From author Nick Stephenson:

I had a bunch of emails last time I posted on this subject, asking me to update how my adventures outside of KDP Select were going after a month – so, if you haven’t read the previous post, go check that out here.

For everyone else, here’s the skinny: From my very first book release in March 2013, there had always been a common trend. Book sales would spike massively around a promotion (usually Bookbub) and then fall right back down again within a few days. Not that I’m complaining, but my eventual goal was to try and keep sales consistently strong, rather than relying on a monthly spike in numbers and then thirty days of diddly-squat.

. . . .

So, I pulled my titles from KDP Select and uploaded them onto other vendors, then set my strongest-rated novel to permafree. I applied for a Bookbub free promotion, which went live on the 27th of June. The results have been better than I could have hoped. Sales have remained consistently higher for over a month, beating out my average daily revenue of $80 by a factor of four. This last month has easily been my strongest to date, and is set to overtake the $7,000 mark by the time July rolls round. And, best of all, sales on non-Amazon retailers make up a significant portion of that figure, and Amazon UK has opened up for the first time.

. . . .

I’ve also been extremely impressed with my first experiences with other retailers. iTunes has been easy to work with (despite it taking nearly a week to get a title approved), Nook was simple and fast (12 hours from submission to publication) and Kobo was a dream. Kobo were also kind enough to feature my permafree book as one of their “first free in series” titles, which gave my numbers there a little push. Kobo is now a nice little side earner – and the efforts these guys go to in order to accommodate indies is commendable – especially given the vacuum that opens up every time I try to email Apple or Barnes and Noble. Well done, Kobo!

Link to the rest, including sales charts at Nick Stephenson

From The Street:

For much of the last year, companies have been scrambling to create their own Pandora and take a piece of the growing — but poorly monetized — music streaming market. Amazon may have just stumbled upon the solution.

In a message to Amazon Prime members in mid-June, Amazon unveiled Prime Music, a collection of more than a million songs and hundreds of playlists available to Prime members through the Amazon Music app. The service is accessible through Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Fire TV products, Android and Apple iOS devices, Samsung Smart TVs and speakers and just about any Mac or PC.

. . . .

So what separates Prime Music from Pandora One or Apple’s iTunes radio and its recently purchased Beats Music? Prime customers are already paying for it, bundled with a bunch of other services including two-day shipping of Amazon marketplace products and Prime video streaming of movies and television shows.

. . . .

Apple attempted to work around them with with iTunes Radio — and its failing attempt to use streaming to sell music downloads — but it discovered the streaming audience doesn’t care about buying music. Only about 2% of iTunes Radio listeners ever hit the “buy” button to download a song.

. . . .

All of the above are just an attempt to wring money from music that consumers are loathe to pay for anymore. The number of music download purchases dropped for the first time in 2013, according to Nielsen and has just continued to plummet in the first half of 2014. Interactive streaming like that offered by Spotify and Beats Music increased volume to 34.28 billion streams in the first quarter of the year from 25.44 billion streams during the same period in 2013. With music executives putting 1,500 streams at the equivalent of a full digital album, streaming equivalent albums have increased by 10.1 million units so far this year as download sales dropped by roughly 9 million units, according to Nielsen.

. . . .

When Amazon raised the price of Prime for new members from $79 a year to $99 earlier this year, it faced the same question that’s still puzzling Pandora: Where’s the value? Amazon responded by securing proprietary streaming content for its video service and tapping into its supply of cloud-based music content to cobble together a streaming service. It may not be quite as intricate as what Pandora offers or tailor its playlists to a user’s profile as the Music Genome Project does, but it’s a streaming service that existing Prime customers get as a freebie and that new customers see as added incentive to sign on for Prime service.

Prime Music does what the Fire Phone can’t and what Apple’s iTunes infrastructure won’t: It enhances the overall value of the service. Amazon’s Fire products have had a tough time keeping pace with Apple even at lower prices, but the integration and bundling of all of Amazon’s offerings — marketplace, video, audio, e-books, etc. — under one payment and on several different devices is making a strong pitch to consumers. Amazon isn’t pleading with them to ditch Netflix, Pandora or even iTunes on-demand services, but showing them how much Prime can offer under one roof.

