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Artmedia - e-Publishing News -
April 2002 ===================================
eBook Report Have POD Pirates arrived in the USA?
e-Networking Red Room Project is to commission new and emerging writers Independent e-Book Awards and Mystic-Ink 6th Hypertext Literature Workshop - Hypertext 02 conference
Artmedia Services Advertising, Sponsorship, Web-site Publishing Newsletter Subscriptions and Unsubscriptions
Welcome to the April edition of the e-publishing newsletter from Artmedia in Sydney, now reaching 4,650 writers, publishers, bookshops, libraries and media-smiths in Australia, New Zealand, America and worldwide.
This month we are making the news, not just breaking the news, as we publicise our correspondence with a1Books in New Jersey, who we fear may be 'making knowledge affordable' by not paying us. And we seek help from the epublishing community to bring publicity to this issue.
Reviews of Believers in love have started to come in, and I quote a section from aussiereviews.com below.
Thank you for reading Artmedia e-Publishing News. Please also forward this to somebody else who may be interested. We aim to provide an avenue of communication for the growing electronic publishing community worldwide, so please send us information for inclusion in this newsletter.
=================================================== Fiction from Artmedia Publishing ===================================================
"Believers in Love", a new novel by Alan Clay, takes the reader from Sydney's Bondi Beach, to a magic mountain in New Zealand, as an unlikely father and daughter team of sand-sculptors embark on a crazy adventure which explores the transient nature of art and life, to discover that dreams are real.
"Believers in Love, the third offering by quirky Australian novelist, Alan Clay, is about love, laughter and life. The story is liberally interspersed by anecdotes taking an alternate look at life, sometimes from the point of view of the book’s characters, other times from beyond, but always with a depth which gives pause to the reader before the story continues. This is not just a story; this is an exploration of emotion and philosophy. A novel of journey and self-discovery." www.aussiereviews.com
Order either book now from bookshops in America, Australia, New Zealand, and England, or from online stores like www.amazon.com or www.barnesandnobel.com and find more information at
http://www.artmedia.com.au
In July last year I discovered a company called a1Books selling my novel dance sisters 'used like new' on amazon for US$14.50, and not listing Artmedia as the publisher.
This aroused my suspicians and I asked my POD supliers, Lightning Source, to check if a1Books was part of the Ingram supply chain, and if they were, to ask them to correct the publisher information.
Immediately Ingram started making enquiries, Dance Sisters came off the Amazon zshops 'used book site' run by a1Books, but it remained on the a1Books site itself with no correction of the publisher information, and no satisfactory explanation.
Then last month I discovered them doing the same with my new book, Believers in Love. By this stage Dance Sisters was selling on their site for $11.75, totally blowing any suggestion that they could be doing it within the wholesale discount margin, as they admit themselves below.
So I sent a 'notice of demand' which I reproduce in full below, and received the acompanying email back from them, again reproduced in full. And, as promised, the books were duely removed, however now several weeks later they books have gone back up on their site again.
This time at the US list price of US$16.95, masking the souce of the product, but in clear breach of our notice of demand, so we are proceeding with the first item of notice from our notice of demand, by publicising our dispute.
How is it possible that a bug in their software faills to update the publisher information for my books over ten months of repeated requests, demands, promisses, and back tracks? It is still incorrect, at time of writing.
Could it be, that by not listing artmedia as the publisher, they are not then guilty of 'passing off' their product as another, even though they may still be guilty of copyright infringement if they are pirating my files .
What commercial opperation is going to stay in buisness with a bug in it's software which 'occasionally drops the price under the margin floor', as they claim below?
I invite anyone on this list who can help publicise this issue to do so, and any who can help us to take action on items two and three of our notice of demand, and I ask for others with experience with a!books to contact us. It is in all of our interests to resolve this.
While we can not be certain what a1Books are doing at this stage, until this is clear, please spread the word, "don't buy 'Believers in Love' from a1Books, you can get it cheaper anyway from amazon at 20% discount, or from your normal supplier, and then you can be sure that the artist is getting paid'.
