An Individual Publisher's Journey

Making Transition to WordPress Site; Improving Web Site; D-Lux 5 Book Status

2010-12-16T20:01:00.000-05:00

I am in the process of setting up my new, easier-to-maintain web site using the WordPress system. You can see the new site at www.whiteknightpress.com/wordpress. This blog will also migrate to that site, though I haven't figured out all the details of how to accomplish that yet. For now, I'm writing my blog posts on Blogger, then I'll import them to the WordPress site.

Today I sent Amazon a message asking them to link the Kindle edition of the Panasonic Lumix LX5 book to the print edition of the book, which they haven't done yet, 48 hours after the Kindle edition went live the other day.

I found out good news today about the print edition of the book about the Leica D-Lux 5 camera; I checked at the Lightning Source site, and found that both the text file and the cover file that I submitted have been accepted after their technical inspections. The next step will be for the company to print a proof of the book and send it to me overnight for approval. I hope to receive the proof copy by early next week, and hopefully approve it quickly; after that, the print version of the D-Lux 5 book will start becoming available gradually on Amazon.com, then, more slowly, on Amazon.co.uk and other Amazon (and non-Amazon online retailers') sites.

Sales of Panasonic Lumix LX5 Book; Status of Leica D-Lux 5 Book

2010-12-15T18:04:00.000-05:00

The book about the Panasonic Lumix LX5 camera is selling fairly well. Actually, it may be selling somewhat better as an e-book for download than as a physical paperback. It is getting a reasonably good sales rank on Amazon.com for the Kindle version, which just started selling yesterday, and it is still selling some PDF copies. The newest book, the one about the Leica D-Lux 5, has started selling fairly well in PDF, which is the only version available right now. The last time I checked with the printer, Lightning Source, the files for the printed D-Lux 5 book were still in "premedia," meaning the technicians are checking the files to make sure they meet all the required standards before the book can actually be printed. That process should take no more than another day or two, unless a problem is found with the files.

Today I noticed that the Lumix LX5 book is also selling in a Kindle version in the U.K., on Amazon.co.uk. There are separate sales of Kindle versions on the US and UK Amazon sites, for some technical reason; a US Amazon user apparently can't purchase a Kindle version from the UK site, and vice-versa. Anyway, Amazon still has not linked the print editions to the Kindle editions; their help system says to give them 48 hours to make those links, and then let them know of the issue. I'll send them a message tomorrow if the links have not yet been made.

For now, here is the link to the LX5 Kindle edition in the UK, for any readers in the UK who would like to purchase that edition of the LX5 book.

I'm also in the process of getting ready to switch my web site and this blog over to a WordPress-based system, which I hope will be easier for me to maintain. So, if you see the web site take on a very different appearance in the near future, that will be the reason.

Panasonic Lumix LX5 Book Now Available for Kindle on Amazon

2010-12-14T17:52:00.000-05:00

I submitted the Kindle file for the Panasonic Lumix LX5 book to Amazon on Sunday, December 12, and it became live and available on Amazon for sale this afternoon, by about 2:00 Eastern time. That was pretty fast. The only problem now is that the Kindle version is not linked to the paperback version, so someone who finds either version on Amazon won't be aware that the other one exists without doing a separate search. I'm not sure if Amazon will automatically create that link; if not, I will send them a message asking them to link the two editions. Here is a link to the Kindle edition of the Lumix LX5 book. The Kindle edition sells for $9.99, about the same as the PDF, which is sold through my web site at www.whiteknightpress.com. It will be interesting to see which of those two e-book versions sells better.

I'm very grateful to Guy Parsons in Australia for his help in providing comments on the final draft of the Leica D-Lux 5 book, which has gone to the printer. Guy also pointed out some issues with my web site, which I have corrected, though the appearance of the site still could use some more work. Guy is a frequent contributor to the forums at www.dpreview.com, particularly the Panasonic Talk forum, and he also maintains his own excellent web site about the Panasonic LX3 camera and related topics, as well as about other cameras and photography topics.

As for the availability of the Leica D-Lux 5 book, it is available now in PDF format through my web site, and I'm hoping that the paperback version will be available on Amazon.com starting within a week or two from now; that schedule largely depends on how quickly Lightning Source, the printing company, starts producing copies.

D-Lux 5 Book Should Be Available Soon in Print; PDF is Available Now

2010-12-13T22:09:00.000-05:00

Tonight, with a lot of help from Clenise in putting the finishing touches on the book's cover, I finally got the PDF files uploaded to Lightning Source, the print-on-demand printing company, for the book about the Leica D-Lux 5. Now I will keep my fingers crossed that the files get accepted and processed without any problems. If that happens, I should get a proof copy shipped back to me from LSI within about a week. If the proof looks okay, then the book should start to gradually become available on Amazon.com, then Amazon.co.uk and other sites.

The downloadable PDF version of the Leica D-Lux 5 book started selling this morning, but a glitch occurred that caused me some unhappy moments. This evening, as I was getting the PDFs ready to upload to LSI, I noticed that an image on one page of the book's text had shifted slightly, and was covering up a couple of lines of text on that page. I hoped that mistake wasn't in the PDF version that was already on sale, but that was not to be. The error was staring me in the face. Luckily, only about 5 copies of that PDF had sold by then, so I quickly got a crash course in how to replace the PDF on the server of the company, FastSpring, that handles sales of the PDFs for me. (FastSpring has been an excellent company to deal with, by the way -- a very efficient operation with excellent customer support.)

I quickly sent e-mails to everyone who bought one of the PDFs with the problem, and then followed up with an e-mail with a new link to download the corrected file. One of the purchasers sent me back a message saying he had downloaded the new file, so hopefully that solution worked out okay for everyone. It was a good learning experience for me, though I already knew that, no matter how much I check things, something can always go wrong.

Anyway, the corrected PDF is up for sale now, and the double- and triple-checked PDFs for printing have been uploaded to the printer; now it's a matter of waiting a few days to see when the printed D-Lux 5 books become available to sell.

One other bit of news today -- I notified the administrator at Leica Rumors (leicarumors.com) about the release of the PDF version of the D-Lux 5 book, and he, who has been great, very quickly posted a nice notice about the book. Later on, when the print book is available, he may run a giveaway contest for a copy of the book. Having the book mentioned on a site like that is great for getting the book noticed, and I really appreciated his responsiveness.

The D-Lux 5 Book is Now Available in PDF

2010-12-12T20:09:00.000-05:00

Well, today, partly spurred on by comments and e-mails from a few people asking when the D-Lux 5 book would be ready, I worked steadily through the day at proofreading and fine-tuning the book. A few minutes ago, I set it up for sale in a PDF version, at my web site, http://www.whiteknightpress.com. The ordering page and other information on the site don't look quite as good as they did earlier, because I had a professional designer create the site originally; for today, I had to just go in with Dreamweaver and struggle until I got it to work. Later on I plan to learn more about web design, and I'm going to try to switch to a system I can better handle by myself, so I can make changes quickly without the site looking like it was attacked by vandals. Anyway, I believe the links are all working. I'll provide a link here directly to the purchase page for the PDF version of the book, in case anyone doesn't want to have to navigate all the way through the web site.

Also today, I received word from the company that does Kindle conversions for me that they have finished their work of converting the book about the Panasonic Lumix LX5 for the Amazon Kindle reading device. So, my next task tonight will be to check over that finished product and, if it looks okay, upload it to Amazon for sale through their Kindle store.

And, of course, I still have to put together all the files and other work to get the paperback version of the Leica D-Lux 5 book into production, which will probably take a few days more. So, plenty of work to do, but things are progressing well.

Home Stretch for D-Lux 5 Book; Some Progress in the U.K.

2010-12-11T19:59:00.000-05:00

Today I finished what may be the final draft of the book about the Leica D-Lux 5 digital camera. I fine-tuned it, read through it, and spell-checked it, and generated the index and table of contents one more time. I took new photographs today for the illustration of the the three different histograms -- for underexposed, overexposed, and properly exposed images. I also took a new portrait of my wife, Clenise, for the illustration of the Portrait category under Scene mode, and I extracted a new example of the purple lines that sometimes show up in videos on the D-Lux 5. I could go on taking new photos and tweaking existing ones, but I think I'm essentially done now. I worked on designing the book's cover, and sent a PDF version out to one camera buff who's been very helpful in reading drafts of earlier books. So, if I can pull all the last-minute details together, I may release the PDF version within the next day or two.

As for sales of existing books, there was a minor step forward today at Amazon.co.uk. They initially listed the LX5 book as unavailable, then available within 2-4 weeks, and recently as available within 2-3 weeks. Now it's listed as available within 1-3 weeks, which I guess is progress of a sort. They do say it won't arrive before Christmas, though.

For the PDF version of the LX5 book, there have been six sales today, to buyers from Australia, the UK, Italy, and the Philippines, in addition to the US. The book's sales rank at Amazon.com has been staying fairly steady, in the range of about 11,000 to 15,000. The book is still being sold by Amazon for the full retail price of $24.95. Amazon did receive my shipment of 12 books for the Advantage program today, but I'm not sure if that small number of books (which are discounted quite heavily) will have any effect on pricing.

Finishing Up D-Lux 5 Book

2010-12-10T22:43:00.000-05:00

Today there was not much new in the sales area -- several sales of the PDF version of the Panasonic LX5 book; the book is selling some copies on Amazon also. Today my main focus was getting the new book about the Leica D-Lux 5 ready to be published. I'm making good progress, and hope to have it done within a week. I'm working on making the PDF version more interactive, with hyperlinks where possible.

Shipping Lumix LX5 Books to Amazon; Finishing D-Lux 5 Book

2010-12-09T21:31:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I received an order from Amazon.com for 286 copies of the book about the Panasonic Lumix LX5 book. This order came through the "Amazon Advantage" program, which lets smaller publishers send books to Amazon for Amazon to sell directly. This can be a useful program, except that Amazon requires a hefty discount for the books it buys. In my case, this discount means that I lose money on every copy of the Lumix LX5 book that I send in. Anyway, I don't have 286 copies of the book, so I filled the order partially, with the 12 copies I had available, and shipped them off yesterday. I don't need to send books to Amazon this way, because the books are being printed by the print-on-demand company, Lightning Source, and they supply all the books Amazon needs. I wanted to send in this one shipment, though, to see if it has any effect on the pricing. Maybe with the heavily discounted books, Amazon will charge less than the list price of $24.95, which I think may be holding down sales. We should see in a few days, after those books arrive at their destination.

I've been able to focus more of my attention on finishing up the book about the Leica D-Lux 5, and I may be able to have a final version ready within a week, if all goes well from here on. I would like to have it available at least in PDF form before Christmas, and that seems like a realistic possibility at this point.

I have stopped selling books on Amazon.co.uk as a third-party seller, because several other sellers are offering the LX5 book there at a reasonable price, so there's no need for me to do so, and it's expensive to ship the books from here in Virginia to the UK and Europe; I only get paid the UK rate for those shipments.

Panasonic Lumix LX5 Book Sales Update; Leica D-Lux 5 Book Update

2010-12-07T22:16:00.000-05:00

Not too much news tonight -- I had to work on something else, so I wasn't able to make any progress on the book about the Leica D-Lux 5, though I hope to work on it again soon. I still hope to have it finished within a week or two. Today there were pretty good sales of the PDF version of the Panasonic LX5 book -- 14 copies have sold to buyers from Canada, Italy, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and Belgium, in addition to several U.S. states. The sales vary a good deal from day to day. It's hard to tell how many are selling in paperback form through Amazon, but I would say probably around 5 copies per day as a rough estimate, so sales seem to be better for the downloadable version at least as of now. If that's true, the reason is at least in part that Amazon still is not discounting the book at all, and I have no way to get them to start discounting it. Also, Amazon in the US still does not keep the book in stock, so the listing there says "additional shipping time" is required; and, in the U.K., the shipping time is still listed as 2-3 weeks, which might easily cause someone to get the PDF version instead of waiting for a paperback to be shipped.

Response to Comment and General Update

2010-12-06T19:22:00.000-05:00

A commenter asked earlier today if I might write a guide book to the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1 camera. I have occasionally had people send me e-mail messages with similar questions about other cameras. I appreciate your asking, but unfortunately I don't have that particular camera in line for a book; I'd love to do more books, but I don't have enough resources to do more than a few per year, at least for the present. There is good news for users of the Panasonic GF1, though -- there is at least one very good book that covers that camera in detail -- a guide written by David Busch and Dan Simon. I have had the opportunity to assist David with some of his other books, and I know firsthand that his books are very well done and provide a lot of excellent information. So, you may want to look into that book, and there may be others available also.

As for the update on my current camera books, today there was a little bit of a change at Amazon.co.uk. For the past several days, they had listed the book about the Panasonic Lumix LX5 as "Usually ships in 2 to 4 weeks." Now, for whatever reason, it is listed as usually shipping within 2 to 3 weeks. That is some improvement, I guess, though I really wouldn't want to have to wait 2 weeks or more for a book I purchased to ship. I expect the actual shipping time is getting shorter and shorter, but it won't be really satisfactory until Amazon.co.uk purchases some books to keep in stock, so they can ship them overnight.

I hope to make some more progress on the Leica D-Lux 5 book tonight; I believe I'm still on track to get it done within the next couple of weeks.

Concentrating on D-Lux 5 Book; LX5 Sales Improving

2010-12-05T22:01:00.000-05:00

Today I finished up some other work and now I can concentrate more closely on finishing up the book about the Leica D-Lux 5 camera. The existing book about its near-twin, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5, is starting to sell a little better on Amazon now, judging from the changes in its sales rank. On the US site, Amazon.com, the book is listed as "in stock," though with a note that it needs "additional shipping time." But this is better than in the UK, where Amazon.co.uk says the book usually ships within "2 to 4 weeks." Still, the book seems to be selling somewhat on Amazon.co.uk. I 'm just hoping the usual shipping time there will be reduced before too long.

I've had several people ask me when the D-Lux 5 book will be available, and I've been saying I hope to have it out in downloadable PDF by mid-December, and then in paperback not long after that. I think I'm still on course for that schedule, though I definitely don't want to rush it out and have its quality suffer. So, I still hope for a December release of the D-Lux 5 book.

Panasonic Lumix LX5 Book is Now More Available at Amazon.co.uk

2010-12-04T22:26:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure if "more available" is the best way to put it, but that was the best short phrase I could think of. Today, the book about the Panasonic Lumix LX5 camera is shown on Amazon.co.uk as usually shipping within 2 to 4 weeks. I guess that's better than "Temporarily Unavailable," which was its status for the past several days, though I'm not sure. Two to four weeks sounds like a long time to wait for your order, especially for those who are ordering with Christmas in mind, now 3 weeks away. But this listing shows the gradual progress a book makes on the various Amazon sites, going from unlisted to unavailable to somewhat available; eventually, it should be listed as in stock and ready to ship for overnight delivery, but I don't know how soon that will happen. In the meantime, there are still some third-party sellers offering the book on the UK Amazon site (including me), who will ship the book much more quickly than 2 to 4 weeks.

No progress today on the D-Lux 5 book, because I had to work on another project for a day or two, but I hope to finish the other project up soon, and then I should be able to concentrate on getting the D-Lux 5 book finished, possibly by mid to late December, first in PDF and later in paperback.

More Lumix LX5 Books for Camerabooks.com

2010-12-03T22:06:00.000-05:00

Today I was glad to get an e-mail message from the owner of Camerabooks.com ordering more copies of the Panasonic Lumix LX5 book. They are an excellent specialty online seller of camera books of all types, and I'm glad to have them carry my books.

Other than that, not too much news today. The LX5 book seems to be selling a bit more steadily now on Amazon.com in the U.S., since it is now shown as "In Stock." In the UK, at amazon.co.uk, it is still shown as "Temporarily Out of Stock," but they are taking orders, and there are now a few third-party sellers listing the book at reasonable prices, so sales seem to be picking up there a bit, based on the sales rank.

I made more good progress on the D-Lux 5 book today, though I still have several more days of work to do on it, and I have other projects that need to be done in the same time frame, so I'm still shooting for getting the PDF version ready before the end of December, and the paperback version as soon after that as possible.

Selling Some Books on eBay; No Discounts Yet on Amazon

2010-12-02T21:24:00.000-05:00

Now I have a good supply of the book about the Panasonic Lumix LX5 camera; I ordered 26 copies from the printer so I could sell them on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk until those sites started showing the book as in stock and ready to ship. Well, as it turned out, Amazon.com very quickly has gotten the book's status to the point of being shown as in stock, but taking some extra time to ship. On Amazon.co.uk, orders are being taken, though the book is shown as "Temporarily Out of Stock." However, there are several third-party sellers there now, so I really don't need to sell the book on either Amazon site at this point. So, tonight I listed the book on eBay again, as I did last week, to give it one more avenue for people to find it. I have already had one sale, to a buyer in NY state.

One reason I may have made a sale on eBay is that I listed the book at $19.95 instead of the regular list price of $24.95, which is what it sells for on Amazon. For some reason, Amazon has not discounted the book at all. In the past, with my similar books, it often sold them at $19.95, and sometimes even for $17.95. It's much better for me when Amazon sells the books at a discount. I get the same payment for the books no matter what price Amazon sells them for, but they naturally sell considerably better when the price is discounted. There's nothing I can do about the pricing; as long as Amazon pays me (or the printer, in this case, who then pays me), they can charge the public whatever they want. I just hope that some competition will arise from other retailers selling the book, so Amazon will eventually sell it at a discount.

On the D-Lux 5 book, I made good progress today. If everything goes well, I hope to have it ready to start selling later this month.

Steady Progress on Amazon; New Shipment of Books Arrived

2010-12-01T20:45:00.000-05:00

As of today, the Panasonic Lumix LX5 camera guide book is listed on Amazon.com as "In Stock," but with the notice that it takes extra time to ship, so people need to order early if they want it for Christmas. Actually, I believe it would ship quite quickly now, because the print-on-demand company is now fully geared up to print the book with the revised PDF files.

At Amazon.co.uk, the progress is still slow; the book is listed as "Temporarily Out of Stock," but now there is one other third-party seller (besides me), a company located in the UK that can ship the books quite quickly. So, in that sense, the book now is in stock for shipment in the UK. No one has ordered one from me lately, so if any are being sold in the UK, it's by Amazon.co.uk with orders that they will fill later, or by the other third-party seller.

I'm making fairly good progress on the book about the Leica D-Lux 5, but it looks as if it will be a few more weeks before I can finish it.

Availability of Lumix LX5 Book is Improving; a Good Review on Amazon

2010-11-30T22:01:00.000-05:00

Today the book about the Panasonic Lumix LX5 camera was listed as "In Stock" at Amazon.com, and not with the "shipping in 1 to 3 weeks" language -- just "In Stock," though the listing does say the item takes longer than other items to ship. But at least it's not listed as "Temporarily Unavailable," as it was for a week or so before now.

