Google ebooks

Yes, Google may finally be getting into the ebook market after years of breathless speculation. No, I don't think it will be a huge success.

"Mr. Turvey said that with books, Google planned to sell readers online access to digital versions of various titles. When offline, Mr. Turvey said, readers would still be able to access their electronic books in cached versions on their browsers."

A.k.a. no downloading of the ebook as a file. No reading the ebooks on planes where internet access is cut off. No reading your ebook on any device without an internet connection.

I know that according to the EULA of an ebook you don't technically own the ebook file, but at least most schemes still allow you to have it in your possession.

The Google Settlement

If you have not been following the Google settlement, Judge Denny Chin has just provided an extra four months to figure it out. If, as an author, you want to opt out of the settlement you now have until September 4, 2009.

The gist of the settlement, as far as I can tell, is this Google asserts the right to scan all books as a part of the Google Library Project, The Authors Guild assumes the rights to represent all owners of printed works in opposing this rights grab.

You can object, or opt out of the settlement--otherwise you are assumed to opt in. The settlement will disperse $45 million dollars to those whose books were digitised without their consent (about $60 per book). Google is then allowed to use any books from this list that are not in print, unless otherwise instructed by the rights holder.

For complete information see here.

If anyone knows of a good summary or commentary please let me know and I will add a link.

Bulletin: Google Books settlement

Authors whose books appeared on Google Books without appropriate consent might be interested in this class action suit. [Full details here]

Ephemera

One of Life's Little Ironies:

From Amazon.com: How to Become Wealthy Selling Ebooks on the Internet by Stacey, Chillemi (Paperback - Jan 29, 2007) and Ebook Secrets Exposed: How to Make Massive Amounts of Money in Record Time with Your Own Ebook by Jim Edwards and David Garfinkel (Hardcover) - April 1, 2006)

Google Tricks:

1) Google Alerts
Set up an alert on your pen name or book title and Google will email you when ever it appears on the internet. This is a great way to get fresh reviews and find out who is blogging about you. But rememeber to use quote marks (e.g. "emily veinglory") to avoid learning about every person that happens to have that first name.
2) Google Links
If you bring up google and in the box type link:wwwyourwebsite.com it will show all the pages that link to yours.

[NEWS]

Triskelion recently moved from .net to .com, buit the site is now down--anyone know why? [Edited to Add] It's back! Chippewa/Lady Aibell have had trouble with hackers affecting the shopping cart and secure forum but have moved to quickly correct the problem.

Kurt Vonnegut has died at the age of 84

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

The top google item for: erotic+romance+blog is currently this:

veinglory.com/
This site has moved to http://www.erecsite.com/blog.html.[<--this is the content of the page]
www.veinglory.com/pblog.html[<--this is the address of the page]
- 2k - Cached - Similar pages

The top google-ranked page for these search terms is my redirect page from the obsolete url to this ERECsite url. And as the days pass the obsolete and almost empty page's google rank is getting better while this one languishes.

How does that make any sense?

Why won't google list the new blog? Why does it hate me?

[whimper]

Google Analytics--Google Fu

Those of you who have websites may already know the dubious joys of sifting through visitor statistics. I used to be a big fan of Statcounter for this but now must admit to having become a good Google-borg and using Google Analytics. If anyone knows a good plain English guide to this heaping pile of data please let me know.

A lot of it is less than totally surprising. I mean people who come to this site via a search engine tend to be looking for 1) erotic/a 2) romance/romantic 3) stories and 4) e-books. (It must also be noted that there are people out there looking for some of you guys, especially--Anne Douglas and Amanda Young).

A lot of visitors stay less than ten seconds (this is not the blog you seek) but another big group are in the 3-6 minutes range and they tend to spend it reading the blog although the publisher list is also popular.

One thing that vexes me is that the obsolete blog has a great google rank on the top keywords despite now being nothing but a redirect page. Yet this blog (yes, this one here) is still listed somewhere on page eleventy-million--despite having the same content and more, and all the current activity. Does anyone with a greater mastery of Google Fu know why? No doubt (as the disembodied voice of my mother is saying) I just need to learn to be more patient.

Edited to add: Other stat gathering methods -- icerocket, sitemeter.

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p.s. Pet Meme entries: cat (2), dog (1), other (0). I will be posting more of these soon but I am trying to avoid having the cats totally take over the blog :) (You know who you are)

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Coming tomorrow: Pet Meme--"Meow Bloggers", by Anne Douglas.