Money and Finance
- Seneca's Moral Letters To Lucilius
A good online collection of Seneca's letters... Link to: Moral letters to Lucilius Letter 2 is one of my favorites. I've put up a couple of quotes on the blog before, from a slightly different translation. Here are a couple of those quotes...
- A Road Map For Natural Capitalism (hbr, 1999)
Link to article: A Road Map for Natural Capitalism (HBR)Natural capitalism comprises four major shifts in business practices. The first involves dramatically increasing the productivity of natural resources—by as much as 100-fold. In the second stage,...
- Recommended Reading
I'm working on revamping the Recommended Reading section to add more categories instead of having so many books in the 'General' tab, and to clean up some things that are probably in the wrong category. I'll also include a few categories...
- Amazon's Kindle 2 Slims Down, Adds Audio
New York – A little more than a year after the Kindle made its debut, Amazon announced a new, updated version of its popular e-book reader Monday with a big endorsement from Stephen King. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos demonstrated the features of the new...
- Upfront And Unscripted With Jeff Bezos (audio)
I think Jeff Bezos and Chris Anderson are two of the best people from which to learn. I don't know how I missed this podcast the first time, but it is really great (in my opinion). I also think the iPod-like comparison is a valid one for The Kindle....
Money and Finance
Jeff Bezos' 2011 Letter to Shareholders
Kindle Direct Publishing has quickly taken on astonishing scale – more than a thousand KDP authors now each sell more than a thousand copies a month, some have already reached hundreds of thousands of sales, and two have already joined the Kindle Million Club. KDP is a big win for authors. Authors who use KDP get to keep their copyrights, keep their derivative rights, get to publish on their schedule – a typical delay in traditional publishing can be a year or more from the time the book is finished – and … saving the best for last … KDP authors can get paid royalties of 70%. The largest traditional publishers pay royalties of only 17.5% on ebooks (they pay 25% of 70% of the selling price which works out to be 17.5% of the selling price). The KDP royalty structure is completely transformative for authors. A typical selling price for a KDP book is a reader-friendly $2.99 – authors get approximately $2 of that! With the legacy royalty of 17.5%, the selling price would have to be $11.43 to yield the same $2 per unit royalty. I assure you that authors sell many, many more copies at $2.99 than they would at $11.43.
Kindle Direct Publishing is good for readers because they get lower prices, but perhaps just as important, readers also get access to more diversity since authors that might have been rejected by establishment publishing channels now get their chance in the marketplace. You can get a pretty good window into this. Take a look at the Kindle best-seller list, and compare it to the New York Times best-seller list – which is more diverse? The Kindle list is chock-full of books from small presses and self-published authors, while the New York Times list is dominated by successful and established authors.
Amazonians are leaning into the future, with radical and transformational innovations that create value for thousands of authors, entrepreneurs, and developers. Invention has become second nature at Amazon, and in my view the team’s pace of innovation is even accelerating – I can assure you it’s very energizing. I’m extremely proud of the whole team, and feel lucky to have a front row seat.
- Seneca's Moral Letters To Lucilius
A good online collection of Seneca's letters... Link to: Moral letters to Lucilius Letter 2 is one of my favorites. I've put up a couple of quotes on the blog before, from a slightly different translation. Here are a couple of those quotes...
- A Road Map For Natural Capitalism (hbr, 1999)
Link to article: A Road Map for Natural Capitalism (HBR)Natural capitalism comprises four major shifts in business practices. The first involves dramatically increasing the productivity of natural resources—by as much as 100-fold. In the second stage,...
- Recommended Reading
I'm working on revamping the Recommended Reading section to add more categories instead of having so many books in the 'General' tab, and to clean up some things that are probably in the wrong category. I'll also include a few categories...
- Amazon's Kindle 2 Slims Down, Adds Audio
New York – A little more than a year after the Kindle made its debut, Amazon announced a new, updated version of its popular e-book reader Monday with a big endorsement from Stephen King. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos demonstrated the features of the new...
- Upfront And Unscripted With Jeff Bezos (audio)
I think Jeff Bezos and Chris Anderson are two of the best people from which to learn. I don't know how I missed this podcast the first time, but it is really great (in my opinion). I also think the iPod-like comparison is a valid one for The Kindle....