Improve you About page on your blog

Almost as important as your website’s home page is the about page. This is your opportunity to build rapport with your guests — a chance to introduce yourself and to explain the aim of your website. Here are 10 tips that’ll have your own page in excellent shape.

1.Offer your name. It’s a blatantly obvious addition, yet so many about pages don’t get personal.
2.Include a photo. People like to see who they’re dealing with. A smile can work wonders, too. If there’s a team behind the website, include them all (even the cleaner plays an important role).
3.If it’s just you, write in the first-person. If someone asks what I do for a living, I don’t say, “David’s a graphic designer.” Use “I,” not “he/she.” It’ll help make you seem more personable.
4.Think about your visitor’s needs. Sure, you’re talking about yourself, but imagine you’re a potential client reading about you. What does the client get from contacting you?
5.Keep it current. Check the content every few weeks or every month to ensure it’s up-to-date. Perhaps you’ve moved home/office, or perhaps you offer a new product or service.
6.Show your location. By including a photo of your office, your town or city, you let people get that little bit closer, helping build rapport.
7.Short and sweet beats long and sour. Ask someone to have a look at your page. It shouldn’t take any longer than a minute to read, and the reader should learn something new about you.
8.Keep it professional. Smiley faces won’t help you clinch that £10,000 deal.
9.Experiment with video. Letting your visitors see and hear you can have a hugely beneficial effect when it comes to building trust online. (If you’re too self-conscious, why not start with an audio podcast?)
10.Add a call to action. Where should visitors go after they’ve read about you? Your design portfolio? Your contact page? Make it easy — include a link within the text.
One more thing, don’t take yourself too seriously.

Creativity in Business: Ask Some Searching Questions

Creativity plays a big part in the development of any successful business. Your ability to creatively solve problems and spot opportunities will determine just how far you and your business go.

One of the best ways to kick-start your creativity, is to ask yourselves some searching questions. Ones that lead you to creatively search for answers and new ideas.

Here are 32 questions, designed to help you think creatively about the development of your business. There are some overlapping re-appraisal questions included to help you examine things from different perspectives.

1. What additional, valuable products or services can I offer to my existing clients or customers (herein called clients)? This is the fastest way to generate a massively profitable boost to your revenue and profits.


2. How am I fully utilising technology in my business? Are there processes that I could streamline, which would give me more time to deal personally with my clients and prospective clients?


3. How can I improve the way I deliver my services?


4. Do I take enough time out, to thank people as often as I should?


5. What new markets could use my products or services?


6. How can I improve the quality of my products or services, so that they are of even more value to existing and prospective clients?


7. Am I associating with the right kind of people, for what I want to achieve?


8. What three things could I do, which would improve the visibility of my business?


9. How can I reach 500% more prospective clients with my marketing message?


10. How can I make my day-to-day work more fun? This is really important!


11. What’s the best way for me to encourage more people, to recommend me to their network and contacts?


12. How is my sales and marketing efforts focused and is it enough?


13. How can I improve my time management and travelling overheads?


14. How do I take action on the ideas I generate, so they have a chance to make a real difference?


15. Should I be thinking about doing some kind of joint venture with another, high quality company?


16. How am I limiting the development of my business, by not investing in professional help in the areas where I am weakest? If so, which area do I need to invest in first?


17. How often do I ask my clients for their feedback, regarding the service they receive from me and what additional services they would like me to offer?


18. What are my marketing goals? If you have not got any written, measurable, specific marketing goals, write some down right now!


19. How similar are my services to my competitors? Most service providers look too alike, so the marketplace uses price as a way to differentiate and judge value.


20. How can I differentiate myself from my competitors, so that I have something uniquely valuable to bring to the marketplace?


21. How do I get enough leads and enquiries via my website or blog? If not, how can I increase this, so my site becomes a lead generating machine for my business?


22. When was the last time a client sent me a “thank you” note?


23. Who would make a good endorsed relationship partner for me?


24. How do I attract enough word of mouth referrals and why?


25. How aware am I, of my client’s problems and challenges? You need to know what’s happening in your client’s world, if you want to be empathetic to them.


26. Do I have a large shallow network, spread over a wide area. Or a smaller deeper, more meaningful one?


27. How many other websites or blogs link to my website or blog? This is important if you are working online, because internal links account for the majority of your search engine optimisation (SEO)


28. How am I working to a marketing plan or strategy. Am I simply doing tactical marketing?


29. How good is my customer service? Yes, do compare yourself to what your competitors offer but also compare yourself to the finest level of service you can possibly offer.


