#Amazon global selling

[klubwork]

The Role Of Cultural Differences In Cross-Border E-Commerce

Understanding cultural differences is crucial for success in cross-border e-commerce. Cultural nuances can significantly impact customer behavior, marketing strategies, and overall business performance. This guide explores the role of cultural differences and provides strategies to effectively navigate them.

Understanding Cultural Nuances

Culture influences how people perceive and interact with brands, make purchasing decisions, and respond to marketing messages. Key cultural factors to consider include:

Language and Communication: Language preferences and communication styles vary widely. For instance, while English is widely understood in the USA, Arabic content is more engaging in the MENA region.

Values and Beliefs: Cultural values and beliefs shape consumer behavior. Understanding these values helps tailor your messaging and product offerings to resonate with your target audience.

Social Norms and Etiquette: Different cultures have unique social norms and etiquette that influence shopping behavior. For example, in the MENA region, modesty and family-oriented values are important considerations.

Tailoring Your Marketing Strategy

Localized Content and Messaging: Create content that resonates with local audiences by addressing their specific needs, preferences, and pain points. Use native speakers for translations to ensure accuracy and cultural relevance.

Culturally Relevant Imagery and Design: Use imagery and design elements that reflect the cultural context of your target market. Avoid using symbols or colors that might have negative connotations in certain cultures.

Cultural Sensitivity in Advertising: Be mindful of cultural sensitivities in your advertising campaigns. For example, avoid themes or messages that could be perceived as offensive or inappropriate.

Adapting Your Product Offering

Product Customization: Customize your products to meet the cultural preferences and needs of your target audience. For example, offer modest clothing options in the MENA region or holiday-specific products in the USA.

Packaging and Labeling: Adapt your packaging and labeling to align with local cultural preferences and regulatory requirements. This includes using local languages, adhering to labeling standards, and considering cultural aesthetics.

Enhancing Customer Experience

Localized Customer Support: Offer customer support in the local language and understand cultural nuances in customer interactions. This enhances customer satisfaction and builds trust.

Cultural Sensitivity in Policies: Ensure your return policies, shipping options, and payment methods consider cultural preferences. For example, offering cash on delivery in the MENA region can increase conversion rates.

Real-Life Success Story: BeautyBloom

BeautyBloom, a skincare brand, successfully expanded into the MENA region by understanding and embracing cultural differences. They localized their website content, adapted their product packaging, and offered Arabic-language customer support. Their culturally sensitive marketing campaigns resulted in a 70% increase in sales and a strong brand presence in the region.

Amazon UAE Sale: A Case Study

One notable example is the Amazon UAE sale. Amazon’s localized approach, including offering products that cater to local tastes and providing customer support in Arabic, has significantly boosted their market presence in the UAE.

Leveraging Amazon Global Selling

For businesses looking to expand internationally, Amazon global selling provides a robust platform. By utilizing Amazon global selling from India, companies can reach a wider audience and streamline their international operations.

Managing Your Amazon Seller Account UAE

To succeed in a new market, managing your Amazon seller account UAE effectively is crucial. Utilizing Amazon account management services can help ensure compliance with local regulations and optimize your sales strategies.

Conclusion

Cultural differences play a significant role in cross-border e-commerce. By understanding and embracing these differences, you can create a more engaging and relevant customer experience, build trust, and drive international growth.

Ready to navigate cultural differences and expand your e-commerce business globally? Sign up with Klub Commerce today. Our all-in-one platform provides the tools and support you need to succeed in diverse international markets. Start your global expansion journey with us and unlock new growth opportunities. Whether you need international eCommerce solutions or assistance with Amazon account management services, we have you covered.

Join the Klub

[kazifatagar]

MATRADE-Amazon MoU To Empower SMEs To Go Global

On June 18, 2024, the Malaysia External Trade Development Corporation (MATRADE) and Amazon signed a MoU to enhance the export capabilities of Malaysian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The “Go Global with Amazon and MATRADE” initiative aims to help Malaysian brand owners and sellers capitalize on cross-border e-commerce opportunities through Amazon Global Selling. This partnership will…

[5shortstories]

It is an international story that goes from one side of the world to the other, transcends time, and, along the way, ventures into kingdoms and introduces Kings, Queens, princes, princesses, prominent high society, love, war, and secrets. There are mysteries and clues in the details of the twists and turns. Royalty Among Us, Hidden in Plain Sight.

Royalty Among Us: Hidden in Plain Sight https://a.co/d/920pO06

[theprivatewolf]

Move To Dubai From UK: A Complete Guide

Are you an Indian seller looking to expand your e-commerce business globally and tap into the potential of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) market? Selling on Amazon UAE is a lucrative opportunity for those wanting to reach a wider customer base and increase sales. In this blog, we’ll take you through the step-by-step process of selling on Amazon UAE from India, highlighting the advantages of entering this market and shedding light on the associated costs.

