Matthew Miller is an avid mobile device enthusiast who works during the day as a professional naval architect in Seattle. He is one of three hosts on the MobileTechRoundup podcast and runs the Nokia Experts website. Matthew started using mobile devices in 1997 with a US Robotics Pilot 1000 and has owned over 90 different devices running Palm, Linux, Symbian, Newton, BlackBerry, Mac OS X (iPhone), Google Android, and Windows Mobile operating systems. His current collection includes a Nokia N85, Nokia E71, Nokia 5800, Nokia N810, Apple iPhone, HTC Advantage, T-Mobile G1, Palm Treo Pro, HTC Fuze, MSI Wind, MacBook Pro, and many more, along with tons of accessories and classic devices like the Apple Newton MessagePad 2100 and Sony CLIE UX50. Matthew co-authored Master Visually Windows Mobile 2003, was a member of the Nokia Nseries Blogger relations program, and is a member of the invite-only Microsoft Mobius mobile device evangelist group. He can be found on various discussion forums under the user name of "palmsolo".
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Monday, August 22, 2011
Publish Your Own Amazon Kindle Ebook
August 11, 2011
SAN FRANCISCO – Would you like to be the next Dan Brown or J.K. Rowling? Perhaps your aspirations are less lofty, but you still have a story–or expert information–to share with the masses. Unless you are already a bestselling author, landing a publishing deal is easier said than done. Thankfully, though, tools are available for you to publish your own electronic book.
I’m no stranger to publishing, having written or cowritten a dozen books. A great deal of pride and satisfaction comes with seeing your written work sitting on the shelf at Barnes & Noble–a dying concept in and of itself. Would you settle for seeing your book on the digital shelf at Amazon.com?
What You Need to Publish an EbookFor starters, you need content: Self-published books don’t type themselves.
Most ebook publishing services are at least capable of working with Microsoft Word files, PDFs, and the open-source ePub format. The Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing service–which I’ll focus on for this article–can work with .doc, .docx, .rtf, .pdf, .epub, .txt, .zip, .mobi, or .prc files. Amazon recommends creating and editing your content in Microsoft Word.
You should also prepare cover art of some sort, as well as relevant information, starting with credits for the author, illustrator, or editors.
When the book is done, remember that with self-publishing comes self-promotion. You won’t have a publisher with a marketing budget and a vested interest in the success of your book out there pitching it for you.
Use all of the tools at your disposal to let your customers or the broader intended audience know the book is available. Mention it in your email signature and on your website. Post a status update and link to it on your Facebook page. Tweet about it. Make sure to promote the book every which way you can.
Professional Consulting or DIY?
Although CreateSpace, Kindle Direct Publishing, Lulu, and SelfPublishing.com provide the tools to do it yourself, many also offer professional services for a fee. For example, CreateSpace provides a comprehensive list of professional services, including copyediting, content formatting, illustration, cover art design, and even marketing services once the book is published. The CreateSpace Unique Book Cover service is $499, though, so be prepared to spend some money.
You want your book to have a polished, professional look, but you don’t want to invest a fortune self-publishing either. You have to find a balance, creating a book that looks good enough to buy, but not spending so much that you lose money in the process.
A suitable middle ground between winging it yourself and hiring expensive professional help is to use your network of family, friends, and business contacts to find someone with the knowledge and skills to contribute, but for a more affordable fee. Maybe you can work out some sort of trade of products or services with another small business to create a more professional book without breaking the bank. You might also consider Elance, Freelancer.com, and other similar services that can connect you with designers looking for projects.
Editing and FormattingUnless you pay (or barter with) a professional, it’s up to you to check the quality of your work. This is a book that you expect people to spend money on, and enjoy or gain some benefit from; the least you can do is to put your writing through a spelling checker, and to ensure that you haven’t made any glaring grammatical errors or introduced any formatting issues in the document you submit.
You can use some text formatting–such as bold, italics, or underlining–for emphasis, but don’t go crazy. Decorations such as bullet points, fancy fonts, or information in the header or footer area of your document won’t translate to the finished product. Tables can be tricky, too.
To ensure that each chapter will start on a new page and not just run together like one big chapter, insert hard page breaks at the end of each chapter. In general, any images you include should be centered on the page. Keep in mind that if you are creating a digital ebook, the Kindle and most other e-readers will render the page in black and white or shades of gray, so some things may not look as nice as you intend.
