Casual Articles - Internet and Businesses Online

Taking on Six Sigma Programs - Guidelines for In-House and Outsourcing Decisions
Based on a wild guess by a close associate of mine, there are well over 2,000 restaurants in the Manhattan area and its surrounding boroughs. Although I cannot validate the absolute accuracy of his count, I do trust it is in the ballpark, since he happens to be one of those guys who seem to know everything about everything in life (and more). His dream is to be on Jeopardy; if it ever happens, I already feel sorry for the other two contestants, who will undoubtedly be decimated on national TV. And, oh yes, he also happens to be a food- lover. There is definitely some credibility to his estimate.There is a point to be made by this story (trust me!). Despite the overwhelming number of restaurants in the city-that-never-sleeps, there are only a dozen or so which I truly enjoy and actually look forward to visiting. I am certain that even if I try every single one of these 2,000 l

considers Amazon have an Alexa Rank of 13! Sites with low AR get tens of millions of visitors per month. Sites with an AR over 100,000 get thousands (and thus will only convert hundreds or less into actual sales across the whole catalogue).

5) Aggregators – Content Reserve are the biggest and best known, serving a growing number of public libraries, as well as a network of retailers including eBooks.com, WHSmith, SimonSays, Fictionwise and eFollett.com. However, Content Reserve do suffer from a “bad press”, at times, in Internet forums on their speed of payment. They also charge up-front storage fees for holding inventory (a charging structure that penalises small publishing outfits with few titles).

eReader.com and Mobipocket complete this group, being both vendors of (free to download) eBook reader software and a repository for eBook downloads. Whilst eReader is currently more popular, particularly with Palm users, Mobipocket looks set to grow in importance, given it’s recent sale to Amazon Europe and Amazon’s plans to integrate Mobipocket into Amazon UK. Mobipocket’s reader software also works on Blackberries and Smart Phones (thus being more platform independent) and is compatible with the emerging and non-proprietary Open eBook format.

Conclusions

With such a limited number of publishers testing eBook models, the market for me essentially bo

Writing Great Cover Letters
Cover letters are an essential ingredient to your complete r?sum? package. This is the best opportunity for you to demonstrate your personal character, knowledge of the company and your business writing skills. The following is a relatively generic format for creating your cover letter. Note that most cover letters are designed to target a specific company or at least a specific industry. First Paragraph You must spark the employer's interest. Focus on your unique characteristics, whether they are based on experience or personal traits that will benefit the company. Don't simply restate your r?sum? objective statement. You must command attention, not simply alert the employer that you are applying for a position (they already know that!). Second Paragraph Provide more detail about your professional qualifications o

The Current State of the Market

In my first article, I outlined the massive advantages to eBook publishing, particularly for the author! Now you have become excited by that, it is time to inject a little realism! Ever since the emergence of personal digital assistants (or ‘PDAs’) and the growth of the Internet, market enthusiasts have been predicting the ultimate demise of the printed book.

This is, of course, nonsense! Traditional books do not require a power supply or batteries and can be read even when badly damaged (so called “graceful degradation”). Printed pages have better contrast and fonts are serifed, to aid the eye in scanning the text. Readers do not need technical skills or expensive and fragile devices to access them. Traditional printed books are here to stay!

Over time – and as technology improves – some of these differences will be eroded. However, at the moment, eBook sales are still only a tiny fraction of overall book sales wordwide and electronic publishing remains a very immature industry. There are many companies, testing different possible business models. There are also competing software formats and handheld device manufacturers (as well as traditional PCs). This diversity will, in the short term, hamper progress.

Future Growth Prospects

It is also wrong to dismiss eBooks as an idea that will never take off (as several industry stalwarts seem wont to do). Why? Well, because that fact is that (a) eBooks are already doing pretty well and (b) the major players are still investing!

Lightning Source, the eBook distributor used by Amazon in the US, sold its millionth print-on-demand book in April 2004. Try telling them that it’s an idea that’ll never work! In 2005, Amazon recently bought French company Mobipocket from Franklin for $2.5 million (to distribute eBooks) and BookSurge.com (to cover print-on-demand books). Look at the Amazon PageRank of eBooks on Amazon’s site and you might be surprised how well many are doing!