Notice of Demand To: a1books.com 11 Stewart Place Fairfield, NJ 07004 USA Date: 22nd March 2002
On behalf of Alan Clay, author and copyright owner of ‘Believers in Love’ (ISBN 0957884400) and ‘Dance Sisters’(ISBN 0646302671) and of Artmedia Publishing, sole authorized publisher of these books, it is hereby demanded that, within seven days of the date of this notice, a1books.com:
Either: Permanently stop selling ‘Believers in Love’ and ‘Dance Sisters’, whether published by ATIA ( ), or by any other publisher, and remove all references to the books from the a1books.com site and amazon zshops.
Or: Provide written documentation of the legitimate source of these books to the copyright owner - explaining why the first copy of each of these books that you sell, is a ‘used’ copy, and how you can sell ‘Dance Sisters’ at a profit at US$11.75 - and immediately correct the publisher information for these books on your site to read Artmedia Publishing.
Failing one of these actions, we give notice that:
1 We will seek wide publicity for this dispute, to encourage a transparent process.
2 We reserve our right to pursue court action to force you to surrender all existing copies of ‘Believers in Love’ and ‘Dance Sisters’ in your possession and any files which could be used to create the books, plus provide a full accounting of copies sold and pay all moneys received through the sale of the books to the copyright owner.
3 Should it prove to be the case that you, or any related entity, are pirating the ‘Print on Demand’ files to these books, we also reserve our right to seek punitive damages calculated on a daily basis from the date of this notice.
Alan Clay Artmedia Publishing 18a Enmore Rd, Newtown NSW 2042, Australia epublish@artmedia.com.au www.artmedia.com.au
Dear Mr. Clay: We are removing ISBNs 0957884400 and 0646302671 from our site.
We receive them from Ingram Book Co. at a 35% discount. We do not buy stock to keep on hand. Ingram ships directly to our customers. We list as a used dealer on Amazon Marketplace because 1) there was not a "new" option when we began selling books there, and 2) some books (not these particular titles) we sell there are used or remainders, so we've never listed in the "new" category. We notice that many dealers listing as new are actually remainder dealers, so it seems to be a meaningless distinction. Until this moment, that is.
As for the pricing, we do not normally sell at such short markup and the price you quote for Dance Sisters seems to be a mistake. We have a bug which occasionally drops the price under the margin floor and we are working to correct this.
Another bug we are fixing is the insertion of our internal publisher identification code in the publisher field on our site.
I hope this has gone some way toward resolving our problems. I apologize for any trouble our listings have caused you and hope that we can work together to sell your books in the future.
Please feel free to contact me directly in the future should you have any other questions or concerns.
Best regards, Ben Archer Director of Sales & Marketing A1Books.com Email: ben@a1books.com
The titles were duely removed, but were back up again this week, still with incorrect publisher information. Not a very permanent removal of these titles! Please explain?
"Alan, Congratulations on the e-newsletter. It is the first I've seen; I do something similar with Media Flash, which has now evolved into a daily e-newspaper. Your discussion of e-books interests me. I've published a number of books, but a recent try at a history of Melbourne radio station 3AK looked like being a financial disaster until I decided to publish it as an e-book. You can find it at www.long.com.au/3ak.htm " Best wishes, Ash Long, Media Flash
"The Red Room Project is to commission new and emerging writers, under 35 years, to write poetry for ‘The Red Room’ radio show ( 89.7fm Eastside Radio ) and also for national radio broadcast (Community Broadcasting Association of Australia) and online. The selected writers will record their poetry and partake in a short, informal interview, both of which are broadcast on radio and published on line at http://www.eastsidefm.org/redroom The Red Room Project runs from Feb – Dec 2002. Only 30 poets are selected to participate in this groundbreaking project. Poems will be broadcast to a huge audience that includes many of Australia’s most esteemed writers. Writers of all styles, genres and backgrounds are encouraged to submit their most inventive, innovative and original poetry. Thanks to The Australia Council all writers are paid. Visit www.eastsidefm.org/redroom for details. Or phone Johanna Featherstone on 02 9332 1596.