How to Start Selling on Amazon Globally

Before diving into the specifics of selling on Amazon UAE, it’s important to understand how to start selling on Amazon globally. Here are the key steps:

1. Register for an Amazon Seller Account: If you don’t already have an Amazon Seller account, you’ll need to sign up. Visit the Amazon Seller Central website and follow the registration process.

2. Choose the Marketplace: Once you have your seller account, select the global marketplace you wish to sell in. In this case, it would be Amazon UAE.

3. Prepare Your Business: Ensure your business is equipped to handle international sales. This includes having the necessary inventory, shipping capabilities, and a customer service plan that can accommodate international customers.

4. Listings and Product Listings: Create product listings in the UAE marketplace, making sure they adhere to local regulations and are optimized for the UAE audience.

5. Fulfillment and Shipping: Decide whether you want to fulfill orders yourself or use Amazon’s Fulfillment Centers. You can also utilize Amazon’s Global Selling program to simplify international shipping.

Steps to Sell on Amazon UAE

Selling on Amazon UAE involves specific steps that cater to the needs of the local market:

1. Verify Eligibility: Ensure that your Indian seller account is eligible for global selling. Typically, you should be a Professional Seller with a positive seller performance.

2. Add International Shipping: In your seller account, enable international shipping. This will allow you to send your products to Amazon Fulfillment Centers in the UAE.

3. Product Compliance: Confirm that your products meet UAE’s legal and regulatory requirements. You may need to adjust your listings and packaging accordingly.

4. Translate and Optimize Listings: Translate your product listings into Arabic, as many customers in the UAE prefer to shop in their native language. Also, optimize your listings to appeal to the local market.

5. Price Your Products: Consider the cost of doing business in the UAE and price your products competitively. Take into account exchange rates, import duties, and shipping costs.

6. Choose Fulfillment Method: Decide whether to fulfill orders from India or use Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) in the UAE. FBA simplifies the logistics and provides excellent customer service.

7. Set Up International Payments: Amazon provides currency conversion services to help you receive payments in your preferred currency.

8. Manage Customer Service: Ensure your customer service team can handle inquiries and concerns from UAE customers promptly and professionally.

Advantages of Selling in the UAE

Selling on Amazon UAE offers several advantages for Indian sellers:

1. Thriving E-commerce Market: The UAE has a rapidly growing e-commerce market, with a tech-savvy population that prefers online shopping.

2. Global Reach: By expanding to the UAE, you can tap into a diverse international customer base.

3. Fulfillment by Amazon: FBA services in the UAE make logistics and customer service hassle-free.

4. Tax Benefits: The UAE offers a tax-friendly environment, which can be advantageous for international businesses.

5. Currency Convenience: Amazon’s currency conversion services make it easy to manage international payments.

6. Cultural Diversity: The UAE’s diverse population provides opportunities to sell a wide range of products.

What is the Cost of Selling on Amazon from India?

The cost of selling on Amazon UAE from India can vary based on several factors, including the type and quantity of products you sell, the fulfillment method you choose, and advertising expenses. Amazon provides a cost calculator on their website to help you estimate these costs accurately. It’s essential to factor in listing fees, referral fees, storage fees, and shipping costs to ensure your pricing strategy remains competitive.

In conclusion, selling on Amazon UAE from India can be a profitable venture if done right. By following the steps outlined in this guide, you can access a thriving market, leverage Amazon’s global selling infrastructure, and potentially achieve significant business growth. Just remember to stay informed about local regulations, optimize your listings, and manage your costs effectively to make the most of this international opportunity. Happy selling!

M.Hussnain

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[fuckyeahgoodomens]

Today, Prime Video announced that it has confirmed that the global, fan-favorite series Good Omens will return for a third and final season. They have confirmed, as follows:

• The third season will comprise of one 90 minute episode starring Michael Sheen and David Tennant who return as the angel Aziraphale and demon Crowley, respectively. • Prime Video is delighted to bring its global customers a gripping conclusion to the ineffable journey between Aziraphale and Crowley. • Production is expected to begin in early 2025 in Scotland and the third season will premiere on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide. • The forthcoming season will bring to life a serendipitous conversation from almost 35 years ago, between the late Sir Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, where they mapped out “what happens next” to the wonderful characters in the world of their internationally best-selling novel. • The first season of Good Omens launched globally as a limited series on Prime Video in May 2019, and became a worldwide hit. This led to the series being renewed for a second season, which premiered in July 2023, and explored storylines that went beyond the original source material to illuminate the ineffable friendship between Aziraphale (Michael Sheen), a fussy angel and rare-book dealer, and the fast-living demon Crowley (David Tennant). • Rob Wilkins of Narrativia, representing Terry Pratchett’s estate, as well as BBC Studios Productions’ head of comedy Josh Cole will executive produce. Good Omens is based on the well-loved novel Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Sir Terry Pratchett and Gaiman. The new season is produced by Amazon MGM Studios, BBC Studios Productions, and Narrativia. • While Gaiman has contributed to the writing of the Good Omens series finale, he will not be working on the production.

my musings:

Shouldn't it have been a series of six episodes?