30. Do I still have the same passion for my business that I used to have?


31. How many of the people I network with on Twitter, Facebook or other social networking sites have I actually spoken to or met?


32. How are my online marketing activities producing bankable results, or just a ton of meaningless, social media numbers? If you have the friends, followers and fans but not the bankable results, you might want to review your strategy.


33. How do I exceed people’s expectations?

Clara Rockmore Plays Theramin: Saint Saens the Swan

Clara Rockmore et sa soeur Nadia Reisenberg pour une interprétation du Cygne de Camille Saint Saens

10 tips to make money with Google Adsense

When thinking about website monetising, Google Adsense is probably the first thing that came to the mind of many people. Created in 2004, Adsense is the easiest way to make money online. Making real money with Google Adsense is not as easy as it seems, but if Adsense wasn’t an efficient way to make money online, people would stop using it.

In this article, I’m going to show you 10 efficient tips to really make money with Adsense.

Understand on which sites Adsense works
Is it possible to really make money with Adsense? The answer is definitely yes, but not on all kind of sites. If you have difficulty and always had terrible results with Adsense, it's because tech-savy people will not click on Adsense ads.

Know which niche are good and which ones are to avoid.

Avoid “SmartPricing” like the plague
Smartpricing is when Google automatically gives the advertiser a discount based on the perceived value of your web site. Certain types of sites supposedly generate more sales so get a higher cost per click while others are typically more lookers and get paid less per click.

If Google placed your blog in the second category, no luck for you. In fact, for the same click on the same ad, a website can earn $1 while another will get on 10 cents!

To avoid getting “Smartpriced” by Google, you have to try to keep your CTR high. Low CTR sites (under 1 or 2%) generally ends up by being smartpriced.

Place Adsense ads on old posts only
To avoid smartpricing, display Adsense ads on old posts only because the vast majority of your regular visitors don’t click on ads. By showing Adsense on old posts only, you’ll definitely keep your CTR high.

The following functions have to be pasted in the functions.php file of your WordPress theme.



Once you successfully inserted the code into your function.php file, you are now ready to call the functions in your single.php template as shown below:



To appear on Adsense ads, advertisers have to bid on a specific keyword. Some keywords, such as “mortgage” have a way higher CPC than others.

A great way to maximise your Adsense income is to identify those high paying keywords and use them in your blog. Several lists of high paying keywords are available on the Internet, some are free and some aren’t.

A good list to start with is this one, which is completely free.

Work with keywords
Although you can’t directly control which Adsense ads appears on your site, you can work with keywords in the hope that Google will display related contextual ads.



For example, if you’re writing a post about Javascript, the keyword “javascript” has strong chances of being used in Adsense ads. If you want Adsense to display ads based on high paying keywords, you have to put these keywords on your document. Don’t abuse though; you may be penalized by Google.

To check your keyword density, here is a great tool : http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html

Use section targeting
As I said before, in order to maximise your revenue you have to work on keywords, but what if Adsense is displaying ads based on a keyword you don’t want to be used? Using section targeting, you can emphasis some text as well as asking Adsense to ignore some other.

The following example shows how to use section targeting in your posts:

Another way to avoid being smartpriced is definitely to display Adsense ads only to visitors who came from search engines.

The following WordPress hack will do that job perfectly. To apply it to your blog, insert the code below in your theme functions.php file. Note that the $SE array is where you specify search engines. You can easily ad new search engines by adding new elements to the array.

function scratch99_fromasearchengine(){
$ref = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
$SE = array('/search?', 'images.google.', 'web.info.com', 'search.', 'del.icio.us/search', 'soso.com', '/search/', '.yahoo.');
foreach ($SE as $source) {
if (strpos($ref,$source)!==false) return true;
}
return false;
}

Once done, open the file where you want to display the ads and paste the following code:

if (function_exists('scratch99_fromasearchengine')) {
if (scratch99_fromasearchengine()) {
INSERT YOUR CODE HERE
}
}

Save the file, and you’re done. Thanks to Stephen Cronin for the hack!

Go Large!
Adsense ads can be displayed in various formats, but they don’t provide the same results. Although it depends of many factors such as your blog niche and layout, the large rectangle (336×280) has proven to be the best paying Adsense format. It is also one of the few Adsense block which can display video ads.

