Check out his slides:

I learned about this from Don Linn’s blog:

Your Old Job in Publishing Doesn’t Exist

http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2010/your-old-job-in-publishing-doesnt-exist/

Working as a producer, I have spent the last 15+ years negotiating and impementing transmedia deals with book / comics creators and rights holders, setting up relationships for publishing them on all emerging digital platfoms.

I recognize that am powerless over my addiction to transmedia production. For years wondered why I was repeating the same behavior, expecting different results. Each time a new technology came along, I would enthusiastically embrace it in the misguided hope that a way had finally arrived to make a profitable business of digital publishing.

At last, there are signs that my behavior is no longer dysfunctional and the time has come for digital adaptations of books to succceed.

Now that it appears that my addiction can lead to different and better results, it seems that it may be healthy and productive. My inner skeptic keeps whispering in my ear, “So, what makes you think that this time it will be different?”

Figthting off my contrarian urge to hold back now that there is evidence that digital has arrived, I am currently producing and developing apps for comics and the movies that can be made from them.

The Operative Words were uttered ages ago by the immortal Samuel Beckett :
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

Then, guess what Alan Kay did next? Here’s a hint. He fathered a genetic line that leads to the iPad, which  embodies the Dynabook concept more thoroughly than any device to date.

After that, Kay went on to work at Xerox PARC and develop the Alto personal computer, which he originally called “the Interim Dynabook.”  The Alto pioneered the graphical user interface including the first use of a desktop metapho with icons for a trashcan and mailbox, multiple windows and drawing programs. The Alto GUI was adapted by Apple and later by Microsoft — spawning the look and feel of the 1984 Macintosh and in the early 1990’s, Windows 3.1.

Kay wanted the Dynabook concept to embody the learning theories of Jerome Bruner and some of what Seymour Papert— who had studied with developmental psychologist Jean Piaget and who invented the Logo programming language — was proposing. The hardware on which the programming environment ran was relatively irrelevant. Alan Kay still thinks the Dynabook hasn’t been invented yet, because key software and educational curriculum are missing.

For these facts, credit goes to the article in  Wikipedia

So, is the iPad “A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages”?  From the pictures below, you’d think so. Even if the software and curriculum Kay envisioned are yet to come, you can feel the same magic — the union of computer-loving human and human-oriented machine — that emanates from Kay’s original sketch of children using his Dynabook above.

Pee-Wee Gets an iPad

A young Girl Gets an iPad on Launch Day

Alan Kay’s Original Dynabook Plan

It’s something only a mullah could love. In an incredible turn of events, Apple has reportedly banned all sexual content from the App store, using an outrageously Puritanical set of rules.  No women or men in bikinis? No ice skating tights? Bye bye, Olympics apps? UPDATE:  Some sexy apps survive! How can it be? Read on….

Apple’s position appears all the more unfair and hypocritical after Phil Schiller, Apple head of worldwide production, went on the record with NY Times HERE and stated:

“It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see.”

When it was pointed out that Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit app is not only still for sale but also FEATURED in the iTunes store today, and yet violates the ban list reportedly delivered verbally to Wobble developer (below) Schiller added,

“The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format.”

The argument that Apple is cleaning up a locust storm of cheap sexy apps while leaving the ones from big publishers seems logical. But wait! Apparently if you’re a small developer of cheesy sex apps but have the right friends at Apple, you can still sell sex. What else could explain the persistance of the bikini-picture-laden “Porn Star Names” app? PC magazine lists surviving sexy apps from developers big and small HERE, as does The Standard HERE.

All I can say is that this is insanely inconsistent, and no way to build a sound business model to attract struggling companies that might want to enter app market.

MacWorld’s David Chartier  critiques the move HERE and concludes:

“Apparently we are now all living in Apple’s Bizarro World, where SI Swimsuit 2010 and Playboy do not garner complaints from the same parents and women who took issue with “Sexy Girls” and “iWobble.”