It should have yeah. It should have been 6 episodes so the seasons would make 666, now it's 661.

Is Neil Gaiman involved?

According to the press he will not be working on it as such though he "contributed to the writing", I mean the third season is based on what he and Terry had outlined together and he started to write into the scripts so I guess it couldn't be done without?

Tell me some good news

uuuuh, *racks my brain*

It is not cancelled completely (like OFMD for example :(), so we still might get the cottage?

Since there will be less of it then there will also be less post production and we might get it sooner?

Ta-da. (sorry)

And

[thebibliosphere]

Amazon keeps sending me “congratulations, you’ve been approved for our creator/influencer rewards program” emails and then because I don’t sign up, they send me more emails listing the benefits of upgrading to being an Amazon Influencer and it’s like Worstie, I know the price of doing business with you.

The only reason I use Amazon affiliate links for my published books at all is because I am currently making something depressing like a dollar from the sales of my paperbacks across global distributors (Audible sent me a check for 18 cents lmao) and the affiliate links help scrape up enough pennies every other month that I actually earn the full retail value of one whole paperback book.

Leave me alone!!! I don’t want to sell people shit they don’t need!!! I just want to sell my books. And even that I’m so bad at that someone in the notes is goin g to go “wait, you’re an author?” Aaaahh

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Keir Starmer appoints Jeff Bezos as his “first buddy”

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

Turns out Donald Trump isn't the only world leader with a tech billionaire "first buddy" who gets to serve as an unaccountable, self-interested de facto business regulator. UK PM Keir Starmer has just handed the keys to the British economy over to Jeff Bezos.

Oh, not literally. But here's what's happened: the UK's Competitions and Markets Authority, an organisation charged with investigating and punishing tech monopolists (like Amazon) has just been turned over to Doug Gurr, the guy who used to run Amazon UK.

This is – incredibly – even worse than it sounds. Marcus Bokkerink, the outgoing head of the CMA, was amazing, and he had charge over the CMA's Digital Markets Unit, the largest, best-staffed technical body of any competition regulator, anywhere in the world. The DMU uses its investigatory powers to dig deep into complex monopolistic businesses like Amazon, and just last year, the DMU was given new enforcement powers that would let it custom-craft regulations to address tech monopolization (again, like Amazon's).

But it's even worse. The CMA and DMU are the headwaters of a global system of super-effective Big Tech regulation. The CMA's deeply investigated reports on tech monopolists are used as the basis for EU regulations and enforcement actions, and these actions are then re-run by other world governments, like South Korea and Japan:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/10/an-injury-to-one/#is-an-injury-to-all

The CMA is the global convener and ringleader in tech antitrust, in other words. Smaller and/or poorer countries that lack the resources to investigate and build a case against US Big Tech companies have been able to copy-paste the work of the CMA and hold these companies to account. The CMA invites (or used to invite) all of these competition regulators to its HQ in Canary Wharf for conferences where they plan global strategy against these monopolists:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cma-data-technology-and-analytics-conference-2022-registration-308678625077

Firing the guy who is making all this happening and replacing him with Amazon's UK boss is a breathtaking display of regulatory capture by Starmer, his business secretary Jonathan Reynolds, and his exchequer, Rachel Reeves.

But it gets even worse, because Amazon isn't just any tech monopolist. Amazon is a many-tentacled kraken built around an e-commerce empire. Antitrust regulators elsewhere have laid bare how Amazon uses that retail monopoly to take control over whole economies, while raising prices and crushing small businesses.

To understand Amazon's market power, first you have to understand "monopsonies" – markets dominated by buyers (monopolies are markets dominated by sellers – Amazon is both a monopolist and a monopsonist). Monopsonies are far more dangerous than monopolies, because they are easier to establish and easier to defend against competitors. Say a single retailer accounts for 30% of your sales: there isn't a business in the world that can survive an overnight 30% drop in sales, so that 30% market share might as well be 100%. Once your order is big enough that canceling it would bankrupt your supplier, you have near-total control over that supplier.

Amazon boasts about this. They call it "the flywheel": Amazon locks in shoppers (by getting them to prepay for a year's worth of shipping in advance, via Prime). The fact that a business can't sell to a large proportion of households if it's not on Amazon gives Amazon near-total power over that business. Amazon uses that power to demand discounts and charge junk fees to the businesses that rely on it. This allows it to lower prices, which brings in more customers, which means that even more businesses have to do business with Amazon to stay afloat:

https://vimeo.com/739486256/00a0a7379a

That's Amazon's version, anyway. In reality, it's a lot scuzzier. Amazon doesn't just demand deep discounts from its suppliers – it demand unsustainable discounts from them. For example, Amazon targeted small publishers with a program called the "Gazelle Project." Jeff Bezos told his negotiators to bring down these publishers "the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle":

https://archive.nytimes.com/bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/22/a-new-book-portrays-amazon-as-bully/

The idea was to get a bunch of cheap books for the Kindle to help it achieve critical mass, at the expense of driving these publishers out of business. They were a kind of disposable rocket stage for Amazon.