Also, at Amazon.co.uk, things have now improved so the book is listed there as "Temporarily Unavailable," but they are taking orders, which is a considerable improvement over "Unavailable," with the added language that they had no idea when or if it would ever be in stock! I have listed some copies on Amazon.co.uk as a third-party seller, but none of them have sold, maybe because Amazon now says it will take orders.

Also, I received a very nice five-star review on the LX5 book today on Amazon.com, which may help get the book selling a bit better. Sales have been pretty slow so far, partly because of the availability issues, I guess.

More Panasonic Lumix LX5 Books Are on the Way

2010-11-29T22:22:00.000-05:00

I was very pleased a few moments ago to receive an e-mail message from Lightning Source, the print-on-demand printing company, saying that my new order of the Panasonic Lumix LX5 books is on the way, and will arrive here on Wednesday, December 1. The book is still listed as "Unavailable" at Amazon.co.uk, and I have had some people e-mail me to ask when it will be available there. For some reason, no third-party sellers are selling the book on Amazon in the UK right now, but I will list them there as soon as they arrive and I have them physically in hand. I may also list some on Amazon in the US, though the book is now listed on that site as shipping within 1 to 3 weeks, and it does appear to be selling some copies there.

I am continuing to work on the book about the Leica D-Lux 5 as time permits. Yesterday I updated the table of contents to be an automatically generated one in Adobe InDesign, which will make it much easier to finalize the text -- I won't have to keep adjusting the table of contents manually as changes are made. Also, when I generate a PDF version to sell online, the page numbers in the table of contents will be hyperlinked to the pages they represent, which will make the book easier to navigate for the reader.

Panasonic Lumix LX5 Book is Back in Stock at Amazon.com

2010-11-28T12:14:00.000-05:00

The system for getting the book about the Panasonic Lumix LX5 camera back in production seems to be working well. The revised proof of the book's text was just approved two days ago, on Friday, and this morning the book's listing on Amazon.com shows that the book ships within 1 to 3 weeks. That doesn't sound so great, but it's a lot better than "Temporarily Unavailable," which is what the listing said for the past week or more. Now the availability should improve gradually over the next several days; fairly soon it should say "In Stock" and eventually, I hope, Amazon.com will make the book available for overnight shipping.

Things don't look so good yet at Amazon.co.uk, the United Kingdom site, where the book is still listed as "Unavailable," with no one selling it. I will list some copies for sale myself as soon as I receive them from the printer, but that won't be until later in the coming week. Eventually, the print-on-demand system will get the books automatically available in the UK, but it seems to take quite a long time for that to happen, possibly a few more weeks. I'll be monitoring the situation there, because there are usually a good number of people in the UK who are interested in photography books, and I will try to make the book available there as much as I possibly can.

New Proof Approved; More Books on the Way

2010-11-27T20:27:00.000-05:00

I was very pleased to see that Lightning Source was as good as its word in getting the revised text file of the Panasonic Lumix LX5 book reviewed and approved quickly. I received word earier today that it had been approved, and it just needed my approval, which I quickly gave. Now, in a matter of a few days, the book should be back in production and then should start showing up again as "available" on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. I tried to keep it available on Amazon.co.uk myself by selling copies as a third-party seller, and I have sold about 5 copies that way, but I don't have more copies to sell, and without me selling them the book is listed as "unavailable" on the UK site. I have ordered another shipment of books to be sent to me from Lightning Source, and as soon as I receive those I will list them again on Amazon.co.uk, unless Amazon has started shipping them itself by then.

Today I ended my experiment of selling books on eBay. I sold one book to a gentleman from Argentina who sent me a couple of friendly messages asking about the book before he ended up buying a copy. I shipped it this morning. I took the other copies off of eBay, though, so I would have some to sell on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. Actually, the cost of shipping the books to the UK and other countries is quite high, and I don't get fully reimbursed, so I may be losing money on some of these sales, but I believe it's important to get the book out to those who want to have it, and maybe some of them will post reviews on the Amazon sites that could help sales. Also, I don't like the idea of there being people who want to read my book, but can't find a copy.

Soon, I hope to get back to work on the D-Lux 5 book, but I have been busy with other things. I may be able to return to that project during the coming week.

New Shipment of Books Arrived Today; Waiting for Lightning Source

2010-11-24T22:36:00.000-05:00

It's a good thing I ordered another shipment of the Panasonic Lumix LX5 books from the printer, Lightning Source, last week. The books arrived today, so I can sell them on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk as a third-party seller, and today I also listed them on eBay as Buy It Now items, so there will be more chances for people to discover the book. It's a good thing, because the book is still listed as "temporarily unavailable" at Amazon.com and most of the other online outlets. That's going to be the case for at least the next few days, because, at the suggestion of my customer service rep at Lightning Source, I submitted a slightly revised text file yesterday, and it will take a few more days for it to work its way through the system so that the book is in full production again. It's undoubtedly good in the long run to have a more solid text file in production, so, once the process has gotten back up to speed everything should be fine.

Not much else to report. Tomorrow I'll pause for Thanksgiving with the family, then back to working on book production, etc.

The Elusive Goal of a Book that is Always "In Stock"

2010-11-23T21:24:00.000-05:00

Well, the book about the Panasonic Lumix LX5 is still listed as "temporarily out of stock" on Amazon.com. It seems to be unavailable on any of the various Amazon sites except, for some reason, in Canada, at Amazon.ca. I have communicated with my representative at Lightning Source several times today, and she has been very helpful and responsive. I submitted a revised interior text file today, and they have already checked it and found it to look fine. They will put it into production as soon as possible, hopefully within a few days, though Thanksgiving will slow things down a bit. Then, maybe by next week, the book will show up as "available" and "in stock" again at Amazon. At least I hope so. Though, as far as I can tell, Amazon continues to take orders for the book, and will ship them out as soon as more books are printed.

Also, tomorrow I will be receiving a shipment of books that were printed recently, before the switchover to the new file. (The books will look the same as before; the file change was just for a technical reason that doesn't affect the appearance of the books.) So, I will fill orders as a third-party seller, for anyone who wants to order from me. I have had one or two orders on Amazon.com and one order on Amazon.co.uk so far; I realize many people prefer to order from Amazon directly; I'm like that myself, partly because of the very quick shipping with Amazon Prime.

So, stay tuned for further developments, but now I believe it will be anywhere from several days to a week or more before the LX5 book becomes fully "in stock" at Amazon.com

Amazon Mystery Solved; Reply to Comment

2010-11-22T22:15:00.000-05:00

First, I'll reply to a commenter, who asked a reasonable question about why you can't just attach a filter to the Panasonic Lumix LX5's lens rather than having to use a conversion adapter. The answer has to do with the nature of the lens on the LX5, which extends outward when you turn on the camera. If you attached a filter directly to the lens, it would block the lens, and the camera could not operate. You see this situation if you turn on the camera in recording mode with the lens cap attached -- the camera comes to a stop and gives you an error message about removing the lens cap. So, you need to attach the conversion adapter, which provides a space into which the lens can extend, and the filter or wide-angle lens is attached at the end of that space, beyond the end of the lens.

Now, on to the Amazon situation. I had been quite concerned because Amazon.com was listing the LX5 book as "unavailable." I thought at first that was some glitch with Amazon's inventory or computer system, but this morning I e-mailed my customer service rep at Lightning Source, the print-on-demand company. I expected her to say there was some issue with Amazon, and they would fix it. To my surprise, though, she replied within a couple of hours, telling me that the book had been pulled from production because of an error with a corrupt font. That was a surprise, because the pdf file with the book's text had passed all of the technical tests before being approved for printing. I don't know how the error cropped up further down the road. Anyway, the printing experts at Lightning Source somehow fixed or worked around the problem, and the book was back in production by the time I got my response. The rep suggested I send a revised text file anyway, though, to avoid any future problems. I prepared a new file tonight, and I'll probably upload it tomorrow, if it can be done without interrupting the printing process any more.

Amazon Can Be Hard to Figure Out at Times

2010-11-20T18:52:00.000-05:00

I have been trying my best to make sure the new book about the Panasonic Lumix LX5 camera is available as widely as possible to people who would like to buy it. I have been contacted by some potential buyers who couldn't find it at a reasonable price in the U.K., and, as I mentioned here recently, I have now signed up as a seller on Amazon.co.uk so I can make the book directly available to purchasers from that site. As of now, I am the only source of this book on the Amazon UK site, but no one has bought a copy yet. I guess they may not like the idea of waiting for the book to be shipped from the US to the UK, though I do ship quickly via First Class Mail International, which should not take much more than a week. And, I have to ship for the domestic (UK) postage amount, not what it actually costs me to ship to the UK. Oh, well. Maybe some sales will come eventually. I think things may pick up when Amazon.co.uk finally starts selling the book directly itself from the print-on-demand system, which is slow getting up to speed.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S. . . . things are a bit hard to understand here, also. Amazon had the LX5 book listed as "In Stock" for a couple of weeks, but then, as of yesterday, they started listing it as "Temporarily Out of Stock," advising buyers they can order now and the book will be shipped when it is in stock again. I don't understand what causes this sort of situation -- the print-on-demand company is supposed to supply Amazon with as many books as it needs whenever it orders them. There must be some sort of glitch or hangup in the mechanism, which hopefully will get sorted out very soon. Here again, I went ahead and listed the book for sale as a third-party seller on Amazon.com, because I do have some (not many) copies in stock, and will ship them quickly if anyone orders one.

I'm Now a UK Seller on Amazon, and Search Inside the Book is Finally Working

2010-11-19T18:08:00.000-05:00

I feel I made substantial progress today in the two areas mentioned in the title of this post. To take the more routine one first, the "Search Inside the Book" function finally started working on Amazon in the US for the Panasonic Lumix LX5 camera book. This means that potential buyers of the book can look at various pages in PDF format, including the Contents, Index, and the first few pages. Also, they can enter a search term and see any reference to it on a page of the book. Some authors and publishers don't use this feature because they're afraid people won't need to buy the book if they can search through it on Amazon, but my opinion is that it helps people decide whether or not the book is one they're really interested in buying. Anyway, I have set this up for all three of my books on Amazon. This time it seemed to take a long time for the PDF files I submitted to be processed and to show up in the book's listing; I submitted them on November 7 and it took 12 days. Anyway, I'm glad it finally worked out.

The bigger news, at least from my point of view, is that, a little while ago, I finally succeeded in setting myself up as a seller on Amazon.co.uk. I never had any intention of doing so, but recently the book about the Panasonic Lumix LX5 was listed as "Unavailable" on Amazon in the UK. For a while there were a few third-party sellers selling it there, then just one, selling it at an outlandish price of more than 1,000 pounds, and then, for the past few days, the book was listed as "Unavailable." I hated seeing that word, so I worked through the system to get listed as a seller on the UK Amazon site. I probably was doing something wrong at first, so it took me quite a number of tries until I succeeded. When I finally did, the process was quite smooth. After I entered my basic information, including addresss, phone number, bank account, e-mail, and credit card, I receive a call on my cell phone from a British voice (a recording) asking me to enter a 4-digit PIN that had shown up on my computer screen. I entered the number, and, within a few more steps on the computer, I had the LX5 book listed for sale. Here is the listing for the LX5 book in the UK.

I know there have been some potential buyers in the UK who were frustrated at not being able to purchase the printed book at a reasonable price. Of course, now the book has to ship from here in the US to the UK. The good part for UK buyers, though, is that, because I am listed as a UK seller, I'm required to ship the book to UK buyers at the domestic postage rate, not the international rate, so they will save a good deal on shipping costs. I ship quickly, within one business day after receiving an order, so hopefully this system will work out okay for the buyers and for me. We'll soon see, I guess.

Otherwise, today has been very quiet. I have had only one order for the downloadable PDF. There's no way of knowing why things quieted down so much; hopefully they will pick up again before too long.

Frustration at Getting Books Sold in the U.K.

2010-11-18T17:53:00.000-05:00

Today a potential buyer of the book about the Panasonic Lumix LX5 camera sent me a message asking why the book has been priced so high on Amazon.co.uk. Until recently, it was priced somewhere in the range of £26 or £30 and above; one or two sellers had it listed at more than £1,000. In the U.S., the retail price is $24.95, which translates to roughly £15.50.

I replied, telling him that I am just as frustrated as he and other potential buyers in the U.K. may be at the high price of the book there. The problem is, all I can do is make the book available and set the list price, which I did; I believe I set it at £16.95. As of now, Amazon.co.uk is not selling the book on its own; evidently the print-on-demand mechanism is not yet sufficiently geared up to have the book printed and available for sale there. I have an agreement with the printer, Lightning Source, to make the book available in the U.K., but it seems to take much longer for the book to become officially available through Amazon itself over there than here in the U.S., where it has been available for some time.

The book was available at Amazon.co.uk through some third-party sellers, as I noted, but they are able to choose their own prices, which they did, none of which was the actual list price.

What's worse is that now, no sellers are listing the book for sale on Amazon.co.uk, so Amazon is listing the book as "unavailable."

I tried to sign up as a third-party seller on Amazon.co.uk, but have so far been unable to do so; I got part of the way through the process of listing the books for sale on the site, but then I got an error message, with no good information on how to proceed.

So, for now, here is all I can say to buyers in the U.K. or elsewhere who want to buy the book from Amazon.co.uk. First, the book is now in stock and available through www.camerabooks.com, an excellent small business in the U.S. that sells photography books online. They do an excellent job with international orders, so you can order from them at the list price of $24.95 plus shipping.

As another alternative, I have listed a couple of my own copies of the book (brand new from the printer) at Amazon.com in the U.S., where I am able to sell items with no problem. My seller name there is alexstrawhite, and I am selling the books for $24.95 plus shipping. Of course, the cost and time to get to the buyer will be greater than if the books were being sold from the UK, but at least the price is the list price. Also, I am a fast shipper; I will ship the books out via First Class Mail International the next business day after an order comes in.

So, although I expect Amazon.co.uk to start having the book available for direct sale before too long, in the meantime, there are at least two other ways for anyone who wants the book to order one at the normal list price.

Reply to Comment; Latest Situation with Amazon Sales

2010-11-17T20:42:00.000-05:00

Well, I guess it was inevitable that someone would, as they did in a comment late yesterday, ask me to get embroiled in the raging debate over whether there is actually any difference between the images taken by the Panasonic Lumix LX5 camera and its near-identical sibling, the Leica D-Lux 5. The short answer is that I don't have a good answer. I have followed many discussion threads on this topic in the Leica Talk and Panasonic Talk forums on dpreview.com. There are numerous photographers who are more expert than I am on technical matters relating to image quality and firmware, and there have been various opinions stated fairly strongly on both (or more) sides of the issue.

My own informal opinion is that there is no major difference between the cameras in image output, but I have not tried to make any serious study of the matter. When I have some time, I may try to post images of the same scene from both cameras, though I'm not sure if that would prove much, especially at the low resolution of images seen on the computer screen. As I work on the book about the D-Lux 5, I certainly see some differences between the cameras. For example, the Leica camera has no Conversion menu option, because Leica does not advise you to attach a wide-angle conversion lens to the camera, as Panasonic does. On a more minor note, the LX5's menu item, "Optional Viewfinder," is called "Monitor Mode" on the D-Lux 5. The two menu items have the same function, though -- to enable you to turn off the LCD screen when it's not needed.

Anyway, I didn't want to ignore this comment, but I'm not ready to tackle this major issue -- at least not right now.

On the Amazon front, I'm somewhat puzzled by the fact that Amazon.com is now listing the Panasonic Lumix LX5 book as shipping in 1 to 3 weeks. That should not be the case, because the book is available at any time from the print-on-demand printer, and it should not take more than a few days for the book to ship. I'm monitoring the situation, and will check with the printer if the situation doesn't resolve itself within a day or two.

Also, still no "Search Inside the Book" on Amazon. I'll be working on getting that feature implemented.

Finally, because of a request from one person who wanted the LX5 book shipped sooner than 1-3 weeks, I listed a couple of my copies on Amazon.com as a third-party seller, using my seller name of "alexstrawhite." If anyone orders one of those, I will ship it the next business day to anywhere in the world that Amazon takes orders from. So, that's one option, at least until those two copies sell out. (I don't have any more copies available at this point, though I may get some more from the printer if the Amazon situation doesn't improve fairly soon.)

What Happened to the LX5 Book on Amazon.co.uk?

2010-11-16T21:47:00.000-05:00

A little while ago I posted information about the seller on Amazon.co.uk who was listing the Lumix LX5 book as "Used" but actually selling new copies at a reasonable price. Well, I just went there to check again, and that seller's books have disappeared! I don't have any idea why, but now the only sellers that are listed have it on sale for more than 1,000 pounds again!

So, one solution I can offer to those in the UK who want to buy the paperback version of the LX5 book is to choose one of the U.S. sellers on Amazon.com, some of whom will ship internationally. Another option is to order the book from http://www.camerabooks.com, an excellent business located in Oregon that specializes in photography books. They will be receiving a shipment of the LX5 book tomorrow, November 17, and they are very good at shipping books internationally with reasonable shipping rates.

I'm still hoping that the various Amazons will soon settle down to having this book available more widely and at reasonable prices, but I have no control over that process, and obviously it will take a while -- probably another week or more.

Sales Are Picking Up a Bit

2010-11-16T20:18:00.000-05:00

Today there was a pretty good flurry of sales of the PDF version of the book on the Panasonic Lumix LX5, and still one or two sales of the PDF version of the book about the Lumix LX3. It's always interesting to me to see what countries the buyers are from -- today there were sales to buyers in Finland, Canada, Denmark, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Norway, as well as various United States buyers.

As for the paperback version of the LX5 book, the only way I can gauge its sales on a daily basis is by checking its sales rank on Amazon. Today it was doing fairly well, but I'm still hoping for Amazon to take several steps, including activating the Search Inside the Book feature, making the book available for overnight shipment, and discounting it somewhat. Also, it would be nice if Amazon in the UK, Canada, and Europe would start selling the book directly in a timely manner, rather than leaving it to third-party sellers, some of whom charge incredible prices.

On Amazon.co.uk, I should point out that there is one third-party seller who lists the book in the "Used" category, but if you look at the actual description, the seller states that the book is brand new, print-on-demand, which of course is accurate -- I strongly doubt that there are any actual used copies out there yet. So, if you want to buy one in the UK, you can get one from this seller in a reasonable time at a reasonable price. On the German site, Amazon.de, the book has a sales rank, indicating it has sold some copies, but it's still listed as shipping in 5 to 7 weeks, which is too bad. So, I continue to wait for things to accelerate a bit more, but overall, I'm pleased that the book is getting noticed to some extent.

Replying to Comments; Situation on Amazon

2010-11-15T21:01:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure if there' a better way to reply to comments; if there is, someone please let me know. Anyway, I do appreciate all the comments I have received so far.

In response to K2, I'm glad you're interested in the Leica D-Lux 5 book. I'm trying to work on it when I can, between other projects. As you saw from yesterday's pictures, I am making some progress, and I'm encouraged by your comment, so I'll press forward as soon as I can.

