The Creative Penn

Writing, self-publishing, book marketing, making a living with your writing

Publishing Ebooks For Dummies With Ali Luke

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Today we are going beyond the basics of ebooks in my interview with Ali Luke, who is the author of Publishing Ebooks for Dummies as well as a fiction author, well-known blogger and internet entrepreneur.

[For up to date information, click here for Successful Self-Publishing: How to Self-Publish An Ebook, Print Book, and Audiobook]

We talk about what people are still getting wrong, ebook pricing and why Ali went with a publisher instead of self-publishing.

In the intro, I mention how totally manic I am right now! I talk about my (attempted) prep for NaNoWriMo and how I am just finishing the latest Exodus edit before sending to beta readers. I'm also working on ‘Turn Ideas Into Cash' and there's still time to sign up for the free prelaunch video series and webinar if you want to expand your business in multimedia (mainly for non-fiction writers).

Interview with Ali Luke

Ali Luke is the author of Publishing Ebooks for Dummies with Wiley as well as Lycopolis, her indie published novel. Ali is a prolific blogger, featuring on some of the biggest blogs on the internet, like Copyblogger and Problogger as well at at her own site Aliventures.com. Ali has been on the show before, talking about her novel Lycopolis

  • ‘Publishing Ebooks for Dummies' is about how to publish your own book without a publisher, but Ali did this with a traditional book deal with Wylie.

Self-publishing is a core part of Ali's business but there is a kudos with a traditional publisher like Wiley which is great for reputation building, for speaking, or even guest posting. To the wider world, there is still cachet and the bookstore distribution is also great, as well as the spread of Ali's own brand. She will reach people who don't know her online. Wiley were great about including examples of her own work as well as links to her blog and twitter. The primary reason was not financial, even though there was an advance, plus Wiley pay on time and the process is swift – excellent compared to some publishers.

 What are people still getting wrong with ebooks?

  • There are some fairly basic errors crop up over and over again. (1) Use professional cover design. There's no excuse for this when there are so many pro-cover designers online.
  • (2) Use pro editing. Ali mentions that she went through 4 drafts of her novel Lycopolis before hiring a pro-editor who suggested cutting around 50,000 words and redesigning the book. This was really difficult but it is so important to get a professional to help you pick up on stuff other readers might have missed. Your sample is critical as an ebook, so the writing needs to be really tight. Life is too short to read a crappy book.
  • (3) Write another book. Don't focus all your efforts into one book and promoting that book. The way to be successful is to write multiple books, so keep writing as well as marketing. Ali talks about the sequel to Lycopolis which she is currently writing and hopes to use NaNoWriMo to get that prioritized.

 On ebook pricing

  • No one really has a clue about pricing, but we discuss it anyway! Don't be too dogmatic about pricing – there are strong arguments either way e.g. 99c is devaluing your work vs/ 99c is important to sell more books. There is no right answer, so be open to using different price points. Ali is using $2.99 for Lycopolis which gets her into the 70% royalties. With the sequel, she will make sure the first book is cheaper than the follow ups. We mention Lindsay Buroker and how she uses free for the first of her fantasy series. Free is definitely a valid pricing model and has its place, but generally when an author has multiple books. You can also package books together.
  • As an entrepreneur as well as a writer, Ali also sells Blogger's Guides, PDF non-fiction material for $27. Using the description ‘guide' is more appropriate than the label ‘ebook' these days and this is a common model for online entrepreneurs to sell premium material. The audience for these guides hang out on blogs and twitter etc, and selling from your own site means you can price higher than the expected price on Amazon. Our language needs to be expanded somehow as there is some confusion about the word ‘ebook' these days.

On working with a publisher

  • The Wiley For Dummies brand is very established and they have clear ways of working, formatting etc so the process was smooth and went from idea in Nov 2011 to printed book in Oct 2012. This is very fast for traditional publishing.
  • On being an entrepreneur and not having the freedom to be in control of the book. Ali likes a lot of control and self-publishing is amazing for this, but Ali enjoyed the support of the Wiley team for things like deciding on the table of contents which helped her plan. Ali said the process was “surprisingly enjoyable” as it took some of the choice away so things could move faster. She also had the confidence that Wiley knew what they were doing so Ali got on with the writing.

