about topics ranging from addiction to loss of personal freedoms and civil liberties. The book is very well written…”

-Amazon Reviewer

“This is a book with well-rounded and evolving characters. It draws you in right from the start and keeps your heart rate up the whole way.”

-Amazon Reviewer

A Top 100 Cyberpunk Bestseller on Amazon

A Top 100 Cyberpunk and Technothrillers Bestseller on Amazon UK

A Top 100 Science Fiction and High Tech Bestseller on Kobo

Infographic: How Long is that Novel? | The Digital Reader

Came by this cool infographic by way of author Steve Vernon, who goes straight to the source:

Infographic: How Long is that Novel? | The Digital Reader.

Books on the Brain

For writers, reading is fundamental, or at least it should be. In order to be a good writer, you need to be a good reader. I read for fun, by and large, but I can also learn plenty of new things technique-wise from my fellow authors at large. How they structure their work, how it’s paced, their dialogue and use of description. So, I read voraciously.

Last month, I joined NetGalley and have found myself a bit buried in review copies. For a book lover like me, this is a good problem to have! It can also be a bit time-consuming and I need to figure out a more structured plan of what to read and when, and balance this against any particular appetites that might arise and hop back and forth between genres, and figure out when I can read the books I’ve invested my own money into.

I thought I sort of had a plan for this month, and have stuck to it pretty well (a whole two books in…), and mostly because I forgot about one big title dropping next week that I’ve had on order for a while: the new Campus novel by Mark Greaney, picking up the series that had grown into a Tom Clancy staple prior to his death last year. I think I’ll need to do a bit of reshuffling and re-prioritizing, but I think it’s going to look a bit like this (and, oh yeah, I got a few new titles that I absolutely deem must-reads based on their descriptions and authors of much renown):

First order of business is to finish up Chuck Wendig’s Blightborn. Look for a review on that one here soon. After that, I think the order will go as follows -

         

I’ve got a few non-fiction goodies that sounds pretty dang awesome and need to figure out when to get to them.

                                                 

                                          

There’s also a few series reads that I need to catch up on… Namely, Richard K. Morgan’s A Land Fit For Heroes series. I have an advanced copy of The Dark Defiles but I urgently need to read The Cold Commands first. I think I’ll need to find some kind of resource to remind me what happened in book one, The Steel Remains, as it’s been a good long age since I read that one.

Also on tap are the first two books in Marcus Sakey’s Brilliance Saga, as well as Timothy S. Jonston’s The Tanner Sequence novels.

I can’t help but think I may have overextended myself, but that’s often my warrant… And oh yeah, I have to edit a book of my own and get cracking on the next draft, and figure out what the hell I’m supposed to write next for book three (of course, the problems there are singling out a particular idea and concept, and figuring out how to connect A to B).

What’s coming up in your read pile?

What Kindle Unlimited Means For Authors

Originally posted on TechCrunch:

Now that Amazon has uncorked their Kindle Unlimited service I, like many indie authors, was curious. What does this mean for us withered scribes, scribbling away in our garrets and bobbing on the waves of Amazon’s massive literary marketplace? Will I get paid if I join Kindle Unlimited? How do I add my book to the mix? Will I become fabulously rich?

Full disclosure: I’ve been mucking about with indie publishing for a year now with the Mytro Project and, with enough digging, you will find one or more of my books on Amazon.

With that said, let’s address our scrivenarial concerns.

Will I get paid if I join Kindle Unlimited? I have asked Amazon for more specifics on how royalties work in Kindle Unlimited but what appears to be happening is that they are treating Kindle Unlimited books as part of their Kindle Direct Publishing Select Program. KDP Select…

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The FCC Has Received More Than 1,000,000 Comments On Net Neutrality

Michael Patrick Hicks:

The big question, of course, is whether or not the voice and will of the people will triumph over corporate capital.

Originally posted on TechCrunch:

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has received more than 1 million comments from the public regarding its proposed net neutrality rules. According to the FCC’s Gigi Sohn, 1,030,000 comments had been submitted by noon today on the East Coast.

Around 21 hours before her note on the new figure, Sohn indicated that the FCC had received more than 900,000 comments. So it appears that there is a late surge in input.