If SI Swimsuit 2010 and Playboy are not eventually removed along with their competition, this recent ban will mark a whole new low for Apple’s walled garden. Ambiguous, moving-target policies are one thing (and, even after a year and a half, Apple still needs to fix them). But instantly destroying the income of independent developers—no matter how useless or degrading you feel their apps may be—while allowing major publishers to peddle the same product is an entirely different thing”

SHOULD TECH COMPANIES BE ALLOWED TO GATE OUR CONTENT?

Apple’s behavior begs the question, “what content will they capriciously decide to ban next?”

Might it be humorous animation with edgy language that is now permitted and sold with Apple’s 17+ rating? This de-motivates the small companies that are supposed to drive our economic recovery from taking the risk that their app could be approved by Apple for sale one day, then banned the next.

Apple apparently applies the same rule of thumb to themselves that they do to S.I. and Playboy: If you’re a big dog, you still get to sell sex.

Much more important in the grand scheme of things is how Apple’s cavalier approach to banning might impact journalism published via the iTunes Store. Dan Gillmor applies his usual cogent, big picture thinking to this problem in his blog post:  Why Journalism Organizations Should Reconsider Their Crush on Apple’s iPad

“Ultimately, I believe, the most important issue is whether news organizations should get in bed with a company that makes unilateral and non-transparent decisions like the ones Apple has been making about content in all kinds of ways. I say they should think hard about it, and answer either in the negative or insist on iron-clad contracts with Apple that prohibit the hardware company from any kind of interference with the journalism, ever.”

Just to prove that Apple’s move can’t be about responding to consumer or FCC concerns and sanitizing all content sold in the iTunes store (of which the App Store is but a part), look at the full nudity and sexy scenes in non-porno video and film content available in the iTunes store and check out the explicit language in the songs and podcasts. What would happen if Apple applied the same ban to these areas of their store?

As Developer John Atherton points out, Apple themselves use women in bikinis to sell their products, not even protecting them behind a Mature Content warning.  Bikinis! In public! Oh, Apple!

It’s disturbing enough that Apple is  acting inconsistently and apparently now banning content in Apps that is for sale in the iTunes store, and in fact meets with community standards across the US to the extent that it is on display in such public places as  billboards, mall shops, bookstores and libraries.

But it’s truly a major injustice to developers blindsided by this incomprehensible ban hammer whose businesses may fail and  who may face personal financial crises for guessing, based on Apple’s past behavior, that they would be safe publishing inoccuous images of models.

TechCrunch has the original story HERE — and updates HERE (a great one!) as well as HERE.

A mild swimwear app was deleted, potentially damaging  that company’s budding business. Apple was silent. Fellow app developers suggested that they might resubmit with an age restriction.  Before they could follow these directions, suddenly the app was reinstated without comment four days later. CEO Gerrard Dennis said he won’t abandon Apple’s App Store, but

“we will now explore other platforms as a safety net against this sort of thing happening again.”

This piece covers the incongruity of eliminating one, but not the other, sexy app from a big, new publisher –  Suicide Girls — while sparing ones from big, old publishers.  Missy Suicide was forthright and insightful in a subsequent interview.  I only wish Apple could be so direct:

“I understand Apple’s problem, they wouldn’t mind some R-rated content if it was all as high production value as a R-rated studio movie or a premium cable series like Californication or Rome (both of which have simulated fucking and full frontal male and female nudity), but they found instead tons of recycled soft-core tacky porn content. And, thanks to the reality of human nature, these crappy, recycled boobie Apps were very popular and so were all over the most visible pages in the App store.

Bummer for Apple, we get it. We hate all the crappy low-grade porn all over the Internet, too. But what kind of clear-cut rules are going to solve this problem? It’s essentially a judgment call. We’re glad one of our Apps made it so far, and we’re going to try to create unique sexy Apps in the future and see what happens.”