Deep discounts aren't the only way that Amazon feeds off its suppliers: it also lards junk-fee atop junk-fee. For every pound Amazon makes from its customers, it rakes in 45-51p in fees:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/29/aethelred-the-unready/#not-one-penny-for-tribute

Now, just like there's no business that can survive losing 30% of its sales overnight, there's also no business that can afford to hand 45-51% of its gross margin to a retailer. For businesses to survive at all on Amazon, they have to jack their prices up – way up. However, Amazon has an anticompetitive deal called "most favoured nation status" that forces suppliers to sell their goods on Amazon at the same price as they sell them elsewhere (even from their own stores). So when companies raise their prices in order to pay ransom to Amazon, they have to raise their prices everywhere. Far from being a force for low prices, Amazon makes prices go up everywhere, from the big Tesco's to the corner shop:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

Amazon makes so much money off of this scam that it doesn't have to pay anything to ship its own goods – the profits from overcharging merchants for "fulfillment by Amazon" pay for all the shipping, on everything Amazon sells:

https://cdn.ilsr.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/AmazonMonopolyTollbooth-2023.pdf

Amazon competes with its own sellers, but unlike those sellers, it doesn't have to pay a 45-51% rake – and it can make its competitor-customers cover the full cost of its own shipping! On top of that, Amazon maintains the pretense that its headquarters are in Luxembourg, the tax- and crime-haven, and pays a fraction of the taxes that British businesses pay to HMRC (and that's not counting the 45-51% tax they pay to Jeff Bezos's monoposony).

That's not the only way that Amazon unfairly competes with British businesses, though: Amazon uses its position as a middleman between buyers and sellers to identify the most successful products sold by its own customers. Then it copies those products and sells them below the original inventor's costs (because it gets free shipping, pays no tax, and doesn't have to pay its own junk fees), and drives those businesses into the ground. Even Jeff "Project Gazelle" Bezos seems to understand that this is a bad look, which is why he perjured himself to the American Congress when he was questioned under oath about it:

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58961836

Amazon then places its knockoff products above the original goods on its search results page. Amazon makes $38b selling off placement on these search pages, and the top results for an Amazon search aren't the best matches for your query – they're the ones that pay the most. On average, Amazon's top result for a search is 29% more expensive than the best match on the site. On average, the top row of results is 25% more expensive than the best match on the site. On average, Amazon buries the best result for your search 17 places down the results page:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/03/subprime-attention-rent-crisis/#euthanize-rentiers

Amazon, in other words, acts like the business regulator for the economies it dominates. It decides what can be sold, and at what prices. It decides whose products come up when you search, and thus which businesses deserve to live and which ones deserve to die. An economy dominated by Amazon isn't a market economy – it's a planned economy, run by Party Secretary Bezos for the benefit of Amazon's shareholders.

Now, there is a role for a business regulator, because some businesses really don't deserve to live (because they sell harmful products, engage in deceptive practices, etc). The UK has a regulator that's in charge of this stuff: the Competition and Markets Authority, which is now going to be run by Jeff Bezos's hand-picked UK Amazon boss. That means that Amazon is now both the official and the unofficial central planner of the UK economy, with a free hand to raise prices, lower quality, and destroy British businesses, while hiding its profits in Luxemourg and starving the exchequer of taxes.

The "first buddy" role that Keir Starmer just handed over to Jeff Bezos is, in every way, more generous than the first buddy deal Trump gave Elon Musk.

Starmer's government claims they're doing this for "growth" but Amazon isn't a force for growth, it's force for extraction. It is a notorious underpayer of its labour force, a notorious tax-cheat, and a world-beating destroyer of local economies, local jobs, and local tax bases. Contrary to Amazon's own self-mythologizing, it doesn't deliver lower prices – it raises prices throughout the economy. It doesn't improve quality – this is a company whose algorithmic recommendation system failed to recognize that an "energy drink" was actually its own drivers' bottled piss, which it then promoted until it was the best-selling energy drink on the platform:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/20/release-energy/#the-bitterest-lemon

There's a reason that the UK, the EU, Japan and South Korea found it so easy to collaborate on antitrust cases against American companies: these are all countries whose competition law was rewritten by American technocrats during the Marshall Plan, modeled on the US's own laws. The bedrock of US competition law is 1890's Sherman Act, whose author, Senator John Sherman, declared that:

If we will not endure a King as a political power we should not endure a King over the production, transportation, and sale of the necessaries of life. If we would not submit to an emperor we should not submit to an autocrat of trade with power to prevent competition and to fix the price of any commodity.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/20/we-should-not-endure-a-king/

Jeff Bezos is the autocrat of trade that John Sherman warned us about, 135 years ago. And Keir Starmer just abdicated in his favour.

