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Oct 15
Love1

Turn off Twitter notifications on your phone (with screenshots)

By Blog

One of the top complaints we hear from readers of In 30 Minutes guides concerns social media notifications. The networks want to do everything they can to get people coming back, so new accounts are mercilessly bombarded with friend requests, recommended accounts to follow, promotions, and much more. Twitter is particularly bad when it comes to notifications because there are so many possibilities that aren’t seen in other networks, such as retweets and being added to a list. In addition, so much Twitter activity takes place on phones, that the notifications can be a serious distraction. This post will show how to deal with Twitter notifications on a phone (specifically, an iPhone 6), as well as email notifications, which also show up on phones. For more information about how to manage your Twitter experience, check out Twitter In 30 Minutes).

While the phone’s master settings can be used to shut down all notifications (for instance, in iOS 9 go to Settings > Notifications and scroll down to the Twitter app to turn off banners, lock screen notifications, etc.) chances are you may want to receive some notifications while disabling others. Here’s how:

1. Open the Twitter app, and click on the profile icon. Then, click on the gear icon to access settings:
Twitter mobile app iphone settings

2. The general settings screen is very basic. To get to the notifications, tap the account name (for instance, @in30minutes):

Twitter mobile app settings

3. Then tap “Mobile notifications” for that account.

4. Finally, you will see the notifications toggles:

Twitter mobile app notifications settings

If you no longer want to receive a certain type of notification on your phone, toggle it off. For instance, to stop receiving “new follower” alerts, toggle the New Followers settings to the left so it is greyed out. There is no “Save” button; the changes simply take effect right away.

It’s important to note that this method won’t control every type of Twitter notification; for instance, if you are receiving Twitter notifications via email (most people do receive notifications via email as well) these will be forwarded to your inbox, which may also show up as mobile notifications on your phone. Twitter email notifications have to be handled separately, as the following video describes:

Sep 23
Love6

What should independent authors do about Kindle Unlimited and other predatory platforms?

By Blog, Industry

This post originally started out as a comment on Mark Coker’s blog post about the demise of Oyster, but it has actually been brewing for a long time, since the launch of the Scribd and Oyster ebook subscription services and the appearance of Amazon’s predatory Kindle Unlimited subscription plan. I’ve decided to expand my thoughts on the In 30 Minutes blog and seek feedback from writers.

I have long thought that in the battle of the platform marketplaces and their business plans, the content creators — whether they be musicians, filmmakers, or authors — seldom get a seat at the table. We have seen this happen with Spotify, where artists get scraps while the platform owners and investors (including the big music publishers) grab money and control. Following the launch of the Oyster and Scribd ebook subscription plans, I wrote:

“As for the venture-funded book subscription services, I’ve taken a look at Scribd and read some of the recent news about Oyster, too. I find it very telling that Scribd.com heavily promotes unlimited books for readers, and offers resources for publishers and partners, yet there isn’t a single page in their support section that explains to authors what they will be getting from the service. Clearly, authors are not a priority.”

Amazon Kindle Unlimited buffet - Depolo_cc_2-0_attribution_flickrAlthough Coker was eventually able to get a reasonable rate from Scribd and Oyster for authors participating in his Smashwords distribution service, it was overshadowed once Amazon decided to jump in with the Kindle Unlimited subscription plan. It’s cheap, fully integrated with the Kindle, and absolutely terrible for most participating authors. Just like the $10 buffet at the local Chinese restaurant, the cheap, all-you-can-eat subscription plan that Amazon launched requires cheap stuff in order to work. It’s great for readers, it’s great for Amazon, but for the authors and content creators? Not so great. Authors who participate (via Amazon’s KDP Select self-publishing service) are getting crumbs in the form of a per-page reading rate that is the same for all ebooks. In the long run KU is terrible for authors, except for a tiny minority who can achieve scale. This will reduce the size of the pie and leave a lot of talented authors struggling or even giving up.

I think it’s time for indie authors to look at the music and film industries to not only see where things are headed, but what can be done to preserve or strengthen our collective power. Withholding the best content from marketplaces (as HBO has done with Netflix and Amazon Prime, and some artists have done with Spotify) is one strategy, although it’s unclear how effective it can be unless lots of content is withheld and there are viable alternatives for audiences to turn to.