"I am pleased to announce that the Independent e-Book Awards and Mystic-Ink are now part of the Digital Literature Institute, Inc. The good news is that the move is complete and the e-Book Awards website has a new home with the Digital Literature Institute. The bad news is that you will need to wait a few more months for the announcement of the short list for the Indie Awards because of the disruption from the move. The Awards Committee is currently working with the Preliminary Readers and the Judges on evaluating the nominations. The short list for the Independent e-Book Awards will be announced on May 31st." Best regards, Sunny Ross. Find a link to the Independent eBook Awards under Awards at http://www.artmedia.com.au/links1.htm
The Media Explores the Message: In person and online workshop. The annual hypertext literature workshop has expanded to incorporate new media and other creative electronic fields. Please join in either in person or online to to see new techniques, discuss ways to examine new media, and gain insights into the impetus and implications behind new media writing. This 6th Hypertext Literature Workshop is part of the Hypertext 02 conference June 13 -16 <http://www.cs.umd.edu/ht02>. You can get more information at <http://www.cs.umd.edu/ht02/workshops/litwork.shtml> The physcial workshop will be all day June 12, 2002 at the University of Maryland. We will have an online workshop from 11:30 - 1:30 Eastern Standard Time. In person: You can apply for the workshop alone or attend the accompanying conference. To apply for the workshop, please send a brief issue paper covering the following points to Deena Larsen <textra@chisp.net>. Deadline for applying for the workshop is May 15. Online: This workshop is designed to bring together electronic developers and creators in a wide variety of disciplines to discuss the different approaches and philosophies for creating. The goal is to understand developments in other electronic creative fields and their implications for new media. Go to http://lingua.utdallas.edu:7000 Click on the LOG IN button on the left hand side Type in your name at the prompt Once in the MOO, type "@go eliterature" to get to the electronic literature chat room. For more information, please email chathost@eliterature.org
The Internet is an interactive medium, and just like a poster, it's important where you put your web promotion. Artmedia are electronic publishers, publishing on the net, and through e-mail newsletters. Here's how you can take part.
Web Site Publishing
$30 a month. This is our bargain website creation and hosting service for artists or groups in literary or performing arts. For this we host your site at artmedia.com.au, up-date it, and maintain your traffic through search engine submission and links.
$40 a month. If you have your own domain name and want us to create, or take over the maintenance of your site, this is our premium package and we do all the above for you at your own address.
Newsletter Advertising and Sponsorship
Aus$50 buys two paragraphs of promotion for your book, service, or web-site, in either of our physical theatre or e-publishing e-mail newsletters.
Sponsorship of either newsletter offers subject line endorsement, eight paragraphs of copy at the top of the newsletter, and a paragraph on the Artmedia home page for a month, and is valued at Aus$350.
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=================================================== This newsletter is copyright (c) 2003 Artmedia, but may be reprinted freely, if a credit to
www.artmedia.com.au
is included. ===================================================
At Artmedia we publish web-sites promoting e-books, and actively
promote them to search engines and through our monthly e-publishing newsletter. Click
through to Dance Sisters to see a sample e-book
site - with a preview chapter, reviews, author biography, and links to sites where
the novel may be purchased - and then click on the
Artmedia
Services button for our e-publishing deal.
In Alan Clay's new novel, Believers
in Love, a father and daughter team of sand-sculptors embark on a crazy
adventure which takes them from Sydney's Bondi Beach, to a magic mountain in New Zealand,
in which they explore the transient nature of art and life, and discover that
dreams are real.
Order
Believers in Love now from
bookshops worldwide, or from online stores like
www.amazon.com
"A female song and
dance trio threatens to self-destruct on the brink of fame, when its leader becomes
involved with a manipulative cult, touting sex, astrology and virtual dreaming"
Dance Sisters is also available as an eBook in a format
which is packaged to enhance the reading experience on your computer with sound and
visuals. This eBook is published by E-dition in Canada, and requires no additional
software. Click on the link below to check it out (this site also includes a limited free
evaluation version).
E-dition - Dance Sisters
This navigable book for your PC requires Windows 9.x/NT, SVGA 800x600x16M colors,
and a sound card for the soundtrack. $12.95 US
This site published by
Artmedia Publishinge-mail: epublish@artmedia.com.au The content
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