I went over to Cedar Fort’s blog to look at stuff. Right off the bat, there are two books I wanted to read (okay, so maybe Shannon Hale didn’t traumatize me as much as I thought).
Altared Plans by Rebecca Cornish Talley
and
Deadly Treasure by Jillayne Clements (look at that gorgeous cover!)
Not in digital formats? (Not even Kindle.)
No sale.
Sorry.
Question: Do you LDS publishers realize how many members read their scriptures on their PDAs, SmartPhones, and iPhones? No? The Church gets it. Why don’t you? Maybe you need to venture forth east of the safety of the Rocky Mountains and attend a few wards to find out.
You have no idea how many sales you’re missing out on.
You lost two just with me.
At least, at the very least, get them into Kindle.
August 14th, 2009
August 14th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
I looked up a bunch of titles that I saw at the LDSBA. None of them on Kindle. Grrr.
August 14th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Not a lick of foresight amongst them. I tried to find at least one before I posted, but I couldn’t.
August 14th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
Karlene, FYI, the best way to get a Kindle edition to come out halfway decently is to feed it a .MOBI/.PRC file.
August 16th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Thanks for the info. I’m still definitely working on the ideas we talked about before. I’ve just been slowed down due to hardware problems that I’ve been trying to resolve. And another business deal. And summer. And…
But really. I’m working on it.
In fact, I talked to one publisher at LDSBA and he’s interested–maybe.
August 16th, 2009 at 10:53 am
I’m working on it too. Right now I’m really learning the ins and outs of a new shopping cart that’ll do what I want it to do.
But yes, I understand, this is something that’s back burner for all of us right now.
August 19th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
I just ran across a Cedar Fort title on Kindle this morning. (Sorry, I don’t remember what it is. I’ve been updating the MLDb for the last three days and all the titles are a blur.) I thought, hey, Cedar Fort is headed in the right direction.
August 19th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Oh wow. I should’ve looked harder, then.
See, what they all need to do is hire me to either a) format their books and/or b) consult with them regarding an e-book workflow process.
August 19th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Absolutely. I actually asked the publisher I work for if I could try doing Kindle formatting and was turned down. We’re really too busy and are understaffed (darn BYU hiring freeze).
August 19th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Do an advanced search with the publisher name and Kindle format and you’ll find a bunch. Deseret Book has some, too. Mostly nonfiction, though.
August 19th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Awesome, thanks!
If they’re on a hiring freeze, though, I doubt they’re going to be hiring freelance digitizers and/or consultants. :/
October 21st, 2009 at 3:33 am
i don’t know if any of you are aware, but amazon’s kindle store has some sort of bias aginst mormonism. they have sub categories for mennonies / 20 books / and jehovahs witnesses and other equally obscure religions, but none for mormonism. most are under general christianity. anyway, this might explain some of the reluctance to publish by some lds publishers.
btw … i’m writing this on my kindle
October 21st, 2009 at 12:28 pm
I’m a little confused. Could you give specific examples? I typed “Mormon” into the search bar and got tons of stuff.
Barring that, if something doesn’t come up “Mormon,” it’ll probably be under “Latter-day Saints” or “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” or “LDS.” And that’s a publisher’s call when they list the books, not Amazon’s. Amazon doesn’t have anything to do with it.
People usually think of Amazon as a bookseller. It is, but that’s not its value. It’s value is in its database, its catalog, its search function, and its SOFTWARE.
October 21st, 2009 at 7:13 pm
okay, now that I’m on a real computer again, I’ll explain exactly what I mean. It’s not that you can’t search for a book by name directly, for example mormon, LDS etc will all get books that mention those words somewhere in the description. And, I guess that works well enough. The problem comes if you decide to browse for a book using the book categories. You can browse to general religion, then to christianity, then you won’t see a mormon section. That’s okay, if you look under protestantism, you’ll see all of the other religions listed that you might expect:
Amish,
Anglicanism,
Baptists,
Canon & Ecclesiastical Law,
Catechisms,
Catholicism,
Christian Life,
Church Administration,
Discipleship,
Education,
Episcopalianism,
Evangelism,
General,
History,
Jehovah’s Witnesses,
Lutheran,
Mariology,
Mennonite,
Methodism,
Orthodox Churches,
Pastoral Counseling,
Pastoral Ministry,
Pentecostalism,
Protestantism,
Quakers,
Rituals & Practice,
Seventh-Day Adventists,
Shakers,
Spiritual Warfare,
Stewardship
(sorry about the long list!)
EDIT: This was from the DTP (what publisher’s see), and is the entire christianity section. In the kindle store, it’s set up a bit differently, and not all of these section will show up under the protestant section.)
Now, even though there are hundreds of books that fall into the mormon category, there is no category to place them into. Most publishers have put them into the General category, and called it good enough. Amazon created these categories, and they didn’t create one for mormonism. I’ve looked through all of the other sections and they aren’t hiding it somewhere weird, it just doesn’t exist.
I know this put ME off when I was working on publishing mormon-themed books through Amazon’s kindle publishing program.
I hope this clarified what I meant
October 21st, 2009 at 7:25 pm
shoot, I’ll just send you to the amazon kindle store …
link!
the page that link will take you to is where MOST of the kindle books with a mormon topic are published. As you can see, it’s not even worth browsing there to try and find new LDS books.
October 21st, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Okay, Susie, thanks! I’m going to take a closer look at that, because yeah, that’s a problem.
MANY protestant religions don’t consider us Christians, though, remember.
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:59 am
Dude has never been able to understand that whole “not a real christian” thing. (glares at that stoopid guvner)
October 24th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
Hi,
I’m sorry my book, “Altared Plans,” isn’t available in Kindle format (though my first book, “Heaven Scent,” was available in Kindle–go figure). I’m curious, what made you want to read my book?
Interesting discussion.
October 25th, 2009 at 8:02 am
Hi Rebecca! I don’t have a Kindle, so that format wouldn’t be useful to me at all. I would prefer it in HTML or LIT.
My point was that LDS publishers should at the very least provide their book in Kindle format and that not doing so is short-sighted.
I don’t know what made me want to read your book. It hit me just right that day, I guess.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Hi,
If you’re still interested in reading my book please email me at talleyrl AT yahoo DOT com and we can work something out.
Thanks!
October 26th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Thanks Rebecca! I emailed you.