Sullivan, who earlier this year took his popular Dish blog independent, has been using a metered paywall but has been tweaking that a bit in recent weeks, adding in a monthly subscription service, too. “Once you’ve gotten past the surge of Dish-heads, getting others to cough up online is new and difficult,” said Sullivan. He told the audience that the Dish blog is approaching $700,000 raised out of their goal to raise $900,000, and they have 25,000 subscribers. On the latter number, Sullivan compared it to the size of “a great little magazine.”

For Popova, who has amassed a huge audience through her tweets and blog posts linking to interesting topics, blogging isn’t first and foremost a business, it’s something she would do even if she didn’t make money off of it. “I created it for an audience of one, it’s just grown from there,” said Popova.

Author, investor and media personality Tim Ferriss uses his blog to test out ideas that he then uses for his best selling books. “The blog is where I experiment,” explained Ferriss. It’s also a community builder and communications platform, and Ferriss said that he’s connected with quite a few startups through his blog, which he later went on to invest in.

And for the New York Times’ Ross Sorkin, the DealBook blog, which he edits, is just one of the mediums that he uses to tell stories. The journalist also hosts a TV talk show, writes columns and features, and has written a best-selling book. “I wanted to create a site about a sensibility, not about me,” said Ross Sorkin, and he wanted it to be able, in theory, to live on for decades without him, he added.

The one thing the group did have in common seemed to be a love of creating content, a desire to share and connect with readers, and a drive to experiment with new ways to do this. Popova has another job; her blogging is her passion. Sullivan said he isn’t taking a salary for his new venture and put his own savings into it. He also said sometimes the sheer passion and mass intimacy can become so engrossing that you are sucked into it: “If it turns out that blogging kills people, I will be the first to go.”

Check out the rest of our paidContent Live coverage here, and a video embed of the session follows below:

Updated at 10AM PST, April 18, to correct that while Maria Popova has another job, Brain Pickings pays most of her bills.
A transcription of the video follows on the next page

Go to page 2 (of 2) on GigaOM .

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Ferriss will be taking part in a panel looking at how some individual writers and media creators have become independent media entities in their own right, and have been able to carve out a healthy living for themselves outside of the traditional industry channels set up by the book, magazine or newspaper industries — and what the benefits and disadvantages of that approach are.

Unlike some of our panelists, Ferriss has always been an independent operator: he first appeared on the scene in 2007 with his book “The 4-Hour Workweek,” and then quickly followed that with other books applying the same approach to health and cooking. Ferriss has built his following on social media into a powerful publicity engine, and is also showing other authors some potential routes for success: according to Ferriss, BitTorrent — normally thought of as a source of pirated content — drove more clicks to Amazon than any traditional ad has.

Sullivan, Ross Sorkin and Maria Popova

Blogger Andrew Sullivan, who is also on our paidContent panel, is another poster boy for the independent media movement: Sullivan recently embarked on a closely-watched experiment by quitting the Daily Beast to launch his own standalone site, funded entirely by his readers. For Sullivan, this move is a return to his past in a sense — he was an independent blogger early in his career and tried the self-funding route before joining The New Republic, followed by The Atlantic and then the Beast.

Also on the panel is Andrew Ross Sorkin, a New York Times writer who also appears regularly on CNBC and other outlets, and has created a booming enterprise for himself within the NYT by building his DealBook blog into a multi-faceted entity with a conference and other elements. Hopefully Sorkin will tell us whether he has thought about taking the same route as Andrew Sullivan and becoming truly independent, and why he has so far decided not to do that.

And rounding out our panel is blogger/curator extraordinaire Maria Popova, who has built her blog Brain Pickings into a destination for hundreds of thousands of loyal readers, who help support her both through donations and by clicking on affiliate links to Amazon when she mentions a book. Although this approach caused some controversy recently, Popova has been able to make a living solely from blogging, without any help from traditional media channels.

Is this kind of approach viable for anyone, or are Sullivan and Ferriss and Popova exceptions? Are there benefits to remaining inside a traditional entity like the New York Times, the way Sorkin has, that outweigh the benefits of being independent? And will more writers and other creators choose to stay independent or become so in the future, thanks to the social web and platforms like Kickstarter? Those are some of the questions we hope to ask at paidContent Live. Please join us.