In response to Esa, I feel badly that Amazon.de is quoting such a long time to get the book. I don't think it should take that long, but the process of getting a new book distributed takes a while to settle down. I don't know if you would want to order from Amazon.co.uk instead and cancel the other order; the UK site now has a third-party seller who is selling the book for a reasonable price, and will deliver within a week or so, at least within the UK. The book has actually started selling in the UK, and on Amazon.de also; you can tell it has some sales because it now has a sales rank on both of those sites.

Speaking of Amazon, I'm still wondering why Amazon in the U.S. has not activated the "Search-Inside-the-Book" feature, for which I submitted the files more than a week ago. Hopefully that will happen soon, but I have not heard back from them since I e-mailed to ask them if there is a problem.

Some Leica D-Lux 5 Photos

2010-11-14T21:26:00.000-05:00

Today I took a break from working on camera books so Clenise and I could take a photo expedition out to a local county park. It was a beautifully sunny, crisp autumn day and we picked a park we had never been to before. It turned out to be a good choice, with a great variety of scenes and activities to photograph, including farm animals, trees with leaves at their peak of autumn colors, a preserved historic farm house from the 1860s, and a pond with a fountain. There also was a blacksmith's work area, a log cabin, and quite a few other attractions. The four photos here are ones I took with the Leica D-Lux 5, which is Leica's version of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5, the subject of my latest book. I took some of these photos today to put them in the new book about the D-Lux 5, which I hope to have completed by the end of this year, if I can find enough time. So, today gave us a chance for a very pleasant excursion, with some great photo opportunities included.

One Reason for Slow Sales

2010-11-13T22:38:00.000-05:00

I don't have a lot to discuss today, but I have been thinking about why sales of the three camera books I have available -- on the Leica D-Lux 4, Panasonic Lumix LX3, and Lumix LX5 cameras, have not been going all that well. One factor that is largely outside of my control is the discount that Amazon uses when it sells the books directly from its site. For example, all three of my books have a retail price of $24.95. Amazon can charge that price, or it can charge less. I get the same wholesale amount, no matter what Amazon charges. So, it doesn't do me any good if they charge the full retail price; in fact, it means slower sales.

So, one problem right now is that Amazon is not discounting either of the two Panasonic Lumix books very heavily right now. They are charging $22.45 for the LX3 book and the full $24.95 for the LX5 book. I wish they would discount them both to $19.95, which is what they're charging for the Leica D-Lux 4 book, but I have no way to make that happen. I'm hoping that eventually some other sellers, like Barnes & Noble, will list the LX5 book at a lower price, so Amazon will drop its price.

That's all I have time for today. It's early in the life cycle of the LX5 book, and I expect sales to pick up eventually.

Still Waiting for Sales to Pick Up

2010-11-12T19:47:00.000-05:00

Things were somewhat slow today with the Panasonic Lumix LX5 book. A few PDF copies have sold, to readers in Belgium, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, and the United States. The book's sales rank on Amazon has been dropping pretty steadily. I wish it would start selling on Amazon.co.uk; there is still just one third-party seller listing the book for more than 1,000 pounds. Soon Amazon should start selling it directly, and that should help.

Today I took several copies of the Lumix LX5 book to the Post Office and sent them to the readers who commented on a draft, and to a few potential book reviewers. I have been tinkering with my Google AdWords account; I don't have good analytic tools for figuring out whether those search ads are helping or not; someday I need to dig into the details and see how many times a click on an ad actually leads to a sale.

I'm also waiting for Amazon in the U.S. to get the "Search Inside the Book" feature operating for the LX5 book. I submitted the necessary PDF files for the text, front and back covers, and spine back on November 7, and the feature has not yet been activated. I think that feature is important, because it lets potential buyers of the book do some searches and check out the inside of the book before deciding whether to buy it. I know some publishers don't use it because they're afraid people will just do searches using that feature and never buy the book, but I think, for this kind of book, if someone has the camera they are probably going to want to have the actual book for reference. Anyway, I'll have to follow up with Amazon if that feature isn't active within a few more days.

Fluctuations in Sales; Sending Out Review Copies

2010-11-11T22:42:00.000-05:00

I don't really have a good understanding of what causes sales of the Panasonic Lumix LX5 book to fluctuate. Over the past few days the PDF version of the book was selling well through my whiteknightpress.com web site, but today, for some reason, only 5 copies have sold during the whole day. I did reduce my Google AdWords account spending limit, but I wouldn't have thought that sales would drop that sharply. Sales are not that great for the paperback through Amazon.com, either. I did get one more positive review on Amazon today, from someone who reviewed a draft, and to whom I sent the final PDF when it was released. I'm hoping to get a few more good reviews over the next few weeks.

One good thing is that it looks as if the book is getting closer to being listed as available at Amazon.co.uk. Actually, today it is listed as available, because a third-party seller is selling it. The problem is, for some reason, they have set the price at more than 1,000 pounds. I know that sellers sometimes put outrageous prices on books, apparently just to have listings, but it doesn't make sense to me. Anyway, I hope the LX5 book will be listed for sale in the UK direct by Amazon within a day or two.

Tomorrow when the Post Office re-opens after today's Veterans' Day holiday, I will mail review copies of the book to several places -- Midwest Book Review, What Digital Camera magazine, and ePhotozine, which reviewed my Leica D-Lux 4 book last year. I'll also be mailing out copies of the book to several other people who reviewed a draft for me.

That's it for today. I hope today was just a slow day for no particular reason, and that sales will pick up again in the near future.

Books Arrived; Progress with Sales

2010-11-10T20:14:00.000-05:00

Today my shipment of Panasonic Lumix LX5 books printed by Lightning Source arrived at my home, so I can now send copies out to people who commented on a draft, and to reviewers. Also, I now have a book ready to send out as the prize for the contest being run at the Photo Rumors site. I will include a free pair of 3D glasses with each book that I send out from home; I ordered a large batch of the glasses, which, as the book states at page 222, I will send out to any purchaser of the book who requests one, because the book has one 3D image, and has instructions for how to make your own "anaglyph" 3D images using the LX5 camera.

Today was the first time I could find the book at all on the Amazon.co.uk web site, the British version of Amazon.com. I had to enter the ISBN (9780964987593) as the search term, but the book did show up, listed as "unavailable." That's actually a good sign, though, because now the title is in the database in the UK, and fairly soon it should start showing up as available.

Up until about 8:00 p.m. Eastern time in the U.S., I have had 16 orders for the PDF version of the book. The orders have come from Singapore, Australia, Spain, Poland, and the United Kingdom, in addition to various U.S. states.

I have been adjusting the amount of money I spend daily on Google AdWords, which is the system that puts up a small ad for the book whenever someone types a particular search term into Google, if I have signed up to bid for the right to display my ad when that term appears. At first I thought my spurt of sales yesterday came from my AdWords campaign, but today I increased the ads, and sales dropped off. I think that sales are either more random, or more likely are sparked by things such as announcements appearing on new web sites, such as the contest that started on Photo Rumors yesterday.

Here is photo of the box of books that arrived today, taken by the LX5 using the lighting in my home office:

Trying to Get the Word Out; Making Some Sales

2010-11-09T21:11:00.000-05:00

Today sales of the PDF version of the Panasonic Lumix LX5 book started out with a rush -- 18 copies sold from the early morning hours up to early afternoon, Eastern U.S. time. Then they stopped dead. I haven't figured that out. It's been about six hours now since a PDF copy of the book has sold. (I get notice for every PDF sale, unlike the case with paperbacks, which as of now are being sold only on Amazon.) I am using Google AdWords to publicize the book during Google searches, and it's possible my account limit was reached, but I'm surprised that the PDF sales stopped so suddenly. Anyway, 18 sales is still great, and they went to buyers in a good assortment of countries. Besides the U.S., buyers were from Australia, Austria, Israel, Singapore, India, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, and the United Kingdom. I'm very glad that the book is going to such a wide variety of locations; it makes me feel more like a part of the international community!

Also, a few hours ago I made contact with the administrator of the Photo Rumors web site and he was nice enough to post an announcement about the LX5 book, and to run a contest, giving away a copy of the book to someone who posts a comment on the site and later gets randomly selected. Here is a link to the Photo Rumors page:
http://photorumors.com/2010/11/09/giveaway-2-photographer%E2%80%99s-guide-to-the-panasonic-lumix-lx5-book/.

Otherwise, not much has changed. I'll be receiving my printed copies of the books tomorrow, and will send some out to those who commented on an early draft and to potential reviewers. I'm also ordering some copies to be sold by camerabooks.com, an excellent online seller of photography books, located in Oregon.

Panasonic Lumix LX5 Book is Starting to Sell Some Copies

2010-11-08T18:22:00.000-05:00

Things are starting to improve for sales of the new Panasonic Lumix LX5 book. So far today, up to early evening, it has sold 14 copies in PDF format, to buyers from Singapore, Malaysia, Denmark, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, in addition to several from the United States. Also, today for the first time the book's listing at Amazon.com is reachable through a search -- in other words, if I go to Amazon.com and type "Lumix LX5" in the search box, this book shows up. Before today, you had to use the special link to the product number that I posted here and on my web site at www.whiteknightpress.com. The book has had one review so far, and I hope it will get some more in the near future.

I have had one or two really nice comments on the book so far, and I really appreciate that. It is a very good feeling to know that at least some readers are finding the book to be useful, and to help them figure out how to get the best results from the camera. I will say that I have used many different digital cameras, and I usually had problems following the instructions that come with them. Although those instructions probably have all or most of the technical information about using the camera, they really are not written in a way that lets you understand how to take pictures in the most useful way, unless you have had previous experience with similar cameras or are generally quite knowledgeable about photography and/or technology.

Now that the book is more easily accessible on Amazon, it has started to sell somewhat in the paperback version. The only way to tell how it's doing is to check its sales rank on Amazon, which was 4,550 just now. That probably doesn't sound great, but it's actually pretty good, at least by my standards. I have another book on Amazon that is ranked below the one million mark!

Amazon Link is Now Working for Panasonic Lumix LX5 Book

2010-11-07T12:07:00.000-05:00

Amazon's procedure for gradually making new books available is working as expected, and the new book on the Panasonic Lumix LX5 camera now has a fully operational link to the Amazon ordering page, though there is no official image of the book cover there yet. (I uploaded my own image as a customer; eventually I'll try to figure out how to get a more "official" cover image uploaded.) Anyway, if anyone would like to order the paperback version of the book for shipment directly from Amazon.com, here is a link:

If you would like to purchase a downloadable PDF version for $9.95, please use this link to my web site for that purpose.

Panasonic Lumix LX5 Book is Starting to Become Available on Amazon.com

2010-11-07T09:46:00.000-05:00

As I said in my last post, Amazon.com has a gradual process for making a new book available for ordering, at least for a book like Photographer's Guide to the Panasonic Lumix LX5, which is printed by a print-on-demand publisher, and gets added automatically to Amazon's database once the printer has it set up for printing. I have been checking on Amazon periodically. As I mentioned yesterday, as of right now you can't find the book on Amazon's site by doing a standard search by title or even by the book's ISBN (International Standard Book Number). But, there is a page in Amazon's site that lists the book. As of this morning, that page says the book is in stock and available for shipping by Amazon. I placed an order for the book in my shopping cart on Amazon, and it looked like a regular order (naturally, I didn't go all the way through to pay for it).

So, if you want to order the paperback edition of the new Lumix LX5 book from Amazon.com, here is the page with the ordering link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0964987597/. You can place an order there now, and Amazon should get the book shipped out fairly soon, though it's not clear right now how quickly they will ship it; it may take several days or even a week before the ordering machinery is fully aware that this book is ready to be printed and shipped. But, once the order is placed, you should definitely be getting the book in a fairly short time. Starting in a week or two, the book should be available for Amazon Prime shipping, with two-day or one-day shipping times for Amazon Prime members.

I haven't updated the www.whiteknightpress.com web site with the ordering information yet, because the book can't be found on Amazon through a normal search. Once the book is easier to find on Amazon's site, I will update my own web site's ordering page to give a link to Amazon for purchasing the book.

Also, the book should start becoming available on other online sites fairly soon, such as powells.com, bn.com, booksamillion.com, and others. It also should start showing up on Amazon's sites in other locations, such as amazon.co.uk, amazon.fr, etc.

Still Waiting for Amazon

2010-11-06T23:11:00.000-04:00

Today only a few copies were sold of the PDF version of the book about the Panasonic Lumix LX5, to buyers from the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. There has been some movement towards the book's becoming available in paperback on Amazon.com and elsewhere. I still can't find it on Amazon by searching for the title or keywords, but if I enter the 10-digit ISBN in an internet browser in a certain format, the book's title shows up on an Amazon page, saying it is not yet available. Here is the format to enter it in: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0964987597. Eventually, this listing will show up saying the book is available, probably within 10 days or two weeks at first, and gradually it should show up as being available within a few days, and hopefully eventually it will be available overnight.

Also, today I received an e-mail from Lightning Source saying they have shipped my order of books directly to me, so I can send them out to reviewers and have a few to sell on Amazon or elsewhere myself. I don't expect those books to arrive until late next week, possibly November 11 or 12.

Responding to Comments

2010-11-06T09:27:00.000-04:00

First, I should add a couple of countries for purchasers of the downloadable PDF of the book about the Panasonic Lumix LX5 -- Australia and the Philippines. I guess it makes a lot of sense for people from that part of the world to purchase the PDF, because the shipping cost to send the paperback book would be quite high, and it would take quite a while for the book to get there. Though I imagine that, as more and more people read PDFs on their iPads, iPhones, and other devices, the PDF versions of books (as well as newspapers, magazines, etc.) will become increasingly popular. I still will be selling a version of the LX5 book for the Kindle, but not until December, because that version needs to be converted to the Kindle format by someone who is an expert at that process, and he is backed up until December.

I'm also still waiting for the paperback version of the LX5 book to show up on Amazon; I guesss it will take a few more days for the listing to get from Lightning Source's computers to Amazon's.

One commenter asked whether you have to get permission from a company to write about its cameras. I haven't sought a formal legal opinion, but in practical terms this doesn't seem to be an issue. I'm not using any copyrighted materials that belong to Panasonic, including any text or photographs; I take all my own photographs and write all my own words. In more practical terms, Panasonic and other camera companies must realize that having books like this available can only help them, because the books should help people use the cameras more effectively.

And, of course, it seems unlikely that an author would write a book of this sort about a camera that he or she was going to criticize generally; I can't see writing a guidebook such as "How to Use (or Attempt to Use) the Horrible Excuse for a Camera by Company X". And, if someone wanted to write a book that criticizes a particular brand or model of camera for some reason, it's hard to see how that would lead to legal problems, unless it disclosed trade secrets or violated some other specific provision of law.

Anyway, these are interesting questions, and if anyone has better answers it would be good to hear them.

First Day of Sales of Book About Panasonic Lumix LX5

2010-11-05T21:58:00.000-04:00

Last night I started selling Photographer's Guide to the Panasonic Lumix LX5 in PDF format through my web site, whiteknightpress.com, using the FastSpring service to manage the downloads. That system has worked well in the past with the books about the Leica D-Lux 4 and the Panasonic Lumix LX3, and it seems to be starting out well for the LX5 book. As of now, about 24 hours after I posted the link for downloading the PDF file, I have sold about 10 copies, to buyers from the Netherlands, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Germany, as well as several from various parts of the United States. I contacted the gentleman who runs a Lumix LX3 site, lx3-photography.com, and he was nice enough to post a link to my site for the download. I am also reaching out to other photography blogs and sites to try to get the word out to potential buyers of the book.

Of course, I know many people would prefer to have a paperback copy of the book, and I keep checking Amazon to see if the book has made it into their catalog, but as of a little while ago it had not done so. I hope it will get there within another few days.

White Knight Press Web Site Has Been Updated for Lumix LX5 Book Download

2010-11-04T22:06:00.000-04:00

A little while ago I posted on this blog, saying that it might take a few days to update the White Knight Press web site to announce the availability of Photographer's Guide to the Panasonic Lumix LX5. It turned out not to take so long, after all, and the site has now been updated. So, for anyone who is interested in purchasing a PDF version of the book for download, you can go to the site at http://www.whiteknightpress.com and click on the link for the Lumix LX5 page.

The LX5 book is still not available for sale in paperback form through Amazon; I hope that will happen within the next few days. I'll update the web site and put an announcement in this blog when the paperback version is shipping.

Panasonic Lumix LX5 Book is Now Available for Download as PDF

2010-11-04T20:34:00.001-04:00

I'm still waiting for the new book about the Pansonic Lumix LX5 camera to start showing up for sale on the Amazon.com web site and other sellers' sites. I'm also waiting for paperback copies of the book to be printed and shipped to me by the printer, Lightning Source, in Tennessee. In the meantime, after receiving some inquiries by e-mail, I have decided to make the book available for sale in PDF form by download. For now, I will include the link to the PDF purchasing page at the end of this blog post. In the near future, I will get that link added to my web site, http://www.whiteknightpress.com. That may take a few days, so for now, if you are interested in purchasing the PDF version, please use the purchasing button at the end of this post. That linked button takes you to the purchasing page, which is managed by FastSpring, a very reliable company that has been handling downloads of my other two camera books (about the Leica D-Lux 4 and the Panasonic Lumix LX3) for several months, with excellent results.

The purchasing process is simple and secure. The price for the PDF download is $9.95 (plus any applicable tax), the same as for the other two books. Payment can be by credit card, PayPal, or several other options. This PDF has high-quality graphics, and it has a full, 18-page index, whose page numbers are linked back the pages in the book, for easy reference. (There also is a full Table of Contents, but the page numbers in the Table of Contents are not active links.)

If you have any questions about the PDF version or the purchasing process, please send me a message at contact@whiteknightpress.com. Here is the link to the PDF purchasing page:

Click to go to secure PDF purchasing page

The Panasonic Lumix LX5 Book Should be Available on Amazon Soon

2010-11-03T21:34:00.000-04:00

I've had a few people send me e-mails asking when the new book about the Panasonic Lumix LX5 camera will be available. I don't have a definite date, but it should be soon. Now that the proof has been accepted, the printer, Lightning Source, will list the book in a database that goes to Amazon.com and other online booksellers, and those sellers will pick up the listing in the normal course of their operations, some sooner than others. It should be a matter of a day or two, or maybe several days, and then the book will show up if you do a search for it online. In the meantime, I have ordered a few books from the printer to be shipped directly to me, and I will make some of those available if anyone needs a book before it becomes available on Amazon. The book probably will not be available in any bookstores, because it is quite expensive to print, and so I can't offer a large enough discount to make it worthwhile for bookstores to carry it. I'll keep posting updates here, and then on my web site once the book is actually in stock at Amazon or elsewhere.

