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LATEST BLOW TO BOOK INDUSTRY Update- 3/31/2020 - “A” has ordered a few books from a publisher I know, one tenth of their usual order. There is no such thing as a “kind” slave master. Sell your books through your own website. Hello from Amazon, We are closely monitoring the developments of COVID-19 and its impact on our customers, selling partners, and employees. We are seeing increased online shopping, and as a result products such as household staples and medical supplies are out of stock. With this in mind, we are temporarily prioritizing household staples, medical supplies, and other high demand products coming into our fulfillment centers so that we can more quickly receive, restock and deliver these products to customers. Beginning today you will see: Reduced Purchase Orders: We have temporarily paused ordering for products that are not household staples, medical supplies, or other high demand products. Extended delivery windows for existing purchase orders: We have extended the shipment/delivery windows for some existing purchase orders to give you more time to fulfill the order. Please ship your products toward the end of the extended window. This will be in effect today through April 5, 2020, and we will let you know once we resume regular operations. We understand this is a change to your business, and we did not take this decision lightly. We are working around the clock to increase capacity, and on March 16 announced that we are opening 100,000 new full- and part-time positions in our fulfillment centers across the US. We appreciate your understanding as we prioritize the above products for our customers. Thank you for your patience, Amazon (Okay, Troy and Mel, you were right. It is a tag. But the box with the pull up menu is on this screen, it's not on the other one.)

Here is a summary of my relative book versus eBook sales from Amazon's affiliate program for 2009 through 2013. The graph does not reveal revenue generated or units sold, but it does show the mix of book, ebooks and other everything else sold, via the Amazon affiliate program, over the last 5 years. Interpret the graph this way, if I sold 100 products in 2009, 81 of them would have been books, one would have been an eBook and 18 would have been anything from a curling iron to a flash drive. You can see that eBooks, as a percentage of everything else sold, has not changed from 2012 to 2013. The explosive growth of ebooks relative to physical books, on AALBC.com, over the previous theee years has slowed dramatically. The literature I've read indicates that the same trend is true industry wide. Over all, the number of items sold was down 19% compared with 2012. Unfortunately revenues decreased more sharply as commissions on ebooks (often selling for 0.99 cents), dwarf commissions generated by physical books.

Amazon's Top 100 Free eBooks K. Honey Thompson's novel "Forbidden Hearts & Revenge" is #31!

If you are a reader wondering why it seems harder to discover good websites, or you run website or Blog that writes about authors or books you need to read this article. The Pimping of Wikipedia: Contributing to the Decline of the World Wide Web The mid- and late 1990s was an exciting time for the Web because so much new, rarely shared, or difficult-to-access information was now accessible. Today, there is more reason for concern, outrage even, than there is for excitement. The reasons are plentiful. One reason is the pimping of Wikipedia. (the full article: http://aalbc.it/pimpwiki) )

Self Published Authors Get Ready, You’re Being Dumped "If you’re a self published author, get ready for some disappointing news. Your usefulness is coming to an end. Yes, you have all worked very hard for very little return in building an empire to be exploited by multinational enterprises, but sadly, your job is almost done and it’s time now for you to be given the ‘boot’. " This is a pretty interesting conversation for you self-published authors. The articles comments are more enlightening than the original article, as if often the case. The problem with the comments is that you can't believe most of what people write you really have to research statements for veracity. But the issues raised are nonetheless interesting and worthy of consideration.

SCRATCH, a short horror stories with audio and video exclusively available for the Kindle is available FREE February 15th to February 17th 2012. Featuring the Audeeoh! Theater performances of Kim Cantey-Davis, Tony Johnson, Tiffany Aaliyah Burkes and Andrea Johnson. Written and produced by Corey A. Burkes Only on Amazon and for Kindle and Kindle readers. Also ... Still doing great things on Amazon ... Butta', the first book in the amazing thrilling series: For more information, visit www.desktopepics.com or on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/DesktopepicsFilms or twitter: http://www.twitter.com/desktopepics

I recently blogged about the fact that most authors who post links to Amazon do not take advantage of Amazon's affiliate program. http://aalbc.it/oWrxtM Someone tried to explain to me why authors do not take advantage of it, by saying they just don't care and are not interested. This seems so illogical because Amazons commisions can be 7, 8% or more depending upon sales -- often exceeding even the author's share of a book's sale. But based upon the acitivity on my latest Blog post on the subject, there seemed to be little interest in the whole issue. Of course the more sophistciated authors are aware of the commisisons that can be earned. Some authors who live in the cities where Amazon does not pay affiliate commisions (currently, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Illinois, North Carolina, Rhode Island, & Connecticut) use the codes of business associates. I give authors a discount on services in exchange for using an AALBC.com affiliate code -- sometimes it even help those authors to make the AALBC.com bestsellers list. Are there any authors out there that link to Amazon without using an affiliate code to earn commissions? If so why?