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/22/autocrats-of-trade/#dingo-babysitter

Image: UK Parliament/Maria Unger (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Keir_Starmer_2024.jpg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

Steve Jurvetson (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jeff_Bezos%27_iconic_laugh.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[copperbadge]

Every time, you guys. Every time I look into alternatives to Lulu.com for self-publishing I come up with “Wow Lulu really is the best of a bad set of options, huh?” 

Recently, Draft2Digital bought Smashwords in order to bring a print book company under their aegis; they’d formerly only done ebooks. I thought I might investigate them as an alternative to Lulu, which I’ve used for about twelve years now. For ebooks I would venture D2D is probably top of the line. For print books they are....not. 

I’m writing this out half so other folks can see it but half so that in the future I can look this up and remind myself of why I’m still with Lulu. 

TLDR: Not only does Draft2Digital want 60% of my print book royalties where Lulu takes 0%, and $30 for a proof that costs me $11 at Lulu, but I also appear to have solved the problem of why Lulu was making me price my books so goddamn artificially high. Which is like. Honestly the best anti-anxiety drug I’ve experienced this week. 

Basically there are a number of elements that go into self-publishing with a print-on-demand service. For some publishers, there’s a “setup fee” which doesn’t really set anything up, it’s just there to be a fee, everything is done by computer on the back end. Traditionally, Lulu has not charged a setup fee. Smashwords used to charge $50, but Draft2Digital currently waives it. I was heartened by that because the setup fee was keeping me from migrating, since I can afford $50 but I balk at knowing I’m paying them $50 for nothing. 

Next is the cost of printing -- what it costs the company in paper, ink, machinery, labor, etc, to just make a book with no profit. Lulu’s price calculus isn’t super clear and I’ve never bothered looking at what the breakdown is, because they’re pretty up-front -- they tell you in the process of setting the book up how much it’ll cost. In this case, a 140-page 6x9 trade paperback, no frills, which is how all my books are printed, is $5. Draft2Digital doesn’t tell you the flat price anywhere but they do offer the breakdown information; it costs $1.22 flat plus $0.0133 per page. So, for a 140 page book, the at-cost is $3.08. So far so good. 

Now, if you’re going to sell through Lulu, the “at cost” is the minimum price. You won’t make any money but you CAN charge just $5 for a $5 book. Any pricing above that is your cut. So -- let’s price this 140 page trade paperback at $13-$15. That’s a bit high to be honest but let’s just see. At Lulu, your take is roughly $6-$8 based on those prices, because you’re just dropping out the cost of printing from the retail price. 

At Draft2Digital, the same 140-page trade paperback, which remember is quoted as costing roughly $1.20 less to print than Lulu charges, gets you $2.75-$3.50 in royalties per book.

....wait, what? 

So now we need to sidetrack a little but I promise it’s for a reason. One of the motivations for looking into a change to Draft2Digital is that I didn’t like that Lulu was setting higher “minimum prices” than I was accustomed to -- they would tell me the book only cost $5 to print but require me to sell it for $12 or similar, and I couldn’t work out why. I’m an idiot but the penny did finally drop: it’s because when you distribute them outside of Lulu (say, on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or similar) your royalties drop like a stone. $7 in royalties purchased through Lulu comes out to like twenty-five cents purchased through Amazon. So Lulu forces you to price the book at a point where you even GET royalties and don’t end up weirdly owing Amazon money. The “global distribution” is what’s driving that minimum up. 

So in price-quoting a competitor I actually solved the problem with Lulu. 

Which is good, because the fun doesn’t stop there. If you want a proof copy of a book from Lulu, it’s the at-cost of the book, plus tax, plus postage. Buying a proof copy of this book from Lulu would cost me $11. Lulu makes you order a new proof copy every time you make a change, which is shady, but usually I only need to make 1-2 changes across the life of a book, so at most the cost will probably be $35 and for that I’ll get three copies of the book. Draft2Digital doesn’t give you an option. If you want a proof pre-publication, it’s $30 flat. If you want to publish and then buy a copy you can, but you can only make one change to the book every 90 days once it’s published. If you want to make more than one change, it’s $25 every time you upload a new version of the manuscript within that 90 day period.

So Draft2Digital’s books cost less to print but they take a massive cut of your royalties out of the retail cost of the book. If the book costs $3 to print, and I price it at $15, that’s $12 in profit on the book. Of that $12, however, I only receive $4. Draft2Digital literally wants 2/3 of my royalties per book. They want $20 more than Lulu to send me a proof copy. If I need to correct the proof, the correction is free, but I’m assuming the second proof will also cost me $30. Any changes after that, within 90 days, will cost $25 plus $30 for a new proof.

