Three More Authors Join

Million-Kindle Club

Hocking is the second author to use Kindle Direct Publishing to reach this milestone

SEATTLE, Nov 09, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Amazon.com, Inc., today announced that David Baldacci, Amanda Hocking and Stephenie Meyer are the latest authors to join the Kindle Million Club, selling over 1 million paid copies of their books in the Amazon.com Kindle Store (www.amazon.com/kindlestore). They join 11 other authors in the Kindle Million Club: Stieg Larsson, James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Charlaine Harris, Lee Child, Suzanne Collins, Michael Connelly, John Locke, Kathryn Stockett, Janet Evanovich and George R.R. Martin.

As with John Locke before her, Amanda Hocking sold the majority of her 1 million Kindle books independently using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). Since its launch in 2007, KDP has provided a fast, free and easy way for authors and publishers around the world to make their books available in the Kindle Store. In addition to the more than 2 million books sold by John Locke and Amanda Hocking, 12 KDP authors have sold more than 200,000 books and 30 KDP authors have sold more than 100,000 books.

"Our customers love reading all kinds of books on their Kindle, and it's thanks to them that the Kindle Million Club keeps growing so quickly," said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content. "It's exciting to see both long-time Amazon best-selling authors from the traditional publishing world and independently published authors join the club."

"I'm thrilled to be a member of the Kindle Million Club," said David Baldacci. "EBooks are leading the way in more people reading and it's great to be part of this revolution." David Baldacci is the internationally best-selling author of more than 20 novels that have been translated into over 45 languages and sold in more than 80 countries. His most recent books include the best seller "The Sixth Man" and the Kindle Single "No Time Left." His newest novel, "Zero Day," was published on October 31.

"I'm so grateful to everyone who has bought one of my books, and to Amazon, for giving me a place to share my books," said Amanda Hocking. "None of this would have been possible without you. Thank you!" Amanda Hocking got her start independently publishing her books and is now the best-selling author of 10 books, including the My Blood Approves series and the Trylle Trilogy, which has been optioned for films. Hocking has been featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, Huffington Post and Forbes.

"I know for a fact that this is the most awesome club I've ever been allowed into," said Stephenie Meyer. "Of course I owe it all to the readers - thanks for continually making me cooler than I actually am. And thanks Kindle, for making it so much easier to bring 25 books with me on vacation." Stephenie Meyer is the author of six novels, including the best-selling Twilight Saga series. "Twilight" was named an Amazon.com Best Book of the Decade So Far, and the series has become a global phenomenon that has been published in 50 languages around the world with over 116 million copies sold worldwide. The movie version of the final book in the Twilight Saga, "Breaking Dawn - Part 1," hits theaters November 18.

Kindle books are "Buy Once, Read Everywhere" - on Kindle, Kindle Touch, Kindle Touch 3G, Kindle Fire, on the web with Kindle Cloud Reader, and free Kindle reading apps for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, PCs, Mac, Android phones and tablets, BlackBerry and Windows phones.

Conservatives Rate "Naughty and Nice"

Christmas Retailers

by Shandra Martinez

Don’t let the strains of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” over the store’s audio system fool you. Barnes & Noble is “against” Christmas.  So says the conservative Christian group, American Family Association, in its message to supporters in its annual “Naughty and Nice” Christmas list, which rates retailers’ marketing campaigns on whether they properly recognize the holiday that celebrates Jesus’ birth.

inShare

The big box bookstore chain is on the naughty list compiled by the Tupelo, Miss-based group, along with 14 retailers from Banana Republic to Victoria’s Secret to Old Navy.

AFA reviews the websites, media advertising and in-store signage of national retailers to determine the list.

The litmus test is whether retailers use “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays” in their ads. The latter is considered offensive because it takes away the focus on Jesus, according to the organization, which urges supporters to send a message to retailers by shopping elsewhere.

“If a company has items associated with Christmas, but did not use the word ‘Christmas,’ then the company is considered as censoring ‘Christmas,’” according to the organization’s website.

“Most national retailers are now using ‘Christmas,’ but there are some that are still clinging to a losing strategy of political correctness,” the group said in an October press release calling out PetSmart for erasing “Christmas” from its website.

The pet chain responded by pointing out that it mentions Christmas in its ads along with other faith-based celebrations. That apparently satisfied AFA, which put the retailer on its nice list, which was last updated Dec. 5.  Most retailers now make AFA’s nice list, from Amazon.com to Wal-Mart to Ace Hardware and Target.

Starbucks is one of 10 retailers, along with Bath & Body Works and Whole Foods, that landed on the “marginal list” between naughty and nice because their ads “refer to Christmas infrequently.”

AFA contends that its campaign against the “War on Christmas” has paid off because its nice list has grown, but the group’s efforts may be lost on some shoppers.

Exiting a Barnes & Noble in Holland Township, Mich., Jan Meltzer said she would like to see retailers send the message of “Merry Christmas,” but she wasn’t ready to commit to a boycott either.