Use a personalised Google search engine on your blog
Many people don’t like the way WordPress search works, and I must admit that this is not the best feature of my favorite blogging engine.

The tools works very well, and you can start monetising it using Adsense. I found out that the search engine is very profitable.

Don’t break Adsense terms of service
At last but not least, one of the best bits of advice I can give to anyone who’d like to make money online using Google Adsense is to be careful with the terms of service. For example, if you click on your own ads, or display incentive messages on your site, Google will quickly finds out and they will consenquently ban your site from Adsense.

You have to play by their rules, so don’t thing you are smarter than them. Respect the terms of services, optimise your ads using the tips I just gave you, and write great content so people will visit your site and click on your ads.

Alone - Edgar Alan Poe

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.

Dyslexia: Books to help children enjoy reading

Today is World Book Day, so what better day than this to focus on books that can help children understand dyslexia and also books that might help dyslexic children experience the joy of reading.

What to look for when choosing books for young dyslexic readers;

• for younger children, look for colourful and engaging illustrations. It breaks up the text into more manageable pieces.

• short sentences are best

• as is clear and bold fonts

• look for chapters or stories that aren’t too long

• a subject that will engage the children and encourage them to visualise

Books that help explain dyslexia to children

It’s Called Dyslexia (Live and Learn Series) by Jennifer Moore-Mallinos

This book is an illustrated picture storybook told from the child’s point of view, that encourage kids never to be afraid of a challenge. The child in this story knows the alphabet, but she sometimes has trouble putting all the letters together to read words. No matter how hard she tries, she often mixes up the letters or writes them backwards. She’s unhappy until her teacher explains that she has dyslexia, and that she can be helped to read and write correctly. There is also a parent’s section at the back of the book.

My Name Is Brain Brian by Jeanne Betancourt

The story that sets out of offer hope to dyslexic children through the central character of Brian, Brian is really smart he just learns differently. The book starts by telling the story of a boy who has dyslexia but does not know it. The other children at Brian’s school make fun of him because he makes many mistakes when reading aloud and while writing on the board. His parents believe that he is just lazy. However a caring teacher recognises the symptoms of dyslexia and sets out to get Brian the help he needs. Brian is embarrassed that he needs the extra help in school. After Brian’s teacher begins to explain dyslexia more to him, he begins to understand that he needs the extra help because his brain learns differently.

So You Think You’ve Got Problems? by Rosalind Birkett

This easy-to-read book is for dyslexic children of all ages. It explains, simply and sympathetically, what is happening to them, and how they can be helped to overcome their problems. It also hopes to show children that they are not alone in their difficulties, and that there are others with the same problems. The aim of this colourful book is to put dyslexia into perspective, particularly for a child, but for parents also.

Books that dyslexic children may enjoy reading

Chrysalis Book series

Chrysalis Children’s Books has introduced READ™, a special new typeface used in educational books that makes reading more accessible to children. READ’s specially designed letter shapes and even letter spacing make books more inviting for all children. READ™ is particularly helpful for young readers, reluctant readers and of course readers with dyslexia.

Books include series on Wild Animals, How Things Have Changed, The Senses, A First Look at Art, Sing and Play, Everyday Food, and Little Hands.

The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss

Written in buoyant easy-to-read prose. This book uses phonics and rhyming in a way children find fun and enjoyable. It can raise the confidence in reluctant readers, as they are small books they can read all the way through all by themselves.

Candyfloss by Jacqueline Wilson

Jacqueline Wilson is one of the most popular kids authors ever. Her genius lies in getting inside children’s heads, convincingly capturing their voices and feelings. Nick Sharratt’s simple illustrations punctuate the chapters and help explain the story.

The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket

In this book, the narrator is involved throughout the gripping story which makes an interesting read. It is well written and action-packed. It’s not a long book, so it’s great for reluctant readers.

Horrid Henry series by Francesca Simon

Funny books reluctant and struggling readers respond well to. The adventures of that most horrible kid, Horrid Henry have short and easy to manage chapters, and brilliantly illustrated.

Slam by Nick Hornby

This book is a good coming of age novel, especially for boys. An excellent story with some hilarious moments. The central character Sam loves music and skateboarding and has met a girl, things in which the reader can relate to.

