Kindle Fire pre-orders are burning down the house

It was only a matter of time before Amazon realized the true untapped potential of a handheld reading device that could go beyond what its original Kindle could provide users. Not that I think Amazon was ever really going to just sit there and be happy with a device that only provided content to be viewed entirely in black and white.
If the screenshot leak over at blog Cult of Android is to be believed then it would appear that Amazon's Kindle Fire will be the fastest selling tablet device in the world. Currently Kindle Fire is racking up pre order sales of 50,000 units a day. In the first five days since its announcement over 250,000 tablets  have been pre ordered with the potential to have 2.5 Million pre orders for the device before it goes on sale on November 15th.

Compare that to the Nook colour which took about two months to sell 1 million units and its clear to see that Nook has a major fight for survival on its hands.
Good news all round for writers and e-book authors because it provides choice, they can either release content in traditional novel text based format or further explore the possibilities of projects with coloured image based content as well such as photo books, essays and illustrative works.
The digital e-reader market is expanding faster than the content is providing even more good news for authors, as each day goes by authors only have to appeal to a smaller percentage of the e-reader population.
What will be interesting to see is how long Kindles current monochrome version continues to sell, will Kindle Fire actually start to kill off traditional Kindle sales far quicker than anticipated or will the price difference mean that it clearly divides the market between those who just want an e-reader for books and those who want to embrace video entertainment?

As for Nook its difficult to say what happens now, too many tech companies have jumped on the tablet bandwagon only to fail miserably because they were not prepared for the market place, in most cases competitors to the iPad have released hardware but never factored into the business plan that the content wasn't there to support it. HP's TouchPad being a perfect example, with no 3G support, lack of content, no support for storage cards and high retail costs it wasn't going to scratch let alone dent what Apple was offering. Apple thrives because the content is there to drive hardware sales. Nook on the other hand needs to evaluate what it's offering its customers that Kindle Fire doesn't, it may need to re-position itself on price or functionality but at what expense to its place within the market is difficult to ascertain.

In the US, Amazon has about three quarters of the e-book market so its audience is already established and at $199 it provides a good halfway point to the iPad 2 which retails in the region of $470. Admittedly with nowhere near the same functionality as the i-Pad the Kindle Fire is still an impressive bit of kit.

CARVED - an ebook is born.

Things are now at a crucial phase of my writing 'career', I say career but its more of toe dipping experiment to see how my wares will be received. My book "CARVED" is complete and has been edited by Joe Konraths editor Diana Cox, its now currently being formatted by a very close friend of mine, Paul Rhodes who runs Orb Entertainment here in the UK. Paul's publishing experience is second to none and since paul heads up the digital book side of things over at Walker Books I know I'm in good hands. I've decided to start small, the book is a novella of sorts so its fairly easy on the eyes.

The book is all about my personal experiences and the subsequent criminal investigation into the Thames torso case that happened almost a decade ago when I discovered the butchered torso of a 5 year old boy floating in the River Thames. As a story I think it has a very unique pitch. I say unique because its story could quite easily be percieved as fiction, but its not, in its very real sense its a personal journey, a bid by me at finally getting closure in what what was one of London's worst crime for over 40 years.
Writing about this traumatic experience has been somewhat cathartic, a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Guilt is a terrible thing to live with, the guilt of wondering if you did enough, the questions and blame you place on yourself eat away at you for years, gnawing away when you're alone in thought. For me the book reinforces certain facts, the doubts I had are now erased and all from putting words on paper.

Carved will be available from September on all major e-reader formats such as Kindle, Smashwords, Nook, Createspace,B&N and Overdrive.

YOUR COVER DESIGN IS KILLING YOUR EBOOK SALES

However long it took you to write your book the chances are you've spent a lot of time on it, you've read through what was initially a tangled mess of structure, formatting and grammatical errors to get to a stage where you're now ready for an editor to add that last little bit of polish.
When this blog started several months ago I wrote about how important it was for ebook authors to give their book the best possible cover they could afford in order to attract potential readers.
So why is it that authors are still making the same mistakes despite the likes of Joe Konrath, the veritable king of epublishing underlining the same critical factors on his blog which has hundreds of followers.