Marketing non-fiction vs fiction

  • Ali is pretty internet-famous for guest blogging, which is effective for non-fiction but not so much for fiction. It worked well for her blogger's guides at $27 each, so she figured it would work for Lycopolis at $2.99 but people don't seem willing to buy fiction off the back of guest blogging. But for non-fiction it works very well. Ali has been doing a lot of guest posts for this book, but won't do it again for fiction.
  • Choose your target blog and read a lot of their posts, then write the post to fit their blog. Make sure the post is your best effort. Plan things in advance as right now this blog is 3 months backlogged. Getting a relationship with the blogger over time is also a great idea.
  • Ali talks about using book reviews for Lycopolis, and she basically hand-sells these to people who might enjoy it. This takes time and patience and a long-term approach.

How to become a bestseller

  • We mention Amazon Author Rank – a new thing Amazon has introduced
  • If you want to sell lots of copies, which isn't everyone's goal, then write in a genre that is popular. But you still have to read and enjoy this genre, don't jump on the bandwagon. Be realistic – experimental literary fiction won't sell as well as gritty crime thrillers which sell well right now.
  • Write a high quality book, regardless of what genre it is. Be respectful of your readers.

Publishing Ebooks for Dummies is available now on Amazon.com and other ebook and print stores. You can also find Lycopolis here.

You can find Ali at Aliventures.com and on twitter @aliventures

Help! My Book Isn’t Selling. 10 Questions You Need To Answer Honestly If You Want To Sell More Books.

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I love answering your questions and I'm always happy to share what I've learned on the journey, but recently I have been receiving the same question over and over again, namely,

help button“Help, my book isn't selling. What can I do?”

Most of the time people include a link to their book on Amazon and I can see immediately why they aren't making any sales, because although I'm an author, I'm a reader first and I've been shopping for books on Amazon for years.

My Amazon #1 bestselling book, How To Market A Book covers everything in how to market a book 3ddetails but the following checklist will also help you identify your problem and solve it quickly.

I have also included lots of links so you can find all the extra material on this (ever-growing!) site.

[As always, these are not rules, because there are no rules in this crazy, fast-moving self-publishing world. There will also always be outliers who get away with not doing any of the following, but these will at least help with some guidelines!]

1. Is your book available as an ebook?

self-publishing distribution providers99% of indie authors will not have print distribution in physical bookstores, and I would postulate that all the success stories we have heard in the last 2 years about indie authors and huge sales have come from ebook sales, not print.

Print books can be a good idea if you have specific reasons around wanting print. I decided against print but in 2013, I changed my mind, returning to print editions for all my books.

BUT/ if you want to sell a lot of books online, then make sure you have an ebook for sale as well.

There has been an influx of ebooks (and print books) self-published in the last year, as well as traditional publishers beginning to re-issue backlists digitally. I've heard a lot of people complain about this so-called ‘tsunami of crap', but personally, I believe you can surf the wave and make good sales even if you're starting now. The ebook market is growing globally as new countries come online and even within markets like the US and UK, ebooks are becoming more widely accepted.

So first off, get your ebook published.

I use Scrivener for formatting in Kindle, ePub and Word formats and then I publish on Amazon KDP, Kobo Writing Life and Smashwords or BookBaby for the rest (US citizens can use B&N Nook PubIt as well.) It's not hard if you spend some time with the various help pages.

2. Has your cover been professionally designed?

Moby Dick book cover

Amazing cover for a classic book

Book buyers still shop with their eyes. If people make it to your book sales page and your cover is terrible, they will not click the Buy button.

Don't use a painting your child did or that you did yourself. Don't DIY based on a YouTube video. Don't assume you can make a professional cover.

Do research your genre on Amazon and take screenshots of books that stand out in a good way.