So why ban “Flip-Strip,” which had no “over nudity” and showed girls in a bra and panties much like a mild Victoria’s Secret catalogue, while allowing “Seduce a Suicide Girl”?

“I think Steve Jobs must have successfully seduced Zoli, in Seduce a Suicide Girl, and is anxiously awaiting our iPad version.”

SO, APPLE…UM…WHAT ARE THE NEW RULES?

Atherton, developer of the application Wobble (it has no sexy pictures at all, just a way for users to tag them) posted this list of rules to his blog based on what he reportedly learned from Apple:

1. No images of women in bikinis (Ice skating tights are not OK either)

2. No images of men in bikinis! (I didn’t ask about Ice Skating tights for men)

3. No skin (he seriously said this) (I asked if a Burqa was OK, and the Apple guy got angry)

4. No silhouettes that indicate that Wobble can be used for wobbling boobs (yes – I am serious, we have to remove the silhouette in this pic)

5. No sexual connotations or innuendo: boobs, babes, booty, sex – all banned

6. Nothing that can be sexually arousing!! (I doubt many people could get aroused with the Wobble pic. Those puritanical guys at Apple must get off on pretty mundane things to find Wobble “overtly sexual!)

7. No apps will be approved that in any way imply sexual content (not sure how Playboy is still in the store, but…)

COUNTERPOINT

The WSJ’s Kara Swisher provides a counterpoint HERE in which she lampoons “overheated bloggers” as the only ones who care — missing the issues of unfair and cavalier treatment of  small businesses and the disconnect of letting technology companies control the content we see.

Going even further, PC World calls Apple’s move  a “smart business decision.”

“As for the iPad, it’s clear that Apple will position its new tablet not only as a consumer device for the home, but also as an educational tool. Software developers are already designing interactive textbooks for the iPad, according to reports. Again, Apple must squash the impression that the App Store is a haven for smut to increase the odds of classroom sales. A few negative news stories about wobbly-boob apps could very well spur many school districts to think twice about adding the iPad as a study tool.

Bottom line: Contrarian Swisher opines that “The porn purge is a smart business move on Apple’s part, even if it appears prudish to outsiders.”“

And what about Japanese manga, which comes from a culture that is far more cavalier about cleavage? So far, Apple’s censorship of popular non-pornographic manga from Kodansha has the Japanese publishers shaking their heads in disbelief.

Read more about iPhone Manga HERE on Eastern Standard

In today’s haze of banks too big to fail and the record store as an endangered species, there is something to be said about the economic impact of the recession on another industry: amusement parks. Whether witnessing the closure of Wild Rivers in Irvine, CA or the closure of Astroland at Brooklyn’s Coney Island, one is left to ponder: Where have the holy grails of thrill-seeking gone? In asking this question, we should know that recent economic and cultural shifts have posed ever-changing hurdles for the historic amusement industry. Yes, historic. Parks have been around for nearly five centuries, withstanding the industrial revolution, both world wars and the Great Depression, so it’s hard to imagine the extinction of this enterprise. The first amusement park was created in 1583 in a town called Bakken, just north of Copenhagen, and for centuries thereafter societies indulged in the permanent fair that amusement parks have provided.

Fun Without a Name

However, the past two centuries have given us a split in the genre: that of the amusement park versus the theme park. While a theme park is distinguished by having various ‘lands,’ each devoted to telling a particular story, an amusement park is a less structured collection of attractions.

This divide between amusement and theme parks began to grow in the mid-1800’s. Britain’s scenic, curiosity-themed Blackgang Chine park on the Isle of Wight opened in 1843, while our own country’s Coney Island launched the nautically themed Sea Lion Park in 1895. It was the inception of Anahiem’s Disneyland theme park in the 1950’s, though, that caused the new format to explode and become more profitable than its amusement-centric predecessor. Though Santa Claus Town in Indiana and Knott’s Berry Farm in southern California preceded the mouse house, Walt Disney’s budding hegemony defined the modern financial approach to amusement parks.