Which means my upfront costs at Lulu are about $35 per published book; to do the same thing at Draft2Digital is between $60 and $105 depending on whether I need to make changes after the second proof copy. And even after that, my royalties at Lulu are just about twice what they would be at Draft2Digital per purchase. 

So, well, Lulu it is. And the problem I was having with Lulu is solved if I decide to just retail through Lulu rather than selling globally. Which...selling globally has done two things that I’m aware of:

1. Fucked up my author page so badly on Amazon that one of my books is still attributed to Kathleen Starbuck, and one of her books is for sale on my author page. 

2. Raised the minimum price I’m allowed to set my books at by like, 40%. 

So I think probably what’s going to happen is going forward my books will be for sale only on Lulu. I can still assign them ISBNs and they still will ship worldwide, and the prices will fall significantly. My deepest apologies to those of you who have paid an artificially inflated price for the last few books; I’m going to fix that going forward, I’m going to go in and try to fix it retroactively in the books that are already on Lulu, and if it’s any consolation at least the cash came to me, and TWO THIRDS OF IT didn’t go to Lulu. 

It’s gonna take me a little time, untangling Lulu’s relationship to other retailers is tricky, but eventually the Shivadh Omnibus and Twelve Points should come down significantly in price, and there ought to be a dollar or two drop for the older books as well. 

This is why it always pays to do the math, even if like me you are dreadful at it. 

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Heated:

Energy experts warned only a few years ago that the world had to stop building new fossil fuel projects to preserve a livable climate.

Now, artificial intelligence is driving a rapid expansion of methane gas infrastructure—pipelines and power plants—that experts say could have devastating climate consequences if fully realized.

As large language models like ChatGPT become more sophisticated, experts predict that the nation’s energy demands will grow by a “shocking” 16 percent in the next five years. Tech giants like Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet have increasingly turned to nuclear power plants or large renewable energy projects to power data centers that use as much energy as a small town.

But those cleaner energy sources will not be enough to meet the voracious energy demands of AI, analysts say. To bridge the gap, tech giants and fossil fuel companies are planning to build new gas power plants and pipelines that directly supply data centers. And they increasingly propose keeping those projects separate from the grid, fast tracking gas infrastructure at a speed that can’t be matched by renewables or nuclear.

The growth of AI has been called the “savior” of the gas industry. In Virginia alone, the data center capital of the world, a new state report found that AI demand could add a new 1.5 gigawatt gas plant every two years for 15 consecutive years.

And now, as energy demand for AI rises, oil corporations are planning to build gas plants that specifically serve data centers. Last week, Exxon announced that it is building a large gas plant that will directly supply power to data centers within the next five years. The company claims the gas plant will use technology that captures polluting emissions—despite the fact that the technology has never been used at a commercial scale before.

Chevron also announced that the company is preparing to sell gas to an undisclosed number of data centers. “We're doing some work right now with a number of different people that's not quite ready for prime time, looking at possible solutions to build large-scale power generation,” said CEO Mike Wirth at an Atlantic Council event. The opportunity to sell power to data centers is so promising that even private equity firms are investing billions in building energy infrastructure.

But the companies that will benefit the most from an AI gas boom, according to S&P Global, are pipeline companies. This year, several major U.S. pipeline companies told investors that they were already in talks to connect their sprawling pipeline networks directly to on-site gas power plants at data centers.

“We, frankly, are kind of overwhelmed with the number of requests that we’re dealing with, ” Williams CEO Alan Armstrong said on a call with analysts. The pipeline company, which owns the 10,000 mile Transco system, is expanding its existing pipeline network from Virginia to Alabama partly to “provide reliable power where data center growth is expected,” according to Williams.

[godzilla-reads]

✨ How to Resist Amazon and Why: The Fight for Local Economies, Data Privacy, Fair Labor, Independent Bookstores, and a People-Powered Future by Danny Caine

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

Danny Caine (bookstore owner) has been an outspoken critic of the seemingly unstoppable Goliath of the book selling world: Amazon. In this book, he lays out the case for shifting our personal money and civic investment away from global corporate behemoths and to small, local, independent businesses.

This book held so much information in such an accessible way that I feel lucky for reading it. I found a copy at one of my local indie bookstores and thought “sure, I think I know why Amazon is bad” but no, Amazon is way worse than I thought it was. The part that really hit hard was Amazon’s Ring doorbell and being partnered with city police forces and ICE to identify “criminals” and illegal immigrants, which is horrific if you remember how terrible their software is at correctly identifying people.

I feel like everyone should read this book, whether you use Amazon or not, there’s a lot of things out there that are owned by Amazon that I had no clue about. This book opened my eyes to the truly horrific way Amazon does things. As saddened as I am by this, it’s always a good reminder to fight for our future and never stop trying to push back against Goliaths like Amazon.