Sharing data and shining a light on the ugly reality of treatment of content creators is another, as artists have done for years with Spotify and Taylor Swift did most recently (i.e., Spotify’s claim it had paid out $2 million, vs. Swift’s revelation that it was 1/4 that figure).

However, one thing artists and filmmakers have been unable to do — in part because of the industry structure involving studios and publishers with misaligned interests — is band together to demand a seat at the table, and fight for their rights. In the publishing world, while some author organizations have taken a stance against Amazon, they represent relatively small numbers of authors. I think there is a huge opportunity to unite the population of indie authors (including self-publisher authors and professionals) who are not represented by these organizations, and are not beholden to the large publishing houses. With a strong voice, the ability to shine a light on the good and bad players in this industry, and the power to issue recommendations, it may be possible for independent authors and other content creators to finally get a seat at the table or take action when platforms behave badly.

What do you think? Is this an effort worth pursuing?

(Note: This post reflects my views only. I welcome dissenting views and discussion in the comments below, but please be respectful)

Image: Chinese Buffet, Steven Depolo/Flickr, used under Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution license

Sep 11
Love2

The iPhone 6S aggravates missing photo archive features in iCloud

By Blog, News

Apple recently announced the latest iPhone model, the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S+. I have closely followed the news, not only because I have written about Apple for years, but also because I am preparing a new book, titled iPhone 6 & 6S In 30 Minutes which covers all iPhone 6 models running iOS 9.

A lot of the media attention around the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus has concerned the powerful new cameras, the ability to shoot 4K video, and Live Photos. These look like amazing features, but as others have pointed out, they come with a high price: They will quickly use up the iPhone’s storage (particularly the 16GB model). I will take this observation a step further: The powerful iPhone 6S camera aggravates a huge design flaw in Apple’s iCloud service — the inability to archive photos and videos on iCloud Photo Library.

iphone6s icloud photo library archive photos backupLet me explain. If you have activated iCloud Photo Library on your iPhone 6 or iPhone 6S, All Photos will show thumbnails of all digital photos and videos created on the iPhone that have not been deleted. It also includes thumbnails of photos from any other device connected to the same iCloud account and synced to iCloud Photo Library.

When you delete a photo or video taken on your iPhone, it is also removed from iCloud Photo Library. It is not archived. This is true even if you have a paid iCloud account with tons of online storage. This is a major problem for anyone who takes lots of photos and videos, and then needs to delete them from the phone to make room for more — once you delete them from the phone, they are gone for good!

Apple support forums are filled with iPhone owners who want to clear some space on their phones, but still save copies of the photos and videos (see Can I use iCloud to store photos I want to delete from my iPhone 5s?). There is no solution on the forums, and when I contacted Apple support the only suggestion they had was to optimize storage on the iPhone, as described on this page:

If you turn on Optimize (device) Storage, iCloud Photo Library will automatically manage the size of your library on your device, so you can make the most of your device’s storage and access more photos than ever. All of your original, full-resolution photos and videos are stored in iCloud while device-size versions are kept on your device. You can download the original photos and videos over Wi-Fi or cellular when you need them. If you turn on Download Originals, iCloud Photo Library will keep your original, full-resolution photos and videos in iCloud and on your device. Download Originals is the default setting for iOS devices with the free 5 GB storage plan and for all Mac devices.

Optimize Storage is an iCloud band-aid that doesn’t scale. This option takes all of the high-resolution photos and videos — even the ones you created just last week — and places them on iCloud’s servers. It leads to other problems. Namely, if you tap a thumbnail to download a high-resolution photo or video from iCloud onto your iPhone, the photo or video may take a long time to load -— or may not load at all — depending on the speed of your Wi-Fi or carrier connection. I found this out the hard way when trying to show a two-minute HD video of a recent vacation experience on my iPhone 6 to visiting family members over a standard home Wi-Fi setup. It was taking too long to load, so I was forced to abandon the attempt.

What if you don’t use iCloud Photo Library, and opt for plain-jane iCloud photo storage? In this case, you will revert to the old Camera Roll view, which consists of photos and videos created by the iPhone’s camera and still stored on the device. Eventually they will have to be deleted and/or manually backed up to a desktop computer.