There is also the book series Percy Jackson and the Olympians in which the central character is dyslexic and a superhero. The first book The Lightning Theft has recently been made in to a blockbuster movie, making it the perfect time to introduce the stories to your children

Reclaim your attention

Reclaim your attention.

Here’s how:

1. Limit your friends. Not real-life friends, but social network and blogging and forum friends. Not that these can’t be good relationships, but having too many makes them meaningless. And each friend will take up a little bit of your attention — when you read their updates, click on their links, reply to their messages, look at their photos, and so on. The more you have, the more attention they’ll require. Limit them to just the essential.
2. Limit your feeds. Blog subscriptions, newsletters, other updates and news subscriptions and so on. Limit them to a handful of essentials, and let the rest go. The more you have, the more attention they require.
3. Limit your communication time. Going into your email inbox? Just give yourself 10 minutes to read, reply, delete, and get out. Going to do Twitter? Give yourself 5 minutes. Seriously, set up a timer. Don’t let these things take up all your attention.
4. Give up on news. It’s a never-ending cycle. And if you’ve paid attention to the news as long as I have (I’m a former journalist), you know it’s all the same, year after year. Unless your job depends on it, the news is usually a waste of your attention. Let go of the need to stay updated. Even if your job does depend on it, keep it limited.
5. Be brief. Write brief emails, tweets, updates, blog posts. With some exceptions, of course. But make brief your de facto. Read more.
6. Give your attention to the important. This is the crucial part: choose what you give your attention to, and do this choosing carefully. What is important to you? Writing? Photography? Design? Coding? Creating a new business that helps others? Your kids? Figure this out, and give this the majority of your attention.
7. Become conscious of your distractions. Once you’ve decided to focus your attention on the important, become more aware of distractions as they come up. Make note of them, and as you get the urge to be distracted, learn to pause, breathe, and return to the important.
8. Surround yourself with the positive. If you want your life to be positive, let the positive have your attention. This applies to blogs, people, projects, and more.
   

Do you Keep talking – or are you explaining…

“For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen” – Stephen Hawking

There was a time when some thought that developers worked best in darkened rooms. When the ideal solution was a conveyor-belt software factory with programmers lined up as though they were in a mass-assembly plant. When massive specifications were required to be drafted and reviewed before a line of code was written…

Do you remember those days? They weren’t so long ago, and some may still cling to the “software factory” ideal. But techniques and thinking such as Agile has proven that in order to fully understand what the customer wants and also to react to change, developers need to be involved in regular communication and able to describe and interpret complex requirements along with any underlying dependencies and impacts.

So what does this mean for developers looking to impress at interview and software companies looking to recruit? Well, an obvious key skill is communication, the ability to work in a team should be forefront in an interviewer’s mind, after all an interview is an ideal face-to-face setting to test verbal communication.

An interviewer is looking for examples to provide confidence that this person can work in their team. So make sure that you have several examples of dealing with critical issues – be they key features or problems, ideally have several such examples well rehearsed so that you can recall them as the situation requires during interview. As you deliver these examples make sure that you clearly explain -

i) The background to the key feature or problem
ii) The options available and any constraints (for example – time/deadline)
iii) The communication that took place to assess and evaluate these options – and ideally indicate the roles that were involved during the conferring and decision making
iv) How the decided option was planned and implemented
v) How the decided option was shown to be satisfactory (what were the acceptance criteria)

And, yes, make sure that you include any technical information that is necessary (of course!)

But the key point is – that you are not just a cog in a wheel, you are a communicating, capable individual who can work in a team but also can take ownership and drive things as necessary. Remember that it’s not just your technical ability that an interviewer is looking for and it really does pay to do the necessary preparation so that these examples are easy to recall whilst keeping your delivery as natural as possible.

If you don’t have much technical experience to draw on then explain this to the interviewer but do still try to demonstrate your communication ability by drawing on experiences in your life when you have been confronted by a situation by following the above steps. We have all faced circumstances where there is a distinct need for a solution, where we have evaluated the available options and then implemented the one that seemed to have the best chance of success.

There is a bit of Project Manager in all of us – otherwise we probably would have never invented the wheel…

Do you plan effectively? Become laser focused with Mind Mapping! | Digital Art Empire

Do you plan effectively? Become laser focused with Mind Mapping! Digital Art Empire

What is mind mapping?
Mind mapping is designed to mirror how the brain functions in a radiant manner rather than linear.