Do take pictures of books you like with fonts and designs you like.

Do check out the ebook cover design awards at TheBookDesigner.com to see some great covers and some truly awful ones. Then hire a professional cover designer, give them that information and work with them to create a professional cover.

If you don't have a budget for this, then work extra hard until you have that extra money. Seriously, I believe this is non-negotiable if you want to stand out in the crowded market.

3. Has your book been professionally edited so it reads well?

I am passionate about the value of editing and editors, especially for new writers, or books in a new genre.

editing ARKANE

Some of my own editing

You should edit your books until you can't stand them any longer, and then you should consider hiring a professional editor to help you take it further, because you cannot see your own words after a point because you know the story so well.

You need other eyes, preferably professional eyes who will critique you honestly and tell you where the problems are, especially if the book is truly awful – and sometimes it is (and that's ok because you can write another one).

Stephen King in ‘On Writing' says to rest the manuscript for a while, so put it away and when you have some distance, read it again. You may be horrified by what you find but better now than when it's out there in the world. Here's some more articles on editing and my recommended editors.

If you can't afford a pro editor, then you can try using a critique group of readers within your genre, or join a group like the Alliance of Independent Authors to network with other like-minded authors in order to network and potentially barter your skills. Bartering shouldn't be underestimated in the online world.

But definitely do not publish your book if only you and your best friend, or your Mum, have read it.

4. Have you submitted the book to the right categories on the ebook stores?

brick booksSorry, but not everyone will like your book.

You may think that everyone will, but they won't. You might not want to put it in a box or a genre or a category, but you have to because that's how readers find it. The category/genre reader has expectations and if you don't ‘fit' they will be disappointed. That's not to say you need to follow any specific rules in your writing (let's not get into that now!) but when you load it up to the distributors you do have to choose which categories and tags to use and they need to be meaningful.

You need some distance from your book in order to do this, but consider where your book fits within the online bookstores. This means deciding on the categories, tags and keywords associated with your book.

It's also important to match reader expectations and the promise of what your book delivers with what your book is actually about.

There is no point having a book with a swirly, girly pink chic-lit cover in the horror section of fiction. It won't sell, however good it is.

There are some scammy sites out there that will tell you to aim for the categories that will rank the best in order to have a Bestseller on Amazon. That's just silly because your book won't match the expectations of the readers and even if you get a bump in sales, it will completely dry up very soon.

You can choose a category that fits your book AND is easier to rank in, for example, I use categories Action Adventure and get visibleReligious Fiction. I rank occasionally for the former and consistently in the latter. That's optimization, but it is still true to the book and to the reader's expectations.

If you're struggling with this, choose 3-5 authors your book is like, not what you want it to be like, but what it is really like. That will help you find the right category.

A great book on categories and Amazon algorithms is David Gaughran's Let's Get Visible.

5. Have you optimized your Amazon sales page with a hook, quotes from reviews and other material?

Buy Me buttonI have seen some Amazon sales pages with not just typos but terrible grammar.

Some of them make no sense at all. Some are just the back blurb with no review quotes or other things that might draw a customer in.

Basically you need to treat the product description like a sales page. People will not buy your book if your description is badly written or hard to understand because it's an indication of the quality of your book. Here's another great article on 11 ingredients of a sizzling book description.

If you want to see a fantastic example, check out CJ Lyons Bloodstained which continues to rock the Kindle charts. That product description seriously rocks. CJ also explains all of this in our ProWriter Marketing course.

You can format your sales description with colored headlines and other funky HTML by using Author Marketing Club's Premium service (which also includes a fast-track way to find appropriate reviewers).

6. Have you priced your book realistically, or at least tried different price points?

price tagIt's important to say on pricing that no one has a clue how to price ebooks and authors are having success at many different price points. Check out this great article on The Passive Voice and the comments below to get an idea of the widely different levels of pricing and success.

However, I had one author ask why his debut novel wasn't selling, and when I checked his sales page, the ebook was priced $11.99. It was his first novel and he had nothing else for sale.