As you can imagine, things will only get worse for owners of the iPhone 6S and 6S+, who will be taking higher-resolution photos and videos. Until Apple’s iCloud group figures out a solution to the problem for all iPhone owners, the best alternative is Dropbox’s Camera Uploads feature, which automatically uploads and backs up all photos and videos taken on your smartphone to a dedicated folder on the user’s Dropbox account. Even if you delete a photo or video on the iPhone, you will still have a copy on Dropbox as long as a Dropbox sync has taken place and there is enough space on the account (free accounts have a limited amount of storage). I have covered this in the latest edition of Dropbox In 30 Minutes for anyone who is interested. Google Drive recently began offering a similar feature, but I have not tried it yet. It boggles the mind why Apple has yet to introduce such a feature for iCloud — Dropbox Camera Uploads was introduced in 2011, so it’s not like it’s a new concept.

Have you had the same photo and video backup problem using iCloud Photo Library on your iPhone 6 or iPhone 6S? How have you dealt with the problem?

Jul 14
Love5

Selling to the federal government/GSA: a bureaucratic nightmare for small businesses

By Blog

Selling to the federal government via the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) sounds great in theory. The government spends billions every year on all kinds of stuff, ranging from toilet paper to tanks. Many purchases are made through GSA contracts. Orders can be huge, and unlike the commercial books business, you don’t usually have to deal with returns. The government has all kinds of programs that give special consideration to small businesses, and even set up an e-commerce website called GSA Advantage. Sounds like a great opportunity, doesn’t it? Especially considering we just launched a new product line, Cheat Sheets for popular software programs such as Google Docs and Google Drive, which could potentially be very useful to office workers, clerks, teachers, and other staff employed by the government.

Google Drive cheat sheet and referenceI was enthusiastic about the GSA selling opportunity for the cheat sheets, until I started to dig into the details of what’s required. Unfortunately, the reality is selling to the government is a complicated, broken mess that puts small businesses at a distinct disadvantage owing to the onerous bureaucratic requirements. As with many things related to the government, the requirements probably started with good intentions, such as increased transparency, better security, and removing opportunities for fraud and waste. But when managers at multiple agencies, government lawyers, preferred private companies, and Congress became involved, it turned into a bureaucratic disaster.

I started the process earlier this year, by registering for SAM (“The System for Award Management is the Official U.S. Government system that consolidated the capabilities of CCR/FedReg, ORCA, and EPLS.”) I then visited or registered for about a dozen other sites which handle different parts of the bidding and ordering systems — Fedbizopps, GSA Vendor Support Center (VSC), the private company which issues a digital certificate, Duns & Bradstreet, the SBA, and more. I also took online training and a test to verify that I understood the general contracting requirements (ask me about SINs, MFC, NAICS classifiers, MAC price lists and EPA clauses!), went through the voluminous GSA clauses that govern certain processes (example: “552.238-71 SUBMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION OF AUTHORIZED FSS SCHEDULE PRICELISTS”), and finally sent in notarized copies of my passport and drivers license and a $119 check to a private contractor named ACES in return for a digital certificate, which verifies to the government I am who I say I am when I make a bid via their online system.

At that point, I was ready to start making offers against solicitations. I spent about an hour installing the digital certificate on two computers, which enabled me to sign into eOffer. Entering my DUNS number showed which schedules my company was qualified for. Opening the most promising solicitation document (TFTP-MC-000874-B, if you’re curious), I was stopped dead in my tracks. By this point, I thought I had jumped through most of the required bureaucratic hoops, but in fact I had only just begun. Here are some excerpts about the additional requirements:

The Offeror must complete and submit the Readiness Assessment for Prospective Offerors. This free, web-based self-assessment is available through the Vendor Education Center (VEC), which can be accessed directly at https://gsafas.secure.force.com/MASTrainingHome or through the Vendor Support Center. …

The Offeror must order and obtain a Past Performance Evaluation from Open Ratings, Inc. (ORI). Offerors are responsible for payment to ORI for the Past Performance Evaluation. …

The Offeror must provide financial statements for the previous two-year period (audited, if available). At a minimum, each financial statement must consist of a balance sheet and income statement. … offerors are NOT to submit tax returns. …

