I started to reply to the Story Reading
I started to reply to the Story Reading Ape’s comment to my last post, then I decided it warrants a deeper explanation. So I’m devoting this post to the question of why I believe a separate site to sell self-published works is a good idea even though most such books are sold through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.
Because self-pubbers need publicity similar to what the large publishing houses provide for their books. Large publishers not only promote the individual books they are publishing, they also advertise their own website as a place readers can go to find good reads.
Amazon, etc, does provide a place where the author can place purchased ads. And yes, they advertise the site itself. Everyone knows Amazon exists, most people have heard of Barnes and Noble and so on. But few people know what books are to be found on those sites beyond the best-sellers that are published by large paper and/or electronic publishers who have spent mega dollars promoting their own books. And that’s money spent on promotion beyond the actual publishing on Amazon or some other electronic platform.
Self-pubbers can’t compete with those advertising mega bucks but they can get together and create a website that’s similar to those large publisher’s websites and they can use every free means possible to advertise that site’s existence.
The fact that every book found on that site will have been vetted so as to meet editorial standards and to be classified by genre, length, and whatever other criteria seems practical can be similar to the promise of the large publishers that every book they publish will have been vetted by editors and checked for typos, etc. the result can be that someone who wants to buy a good book can go directly to the self-pubbers site and browse through the stacks, secure in the knowledge that all books there would have met whatever criteria the self-pubbers have created… and hopefully whatever book they buy will be worth the purchase price.
Whew!!! That’s all for now, guess I’ll jump off my soapbox.
But I do believe this is the direction that self-pubbers must go in order for their books to be found among the huge influx of good and bad literature that’s flooding the electronic book world. I also believe it will happen because surely I’m not the only author to be thinking this way.