. . . .

Amazon, however, took the extra step of setting up an all-inclusive pricing scheme and shoving everything else into it. Instead of streaming music and bringing in zero for it while hoping consumers find it in their hearts to download the occasional album, Amazon gave itself a base membership price to work with and built up. It’s not unlike what Costco did by making membership fees the foundation of its retail model, and much of that bulk shop’s growth and ancillary offerings including tire shops, auto sales and travel services are bolstered by that base consumer investment.

Link to the rest at The Street

PG says the music business started experiencing technology disruption with the introduction of the iPod and iTunes in 2001. No two disruptions are the same, but it’s instructive to study the development of different disrupted business.

From Insatiable Booksluts:

Act I:

Amazon: Hey Publishing, we just invented a new thing that we think you’ll like. You know how after you make a book you have to pay a buttload of money to get it all printed and shipped and stuff? We figured out a way that you could not have to pay all that money and still sell lots of books.

Publishing: OMG NO WHAT IS THIS WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO DESTROY PUBLISHING

Customers: Hey! These ebooks are pretty cool! I can carry a bunch with me all the time and it sucks less when I have to move!

Publishing: NO THEY ARE NOT COOL, PAPER BOOKS FOREVER, WE KNOW YOU JUST WANT TO STEAL OUR CONTENT OFF OF THE INTERNETS. CAN WE TRIPLE THE DRMs PLEASE

Customers: ……

. . . .

Act III:

Amazon: Hey Publishing, since it only costs you like a fraction of a percent actually to produce ebooks vs printing books, why do they cost so much?

Publishing: SHUT UP

Apple (aside to Publishing): Hey, I know how you guys can make more money off of ebooks.

Publishing: You have our attention.

Apple and Publishing whisper quietly between themselves.

Publishing: OK SO FROM NOW ON EVERYONE HAS TO SELL AT THE PRICE WE DECIDED AND YOU ONLY MAKE 30%

Amazon: What? But . . . I mean, we’re a retailer, not a consignment shop? And your prices are higher than paperbacks–isn’t that kind of silly for a medium that costs significantly less to produce? Why not price them less so you can sell at a higher volume, since you have no limit on the units you can sell?

Publishing: NO WE ALL DECIDED ALREADY

Apple blows a raspberry at Amazon, then sells them a bunch of iPads and iPhones.

Link to the rest at Insatiable Booksluts and thanks to Nick for the tip.

From Reuters:

Apple Inc reached an out-of-court settlement with U.S. states and other complainants in an e-book price-fixing class action lawsuit on Monday, effectively avoiding a trial in which the iPad maker faced more than $800 million in claims.

. . . .

The U.S. Department of Justice sued Apple and five publishers in April 2012, accusing them of working together illegally to increase e-book prices.

Since then, 33 states and U.S. territories have separately sued Apple on behalf of their consumers, while individual consumers in other states and territories filed a class action lawsuit.

The complainants are seeking up to $840 million in damages for e-book customers. The exact amount of damages was to be litigated at a trial scheduled for July 14.

Link to the rest at Reuters and thanks to Chris for the tip.

From USA Today:

As China’s Internet giant Alibaba enters the U.S. consumer market — encroaching squarely on Amazon.com’s primary turf — Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is getting even more aggressive than usual.

The Seattle-based company has just entered the online music market and is expected soon to unveil a mobile platform that puts Amazon services at the center of a device user’s experience.

Amazon’s strategy for its new streaming music service looks familiar to the one the company used with great impact on the markets for books, DVDs and other online media: Offer the lowest price and broadest distribution.

Yet Bezos is going a step further than he has in the past by giving music away for free.

By merely adding it on for $99-a-year Amazon Prime subscribers, Bezos is essentially delivering almost-everything-but-the-hits digital music along with the milk and eggs at their door.

In doing so, he’s sent a shot across the bow of an industry that’s already grappling with stagnant sales.

. . . .

Amazon’s arrival might be bad news for rivals investing in the streaming music market, as Apple has just done by agreeing to acquire Beats Electronics for $3 billion.

It’s also a long-term threat to Spotify and Pandora Media, which ask their subscribers to listen to ads in exchange for music.

. . . .

Pandora, Spotify and Apple — via iTunes and, in the future, via Beats – all have broader music offerings than what Amazon will offer – at least at first.

Yet Bezos is offering the Baby Boom generation most of the same classic tunes they now listen to on Internet or satellite radio.

. . . .

How much profit can Apple make on something that Bezos is giving away for free, and when most of Pandora’s 77 million users don’t pay for its streaming service?

Link to the rest at USA Today

From The Digital Reader:

Judge Denise Cote breathed life into another antitrust lawsuit against Apple and five publishers today.

Dnaml was the first of several retailers to file a lawsuit against Apple and the 5 publishers, and it will also be the first to go to trial. In a 22-page ruling, Judge Cote ruled that the Australian ebook company had met the minimum requirements to have its day in court.

The case, which passed under everyone’s radar when it was filed in September 2013, argues that Dnaml was financially harmed “directly and as a proximate result” of the price-fixing collusion by Apple and the five publishers (Macmillan, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Penguin).

Much of the Dnaml complaint directly cites and quotes the 2012 lawsuit filed by the DOJ and state’s attorneys general, and it asks for “all fair and equitable damages” as well as attorney fees.

. . . .

Judge Cote has scheduled a pretrial conference for 25 July, and she also included two other retailers who have filed similar lawsuits. BooksonBoard and Diesel eBooks, two US ebook retailers, each filed a lawsuit in early 2014 making many of the same allegations as Dnaml.

. . . .

“It is more than plausible that a discount retailer was harmed by a conspiracy to remove retailers’ ability to discount e-books,” the judge wrote in her order, adding that the retailers were “indisputably competitors in a market in which trade was restrained.”

Link to the rest at The Digital Reader

From Mark Coker via The Huffington Post:

Imagine a bookstore in nearly one billion pockets and purses.

During the live demo event of Apple’s unveiling of their new iOS 8 operating system on June 3, Apple made a passing reference to a slide of “iOS 8 features we didn’t have time to talk about.”

Buried in the fine print but photographed by bloggers was an ebook retailing bombshell: iBooks will come pre-installed on iOS 8.

The iBooks app is Apple’s ebook store containing over 2 million books (my ebook distribution company, Smashwords, supplies over 250,000 of these books).

This is a game-changer for ebook retailing, a big win for authors, the most significant counter yet to Amazon’s hegemony over ebooks, and a boost to book culture because it’ll make more low-cost ebooks more accessible to more readers than ever before.

. . . .

Starting this fall, iBooks will occupy prime screen real estate on all new devices. The new iOS will also be available as a free upgrade to users of the iPhone 4s, iPhone 5, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5s, iPod touch 5th generation, iPad 2, iPad with Retina display, iPad Air, iPad mini and iPad mini with Retina display.

Apple’s move will place ebooks just one click away from being discovered, sampled and purchased by nearly a billion readers.

. . . .

Make sure all your books are distributed to iBooks ASAP. If your ebooks are among the 500,000 locked in the dungeon of exclusivity at Amazon’s KDP Select, break them free as soon as you can.

Link to the rest at The Huffington Post and thanks to Tom for the tip.

From The Sydney Morning Herald:

Apple device owners who have iCloud accounts are being told to change their passwords by Australian authorities in the wake of a hijacking attack that appears to have spread to the US.

The Australian government’s Stay Smart Online service and the NSW Police have both issued warnings to Apple users, which state that as a precaution they should change their passwords.

. . . .

 Meanwhile, Apple issued a statement to Fairfax Media on Wednesday stating its iCloud service had not been hacked, but that impacted users should “change their Apple ID password as soon as possible and avoid using the same username and password for multiple services”.

. . . .

The attacks, which were initially only impacting device owners in Australia, involve a hacker logging in to Apple iCloud accounts and using the lost device feature to lock users out. A message then demands a ransom of between $US50 and $US100 for the device to be unlocked.

If a passcode was set on the device – be it an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch or Mac – the user could simply enter it, change their iCloud password and avoid having to deal with the ransom. But if no passcode was set, Apple device owners reported having to erase their entire phone or device. If a back-up existed, this could then be used to restore it to when it was last backed up.