Creating Front and Back Matter
When you open nearly any paper book, you see pages at the beginning before you get to the first page of real content. This section contains elements such as the title page, copyright page, dedication, preface, and prologue, and is referred to as the front matter. The back matter includes things such as an index or any appendices you wish to add at the end of the book.
You are not obligated to include all or any of these things, but your book will have a more professional look if you at least include a title page. It can be as simple as placing the title of the book in the center of the very first page with the author’s name beneath it.
Next page: The two-step publishing process, and how to set the right price.
Ebook Availability
As it happens, I am self-publishing a book–two, actually. I am taking the content from my popular “30 Days With Google Docs” and “30 Days With Ubuntu Linux” series, and publishing them as Kindle digital books.
The Kindle format is proprietary to Amazon, but the Kindle device is the dominant e-reader, and Amazon offers a free Kindle app for Windows and Mac computers, as well as for iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone 7 devices. Amazon also makes the process very simple.
If you want your book to be even more widely available, though, the open ePub standard is the way to go. ePub formats are readable on a wide variety of Windows and Mac applications, and can expand the audience for your book to include other e-reader platforms, such as the Barnes & Noble Nook, Kobo e-readers, devices from Sony, and more. To publish in ePub format, you can use one of the alternative services, such as Lulu.com.
Kindle Direct Publishing: Step by StepLet’s walk through publishing my book using Kindle Direct Publishing.
To begin, I went to the Kindle Direct Publishing site in my Web browser and signed in. Since this was my first attempt at self-publishing a Kindle book, my dashboard looked pretty bleak. I clicked the button at the top labeled Add a new title.
Essentially the process of creating and publishing a Kindle book takes only two steps. The first step involves supplying the basic details for the book. Amazon provides simple, self-explanatory fields–and if any of them don’t seem clear enough, you can just click on the What’s this? link for more details.
Step 1: The Basics
I entered the title of the book, and checked a box to mark the title as part of a series. I then entered 30 Days With in the Series Title field, and called this Volume 1. Then I typed a brief description of the book; Amazon describes this text as the sort of blurb you might find on the inside flap of a hardcover book. The field has a 4000-character maximum, enough to give the reader a basic understanding of what the book is about, and perhaps a little tease to entice the reader to buy the book.
Next, I clicked the Add contributors button. This area is where I added myself as the author, and where I could also add other people, such as an editor or a photographer, to give credit where credit is due. Beneath that button, I specified that my book was in English and that the publisher was S3KUR3, Inc. (my personal company). I left the publication date and ISBN fields blank. The date defaulted to now, which is what I wanted. If you want an ISBN (International Standard Book Number), a numeric code used to identify commercial books, you have to acquire an official one; it isn’t required, though, so I didn’t bother.
Next, I had to select my publishing rights. I could make the book public domain, or I could make it not public domain with me holding the necessary rights to publish it. I clicked the latter. Then, I selected two categories under which the title would be filed in the Kindle store, and assigned some keywords that might help the book show up in searches. Next, I uploaded the cover-art image. Amazon requires that the image be a .tif or .jpg file at least 500 pixels on its longest side, with the image being at least 1280 pixels. Smaller images may result in grainy or pixelated cover art.
After the cover art, I uploaded my Microsoft Word .docx file containing the content of the book. Once that’s done, you can click the Preview book button to see what the material will look like when rendered on a Kindle. You can’t make changes from the preview, however, other than to change the font size as you can on an actual Kindle.
Thankfully, before publishing you can still go back and change the content of the book itself, and reupload it. Once the book is published, you can visit your Kindle Direct Publishing Bookshelf to view the titles you have published; there, you can edit the book details, or change the royalties and pricing information.
After previewing my content, I clicked the Save and Continue button at the bottom.
Step 2: Rights and Pricing
That brought me to the second step: rights and pricing. I began by selecting where the book should be published. Amazon selects worldwide publishing by default, but if you have rights limited to certain countries or regions, you can click the Individual territories button and select specific countries. I left it on worldwide.
Then came the fun part–the money. I had two royalty plans to choose from: 35 percent and 70 percent. The decision seems like a no-brainer: Of course I would rather get 70 percent of the revenue than 35 percent. However, a couple of other factors affect the decision.
