I haven’t added anything to this blog for quite a while. It’s time to change that. I have just migrated it from WordPress to a Hugo-based static website. This should mean it runs faster, and also it should be easier to add new posts. There is also the benefit that it now runs free, courtesy of Netlify. I will add an update to explain how I did this migration later.

I’ve noticed something unusual in the ebook price alerts going out from Luzme. The old ‘cheap’ ebook price point used to be £0.99, and before that, it was £0.20. But now, it seems to be £1.99. The Martian, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, The Devil in the Marshalsea, and more. All dropped to £1.99 whereas before I’d have expected £0.99. Interesting…

Now you can go to a page which shows all the most recent price drops for your watchlist. And it automatically updates, so if a new price drop comes in while you’re looking, then you’ll see it at the top of the page. http://luzme.com/watch/updates

So that’s it for this year… Described by one attendee as “an insanely great publishing meeting” ! Thanks to all our wonderful speakers: Cory Doctorow, Ian Ritchie, Timo Hannay, John Gilbey, Jan Velterop, Mark Hahnel, Michelle Brook, Rachel Willmer, Brennan Dunn, Peter Armstrong. And our best wishes to Jenny Todd, who couldn’t make it on the day because of a car accident, hope all is well! Here’s the links to the talks:

“Disruption in the Publishing Industry” Friday, 20th June Business School, University of Edinburgh http://edinpubconf.net Following the success of last year’s Edinburgh Publishing Conference, we’re running it again with a exciting set of speakers. To name but three: Cory Doctorow, Ian Ritchie and me! Cory Doctorow: award-winning writer, journalist, activist. His talk at O’Reilly’s 2013 “Tools of Change” conference was one of the highlights, and we’re delighted to have him as our main speaker.

How much should you pay for an ebook? $9.99? $0.99? $0? And how much should you price your ebooks? I’m going to tell you what people have actually paid for their ebooks, based on some hard data from Luzme. You can set the price of your book to be anything you want; what really matters is what someone will pay for it! This article originally appeared on TechCrunch. Last year, Luzme captured a large amount of ebook price data and reader pricing preferences.

I’ve added a new country, Spain. If you’re interesting following the stores in Spain, then please go to your settings and activate the stores there.

I’ve recently uploaded a new release (v5.1.0) New Design V5 brings a new design; and I hope you like it. Please take a minute to check your settings; you have total control over which stores you follow, so if you’re getting alerts for stores or countries you don’t expect, then please just go to your settings and switch them off. New Country (Germany) One of the main behind-the-scenes benefits of this new design is that it’s going to be much easier to add new countries and stores, so please let me know what you’d like to see.

Last week, I was absolutely delighted to find that an article about Luzme was on the front page of cnet.com! Link to the article on cnet.com As you can imagine, the traffic level leapt up way above normal. I’m sorry if you’ve been adversely affected by the slowdown this caused; I’ve added extra resources to cope with the higher load. Rachel

I’m working on a project to enable a UK-based author do direct worldwide ebook sales of their own works. Selling ebooks in Europe is an important part of that worldwide market. And, given that this is a UK-based project, we need to comply with the relevant VAT rules. If the customer is in the EU, we add the VAT. If they’re not, we don’t. If we add the VAT, it’s the UK rate of 20% and we pay it to the UK HMRC.