Proof Copy of Lumix LX5 Book Arrived and Has Been Approved

2010-11-02T20:13:00.000-04:00

This is a photograph (taken with my Panasonic Lumix LX5 camera) of the proof copy of the new book about the LX5, as it arrived today via UPS. The photo also shows the standard card that came from Lightning Source advising the publisher (me, in this case) to check the copy over for things like correct pagination, typos, positioning of the elements on the pages, correct ISBN, etc., before approving it. Everything looked very good to Clenise and me, so I went online earlier this evening and approved it with Lightning Source. It will take a few days, but soon the book will automatically start to show up as available for sale on Amazon.com and other sites. In the meantime, there's plenty of other things to do. I will order some copies from Lightning Source so I can send them out to reviewers and the people who helped me by commenting on the book, and I may ship some to one or more bookstores that may order them from me. I also need to plan some amount of marketing and publicity activity, so people who may be interested in the book will know it exists! So, the book production phase ends for now, and the marketing phase will take over for a while.

Before too long, though, I plan to do another version of this book that is oriented to the Leica D-Lux 5, the new model from Leica that is essentially the same as this Panasonic camera, except for some cosmetic changes and different software, among other things.

Proof Copy of Panasonic Lumix LX5 Book Has Shipped

2010-11-01T22:01:00.000-04:00

Within the past hour I received an e-mail message from Lightning Source saying they have shipped out the proof copy of the book about the Panasonic Lumix LX5 digital camera. I will receive the proof tomorrow, and if it looks okay I will log on to my Lightning Source account and approve it. Then, hopefully within a few days, the book will start to show up as available on Amazon.com and other sites. I will also order a few copies from the printer to be shipped directly to me, so I can send them out to reviewers and to several people who provided helpful comments on drafts of the book. I may also make some available for sale myself, if Amazon is slow to start showing the book on its site.

In response to a comment, the only problem I have had with the CMYK colors of these books was when there were compatibility problems between Adobe Acrobat and the Macintosh Snow Leopard operating system, resulting in a botched conversion of the file to PDF format. I use Adobe InDesign CS5 software to lay out the books, and the RGB images should be automatically converted to CMYK by Acrobat, but on some occasions the conversion apparently didn't work properly. This time, everything went well, as far as I know.

Dealing with Printing Issues for Panasonic Lumix LX5 Book

2010-10-31T22:09:00.000-04:00

In response to a comment, I'll say a little bit more about some of the issues that come up with sending PDF files to Lightning Source (LSI). With each of my two previous books (about the Leica D-Lux 4 and the Panasonic Lumix LX3) that were (and still are) printed by LSI, I had my files rejected at least once for technical problems. The publisher (me, in this case) has to submit two PDF files for each book: one file for the text of the book, and a separate file for the cover. These 2 PDF files have to meet a set of precise specifications, including document size, bleeds, ink coverage, etc., some of which I really don't understand at all well. For example, all colors in the files have to be CMYK, which stands for cyan, magenta, yellow and black, which are the colors used by printers (the machines, that is). Generally, when you or I work on the computer, the colors are considered RGB, for red, green, and blue, which is the color system used by monitors. When you create the PDF from the original document, you have to make sure all RGB colors are converted to CMYK. This process can make the colors look a bit different; blues may look more purple, for example. Some publishers undoubtedly have equipment and software to calibrate their equipment so they can see what the end result will look like on paper, but I don't. This issue is generally taken care of by generating the PDF using the proper process. In this case, the proper process, starting with a file in Adobe InDesign, is to print the file to a PostScript printer file, then process that file into a PDF file using Adobe Distiller. This procedure has considerable complications, especially for someone like me who uses a Macintosh with the Snow Leopard operating system, but I eventually was able to work through them and generated the files properly.

Another issue I have run into is with the resolution of images. LSI wants the photographs in the text and cover to be generally 300 dots per inch, which is a good, high resolution for printed work. In the past, I received notices from LSI saying my text file contained images that were considered low resolution, but they would print them anyway. The lowest resolution they will accept is 72 dots per inch, which is the resolution for most images when viewed on a computer monitor. Those images looked okay in the printed books, but this time, for the Panasonic Lumix LX5 book, I was more careful to generate images with at least 300 dpi resolution in Photoshop. I must have succeeded, because this time around I did not receive any error messages from LSI about low resolution images.

Those are the major issues I have run into, though I'm sure other publishers have had other issues in meeting the specifications for LSI printing. You can get more details at www.lightningsource.com, where there are various publications available about their printing process and their file creation requirements.

Status: Proof Has Been Generated

2010-10-30T18:38:00.000-04:00

I probably shouldn't keep going on to the Lightning Source web site to check on the status of the Panasonic Lumix LX5 book; after all, they say a watched pot never boils. But I needed to take a break from doing some fairly tedious work in Photoshop, so I loggged on to my account just to take a quick look, and the status had been updated. The status as of today is: "Proof has been generated." My interpretation of this status is that they have printed out a copy of the book and its cover, and it's waiting to be inspected by the quality control people; once it passes inspection, it will be shipped overnight to me so Clenise and I can review and (hopefully) approve it.

Of course, there's no way to know what the exact schedule will be, but as of now it seems possible that the proof could ship out on Monday or Tuesday, and get to us in Virginia on Tuesday or Wednesday. So, if all continues to go well, the book still seems to be on track for becoming available for sale by late next week or thereabouts.

In the meantime, here are a couple of photos taken by the LX5. The first one is included in the book; the second one did not make it because of space limitations.

Book About Panasonic Lumix LX5 May Be Ready Next Week

2010-10-29T20:46:00.000-04:00

Today I received an e-mail message from Lightning Source advising me that my order for a proof copy of the Lumix LX5 book has been confirmed. I then went on their web site and checked the status of the book; it reported that the "book block" and the cover have both been "accepted." That was good news! That means that there were no technical problems with either the interior text of the book (268 pages, including Table of Contents and Index), or with the cover. There are quite a few technical problems that can arise (and have in the past), such as incorrect document size, some fonts not embedded, wrong resolution of the images, colors that don't conform to the CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) standard, etc. Now the book's status is shown as "print ready." I just have to wait until Lightning Source puts the book in one of its printing queues and produces a proof copy. They will then ship it to me overnight for approval. If it looks OK, I will approve it online, and that releases it for distribution through Amazon.com and other sellers. Based on past experience, I think the proof may get to me by about Wednesday, November 3 or thereabouts. If it is in good shape, Amazon may start selling the book by the end of next week. Of course, everything is out of my control at this point except approving the proof copy. I will be very quick at that step, once I receive the proof copy.

By the way, here is what the cover of the book looks like:

So Far, So Good -- LX5 Book Should be Available Soon -- Here is An Excerpt

2010-10-28T22:29:00.000-04:00

I checked today on the Lightning Source site, and the status report is that Photographer's Guide to the Panasonic Lumix LX5 is in "premedia," which means the technicians are checking the PDF files for the interior text and the cover to make sure they comply with all of the technical requirements, before the files are set up to print on the company's printing equipment. If the process continues to go smoothly, they will print a proof copy and overnight it to me, maybe by early next week. Once I approve the proof copy of the book, the book will start gradually to become available at Amazon.com and other online sites.

For now, I have uploaded to this blog a link to a PDF excerpt with Table of Contents and the first few pages of the book about the Panasonic LX5 so you can get an idea of what subjects are covered and what the text and illustrations look like. So, take a look at the excerpt that I have included in the links section of the blog, and see what you think.

The Panasonic Lumix LX5 Book Has Gone to the Printer

2010-10-26T20:13:00.000-04:00

Finally, after the past few days of sometimes-frustrating proofreading by Clenise and me, a little while ago I uploaded the PDF files to the printer, Lightning Source. The book, Photographer's Guide to the Panasonic Lumix LX5: Getting the Most from Panasonic's Advanced Digital Camera, should start showing up as available on Amazon.com within a week or so, if all goes well. In the past, I've had problems with PDF files that did not meet the specific requirements of the printer, though this time I think I did better than previously, having learned from my mistakes, and having been very careful to follow all the steps exactly to produce compliant files.

I did change the file with the text of the book a couple of times today, as I spotted last-minute problems in the layout. In one case, the photos of the HDMI cable connecting to the camera were misplaced next to the discussion of connecting the regular (non-HDMI) cable. That was a pretty small thing, but I don't like to have any mistakes in the book, if I can find them. Inevitably there will still be some typos or other glitches, but I did my best to find and eradicate them.

As of now, the book will be available only in printed form, though I have it scheduled to be converted for the Kindle in December (the formatting company always has a hefty backlog), and I may make it available on PDF within the next few months, depending on how things go with the printed version. The book is already listed on bn.com (Barnes and Noble's site), because I submitted the information about the book through the Bowker company, which runs Books in Print. Bn.com has it listed at a substantial discount, but, based on past experience, they won't actually fill any orders at that price, and will cancel them if anyone pre-orders the book, because the book is not going to be available at that price. I believe BN just assumes it will be, because most books are heavily discounted by the publisher to get them into stores. In my case, I can't offer a heavy discount, because it costs so much to print each book, partly because of the color photographs. It will eventually be available at BN.com, at a more regular price.

The New Book about the Panasonic Lumix LX5 is Almost Here

2010-10-25T20:17:00.000-04:00

I've mentioned briefly in response to comments that I'm working on a book about the Panasonic Lumix LX5, the successor to the LX3 (the number 4 was skipped because it is unlucky in Japan, according to members of the dpreview.com Panasonic Talk forum). I got the camera as soon as I could in late August, and I've been working on the new book ever since. It's a great camera, very similar in size and features to the LX3, but it has a longer zoom range, much stronger movie-recording capability, and quite a few other new or enhanced features, such as a My Color shooting mode that gives a strong range of color and monochrome effects. The camera is certainly different enough from the LX3 that it needs a new book to do it justice.

Right now I have the text and illustrations (163 color photographs) finished, and my wife is proofreading what I expect to be the final draft. Then, either tonight or tomorrow, I will send the PDF files to the printer. After that, with good luck it will take about a week or so before the book becomes available on Amazon.com and other online sites.

Once this book is out and available, I hope to start on a new version that covers the Leica D-Lux 5, which is very similar to the LX5, but has a different outer body and different look for its menus. Depending on how busy things are otherwise, I hope to get that book done by the end of this year. In the meantime, though, the LX5 book should be of considerable use to D-Lux 5 users, because there are no really significant differences in the operation or features of the two cameras, at least none that I'm aware of as yet. (I've only had my D-Lux 5 for few days, and haven't done that much with it yet.)

Dealing with Book Reviews

2010-09-01T21:57:00.000-04:00

I said I would write about some experiences with book reviews, so here goes. At the moment I'm talking exclusively about reviews on Amazon.com. It's not clear to me how much effect those reviews have on prospective readers of books. I would think it's a safe bet that it depends on various factors, including what kind of book is involved, why someone would be buying it, how many reviews are on Amazon, etc. For example, if there are hundreds of reviews, there are likely to be some five-star and some one-star reviews, so the reader won't be swamped with any single opinion. And, if it's the only book available on a particular subject, a reader may decide to ignore negative reviews on the chance that the reviewer was overly critical.

In my case, I'm dealing with reviews of only one book at present, Photographer's Guide to the Leica D-Lux 4; my second book, Photographer's Guide to the Panasonic Lumix LX3, has no reviews on Amazon right now. Well, actually it had one review, but that one is gone. I'll talk about that review in a minute.

I'm going to talk first about a recent review of the book about the Leica D-Lux 4. That was a one-star review, in which the reviewer said the book was a complete waste of time; it apparently didn't tell him (her?) anything new, and seemed to be a re-hash of the camera's user's manual. The reviewer had purchased the book for the Kindle, Amazon's e-reader, and had been so displeased that he (she?) got a full refund from Amazon.

Well, that review really bothered me. For one thing, I had worked very hard to dig up good, solid information about the camera that is not covered in the user's manual. I did many hours of experimenting with the camera's various settings and purchased quite a few flash units, adapters, and other accessories to test them with the camera. I covered topics, such as infrared photography, street photography, and others that are not mentioned at all in the user's manual. And the reviewer made a nasty remark about me personally, which did not seem appropriate for a book review.

So, although at first I considered just posting a comment on the review as an opportunity to make some of the above points and state my case, I asked Amazon to remove the review, which they did, within 24 hours of my request. I have found Amazon to be quite responsive in this area; I have now asked for two reviews to be removed, and both were removed quickly. Of course, I don't make that sort of request lightly. As I noted, in the recent review of the Leica D-Lux 4 book, the reviewer made what I took as a personal slur against me. In the other case, a reviewer of the Panasonic Lumix LX3 book stated, completely erroneously, that the book was out of date because it covered version 2.0 of the camera's firmware (internal programming), when the latest version was 2.2. That was not true at all; the book was completely up to date and covered version 2.2. The clincher was that the reviewer said that it was too bad the book was out of date, because he (I assume it was a he) really had wanted to buy this book! Well, of course, my basis for asking to have the review removed was that the reviewer admitted he had not read (or even seen) the book! The review was removed promptly.

Since I've gone through this process as a writer of these books, I have become more sensitive to the impact of bad reviews. Today I saw a one-star review of a book I had just bought, The Wild Side of Photography. I found the book to be excellent, so I posted a five-star review to counteract the negative effects of that lone, thoughtless review. In that case, the reviewer was upset because the book, which was translated from the German, included a reference to a German web site for further information about one of the many topics in the book. Well, that may be a glitch, but it certainly doesn't warrant a one-star review of the whole book!

I'll get off my soap box now and get back to work on other things. I need to write some more books, so I'll turn my efforts in that direction for a while.

The Amazon Connection

2010-08-30T19:24:00.000-04:00

Amazon.com is a huge factor in my publishing experience, so I'll talk a little about some aspects of my interaction with Amazon. There are some things not to like about the company, but on the whole my connection to it has been a tremendous benefit.

The main benefit comes from the fact that I can get my books sold through Amazon without jumping through a lot of hoops, using the direct distribution that comes from having the books printed by Lightning Source, Inc. (LSI). I spoke about that system several months ago, but it's worth repeating -- for self-publishers or small, independent publishers, an excellent way to get your books distributed with a minimum of effort is to sign up with LSI, a print-on-demand company, which prints the books as orders come in from Amazon (and others, such as BN.com, the online arm of Barnes & Noble). All the publisher has to do is sit back and collect the proceeds -- whatever is left over after the printing costs. Of course, there's a good deal of work to do up front. Anyone who is interested in pursuing that option should get copies of Aaron Shepard's two excellent books, Aiming at Amazon and POD [Print on Demand] for Profit.

Once the books are available through Amazon and other online retailers, it's hard not to become somewhat obsessed with tracking their progress. For example, I find myself going on Amazon several times each day to check my books' sales ranks. It may be somewhat of a waste of time, but it does give me some idea of how well the books are selling. For example, the newer of the two recent books, Photographer's Guide to the Panasonic Lumix LX3, is starting to catch on somewhat after being available for about a month. It's now available through Amazon.co.uk, the United Kingdom site, as well as Amazon.com, and its sales rank is now sometimes in the five digits, rather than the dreaded six digits. The other book, Photographer's Guide to the Leica D-Lux 4, continues to sell some copies, though both books are probably nearing the end of their most substantial sales, as the cameras they discuss are being superseded by newer models. (The new Leica model is anticipated, but not announced yet; the new Panasonic model, the Lumix DMC-LX5, has recently started shipping in Canada and the United Kingdom, but not through U.S. dealers quite yet.)

That's all for now. I need to talk about customer reviews on Amazon; I'll try to get to that topic in the near future.

Slowing Down as the Summer Ends

2010-08-27T21:52:00.000-04:00

Well, the summer doesn't officially end for almost a month, but it feels as if it is ending this weekend. My daughter heads back to college tomorrow and school is starting back up for some local kids. Camera guidebooks are not selling too well at the moment, at least not the ones I'm involved with. I'm hoping it's just a late-summer lull as people finish their last week of vacation and get ready for the Labor Day weekend.

I have gotten several things done lately; my new, professionally-designed web site is up and running nicely; it's still at whiteknightpress.com, but now it has a much cleaner look. My new book, Photographer's Guide to the Panasonic Lumix LX3, is available there in paperback through links to Amazon.com and camerabooks.com, and the PDF version is also available through my site. The paperback and PDF versions of Photographer's Guide to the Leica D-Lux 4 are also available through the site. The experience of selling the PDF versions has worked out fairly well. This past week I had two or three customers who e-mailed me about having problems downloading the PDF after they had paid for it, but those were quickly resolved. The downloading system, using fastspring.com, has worked very well overall, and fastspring's technical support has been very responsive and helpful.

I have found it interesting to see the locations of the buyers of the PDF versions of the books. Quite a few have been international buyers. Here are some of the locations for the recent purchasers of the PDFs: besides various U.S. states, I have had buyers from Spain, the United Kingdom, Singapore, the Netherlands, Russia, Israel, Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Oman, Cyprus, France, Sweden, and Portugal. Sales of the print versions of the books have been tapering off lately, which I suppose is not surprising given that the new version of the Panasonic camera, the Lumix DMC-LX5, has recently started shipping, at least in Canada and the United Kingdom. I have placed an order for one myself, and hope the U.S. shipments will start soon. I do have a tentative plan to write a new book about the LX5, and possibly a new book about the Leica version of that camera, assuming that Leica eventually does produce one, which presumably would be called the Leica D-Lux 5.

Well, that's the update for now. I have also been working on books with David Busch, and the latest one, on the Sony A550 and A500 DSLR models, has recently started selling on Amazon.com and elsewhere. I'll try to do more frequent updates to this blog as things continue to develop.

Lumix LX3 Book is Available on Amazon

2010-07-29T22:23:00.000-04:00

A few days ago the print-on-demand paperback edition of my new book, Photographer's Guide to the Panasonic Lumix LX3, started showing up as available on Amazon.com. They have it listed at $24.95, the full retail price. The price may be keeping people from buying it; I believe it has sold about one copy in the five or so days it has been available; as of a few minutes ago its sales rank had dropped into the 800,000 range, which is not too good. I have listed a copy on Amazon as a 3d-party seller for $19.95, and it hasn't sold either. Oh, well -- the camera's replacement (the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5) has been announced, which must be a factor. Ironically, though, the Leica D-Lux 4 camera seems to have been officially discontinued, though the book about the D-Lux 4 is continuing to sell fairly well. Neither book has sold any PDFs lately, though. I have a web designer working on re-designing my home-made site, but the point of that exercise is fading, because no one is buying the books! Maybe the redesigned site will help. I'll try to post another update in a few days.

It's Been Quite a While, But I'm Back to Post Once Again

2010-07-22T21:04:00.000-04:00

My last post was in January, after Clenise and I had finally ended our home-based printing enterprise and moved on to having Photographer's Guide to the Leica D-Lux 4 printed by Lightning Source, Inc., a major print-on-demand company. The arrangement with LSI has been fantastic. After an initial waiting period of 3 months, I get paid by direct deposit shortly after the first of the month for the books that were sold three months previously. I have set the back up for sales both by Amazon.com in the US and Amazon.co.uk in the United Kingdom. The book sells fairly well in Britain, where amateur photographers are very active and take their hobby quite seriously.