First, the minimum list price for books in the 70 percent plan is $2.99. But many self-published Kindle ebooks sell for only 99 cents, and those must go under the 35 percent royalties plan. The trick is to figure out whether you will sell enough additional books at 99 cents to make up for the difference in royalties, or if you are better off making your book $2.99 or more so that you can choose the 70 percent plan.
Another factor is that books published on the 70 percent plan have the Kindle Book Lending feature enabled by default. If you choose the 35 percent plan, you have the option to enable or disable lending.
I decided that $2.99 seems like a reasonable enough price–especially considering that the other books I have written had list prices more like $31.95, and that even the Kindle versions of my books are $16.47 and up.
That’s it. Just click the Save and Publish button at the bottom, and you are all set. It can take a day or so before the book shows up in the Kindle store–but just like that, you’re an author.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Kindle app works on rooted Nook for ultimate ebook reader
Monday, July 18, 2011
Spam storm clogs the Kindle self-publishing platform
The Kindle’s ebook store has become a new outlet for self-publishing spammers in the past few months, forcing users to wade through a growing number of low-value, subpar content to get to the titles they want. This recent trend may be damaging to Amazon’s push into self-publishing and may even dig into the Kindle’s reputation, hurting the 10 percent of business Citigroup analysts say the product will account for in 2012.
Spammers are exploiting something known as PLR content, or Private Label Rights. Though there is potential for this work to be of high quality, PLR allows someone to grab informational content for free or for very cheap on the internet and reformat it as a digital book. The form of PLR these spammers use tends to be poorly written, generic and lets them put anyone’s name on it, slap a catchy title and churn it out for 99 cents. Amazon then pays out 30 to 70 percent of the revenue.
Sometimes these ebooks will just be stolen content from actual work. Reuters points out a case concerning a New Zealander and her debut historical novel which she found being sold on the platform under a different author’s name. The case was resolved by Amazon’s British team, but it points to a larger issue. Reuters cited Internet marketer Paul Wolfe, who explained that the common tactic involves copying an bestselling ebook and repackaging it with a new title and cover.
The problem has not been hitting Google eBooks or Barnes & Noble’s Nook so far, but the Smashwords ebook publisher has been seeing a trickle of spam. The spam on Amazon’s platform may become a more widespread problem. The increase in ebook sales over the past year has helped many people who couldn’t publish their work traditionally, with an outlet to get their voice out there. Amazon needs to wake up and either manage it’s submission more aggressively, require a fee or set up some sort of social networking weeding process in order to keep this platform untarnished.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Open Question: Are we at the ebook tipping point? - It's official Kindle books are outselling print books.
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In a news release today, Amazon announced that Kindle book sales are outpacing sales of hardcover and paperback book sales combined. The release included several interesting statistics:
Since April 1, for every 100 print books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 105 Kindle books. This includes sales of hardcover and paperback books by Amazon where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher.Amazon sold more than 3x as many Kindle books so far in 2011 as it did during the same period in 2010.Less than one year after introducing the UK Kindle Store, Amazon.co.uk is now selling more Kindle books than hardcover books, even as hardcover sales continue to grow. Since April 1, Amazon.co.uk customers are purchasing Kindle books over hardcover books at a rate of more than 2 to 1.These stats beg the question: Are we at the ebook tipping point?
Please share your thoughts in the comments.
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Thursday, June 9, 2011
Rich Dads Robert Kiyosaki to Offer First Ever, Live Kindle eBook Signing of Unfair Advantage The Power of Financial ...
- Experience groundbreaking application of a popular technology, receive exclusive bonuses and discover what schools will never teach about money on May 26th at http://on.fb.me/UnfairAdvantageEbook What:
Robert Kiyosaki, author of the number one personal, finance book of all time, ?Rich Dad Poor Dad,? will offer the first ever, live, Kindle eBook-signing of his new best-seller, ?Unfair Advantage ? The Power of Financial Education,? at http://on.fb.me/UnfairAdvantageEbook.
Attendees can:
? Participate in the first, live chat and Kindle eBook signing of its kind!
? Purchase a limited edition of the eBook officially signed by Robert Kiyosaki and available only during this special, Facebook Livestream event.
? Access exclusive photos and a bonus chapter about the corruption of capitalism unique to this one-time, eBook edition.
? Ask Robert and contributing author and tax expert, Tom Wheelwright, CPA, questions via Facebook posts.
? Hear Robert expose unfair advantages of the rich during his live chat.
