Tips for Self Promotion, Sales, and Advertising discussion
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Kindle outsells amazon.com printed books
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Mod
This expose of Kindle ebook "sales" was also written on December 28th
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/12/ebooks-outsell-books-on-amazon-but-theyre-free.html
Amazon is allegedly counting Kindle books "sold" for $0.00 as among their "sales" and "bestsellers".
If publishers were to give away a few thousand copies of books, they could make any author a "bestseller" without ever selling a print copy at all. But no one would make any money at all.
Interesting about the Kindle free ebook sales. There are quite a sprinkling of free ebooks at www.smashwords.comIt's makes you wonder whether writers will earn anything from the ebook explosion they say is to come. I have several books for sale at Smashwords.
Laurel
Mod
This was in yesterday's Publishers' Lunch (blanket permission to share was granted).
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On the hot-button topic of piracy, Verso's survey found that "over 28 percent of e-reader owners have used unregulated file-sharing services, such as RapidShare, Megaupload and Hot File to download at least one e-book within the last twelve months, and 6 percent have used such services to download ten or more titles during this interval. (Sixty-four percent did not download any ebooks from such services.)
Their survey also indicates that "questionable downloading, while affecting all age and gender brackets, is concentrated disproportionately among younger male readers. Among males aged 18-34, over 45 percent report engaging in such downloading activity within the past twelve months. Nearly 13 percent have downloaded ten or more e-books from file-sharing services, more than twice the level of the survey population as a whole." McKeown will have much more data and analysis to share in his DBW presentation.
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For authors writing for an audience of ladies over 40, this is good news.
Rowena wrote: "Amazon's current "best seller" listhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/..."
ahhhhh, so THAT's what you have to do to make the best seller list? NOW i get it. but I still end up with the same problem -- How do I eat?
j guevara
I am not sure how free ebooks affect the ebook market. I want to read, what I want to read. I am not going to read a book just because it is free. As a reader, I greatly value being able to read an excerpt before bying, the larger-the better.Also, I do not think free books should be included in the same bestseller list with the books people paid money for, mostly because they were not sold but given away-there is a world of difference between the two.
FYI, I sold 123 print copies of my book last month and 21 Kindle. So about 6 to 1 in favor of print. My print book is 12.95 list and sells on Amazon and B&N for 11.65. My e-book is 9.99.This is for a non-fiction history book. I assume the ratio would be different for a fiction book, but totally do not believe that ebooks outsell print. Maybe if you use units sold. Why not use total Dollar sales of each as a better metric (to eliminate free or 0.99 books)?
Mod
I've nothing against ebooks. I've two out myself.
However, I am really, really tired of "experts" who massage the statistics and effectively lie to the public.
My names is PeteHi everyone Ive been reading your messages. As a new author my publisher was trying to convince me ebook is really the way to go. However i am so paranoid and transfixed on my "ranking" on amazon that i researched kindle books. Im so suprised people keep saying ebooks are the new future of publishing. how many of the top ten on the kindle list are freebes? I dont believe a new author can do anywhere near as well as they could with a print release. My work
Dawn of the shadow is on kindle but very soon its going to be released as print. I can only hope im right.
http://dawnoftheshadow.webs.com/index...
Mod
EBooks may well be the future of publishing, but your contract ought to award you way more than royalties of 4% (the rate for print) on sales of your ebooks.
Ebook publishers offer royalties to the author from 30% as I understand it to 60%.
That may be true rowena but from what ive been told from ebook readers they are going for more well known authors on ebook or they zero costing books
Pete wrote: "My names is PetePete you are very observant, there is a lot of mis-information around now days and a lot of people that want your money and are only too happy to take it from you. Success in this business is not going to happen overnight to the average writer and all the advertising in the world will not sell a real bad book for long. The same goes for "tag mine and I will tag yours" thing. Hard work, listen to your instincts, and try to search out professionals who have a grasp of what occurs when a limited population is attacked by an unlimited number of authors using new and varied modern techniques to produce millions and millions of books.
Good luck, believe in yourself and watch out for us who call ourselves experts. Dr Robert E McGinnis and by the way, I am not interested in Kindle myself. I am very old fashioned and I write for old fashioned people.
Dr wrote: "Pete wrote: "My names is PetePete you are very observant, there is a lot of mis-information around now days and a lot of people that want your money and are only too happy to take it from you. S..."
Rowena wrote: "Pete,
EBooks may well be the future of publishing, but your contract ought to award you way more than royalties of 4% (the rate for print) on sales of your ebooks.
Ebook publishers offer royaltie..."I was surprised at the 4% figure for royalties for print books. My contract for "The Patient's Guide to Weight Loss Surgery" is 10% for the first 10,000 sold. Then 12% for the next 5,000 and 15% for any over 15,000 sold. I thought this was the industry average. Please tag my book on Amazon.com
ISBN # 9781578263158
April Hochstrasser
Mod
Thank you for sharing your rates.
I dare say every publisher is different, and some agents negotiate better rates for their authors.
Also, the royalty rates may be different for non-fiction than for fiction, and for hardback as opposed to paperback.
I knew this would happen- my books are on the Kindle and though this is a TERRIBLE thing for traditionally published authors (less royalties)- it's great for self publishing.
Julie