“Christ is the reason for the season,” said Meltzer, a Catholic who lives in South Haven, Mich. “Christ is out of Christmas as far as most people are concerned.”

Barnes & Noble, meanwhile, insists the company isn’t ‘against’ Christmas

“We do in fact have references to Christmas in our stores,” said Mary Ellen Keating, a spokeswoman for Lyndhurst, N.J.-based Barnes & Noble.

The company sends a sign package to all stores that includes signs that say Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, and Happy Holidays.

“The holiday season includes more than Christmas,” Keating said. “Therefore, our overall theme has always been Happy Holidays.”

(Shandra Martinez writes for The Grand Rapids Press in Grand Rapids, Mich.)

Copyright: For copyright information, please check with the distributor of this item, Universal Uclick.

New Digital

Short Works for Penguin

by Charlotte Williams, The Bookseller

Penguin is launching a digital series of exclusive short works called Penguin Shorts, releasing nine titles by authors including Helen Dunmore, Toby Young and Colm Toibin.

The short works will be released on 1st December and will have a launch price of £1.99, with fiction and non-fiction works included, and will be available at all "good e-book retailers". Penguin aims to release new titles each month, with each e-book branded with Penguin's tri-band design. Penguin US will adopt the Penguin Shorts branding in 2012 to make it a global Penguin initiative.

The nine launch titles will be A Guest at the Feast by Colm Toibin, a memoir of his days growing up in Ireland during the 1950s and 1960s; At the Hairdressers by Anita Brookner, a novella exploring issues of trust, betrayal and loneliness; Protection by Helen Dunmore, a story examining how far you would go to ensure your family's safety; The Happiness of Blond People by Elif Shafak, an examination of national identity and immigration; How To Set Up a Free School by Toby Young; How to Be a Rogue Trader by John Gapper; recipe title Perfect Christmas Day by Felicity Cloake; The Battle of Alamein: North Africa 1942 by John Bierman & Colin Smith, the first of a Great Battles series to be available through Penguin Shorts; and Great Battles: The Battle of Isandlwana by Saul David.

Viking publishing director Venetia Butterfield said: "Since Penguin introduced affordable quality books over 75 years ago, we have always tried to find innovative ways to give readers intelligent writing at a low price-and Penguin Shorts does exactly that. They are explicitly designed to be read anywhere, on any device, in a small space of time-and fill a genuine gap in the market. We are extremely proud to be launching with such an incredible array of talented writers who, between them, cover a completely fascinating range of subjects."

Now How Did

We Know That?

by Amber Goodhand

When Anthony Weiner was caught with his pants down over the summer, a woman named Traci Nobles came forward as one of his mistresses, and now from RadarOnline.com we learn that she's shopping a tell-all book of her online tryst with the former Congressman.

"Traci has been shopping her book around to various publishers," a source close to the situation told a reporter.

"As far as I know, she doesn't have any bites yet...but she's confident she'll get a book deal, and it'll be a juicy bestseller."

The book proposal has 143 pages and 23 chapters in entirety featuring screen shots of her instant messaging conversations with Weiner and mention of a few other notable celebrities.  According to the proposal, Weiner and Nobles befriended each other on Facebook, and their conversations quickly turned sexual; so the two moved to Yahoo! Messenger as a means to chat.

The instant messenger screen shots in the book show Weiner's profile picture to be a toddler, which Nobles claims he told her was his niece.  He used that instead of his own photo as an easy way to divert his staff members from finding him online.

RadarOnline.com

D.I.Y.

by Gregory Cowles, NYT

One big result of the e-reading revolution is that self-publishing has become more viable than ever. The proof is on the e-book best-seller list, where a do-it-herself novelist like Darcie Chan — she’s at No. 23 this week with “The Mill River Recluse” — can hold her own against industry heavyweights like Michael Connelly (at No. 20) and Nora Roberts (at No. 13). Chan spends her days drafting environmental and natural resource legislation as a lawyer for the United States Senate, and she told one interviewer this year that writing long, complicated bills helped persuade her to tackle a book: “I figured that if I could draft or edit hundreds of pages of text within a few weeks, I could certainly complete a novel during my own time.”

Chan originally tried to publish the book through conventional channels, securing a New York agent and collecting rejection slips before giving up for several years, but with the rise of e-books she decided to give it another go. Even with her success, though, Chan hasn’t abandoned the idea of landing with an established publishing house someday. “I would still love to have a book traditionally published,” she said, “be it ‘Recluse,’ my second novel (currently in progress) or a future work.”

Kindle Direct

Settles on Fund

Amazon now made official what we reported was in the works last month: Authors who publish their work through Kindle Direct Publishing exclusively have the option of putting their titles into the Kindle Owner's Lending Library, compensated through pro-rated shares of a fund "expected to be at least" $6 million for all of 2012 (beginning with $500,000 allocated for the month of December). Titles must be exclusive to the Kindle store for a minimum of 90 days (which is a reduction from the 180 days Amazon initially sought from some authors). If books are currently available through multiple retailers, authors must withdraw the titles from competitors and restore exclusivity to Amazon in order to participate. VP of Kindle Content Russ Grandinetti claims that the "short 90-day commitment allows authors and publishers to experiment at very low risk."