In fact, eBooks are particularly suited to the distribution of business, computing and academic works (with a small but high value niche market). They have also proved to be a viable complimentary channel for popular mass-market paperback titles. Members of the Open eBook Forum (OeBF) reported $3.2m of sales in Q3 2004, a 25% increase over the same period in 2003. The equivalent volume increase was 11%, so eBooks are commanding higher prices as consumer acceptance grows.

Features of the eBook market

At a basic level, one can distinguish five main components to the emerging ePublishing market:

1) Free distribution - epitomised by Project Gutenberg; started in 1971 (in the very earliest days of the internet) and now maintained by an army of volunteers. At time of writing, there are 16,700 free etexts in it’s catalogue and approx. 1.8 million downloads a month. Top 20 downloads include the War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Peer-to-peer (free and generally illegal) distribution using Internet Relay Chat (IRC), Usenet and file sharing software (like Kazaa, BitTorrent & Limeware) has yet to take off in the book market as it has in recorded music. It might be easy to burn MP3s from a CD, but scanning a book, page-by-page to create a text file is beyond the skills and patience of almost everyone! Everyone, that is, other than the dedicated volunteers at Gutenberg!

2) Own distribution - all about selling your eBooks via your own website. I recommend this option as a complementary channel to Booksellers, Distributors and Aggregators. At the basic level, you register a domain name via a hosting agency (e.g. 1&1 Internet Ltd) and create some pages using Net Objects Fusion or similar design software. PayPal is emerging as the simplest and most widely accepted payment interface (with 71 million users worldwide).

3) Bookseller distribution - the biggest and most confusing component of the marketplace. At one end of the spectrum is the online equivalent of the traditional ‘vanity publisher’ companies; where you are charged an up-front fee to list your book but then get 100% of the sales receipts. Examples include ebookpalace.com and ebookomatic.com. With Alexa PageRanks over 170,000, there are just not enough users regularly visiting these site to make them worth your while (especially when one excludes the hapless authors admiring their works).

In the middle of the spectrum is the royalty bookseller who does not levy an up-front charge but instead pays you a %age royalty on each eBook they sell for you. Examples include lulu.com, ebookad.com and cyberread.com. Unlike some less reputable operators, Lulu do not levy hidden up-front charges on top of royalty percentages. They also generate reasonable web traffic, with an Alexa rank of 5,421 – so I would consider Lulu but ditch the rest in this category.

Finally, at the other end of the spectrum are the major online booksellers. Of the big four (Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble and BOL.com) only Amazon distribute eBooks on their site and even then Amazon only accept titles from their distributor, Ingrams.

4) Distributors - The best “back door” into Ingrams (who normally do not deal with small publishers) and thus into Amazon is via their subsidiary Lightning Source International (LSI) LSI handle the inventory and technology for secure download of titles on Amazon.com, eBookmall.com, Diesel-Ebooks.com and Powells.com. I receive most of my sales via LSI (bot surprising when one considers Amazon have an Alexa Rank of 13! Sites with low AR get tens of millions of visitors per month. Sites with an AR over 100,000 get thousands (and thus will only convert hundreds or less into actual sales across the whole catalogue).

Conclusions

With such a limited number of publishers testing eBook models, the market for me essentially bo

Public Relations for Dentists
Public relations for professional Dentist Practices makes a lot of sense, because it brings awareness of the need to take care of your teeth and it brings community good will to the forefront of the business. Designing a good public relations program is not easy for a professional practice.This is because there are so many professional practices vying for the same ink space in the news paper, segment on the radio or images on the local cable station, never the less there is much that can be done to promote a professional Dentist Practice thru a well thought out public relations program and strategy.For professional practices and especially such practices as Dentistry can benefit significantly thru the providing of educational services and volunteer projects; and this makes a lot of sense. This does not mean the professional dentist medical corporation should go out and

(as several industry stalwarts seem wont to do). Why? Well, because that fact is that (a) eBooks are already doing pretty well and (b) the major players are still investing!