However good your book, however marvelous the cover, your first novel is unlikely to sell at that price. Most ebooks are under $9.99, and a lot of fiction is under $7.99, with many indie books being under $5.

The 99c price point still has some power even after the algorithm changes but you might go somewhere in between, changing your price with promotions as well. I have my books at $2.99 right now so I make $2 per ebook. You get to set your own prices but there's no way you'll sell much at those very high prices.

7. Have you written, or are you writing another book?

bookshelvesSure, there are some breakout successes, but most indie fiction authors making decent money right now have 5 or more books. For non-fiction authors, you can expect to make your money on back-end products and services and not book sales anyway.

The more books you have available, the more virtual shelf space you have, the easier it is for people to discover you. Plus if a reader finds one they like, they may buy them all so you make more per customer.

I was as guilty as anyone of trying to hype my first novel, because it took so long and I thought it was a precious snowflake. I still believe you have to hustle those first thousand sales with everything you have, but my sales and income jumped when I released the second novel with very little fanfare because I already had an established presence on Amazon and they do a lot of marketing for you when you have multiple books, e.g. emails to people who bought your last one.

I am also fascinated by the rise of novellas and serials as a way to create more books, more quickly. Hugh Howey is a great example of someone who wrote novellas in different series and then continued the direction of the stories for the novellas that took off, Wool being his most famous and lucrative. I am definitely moving into this model in 2013 in between longer works.

8. Have you done some kind of promotion or marketing to let people know it is there?

marketingAgain, there are no rules and in fact, everyone has different results from different marketing tactics. Some hit a mega-success with none at all, but I do think that you need to hand-sell your first 1000 readers because they won't just appear out of nowhere.

Remember: Marketing is sharing what you love with people who want to hear about it. You don't have to be hard salesy, scammy or nasty. Just be authentic and share your passion.

If you need some starter tips, you should definitely be building your email list from your own website and also from a signup at the back of your book.

If you do that with book one, you will have at least some people to market to with book 2. It's a start, and it grows over time. This is my only non-negotiable recommendation for authors, because you never know what will happen with all these sites we depend upon for sales. If they disappear, or the terms we publish under change, then your email list of fans and buyers is all you have.

I also believe that social media can sell books, but it is a slow build over time and you have to have other goals than just book sales, e.g. networking with peers and other authors. It's not instant sales so you can't rely on it. The whole author platform thing is massively useful in so many ways but it is only one aspect of book sales.

If you have some budget you can pay for promotion, but be targeted and track results.

The biggest leaps I had on the Amazon charts were from paid promotional pushes on sites that market direct to Kindle readers. I have used Kindle Nation

Prophecy Joanna Penn next to Lee Child

Prophecy with Lee Child on the Action Adventure Bestseller List

Daily, Pixel of Ink and BookBub and there are new opportunities all the time. I more than made my money back but the rankings were worth it. Prophecy hit the Action Adventure list above Lee Child! (of course, it dropped away but the screen-print is worth gold!)

Free is still a great option, especially if you have multiple books, as it means people can discover your work with no risk. Fantasy author Lindsay Buroker talked about this in our interview where she revealed that the first book in her series is permanently on free with her other books at $4.95. You can do this by making your book free on Smashwords and eventually Amazon will price match it.

9. Have you asked for reviews, or submitted to review sites?

reviewsThere's been a lot of scandal about the sock puppet reviews but reviews are still critical because they give your sales page social proof and they feed into the book site algorithms.

I give away a lot of free books to people who might like my genre and ask that they leave a review if they like it. No hard sell, no pressure, no expectation. This is easy if you have built up a list from the last book, or if you have built a platform and in fact is one good reason to do this. Traditional publishing has been doing this forever so it is not a new or a scammy tactic.

Remember that not everyone will like your book and not everyone will leave a review, or a good review, but it is a start. [And remember, don't respond to bad reviews!]