Experimenters should note that in the terms sheet we were shown, participation rolls over automatically until cancelled. Amazon says that 31 of the top 50 KDP authors have been persuaded to participate, enrolling 129 titles.

As we reported earlier, participating authors will also be allowed to promote their books for free without jeopardizing their high-royalty status, for up to 5 days each 90-day period. (This allows those authors to try to boost their visibility and ranking within the Kindle store.) There are no "rollover days" from one 90-day period to the next; it's use-it-or-lose-it, according to Amazon documents shared with us.

The monthly royalty payment for each KDP Select book is based on that book's share of the total number of borrows of all participating KDP books in the Lending Library. Amazon cites a representative example of 100,000 total borrows in a month of all KDP Select titles. If an author's book is borrowed 1,500 times - or 1.5 percent of the total - then the author would earn $7,500 from the pool of $500,000. (If your book is not borrowed, you do not share in the pool; but in this example, a single borrow earns $5.)

One important point of ambiguity--in both the press release, and the Amazon terms and conditions shown to us--is that the actual size of the cash "fund" that Amazon makes available appears to be up their discretion entirely. They have consistently talked about $500,000 a month and $6 million for the coming year, but the terms sheet we have seen only states "we will establish a fund on a monthly basis." They use the example of "if the fund for a particular month is $500,000...." Presumably authors might cancel their participation if the funding does not meet or exceed expectations.

Release 

Bits & Bytes

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FICTION

Debut

Amazon UK's Best Book of 2011, Elizabeth Haynes' INTO THE DARKEST CORNER, about a woman suffering from OCD, who is locked into a psychological drama as a terrifying figure from her past appears to have re-emerged to upset her fragile security, to Jonathan Burnham and Jennifer Barth at Harper, in a major deal, at auction, in a two-book deal, by Adrian Weston on behalf of Myriad Editions.

adrian@adrianweston.com

Mystery/Crime

Two new novels in Sara Paretsky's New York Times-bestselling V.I Warshawski series, again to Christine Pepe and Ivan Held at Putnam, for publication in 2013 and 2015, by Dominick Abel at Dominick Abel Associates (NA).

Children's: Young Adult

Jo Knowles's LIVING WITH JACKIE CHAN, a companion novel to Jumping Off Swings that follows a boy to a new school, in a new city, where he moves in with his eccentric, Jackie Chan-obsessed uncle, and, in spite of being haunted by the baby he fathered and had put up for adoption, starts to find a new life for himself...one that finally allows him to face the one he left behind, to Joan Powers at Candlewick Press, in a two-book deal, for publication in Fall 2013, by Barry Goldblatt at Barry Goldblatt Literary (NA).

NONFICTION

Advice/Relationships

Alexis Stewart & Jennifer Koppelman Hutt's WHATEVERLAND: Learning to Live Here, a humorous self-help book with attitude that will help readers experience the joy of getting things out in the open while living a fabulous and shame-free life, to Tom Miller at Wiley, for publication in October 2011, by Shawn Coyne.

Biography

Former Sports Illustrated editor and author of Titantic Thompson and Tommy's Honor, Kevin Cook's FLIP, the inside story of TV's first black superstar, Flip Wilson, covering all the major events of Flip's life, from his dirt poor beginnings in Jersey City to breaking out on The Tonight Show to TV's top-rated Flip Wilson Show, and his controversial and highly unusual decision to forgo a comeback, to Rick Kot at Viking, by David Peak at Vigliano Associates.

Cooking

Proprietor of the red-hot downtown New York sandwich shop Baohaus's Eddie Huang's FRESH OFF THE BOAT, a gonzo foodie's journey pitched in the tradition of Anthony Bourdain and a classic immigrant coming-of-age story, to Chris Jackson at Spiegel & Grau, by Marc Gerald at The

Agency Group (world).

dcronin@randomhouse.com

Religion/Spirituality

Professor of Asian and Asian-American Studies at SUNY Stony Brook William Chittick's ISLAMIC SPIRITUALITY: DIVINE LOVE & THE SUFI PATH, bringing to light extensive never-translated Persian sources and presenting the rich prose literature at the center of Islamic spiritual thought, to Jennifer Banks at Yale University Press, in a nice deal, by Stephen Hanselman at LevelFiveMedia (World).

NYT bestselling author John Hagee's POWER OF THE PROPHETIC BLESSING: An Astonishing Revelation for the Next Generation, to Worthy, for publication in August 2012.

General/Other

Freelance journalist and blogger Rebecca Hills's THE SEX MYTH, a call to arms which explores the great sexpectations shaping the lives of Millennials today: how sex has become a marker of who they are and how they fit in - and how it is almost impossible to live up to the hype, to Karyn Marcus in her first acquisition at Simon & Schuster, in a pre-empt, for publication in Summer 2013, by Rebecca Friedman at the Frederick Hill Bonnie Nadell Agency (World).

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