This post was revised on April 8 to clarify that Tim Ferriss has not self-published his books. Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr user seanosh

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Belle writes that “early next year, we will launch Amazon Publishing in Europe from our EU headquarters in Luxembourg.” Victoria Griffith, who headed Amazon Publishing in Seattle, will move to Luxembourg in early 2013 to run the operations. In her place, Larry Kirshbaum, publisher of Amazon Publishing New York, “will now assume editorial leadership for our Seattle and New York adult imprints, as well as Amazon Children’s Publishing.” Daphne Durham, who was editorial director, is promoted to editor-in-chief across Amazon’s adult imprints, reporting to Kirshbaum. Other staff changes:

Amazon veteran Amy Bates will oversee Operations across our entire publishing business.  West Coast Marketing chief Mikyla Bruder will oversee our global marketing efforts across all imprints.  Philip Patrick, who has been leading our rights and licensing team, will now lead our larger business development, rights and sales teams across all imprints.  And another long-time Amazon veteran, Brooke Gilbert, will continue to lead our dedicated Author Services team.

Belle also touted some sales numbers. Tim Ferriss’s The Four-Hour Chef, released November 20, “has already sold over 60,000 copies (print + Kindle),” he said. With Publishers Lunch reporting today that Four-Hour Chef sold 29,000 print copies in its first week (according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks print sales, including those through Amazon’s website), that suggests about half Four-Hour Chef‘s sales were digital.

Amazon Publishing now has five active Seattle-based imprints, mostly focused on genres like romance and thrillers, along with the general trade and children’s divisions in New York. Publishing industry veteran Kirshbaum was hired to launch the New York division in May 2011, and it published its first books this fall — including Ferriss’s Four-Hour Chef and former Laverne & Shirley star Penny Marshall’s memoir My Mother Was Nuts. Barnes & Noble and many independent bookstores refuses to carry Amazon print titles in their stores, which limits the distribution of Amazon Publishing titles and could affect the company’s ability to sign bestselling authors in future. But, as Belle notes in his letter, the company will now attempt to bring more English-language authors to a European audience.

Here is Belle’s full letter:

Dear Friends:

As we head into the holiday season, we have much to be thankful for at Amazon Publishing. We are especially thankful for our authors, who continue to keep us energized, and readers, who help get these books on Amazon bestseller lists. I am happy to report that thirteen of the Top 100 Kindle bestsellers for the month of October were by Amazon Publishing authors. In the past few months, we’ve welcomed several new authors into the 100,000-copies club: John Rector (ALREADY GONE), Sean Chercover (THE TRINITY GAME), Blake Crouch (PINES), Kendra Elliott (HIDDEN), Laurie Fabiano (ELIZABETH STREET), GM Ford (THICKER THAN WATER), Melinda Leigh (SHE CAN RUN), Alexis Harrington (HOME BY MORNING), Karin Slaughter (THORN IN MY SIDE), Michael Wallace (THE RIGHTEOUS) and Nelson DeMille (THE BOOK CASE).

We continue to be energized by readers’ reception for our authors and their books — so much so that we have some exciting news to share. Early next year, we will launch Amazon Publishing in Europe from our EU headquarters in Luxembourg. Vicky Griffith, who as Publisher of our West Coast Group, has been instrumental in launching our US business, will be relocating from Seattle after the New Year to help support this effort. We will begin staffing a team of editors and marketers, and ensure we are expanding the English language audience for our authors, with a focus on our English language bookstores on amazon.co.uk, amazon.de, amazon.fr,amazon.it and amazon.es.

As Vicky hops the pond, we will make a few organizational changes in the US, centralizing key functions and positioning us for continued growth.  Larry Kirshbaum, Publisher of our East Coast Group, will now assume editorial leadership for our Seattle and New York adult imprints, as well as Amazon Children’s Publishing. Daphne Durham will step into the role of Editor-in-Chief across all of our adult imprints, reporting to Larry. Amazon veteran Amy Bates will oversee Operations across our entire publishing business. West Coast Marketing chief Mikyla Bruder will oversee our global marketing efforts across all imprints. Philip Patrick, who has been leading our rights and licensing team, will now lead our larger business development, rights and sales teams across all imprints. And another long-time Amazon veteran, Brooke Gilbert, will continue to lead our dedicated Author Services team.

We remain determined to invent ways to help authors reach more readers. In July, for example, AmazonCrossing began translating  the first of our English language books into German. Already, twelve of these titles have appeared on the Kindle Top 100 list in Germany. At the same time, our Kindle Serials format has outperformed our expectations in the short time since our September launch — and we are thrilled to be publishing Kurt Vonnegut’s SUCKER’S PORTFOLIO, featuring seven never-before-published stories releasing in serialized form, over the next seven weeks. In September, based on overwhelming customer feedback, Amazon Studios optioned the film rights to Ania Ahlborn’s SEED, published in July by 47North. Short-form content has a home with Amazon Publishing as well: Thomas & Mercer published THE BOOK CASE by Nelson Demille as a Kindle Single in May (over 200,000 copies sold) and THORN IN MY SIDE by Karin Slaughter (over 100,000 copies sold).