The Offeror must submit a narrative description of its corporate experience. This narrative cannot exceed two pages and must address the following: (A) The number of years of corporate experience in providing the products/services described under this Schedule, regardless of the specific products/services being proposed – a minimum of two (2) years of corporate experience is required (B) Organization’s number of employees, experience in the field, and resources available to enable it to fulfill requirements (C) Brief history of the Offeror’s activities contributing to the development of expertise and capabilities related to this requirement (D) Information that demonstrates the Offeror’s organizational and accounting controls (E) A description of the resources presently in-house or the ability to acquire the type and kinds of personnel/products proposed (F) A description of how the Offeror intends to market the proposed products/services to Federal clients (G) A discussion regarding the intended use of subcontractors. …

Quality Control: The Offeror is to submit a single narrative for this factor, regardless of the number of products/services offered. This narrative cannot exceed two (2) pages and must address the following: (A) A description of internal review procedures that facilitate high-quality standards (B) Identification of individuals responsible for ensuring quality control (C) Whether or not subcontractors are used and, if so, the quality control measures used to ensure acceptable subcontractor performance (D) How potential problem areas and solutions are handled (E) The procedures for ensuring quality performance when meeting urgent requirements (F) How quality control will be managed when completing multiple projects for multiple agencies simultaneously. …

GSA’s pricing goal is to obtain equal to or better than the Offeror’s Most Favored Customer (MFC) pricing under the same or similar terms and conditions. GSA seeks to obtain the Offeror’s best price based on its evaluation of discounts, terms, conditions, and concessions offered to commercial customers. However, offers that propose Most Favored Customer pricing but are not highly competitive will not be determined fair and reasonable and will not be accepted. … The proposed pricing structure must be consistent with the Offeror’s commercial practices. Pricing must be clearly identified as based either on a “Commercial Price List” or a “Commercial Market Price,” as defined in FAR 2.101 (see “Catalog Price” and “Market Prices” under the definition of “Commercial Item”). (A) If the MFC is a Federal agency, but sales exist to commercial customers, identify which, if any, of the commercial customers receive the Offeror’s best price.

There are many more clauses and rules in the document. Put together, they are not insurmountable. Thousands of companies deal with GSA solicitations every day. However, in this particular solicitation, there was one line in particular that made me throw up my hands:

“Due to the large number of new offers currently in process, it may take up to 12 months or longer before an offer is evaluated.”

Because the government agent responsible for viewing my offer may not even get to it for another year, the accompanying documentation such as financial statements, vendor assessments, quality control processes and other information may be out of date. Outdated and inaccurate information can lead to a rejection. It’s a Catch-22 that increases costs, adds risks, and wastes everyone’s time.

Larger firms getting started with government contractors can eat the costs, deal with delays, and assign multiple staff members to plow through the red tape. They can afford to wait a year or two, reapply, or hire a specialist agency to deal with these issues. It’s not so easy for small businesses, especially companies with just one or two people and limited cash flow.

And let’s consider what’s being sold. i30 Media is a publisher. We don’t sell cruise missiles, or $20,000 software packages. The cheat sheets cost under $5. Why should it be so hard for any company to sell low-cost items to government agencies?

Are we giving up? No. But I am going to find other outlets to sell to the government — contractors which already have gone through the painful setup processes and are looking for some high-quality training materials to add to their catalogs.

It’s worth noting that I already sell to commercial customers through Amazon Advantage. The time required to set up the listings for the Google Drive Reference & Cheat Sheet, and start selling? About 3 hours, from registration to getting the listing posted. The cost: Nothing. I didn’t have to take a two-hour training session, get a copy of my passport notarized, install a digital certificate, prepare a corporate history, or explain my QA processes. Selling to companies or individuals vs. selling to the government is like night and day.

I welcome comments from other businesses that want to sell to the government through the GSA, or already have contracts. What are some tricks of the trade for dealing with contracts of this type?

