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But the way Select used to work was that a good free run would translate to increased paid sales after your book was done being free. This is no longer the case.
book free because you have later books in the series to sell, this is best done with price-matching (covered in marketing later).
In our experience, the ability to sell your book on other platforms is worth more profit than you’ll earn from those borrows.
Amazon’s primary marketplace is the American Amazon.com site, but the Amazon.co.uk site, which serves (you
guessed it) the U.K., is also significant. Sales in other markets, for those who write in English, tend to be small and almost insignificant.
Kobo Kobo is currently our (conditionally) favorite bookseller. The only thing that stops them from being our unconditional favorite is their size. Our Kobo sales are significant, but still pale in comparison to Amazon. Amazon is gigantic, and Kobo, which is still small, simply can’t compete.
That said, we love, love, love Kobo. The company “gets” us indies in a way that Amazon doesn’t.
Their dashboard is beautiful and extremely usable: a gift to self-publishers. Their self-publishing team (called “Kobo Writing Life”) is highly responsive. We contact Am...
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Kobo is our #2 (we sell as many copies of The Beam and Unicorn Western on Kobo as we do on Amazon), and Kobo sales alone make the idea of granting Amazon exclusive rights to sell ...
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They feel like a partner, not some so...
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Kobo can’t grow without you. Amazon can. And it shows.
It’s worth noting that B&N, like all of the stores other than Amazon, is hard to gain traction in via advertising because it doesn’t have a robust and popular affiliate program like Amazon’s. For this reason, advertisers are less willing to send traffic. As of this writing, the only truly reliable way to reach Nook readers and hence gain non-organic traction is via the list advertiser BookBub. If you can get listed on BookBub — something
We recommend uploading to Kobo, Amazon, and B&N directly.
other retailers outside Smashwords itself), then later uploaded the exact same file and been accepted. It can be frustrating, but we tend to keep trying. Others pull out their hair and surrender.
Two, we use them to distribute “all in one fell swoop” to minor stores like Sony and middle-range players like Apple, which can be a pain to enter. And three, we use them to get our books free in Barnes & Noble. As of this writing, Smashwords is the only aggregator that can get your book into Barnes & Noble at a price of $0.00, and that matters for price-matching, which again we’ll come back to later.
Draft2Digital
we would recommend Draft2Digital over Smashwords.
self-publishing tools available at sites like Kindle Direct Publishing, Barnes & Noble's NOOK Press, and Kobo's Writing Life.
Draft2Digital will give you a single place to publish, manage, and track your project’s performance across the spectrum of e-book retailers. Draft2Digital also promises that they’ll add new venues as they open. It is easy and costs nothing (except your control).
Print is always a pain in the ass, but CreateSpace’s process greatly reduces that pain.
We prefer the 5.25” x 8” trim size for almost everything
strongly suggest you choose the matte cover and cream-colored paper.
Upload your files, select your options, and then, after a series of proofing steps, put your book up for sale. People will be able to buy it either from CreateSpace’s dedicated store or (more likely) from Amazon.com.
If you choose to enroll the digital version of your book in Amazon’s MatchBook program, people who buy your print book can get the e-book version for free or at a discount. We suggest making the match free.
someone buys the print version of one of our books, we want them to h...
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and don’t think they should have t...
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CreateSpace’s paperbacks are pretty good, and it’s nice to hold your own book in your hand. You won’t get into your local bookstore via CreateSpace, but you’ll be in print, and that’s kind of cool.
Lightning Source for your print distribution and use the standard bookseller discount, a buyer could possibly walk into a bookstore and order your book via the seller’s Ingram
fuer Scheiss Raucher
catalogue system. You might also be able to arrange for bookstores to order books for signings or stock your title as a “local author” offering this way. If your print books are only
ISBNs from MyIdentifiers.com,
ISBNs
We have ISBNs for print. You can get free ISBNs from CreateSpace for your print books, and that actually does mean something. Specifically, it means you can’t go out and publish that same format (paperback, hardback, whatever) somewhere other than CreateSpace.
paperbacks via both CreateSpace and Lightning Source (CreateSpace because those books are available via Amazon.com and Lightning Source because the books are higher quality and we want to order them ourselves to hand out or sell),
and if you don’t use your own ISBN, you ...
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you anticipate publishing in several places, you’ll want to get and use your own ISBNs. If not, don’t worry about it. NOTE: You will need a separate ISBN for each format — i.e., paperback books and hardback books must have different ISBNs even if they’re versions of the same book.
WAY #1: Via the product image. If you just use a normal, flat image for the collection’s cover, there will be nothing to differentiate it from other books on the market, and therefore prospective buyers will see it as a single book.
You want them to see it — and hence mentally price it — as the
recommend creating a 3-D pro...
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3D Box Shot. It shows the six “...
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3D Box Shot
The Beam: The Complete First Season Collection (Books 1-6).
Amazon in big, bold, orange type: This collection contains the complete first season
the epic sci-fi saga, The Beam — all SIX debut-season episodes. Save 45% versus buying the individual episodes!
Initial caps means capitalizing all of the major words in your book’s title and subtitle; The Complete First Season Collection looks better than the complete first season collection in a
Hone your descriptions until they can cut glass.
And look at the bestselling books in your genre in order to mimic what they do ...
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orange on Amazon.com by enclosing text in <h2> tags. A smaller but still noticeable black, bold font will result from enclosing text in <h3> tags. You can also use simple bold and italics by using <b> and <i> tags. These are good examples of small things making big differences.
If you have a print version, making sure it’s linked to your e-book version.
CreateSpace print book. So our $9.99 Beam e-book? That looks a lot cheaper when you see that it’s “marked down from” $19.99, which is the cost of the print book.
Amazon will also match the page count of your e-book against the print book’s page count, which usually makes the e-book appear longer than it would otherwise.
Having a print version available also makes you look a little more pr...
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people you can reach, and anywhere you can reach folks is part of your platform. All of that’s great, but there’s a problem with relying on booksellers, social media, or various other online communities for your platform. Anyone have a guess what it is? Bueller? Bueller? So many writers fail to understand this to their significant detriment: All of the above are examples of platforms owned by other parties, and it’s a big mistake to rely on a platform you don’t own, and hence control.