I have just finished an updated and revised version of the book, geared to the Panasonic camera that is almost identical in features and functions to the Leica D-Lux 4. That book is called Photographer's Guide to the Panasonic Lumix LX3. Rather ironically, I approved the proof copy of the book yesterday, which happened to be the same day that Panasonic officially announced the replacement model, the Lumix LX5. Well, I knew that was coming, but I still wanted to get the second book done, for those readers who still will be buying and using the existing model for a few more months, I hope. The new book is updated to cover the features added in the upgrade of the camera's firmware to version 2.2; that updated information also applies to the Leica D-Lux 4.

On another front, after writing the Leica book, I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to co-author some other camera guides, with David Busch, who is a very established and well-respected author of numerous guides and other photography books. That has been a great experience, and I hope to be continuing in those endeavors.

Well, I wanted to add this brief update to let people know that I have not totally disappeared. I will try to add more updates from time to time as things progress.

Summing it Up

2010-01-14T20:25:00.000-05:00

That title for this post doesn't necessarily mean this will be the last post, but I think it's getting close to that point. I haven't posted in quite a while, largely because I've been working on writing another book -- another camera guide. This time it's not one that I'm going to publish mysefl (let alone print, bind, and ship from home!). One very positive result of the Leica D-Lux 4 book project, and one that was not intended at all at the start, was that I was able to use that book as a sample of my writing, and I ended up getting a contract to write a book about a different camera. I can't discuss the details at this point because of confidentiality provisions in the contract, but it was a great opportunity, though very intense. I've been working just about non-stop in every available hour since Christmas, and finally finished my part (I'm writing with another author) this afternoon -- unless there are changes to be made.

Now I finally have some time to reflect a bit more about our experiences with the Leica D-Lux 4 book. I know Clenise is relieved that the home-based printing aspect is over. I think she and I both enjoyed some parts of that process, because it was exhilarating in a way, but it was really exhausting and stressful, and it was not at all good for her arm, which she used repeatedly to work the binding machine. Now her arm is recovering, and we're both breathing easier.

One point I don't think I made very strongly is that, overall, what turned out to be the system that saved the day for us was the ability to use Lightning Source, the print-on-demand company, to take over, in effect, the whole project. Looking back now, it seems almost miraculous how things have changed. One day Clenise and I were working ourselves to a frazzle to manufacture and ship the books, and deal with customer-service issues. The next day, once LSI took over, we could sit back and do nothing, if we wanted. I need to do some more work to publicize the book, but other than that, there's not that much to do. LSI gets orders from Amazon, Barnes and Noble.com, and quite a few other online booksellers, then prints the books and ships them to those sellers very quickly. Every once in a while I log into my LSI account and find out how many books have sold. As of earlier today, the report said they have sold 165 books so far in January -- not bad for a small self-published book.

If I were to self-publish any more books, I would not hesitate to set them up from the start through LSI, and get them sold through Amazon, et al. It really is a great system. This whole strategey is the subject of a wonderful book by Aaron Shepard called Aiming at Amazon. Aaron is the guru of this method of self-publishing, and he really understands the print-on-demand business and the workings of Amazon in great depth.

The Kindle edition has been available on Amazon for a couple of weeks now, and as of yesterday it had sold about 12 or 13 copies, I think. Those go slowly, but there's no hurry.

I still need to do an update for my whiteknightpress.com web site about the firmware upgrade for the Leica D-Lux 4 camera. I hope to get to that within the next week or so.

Monitoring the Situation

2010-01-07T22:31:00.000-05:00

The atmosphere around the house is very different now that Clenise and I are no longer printing, binding, and shipping books. Not that things are quiet or restful - I have moved on to another book project that turned out to have a very tight deadline, so I've been working pretty steadily since Christmas. The good news, in a way, is that I have to be done with my draft by about January 18, so maybe there will be some breathing room at that point.

In the meantime, I've been monitoring sales of the book about the Leica D-Lux 4. I discovered a way to check on the Lightning Source web site to see how many books have been sold through their print-on-demand operation, and it said that about 215 sold in December, and about 82 in January. That's not bad for this sort of book, in my opinion. Of course, those are probably the biggest sales times of the years, because of the Christmas holidays, when a good number of people may have gotten the D-Lux 4 camera as a gift and then wanted the book to help them learn how to use it.

There still are not many reviews of the book on Amazon.com. Yesterday the first somewhat negative review appeared, saying the book is "not very informative"; the reviewer said he was disappointed based on his expectations after reading the earlier reviews. That's fair; I imagine he is a more advanced user, and wanted more advanced advice. But most readers have reacted favorably; I think more of the people who want camera books are looking for more basic advice. Several of them have left me positive feedback through Amazon Marketplace, because they bought the book directly from me through that channel. I hope some of them may eventually leave reviews on the main Amazon site, where more people will see the reviews.

Today I again suspended my Google AdWords campaign, because, at $25.00 per day, the expense adds up very quickly, and I am not sure how much good it was doing at this point. I'm going to wait and see how sales are affected by stopping that campaign.

Starting the New Year Quietly

2010-01-01T17:35:00.000-05:00

Things are fairly quiet, as you might expect for New Year's Day. I have had a few people send me messages through the White Knight Press web site asking how to order the book about the Leica D-Lux 4, so I guess I don't have that information displayed clearly enough on the site. I will need to work on that at some point. I have put up on the site an announcement that the book is available on the Kindle. The Amazon search engine now finds the D-Lux 4 book, Kindle edition, quite well; at first it didn't find it. The Kindle edition now has an Amazon sales rank, but pretty far down; the last I checked it was in the 27,000 range. But my understanding is that, once it has some sales rank, that means at least one Kindle copy has sold. That, of course, is good news, because it doesn't cost anything to produce more copies of the Kindle book.

I realized today that there is a way to check my account with Lightning Source through their web site. I did so earlier today, and found a report that the D-Lux 4 book had sold at least 215 copies since it first became available there in late December. That was pretty encouraging news, since that's a decent number of sales for just a couple of weeks. I'm not sure, though, if that figure includes the 16 books I ordered for myself or the 16 books I had shipped to camerabooks.com in Oregon. But even without those 32 books, the sales total for December 2009 would not be too bad.

D-Lux 4 Book Becomes Available on Kindle

2009-12-30T19:16:00.000-05:00

Today the people at Amazon.com sent me an e-mail message saying they have published my book about the Leica D-Lux 4 book on the Kindle. It took a bit longer than I expected, but now it is available, though I had some trouble finding it in searches. One issue is that the Kindle edition is not linked to the print edition, so you have to search for the two editions separately. I'm hoping that will automatically be fixed, but if it isn't, I will send a message to Amazon asking that they be linked.

Not much else to report right now. It's somewhat quiet at home without all the hubbub of printing and binding books, but I have to say that, as of now, I don't miss it, though I'm glad we did it. I know Clenise is glad that phase is over, because now she has time to work on her own tax preparation business. She has various webinars to listen to and lots of IRS information to read, as well as estimated payments to prepare for clients, so she can finally catch up on a lot of her own work. And I am trying to move on to some other projects, while still, of course, monitoring sales and progress of the Leica D-Lux 4 book.

All Is Quiet

2009-12-28T20:42:00.001-05:00

An aura of peacefulness has descended, which is appropriate for the holiday season. I've been able to clean up my home office to a large extent, because we're out of the business of printing, binding, and trimming, at least for now. Today, the guy from the local graphic-arts company came by to install our newly sharpened blade. We had a nice chat, and then he left. The last time he was here, about a month ago, things were in a state of relative turmoil, and Clenise and I were racing against the clock every day to produce enough books to stay one step ahead of the orders.

So, we're both relieved, I have to say. Clenise has straightened up her office, and again has time to take tax courses and webinars about her new tax software. Things are much more relaxed, and I don't miss the excitement.

With regard to the Leica D-Lux 4 book, I'm still waiting for it to become available on Amazon's Kindle. I think I've done everything necessary to that end; I responded to Amazon's latest request for more information, and I hope it shows up on the site for sale in the near future. I do get some inquiries from people asking if the book is available in an electronic format.

Oddly, there have not been any more reviews of the book on Amazon in about the past week, and only 4 altogether. At least those have all been favorable. I had a glitch with Google AdWords earlier today, because I deleted the ordering page from my whiteknightpress.com site now that the book is available directly from Amazon, but I forgot that that page was tied to my ads on Google AdWords. Luckily, that deletion triggered a warning message from Google, and I quickly fixed the problem, so the ads are running again now. I plan to keep them running for a while, though they are costing me about $25.00 per day, and I don't think it makes sense to continue at that rate indefinitely. Eventually I'll cut down on them and see how that affects sales on Amazon.com.

Waiting for Kindle

2009-12-26T16:02:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I uploaded the final version of the D-Lux 4 book formatted for the Amazon Kindle. Today I received an e-mail message from Amazon saying they want to make the book available on Kindle, but first they need to have me submit some assurance that I am the owner of the electronic rights to the book. I replied quickly, giving them the number of my pending copyright registration case and stating that I own all the rights to the book. I hope those assurances will suffice, and that the book will be made available in Kindle form as soon as possible.

I had one inquiry today from a gentleman who would like to buy the book in electronic format, such as a .pdf file. I replied that it will be available on Kindle soon, and may be available in other formats as well.

Both Clenise and I feel very relieved that we don't have to keep cranking out copies of the book. We both have plenty of other activities to occupy us, and even without printing, binding, and shipping books we're both quite busy, so the switch to production by Lightning Source came at an opportune time.

I'm not sure how much more I will be adding to this blog. I probably will stop making daily entries for now, and may make entries only when something of particular interest happens.

Christmas Activities

2009-12-25T16:04:00.000-05:00

It's a rainy, but still white from recent snow, Christmas afternoon. We're getting adjusted to the new phase of book publishing, in which Lightning Source does the printing and distribution, and we sit back and wait for payment. So far, so good; the D-Lux 4 book climbed somewhat steadily up to an Amazon sales rank in the 3,300 range, though it has now slipped back down into the high 4000s. I'm finding it somewhat hard to keep from checking the sales rank; I don't need to check it so often.

In other news, today the book was finished in its format for uploading to Amazon.com in a Kindle electronic version. I have checked over the formatting, which looked good, and have uploaded the Kindle version. The Amazon site says it may take a couple of days before the e-version is checked over and approved to be made available for purchase on Amazon. I set the price at $9.99, on the theory that people generally wouldn't want to pay more than that for an electronic book about a camera. I considered setting it at $14.95, but decided I was likely to lose too many potential sales at that price.

Things are otherwise quiet. I'm hoping the D-Lux 4 book will start to sell some more copies fairly soon after Christmas, to those people who have received the D-Lux 4 camera as a Christmas gift.

First Day of the New Approach to Selling the Book

2009-12-24T15:33:00.001-05:00

Today, on Christmas Eve, the landscape here at home has changed, and I believe it is significantly for the better. Clenise took what may be our last shipment of a book to an individual buyer to the Post Office, along with some other items, while she was running her last-minute Christmas errands. My book about the Leica D-Lux 4 camera is now established as a product that, if all goes as it should, will be permanently in stock on Amazon. I believe that, if enough orders start coming in to Amazon, they eventually will keep it physically in stock. Until that time, they will have it in "virtual" stock, meaning they can have copies shipped directly from the Lightning Source facility in Amazon packaging as orders come in.

I have changed my web site at whiteknightpress.com to reflect this new setup. Now the only purchasing options mentioned on the web site are Amazon.com and camerabooks.com, the retailers based in Oregon who have sold quite a few of the D-Lux 4 books. I plan to keep dealing with them as well as Amazon, because they have a very good specialty operation to sell all sorts of photography books, and they have been very pleasant to deal with.

I have also started using the Amazon Associates program, which lets me put purchasing buttons on my web site, and will generate a small commission if someone clicks on one of the buttons and then purchases something on the Amazon site. I don't want to get carried away with this system, but I have put up buttons for the Leica D-Lux 4 book and the camera itself on the web site. And, as you will notice, I have put a link for purchasing the Leica D-Lux 4 book at the bottom of this blog post.

I will try not to check the D-Lux 4 book's sales rank on Amazon too often, but I will say that it has improved from the 37,000 + level that it was at yesterday. Earlier today it went as high as the 13,000 range, then dropped back to about 18,000. I just checked a minute ago, and it had spiked up to 7,062. So, at least that means the book is selling on Amazon, though I won't get any actual sales figures until Lightning Source sends me its monthly statements.

Photographer's Guide to the Leica D-Lux 4: Getting the Most from Leica's Compact Digital Camera

A New Phase - D-Lux 4 Book Now Available Again on Amazon

2009-12-23T21:22:00.003-05:00

You could say the process has now come full circle. When Clenise and I first started producing the book about the Leica D-Lux 4 camera back in late October of this year, I signed up for an Amazon Advantage account, through which I shipped books to Amazon for them to keep in stock and sell. If you've read some of the earlier posts in this blog, you know that that process soon spun out of control, because Amazon first asked for 2 books, then 32, 32 again, then 265, and finally 419, if I remember the numbers correctly. At that point we had to stop and completely re-think the situation, because there is no way we can produce that many books using color laser printers and a manual binding machine, not to mention the manual guillotine cutter, which requires at least four cuts per book.

So, without repeating the history of the past several weeks, in a nutshell, I signed up for an account with Lightning Source (LSI), a large print-on-demand company that will print the books in Tennessee and make them available directly to Amazon.com and other major online retailers (but not to distributors to bookstores, in my case).

I just received the proof copy from LSI this past Monday, and I expected it would take a week or more for the books to show up as available directly from Amazon. But I checked a few minutes ago, and, lo and behold, the book is now shown as "In Stock" and eligible for shipping with Amazon Prime. I believe this means that Amazon doesn't yet physically have a supply of books in its warehouse, but has them immediately available through LSI. Anyway, this is great news for me and for anyone who wants to buy the book, because they can order it and it will arrive quickly. Clenise and I don't have to print, pack, and ship to customers, and we can get out of the business of maintaining laser printers, refilling color toner cartridges, getting cutter blades sharpened, etc.

So, we'll see how this unfolds from here. I'm hoping the book's sales rank on Amazon (currently 37,034) will go up somwhat because of the ease of ordering directly from them, and because Amazon can't run out of books, having a direct pipeline to LSI's printing operation.

Also, LSI just e-mailed to tell me they have shipped a carton of books to camerabooks.com, the retailer in Oregon, and one carton to me. So, although both laser printers have been working here tonight and Clenise has bound another batch of books (using our new shipment of hot melt glue pellets, which seems to be of better quality than the pellets we used for the last two months), we may be getting out of the book printing business for now, and maybe forever. We'll see.

Still Printing While Waiting for Copies from Tennessee

2009-12-22T19:44:00.002-05:00

I had visions of sitting back and waiting for copies of the Leica D-Lux 4 book to be shipped to us here in Virginia from the Lightning Source facility in Tennessee, but I checked on their web site and it doesn't look as if those copies will arrive for another week or more, given the holiday season volume of work and the normal turnaround time. In the future I'll be able to order enough copies to have them in stock, and I won't need very many probably, because Lightning Source will keep Amazon.com and other sellers supplied directly. For now, though, Clenise has gotten both Brother color laser printers fired up again and sending out streams of nice-looking pages to be bound into finished books.

Clenise went to Office Depot today and picked up eight more reams of laser printer paper to keep us in production. I'm trying to avoid buying any more toner, because of the expense and mess involved. I'm hoping we can use up the remaining toner so we get our money's worth from it, and then go out of the printing business, at least for the time being.

I had actually thought we might be able to ease off more than we have, because it's now so close to Christmas that I thought people would stop ordering books for a while. They aren't ordering quite as many as before, but right now, on Tuesday night before Christmas, we have seven orders left to fill -- five color books and two black-and-white. Maybe now the orders will slow down until after Christmas. My thinking is that some people will get the Leica D-Lux 4 camera for Christmas and want this book to help them learn how to use it; we'll see in a few days. Hopefully by then the Lightning Source books will at least be on the way, so we won't have to scramble to print more books.

Checking Out the Proof

2009-12-21T21:23:00.005-05:00

Today the snow that was left on the ground after the storm is still creating enough of a problem that there was no mail delivery, but the FedEx truck was able to get here and deliver the proof copy of Photographer's Guide to the Leica D-Lux 4, as printed by Lightning Source in Tennessee. I was a little nervous opening the package, because I didn't know how well my Adobe InDesign files, exported to PDF files, would translate to a final product printed by a large print-on-demand company.

The news was good, though. The proof copy of the book looks very similar to the books that Clenise and I have been producing since late October. Some people on discussion forums had said that color photos don't look that great in print-on-demand books, but the photos in the proof look fine to me. I guess one reason for this result is that the photos in my book are not presented as great works of artistry; they are more in the nature of illustrating the capabilities of the camera. Many of the photos are simply photos of the camera's controls or menus, and they don't need to look spectacular. But the photos that are more colorful, and not just technical, still look very good to me. So, I was very relieved to see the excellent quality of Lightning Source's color printing. Also, the book is well constructed and looks in every way like a very respectable book that I would expect to see on a bookstore shelf.

I have already ordered two cartons of 16 books -- one carton for me, so I can fill some individual orders, and one carton for the folks at camerabooks.com in Oregon, who have been quite successful in selling the book through their web site.

Clenise and I are both really looking forward to settling back and letting Lightning Source handle the work of printing and binding the books, and even shipping them in most cases. This next phase of the project will be another interesting one, and hopefully less stressful than the earlier phases.

Digging Out; Moving Forward

2009-12-20T16:55:00.002-05:00

Here in central Virginia we got a lot of snow from last Friday afternoon through Saturday night. Today was bright and sunny, though still cold, and I was able to dig out a path for the car in about three hours. Later this afternoon I took a group of about 12 books to the post office and dropped them off in the collection box so they can start on their way to their purchasers tomorrow. I do spend a lot of time on shipping; I use the U.S. Postal Service Click 'N Ship service, which lets me print out the postage and address on a form to be attached to each package. It takes a lot of time to do that, but it has the advantage of discounts for the postage, and free delivery confirmation for domestic Priority Mail shipments.

Today I heard from a buyer in Spain whose book never reached him, after about four weeks. That's frustrating for him and me, but there's nothing to be done except refund his purchase price, which I did immediately. It's quite rare that a shipment doesn't reach a buyer, so I just accept the occasional problem as an ordinary part of the business.

I still have the Google AdWords campaign paused, because I don't want to generate a huge number of orders right now. I want the book to be available to anyone who's looking for it, but by now a Google search may find it anyway without having an ad pop up. I plan to resume the ad campaign later, once the books are being shipped by Lightning Source, but I don't want us to have to buy any more supplies for producing the books ourselves, if that can be avoided.