You can also contact book bloggers or Amazon reviewers to get more reviews. This is hard work if you do it manually, but you can use the Author Marketing Club's Premium service to short cut the process by finding reviewers for books like yours.

You can also listen here to Rachel Abbott in this interview talk about how this strategy got her to #1 on Amazon.co.uk.

10. Are you working your butt off?

hard work aheadGenerally, I'm an even tempered type of girl, but when I get emails from people asking why they're not successful and they've done nothing on this list, I get a little annoyed!

Especially when this site has over 700 free articles on writing, publishing and marketing and there's 75+ hours of audio for you to learn from for free. Oh yes, and a 57 page Author 2.0 ebook on all this.

That's all available for free, but I also have a book you can buy for less than the price of a coffee – How To Market A Book.

There is no excuse not to be educated, even just from this site.

I absolutely believe that you can be a great writer and make an income from writing.

I have to believe that for you because I believe it for me, and I have left a stable job and steady income to take a chance on being an author-entrepreneur. I've been on this path since 2007 when I decided to write my first non-fiction book, so I am 5 years into working my butt off to change my life.

But writing books is not a get rich quick scheme.

I look at authors like CJ Lyons, Scott Sigler, Chuck Wendig, Joe Konrath, Bob Mayer and so many others and I know they are working their butts off every day writing and getting their work out there. The recent success of Sean Platt & David Wright in landing a Serial deal with Amazon is because they work incredibly hard at writing all day, every day to produce new content for their market. They are my heroes.

These guys are pros and they know it takes hard work to get there and hard work to stay there.

So please, if your book is not selling any copies at all, go through this checklist and honestly evaluate what you have done and how much effort you have put in. Please also share this with other people who may be asking the same question.

I'd love to know what you think, so please leave a comment below. What other tips can you give for people who aren't selling any or many books?

Images: Bigstock Help button, Bigstock Buy Me button, Bigstock price tags, Bigstock hard work ahead.

The Secrets To Ebook Publishing Success. A Must-Read For Authors.

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OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn

I've been a fan of Mark Coker and Smashwords for years now, and Mark continues to deliver value to authors through his distribution platform but also through sharing his vast knowledge of digital publishing.

Free ebook: The Secrets To Ebook Publishing Success

He has just released a free book ‘The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success” which contains a serious number of tips that will help you make your work better, as well as some amazing insights into successful authors who publish through Smashwords.

I learned heaps from the book. It really is well worth your time whether you are indie or traditionally published. Here are just some of things you will learn about.

  •  A great overview of the changes in the industry
  • Some financials around self-publishing, bootstrapping and resource allocation
  • Tips on ebook covers that work
  • Metadata magic and why it's important as well as the algorithms that impact our book sales
  • Why writing more books and books over 70,000 words is critical for longer term success
  • How trust and brand loyalty work
  • Why distributing through one site is short-sighted, even if that site is the biggest bookseller in the world. [OK, so I was one of those authors who took my books off Smashwords in order to try Amazon KDP Select which requires exclusivity. However, next week I will be republishing my books on all platforms based on some of Mark's points in this well-written chapter – as well as how impressed I am with Kobo.]
  • Using strategic pricing as well as free
  • Why patience is important and the sales behavior of different books – the invisible book, the slow boil, slow builder and breakout book.
  • Why you shouldn't fear piracy
  • On long term platform building and marketing
  • Word of mouth and how books go viral, or not
  • How readers find books and how to optimize your touch points
  • It's not about book launches anymore, it's an ongoing marketing approach
  • Think globally about your book and the expansion of ebook markets
  • How to behave as an indie – let's be generous with each other – this is not a zero sum game

…and much more.

So what are you waiting for? Click here to go and download Mark's ebook on Ebook Secrets and then spend an hour reading it – and take notes!

Related Resources on Ebook Publishing

* My interview with Mark Coker when we met live in Australia in 2010 – we get enthusiastic about the possibilities for authors

* Interview on Smashwords blog with Brian S Pratt who went from earning $7.82 in a quarter to $25,000 in a quarter, and $200,000 in a year from his books.

