Tag: Kindle

Self-Publishing, Viral Marketing

The Future of Publishing

In her end of the year address, Simon & Schuster CEO, Carolyn Reidy had this to say of the book market, “The US bookselling market has been truly lackluster, and year-on-year sales at most of our major customers have declined significantly … the lower sales volume attributed to the soft marketplace was impossible for us to overcome.”

But is the marketplace soft? Have book sales truly declined? Or, as Seth Godin would suggest, has the marketplace, instead of going soft, changed radically?

Self-published author, Keith Knapp, has nearly dominated the Kindle store sales rankings for months. As Knapp points out, it’s not easy to get readers to pick up titles from authors they’ve never heard of. But here is an example of an author adapting to the changing market to find success, in spite of disliking the practice of marketing itself.

As Seth identifies, “Competition and the market are like water. They go where they want.”

I encourage you to take two minutes and enjoy this video, The Future of Publishing.



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Book Promotion

Promoting Your Self-Published Book with a Kindle Edition

Amazon recently introduced the Kindle 2. 

If you are a self-published author and you have not heard of Kindle, click here for more information.

Why should you offer a Kindle edition of your book?

An ebook edition of your self-published book can help with the promotion of your hard copy format.  Keep in mind that distribution of an ebook is quicker and more affordable.  By giving people a choice between your ebook and your paperback, you offer them two different price points.

If you have an ebook edition of your book, perhaps you are already using it to promote your hard copy format on sites like Amazon’s Kindle Store.  If so, don’t worry, the Kindle 2 is compatible with all of the Kindle books already in the Kindle store, so you do not need to submit another format.

If you don’t have an ebook edition, you should consider getting one and submitting it to Amazon’s Kindle store.  Now is a great time to do that since Amazon is currently promoting the new Kindle 2.  Here’s where you can submit your ebook format for Amazon’s Kindle store: dtp.amazon.com. 

Good luck and have fun!
Kelly Schuknecht
selfpublishingadvice.wordpress.com

Choosing a Publisher, Self-Publishing

Writing for Self-Publishing: Ask the Book Doctor

E-Books

Q: I am working on formatting and editing a nonfiction book designed to be both an e-book and a published hard-copy book. I will also likely end up doing the work to get this work accepted by a publisher. Can you tell me, have e-books become popular yet, or is the core of publishing still in paper and not looking to move forward?

 

A: Most publishers I know that help authors produce e-books and printed books are not traditional publishers; that is, they produce print-on-demand books and do not stockpile books or distribute them to stores. They simply print one at a time when they are ordered, so there’s no major investment on their part and no advance on royalties to you. Basically if you sell a book, you get a percentage of the profit, but if you yourself don’t sell it, the printer won’t go to any trouble to sell it for you.

 

As far as the popularity of e-books, several companies have tried to produce machines (Kindle and others) to make e-books more attractive to readers, but still e-books lag far behind printed books when it comes to sales. Still, after an e-book is created, you incur no further cost to reproduce and distribute it when sold, so e-books can provide one-hundred percent profit to authors who have a client base and can promote their own books or sell them through their own Web sites. 

What would you like to ask a book doctor? Send your questions to Bobbie Christmas at Bobbie@zebraeditor.com. 

Book Promotion

Submitting the Ebook Edition of your Self-Published Book

Last week I talked about using an ebook edition of your self-published book to promote your hard copy book.

I mentioned Amazon’s Kindle Store as one place where you can submit your ebook edition. If you haven’t checked that out yet, here is where you can go to set up your account and submit your ebook file: dtp.amazon.com

Have you been looking into other places where you can submit your ebook edition? There are a variety of ebook retailers on the internet. You can contact them each individually and submit your ebook file. Each ebook retailer will offer different royalty splits.

You can do a search on Google to find more ebook sites. Here’s another one to get you started: www.fictionwise.com

Good luck and have fun!
Kelly Schuknecht
selfpublishingadvice.wordpress.com