Snowed In; Building Up Inventory

2009-12-19T15:03:00.003-05:00

The predictions of a major snowstorm were not exaggerated. The central Virginia area is buried in a large dumping of snow. Right now it's snowing again, and we may get several more inches before it's done. I don't like the feeling of not being able to get out to the post office to ship books, but that's the situation. Usually on a Saturday I would make at least one trip to the post office to drop off the books that I prepared with printed postage from the usps.com web site, and to take the international shipments to the counter for processing. But the orders I have as of now will have to wait until at least Monday, when I hope to be able to be back on track with mailing packages. I posted a notice on the whiteknightpress.com web site to alert purchasers to the delay. Actually, though, I still probably will be able to ship the books within the required time frame for Amazon Marketplace, of one to two business days.

We have both printers printing now, one churning out color copies of the book and the other printing the black-and-white version that sells for a lower price. There have been several orders for the black-and-white version, and it appears that buyers do like having that choice, though the color version is still more popular by at least a ten-to-one margin.

Last night Lightning Source sent a message saying they have shipped the proof copy of the book, which is scheduled to arrive here on Monday, December 21 (weather permitting). It will be very interesting to see how that version of the book compares to our own printing. Hopefully we can then switch to using the LSI version, and reduce the labor-intensive activities of printing and shipping the books.

Big Snow Coming

2009-12-18T20:48:00.002-05:00

It's Friday evening. This morning I took about 15 books to the downtown post office and mailed them out. This afternoon I sent out another five. I wanted to ship as many as possible before the huge snowstorm hit. It's snowing heavily now, and there could be one or two feet of snow on the ground before it ends sometime tomorrow or Sunday. I've paused my Google AdWords campaign to try to cut down on orders somewhat. I'm reluctant to cancel the listings on Amazon Marketplace or on the whiteknightpress.com web site, because potential buyers could be discouraged if the book appears to be unavailable; they might conclude that it went out of print.

I've already had three new orders that haven't shipped yet, including one for Norway, for which I have to get to a post office, as opposed to just mailing the book from home or in a collection box. I probably won't be able to ship it before Monday at the soonest; I'll e-mail the buyer that there may be a shipping delay.

Still no more news from Lightning Source. When I log into my account, it shows that my proof order is "printing." I guess that means that it was approved to be printed, or maybe has entered a work flow to be printed, then inspected, bound, etc., before it gets shipped. So it will be next week before I get the proof copy of the book to approve, and then a few more days before the books can be distributed widely.

We have a good number of books printed out, waiting to be bound. No hurry to bind them, because we won't be able to get them shipped for a few days. Both printers are working well now, thanks to Clenise's steady work at maintaining them.

Stress Level Through the Roof -- And Back Down Again

2009-12-16T17:05:00.002-05:00

Today I had what was one of the most stressful periods of the entire book project. A couple of days ago I re-submitted the cover file for the Leica D-Lux 4 book to Lightning Source, the print-on-demand company that will start printing the books. The first cover file had been rejected for technical reasons, but I believed I had fixed those problems with the revised file. I was waiting somewhat apprehensively for some word from LSI as to whether the new file passed muster.

Early this afternoon I received an e-mail from the customer rep at LSI saying they had encountered problems with my file -- the exact same problems that they had with the original file! This was not good news. I had imagined maybe there would be some other problem, or maybe they would say there was still a slight issue but the file could be processed anyway, but not that all of the same problems were still there!

So I first called a person who is providing consulting services for the project. She looked at the file on her computer and could not immediately see a problem. I then called my customer service rep, who had sent me the unwelcome e-mail. I left a message for her to call me back. I didn't hear from her for about an hour, so I called a different rep, whose name had also been sent to me. She answered her phone, thank goodness. I explained the situation, and fortunately she soon reached the conclusion that I needed to speak to the technical person who had handled the file and found the problems. He came on the line and was very pleasant and helpful. After I explained my concerns, he realized that he had been looking at the original file again! He quickly checked the revised file, and found that it was fine and ready to go. He was quite apologetic, and promised to get the file processed as soon as possible. So, all's well that ends well, though I had some bad moments thinking I was at a dead end and could not get that file approved. Maybe it was worth going through this to get to the feeling of relief at the end.

So, in the fairly near future I should be receiving a proof copy of the book from LSI, and then, assuming it looks okay, I can order copies of the book to distribute myself, and I can let the books be distributed automatically to Amazon and other online retailers as orders are placed. I'm looking forward to letting LSI handle a lot of the work that Clenise and I have been doing ourselves for the past six or eight weeks.

The orders, meanwhile, have slowed down dramatically. Only two orders as of late afternoon today -- one from the U.S. and one from Singapore. I reactivated the Google AdWords campaign last night, so hopefully some more orders will come in, though people may be focusing on the holidays and may not think the book will arrive in time to be useful to them. I can still ship them out to arrive by Christmas in the U.S., though probably not outside of the U.S.

Still a Lot Going On

2009-12-15T22:45:00.002-05:00

Well, yesterday I missed out and never got around to posting a new entry here. It just got too late with everything going on. I won't try to mention all that's happening, but I'll just give a brief update.

Leica posted the firmware update to the D-Lux 4 camera on the U.S. web site on December 11, but a day or two later it disappeared. The only explanation I have seen was a brief message by a member of the dpreview.com Leica discussion forum saying that there were technical concerns with bracketing and the French language. That's too bad; I updated my camera and it was working fine as far as I could tell. The update provides some excellent enhancements to the camera, but we'll have to wait a while for it to be fixed and released again.

We're printing books again now, though I had to make a quick trip to OfficeMax this evening for more Brother toner cartridges. Yesterday I started to order some on Amazon.com, but I left them in my virtual shopping cart, and never finished the order. Oh, well. Things were busy yesterday.

Orders have slowed down a bit. Yesterday I took 18 books to the post office, representing the orders from Saturday and Sunday. Today I took 8. As of now, at 10:50 Tuesday night, we have 9 books to ship tomorrow, all to buyers in the U.S., which is unusual. I had stopped the Google AdWords campaign for several days, and that may have had the effect of slowing down international orders. Anyway, this evening I started it back up again, and we'll see if orders pick up.

I guess some people are ordering for the holidays, and they may think it's too late to get books shipped in time. Actually, I ship the next business day if I receive the order by about 11:00 p.m. Eastern time, so there is still time if anyone wants a book before Christmas.

The last two black-and-white copies of the book that were available from me on Amazon Marketplace just sold, and I'm not going to put any more of them on sale there, at least not right away, because we're only printing color books right now, and with only one printer operating, we can't print both kinds at the same time.

Yesterday I submitted a revised cover file to Lightning Source after they e-mailed me to say the first file had technical problems. I'm hoping I got it right the second time.

Trying to Keep Up with Orders

2009-12-13T13:23:00.003-05:00

As we continue down the home stretch, it never seems to get much easier to keep up with orders. The one printer that is now functioning was printing quite nicely last night and then again this morning -- until it "paused." I tried to un-pause it from the computer, but that had no effect. For the last two hours, Clenise has been working to get the toner cartridges refilled with toner from the bottles we bought over the internet. This toner seems to be good, but it is a very tedious task to refill the cartridges properly, so toner doesn't leak out, and the printer recognizes the cartridge as full. A few minutes ago she replaced the refilled cartridges in the printer, and then the printer's display turned the dreaded red color, with a message about a Drum Error. Now Clenise is using the vacuum cleaner to try to clean off the drum unit of any excess toner.

With any luck, we will have the printer up and running again before too long, but nothing is certain in this venture.

Right now, we have seven unfilled orders, all for the version of the book with color photographs. A few people have ordered the black-and-white version, but I believe the ratio is at least ten color books to one B&W book.

Today we officially reached the mark of 400 books sold. We have produced considerably more than that, because of books sent out as promotional copies or replacements for books that got lost in shipment or had other issues.

We have now sold books to buyers in 22 countries other than the U.S.

A Quieter Day

2009-12-12T14:03:00.003-05:00

Today is Saturday, and for once I'm finding time to write a post during daylight hours, just after 2:00 p.m. Things have settled down for the moment, which is a rare situation lately. I've received orders for only two books so far today. I'm not sure why; maybe it's because the holiday season is in full swing and people have things to do other than order camera guides. At any rate, I'm glad it's peaceful here now. Clenise is really worn to a frazzle, though she managed to bind nine more color-interior books a little while ago. I needed two of them to fill today's two orders.

I also had a chance earlier today to download and install the new version 2.1 firmware update to the Leica D-Lux 4 camera. It does seem to be a very useful update; it helps with white balance accuracy, provides a 1:1 aspect ratio so you can take perfectly square images; and gives a broader range of adjustments for exposure compensation, among other items. It will take a while to test all of the new functions and figure them out. I have posted links to the update on my whiteknightpress.com web site. Eventually I may revise the book to include references to the new features, but I won't do that until the update has been around for a while.

Now I'm waiting for Lightning Source to finish processing my text and cover files and send me a proof copy of the book to approve. Then it will be interesting to see how quickly and how widely the book gets distributed. I was reading today on Aaron Shepard's blog that books such as this one (printed by Lightning Source and distributed with a "short discount" and non-returnable) will not be carried by Borders.com. It still should be available through Amazon.com and BN.com, among other places. I'll be watching to see where the book turns up. I'm hoping this type of distribution will work out well. Of course, it would be nice to see it on bookstore shelves, but that is not likely to happen when I'm not making it available at the higher discount that the major distributors require. I will have to decide whether to order some books myself that I can sell through Amazon Marketplace and elsewhere. Actually, I wouldn't mind getting out of the business of selling individual copies of the books, because it takes so much time to process orders and pack and ship books, including daily trips to the post office.

Down the Home Stretch

2009-12-11T22:02:00.002-05:00

Clenise and I are both getting worn out from producing books ourselves. Her case of tennis elbow is getting worse, from operating the lever of the binding machine and the blade of the cutter, along with constantly maintaining the printers and tweaking the toner cartridges to keep the pages flowing out. But I think we're approaching the end of this phase of the project. Today I received a message from Lightning Source saying they have started processing the files I uploaded yesterday, and with good luck it sounds as if they may be ready to start printing the books within a week or so. We're both looking forward to sitting back for a while and letting someone else do the printing, binding, and shipping.

Today Leica announced the update of the firmware of the D-Lux 4 camera to version 2.1, a long-awaited event. I'm glad I didn't wait for that update before publishing the book. I have put a link on my web site at whiteknightpress.com for people to get access to the new update. I haven't had a chance to download it yet myself, because I've been busy filling orders. The Google AdWords campaign is still paused, but today so far we have had eight orders through Amazon Marketplace (one of them for 2 books) and one order through the White Knight Press web site. We are just barely producing enough books to fill these orders.

Start of Transition Time

2009-12-10T17:09:00.003-05:00

Today marks the beginning of a transition period in the life of our project to publish the Leica D-Lux 4 book. I took the final steps to carry out the plan to have Lightning Source, the print-on-demand company, print copies of the book as needed and distribute them to the major online sellers, such as Amazon.com. The books and other writings about using this company (often referred to as LSI) warn that the process can be difficult for a neophyte like me, but it wasn't really too bad, maybe because I was expecting worse. I didn't have to ask anyone from the company for help, though I had received e-mails from several people with LSI giving their phone numbers in case I needed assistance.

After double-checking my Adobe InDesign file with the book's layout for formatting and any problems, I used InDesign's built-in Export function to export a pdf file, using the standard of PDF/X-1a:2001, which is what LSI requires. I also used LSI's cover template generator to request a cover template. That process was a little trickier; after I gave the the number of pages and other specifications (color cover and interior; trim size of 5.5 by 8.5 inches, etc.), LSI e-mailed me an InDesign cover template with a bar code containing the ISBN and price of the book. I then had to insert the graphic elements of my cover design onto that template. That was a bit tricky for me, but Clenise helped me, and eventually we got the cover looking just like it looks now, with everything in its place.

Now, unless LSI finds any problems with the cover or text files I uploaded, we will receive a proof copy of the book within a week or two. Once the proof is approved, the book should start being distributed to any online seller that requests copies. Also, I can order copies myself, so I can keep selling the book on Amazon Marketplace and on my whiteknightpress.com web site if I'm so inclined.

The book won't be in bookstores, because I selected to have a "short discount" of 20%. Bookstores require a discount of something like 40% or more, so you probably won't find this book in Borders or Barnes & Noble stores, at least in the near future. Who knows what could happen later on.

Orders through Amazon Marketplace and my own site have continued to flow in at a fairly steady pace of roughly six or eight per day, though I have put my Google AdWords campaign on pause. It gets tiring to keep filling individual orders, and I will be glad in a way when LSI starts to handle printing and distribution.

Today we had two more orders from Sweden, after one other recently, and one from Finland the other day, so I guess there may be some sort of announcement about the book on a Swedish web site that I'm not aware of.

I'm still offering the color and black-and-white versions of the book; I haven't made an official count, but I would estimate that sales of the color version are about ten times the sales of the black-and-white version. I'm sending LSI only the color version, and once LSI starts printing the books, I will have to decide what to do about the black-and-white one. One possibility would be for Clenise and me to keep producing that version on our printers, because the cost of black toner would be manageable, and the volume of sales probably would be low enough to be manageable also.

Presses Are Still Rolling

2009-12-08T23:18:00.002-05:00

This will have to be short because time is short, but I don't like to miss posting for a day if I can help it. I'm in the process of getting the book set to be printed by Lightning Source in color. The good news on that front is it looks like they can print it for a reasonable amount, unless I've read their pricing schedule wrong. The bad news is it looks as if it may take a couple of weeks to get that process finished, but I hope to get the files uploaded to them within a day or two.

The orders keep rolling in, though I've paused the Google AdWords campaign in an effort to slow the orders down; we've run out of cover stock, and a new supply won't arrive for another day or two. We also need more toner. Clenise has had success in refilling cartridges from bottles of toner, so we'll try that method at least twice more.

Orders have come in from several new countries over the last few days -- Finland, Sweden, Luxembourg, and Belgium. Also other orders from France, Spain, the Netherlands, and others. Quite a few from the UK and Canada. I wish I knew how people are finding out about the book; I wonder if some announcement reached Scandinavia recently.

Well, that's it for now; have to reload paper in the printer.

Color versus Black-and-White

2009-12-07T21:50:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I set up the two official versions of the book about the D-Lux 4 camera -- the original version, with color photographs in the interior of the book, and a newly fine-tuned version with all the same content as the original book, except that the photographs have been converted to black-and-white. I didn't just print the same book without color; I took each photograph individually and adjusted it so it would look as good as possible in black-and-white, by adjusting the contrast, brightness, sharpness, etc.

As I mentioned in earlier posts, the driving force here was to try to make enough money from selling the books to cover our expenses for printing them; we had been losing money on each book because we were not able to find a reliable source of color toner for the laser printers at a price that would let us break even or make a profit at the original price of $19.95 for the full-color version of the book.

So yesterday the book went on sale on Amazon Marketplace and on my whiteknightpress.com web site in two versions -- the original color one for $26.95 and the black-and-white one for $19.95. Since that time, we have had 12 orders -- 10 for the color book and 2 for the black-and-white version.

That result surprised me somewhat. I thought some more people might balk at the higher price and prefer to pay $19.95 for the less-expensive version, which has all the same text and is basically just as useful as the color book for learning how to use the D-Lux 4 camera. But I can understand someone wanting the "best" version available.

Today I received my e-mails saying my account with Lightning Source has been approved. I will soon look into pricing to have that print-on-demand company print the books. I was going to have them printed in black-and-white, but now, after today's sales results, I'm rethinking that decision, and may get the books printed in color, if it can be done at a price that leaves some margin for profit.

Clenise has done a great job of keeping the printers running despite many mechanical failures, defective toner cartridges, and other obstacles, so we're still able to keep up with orders for the book. Now, of course, we have to gauge demand for the two different versions and keep enough of both versions printed and ready to ship. That does complicate things a bit, but so far, so good, and hopefully Lightning Source (or possibly another company) will soon take over the printing and shipping chores.

Printer Woes; Testing the Waters with New Price

2009-12-06T17:34:00.004-05:00

Last night Clenise was up until about 2:30 in the morning trying to get the toner cartridges working properly. Yesterday we received our first shipment of bottles of toner to refill the cartridges with -- our latest attempt to address the problem of the excessive cost of color toner for the Brother printers. She has figured out various techniques and tricks for how to empty out the old toner and add the new toner, and reset the cartridges. All seemed to be working earlier in the evening, but then a clicking sound started up in one of the cartridges. Right now she's still trying to diagnose that problem, so we haven't been able to print anything all day today.

On the sales front, yesterday I finished the procedures for re-listing the books with the new prices. The color version of the D-Lux 4 book is now listed at $26.95 on Amazon Marketplace and on my web site, whiteknightpress.com. The black-and-white version is listed on Amazon and my web site also, at $19.95. For some reason, I haven't been able to find the black-and-white version through a search on Amazon, although it is listed in my inventory on Amazon Marketplace. If it doesn't show up within about another day, I'll have to contact Amazon to see if they can fix this issue. Ideally, the two versions of the book should be linked, so potential buyers browsing on Amazon can see both and decide which they want.

I have been somewhat surprised that no one has yet bought the black-and-white version of the book. I have sold several -- maybe about 4 or 5 so far, of the color copies at the new price of $26.95. I have heard quite different opinions from various people about color versus black-and-white. Some say it should not make a big difference, but others, including one commenter on this blog, said it would be a shame to do away with the color edition. So this will be an experiment. My plan was to start selling the book through Lightning Source for $19.95 in a black-and-white edition, having the books printed on demand by that company. But if it turns out that none of the black-and-white versions sell, I may rethink that strategy and sign up with another company to print the books in color to be sold at a higher price -- at least $26.95, and possibly $27.9 -- to leave a margin for some profit and start to recover the expenses of this project.

Had to Increase Price of Book

2009-12-05T11:47:00.002-05:00

I was reluctant to take this step, but as those who have read the past posts here know, we were getting submerged in expenses because of the costs of buying toner and other consumables for the two Brother color laser printers we're using to print the book about the Leica D-Lux 4 digital camera. I have never stopped to figure out a precise cost of producing each book in color, but I know we were taking a substantial loss on each book. A complete set of high-capacity toner cartridges for each printer costs about $330.00 at the cheapest I could find. The cyan, magenta, and yellow toners are about $90.00 each, and the black is about $60.00 each. We also have to replace periodically the printers' drum units, waste toner boxes, and belt units. That's not to mention the cost of paper, which is at least $12.00 per ream of 500 sheets. Each book requires 57 sheets of paper, if there is no loss at all through misprints or wastage. That means we get slightly more than 8 books out of a ream, so the paper cost alone is about $1.50 per book. I'm not sure how many books we get from a complete set of toner cartridges, but I would say the most we could get would be about 30 books. So, the toner cost would be roughly $11.00 per book. Then there is the cost of replacing the blade of the paper cutter, which can last for only 1,000 cuts. Each book takes at least 4 cuts to trim it, so we have to spend about $300.00 for a new blade after every 250 books. That adds about another dollar to the cost of each book. (We may be able to reduce that cost by getting one of the old blades sharpened; we'll try that next time.) Then you factor in fees charged by Amazon.com, eBay, PayPal, or any other avenue of distribution, and it's easy to see how we were losing money on every book sold.