Earlier this week, under crushing traffic, the FCC pushed its deadline back for the first round of public comment to Friday, to allow everyone a chance to submit their views. Companies like Comcast and Netflix have weighed in during the extended period, as well as, it appears, a huge number of private individuals.

The issue of net neutrality, and especially the FCC’s current notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM), has caught on in the public domain in impressive fashion. It will be interesting to see…

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Future Homes

Since buying our first home nearly five years ago, my wife and I have become pretty well versed in locating problems, minor maintenance, and fixer-upper work. We’ve had a good eye toward energy efficiency, but there’s still plenty of other areas we’ll need to modify and adapt as we go forward, and figuring out better sustainability methods, like installing solar panels, which makes long-term sense for us given the amount of direct sunlight our home absorbs and rising energy costs.

Our home is only 30 years old, but from a design perspective, quite a lot has changed. And present-day technology seems fit to modify home design even further and perhaps permanently alter the face of architecture and construction. I really appreciate the amount of innovation that has come alongside these new innovations, and I’m very excited by the possibilities now opened with these broader scopes. If we can aim high with 3-D printed organs, why not go simpler (and perhaps quite a bit less sexier from a pop-sci perspective) and more immediate?

Recently, China built several homes constructed from a 3-D printer. That’s a pretty impressive breakthrough, although questions of long-term durability and sustainability of this initiative still remain.

Personally, I think it’s a pretty significant breakthrough. 3-D printing seems to have sparked a bit of a race to see how compatible this technology is with architecture. Ultimately, the answer seems to be pretty damn compatible after all, and there’s a lot of areas where it may even be better, from a design or aesthetic view, than traditional methods. As ArchDaily suggests, 3-D printing may make for a low-cost, simple method to execute Hadid architecture.

Another significant breakthrough could lie in these smart bricks.

Designed by Ronnie Zohar, his focus is

to make it as simple as possible to build using the bricks. “I’d like people in Africa and other places in the world to be able to build with our brick and get a thermally-insulated house using the same money they would have spent on tin.”

Both of these technologies, perhaps even acting in unison, strike me a terrific solution to low-cost urban development, and a smart way to get financially strapped regions back on their feet following natural disasters.

On a side note, and from the perspective re-purposing, recycling, and reusing, I’m a bit enamored with the Shipping Container Home movement. Check out this article from Popular Mechanics. Lots of intriguing design work happening with a rather surprising object.

A shipping container house in Quebec.
Source: “10 Shipping Container Buildings For Homes And Outbuildings“

 

 

Amazon Tests ‘Kindle Unlimited,’ A Netflix For Ebooks And Audiobooks

Michael Patrick Hicks:

 

This is a very interesting development and I’m curious to see what comes of this. I think it’s quite an exciting possibility.

But the article shown is mostly based on speculation and educated guesses toward Amazon’s business model. We all just have to wait and see what Amazon’s plans are when full details are eventually released. While this is a potentially neat service, my own interest in it from a consumer standpoint is dependent on what authors and titles are included and what impact, if any, it has on the Prime membership.

TechCrunch speculates that it would be “presumably untethered from Amazon Prime,” but without any official word from Amazon it’s hard to say. With the recent price increase in Prime and already having their toes in the water with the Kindle Lending Library, I’m hoping that Kindle Unlimited could act as both a standalone subscription service for those who want it, while also serving as an additional incentive for current Prime members with Kindles/Kindle apps. The TechCrunch article is based off a cached link, and there’s no current info available on Amazon, and it seems like all the links are dead-ends.

I’ll wait for more details to come out, but I’m cautiously optimistic.

Originally posted on TechCrunch:

Amazon might give readers something to get really excited about: A digital ebook and audiobook subscription service that provides Kindle users with all the content they can consume from a potential library of over 600,000 titles for just $9.99 per month. That’s according to this cached link, first spotted by GigaOM.

This ‘Netflix for ebooks’ would compete with existing services including those from startup Oyster, but would obviously have more depth and weight behind it thanks to Amazon’s existing success with the Kindle and its extensive user base, as well as the size of its library. The test pages don’t contain any publishers from the so-called big five, which include Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins, both of which do offer their titles to Oyster.

The biggest publishers ask for a large (read: at least seven figures) up-front fee, and services have to pay each time a user…

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