May 22
Love2

99 Designs review: Crowdsourcing a book cover redesign

By Blog

Book cover redesign is a big deal. It takes time, there are lots of hassles, and at the end of the day it requires authors and publishers to step out of their text-based comfort zones and make hard choices about visuals. I’ve participated in several book cover redesigns, as well as redesigns of magazines, newspapers, websites, and mobile apps, always working with designated design teams and traditional workflows. However, for the book cover redesign for In 30 Minutes guides, I decided to take a different approach using crowdsourcing at several key stages. This post will serve as a description of the process as well as a 99 Designs review.

First, a little background about the redesign project. I launched In 30 Minutes guides in 2012, first with a DIY design just to test the concept (using a fast prototyping and testing approach I call “lean media”). Once I verified that readers liked the basic brand, I enlisted a graphic designer I had worked with before to create something more attention-grabbing and professional for the book covers. It was important to have a consistent design for the series, and have something that could stand out in Amazon and other online marketplaces. Here’s what we eventually came up with:

Old design for In 30 Minutes guides

The original book cover designs dating from 2012

This design has served us well, and enabled Google Drive & Docs In 30 Minutes, LinkedIn In 30 Minutes, and several other titles to sell many thousands of copies in both ebook and print editions. However, this year I decided it was time for a new design. There are three reasons for this:

  1. I am preparing for national retail distribution for the paperback edition, and several other publishers as well as people working for distributors have suggested that I try a more modern design. Retro works for retro topics, but for technology and and current business trends, something more modern is appropriate.
  2. After 3 years with the same designs, I felt we should at least have a refresh (a light redesign that preserves the core feel of the existing design, usually with more modern elements). When I worked on magazines and online publications, refreshes or full redesigns typically happened every 3 years.
  3. The old design doesn’t leave enough room for subtitles

For the new redesign, I decided to take a different approach. I feared putting all of my eggs in one basket with a new graphic designer (especially someone I have never worked with) might limit my options and take a long time to work through. I also wanted to see if any online services could work faster and more cheaply. I had used oDesk (now Upwork) in the past for small design projects, and had pretty good results for a relatively low cost.

I soon stumbled upon 99designs. This is a design company that is using crowdsourcing and a global pool of design talent to provide services. The basic idea behind a 99designs “contest” is the client pays a set fee ($300, $500, $800, etc.) for dozens of freelance designers to come up with different design ideas and eventually come up with a winning design. The graphic designer whose design is chosen by the client wins the prize.

The concept is not without controversy, and many experienced designers don’t participate — it goes against their beliefs about the client/designer relationship, the prize doesn’t come close to their standard rates, and there’s a real chance they may not win. But it opens some doors for younger designers, as well as designers from other countries who otherwise would have a tough time recruiting clients outside of their regions.

I liked it because it gives me the chance to see ideas from lots of different designers, and moves fast — the contest can wrap up in about a week. So I decided to give it a shot.

I chose 99 Designs’s “silver” level ($500) which supposedly attracts more experienced designers and results in more submissions. I also paid a little extra to make my contest stand out ($19) and required participants to sign an NDA (I think about $39, but in retrospect that may not have been necessary considering I am blogging about it now!) It’s basically a form of crowdsourcing, although some people might view it as more of an auction (historical note: one of the first crowdsourcing experiments took place at a British cattle auction, when participants were asked to guess the weight of cow — the average guess was just one pound off the correct weight).

99 Designs review: submitting redesign specifications

Here are the specs I submitted via the 99 Designs website:

Describe what your organization or product does and its target audience

I am the publisher of In 30 Minutes guides — how-to guides for technology, business, and other mildly complex topics. Our current selection can be seen on in30minutes.com.

Our motto is “Quick guides for a complex world.” Our target audience generally skews to 40+, male and female, but we sometimes get younger readers. Most are in the U.S., U.K., and Canada.

Describe what you want designed

I need a new cover design template for the series.

The current designs date from 2012 and have served us well, but feedback from professionals in the book industry state the design is “too retro.” There are a few other issues with the template we use, such as not enough space for the subtitle. I have attached samples.

The deliverables for this project include:
* Two sample ebook covers for two titles (RGB PNG) (LinkedIn In 30 Minutes and Excel Basics In 30 Minutes, 2nd Edition)
* One sample print cover including spine and back cover (RGB PDF) (LinkedIn In 30 Minutes)
* Template master (PSD, etc.)
* All art elements, fonts, etc.