I'm hoping that the price increase will stem the flow of money out. I'm not sure how people will react to the increase; maybe they will stop buying books. Actually, that would be better in a way than continuing to sell books at a loss. This morning I took 13 books to the Post Office, and when I got home there were two new orders waiting for me.

Anyway, it will be very interesting to see if the price increase brings sales to a halt, or brings in enough money to cover the cost of the books. We're also now printing and offering for sale a black-and-white version, and it may be that people will be satisfied with that version. All of the content is the same; it just lacks the color in the photos. It will save a considerable amount of money to print that version, because we will only need black toner, not the three colors.

Google Adjustments

2009-12-04T21:06:00.003-05:00

I haven't made a scientific study, but yesterday was a slow day for orders -- only about 3 or 4, while I had suspended the Google AdWords campaign for a while. Today I reactivated it, and we ended up with 12 orders by individuals so far, all but one through Amazon Marketplace. That's the most Amazon Marketplace orders I've ever had in one day. I don't know if it's because the Google ads are back up again, or because I haven't shipped any more books directly to Amazon for them to sell at a lower price, so people are deciding they need to order from a seller who has them in stock for immediate shipment, rather than wait for Amazon to get them back in stock.

Yesterday I assigned a new ISBN to the revised edition of the book, with black-and-white photos, and we printed up a few copies. I'm waiting for my new Lightning Source account to become active so I can start selling books that they print and distribute. Things are still very busy, and it will be interesting to see what direction they go in next.

Trying to Turn Things in a Different Direction

2009-12-03T17:43:00.002-05:00

The Leica D-Lux 4 book project is still very enjoyable and exhilarating in its way, but it can be draining, for both me and Clenise. She has tennis elbow, which is made worse by operating the binding machine and cutter. She also spends a lot of her time diagnosing and fixing color printer problems, mostly caused by bad toner cartridges.

Today I am in the process of signing up for an account with Lightning Source, the large print-on-demand company that will print the book for us and ship it to major distributors such as Ingram and Baker & Taylor. I don't fully understand how it will all work, but I'm basing this move partly on Aaron Shepard's excellent book, Aiming at Amazon, which advocates the use of Lightning Source, and discussions in publishing forums online.

The other aspect of the new direction is to convert the book's interior photographs to black-and-white. I spent much of yesterday doing the conversions in Adobe Photoshop Elements and InDesign. Soon I have to assign one of my eight remaining ISBNs (standard book identifying numbers) to the new version. Even though it will have the same text, I've been told that this will constitute a sufficiently different format of the book that it needs a separate identity through a new ISBN.

Then, I will send the pdf version to Lightning Source and they will print them whenever orders come in. I will also be able to order copies myself, so I can keep selling them through my web site and on Amazon Marketplace and elsewhere.

I've had orders come in recently from Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Canada, as well as U.S. ones. The book keeps selling to individuals, but those sales are slowing a bit now, partly because I have suspended my ad campaign on Google AdWords. I may start it up again once the new version of the book goes into production.

A Lot Has Been Happening

2009-12-02T20:20:00.003-05:00

As evidence that a lot has been going on, I point out the fact that yesterday I never got a chance to make an entry in this blog. That was the first day I have missed in a long time. Things have been very hectic as I try to figure out the next steps. This morning Amazon sent another order, this time for 418 books. I need to go ahead and cancel or decline all outstanding Amazon orders, because I can't possibly produce that many books. I'm still selling books to individuals on Amazon Marketplace, but we're just barely producing enough books to keep enough on hand to fulfill those orders.

Today I saw that someone has listed a copy of the book as Used on Amazon Marketplace for $80.77. I'll have to check to see if that sells; if it does, I guess it means my pricing is off!

I have started the process to get the book printed by the print-on-demand company, Lightning Source; I hope to send the pdf files to them within the next few days. Hopefully, then all the people who want the book through Amazon will be able to get them. The interiors will have black-and-white photos rather than color, but that shouldn't matter too much, because the purpose of this book is to show people how to use the camera, not to illustrate the taking of beautiful color pictures.

Anyway, we have one color laser printer up and running now. We decided to get a new set of high-capacity color toner cartridges that are the genuine Brother ones. I'm pretty disappointed in the quality of all of the refilled toner cartridges we tried. Every time I thought we had found a great source of economical toner, it turned out the supplier sent us defective cartridges, or ones that weren't completely filled, etc. We are going to try refilling the genuine Brother cartridges ourselves, with bottles of toner. That will be the last attempt; if that doesn't work, we may stop printing and just rely on Lightning Source.

I don't feel good that there still seems to be a good amount of demand for the book that we can't fill quickly, but that's the way things go with projects like this; it was to a certain extent an excursion into the unknown. An excellent learning experience. I do hope we can turn it into a financially profitable one, but that's still uncertain.

Moving Toward a New Phase

2009-11-30T22:02:00.002-05:00

Today I took a concrete step toward the transition from home-based printing to using a print-on-demand company, Lightning Source. I signed up with a consultant who has considerable expertise in that area, and I will be bouncing questions off of her for the next several days. I expect to convert the book to having all black-and-white photos in the interior to cut down on production costs, and let Lightning Source take care of distributing the book to Amazon and other sellers. The book may not get into bookstores this way, but it isn't in stores now and is selling fairly well through online channels.

Today we received our new blade for the Martin-Yale cutter accompanied by a set of instructions that would make the standard knockdown furniture instructions look like a simple nursery rhyme. To be fair, the instructions had an introduction saying the blade should be installed only by a qualified field service person. Clenise made a valiant effort to install it, but soon realized she needed professional help. Remarkably, she called the company and they directed her to a local service man, who came right out to our house and installed it! I was amazed, and now the cutter cuts like a blazing sword through melting butter; an incredible difference.

The laser printers are a different story. We received another shipment of refilled toner cartridges, and they are not doing so well, though we switched them into the other printer and now we are able to print some good copies.

Today we received an order for 21 more books from camerabooks.com, and we'll ship those tomorrow. I think I'm going to have to cancel all outstanding orders from Amazon Advantage, because it's too costly and difficult to produce enough books to fill those orders. Once we're up and running with Lightning Source, Amazon will get books through that channel.

Coming to a Major Decision Point

2009-11-29T19:40:00.002-05:00

Writing the book about the D-Lux 4 was a challenge, but I have to say that the publishing, printing, and distribution have presented more challenges. Every day I learn something, though, which is great. This experiment has not been financially profitable as of yet, but I think the amount of knowledge Clenise and I have gained has made it all worthwhile.

Today I learned more about how Amazon Advantage works. I had read the help files Amazon has available, as well as the instructions it sends when it orders books through the Advantage program, but those files did not explain everything, and some of the instructions were inconsistent with each other, at least as I read them. Anyway, about a week ago they ordered 265 books from us, and we scrambled for a while trying to figure out whether we could produce that many books. I contacted a print-on-demand operation to check on the possibility of getting them to print the books, and considered other options as well. Eventually, Clenise and I decided we could not fill that full order, so I replied to the order by saying we will ship 32 books by December 7.

I wasn't quite sure what would happen next, but I found out today. This morning Amazon again sent an order for more books -- this time for 239 books. I then read some more help files, and I found a statement saying that, if we can't fill the entire order, we should declare the title "suspended" because it's temporarily unavailable. If we don't do that, Amazon will continue to order books, because we have the title listed as "active."

Okay, so now I think I understand better how Amazon Advantage works. Either we declare the title suspended, or we find a way to fill the complete orders for hundreds of books. We really can't do the latter, at least under present conditions. So we need to find a new approach to distributing this book.

Basically, it does not seem to be economically feasible to produce a book like this one, with numerous color photographs on its interior pages, with a list price of $19.95. So something has to give -- we need to either raise the price or convert the book to all black-and-white pages.

I don't really like the idea of raising the price to $24.95, as someone suggested to us, and that wouldn't solve the problem that well, because producing the book in color would still be expensive enough to cut the potential profit to a bare minimum.

That leaves converting the book to black-and-white pages. That really isn't too much of a problem. I liked having the color pages, partly because they look nice, partly because it was interesting to see if color laser printers could produce adequate quality (they could, in my opinion, but not cost-effectively), and partly because I like to reproduce the pictures as the camera actually took them.

But, for the purpose of illustrating how the camera works, most of the functions don't really need color illustrations. Some of the images are easier to see in detail with color, which gives more definition to the pictures, but I don't think the reader will miss too much with black-and-white illustrations.

So, after discussing the options with Clenise today, I think it's likely that we will switch gears and shut down our home-based printing operation within the next week or so. Instead of printing at home on color laser printers, I'm tentatively planning to look into getting the books printed in black-and-white by Lightning Source, the large print-on-demand company that is used by numerous publishers for books that don't need to be printed in huge amounts. That way, we can have as many books printed as needed; they will be printed quickly; and they will automatically be available through the large distributors, including Baker & Taylor and Ingram, so, if Barnes & Noble or another retailer wants to order a book for a customer, they can do so (which they can't as of now). Also, the books will be available to Amazon, but through the print-on-demand channel, and not through the Amazon Advantage program. I think this system will work better for us, and will take the pressure off us to produce dozens of books on short notice.

We will still keep printing for a week or two until we can get the new system started, assuming that's the route we take. I plan to talk to a consultant about helping make this transition, which may require getting a new ISBN for the book, etc. Also, I will make a further effort to get the book formatted for Amazon's Kindle and made available for sale for that electronic device.

On the individual ordering front, I still am receiving orders, though there has not been any new publicity lately, so there have been only about five or six orders per day. Today we had an order from Malaysia, our first order from that country.

I have to say that, although Clenise and I have both enjoyed the experience of printing and binding books, it was beginning to wear us out with the long hours and stress of dealing with printers that wouldn't print, or printed badly, a cutter whose blade was wearing out, and other issues. We both can use some rest, which may be coming in the near future, if things work out along the new lines we envision.

Two Printers Printing Again - After a Battle

2009-11-28T19:50:00.002-05:00

The battle was strictly a technical one, but a draining and protracted one. As of yesterday, I was about ready to throw both printers out a window. Clenise had pretty well solved the print-quality issues by cleaning the printers' components, installing new drum units and belt units and toner cartridges, and other actions. But then the printers would print a few pages, then "pause." I have no idea why they would pause, but once they did, even if they resumed the print job was ruined. Sometimes I could get maybe 20 or so pages printed, and then I would coax the rest of the book's pages out of a printer, but it took me all day to get about three full copies of the book.

I reinstalled the printer drivers and reset the printers to factory settings, but nothing worked. I finally decided the problem must somehow be related to the fact that both printers were on our home ethernet network, along with several computers, and somehow the data streams going to the printers were getting confused or interrupted by data going elsewhere. Or something like that. I don't know much about the technical aspects of networking.

So today I finally decided to switch one of the printers to a USB connection directly to the computer. That seems to be working. Right now that printer is happily cranking out clean pages. I left the other printer on the network to see if the problem has cleared up, and so far it seems to be okay. The other printer also is printing continuously. I guess two identical printers on the same network caused confusion, though that system had worked quite well previously. Anyway, once I make sure this system works, I'm not going to change it one bit.

We haven't received our new cutter blade yet; I think it will arrive Monday, and by then we should have enough copies printed that we can concentrate on cutting and binding. So things are looking up. Of course, we still haven't found a way to control the high cost of color toner, but we're taking things one step at a time.

Looking for New Approaches

2009-11-27T19:19:00.002-05:00

I need to find a way to cut down on the costs of production, or else turn over production to someone else, because the costs of color toner, along with printer parts and other items, are eating away at any potential profits. Yesterday I contacted someone with a company that prints color books. He was glad to take on the job, but his company would charge $14.52 per book, which is more than I get paid for most sales. So I would still be losing money if I tried that option. Another option is to switch to a version of the book with all black-and-white photographs. I may have to make that change eventually, but not yet. However, I have started to offer a black-and-white version as an option through my web site, at a reduced price of $15.95. That just started today, and no one has purchased that version yet. We'll see how that develops.

The next issue that started causing problems today is the condition of the Martin-Yale 7000e paper cutter. It's getting noticeably harder to trim the bound books now, because the blade is getting dull. I have ordered a replacement blade, and hopefully it will arrive in time to avoid a shut-down of production for lack of a cutting capability.

I replied to Amazon's order department about their order for 265 copies of the book; I said we will ship them 32. There's no way we can produce 265 copies in the near future, and 32 is the amount we have shipped the last two times, so that seemed like a reasonable amount. Maybe Amazon's pace of sales will slow down and things will become less hectic.

Right now we have one printer printing very nice copies, using new toner cartridges that arrived by UPS this morning. The only problem is that the printer pauses from time to time for no discernible reason. Clenise just got the other printer working after a couple of days when it wouldn't print at all. I'll try printing to it soon.

Happy Thanksgiving; Trying Not to get Bogged Down with Book Issues

2009-11-26T20:40:00.002-05:00

At first I thought I wouldn't post anything today, because the kids are home from out of town and we're having our Thanksgiving dinner and trying to relax. But, a short update is probably in order. I did receive some helpful feedback from a publishers' group I joined, and I have sent a message to a print-on-demand company to see if they can start producing the book in greater volume than we can with our laser printers. Both of our printers are down now, for lack of toner for both printers, and for one printer, for lack of working. Our cutter's blade is getting dull, so I ordered a new blade. More toner should be arriving over the weekend, but we really need to get someone else involved in the printing if we're going to keep up with the orders.

I heard back from a customer who had ordered the book from Barnes and Noble's web site. I had written him to say I didn't think they would be able to get him the book, and, sure enough, he replied today, telling me they had cancelled the order and said they couldn't get him the book. I had suggested he order it instead from camerabooks.com. He said he did so, and was pleased with their service. I thought that was interesting that Barnes & Noble had even listed the book on its site. And I was glad that camerabooks.com got the sale.

Things Are Getting a Little Intense; Comments and Suggestions are Welcome

2009-11-25T19:12:00.002-05:00

Clenise and I have been very busy all through our project to publish the book about the Leica D-Lux 4 camera. Keeping enough paper, toner, printer components and other supplies at hand and keeping the printers going with good copies of the book have been challenges all along. Filling the orders from individuals and the few larger orders from Amazon.com presented other hurdles to get over.

But today we were presented with a new order from Amazon that has clearly put us on the brink of a fairly major decision. This morning I received an e-mail from Amazon Advantage with an order for 265 more books. That's in addition to the 32 I just shipped to them today, and the 32 that we shipped a week or so ago. As with other orders, 265 doesn't sound at first blush like a large number. But to small publishers like us, it is really huge, since we have to create each book from scratch in our home office. We have to get the paper, the toner, get the printer to cooperate, then cut the printed pages in half to book-sized pages, bind the books, trim them, shrink-wrap them, and ship them. I figure that printing 265 books would take roughly 32 reams of printer paper, and would take about eight heavy cartons to ship them in.

So now we have to decide whether to accept this order and start printing all day, every day. We would need a new blade for the cutter, new drum units for the printers, and a host of other supplies. We don't make any money on books sold to Amazon at their standard heavy discount. But it is good to see the book in stock and available there; it gives it exposure and credibility, I think, and the chance for more reviews by readers.

On the other hand, I never envisioned the book selling this many copies this quickly, and we aren't really set up to print and ship in that sort of volume.

So, what do we do now? I haven't received many comments on this blog, but if anyone has any realistic ideas, I would love to hear from you. If you don't want to comment publicly, you can reach me through the web site at www. whiteknightpress.com.

Here are some of my thoughts and questions:

1. What would be the implications if we decline to fill the latest Amazon Advantage order, or fill it only partly? Would that have any negative consequences, or would Amazon just then order some more books later on and see if we can fill a later order? The book would not get listed as "in stock" at Amazon, presumably, unless we can completely fill the order. But is that a bad thing?

2. What are the best other options? Should we try to find a short-run printer who can print this book with its color photos through conventional printing in a lot of 500 or 1,000, to take the pressure off of our self-printing operation?

3. Is there an established publisher somewhere that would be interested in working with us or taking over the book? A little while ago on Amazon its sales rank was 1,194, though that may just be a temporary spurt because of some publicity or other factor I'm not aware of.

4. Any other ideas that could keep the book selling without our being swamped in actual toner and figurative red ink would be welcomed.

Not Enough Hours in the Day

2009-11-24T22:54:00.002-05:00

I didn't get a chance to write this entry until almost 11:00 p.m., pretty late for me. That's because things are so busy. Ten individual orders today, including one from a new country -- Portugal. Also orders from Spain, Canada, and the Netherlands, as well as the U.S. I cut the Google AdWords budget to $10.00 today, because we really have about all the orders we can handle at the moment. I was going to delay filling the latest Amazon order for a while until we could build the inventory back up, but they e-mailed me this morning with a reminder, saying they would like to have the Amazon Advantage orders confirmed within 24 hours. So I confirmed the latest order, and we will try to ship them 32 books within the next few days. Our production is doing better; today Clenise bound 26 books in one session, a new record. Then we had to trim them, inspect them, and shrink-wrap them, while constantly printing new ones. Both printers were working today, but we're waiting for a new shipment of toner before we can print many more copies.

No real problems today; by now we've experienced just about every problem, so we're more ready to deal with issues as they arise. The cutter's blade is starting to get a bit dull, so soon we'll be faced with ordering a new blade to use while we get that one sharpened. That will run us around $300. There are plenty of expenses, and it's not yet clear that we'll be able to make any profit. But things are busy and interesting, and that's not so bad. Clenise and I are learning something useful every day, and maybe we can put the information to good use for future projects, or for later stages of this one.

Keeping Up with Orders

2009-11-23T22:04:00.002-05:00

Individual orders have been coming in fairly steadily; I would say the average lately is about five per day. Someone e-mailed me today to say he was having trouble ordering through PayPal on my web site, whiteknightpress.com. I suggested he try Amazon Marketplace or eBay. Later he replied, saying he had worked it out by ordering through Barnes & Noble, whose online site says the D-Lux 4 book will be available on November 28. I e-mailed back, saying that's not a great option, because Barnes & Noble has never requested any books from me, and I have not sent them any books, so it's unlikely they have any! I hope he ends up getting the book one way or another.

We've been printing books pretty steadily lately, with an eye to filling Amazon's latest order for 32 books, and still keeping up with individual orders. There haven't been any new reviews on Amazon lately, though I've gotten nice feedback from two recent buyers on Amazon Marketplace and eBay.

One area that I haven't mentioned in a while is the book's cover. In my opinion, the cover has been one of the more successful aspects of this whole project. For one thing, it has been easy to print, since it's a single-sided document. Also, I was lucky in choosing what turned out to be a very good coated stock for printing the cover. It looks nice, and holds the printer's colors very well. The design looks pretty good to me, and that is largely because of the helpful suggestions I received from a person who did not want to be named. That person contacted me through dpreview.com and gave me some very helpful tips about design of the book and cover, but did not want any public acknowledgment.