I'm a regular on Kindle boards and I'm still horrified by some of the book covers people are putting out there, the very same people who complain about the lack of sales on the boards at a later point. Remember this is a book that might have taken over two years to write, I find it strange that people who would dedicate that amount of time to writing a story for others to read completely ignores the importance of the cover design to promote it to their potential readership.
The key to a good cover is content, specifically content that hints at the main story elements or characters that appear in your book, however, before you set your sights on that content there are other factors that you must consider before finally deciding on what image or design is going to represent your book.

The first factor you need to consider is how you are positioning your book to the marketplace, that is to say, what sums up your book to your audience in terms of genre, can you explain what the synopsis of the book is within two sentences or less so that you can position it as something people can relate to?- for example "  A taught hi-tech thriller of modern intrigue and action set in Dubai". Positioning your book allows you to see where you fit within the marketplace, because the first thing you'll want to know is how many other thrillers are there that are also set within the Middle East.

The second factor you need to consider is what is the single biggest draw for your book, is it the title of the book, the story or your lead character. I've lost count of amount of covers I've seen on Kindle Boards that feature a bland photo depicting field with clouds or just clouds and really bad typography. There's absolutely nothing compelling in covers that are so vague that they say nothing about the content of your first book,hear me when I say that readers want to be engaged with your story the second they lay eyes on your cover, the last two years of your life have been spent hunched over a PC and you're killing your chances stone dead with poor design choices.

The third factor is competition - what are competitors or established authors putting on their front covers in terms of design? If you're writing sword and sorcery fantasy novels then you're going to need to look into that genre to see what has gone before, yet another wizard and a dragon on the cover aren't necessarily the best choices to run with. Picking out a dramatic or core story element involving the protagonist might be what works in separating your book from the myriad of others within the genre. Researching this area is essential and you really need to invest the time here. The chances are you already read books in the genre you decided to write in, its a good idea to gather all those books and have them in front of you so that you can see how effective their typography and design layout is. What colours are prominent, what fonts work better than others, is the authors name big or small, illustration or photographic media?, its the pieces that all come together to create a cover.

Finally you need to be brutally honest with yourself, before you decide on the cover get feedback from friends or family and if you have a choice of two or more designs get a vote. Just because you like the cover doesn't mean that someone else will, this book isn't written for you its written for others and you need to realise that more than you probably think. Ask yourself the question"Is my cover design giving my book the best possible chance in the marketplace?". If you have even the smallest amount of doubt on the answer then you need to rethink your design. There is no point in releasing two years of effort with a cover you don't believe in.

Some people will complain they can't afford a designer for their cover, sorry, but thats bullshit, if you can afford an editor then you can throw some money at a designer too, and if you can't then you should save the money and hold off releasing the book until you can afford it. Remember this is time you invested in the story, don't throw all that away with a shoddy cover you spent 30 mins on. Sources like Devianart have hundreds of designers who also freelance at vastly reduced fees, local art colleges or searches on the forums will also point you in the right direction.
Design programs such as Photoshop Elements is a cut down version of its more expensive big sister product Photoshop but still contains a comprehensive graphics package at a fraction of the price, coupled with the awesome step by step book Photoshop Elements book for Digital Photographers you should be able to get something together fairly easily.
I use both Photoshop Elements and the above mentioned book to create images for my zazzle store, I'm no whizz kid by any means but the simple step by step instructions on image manipulation will help you get the most from your images or photos for your book cover.
Alternatively you can consider book design packages if you want to save money and have total control of the books look and feel, there are many programs out there and one that comes highly recommended is Book Cover Pro, its easy to use, even for the novice and you can either use the background templates they provide on their own site over at www.bookcoverpro.com or click and drag jpeg and tiff formatted files into your book cover pro templates.

DO
Look at competitor covers
Research your genre
Spend time positioning your book
get feedback on your chosen cover from friends and family
invest in a designer to create your cover

DON'T
Use images that are vague more than they are 'arty' or alluring
Slap text on a stockphoto as an easy, cheap fix
Use small script fonts you can't read when the cover is reduced in size
Use standard fonts, experiment with new ones.

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