* Interview on Smashwords blog with Ruth Ann Nordin, romance writer who went from earning $0 to $75,000 on Smashwords

* Ruth Ann Nordin's little ebook about marketing available on Smashwords (also free)

* The Smashwords Blog where Mark shares lots of great data

 

Is Free Too High a Price?

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OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn

This is a guest post from author CY Lyons, who writes thrillers with heart. You can also watch/listen to an interview with CJ here. I think this is a great strategy for authors with multiple books. We are also very lucky as indie authors to be able to change our pricing so fast so you can make an ebook free for a week and then shift the price again. It's worth considering!

There's a lot of talk about how much e-books are worth to readers.

I think that's the wrong question. The question should be: how much are readers worth to e-book authors?

I've been indy self e-publishing for 15 months and as of June sold around 3000 copies a month. But I had one book, SNAKE SKIN, a mainstream thriller that was a bit of a stretch for my target audience of women who enjoy a touch of romance with their thriller/suspense novels. SNAKE SKIN had gotten rave reviews but just wasn't selling.

I had SNAKE SKIN priced at $4.99 and consistently made around $300 a month on it. Tried a special sale price of 0.99–and made around $300 on it that month. Re-priced it at $2.99 and was…you guessed it…still making $300 a month.

This book recently earned a 4 1/2 star review from RT Book Reviews, one of the most respected print book review magazines. I felt in my heart it was worth more than $300 a month to me–and much more than $0.99 to readers.

I decided it was too valuable to reduce the price further.

Instead, I gave it away.

You read that right. I placed SNAKE SKIN on sale for FREE on Smashwords. In about three weeks the free price propagated to Amazon. I woke up on a Saturday morning to find that Amazon had dropped it to free and it had already “sold” 5,000 copies.

I figured that would be about it–that was already more than the 1000 copies it sold during the month I had it at 0.99…imagine my astonishment as I watched during the day to see it “sell” 10,000 copies in ten hours.

48 hours after it was placed on sale for free, 24,987 copies were downloaded and it had made it to #3 on the Amazon Kindle Free Bestseller list!

Now some might say: CJ you're crazy! (I've heard that before, lol.) You could have made over $8,000 if you'd priced it at 0.99 instead of giving it away for free. You're losing money!

No sir. I've lost at most the $300 a month the book was earning me…but I've gained potentially 24,987 *NEW* readers.

Readers are so much more valuable to me than $300. And NEW readers? Priceless.

How do I know they're new? Well, just about anyone who knows my name would have heard about the previous 0.99 sale. And for the first half of the year, I offered free books on my website, including SNAKE SKIN.

So odds are, most of these 24,987 are new to me and my work.

I've always believed that my books are my Number One promotional and marketing tools. I'm seeing SNAKE SKIN as the perfect “gateway drug” to hook readers on CJ Lyons and her Thrillers with Heart.

If there's one thing I've learned about being an indy author, it's that you have to have the end in sight (just like when writing a novel). You may not know how to get there, you might take a lot of detours along the way, but it's important to stay focused on a clear, measurable goal.

My goal with this promotion was to attract new readers. To help SNAKE SKIN find its audience. Mission accomplished.

Has this experiment with free changed my future marketing plans? Oh yeah.

First, I sheepishly called my agent who manages the subrights for my e-books, thinking she would be dismayed that I'd given all those books away for free (after all, that's tens of thousands of readers who will never buy SNAKE SKIN).

Instead she loved it! Totally agreed with me about the value of readers. But, being the strategist she is, she asked me to change the book's price to 0.99 so she could start tracking actual sales figures.

To me, 0.99 for a book is cheap while a free book is a valuable gift from me to my readers. So I hesitated. Until I realized that we now had a new goal: making the “real” Amazon list.

Different goals, different strategies. SNAKE SKIN hit as high as #30 on the Amazon Kindle overall bestseller list and by the end of the month 40,000 people had it on their Kindles.