[hussyknee]

Guys, Z-library is back up, but it desperately needs our help.

Z-Library is one of the largest online libraries in the world. We aim to make literature accessible to everyone. Today, Z-Library contains over 12,140,413 books and 84,837,000 articles Z-Library has many servers all over the world. Our stored data now totals more than 220 TB! Every month, millions of people use Z-Library for their purposes — and that means we are on the right track. But it will be difficult to achieve our goals without your help.

As you may know, almost all public domains of the library were blocked in November 2022 by order of the US Secret Service. The inner infrastructure of the project suffered some substantial damage too. Today, we are still under unprecedented pressure. At the moment, Z-Library is going through the hardest times in all the 14 years of its existence. The library might work with interruptions, and we ask you to be patient. Be sure – we are doing everything possible to provide free access to knowledge for millions of people across the globe, and we expect you to help us with that and to support us.

But despite all the difficulties, the library continues to function and develop. We have recently introduced several important features: the new recommendations section, comments to booklists, the new web-site menu, personal domains and Telegram Bot, and more.

Your active support gives strength to our Team and inspires to work. Each donated dollar is not only money for us, but it is also the confidence that you really need our project!

On 15 March 2023, as in March and September of each year, we launched additional fundraising to project maintenance and development. We will be extremely thankful for every dollar that will be donated. Furthermore, UNLIMITED downloads (for 1 month) are available for ALL contributors who will donate during the fundraising period. The fundraising will run until 1 April 2023

Millions of people use Z-Library every month for their purposes — this shows us that we are on the correct track. But it will be difficult to achieve our goals without your help.

Please consider making a donation.

I know there's a lot of discourse around book piracy right now, but you know who absolutely cannot afford to buy your books in dollars, afford the shipping fees, or don't have access/ travelling distance to the kind of fully stocked libraries you have in the West? The Global South. Our factories make your Kindles, your phones, your textbooks, and then we can't afford to buy them from your corps that sell them at around 300% grate price, and half the books are not even available for our region. Our universities don't get your funding or recognition, and when we do sell our personal possessions to get the money and work our asses off to get admittance to Western universities, y'all use us as grunts, exploit us and pass our work off as your own. Worse still, you buy out our local publishing houses and shut them down.

You cannot imagine the extent of global apartheid and colonial economic order that capitalism runs on. Amazon cheats you out of royalties? We can't even afford to buy your books. A dollar can buy someone a full dinner here. These sites – Z-lib, Internet Archive, Libgen, Open Library, Sci-Hub, PDF Drive, LibriVox – they are essential to granting the global majority our human right to knowledge, education and access. Z-Lib is by far the best one of them all.

You will first need to sign up to Z-Lib and access it through the private domain link they send you. It's a simple process, and every little bit counts. You're a leftist that believes in equal access for all? Then literally, put your money where your mouth is.

[f1ghtsoftly]

All The Women’s News You Missed Last Week:

12/2/24-/12/9/24

Jay-Z is named in a civil lawsuit accused of raping a minor. Nick Fuentes also faces charges for battery in connection to the backlash he received after posting “your body. my choice”. President Salome Zourabichvili fights against pro-Russian forces in Georgia. In a must-watch clip this week a South Korean woman bravely fought back against the re-establishment of military dictatorship, pushing away a soldier’s gun as she yells at him. 

LGBT: 

Supreme Court reluctant to overturn Tennessee transgender law 

Women in the News: 

Georgia’s Elections Reveal Regression of Democracy and Gender Equity. The Country’s First Female President Is Fighting Back. 

Harassment case against Lizzo dropped 

Missing grandmother's body recovered from Pennsylvania sinkhole 

WATCH: Astronaut shows students how they drink liquids in space 

Sharon Stone’s tearful message to her younger self 

Woman sentenced in case that sparked Springfield cat-eating rumours 

Woman admits drink-driving crash that killed bride 

I love being a culture warrior, says Tory leader Badenoch 

Mexico leader responds to Trump claim she agreed to stop migration 

Taylor Swift: As the Eras Tour bows out, what will she do next? 

‘I crocheted the giant doily on Turner Prize car’ 

Viral author who sold two books becomes bestseller 

Sarah Storey 'gutted' to be out of Dancing on Ice 

Male Violence: 

Jay-Z accused in a civil lawsuit of raping a 13-year-old girl in 2000 along with Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs 

Teen Girl Set on Fire by Stalker After Rejection, Dies in Andhra Pradesh 

Mattel sued over porn site misprint on Wicked dolls 

Diddy accused of dangling woman from high balcony in new case 

Ex-Abercrombie boss's partner pleads not guilty to sex trafficking charges 

Judge in 'shaken baby' death penalty case steps down 

Girl's death after Wexford assault 'a terrible tragedy' 

Selling sex for gold in the Amazon's illegal mines 

Far-right influencer Nick Fuentes accused of pepper spraying woman on his doorstep 

Want this in your inbox instead? Subscribe here

As always, this is global and domestic news from a US perspective covering feminist issues and women in the news more generally. As of right now, I do not cover Women’s Sports. Published each Monday afternoon.