Cash for Coasters

As in any industry, amusement parks are highly reliant on cash flow, and not just from the wallets of the masses. The current model for amusement and theme park production is based on funding from corporations — for example, after two years of hanging in the balance, Universal Studios has finally greenlit its new Korean theme park and resort with the help of additional investment from Lotte, a major conglomerate based in Korea and Japan.

The corporate route is not the sole model for creating a park; however, it is the most lucrative one. Family-owned theme parks have become rare and more of a novelty, thriving in specific hotbeds like the northeastern United States (especially Pennsylvania). Without the lunchboxes, movies, action figures and other franchise hooks in the water, these smaller parks are at a material disadvantage – not just in terms of dollars, but also in terms of fans.

The Brand Name Game

Yet, the creativity of these family-owned underdogs has not been compromised, as shown by the United Kingdom’s especially successful franchise, Gulliver’s Kingdom Trilogy. This family-owned entity has expanded its brand into two other parks, Gulliver’s World and Gulliver’s Land, and it continues to develop new innovative elements its flagship park.

The Gulliver chain and its corporate counterparts are thus seeking out new themes and developments to make their own. In attempts to keep up with new parks like Incheon, Korea’s new Robot Land, park owners are in the race to evolve with the market and create innovative, kitschy, or resort features to better distinguish themselves. Whether it be Gulliver’s recently established Eco-Park, Disney’s addition of California Adventure or the U.K.’s Wildwood’s grant for the Endangered Species Centre, changing names and building out is now the game.

Globalized Amusement

Although household names like Disney and Six Flags are a part of America’s DNA, the stage for amusement has grown gone global. Last year, international conglomerates dominated the U.S. parks market, while American companies kept their sights abroad. Disney is building a new park in Shanghai, and Universal’s Korean super park and resort — equipped with movie theme park, water park, resort, golf course and condominiums — will begin construction in Seoul.

On U.S. soil, Village Roadshow, an Australian franchise, opened one of the only new American parks last year: the Wet ‘n’ Wild water bonanza in Phoenix, Arizona. In another sign of the reverse flow of new parks, the transformation of Cypress Gardens in Florida to Legoland resulted from a takeover of the park by the U.K.’s Merlin Entertainment. Meanwhile, places like Coney Island have become dilapidated meccas of a once-flourishing public amusement culture – in 2009 we also bade farewell to Chicago’s Kiddieland and Seattle’s Fun Forest Amusement Park.

So what has become of Walley World, anyway? It’s likely that Marty Moose has been unplugged during construction while Walley is abroad expanding the park franchise. Please visit again soon!

Credits: Information for this article was taken from Leisure Management, Amusement Today, Attractions Management, The Korea Herald, and wikipedia.org. Additional thanks to the editor, James Boo, and Jeremy Ross for these references and insightful conversation.

I just learned that even when an eBook file is in the open ePub standard, separate files with slight differences are required by each retailer and must be managed. A publisher might have to make and track a dozen or more versions of their ePub files, in addition to those in common formats like PDF, Kindle/Mobi, eReader, .LIT, as well as a handful of proprietary formats ranging from Zinio and iVerse to Sony PSP .

The distributors and retailers see this as a “file distribution” problem that is the publisher’s responsibility and not something they want to take on.

It’s not so surprising though. Recent history has been all about shifting responsibilities and job functions to the publisher.

A seismic shift happened for publishers in the 1990s with the advent of DTP on Macs.

Formerly, publishers created paper mechanical layouts using output from typesetting machines at local vendors. They shipped those to pre-press companies along with a art or photos to scan… and copious notes. The pre-press shop took responsibility for converting those elements into plate-ready film. They handled everything including imaging the text layouts, scanning images, creating correct trapping, applying pre-separated color, and many more esoteric details. If anything went wrong, they had to fix it.