Picture the internet without links and pictures – just lines of text with no relation or connection - perhaps with a doodle here and there – this is what your notes plans and essentially strategy is without a map, a mind map.

A mind map is simple a way to express your thoughts on paper using associations connections and triggers to cultivate further ideas.

It’s similar to how Mnemonics works in that it uses all your faculties to recreate your mental processes. Mnemonics is a way of remembering things through associating easy to remember ideas and data. So for example a song is used to remember your new office address. This is how people display extraordinary feats of memory

How it works
The basic idea behind a mind map is that you write down your initial idea with an image, say a simple initial idea for a project. From there you can draw branches to the programs you may use, the places you’ll have to visit and how long this may take.

Popularity
Since its creation 1960’s by Tony Buzan, it has had a widespread use in almost all industries including design studios across the globe. It is acknowledged it is used by 250 million people.

Here Chris Pirillo talks about the benefits of mind mapping and some online software to help you mind map.

A few tips to help you mind map
Mind mapping especially for a creative boost should be fun, draw out the initial idea, which could be anything from the clients brief, your audience or even just some colors. The main idea is link as many choices as possible together with as many triggers as you can, visually. Then label the first sketch with something memorable and descriptive.

The structure is like a tree, with one branch leading to another pool of ideas and choices. Once you have the first few ideas down you can go ahead and add more detailed images or if you like memorable colours. For example the red ideas could represent a deadline, or a drawing of a book could mean the Facebook app your developing.

Free mind mapping software:
Freeplane is a free, open source software application for creating mind maps (diagrams of connections between ideas), and electronic outlines. Written in Java, Freeplane is supported on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, and is licensed under the GNU GPL.

Compendium is a computer program and social science tool that facilitates the mapping and management of ideas and arguments. The software provides a visual environment that allows people to structure and record collaboration as they work through “wicked problems”.

WikkaWiki (often shortened as Wikka) is a free, lightweight, and standards-compliant wiki engine. Written in PHP, it uses MySQL to store pages. WikkaWiki is a fork of Wakka Wiki to which a number of new features have been added. It is designed for speed, fine-grained access control, extensibility, and security, and is released under the GNU General Public License.

VUE (Visual Understanding Environment) is a free, open source concept mapping application written in Java. The application is developed by the Academic Technology group at Tufts University. VUE is licensed under the Educational Community License. VUE 3.0, the latest release, was funded under a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

SciPlore MindMapping is a mind mapping application written in Java. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License and based on the open source software FreeMind. The focus of SciPlore MindMapping is on combining mind maps with PDF and reference management.

XMind is an open source brainstorming and mind mapping software tool developed by XMind Ltd. It helps people to capture ideas, organize to various charts, and share them for collaboration. It supports mind maps, fishbone diagrams, tree diagrams, org-charts, logic charts, and spreadsheets. It is often used for knowledge management, meeting minutes, task management, and GTD. XMind is compatible with FreeMind. The latest version is XMind 3.

Pimki is a PIM derived from the Ruby-based Wiki-clone, Instiki, written and maintained by Assaph Mehr. It is “the place to dump your brain, organise your thoughts and Get Things Done.”

FreeMind is a premier free mind-mapping software written in Java. The recent development has hopefully turned it into high productivity tool.

The Cost of Printing Hardcopy Books and eBooks

In the emerging world of e-books, many consumers assume it is only logical that publishers are saving vast amounts by not having to print or distribute paper books, leaving room to pass along those savings to their customers.

Publishers largely agree, which is why in negotiations with Apple, five of the six largest publishers of trade books have said they would price most digital editions of new fiction and nonfiction books from $12.99 to $14.99 on the forthcoming iPad tablet — significantly lower than the average $26 price for a hardcover book.

But publishers also say consumers exaggerate the savings and have developed unrealistic expectations about how low the prices of e-books can go. Yes, they say, printing costs may vanish, but a raft of expenses that apply to all books, like overhead, marketing and royalties, are still in effect.

All of which raises the question: Just how much does it actually cost to produce a printed book versus a digital one?

Publishers differ on how they account for various costs, but a composite, and necessarily simplified, picture might look like this, according to interviews with executives at several major houses:

On a typical hardcover, the publisher sets a suggested retail price. Let’s say it is $26. The bookseller will generally pay the publisher $13. Out of that gross revenue, the publisher pays about $3.25 to print, store and ship the book, including unsold copies returned to the publisher by booksellers.

