Wednesday 15 June 2011

Try not to become a man of success...

Try not to become a man of success, but rather a man of value.
Albert Einstein

Back to the e-book ranting today. My father-in-law cut out a very interesting article for me the other day about e-books. I mentioned before on my blog just how much popularity can be achieved through a well priced e-book- wouldn’t you buy a book for £1.99 or less- give an unknown author a go. I know I would if I had the time. With 70% royalties this makes the best solution for authors wanting to be heard. So I ask you- what do you think? With amazon predicting huge sales of the Kindle in the coming years- and having played around with one myself- I can see why it is so popular. It must be worth it.

Rumors are strife that if you are doing it yourself then formatting can be a nightmare- Which makes me think set up a e book self publishing company and you are on to a winner- something I am seriously beginning to consider- but with my next novel “The Book Club” I am definitely going to test the kindle market first. I have contacted my publishers today to see if I can reduce the cost of Goa Traffic on the kindle- I mean how high can their margin be – if its an electronic download. And a £1.99 do it yourself kindle book can get you 70% royalty. I am curious- frankly I would be happy dropping my margin even if I only make £0.10pence just to get the sales and the publicity and of course my name as an author out there! After all “Goa traffic” Is not about making money, its about getting my work out there, seeing if its any good, making a name for myself and more importantly now is getting self publishing more of a name than the traditional routes.

The more I look into it- the more I think that mid-list authors are being ripped off quite considerably when they follow this golden traditional publishing route. Many self publishers (and I’ve done some work here) just check out www.selfpublishingreview.co.uk  are slightly apprehensive of plugging their book for fear of that question-of who the publisher is- and then they don’t really want to say they are self published but of course they have to and to the layman this means generally one thing- that its not good enough- Self published authors know that look and that’s what they are afraid of- Like I said before self published authors are not hugely self confident.

I would have thought the same thing myself before I started this long process. Now I think differently. Self publishing is great. You get higher royalties, pure creative control over your work. More control of when you work is going into print etc.. Okay the huge downside is the cost, time and effort in marketing – but then how many hugely successful authors do you know- We all hear of the JK Rowlings of this world but there are millions of authors out there with some good stories to tell. Anyway without the print costs kindle is the way forward… maybe.

Just something to think about!


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