After DTP became the primary workflow for everything from design and layout to most of the pre-press functions, the publishers had to train or hire production people who essentially brought the work, the skills and the responsibility in house. In many cases it took years to recoup the investment in growing these departments. Making high quality digital files and keeping track of them required more than skilled workers — it required investment in servers, databases, and much more.

With eBook publishing, another category of responsibility now shifts to the publisher.

Now many functions previously handled by the distributor and the retailer must come in-house. Formerly, publishers need only ensure that a single print edition was produced to their specifications. Warehousing, shipping, tracking how many books went to each retailer, all could be handled by the printer and distributor. Customization for the retailer was often as simple as the retailer applying a pre-printed price sticker. The most complexity that the publisher had to cope with was the release of three or four separate products often with different release windows: A hardcover, a softcover, and perhaps a special Library or Scholastic Book Fairs edition.

Now, publishers must come up with a system of documenting numerous third-party requirements and specs, producing and  tracking each variant.  There may be 5 or as many as 20 or more versions, one for each retailer, each of which requires a slightly different ePub file and/or metadata file.Once again, the publisher must invest in staff and infrastructure — even if they hire Innodata or other conversion shops to make the variants. Some publishers keep the various files resident on their servers and hire programmers to create a reliable sales-based push — or permissions-based pull  — system. In effect they are the distributors and the “distributors” are just order takers or perhaps hardware device companies that just want the content as gas for their car.

The agency pricing model seems fraught with problems, and there is no clear source to guide publishers in praparing an agency model deal. Major issues come up, such as how to handle sales tax if the “agent” incurs sales tax liabilities via its physical presence in some or all states, versus Internet-only sales for which sales tax liability is simplified, and if the publisher then must collect that tax from the agent and pay it to each state.

I’m looking forward to the day when this is all rote, but for now it’s a huge learning curve. Publishing departments that have been able to take stability for granted don’t even know what questions to ask as e-Book-driven change hits them.

I was in a futuristic city, in an apartment. With me were some people of varying ages that I know from playing Aion, a MMO. I recognized their voices from hearing them over group voice chat.

We all had items, like doorstops or candy bars, emblazoned with a lightning bolt and a number. When pressed, the number lit up, and we became Activated. For a period of time, we were smarter, all our “things are right with the world” receptors were turned on, and we gained points. These points accrued to our overall score, that hackproof account with the points that you get from what you do in Real Life. The ones that count most for the Big Stuff: getting things you need to live, keeping loved ones safe, going down in history…

The damnable thing was that the Activation only lasted for about 45 seconds on most of these items. There was a warning on the other side about doing certain things beyond the Activation time. There were penalties. Ones that could reduce your Real Life Points.

This was highly demotivating. I sat with my friend “Keith” (name changed to protect both the innocent and the guilty) who has been a powerful and successful film executive, Native American rock art teacher, founder of a rock guitarist’s museum, psychic to the stars. He too was surprisingly dull in affect. We were only allowed to use older computers in this state, and I was unable to play any of the music I had collected to get his opinion.

Two of my friends from the MMO sat, chatting to each other, wearing rubber chicken suits of fine design. The beak animated authentically to their speech. They had discovered they could earn Activation points from this activity.

I ventured out. Everyone moved around the city sluggishly except for the staff, whose activation items looked different. Why? Because they were on. Always on. No timeouts. No Disactivation. It seemed patently unfair.

So I returned to the room of the Disactivated Activated.

The feeling has its own life, or death, that does not seem directly connected to the amount of opportunities that are not open for us again.

The city is futuristic, but it is also like exactly where we are right now. The velocity of human activity as well as the rate of acceleration of change makes the deactivated periods shorter and shorter now.

Been down so long it looks like “up” to me – Richard Farina’s mantra and book title never seemed so true.

We’re learning what the New Normal is in this city. Yes, it seems there’s less to life. Long periods of Disactivation. But we’re getting adjusted to it. Each game activator I trigger benefits eight other players, someone told me. That’s motivating. Even if it seems too short a time to get any good points racked up for myself.