That's twice the population of the town I grew up in. So, yeah, I now see the value in 0.99. It has nothing to do with the value of the book; it's all about the value of being positioned correctly.

What's next? SNAKE SKIN was a book in search of its audience and one of my lowest sellers until now. And this month, August, I'm putting my all time bestselling book, a romantic thriller called BLIND FAITH, on sale for 0.99.

BLIND FAITH received a coveted Top Pick from RT Book Reviews as well as great reviews elsewhere and has constantly outperformed my other e-books, hitting and staying on the Top 100 Romantic Suspense charts since it was first released.

My goal this time? I'm thinking big. I want to hit the top 20 on Amazon by the end of the month—which could maybe (if the timing is right and the stars align) lead to a spot on a major bestseller list such as the USA Today or even the New York Times.

Hey, I always say if you're gonna dream, dream BIG!

It's a gamble. A huge one. I risk BLIND FAITH, my top seller, being seen as “cheap.” But I hope readers will see this special limited time sale as an opportunity to grab a great book that has never been priced below $4.99.

Want to see how BLIND FAITH is doing? You can check here: http://www.amazon.com/BLIND-FAITH-ebook/dp/B0043M6J92/

What do you think? Where does free fit into your marketing strategy? And when is free too high a price?

Thanks for reading!
CJ

What do you think?

About CJ:
As a pediatric ER doctor, CJ Lyons has lived the life she writes about in her cutting edge thrillers.  In addition to being an award-winning, bestselling author, CJ is a nationally known presenter and keynote speaker.

CJ has been called a “master within the genre” (Pittsburgh Magazine) and her work has been praised as “breathtakingly fast-paced” and “riveting” (Publishers Weekly) with “characters with beating hearts and three dimensions” (Newsday).

Her award-winning, critically acclaimed Angels of Mercy series (LIFELINES, WARNING SIGNS, URGENT CARE and CRITICAL CONDITION) is available now.  Her newest project is as co-author of a new suspense series with Erin Brockovich.  You can learn more at http://www.cjlyons.net

Image: Flickr CC Brad Stabier

10 Reasons Why Authors Love Ebooks

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OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn

You might have noticed that ebooks are being talked about a lot at the moment. The growth of ebook readers and ebook sales plus the success of Kindle authors have made headline news in even the most traditional press. A few days ago, bestselling thriller author Barry Eisler announced that he was turning down a half million traditional publishing deal to self-publish, primarily because of the potential of ebook sales. And do I need to mention Amanda Hocking's Kindle millionare status?

If you're not convinced yet, here are ten reasons authors love ebooks and at the bottom, introducing my new multi-media course on ebook publishing if you're ready to poke your toe into the water.

1) Ebook sales are growing which means the number of readers is growing. I've certainly been noticing more ebook readers on the train and also people in my office are buying the new Kindles and loving them. Ebook sales have been reported to be up 115% this year, and even though that's growing from a small base, the pace of adoption is speeding up. Your book can be available to this growing market.

2) You can reach readers globally. This is amazingly exciting when you think hard about it. Anyone can now publish their book on Amazon.com, the biggest bookstore in the world, or on a site like Smashwords, also open to all.  Anyone can buy your book as long as they have some kind of digital device to read it on. Since Kindle app, Stanza and other apps are now on the majority of smart cellphones, it won't be long before even the developing world can be reading your books (since cellphones have a much larger penetration than computers). I'm in Australia and yet my major market is in the US, thousands of miles away. Some US authors I've spoken to have said how well their books sell in Europe. It's a small world when our work is digital. Brilliant!

3) You can publish your book within 24 hours – and for free. Speed to market has to be one of the most annoying factors of traditional publishing. It can take 18 months – 2 years to reach bookstores after you've finished writing a book. Perhaps that can be chopped down to as little as 6 months but with ebooks, you can publish to the Kindle store within 24 hours. You should absolutely be using professional editing, cover design and formatting but once the book is ready for the market, you can publish fast and easily. Oh yes, and it's free to publish on Amazon and Smashwords. They just keep a small % of sales.