Why:
?Financial education is the unfair advantage of the rich, and it?s time for people to challenge the preconception that they will struggle financially all of their lives,? states Kiyosaki. In ?Unfair Advantage ? The Power of Financial Education,? I share the secrets of the wealthy and what schools will never teach you about money.?
?We are constantly learning and changing with today?s fast-paced economic environment to provide the best information possible,? states Shane Caniglia, director of technology at The Rich Dad Company. ?This groundbreaking use of Kindle and Amazon is the first of many, strategic and innovative ways we plan to use technology in the future to help people increase their financial education and prosper.?
When:
Thursday, May 26, 2011, 2:00 - 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time
Where:
Log on to http://on.fb.me/UnfairAdvantageEbook.
Cost:
It?s free to join the live chat, and the exclusive, limited Kindle-edition of ?Unfair Advantage ? The Power of Financial Education?, available only during this eBook signing, is $9.99.
Info.:
For more information, visit www.richdad.com/livestreaming.
About the Rich Dad Company
Our company was founded in 1997 based on Robert Kiyosaki?s best-selling personal finance book, ?Rich Dad Poor Dad.? While his poor dad?s outlook closed his mind to the possibility of financial freedom, his best friend?s rich dad elevated Robert?s dreams, opened his mind to life's possibilities and allowed him to be financially free. Today, Robert and his team of experts provide financial education via books, seminars, videos, coaching, social media, innovative technology, and the board and Web game, CASHFLOW?, based on Robert?s belief that people learn best through simulation. Our mantra is ?Knowledge is the New Money.? Everything we do has one common goal: to increase your financial knowledge and help you live the rich life. Discover how we can help you on your journey towards a rich life at www.richdad.com or call us at 800-308-3585.
# # #
Media Contact: Melanie Rembrandt, Rembrandt Communications?, info@rembrandtwrites.com, 800-PR1-0116
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Amazon US Says Kindle eBook Sales Outperform All Print
It started with Amazon UK coming out yesterday to announce that ebook sales for their Kindle book reader are more then two to one compared to hardcover sales. Now, it’s the US side of the operation that is coming out with their own numbers. Like their UK counterparts, similar trends have been observed with the US arm confirming that sales of the electronic books are greater then the sales of both hardcover and paperback combined.
The growth of ebooks have been quite strong with sales steadily increasing. When you compare the numbers from 2010 and 2011, we see that so far this year, ebook sales are three times greater then what they were over the same time span last year. With numbers such as this, you may expect to see the company post some strong numbers and this is exactly what is observed. Amazon has confirmed that in regards to their book business, the year over year growth has been the fastest observed in their history, both in terms of numbers sold and dollars.
Amazon’s library of books now comes in at 950,000 titles strong with nearly 20% of the titles (175,000 titles) having been added in just the last 5 months. Paper copies of books have a greater cost associated with them, both in terms of production and distribution, so with ebooks now taking off, we have to wonder how long it will be before we see at least publisher move to a digital only distribution method.
Via: Pocket Lint
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Kindle ebook sales exceed print sales in US
Amazon has announced that Kindle ebook sales now outnumber physical paperback and hardback sales, the digital platform overtaking print in just four years. Since April 1, Amazon says, it has sold 105 Kindle ebooks for every 100 print books on its US site. That’s not just limited to cases where both formats are available, either; it takes into account print titles where no Kindle equivalent is on offer (though free Kindle ebooks aren’t counted).
In fact, Amazon shifted more than three-times as many Kindle books in 2011 so far as it did in the same period last year. As for hardware, the discounted – and ad-supported – Kindle with Special Offers has shot to the top of the popularity charts, dominating sales in the US.
The numbers look to be headed the same way outside of the US, where Amazon’s ereader platform is less mature. In the year since the Amazon UK Kindle store opened, ebooks now outsell hardbacks; it’s a 2-to-1 ratio since April 1 the retailer claims.
Kindle with Special Offers for only $114 is already the bestselling member of the Kindle family
SEATTLE—May 19, 2011—NASDAQ: AMZN—Amazon began selling hardcover and paperback books in July 1995. Twelve years later in November 2007, Amazon introduced the revolutionary Kindle and began selling Kindle books. By July 2010, Kindle book sales had surpassed hardcover book sales, and six months later, Kindle books overtook paperback books to become the most popular format on Amazon.com. Today, less than four years after introducing Kindle books, Amazon.com customers are now purchasing more Kindle books than all print books – hardcover and paperback – combined.
