There is not much doubt that a larger Kindle will be announced this Wednesday (http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/04/amazon-press-event-wednesday-may-6th-see-you-and-then-new-kind). By this news alone, one might assume that this device will cost more than the current Kindle 2, which already receives quite a bit of backlash from having a high price.
However, Amazon knows that their price is considered a purchasing barrier. Although I think they've already done a superb job of pricing given that each Kindle includes (currently) unlimited internet access forever, a lower price will surely help sell more.
How can Amazon lower the Kindle's price?
1) Advertising - a larger screen gives more space for ads in addition to content.
2) Subscriptions - Why hasn't a book-of-the-month club offered a subsidized Kindle?
With the New York Times as a partner of this newer Kindle, they have the opportunity to do both, just like they've always done with their print edition.
Personally, I am very comfortable with the size of the current Kindle 2, but wish all my books were e-books on it so that I have access to them at all times (note that I carry an iPhone at all times).
Another rumor is that Kindle will receive support from textbook publishers. If all textbooks needed by students were on this one device, that would make cross campus treks a lot easier!
Monday, May 4, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Version 3 Beta
We have been testing version 3 both in house and with select customers, and have now opened it up for public review. It shouldn't be many days before this one is ready for release, but we thought we'd give more people a chance to beat it up.
Due to outstanding suggestions, we have made many enhancements to DashBook. Some of the largest changes include:
- Vista 32 bit and 64 bit support
- Automatic mechanical royalty calculations for the music industry
- Expiration dates for handling subscription sales and followups
- Expenses tied to individual products, with royalties optionally adjusted
- Ability to review and create royalties directly from the products screen
- Ability to review order history directly on the customer screen
- Option to use PayPal on the subset of authors having PayPal accounts
Please check out our beta (beta link expired; contact us if you wish to be on the cutting edge!). If DashBook does not handle something you need in your business of royalties or licensing, please tell us what you want!
Friday, March 27, 2009
Improved by customers
While DashBook continues to add new clients, it is also continuing to grow in capabilities as well as ease of use. There is a wonderful synergy between our company and those of our clients.
I love when someone searches out a solution to their problem, usually being overwhelmed with handling all of their royalty or licensing contracts, and discover DashBook. Their excitement in finding an affordable program that they can easily understand is contagious. Almost everyone gives us great compliments. Our most recent quote was "BTW, the ISBN import function is genius. Nice work."
That feels great. However, our excitement doesn't stop after they purchase DashBook. Our users have fantastic ideas on how to further improve our system. Although we will soon be releasing DashBook version 3, the developmental thrill has subsided, though exposing our latest work to the world will be fun. I can't wait to start work on our new list of client-suggested enhancements. Some are so good while being so simple to do, that we should be following up with an update to our not-yet-released v3 pretty quickly.
I love making things better!
I love when someone searches out a solution to their problem, usually being overwhelmed with handling all of their royalty or licensing contracts, and discover DashBook. Their excitement in finding an affordable program that they can easily understand is contagious. Almost everyone gives us great compliments. Our most recent quote was "BTW, the ISBN import function is genius. Nice work."
That feels great. However, our excitement doesn't stop after they purchase DashBook. Our users have fantastic ideas on how to further improve our system. Although we will soon be releasing DashBook version 3, the developmental thrill has subsided, though exposing our latest work to the world will be fun. I can't wait to start work on our new list of client-suggested enhancements. Some are so good while being so simple to do, that we should be following up with an update to our not-yet-released v3 pretty quickly.
I love making things better!
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Fictionwise bought by Barnes & Noble
Fictionwise has an FAQ on the deal here: http://www.fictionwise.com/bn.htm and the official press release is here: http://www.barnesandnobleinc.com/press_releases/2009_march_5_fictionwise.html
The e-book market is heating up. 2009 will be a great year for this industry. Barnes & Noble is apparently taking e-books seriously now. They don't have much choice, if they want to stay in business. Yes, e-books were only 1% of sales, but their sales growth is exploding.
Now that Amazon has supposedly sold half a million Kindle machines, just released the Kindle 2, and now the Kindle iPhone app, they are poised to take over the ebook industry. We know that they will release Kindle readers for other devices, which proves that they want to own the business of selling e-books. If Amazon decides to make retrieval of free e-books easily done in their Kindle store, they would totally blow away competitors like Stanza while not hurting their sales at all.
The Fictionwise Pendergrast brothers can see the Amazon storm building intensity, and they need serious help to survive it. Good Luck!
Hey, Steve and Scott, how about we work with you on connecting your system with DashBook, so your publishers and authors can easily keep track of their book sales and royalties?
The e-book market is heating up. 2009 will be a great year for this industry. Barnes & Noble is apparently taking e-books seriously now. They don't have much choice, if they want to stay in business. Yes, e-books were only 1% of sales, but their sales growth is exploding.
Now that Amazon has supposedly sold half a million Kindle machines, just released the Kindle 2, and now the Kindle iPhone app, they are poised to take over the ebook industry. We know that they will release Kindle readers for other devices, which proves that they want to own the business of selling e-books. If Amazon decides to make retrieval of free e-books easily done in their Kindle store, they would totally blow away competitors like Stanza while not hurting their sales at all.
The Fictionwise Pendergrast brothers can see the Amazon storm building intensity, and they need serious help to survive it. Good Luck!
Hey, Steve and Scott, how about we work with you on connecting your system with DashBook, so your publishers and authors can easily keep track of their book sales and royalties?
Monday, February 23, 2009
Books on Consignment
Whether you are trying to keep your books in the local bookstore, or having a national distributor warehouse pallets of books that they sell on your behalf, tracking consignments is easier handled when you have DashBook.
With DashBook, you can use an Advanced order to explain the details of your consignment arrangement. Here are the typical steps in the life of consigned books:
1) You create an advanced order, and mark the items as Consignment. For this order, you will be creating a shipment, but not an invoice. This tells DashBook that these units will be moving from your standard warehouse to the warehouse of your consignee. This is still stock that you own.
2) You receive a report from your distributor indicating that they have sold your books. Now is the time to add an Invoice to your order for the number of units that were sold. This means that the distributor finally owes you for something! Placing this invoice on consigned stock will instruct DashBook to reduce the inventory held at that consignee location. Do not create a shipment for these, as that work is done by your distributor.
3) Any returns can be handled on the Returns tab of your order. Simply tell DashBook how many units are returned for financial credit, and if any of them are physically being returned to your stock as opposed to merely increasing your consignee stock.
That's it! DashBook will allow you to create a special Consignment inventory report that will show you how much of each book is in each location. You can even ask for the details of every sale and return transaction on this report, so you can find out exactly what has happened to your books!
With DashBook, you can use an Advanced order to explain the details of your consignment arrangement. Here are the typical steps in the life of consigned books:
1) You create an advanced order, and mark the items as Consignment. For this order, you will be creating a shipment, but not an invoice. This tells DashBook that these units will be moving from your standard warehouse to the warehouse of your consignee. This is still stock that you own.
2) You receive a report from your distributor indicating that they have sold your books. Now is the time to add an Invoice to your order for the number of units that were sold. This means that the distributor finally owes you for something! Placing this invoice on consigned stock will instruct DashBook to reduce the inventory held at that consignee location. Do not create a shipment for these, as that work is done by your distributor.
3) Any returns can be handled on the Returns tab of your order. Simply tell DashBook how many units are returned for financial credit, and if any of them are physically being returned to your stock as opposed to merely increasing your consignee stock.
That's it! DashBook will allow you to create a special Consignment inventory report that will show you how much of each book is in each location. You can even ask for the details of every sale and return transaction on this report, so you can find out exactly what has happened to your books!
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Upgrade from AnyBook and now PUB123
As usual, we have been very busy improving DashBook. We are now releasing version 2.3 following the v2.2 just a few weeks ago. The enhancements were numerous, but this blog entry will be about our importing data from obsolete and obsolescent systems.
Since DashBook has now grown into the best choice for small book publishers to handle their royalty calculations, we have been getting requests to import from legacy systems. Publishers are moving from the old standards of AnyBook and PUB123/SOHO123 to DashBook, and are asking us to help them in their transition.
Well, we've responded with an automated import of current information and history so that users can now have the best of both worlds -- all of their history within the easy to understand and use DashBook system. Normally it could cost thousands of dollars to migrate history from one system to another, but we are offering it all at no extra charge within our $249 program. As a friend of mine would say with a smirk, "What a bargain!"
We import customer information, product descriptions, and yes, even royalty agreement definitions. Since DashBook can handle the sales channels of PUB123 as well as the breakpoint volume and discount tiering of AnyBook, the conversion was actually simple.
We also import all of the orders from each of these systems, so that you can review the history of your products and customer purchases within DashBook. Doing all of this work did point out a deficiency in DashBook. AnyBook has consignment ability, and one of our converts recorded Promotional copies sent out from consignment. Hmm. We hadn't addressed that in DashBook, but we have it now. You can now mark an order item as Promotional for a Consignment so that it removes those units from the consignee's inventory.
We have also greatly improved our Consignment Inventory tracking to be the best in its class, giving you the option of seeing changes as deep as individual orders, or just the totals for each consignee. Frankly, if you have AnyBook and used consignments, you need to import into DashBook if you wish to see accurate consignment inventory levels.
DashBook makes it easy to see how your data will look in a better system. If you wish to migrate to DashBook from a system that we currently do not import, let us know so that we can help you, too.
Since DashBook has now grown into the best choice for small book publishers to handle their royalty calculations, we have been getting requests to import from legacy systems. Publishers are moving from the old standards of AnyBook and PUB123/SOHO123 to DashBook, and are asking us to help them in their transition.
Well, we've responded with an automated import of current information and history so that users can now have the best of both worlds -- all of their history within the easy to understand and use DashBook system. Normally it could cost thousands of dollars to migrate history from one system to another, but we are offering it all at no extra charge within our $249 program. As a friend of mine would say with a smirk, "What a bargain!"
We import customer information, product descriptions, and yes, even royalty agreement definitions. Since DashBook can handle the sales channels of PUB123 as well as the breakpoint volume and discount tiering of AnyBook, the conversion was actually simple.
We also import all of the orders from each of these systems, so that you can review the history of your products and customer purchases within DashBook. Doing all of this work did point out a deficiency in DashBook. AnyBook has consignment ability, and one of our converts recorded Promotional copies sent out from consignment. Hmm. We hadn't addressed that in DashBook, but we have it now. You can now mark an order item as Promotional for a Consignment so that it removes those units from the consignee's inventory.
We have also greatly improved our Consignment Inventory tracking to be the best in its class, giving you the option of seeing changes as deep as individual orders, or just the totals for each consignee. Frankly, if you have AnyBook and used consignments, you need to import into DashBook if you wish to see accurate consignment inventory levels.
DashBook makes it easy to see how your data will look in a better system. If you wish to migrate to DashBook from a system that we currently do not import, let us know so that we can help you, too.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Tracking music royalties
We have received a number of questions about tracking royalties on music.
Music royalties can get very complicated, and you can use DashBook to simplify your work. Typically, each song has a multitude of musicians and composers to pay. One person may get a fixed dollar amount for each song, plus a percentage of the sale. Or another gets ten cents each time her artwork is included. Additionally, each royalty receiver may get a different amount based on what happened to that song.
For instance, perhaps the royalty contract dictates that the musician gets a different royalty depending upon whether the song was sold as an electronic download vs. played on the radio. You can quickly see that there are many venues and media types that can be broken out as a special royalty amount or rate.
In DashBook, you can create many different arrangements having the same product and author/musician. If the music media or royalty event is vastly different, you may enter it as a different product. Alternatively, you could use a feature we call Sales Channels. This allows you to make one order that says all items of this order are using a Sales Channel called "MP3 download", whereas another order might be for a Sales Channel of "Radio Plays over 30 seconds". You can have an unlimited number of sales channels. In your royalty agreement, you can list a different royalty percentage for each sales channel. This reduces the number of products that you need to maintain.
Once you have a myriad of options listed, DashBook does allow you to easily see all of the royalty arrangements for either a product/song or a musician/author/royalty rights holder. And of course, view reports showing either totals due or every transaction that resulted in a royalty.
And one of the features I love -- you can go to the Pay Authors screen to see all amounts that are due for all musicians, and mark them paid with a single click if you do not wish to make individual adjustments.
If you have any questions about how to handle your royalty situation, please email us at support@financialsoftworks.com.
Music royalties can get very complicated, and you can use DashBook to simplify your work. Typically, each song has a multitude of musicians and composers to pay. One person may get a fixed dollar amount for each song, plus a percentage of the sale. Or another gets ten cents each time her artwork is included. Additionally, each royalty receiver may get a different amount based on what happened to that song.
For instance, perhaps the royalty contract dictates that the musician gets a different royalty depending upon whether the song was sold as an electronic download vs. played on the radio. You can quickly see that there are many venues and media types that can be broken out as a special royalty amount or rate.
In DashBook, you can create many different arrangements having the same product and author/musician. If the music media or royalty event is vastly different, you may enter it as a different product. Alternatively, you could use a feature we call Sales Channels. This allows you to make one order that says all items of this order are using a Sales Channel called "MP3 download", whereas another order might be for a Sales Channel of "Radio Plays over 30 seconds". You can have an unlimited number of sales channels. In your royalty agreement, you can list a different royalty percentage for each sales channel. This reduces the number of products that you need to maintain.
Once you have a myriad of options listed, DashBook does allow you to easily see all of the royalty arrangements for either a product/song or a musician/author/royalty rights holder. And of course, view reports showing either totals due or every transaction that resulted in a royalty.
And one of the features I love -- you can go to the Pay Authors screen to see all amounts that are due for all musicians, and mark them paid with a single click if you do not wish to make individual adjustments.
If you have any questions about how to handle your royalty situation, please email us at support@financialsoftworks.com.
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