4) Ebook readers buy more books. I know this from experience as I read at least 3x more books now than I did before because the price enables it. My husband just bought 5 novels over the rainy weekend which he devoured. They were indie priced at $2.99 and so there's not even a question that's a bargain. New books in Australia are around $30 each. The price alone means that people will read more books electronically. There are also studies out that show this too, so it's not just my opinion!

5) You can experiment with pricing. Joe Konrath has recently been doing experiments with the $2.99 and 99 cents pricing for his book The List. It's hard to know what makes a difference but the sweet spot is certainly under $5 for larger volume sales. I certainly had a surge at 99c for Read an Ebook week but was also in the Kindle charts for $2.99. The top sellers are playing with different price points, for example, selling the first in a series for 99c and then making subsequent books $2.99 or $4.99. Whatever price you choose, you can make changes quickly and easily for ebooks with the update being posted within 24 hours so you can experiment.

6) Ebook readers buy more indie books. You basically can't buy books by independent authors in bookstores unless the author has made a specific effort to work with an individual bookseller. Therefore, it was hard for readers to find these books and perhaps it's understandable why they were considered of lower value. But with ebooks, the publisher doesn't matter to the reader (generally) and readers are finding ebooks through multiple ways. Obviously the Kindle Top rankings in any category are important but also recommendations and marketing made a difference. Once readers are convinced there are quality indie books around, they can be converted to buying similar books.

7) Daily sales figures. This type of reporting is unheard of in traditional publishing where authors may never learn exact sales figures or understand the source of the sale. Royalty statements might come months later and aren't traceable to any specific marketing campaign. On Amazon and other platforms you can see your sales figures and adjust your efforts accordingly. As someone who appreciates internet marketing and online sales, I really like to know what I am selling and what money is coming in. It's great to be able to log into the Amazon KDP and see sales figures for US and UK sites.

8) You can update any typos or problems with the book. There are always typos in any book, no matter how traditional the publisher. I had 2 editors and 7 proof-readers and still there were a few typos in Pentecost. With ebooks, you can fix these up and reload the file and the next person gets the corrected ebook. This also means you can also add references to the next book in the series when your subsequent book is launched, or sample chapters with a hyperlink to the next book. Plus, you can even personalize ebooks by signing them with this method as ireadiwrite has been doing.

9) You can make more money and get paid more regularly. Don't take my word for this. Read this discussion between Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath, best selling thriller authors. Eisler turned down half million to go the self-publishing route. He explains it all in that post. These are amazing times. (and should I mention Amanda Hocking again?)

10) You don't have to be technical as you can use freelancers. For many people, the thought of ebook formats and coding is all too technical, time-consuming and frustrating. But don't worry any more! There are plenty of freelancers you can use for this. I personally recommend B10 Mediaworx, April L Hamilton and EBook Architects. You can also check the ebook formatting directory here. Yes, you need a budget but only a small one and it's an investment in a quality finished product.

So what are you waiting for?

Many people are holding off because the process for ebook publishing is just too daunting. Hopefully this will help.

I now have four ebooks selling on the Kindle and other ebook distribution platforms and recently went through the process for my first thriller novel, Pentecost. It's still in the Kindle bestseller rankings six weeks after launch (although rankings change hourly so this will change).

I learned a lot along the way and share all that information with you in this multi-media mini-course, Ebook Publishing for Kindle, iPad and more. It has 4 screen capture videos where I go through everything I've learned about ebooks, answers to common questions plus behind the scenes of my Kindle and Smashwords accounts so you can exactly how the process works. There are audio mp3s of each of those videos plus a full color ebook with screen-shots and detail so you can read as well.

The mini-course is US$39.99 with a full money-back guarantee if you're not happy – no questions asked.Click here to read more in-depth information about the course.

Or click the button right to buy now for $39.99 =>  Add to Cart

Do you have any concerns about ebook publishing? Let me know in the comments and I'll try to address them.

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