Our adjustment is a way of making the rate of the decline into depression appear to slow, which makes it feel like a recovery. As anyone knows who’s been in an airliner that hits turbulence and drops thousands of feet will know. It’s when you stop plummeting ever faster that you feel the first relief. The engine note changes. Gravity begins to return.

A complete rewind to the beginning of my gaming career. Paying dues. Dues that I never knew I still owed.

What to do. The pool of losers grows. And they’re peeing in it. The dye that is put in the pool to reveal who is peeing by turning purple has been activated so often that the whole pool is purple. Pavlov’s dog would have something to say about this. I don’t want to be in this pool.

Then I wake up. And realize thankfully that life has gotten much better for me lately, so I don’t feel like I’m living in Disactivation very often at all. But a lot of people around me DO feel that they’re Disactivated. I’m glad I had the dream to remind me that I’m still tuned into that spirit, even if it’s a place  where I don’t want to spend too much time.

The late, great Doug McClaran is playing piano and my longtime friend Casey Dennis is on the bass. Not seen here (probably making whoopee somewhere off camera), the other main Road Apples:  Band founder and singer Dan Gillmor and lead guitarist/singer Frank Williams. Unknown to me are the percussionists and the distant rhythm guitarist.

Road Apple at Close Enough

For more about Road Apple and its members, visit

Road Apple on MySpace
(Jeremy Ross’ drumming can be heard here on Space Cowboys , one of his best sessions ever)

Casey Dennis Music on MySpace

Dan Gillmor and his project MediActive

See my analysis after the jump.

JEREMY ROSS MEDIA ANALYSIS

Sticking to what has been publically announced or reported , here’s my analysis.

The new Kindle 70/30 deal will be offered to self-publishers through Amazon’s DTP program starting June 30, 2010. It’s open to anyone, from individuals to large publishers,  should they want to take advantage of it.

Amazon gives an example of a text novel, stating that, after a six cent distribution fee, an author would earn $6.25 per copy on a book that sells for $8.99, rather than the old rate of $3.15. I realized after looking into this more deeply that there is an unprecedented set of conditions attached…

Once I read through the lengthy terms, however, I was concerned that Amazon’s offer was far from comparable with Apple’s terms for a 70/30 split currently available from the App Store (and reportedly coming in some related form for the iBook store). Apple’s approach has, frankly, done a lot to establish digital sales of all media types as viable.

Charlie Stross provided an excellent summary of the problems with the DTP deal in his blog post  covering the pricing control battle that has just exploded between major publishers and Amazon:  Amazon, Macmillan: an Outsider’s Guide to the Fight

“From a distance this looks competitive, but the devil is in the small print; to get the 30% rate, you have to agree that Amazon is a publisher, license your rights to Amazon to publish through the Kindle platform, guarantee that you will not allow other eBook editions to sell for less than the Kindle price, and let Amazon set that price, with a [floor of $2.99 and a] ceiling of $9.99.”

In addition, to what Charlie noted, the book’s list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest price of the physical edition of the book.

After realizing the issues that major publishers will have with these terms, I was not surprised to see that Amazon will still offer their previous, apparently-less-favorable royalty split DTP deal with fewer conditions attached as an alternative. In that scenario, the self-publisher receives 35% of a suggested retail price that he or she sets.

From my perspective, working as a consultant with publishers of comics and other visual books that tend to have large files, the .15 cent per MB digital distribution fee is actually the most significant non-starter.

An all-text book might be a half-meg while a visual book could be 10 MB per chapter (download file size limitations would practically force you to sell it by chapter!)and have six or more chapters.  In short, the fee might be equal to or greater than not only the publisher’s share but also the full retail price.