For cover design, typesetting and copy-editing, the publisher pays about 80 cents. Marketing costs average around $1 but may go higher or lower depending on the title. Most of these costs will deline on a per-unit basis as a book sells more copies.

Let’s not forget the author, who is generally paid a 15 percent royalty on the hardcover price, which on a $26 book works out to $3.90. For big best-selling authors — and even occasionally first-time writers whose publishers have taken a risk — the author’s advance may be so large that the author effectively gets a higher slice of the gross revenue. Publishers generally assume they will write off a portion of many authors’ advances because they are not earned back in sales.

Without accounting for such write-offs, the publisher is left with $4.05, out of which it must pay overhead for editors, cover art designers, office space and electricity before taking a profit.

Now let’s look at an e-book. Under the agreements with Apple, the publishers will set the consumer price and the retailer will act as an agent, earning a 30 percent commission on each sale. So on a $12.99 e-book, the publisher takes in $9.09. Out of that gross revenue, the publisher pays about 50 cents to convert the text to a digital file, typeset it in digital form and copy-edit it. Marketing is about 78 cents.

The author’s royalty — a subject of fierce debate between literary agents and publishing executives — is calculated among some of the large trade publishers as 25 percent of the gross revenue, while others are calculating it off the consumer price. So on a $12.99 e-book, the royalty could be anywhere from $2.27 to $3.25.

All that leaves the publisher with something ranging from $4.56 to $5.54, before paying overhead costs or writing off unearned advances.

At a glance, it appears the e-book is more profitable. But publishers point out that e-books still represent a small sliver of total sales, from 3 to 5 percent. If e-book sales start to replace some hardcover sales, the publishers say, they will still have many of the fixed costs associated with print editions, like warehouse space, but they will be spread among fewer print copies.

Moreover, in the current print model, publishers can recoup many of their costs, and start to make higher profits, on paperback editions. If publishers start a new e-book’s life at a price similar to that of a paperback book, and reduce the price later, it may be more difficult to cover costs and support new authors.

Another reason publishers want to avoid lower e-book prices is that print booksellers like Barnes & Noble, Borders and independents across the country would be unable to compete. As more consumers buy electronic readers and become comfortable with reading digitally, if the e-books are priced much lower than the print editions, no one but the aficionados and collectors will want to buy paper books.

“If you want bookstores to stay alive, then you want to slow down this movement to e-books,” said Mike Shatzkin, chief executive of the Idea Logical Company, a consultant to publishers. “The simplest way to slow down e-books is not to make them too cheap.”

In many ways, the $12.99-$14.99 price bracket for e-books is an experiment. With it, the publishers seem to have beaten back, for the moment, the $9.99 price that Amazon has offered for Kindle versions of most new releases and best sellers, but it remains to be seen whether consumers will tolerate that.

Music prices, for example, have come under significant pressure in the digital age: from 2000 to 2009, the price of audio discs, tapes and other media, which includes digitized music, fell a little more than 3 percent, according to the federal Consumer Price Index. Prices of so-called recreational books, meanwhile, have increased just over 6 percent during that same period.

Certainly, publishers argue that it would be difficult to sustain a vibrant business on much lower prices. Margins would be squeezed, and it would become more difficult to nurture new authors. “Most of the time these people are probably not going to make huge sums of money the first time they publish,” said Carolyn Reidy, chief executive of Simon & Schuster.

In fact, the industry is based on the understanding that as much as 70 percent of the books published will make little or no money at all for the publisher once costs are paid.

Some of these books are by writers who are experimenting with form or genre, or those who just do not have recognizable names. “You’re less apt to take a chance on an important first novel if you don’t have the profit margin on the volume of the big books,” said Lindy Hess, director of the Columbia Publishing Course, a program that trains young aspirants for jobs in the publishing industry. “The truth about this business is that, with rare exceptions, nobody makes a great deal of money.”

For many authors, pricing is a thicket of confusion. “None of us know what books cost. None of us know what kind of profits hardcover or paperback publishers make,” said Anne Rice, the author of “Interview With a Vampire” and the “Songs of the Seraphim” series.

She said she did not know whether publishers had struck the right price for e-books. “For all I know, a million books at $9.99 might be great for an author,” Ms. Rice said. “The only thing I think is a mistake is people trying to hold back e-books or Kindle and trying to head off this revolution by building a dam. It’s not going to work.”