Features of the eBook market

At a basic level, one can distinguish five main components to the emerging ePublishing market:

Conclusions

With such a limited number of publishers testing eBook models, the market for me essentially bo

Sole Proprietorship as a Business Structure - Advantages & Disadvantages
Do you know what sole proprietorship is? A sole proprietorship is a business which has only one owner. It is a "sole" proprietor in the sense that the owner has no partners. A sole proprietorship essentially means a person does business in his own name and there is only one owner. A sole proprietorship is not a corporation, it does not pay corporate taxes, but rather the person who organized the business pays personal income taxes on the profits, making accounting much simpler.Most sole proprietors will register a trade name "Doing Business As". This allows the proprietor to do business with a name other than their legal name and also allows them to open a business account with banking institutions.A sole proprietorship has an authority to hire any number of employees because the law makes no distinction between you, the sole proprietor, and the business. Sole proprie

army of volunteers. At time of writing, there are 16,700 free etexts in it’s catalogue and approx. 1.8 million downloads a month. Top 20 downloads include the War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Peer-to-peer (free and generally illegal) distribution using Internet Relay Chat (IRC), Usenet and file sharing software (like Kazaa, BitTorrent & Limeware) has yet to take off in the book market as it has in recorded music. It might be easy to burn MP3s from a CD, but scanning a book, page-by-page to create a text file is beyond the skills and patience of almost everyone! Everyone, that is, other than the dedicated volunteers at Gutenberg!

Conclusions

With such a limited number of publishers testing eBook models, the market for me essentially bo

Making Money Online - Scripts and Potentials Second Way
With sure ways to build your site success, you have some powerful scripts to be uploaded and the see the magic of traffic boost up. Rich Webmaster Kit auto-responder script is most needed one and is very effective in getting your customers the way that leads to your site. You need to install one or more than one to work for you and you are really at bullish comfort in managing your customers. The E-books script has its value to the best available with sales products and matters, if you even have nothing to sell. Next you can lure your customers to get to the utilities that you provide with like RSS feed sharing to various forums, Blogs, websites, and subscribers; URL shortener; Ajax YouTube Video downloader; Online Notepad etc.The visit to your site must bring out some unique hits every time and to this reason the Rich Webmaster Kit is versatile in giving some better solution

100% of the sales receipts. Examples include ebookpalace.com and ebookomatic.com. With Alexa PageRanks over 170,000, there are just not enough users regularly visiting these site to make them worth your while (especially when one excludes the hapless authors admiring their works).

Conclusions

With such a limited number of publishers testing eBook models, the market for me essentially bo

Little League Baseball Fundraisers
Youth sports fundraisers can be painful for parents, so here are some easy baseball fundraiser ideas. Most Little League teams need to raise funds to cover expenses such as field maintenance, uniforms, umpires, etc. The money raised by selling advertising space at the ball fields and by doing the portrait fund raiser only goes so far.So what are some easy Little League fundraisers and what can you do to maximize the funds raised? Let's take a look at traditional candy sales, discount cards, and some event ideas.Candy sales Just about every youth sports team on the planet has done a candy sale at some point, but did you know that there are three simple things you can do to double or triple your profit?The first is using a simple two-sentence sales script that tells why you are raising funds, asks for their 'help', and uses the word 'because' which is a power

Conclusions

With such a limited number of publishers testing eBook models, the market for me essentially boils down to Lulu, LSI, Content Reserve and Mobipocket. Whilst immature and limited by diversity, the eBook market is growing rapidly. This growth looks set to continue.

HTTP = HTML link (for blogs, profiles,phorums):
<a href="http://www.casualarticles.com/article/60310/casualarticles-Free-eBook-Publishing-Guide--Part-2--Features-of-the-eBook-Market.html">Free eBook Publishing Guide - Part 2 - Features of the eBook Market</a>

BB link (for phorums):
[url=http://www.casualarticles.com/article/60310/casualarticles-Free-eBook-Publishing-Guide--Part-2--Features-of-the-eBook-Market.html]Free eBook Publishing Guide - Part 2 - Features of the eBook Market[/url]

Many small businesses have a difficult time growing and maintaining sales. This problem is often caused by a number of circumstances and events that are out of their direct control. Many forces can be blamed for tough times in a business, but the offender typically is the absence of one element: a competitive marketing strategy.

You won’t be if you accept a very simple premise. Here, in just two sentences, is your pathway to effective public relations. A pathway that lets you target the kind of stake- holder behavior change that leads directly to achieving your objectives.

Do you grow tired of hearing that every time you look for an online business? Has it ever really worked for anyone?

Tags

Links

Casual Articles - Free eBook Publishing Guide - Part 2 - Features of the eBook Market

Related Articles: