Saving...First the bad news.
Free apps are winning over paid downloads. In 2011, 96% of smartphone apps were downloaded for free. A recent report states:
Today’s smartphone users are increasingly unenthusiastic about paying for mobile applications. Consumers are closing their wallets at app stores, preferring free app downloads instead.
As revenue goes, that’s the bad news for today’s apps.
Now the good news.
IHS Screen Digest suggests in-app purchases will become the new standard for mobile app revenues. The freemium model, proven successful by gaming companies that charge users for accessing new tiers of content, involves consumers downloading an app for free, then being drawn to make purchases within the app. IHS projects that in-app purchases will account for 64% of total smartphone app revenue in 2015, up from 39% in 2011.
But Trapdoor Technologies goes one step better.
Trapdoor Technologies has embraced this ‘freemium’ model with their first entry in this market with my techno-thriller Cyberkill. The download of the full version advertising supported enhanced ebook app is entirely free. All enhance content is included. Nothing is left out.
The reader can turn off the ads in the ebook at any time by doing an in-app purchase.
Pretty cool, huh?
What’s interesting in writing speculative fiction like Cyberkill, is the times when the book mirrors or predicts reality.
One scene in Cyberkill, describes an AMTRAC train being deliberately sabotaged by hackers hacking into the AMTRAC system leading to hundreds of death. I won’t spoil it here by describing the scene. You’ll have to read the book to find out.
At any rate, just the other day hackers, possibly from abroad, executed an attack on a Northwest rail company’s computers that disrupted railway signals for two days in December, according to the TSA.
On Dec. 1, train service on the unnamed railroad “was slowed for a short while” and rail schedules were delayed about 15 minutes after the interference, stated a Transportation Security Administration summary of a Dec. 20 meeting about the episode obtained by Nextgov. The following day, shortly before rush hour, a “second event occurred” that did not affect schedules, TSA officials added.
“Amtrak and the freight rails needed to have context regarding their information technical centers,” the memo stated. “Cyberattacks were not a major concern to most rail operators” at the time, adding, “the conclusion that rail was affect [sic] by a cyberattack is very serious.”
Grab a copy of CyberKill (print, digital, enhanced ebook app) and see what other possibilities speculated in my book are on the horizon.
General knowledge says that it takes many months – even years – to write a novel.
I ran across an article in Wired Magazine that disproves that ‘reality’. It seems some very noted authors of some very popular books have proven otherwise.
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in less than a week. He burned the first draft when his ego was bruised by his wife’s critique.
When Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451, he had to rent a typewriter at the UCLA library at 10 cents a minute. The ticking meter spurred him to write this classic in nine frantic days.
Georges Simenon churned out each of his 75 Inspector Maigret novels in less than two weeks.
And Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange, wrote the popular droog novel in less than three weeks.
Oh, and if you think such feats are performed by only the well-known classic authors, think again. Sara Gruen, inspired by the National Novel Writing Month, pounded out 50,000 words in 30 days. Gruen produced a first draft of her novel in just four weeks.
That book? Water for Elephants, a number-one best seller that became a hit movie.
So hit those keys and pound out the next best seller. It should only take a few weeks.
David Farland keeps a pretty much tab on the publishing industry. His comments here adds to the belief that ebooks will be king of the hill in a few years.
Right now, the e-book market is growing at over 10% per year. Meanwhile, the sale of paperbacks and hardcovers is dropping disproportionately. In fact, sales last month on hardcover books were down more than 40% from just the month before!
Now, there are reasons for this. Part of the problem has to do with the collapse of the Borders bookstore chain here in America. That might account for a drop of 25%. Another drop of 10% might be claimed because of the rise in sales of e-readers that people got for Christmas. But that means that there is still a substantial drop that doesn’t make sense—another 8%, more or less. What’s going on? I think that there may be people who are delaying hardback purchases in anticipation of buying e-readers. After all, why pay $25 for a hardcover when I plan to buy a Kindle and then get the electronic copy for $15 on Mother’s Day?
He may be right.
Do a search on Google for enhanced ebooks and you will find that there’s a divergence of opinion on them. The main critique falls into three areas.
The first opinion states that enhanced ebooks with embedded video, sound and graphics, takes away from the enjoyment of the book because the enhanced ebook intrudes on the reader’s ability to imagine the story in his mind. The very popular Harry Potter books loved by children are used as a prime example.
This opinion states that any attempt to add greater dimensions to the Harry Potter story telling like the movies takes away from the imagination of the children. But that’s a false argument.
Sure, when a child reads a Harry Potter book, he or she congers up a vivid picture in their mind of the characters and environment in the book. Those critics hold that the movies made from those books somehow take away from that imagination process.
But if that were true, how do you account form the hundreds of millions of dollars each book in the series has generated as a movie? And most of the audience for these movies are the children that read the Harry Potter book. The children enjoyed both versions of the story telling and it did little to take way their imagination of the story.
Of course, the professional handling of the book material by the movie studio did the story justice. As in anything creative – it has bee done well.
The second critique of enhanced ebooks comes from those that say the imbedded multimedia and extended material interrupts the reading experience. They claim, rightfully so, that the embedded video, audio and links to the Internet within the text interrupts the reading of the book. But Trapdoor Books has recognized this problem and placed its multimedia and outside links in what is called the ‘marginalia’ that sits along the outside column of the text. This marginalia can be totally turned off and the reader can read just text.
The third critique has nothing to do with the reading experience. It has to do with economics — the cost of producing enhanced ebooks. This is a valid critique. It does cost more to produce an enhanced book. Thus the retail cost of the ebook is higher than the traditional ebook.
But Trapdoor Books has found a solution to that. Their enhanced books are FREE. They are advertising supported and that revenue pays for the production of the ebook.
So, Trapdoor Books has found the way to meet the objections of the enhanced book skeptics.