“Customers are now choosing Kindle books more often than print books. We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined it would happen this quickly — we’ve been selling print books for 15 years and Kindle books for less than four years,” said Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO, Amazon.com. “In addition, we’re excited by the response to Kindle with Special Offers for only $114, which has quickly become the bestselling member of the Kindle family. We continue to receive positive comments from customers on the low $114 price and the money-saving special offers. We’re grateful to our customers for continuing to make Kindle the bestselling e-reader in the world and the Kindle Store the most popular e-bookstore in the world.”
Recent milestones for Kindle include:
· Since April 1, for every 100 print books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 105 Kindle books. This includes sales of hardcover and paperback books by Amazon where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher.
· So far in 2011, the tremendous growth of Kindle book sales, combined with the continued growth in Amazon’s print book sales, have resulted in the fastest year-over-year growth rate for Amazon’s U.S. books business, in both units and dollars, in over 10 years. This includes books in all formats, print and digital. Free books are excluded in the calculation of growth rates.
· In the five weeks since its introduction, Kindle with Special Offers for only $114 is already the bestselling member of the Kindle family in the U.S.
· Amazon sold more than 3x as many Kindle books so far in 2011 as it did during the same period in 2010.
· Less than one year after introducing the UK Kindle Store, Amazon.co.uk is now selling more Kindle books than hardcover books, even as hardcover sales continue to grow. Since April 1, Amazon.co.uk customers are purchasing Kindle books over hardcover books at a rate of more than 2 to 1.
Kindle offers the largest selection of the most popular books people want to read. The U.S. Kindle Store now has more than 950,000 books, including New Releases and 109 of 111 New York Times Best Sellers. Over 790,000 of these books are $9.99 or less, including 69 New York Times Best Sellers. Millions of free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books are also available to read on Kindle devices. More than 175,000 books have been added to the Kindle Store in just the last 5 months.
All Kindle Books let you “Buy Once, Read Everywhere” – on all generation Kindles, as well as on the largest number of devices and platforms, including iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, Mac, PC, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, Android-based devices, and soon HP TouchPads and BlackBerry PlayBooks. Amazon’s Whispersync technology syncs your place across devices, so you can pick up where you left off. With Kindle Worry-Free Archive, books you purchase from the Kindle Store are automatically backed up online in your Kindle library on Amazon, where they can be re-downloaded wirelessly for free, anytime.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Dear author, would you sign my Kindle?
Sitting at a table in a Barnes & Noble in St. Petersburg, Fla., T.J. Waters was signing copies of his book Hyperformance when a fan standing in line with the eBook version walked up and said, “It’s too bad you can’t sign my Kindle.”
Waters, a senior consultant for U.S. Special Operations Command Headquarters, suddenly found himself wondering, “How come the tech world can put a man on the moon and I can’t sign an eBook?”
With consumers now accustomed to experiencing music and movies on Lilliputian devices, they’re also increasingly reading Tina Fey, Scott Turow and Suzanne Collins on Kindles, Kobos and iPads. You can be a diehard Haruki Murakami fan and not have a single novel of his on your bookshelf.
And that’s only going to become more common. By 2015, sales of eBooks in the United States are expected to triple to nearly $3 billion, according to Forrester Research. But the sea change has created a dilemma: What, then, do authors autograph at book signings?
Some readers have resorted to asking authors to sign the backs of their iPads and the cases of their Kindles. But the growing demand for more-elegant solutions has software and marketing companies scrambling to propel book signing into the digital age.
Waters is in the vanguard. At the BookExpo America in New York in May, he and Robert Barrett, an information technology executive, plan to debut Autography.
Here’s how an Autography eBook “signing” will work: A reader poses with the author for a photograph, which can be taken with an iPad camera or an external camera. The image immediately appears on the author’s iPad (if it’s shot with an external camera, it’s sent to the iPad via Bluetooth).
Then the author uses a stylus to scrawl a digital message below the photo. When finished, the author taps a button on the iPad that sends the fan an email with a link to the image, which can then be downloaded into the eBook.
Wait time? About two and a half minutes. Bragging potential? Endless: Readers can post the personalized photo to their Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Autography has been tested at book signings in the United States and abroad. Recently, he signed eBooks for fans in Dublin while on a radio show in Florida by sending callers an email with a link to his autograph.