Amazon Orders Yet Again

2009-11-22T14:48:00.002-05:00

Well, I guess a small publisher is supposed to be glad when a big company orders more of his books, but I'm actually getting to the point of slightly dreading the appearance in my e-mail inbox of "You have an Amazon.com Advantage order." I prefer seeing the messages about payments received through PayPal, or sales through Amazon Marketplace. This morning I saw all three types of message. I read some more about Amazon's Advantage program, and I think I understand it better now. They just keep placing orders as they run out of books, though they still don't seem to ever place orders large enough to ever actually be able to list the book as "in stock." This time they ordered 32 books. I guess that may be their maximum order from a small publisher like me, because that's the largest number they have ordered previously. Anyway, now I am faced with deciding whether to try to fill this order or tell Amazon I don't have enough books available.

Right now, we have nine books bound, shrink-wrapped, and ready to ship. Six others are already packed up and ready to go the post office tomorrow, mostly heading outside of the U.S., to Canada, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. So, in order to fill the new Amazon order, we would need to produce 23 books in a short amount of time, and that's not accounting for other books that would be needed for other orders as they come in. I have a little time, because Amazon's materials say I can take up to seven days before confirming that I will fill the order.

Otherwise, today I printed a sample black-and-white version of the book to see how it looks. It looks quite good; the color photographs look nice, but the book is really just as useful with black-and-white photos. So I'm considering offering that version through my web site at a reduced price, to cut down on the difficulty of dealing with color toner for the laser printers.

Today I had an interesting message from a fellow in California who also decided to publish his own guidebook about a technical topic -- in his case, software. He had some interesting points about what he did and how he did it, including switching to a PDF after he became bogged down with filling orders, going to the post office, and generally dealing with printed copies. (Though he had the books printed somewhere else; he didn't print them himself.) It's very interesting to hear the stories of other people who are going the individual-publisher route, and I learn something new every time I hear one of those stories. I hope I'll hear others.

Right now Clenise has got one printer running smoothly with clean copies flowing out. But it will quite a while before we get 32 books ready to ship. We may not ever fill that order; I'm just not sure right now.

Ups and Downs of the Publishing Project

2009-11-21T15:14:00.003-05:00

My book about the Leica D-Lux 4 has been available to the public for about four weeks now, so it's time for an update and evaluation of how things are going. We have sold 205 books, including 89 books shipped to Amazon.com to be sold by them. Ten books have gone to Camerabooks.com to be sold by that retailer. I don't know yet how those books will sell. The majority of the sales have been through my own web site, whiteknightpress.com, or to individuals through Amazon Marketplace and eBay.

Today we added one more country to the list of locations of purchasers -- Ireland, bringing the total to 13. That is one of the pleasures of this endeavor -- knowing that my book is going to readers in various parts of the world, and hopefully helping them use their cameras for better results. I also have enjoyed interacting with purchasers who have special requests, such as needing the book quickly before going on a trip, or needing two copies. It's always nice to know that someone's needs are being met efficiently. One customer e-mailed to say his book had been mangled in shipment (even though I ship them in sturdy mailers), so I sent him a replacement book and he was very appreciative. One thing I always try to do is to ship the books quickly. I buy a good number of books and other items online myself, and having them shipped quickly is very important to me. Today I made three separate trips to the local post office after orders came in, so I could get the books in the mail today, rather than wait until Monday. (Two of the books were going to Japan and Ireland, and I have to take those to the post office; for domestic shipments I use online postage, and can drop the books in a collection box, so I don't need to go into the post office.)

Right now everything is going fairly well except that the printers develop print-quality problems about once a day. We keep replacing drum units and waste toner boxes and Clenise constantly cleans the printers' interiors, but problems persist. I think there also may be a problem stemming from some of the lower-quality replacement toner cartridges we've used. We'll keep searching for a better supply of decent-quality toner.

Also, orders have tapered off. I have no idea what the overall demand for this book is. As far as I can tell, the Leica D-Lux 4 camera itself is still very popular and selling well. I would hope some of the new buyers would want this book to help them take advantage of the camera's features. I guess the next two months will tell that story.

The giveaway contest on Leicarumors.com ended within the past couple of days, and the site's administrator e-mailed me today with the address of the lucky winner in Hoboken, New Jersey. His book was mailed this morning, Priority Mail, and is on its way. Leicarumors has been possibly the best source of publicity for the book. I guess I need to figure out where else to spread the word so that people who might be interested in the book will find out about it.

I read somewhere that it's a good idea to start a Facebook page for your business, so I did that. It was quite easy, but I have to confess that I know very little about Facebook; I don't have a personal Facebook account. So, I started a page today, but I guess I need to learn more about how to take fuller advantage of that means of communication.

The Economics of Self-Publishing and Printing

2009-11-20T18:03:00.003-05:00

Now is a good time to reflect on how things have progressed to this point. I just finished updating all of the sales data in my Bento database, and the grand total of books sold as of right now is 200. That is not a huge amount of books, but it sure seemed like a lot while Clenise and I were printing, cutting the pages apart, binding, trimming, and shrink-wrapping, not to mention filling orders and shipping. Many of these copies sold at the full $19.95 list price, but quite a few also sold to Amazon and other places at reduced prices. All of that would be fine if we hadn't spent so much to produce the books. Paper has been a fairly big expense, as has equipment, but toner is the real killer. I knew toner would be expensive, but I didn't realize how much of a problem it would be to keep buying it so frequently. Even that might not be so bad if the printers didn't keep developing print-quality issues. One of the printers is still out of commission right now because it puts a bright blue band along one edge of the pages. The other printer is starting to develop a light blue haze on its pages. Clenise is great at diagnosing and fixing these issues, but there aren't enough hours in the day to keep dealing with them, and the expense is mounting.

So, I'm starting to think about other options. One would be to convert the book to all black-and-white. I really like having the color photographs in the book, because of the nice appearance, but I believe we could save a large amount of money with a black-and-white version.

The other option is to contract out the printing and binding to a commercial printer or print-on-demand company. At this point I'm just starting to think about the possibilities; for now, we're still geared up to produce books, and maybe we'll be able to build up a reasonable sized inventory with our current supplies, and then see where we stand.

More on Amazon, Laser Printers, and the D-Lux 4

2009-11-19T21:17:00.002-05:00

The Amazon mystery cleared up a little bit today. It turns out that their sales figures for the book lag reality by several days. Today I went online and found that they had sold 51 books, not just 25, as earlier reports showed. My first three shipments to them (2, 23, and 27) totalled 52 books, so there still is a slight mystery -- what happened to the 52nd book? Maybe they keep one as a reference? Maybe they used it for the "search inside the book" function, which I have signed up for.

By the way, the "search inside the book" function has a glitch I didn't know about. It became active yesterday, and I checked the D-Lux 4 book's listing on Amazon to try the search function. I entered terms such as "infrared," "time-lapse," and "display," and the search found zero results each time. I e-mailed Amazon, and they replied quite quickly, saying it takes about a week for their system to index the entire book. That seems odd, but that's the way it is. I just hope potential buyers of the book aren't scared off by the fact that, based on the search function's results, the book appears to have no words in it. . . .

As for the color laser printers, they are becoming the bane of our existence. Clenise, who is good at getting to the bottom of mechanical problems, has been taking the printers apart, cleaning them, adjusting them, and doing everything humanly possible to maintain them, but they have been putting heavy blue streaks, small magenta blotches, and various and sundry other blotches on the pages. Fortunately, we have enough books printed out already to meet current orders, but we aren't able to print any new ones at the moment. We think the problem may stem from our use of refilled toner cartridges in order to cut costs. We have some more cartridges coming from another vendor soon; hopefully those will produce better results.

I said I would discuss the Leica D-Lux 4 camera, the subject of the book, some more. I think it's a great camera, obviously, and so do many others, based on the comments I have read on dpreview.com, the Leica Forum, and other places. It is remarkable because of its overall quality of images and its excellent lens, and because of its unusually wide 24mm equivalent wide-angle focal length. It is somewhat limited because it zooms only to a 60mm equivalent focal length, but you just have to decide to forego a strong telephoto if you use this camera.

Also, of course, it has excellent manual control of focus and exposure, and it has just about all of the functions an amateur photographer would want for daily use -- self-timer, excellent macro (closeup) shooting (to within 1 centimeter of the subject), a wide range of shutter speeds (1/2000 sec to 60 sec), excellent auto exposure control, and many others. Also, it has a very nice appearance and small, pocketable size, with the Leica logo on the front. It also happens to have a decent capability for taking infrared photos, which many modern digital cameras do not have.

So, as far as I can tell, many photographers are very well pleased with this camera, and will keep using it for some years to come.

Amazon Speaks Yet Again; More About the D-Lux 4

2009-11-18T20:23:00.002-05:00

I have to admit I am probably one of Amazon.com's best customers. I love books, and I order quite a few of them. I take advantage of Amazon's Prime shipping, which gives free two-day shipping for many items and overnight shipping for $3.99 for many items (including, remarkably, 75-pound laser printers). So I'm not out to knock Amazon, though many small publishers probably are not fond of the company's practice of paying small amounts for books, and selling them at discount prices. And I still can't figure out the logic of how Amazon is handling my book, which, admittedly, is not a Going Rogue or The Lost Symbol.

My book about the Leica D-Lux 4 camera is still listed on Amazon at $13.46, and still shown as out of stock. One person e-mailed me early today and said he tried to order one on Amazon, and the message in his online shopping cart said the book would not arrive until after December 25. As I told him, I have shipped all the books Amazon has ordered from me -- successive shipments of 2, 23, 27, and 5 books. I don't know if these have already sold out through pre-orders, or if they haven't been received into Amazon's inventory yet.

Anyway, today I received another order from Amazon, this time for 32 copies. At least this time Clenise and I won't have to scramble as much as last time to fill the order. We have almost that many books already printed, bound, trimmed, shrink-wrapped, and ready to go. I'll probably try to send them to Amazon this Friday. I'm still a bit puzzled that they haven't ordered more books sooner, so they aren't constantly shown as sold out, but in a way I don't mind, because I keep getting orders for individual books at a more reasonable price.

I tried to get the book formatted to be sold on the Kindle, but that seems to be fairly complicated. With the help of my son, who studied computer science and math in college, I got the pdf file of the book converted to HTML so it looks fairly good on Amazon's Kindle preview page, but there seem to be some more requirements to be met before it can actually be uploaded and sold. I'll keep working on that.

Now to discuss the camera some more. In the last post I put up a few images from the camera -- a few showing the book production process, and a few others from the book itself, all taken by the D-Lux 4. I'd like to try to explain why I picked the D-Lux 4 to write about. I'm not sure I have a complete answer, but here are some thoughts.

I must admit that I, like quite a few other amateur photographers, am a little dazzled by the Leica name. It conveys an aura of prestige and quality, along with a hint of German precision and attention to detail. My older brother used a Leica rangefinder camera many years ago, and I read the discussions in the photography forums about the great history and mystique of Leica. So that certainly was a part of the reason to choose this camera.

Also, of course, I didn't want to choose a camera that had already been written about. My other camera, a Canon EOS-40D, has had several books written about it, and there was no point in adding to that body of work.

People might ask if it was smart to pick as a subject a camera that has been out on the market since fall of 2008, and to publish a book about it in October 2009. Maybe not. But I will say that there seemed to be a fairly good chance this camera will stick around for a while, partly because it's a Leica, and partly because it has quite a following. It really is a terrific little camera because it is easily portable, takes great pictures for a non-DSLR (digital single-lens-reflex, a larger camera with interchangeable lenses), and has a great array of features for more serious photographers, including manual controls and a wide range of useful menu options.

As it's turning out, I think I got lucky. There was considerable talk a couple of months ago that Leica would replace the D-Lux 4 with a newer model of camera that, like this one, is based on a Panasonic camera. (The D-Lux 4 is based on the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3.) But that hasn't happened yet, and as of now there doesn't seem to be any indication it will happen in the near future, and it may never happen. All kinds of rumors circulate on this topic. For one thing, Leica has announced the X1, a new, small digital camera that is more like the traditional Leica, not based on a Panasonic. It doesn't seem as if that camera is in direct competition with the D-Lux 4, so the D-Lux 4 may survive for quite a while longer. That would be unusual for a compact digital "point-and-shoot" camera; they often are in production for a relatively short time. But I have my fingers crossed that the D-Lux 4 will set a new record for longevity!

Talking About the Leica D-Lux 4 Camera Itself

2009-11-17T20:11:00.007-05:00

For a change, after I give brief update I want to talk a little about the camera that is the subject of my book: the Leica D-Lux 4. First, though, the update.

We've been working some wrinkles out of the production process; we found some of the bindings needed to be improved, and we think we have that situation under control now. Yesterday I tried raising the daily Google AdWords budget to $30.00, and we did end up with 8 orders for the day, as opposed to only 3 as of late evening today, with a $10.00 budget. So I have just put the budget up to $20.00, where it was when I first started the ad campaign. Hopefully that will increase sales of individual books.

Amazon.com now has the book listed for $13.46, even lower than the $14.96 it was listed at before, but it is still listed as out of stock, even though the UPS shipment of 27 books was scheduled to arrive at Amazon in Indiana today. There's also a shipment of 5 books that should be getting there. I don't know quite what the situation is in that area.

Now, back to talk a bit about the Leica D-Lux 4 itself. I'm including some pictures taken by the camera, which I haven't done in a while. Here is a picture I took a couple of nights ago with the D-Lux 4, with no flash, showing a stack of books to the right of the binding machine, along with a group of covers that are going to be bound to these stacks of pages. The stacks are resting on top of the guillotine paper cutter that has already cut the pages to this size, and later will trim the books to their final size.

This next picture, below, taken shortly afterwards, shows the books after they have been bound, trimmed, and wrapped in shrink-wrap bags, waiting to have the bags shrunk to make tight-fitting shrinkwrapping.

Next, here are some images from the book:

This image is an illustration of the "pin hole" setting in the camera's Scene Mode. This setting simulates the use of a primitive "pin hole" camera, which tends to darken the corners of the image and adds some graininess to the image.

This image was taken using the Scene Mode setting of Aerial Photo, which is specifically designed for taking pictures through airplane windows. This was taken on a trip from Virginia to Seattle, approaching the Seattle area.

This picture was taken with the camera set to the Film Grain setting of Scene Mode, simulating the graininess of a high-speed black-and-white film.

Those are just a few samples of photos from the D-Lux 4. In a future post, I'll talk a little bit about some other aspects of the camera, and why I thought it was worthwhile to write a book about its use

Building Up Inventory

2009-11-16T20:59:00.002-05:00

As of now we have finally built up an inventory of books, so we won't have to scramble to fill whatever orders come in. I still can't quite figure out how the Amazon system works; the book is still listed as out of stock on their site, though I have shipped them successive orders of 2, 23, 27, and 5 books. I wonder why they haven't ordered more. But it's better for me to sell books to individuals, so I'm not complaining.

Today the book was listed on the site of camerabooks.com, the web store that I contacted last week. I'll be interested to see how many books they sell. I'm still getting orders from individuals through eBay, Amazon Marketplace, and the whiteknightpress.com web site. Quite a few of them come from the UK.

Today I was contacted by a second buyer who needed the book quickly so he can read it on the airplane on a trip he's taking this Friday. I sent it first thing this morning, and it should get there in plenty of time.

I also had my first customer with a problem; his book was damaged, apparently in shipping. I ship them in sturdy cardboard folding mailers; he said it looked as if the Postal Service had gotten it caught in a machine or something. His replacement book will be in the mail first thing tomorrow morning.

I contacted the photography blog at www.photographyblog.com to ask if they would review the book; I got an e-mail back from Mark Goldstein with a link to a news article about the book that he posted upon receiving my message. That was a great response. I need to find more good photography-oriented sites that might be willing to mention the book.

Also, the administrator of Leicarumors.com has started up a contest for a giveaway of a copy of the book; he has been terrifically supportive of the book. The contest has already generated a good string of comments.

I got a message from Google AdWords today suggesting I would get better results from my ads if increased my budget to $30.00 per day. Well, I guess that is something they would suggest! I decided to give it a try, though, probably just for today. So far today I have had seven individual book orders, which is pretty good. I'll go back to $10.00 a day for Google AdWords tomorrow, and see how much difference it makes.

Amazon Orders Again -- But Why This Amount?

2009-11-15T12:13:00.002-05:00

This morning while shaving I checked the e-mail on my iPhone and there was another announcement of a new order for books from Amazon Advantage. This started me wondering and worrying. The e-mail didn't say how many books are ordered, so I speculated on the possibilities. Their previous orders had been for 2 books, then 23, then 27. So could they be ordering some huge amount now? (Huge by my standards, that is.) The book had been showing up as out of stock on Amazon for days now; maybe they wanted to stock up to meet the demand as the holidays approach. I thought to myself, if they want 50 books, I can't do that. Clenise's arm is sore from operating the binding machine and cutter. We can't run ourselves into the ground just to sell books on Amazon at a marginal amount.

I needn't have worried. The Amazon order turned out to be for: 5 books. I can't figure that out. If the first three orders sold out so fast, why do they want only 5 books this time? Anyway, I'm sure they have sophisticated software that decides how many to order. I'm actually glad it was a small order, because now we can try to build up our inventory; right now we actually have more than 20 books printed and bound, and both printers are clicking away happily as I type this. I won't mind concentrating on individual orders rather than scrambling to ship a large amount to Amazon. Just this morning, a gentleman ordered a book through whiteknightpress.com, and included a message saying he needs the book by Wednesday, and could I send it by FedEx. I replied that the normal Priority Mail should make it on time; I'll be sure to mail it early Monday morning. I enjoy that kind of interaction; I'm glad to know someone "needs" the book!

Just to fill out the toner story a bit more, there's one thing the Cartridge World people didn't tell us when we first contacted them about getting refilled color toner cartridges. When we went there yesterday to have them reset the magenta cartridge that the printer thought was empty, the fellow told us that the refilled cartridges don't contain toner that is equivalent to the genuine Brother toner, because of patent issues. He acknowledged that the color printing will be lighter with the refilled toner, and that we have to set the printing to "vivid" to get the same level of color we have been getting. So, we may end up using more toner, and cancelling out any savings. We'll see how that works out.

We did find slightly cheaper color laser paper in the 28-pound weight we're using, at OfficeMax, and it seems to be working quite well.

Right now, things are going well enough that I'm starting to think about writing another camera guidebook, though it's too early to take any definite steps in that direction. For now, the Leica D-Lux 4 camera seems to be still very popular, and new camera sales mean the possibility of more book sales.

I finally found time to enter most of my book order data into my Bento database on the Mac last night. Now I have to enter the expenses and start generating reports. It will be interesting to find out if we're making any money.