Thursday, July 14, 2011

E-Books: The Future of Self-Publishing

The future is NOW. Author Ellen Gable gives some helpful advice.
With tens of thousands of Kindle (and other) e-readers being sold daily, they are fast becoming the wave of the future! The Kindle reader is also available as a free application for PC, iPod, iPad and iPhone, so it’s not necessary to spend money to be able to read a Kindle book.

Amazon currently offers Kindle publishers 70 percent royalty (for most books) and there are virtually no up front costs. Of course, there are other advantages to having your self-published book available on the Amazon Kindle. (Read entire post.)
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3 comments:

The North Coast said...

Information tech is doing the same thing to the "white shoe" publishing industry that it did to finance and securities trading, music and film distribution, and almost every other industry where the goods can be distributed electronically.

Kindle is not the only online publisher were indie authors can self-publish easily and for free. There is also Smashwords, which offers downloads in more formats and pays authors 85% of their proceeds. While Kindle is still better known, Smashwords is gaining on them quickly.

There has never been a better time to be a new author. You can publish your book nearly instantly online, at no real cost beyond that of obtaining a copyright ($35) ISBN no ($39), and whatever you decide to pay to get your book edited and formatted, and have a cover designed if you don't want to do these things yourself.

No more sending the thing around to every publisher out there in hopes that one will take a look, knowing that no one will, most likely. No more getting published and never seeing a dime of revenue off it because it ended up in the remainder bin after 3 months because no one wanted to spend money promoting a new author. No more trying to forge connections at the houses because you have to know someone to get your manuscript read.

And no more paying $25 or more for a newly released book, just to sell it to a used book store for 10 cents on the dollar because you need to make shelf space for more books or you're moving 500 miles or something. The prices on e-books are dropping very rapidly, as publishers realize they will not sell many books in this climate unless they pass the savings in electronic publishing on to their customers.

For every job IT has eliminated, it has created a dozen opportunities for people who otherwise wouldn't have any. I love it.

elena maria vidal said...

Yes, I love it, too. I am working on getting all my books onto Smashwords.

The North Coast said...

I'm leaning towards Smashwords, too. I tend to favor it because all Smashwords books can be downloaded on Kindle AND a big array of other formats, such as the one that the Sony reader uses.

Consider that over 2.5 million books were downloaded on to CELL PHONES last year, and you get an idea of what a writer whose books are not available electronically is missing out on... it's just sick to sit there with a $20 trade paperback no one wants to buy because you're a new writer, while they'd happily give you a try at $1.99.