The always-insightful Calvin Reid at Publisher’s Weekly wrote a revealing overview in his article: Amazon Offers Higher Royalty on Self-Published e-Books — Publishers Weekly, 1/20/2010

At the end of what is becoming an exceedingly long day, the “real” publisher deals Amazon offers to midsize and larger publishers are likely to have more acceptable business terms than the DTP ones—at least, after the dust settles from the current brou-ha-ha over Agency vs. Retail/Wholesale models.

FULL TEXT OF AMAZON PRESS RELEASE:

AMAZON ANNOUNCES NEW 70 PERCENT ROYALTY OPTION FOR KINDLE DIGITAL TEXT PLATFORM, ENABLING AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS TO EARN MORE ROYALTIES FROM EVERY KINDLE BOOK SOLD

SEATTLE—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced details of a new program that will enable authors and publishers who use the Kindle Digital Text Platform (DTP) to earn a larger share of revenue from each Kindle book they sell. For each Kindle book sold, authors and publishers who choose the new 70 percent royalty option will receive 70 percent of list price, net of delivery costs. This new option will be in addition to and will not replace the existing DTP standard royalty option. This new 70 percent royalty option will become available on June 30, 2010.

We’re excited that the new 70 percent royalty option for the Kindle Digital Text Platform will help us pay authors higher royalties when readers choose their books.

Delivery costs will be based on file size and pricing will be $0.15/MB. At today’s median DTP file size of 368KB, delivery costs would be less than $0.06 per unit sold. This new program can thus enable authors and publishers to make more money on every sale. For example, on an $8.99 book an author would make $3.15 with the standard option, and $6.25 with the new 70 percent option.

Today, authors often receive royalties in the range of 7 to 15 percent of the list price that publishers set for their physical books, or 25 percent of the net that publishers receive from retailers for their digital books, said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content. We’re excited that the new 70 percent royalty option for the Kindle Digital Text Platform will help us pay authors higher royalties when readers choose their books.

DTP authors and publishers will be able to select the royalty option that best meets their needs. Books from authors and publishers who choose the 70 percent royalty option will have access to all the same features and be subject to all the same requirements as books receiving the standard royalty rate. In addition, to qualify for the 70 percent royalty option, books must satisfy the following set of requirements:

The author or publisher-supplied list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99

This list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the physical book

The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights

The title will be included in a broad set of features in the Kindle Store, such as text-to-speech. This list of features will grow over time as Amazon continues to add more functionality to Kindle and the Kindle Store.

Under this royalty option, books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices. Amazon will provide tools to automate that process, and the 70 percent royalty will be calculated off the sales price.

The 70 percent royalty option is for in-copyright works and is unavailable for works published before 1923 (a.k.a. public domain books). At launch, the 70 percent royalty option will only be available for books sold in the United States.

The Kindle Digital Text Platform is a fast and easy self-publishing tool that lets anyone upload and format their books for sale in the Kindle Store. To learn more about the Kindle Digital Text Platform, visit http://dtp.amazon.com/

Amazon’s newest shot to keep e-book prices low and to develop more original content is a new royalty program that will give authors and publishers who use the company’s self-publishing Kindle Digital Text Platform a much higher rate that (sic) standard royalties. Under the program, which goes into affect June 30, authors or publisher who choose the new 70% royalty option will receive 70% of list price, net of delivery costs on all e-books sold. The new option will be in addition to the existing DTP standard royalty option.

Delivery costs will be based on file size and Amazon said that new program will enable authors and publishers to make more money on the sale of e-books. In Amazons example, on an $8.99 book an author would make $3.15 with the standard option, and $6.25 with the new 70% option. To qualify for the new rate, however, e-books must meet a set of requirements that includes carrying a price between $2.99 and $9.99, a price that must be at least 20% below the lowest physical list price for the physical book. The title must also be made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights, although at launch the option will be available only for books sold in the U.S. In addition, books must be offered at or below price parity with all competition, including print book prices. Amazon said it will provide tools to automate that process, and the 70% royalty will be calculated off the sales price.

Beware mixing wild times, Korea and cameras…unless, of course,  the camera is MINE!