Specs:
* 6” wide by 9” tall (paperback). Spines have two versions — .23” and .21” — with the title of the book and the publisher (i30 Media). Paperback needs to have white box on rear cover (see sample) for ISBN placement. See https://www.createspace.com/Help/Book/Artwork.do to download a template (use black and white interior, 6”x9” trim size, 102 pages, white paper)
* Ebook: 1600px wide 2560px high (front cover only, note that it is identical to the print cover) (see https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A2J0TRG6OPX0VM#dim for more details)

The new design needs to:
* Look more modern, clean — more “Apple” than “Microsoft”
* The new design does not need to echo the old design — something completely fresh is fine!
* Incorporates the “In 30 Minutes” concept in some way (for instance, in the old design we used a stopwatch)
* Flexible to handle long titles and subtitles (for instance: “Dropbox In 30 Minutes” vs. “Personal Finance For Beginners In 30 Minutes, Vol. 1”)
* Easy to read title and stands out even when shrunk to thumbnail size on Amazon or other online/mobile marketplaces. This is very important.
* Even though the guides sometimes talk about products, we will not be using product photos or logos on the cover.
* It has to be clear different guides about different topics belong to the same series.
* Colors can be uniform, or differ from guide to guide, but please do not use any combination of yellow and black.
* The back cover of the print version needs to have our motto “Quick guides for a complex world” appear somewhere, set off from the rest of the text.

Is there anything else you would like to communicate to the designers?

The following examples of book series can be shared:

500 series: http://amzn.to/1EtyA7k
Gualtieri series: http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,214196.0.html
http://amzn.to/1KXEWR2

I am including them because they clearly belong to the same series, and also show up well as thumbnails.

“Please do not use any combination of yellow and black” relates to the fact that many casual observers mistakenly equate In 30 Minutes guides with “For Dummies” books. The concept is actually quite different on several levels, including the facts that our guides are much shorter and easier to read and cover topics that Dummies guides don’t (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.). But I want to avoid any suggestion that In 30 Minutes guides are attempting to mimic Dummies — so no yellow/black designs!

Judging the book cover redesigns

The 99 Designs contest started. Soon I began to get designs from people all over the world. Logging onto the 99designs.com website, I was able to perform the following tasks:

  • Communicate with designers by leaving private comments and “stars” on specific designs
  • Eliminate designs I did not like
  • Use a special tool to mark parts of a design and offer suggestions (“move the stopwatch hand to the 5:30 position”)
  • Add files, such as graphic elements or samples.

Many of the designers responded very quickly. One early problem related to conveying the “In 30 Minutes” concept visually. Digital timers don’t really work, as they could be other things (such as a thermostat or gauge). The traditional stopwatch was the only real choice, but I had to tell designers not to use “free” clip art or vectors from the Internet, as many of them actually come with copyright or usage restrictions. I ended up licensing a few shutterstock vectors of modern-looking stopwatches and uploaded them to 99designs.

Here are some of the early designs:

99 designs review - crowdsourcing book cover design using 99 designs

99 Designs review: Some of the designs submitted during the early part of the contest

The first phase of the contest ended after 5 or 6 days. I was then prompted to choose the six finalists, but was also offered an option to take 3 more days to have my friends and social contacts vote on the ones they liked. This is another crowdsourcing element which I happily leveraged. I used 99designs to post the contest to Facebook and Twitter, and am also leaving it open to the readers of this blog (click this link to get started, it will take less than a minute).

I liked the ability to get lots of different design perspectives from graphic artists in many countries. I also liked tools that let me easily share the results with my readers and fans, so I could get real perspectives about which designs worked and which did not.

Professional design we ended up using for LinkedIn In 30 MinutesUltimately I did not use the materials from 99 Designs contest. I had some contacts in the publishing industry review the designs, and they indicated they were not up to snuff. I don’t fault the designers for this as I was the person calling the shots in terms of what worked and what didn’t. Some of the blame for “not up to snuff” falls on me.

I ended up going with a design team based in Austin which I found through the Independent Book Publishers Association network. It was more expensive, but I am very happy with the results. I’ve included an inset sample here.

What did you think of this 99 Designs review? Would you ever consider using a crowdsourced design service such as 99 Designs, or would you rather go with a dedicated professional designer?