We’re also very excited about some highly-anticipated new releases.  Tim Ferriss’ THE 4-HOUR CHEF released last week, and has already sold over 60,000 copies (print + Kindle) — more than any other non-fiction title on Amazon for the week, which included Black Friday. BONE RIVER by Megan Chance, which has been called “heartbreaking…complex and intriguing” by PW and “quietly powerful” by Booklist comes out December 4. THE BEGGAR KING, the “brilliant” third book in the highly-acclaimed Hangman’s Daughter series (over 500,000 copies sold) releases January 6. And THE RUSSIAN DONATION, winner of Germany’s Friedrich Glauser Prize, is being translated into English by Gerald Chapple and will be published by AmazonCrossing on January 22.

As our CEO likes to say, “It’s still day one.” That is especially true of Amazon Publishing. We have much work to do, and many challenges ahead of us, and we remain relentlessly focused on providing the best possible publishing experience for your authors.

Thank you again for your support.  If you have any questions about Amazon Publishing, as always, please feel free to reach out to me directly.

Jeff

P.S. If you’ve started your holiday shopping, check out HARRY POTTER PAGE TO SCREEN, THE COMPLETE FILMMAKING JOURNEY (COLLECTOR’S EDITION).  It’s available December 4.

Jeff Belle
Vice President
Amazon Publishing

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Amazon will release Ferriss’s book on November 20, amid media coverage that the company probably isn’t thrilled about. Articles in Publishers Weekly, the Wall Street Journal and now the New York Times have focused on low print sales of Amazon NY’s first big title, Penny Marshall’s memoir My Mother Was Nuts, and bricks-and-mortar bookstores’ refusal to carry Amazon titles.

As Amazon attempts to sign big-name authors in the future, it will have to convince them that print distribution isn’t important. The 4-Hour Chef may be sold at few places other than Amazon. Barnes & Noble, the largest bookstore chain in the U.S., won’t stock Amazon titles in its stores, and many independent bookstores refuse to do so as well. And while Amazon is making its New York titles available as ebooks to other retailers through distributor Ingram, few rivals are biting. The ebook edition of My Mother Was Nuts, for example, is for sale at Kobo but not at Google, Barnes & Noble’s Nook store or Apple’s iBookstore.

Ferriss says he is not worried. He is cross-promoting The 4-Hour Chef, which Amazon will release on November 20, within his earlier two Crown titles. He announced on his blog today that the digital editions of The 4-Hour Workweek and 4-Hour Body will be updated with a sample chapter from The 4-Hour Chef, and The 4-Hour Chef will contain excerpts from the two earlier books.

“This is something that I effectively brokered. It made such straightforward business sense to cross-promote between the books,” Ferriss told me. He said it wasn’t hard to get Crown to agree to include the sample chapter of 4-Hour Chef in the earlier titles, though the Crown ebooks won’t include buy links back to Amazon.

Those articles, Ferriss told me, give the impression that he “didn’t know what he was getting into, and was very enthusiastic, and is now having second thoughts — which is completely, 100 percent inaccurate…I remain as enthusiastic and optimistic about this book as I was in the beginning.” People assume that success “means #1 New York Times bestseller,” he said. “I’ve never said that. I would love to have a #1 New York Times [bestseller], but the New York Times list skews heavily toward books that have reporting from multiple retail outlets. And therefore, I’m not pinning all of my hopes on the NYT list, nor did I ever do that. From the very first time that I considered working with Amazon, I had to come to terms with the fact that I might not sell print through retail.” On his blog, he writes, “Fiction: My goal is to have The 4-Hour Chef hit national bestseller lists. Fact: My goal is to have all three of my books on the lists at the same time.”

I asked Ferriss what he thinks about Barnes & Noble’s no-Amazon-books-in-stores policy — after all, the policy is partially having its intended effect at least in terms of media coverage like the articles I linked to above. “I’m not clear on what they are trying to prevent, or hoping to,” he said. “Do I blame them? No. If I were in their shoes, would I do the same thing? Maybe. I’m much more curious about what Barnes & Noble’s ten- to twenty-year plan is, as opposed to why they’re doing this with Amazon.”