Rachel Chou, chief marketing officer for Open Road Integrated Media, a publishing and marketing company that has organized e-signings, said that within the year consumers should expect to see a variety of advances in digital signing, including eBooks sold with blank pages for that purpose. Some devices already have their own solutions, such as Sony’s Reader, which enables authors to use a stylus to sign a page on its screen.
Even so, Chou suggested not all readers care about autographs. “We’re struggling with the idea: Is it about the autograph or is it about the take-away that you met that person?” she said. In an age of “look at me!” status updates, she thinks it’s the latter.
Last year, at an e-signing for Jonathon King’s Midnight Guardians at Bouchercon by the Bay, King posed with fans for photographs, which were given to them on USB memory sticks loaded with exclusive information.
In the end, readers will get more for their money. Then again, they’ll have to strike a pose at book signings.
New York Times News Service
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Amazon Unveils Ad-Supported Kindle eBook Reader For $114
Amazon.com (AMZN) is trying a new wrinkle in the eBook market: a discounted, advertising supported version of the Kindle.
The new “Kindle with Special Offers” will sell for $114, modestly below the $139 for the regular version of the Kindle. The company said the new version will include “special offers and sponsored screensavers.” The new Kindle can be ordered now, and starts shipping May 3.
The company said initial screensaver sponsors will include Buick, Olay, Visa and the Amazon.com Reward Visa Card from Chase.
Amazon said offers in the first few weeks will include:
$10 for $20 Amazon.com Gift Card$6 for 6 Audible Books (normally $68)$1 for an album in the Amazon MP3 Store$10 for $30 of products in the Amazon Denim Shop or Amazon Swim ShopFree $100 Amazon.com Gift Card when you get an Amazon Rewards Visa CardBuy one of 30 Kindle bestsellers with your Visa card and get $10 Amazon.com credit50% off Roku Streaming PlayerAmazon is also unveiling AdMash, a Kindle app and Web site were customers can evaluate ads for potential use as Kindle scree-savers.
Wow. Genius on so many levels. It’s a Kindle for the budget-limited. They have turned the advertising into a bonus – Kindle with Special Offers! Via AdMash, they are using their customers as unpaid focus group members. And they are moving into the Groupon, discounted products market. Really, simply genius.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Kindle Ebook Sharing Site Lendle is Back [Blip]
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Friday, March 25, 2011
Kindle, Nook lending site, eBook Fling, goes live
(Credit: eBook Fling)
In the past month or so, a couple of e-book-lending sites, Lendle and BookLending, opened for business. Those sites cater to Kindle users, but Book Swim's eBook Fling, which officially launched today, offers lending to both Kindle and Nook users.
How does e-book lending work? Well, while publishers only choose to make certain e-books lending-enabled, plenty of e-books are available to loan out on a very restricted basis. If you own a lendable e-book (they're labeled as such), you can loan it to one person, one time, for 14 days.
The sites all work in much the same way, each offering free membership into their respective lending "clubs." In the case of eBook Fling, you sign up and list the titles you have available for lending, then wait for requests to come in. You lend an e-book by simply sending an e-mail invite to the requesting borrower and in return, you earn credits for each "successful fling."
If you don't have any credits available, you can pay $1.99 to borrow a book, which is, we assume, how the site makes money, along with earning sales leads from Amazon for embedding links to purchase books when they aren't available to borrow.
While more folks are choosing to check out e-books from their local libraries using OverDrive's Media Console apps for Android, BlackBerry, iPhone/iPad, Windows Mobile devices, and Windows and Mac computers (the Kindle does not support library lending), eBook Fling is counting on Nook and Kindle owners' desire to extract some added value from their e-book purchases.
To avoid privacy concerns, the sites encourage members to create a custom e-mail address just for Kindle or Nook lending activities that's separate from your personal e-mail address or the e-mail address associated with your Nook or Kindle.
A key factor in all this is how many people end up signing up for the lending club and seeding the site with content to borrow. A recent Wall Street Journal article quotes Catherine MacDonald, the founder of BookLending, saying her site has more than 16,000 registered users and the site has a total of nearly 20,000 book loans so far. It will be interesting to see how this submarket pans out and whether publishers, who are wary of e-book lending, embrace it further or continue to proceed very cautiously.