[digiaansh]

Unveiling the Best E-commerce Agency Offering Amazon SPN Services

[5shortstories]

Thank you to Synergy Network Worldwide for editing the Spanish version of Barcos de batalla, huérfanos, gitanos, bodas, y una Con

[darkmaga-returns]

Microsoft, NVIDIA, Amazon, OpenAi, and other US companies were caught exporting Ai technologies to the CCP and Chinese military through foreign businesses and an Amazon Web Services (AWS) loophole.

Karen Kingston

Jan 06, 2025

Unless otherwise noted, written content is copyright of Karen Kingston, Karen Kingston LLC.

January 6, 2025: On January 2, 2025, the leaders of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sent a letter urging US Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, to close the commerce loopholes that enable US companies to provide the most advanced Ai systems and technologies to the Chinese military. Ironically, these ‘loopholes’ include the extreme lack of US laws (passed by Congress) that regulate the Ai industry.

Per the letter from Chairman John Moolenaar (R-MI) and Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), the US Department of Commerce will soon be publishing new international Ai commerce guidance, “which will create a global licensing regime for the export of advanced Ai processors and potential restrictions on Ai self-learning neural networks.”

MicroSoft, Dell, OpenAi, and NVIDIA are Actively Exporting Ai Technologies to CCP Business Partners

While the urgent demand for the United States to regulate the Ai industry may not appear to be a ‘dire national security threat’ to the majority of Congress, in a similar letter sent last January from Mike Gallagher (former Chairman of House Oversight Committee on the CCP), Gallagher calls attention to two (2) United Arab Emirates (UAE) based companies, specifically G42 and Dark Matter, that have China-based business partners which support “the CCP’s surveillance state and human rights abuses.”

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

The Amazon Good Omens Press Release! :)

In a special celebration for fans, Neil Gaiman collaborated with superfans Hilly & Hannah Hindi of the The Hillywood Show to reveal the ineffable premiere date in their original video “Good Omens Parody”

Official Teaser Art Available HERE Fan-Created Parody Video Viewable HERE 

*NOTE TO EDITORS: Please refer to our streaming service as Prime Video and not Amazon Prime Video*

CULVER CITY, California—May 10, 2023—This summer, something’s going down in the up!Good Omens Season Two will  premiere July 28 on Prime Video. After the global success and enthusiastic response to the first season, co-creator Neil Gaiman is satisfying fans’ hunger for more on-screen  adventures of the beloved unholy duo with an entirely original story. The ineffable Season Two premiere date was revealed on the 33rd anniversary of the publishing of the original novel Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Terry Pratchett and Gaiman, which was the basis for the first season of the television series. As a special celebration for fans, Gaiman collaborated with superfans Hilly & Hannah Hindi of the The Hillywood Show to reveal the date in a fan-funded video, “Good Omens Parody,” which can be viewed HERE. The six-episode season will be released exclusively on Prime Video on July 28 in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide. Fans can catch up on the first season of Good Omens streaming now on Prime Video, part of the savings, convenience, and entertainment that Prime members enjoy in a single membership.

Season Two of Good Omens explores storylines that go beyond the original source material to illuminate the uncanny friendship between Aziraphale, a fussy angel and rare book dealer, and the fast-living demon Crowley. Having been on Earth since The Beginning, and with the Apocalypse thwarted, Aziraphale and Crowley are getting back to easy living amongst mortals in London’s Soho when an unexpected messenger presents a surprising mystery.

Good Omens Season Twostars Michael Sheen and David Tennant as angel Aziraphale and demon Crowley, respectively. Also reprising their roles are Jon Hamm as archangel Gabriel, Doon Mackichan as archangel Michael, and Gloria Obianyo as archangel Uriel. Returning this season in new roles are Miranda Richardson as demon Shax, Maggie Service as Maggie, and Nina Sosanya as Nina, with new faces joining the misfits in Heaven and Hell: Liz Carr as angel Saraqael, Quelin Sepulveda as angel Muriel, and Shelley Conn as demon Beelzebub.

Neil Gaiman continues as executive producer and co-showrunner along with executive producer Douglas Mackinnon, who also returned to direct all six episodes. Rob Wilkins of Narrativia, representing Terry Pratchett’s estate, John Finnemore, and BBC Studios Productions’ head of comedy Josh Cole also executive produce, with Finnemore serving as co-writer alongside Gaiman. Good Omens is based on the well-loved and internationally best-selling novel by Pratchett and Gaiman. The new season is produced by Amazon Studios, BBC Studios Productions, The Blank Corporation, and Narrativia.

ALL THE EPIZODES WILL BE RELEASED AT ONCE!!! 🥰🥳 WAHOO!