When Ferriss originally signed up with Amazon, he expected “blowback” from the traditional publishing industry and retailers, he told me (and the NYT). “I’m very convinced this book will succeed in terms of the sheer number of units moved to readers,” he said. “I think it could sell as many [copies] or more than my previous two books. Am I going to have the same channels of distribution? No, I won’t, necessarily, because there are people who have blacklisted it…I think that no matter how well I do — even if I sell a million Kindle copies, for instance — there will be people in the book trade who call it a failure because they’re using different metrics.”

Photo courtesy of Flickr / Tim Ferriss

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Cozy, a San Francisco-based startup founded in March, plans to announce Thursday that it’s raised $1.5 million in seed funding to standardize the application and rental payment processes for landlords nationwide. The round was led by the Social+Capital Partnership, and included investments from Google Ventures (Kevin Rose was behind the deal), Tim Ferriss, Jason Calacanis and Gary Vaynerchuk.

The site, which had been testing its product this year and is now accepting members for its beta product, attacks two key points of interaction between landlord and tenants: the application process and monthly rent payments. The founders hope that standardizing these interactions will benefit both landlord and tenant and provide a digital record for both down the line. Cozy is available nationwide, and so far, has seen the most interest from landlords in the Bay area, Portland, and New York City.

The founders have created a shorter, more succinct rental application that asks only what landlords need to know about applicants and tries to eliminate unnecessary or repetitive questions. CEO Gino Zahnd explained in an interview that most rental applications ask far more questions than landlords actually want to know, and provide details best left for the actual lease. Zahnd said that most landlords just want to know if a tenant will pay his rent on time.

The other aspect of Cozy’s product helps tenants looking to prove their competency to landlords. Cozy allows landlords using the app to collect and track monthly payments online, and provides renters with digital proof of their reliable payments, something which isn’t reflected in credit reports. The process allows landlords of multiple buildings or apartments to manage payments without using paper.

Cozy is led by Zahnd and John Bragg, who worked together at Kosmix, which is now Walmart Labs, and then at Seabright Studios, a user experience firm. Previously, Zahnd worked for Flickr, Splunk, and Adaptive Path, and Bragg with Capital One.

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The 4-Hour Chef does not go on sale until September 25, 2012, but users can pre-order it now at a large discount: $15 for the hardcover (the list price is $30) or $5.99 for the Kindle version (the list price is $22*). “I’ll be thinking up bonuses for people who buy the print edition early,” Ferriss writes on his blog.

Ferriss is also releasing a free Kindle Fire app, “A Christmas Countdown Experiment: The 4-Hour Chef Teaser,” including “a seven-day Christmas countdown advent calendar, with unusual tips that allow you to enjoy wine, cookies, and all the other holiday vices…while losing fat.” It is currently only available for the Kindle Fire, with iPad and Android tablet versions “coming along shortly.”

Finally, Ferriss is giving away 50 free Kindle Fires to those who creatively promote his book and quantify their efforts. He writes:

1) Just spread the word in the next 48 hours! Send people to this blog post or The 4-Hour Chef page on Amazon. Here are some ideas: Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, e-mail signature, street miming. The last one doesn’t scale as well as the others.

2) By 11am PST this Thursday (Dec. 3), leave a comment on this post telling me what you did. If possible, quantify the impact (clicks, page views, etc.), and be sure to follow these two rules, which are required for your entry to be valid:
- In the first line, tell me what you’d most like to learn in The 4-Hour Chef.
- Keep the entire comment to 200 words or fewer, so use bullets!

We’ll consider the first 300 submissions, and a few judges and I will choose the 50 we think did the best job (subjective, I know). Then we ship them off! Void where prohibited, Martians under 21 not allowed, etc., etc. Winners will be announced next week.

I was surprised/impressed by how big, splashy and Amazon-centric (and early) this marketing campaign is and wonder whether we can expect promotions of this level from the other authors Kirshbaum has signed up. It appears that Ferriss is primarily directing the campaign through his own site, enlisting his existing fan base (the importance of which was stressed by Seth Godin as one of his “takeaways” from the Domino Project) but I’ve asked him and Amazon whether he is funding it himself (is he paying for all those Kindle Fires?) or whether Amazon is contributing them to the cause.

Hat Tip: Philip Nowak

*A suspiciously high price, Ami Greko points out. Amazon has generally priced e-books from its own imprints low, with low list prices as well. I’m wondering if Amazon will always keep the “list price” high but never sell the book at that price (in order to make it always look discounted), and/or if Amazon is indeed planning to allow other retailers, like Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS), to sell its e-books–and is keeping list prices high for that reason.

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