Self-Published Author clears $126,000 in one month. Wow.

Books are facing competition from a wide array of cheap digital entertainment—from Netflix Inc.'s streaming-video service to Apple Inc.'s iTunes store—easily accessed via tablets, options that don't exist on dedicated e-reading devices.

All of which has helped boost the sales of Mr. Locke, the self-published thriller writer. Mr. Locke, who published his first paperback two years ago at age 58, says he decided to jump into digital publishing in March 2010 after studying e-book pricing.

"When I saw that highly successful authors were charging $9.99 for an e-book, I thought that if I can make a profit at 99 cents, I no longer have to prove I'm as good as them," says Mr. Locke. "Rather, they have to prove they are ten times better than me."

Mr. Locke earns 35 cents for every title he sells at 99 cents. Altogether, he says his publishing revenue amounted to $126,000 from Amazon in March alone. It costs him about $1,000 to have his book published digitally, complete with an original dust jacket image. He also hires an editor to work with him at additional expense.

In March, he sold 369,000 downloads on Amazon, up from about 75,000 in January and just 1,300 in November. His titles are also sold by digital bookstores operated by Kobo Inc., Barnes & Noble Inc., and Apple.

Read the full story here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703838004576274813963609784.html

Should You be Concerned? Maybe. The Really Smart Phone -Robert Lee Hotz on WSJ.com

Through these and other cellphone research projects, scientists are able to pinpoint "influencers," the people most likely to make others change their minds. The data can predict with uncanny accuracy where people are likely to be at any given time in the future. Cellphone companies are already using these techniques to predict—based on a customer's social circle of friends—which people are most likely to defect to other carriers.

A wave of ambitious social-network experiments is underway in the U.S. and Europe to track our movements, probe our relationships and, ultimately, affect the individual choices we all make. WSJ's Robert Lee Hotz reports.

The data can reveal subtle symptoms of mental illness, foretell movements in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and chart the spread of political ideas as they move through a community much like a contagious virus, research shows. In Belgium, researchers say, cellphone data exposed a cultural split that is driving a historic political crisis there.

And back at MIT, scientists who tracked student cellphones during the latest presidential election were able to deduce that two people were talking about politics, even though the researchers didn't know the content of the conversation. By analyzing changes in movement and communication patterns, researchers could also detect flu symptoms before the students themselves realized they were getting sick.

very very interesting data analysis going on - read the full post on the Wall Street Journal

Should You be Concerned? Maybe. The Really Smart Phone -Robert Lee Hotz on WSJ.com

Through these and other cellphone research projects, scientists are able to pinpoint "influencers," the people most likely to make others change their minds. The data can predict with uncanny accuracy where people are likely to be at any given time in the future. Cellphone companies are already using these techniques to predict—based on a customer's social circle of friends—which people are most likely to defect to other carriers.

A wave of ambitious social-network experiments is underway in the U.S. and Europe to track our movements, probe our relationships and, ultimately, affect the individual choices we all make. WSJ's Robert Lee Hotz reports.

The data can reveal subtle symptoms of mental illness, foretell movements in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and chart the spread of political ideas as they move through a community much like a contagious virus, research shows. In Belgium, researchers say, cellphone data exposed a cultural split that is driving a historic political crisis there.

And back at MIT, scientists who tracked student cellphones during the latest presidential election were able to deduce that two people were talking about politics, even though the researchers didn't know the content of the conversation. By analyzing changes in movement and communication patterns, researchers could also detect flu symptoms before the students themselves realized they were getting sick.

very very interesting data analysis going on - read the full post on the Wall Street Journal

Guess what Canadians! Ban on Twitter, Facebook election-night posts draconian - up to $25,000 fine or 5 years in prison

Media_httpwwwmontreal_gnafi

Really??? And how is our government going to enforce this??

"...Section 329 of the Canada Elections Act still prohibits transmitting the results of the vote in any electoral district to the public in another electoral district before the polling stations close in that other electoral district.

That means on May 2, it will be illegal for Postmedia News — or the CBC or Radio-Canada or the Globe and Mail or the National Post or any other national media outlet — to maintain a live website with up-to-date results. At least until after the polls close in B.C..."

Read more: http://www.canada.com/news/decision-canada/Twitter+Facebook+election+night+po...

comScore Introduces Total Universe Report, Enabling Publishers to Demonstrate Full Range of Site Activity Across Devices and Media Platforms - Yahoo! Canada Finance

RESTON, Va., April 21, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ:SCOR - News), a leader in measuring the digital world, today announced the beta release of the comScore Media Metrix Total Universe report, which provides audience measurement for 100 percent of a site's traffic, including usage via mobile phones, apps, tablets and shared computers such as Internet cafes. This never-before-available report, which will be available to comScore Media Metrix subscribers, will be released with April data in the U.S. and U.K. (with other global markets being released in subsequent months) for all publishers currently leveraging the comScore Unified Digital Measurement™ (UDM) tag. The initial report features standard comScore Media Metrix key measures, such as unique visitors, reach, and page views, providing an unduplicated view of site audiences across multiple media platforms.

read the full post on Yahoo news....

