Amazon has a new Kindle promotional fund and effort

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Details are here.

Basically Amazon sets aside $6 million, the KDP Select fund.

If an author makes their book exclusive to Kindle for at least 90 days then it may go into the lending library, and you can earn part of this fund.

Sounds like it's a way to lock down indies, though oddly I can see this being too easy – the majority of my sales are through Kindle and I promote platform-independent.

But how will people react?  Well I confess I got an "oooh" reaction out of this myself – then realized there's no guarantee I'd get into the lending library anyway.

Still I think it shows Amazon is thinking long tail – they want to lock down authors, and they want to be a full-service platform.  This is important with eBooks, since though the Kindle may be easy, a lot of people are publishing in PDF and ePub anyway.

More as we find it.

– Steven Savage

 

Occupy, Banks, and the Spotlight

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It's looking like the Occupy Movement has gotten the attention of Bank of America with their new Occupy Your Homes anti-foreclosure protests. What's remarkable is that BofA seems concerned enough to send out a memo – and realizes they're being targeted.

I think they're a bit nervous, and they should be:

  • This rebrands the OWS movement in a way that provides easy messaging and positive image.
  • It calls attention to foreclosure and home issues – and can keep the issues in the news.
  • Anything the bank does backfires.
  • The backfires will call attention to bad banking practices, MERS, etc.
  • Most people aren't too happy with banks.

If this continues (and my guess is it will), then it's going to keep the public eye on banks and their activities past and present. This could lead to deeper investigations (if not just more awareness) of serious problems in the system.

As we all know the banks have a lot of problems still – and frankly I don't think they can stand the scruity and the lawsuits that would follow.  So this shift in tactics could have a lot of effects on the banks and how they're treated.

– Steven Savage