The issue appears to stem from the hacker making use of credentials from a previous data breach on an unknown company. Apple’s statement alludes to this – by stating that customers should use different passwords across their online accounts –  but does not confirm it.

As is often the case after a data breach, hackers sift through the data looking for information they can use to break into users’ other online accounts. And because users often use the same password across multiple online accounts and don’t change them, hackers can often get in.

Link to the rest at The Sydney Morning Herald

PG had a post called Don’t Get Hacked that discussed ways of avoiding what’s happened in Australia. He suspects a lot of visitors to The Passive Voice wouldn’t want their KDP or Nook Press passwords to get hacked.

From GigaOm:

An appeals court this week refused to halt a trial that could require Apple to pay hundreds of millions of dollars over price-fixing, even as the company continues to deny any wrong-doing and seeks an appeal.

In a succinct order, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said a trial can go forward on July 14 that will determine how much Apple should pay for brokering a conspiracy with book publishers to fix the price of ebooks.

In April, class action lawyer Steve Berman said, “Consumers could see a judgment of between $750 to $850 million,” as punishment related to Justice Denise Cote’s conclusion last year that Apple organized the scheme.

Link to the rest at GigaOm

PG says this is the second time Apple has gone to the Second Circuit to try to stop this case from going forward. The Court of Appeals has turned them down twice.

Apple will get another appeal after the damages trial, but PG suspects that if the Court of Appeals had seen anything materially wrong with how the trial judge had handled the case so far, it would have intervened.

As PG has written previously, he thinks the Price-Fix Six (Apple and five big New York publishers) engaged in a mundane and, as these things go, very unsophisticated price-fixing scheme. They were stupid to try in the first place and the whole conspiracy fell apart pretty quickly.

Smart price-fixers can keep these operations going for years before they’re caught.

From Vox:

For the last two years, people have been buying comics like they do their music — in pajamas (optional), on a tablet, and mostly through a specific app called Comixology. Not unlike iTunes, Comixology allowed readers to search and buy comics with a flick of the finger, saving a trip to the brick and mortar store and (more importantly) possible embarrassment from looking like a comics newbie.

Comixology began showing its dominance in the app market place at the beginning of 2011. By September, it was in the top ten of the highest-grossing apps in the App store, and remained in that upper echelon for the next two years. In 2013, the company announced that it was the top-grossing non-game iPad app for the year. So it wasn’t a huge surprise when Amazon announced it was buying Comixology last month.

As with many acquisitions, neither company really spelled out what that meant for consumers.

. . . .

The Verge’s Adi Roberton was told by Comixology that the app would remain safe, even unchanged. Robertson reported:

A Comixology spokesperson confirmed that its brand and apps aren’t going away in the foreseeable future, saying that the companies would likely find ways to make Comixology and Kindle work better together.

On Saturday, users found that Amazon had gutted the app, killed one-touch buying, and in doing so, alienated publishers and rabid readers alike.

. . . .

Amazon’s changes mean buying a comic is now a tedious, multi-step process with logins, account creations, and is done through a web browser. The original app is now more or less just a fancy PDF reader for all the comics that clients have already purchased.

Link to the rest at Vox

PG claims little expertise in the world of apps, but understands this change (which applies to iPad and iPhone users only) is because Apple won’t allow apps sold through iTunes to implement in-app purchases unless those purchases pass through Apple, which takes 30% of the purchase price.

Amazon is not inclined to process content sales through Apple because of the 30% fee but also, more importantly (PG suspects), because Amazon generates a lot of additional sales based on the customer data it captures through direct sales. Apple doesn’t pass any customer data to the owners of apps (just like Amazon doesn’t pass any customer data to the people and business who sell direct on Amazon).

It’s an indication of how valuable customer data is to Amazon that it’s willing to irritate current Comixology purchasers with iPads by removing in-app purchasing.

At the risk of triggering an avalanche from Apple fanbois and fangurlz, PG humbly reminds them that Android tablets, including Amazon’s Kindle Fire, are very nice devices these days and typically cost a lot less than iPads.

PG seems to remember reading that the Fire HDX has a higher-res screen than the latest iPads which would seem to benefit comics readers.