Tweet for Chuck! Twitter Campaign Tries to Save Chuck From Cancellation | Underwire | Wired.com

From wired.com/underwire

"...A small but mighty online force has swelled in hopes of getting nerdy action-comedy Chuck renewed for a fifth season. The latest in a series of online efforts to get NBC to commit to another chapter of the show, the We Give a Chuck campaign has been flooding Twitter with appeals to the show’s advertisers.

“The Nielsens are basically just a tool to tell a network and advertisers that people are watching the commercials aired during a show,” said Kris Schneider, one of the co-founders of We Give a Chuck, in an e-mail to Wired.com. “We decided that as fans we could tell them the exact same thing using Twitter. And unlike the Nielsens, which only seem to measure if a TV is on, we could show that not only were we watching, we were paying attention.”

The gambit is fairly simple: During airings of the show, fans send tweets to advertisers, like: “Just rewatched the last episode of #Chuck while drinking my daily @drpepper! Thanks for the Chuck support @pepsi!” The posts are then appended with the hashtag #NotANielsenFamily...."

trendwatching.com's May 2011 Trend Briefing covering THE F-FACTOR

Just a few recent stats demonstrating the reach and power of the F-FACTOR:

  • The F-FACTOR is currently dominated by Facebook, as over 500 million active users spend over 700 billion minutes a month on the site. (Source: Facebook, April 2011)
  • And its impact isn’t just on Facebook itself. Every month, more than 250 million people engage with Facebook across more than 2.5 million external websites. (Source: Facebook, April 2011)
  • The average user clicks the ‘Like’ button 9 times each month. (Facebook, 2010)

And a couple of brand-related, F-FACTOR stats:

  • Three quarters of Facebook users have 'Liked' a brand. (Source: AdAge/ Ipsos, February 2011)
  • Juicy Couture found that their product purchase conversion rate increased by 160% after installing social sharing features (Source: CreateTheGroup, February 2011)
  • Incipio Technologies, a gadget accessory retailer, found that referrals from Facebook had a conversion rate double the average (Source: Business Insider, March 2011)
  • But it’s not just about Facebook. Take for example the explosive rise of the daily deal site Groupon, which used referrals from friends and colleagues to drive sales of over 40 million deals in the two and a half years since it launched in November 2008, via email ;-)

So, here are just five of the ways that the F-FACTOR influences consumption behavior:

  1. F-DISCOVERY: How consumers discover new products and services by relying on their social networks.
  2. F-RATED: How consumers will increasingly (and automatically) receive targeted ratings, recommendations and reviews from their social networks.
  3. F-FEEDBACK: How consumers can ask their friends and followers to improve and validate their buying decisions.
  4. F-TOGETHER: How shopping is becoming increasingly social, even when consumers and their peers are not physically together.
  5. F-ME: How consumers’ social networks are literally turned into products and services.

* This Trend Briefing is about the impact of consumers’ social connections on how they find, decide and purchase: i.e. what happens when consumption is increasingly social, rather than the personalized retailing opportunities on social networks (which is currently still the main focus of F-COMMERCE). For more on this see the excellent Social Commerce Today.

Lots of excellent deets in this Brief - read the full post on trendwatching.com/briefing

BUUTIFUL! Coming Soon, A Sculpture of 7,000 LED Lights Inspired By Bucky Fuller | Co.Design

Media_httpimagesfastc_jegzy

Excerpt from fastcodesign.com:

"The immense chandelier, designed by 3XN, will welcome guests to Copenhagen's Bella Sky Hotel starting May 16th.

3XN is a major player in Scandinavian architecture, so it's no surprise that they were approached to create a larger-than-life lighting installation for the Bella Sky Hotel in Copenhagen, which will be the region's biggest hotel when it opens on May 16th. The Bella Chandelier boasts 7,000 coolly glowing LED tubes linked in a minimalist pattern that took the best minds in design, science, and technology from 3XN's R&D arm GXN to create. Here's what it'll look like (ABOVE!)"

more pics & deets on fastcodesign.com

SuperCool! Barcodas iPhone App Turns Barcodes Codes into Electronic Music | Co.Design

From fastcodesign:

"Leo van der Veen's ingenious app lets you turn any scannable product into an augmented-reality musical instrument.

Those ubiquitous QR codes may get all the trendy tech love these days, but the humbler Universal Product Code -- or barcode, as it's better known -- has some creative life left in it yet. An iPhone app called Barcodas turns any UPC code into a electronic instrument: just scan it with the iPhone's camera, and those black bars jump to musical life like a tiny player piano. Since almost everything on earth has one of these barcodes pasted on it somewhere, you'll never be at a loss for musical inspiration...."

more pics & deets on fastcodesign.com