Putting your e-book out there

[LuciieSpirit]

So I have written an ebook before and that's going ok…

But I am onto my second one and was looking at actually making a plan this time on how to launch it and promote it.

Does anyone have any advice, whether it be on how to promote it, to where they actually put it? 

I am planning to make it free.

Any tips are welcome! 

Thanks in advance <3

 

[BronxWench]

I use a publisher, because I am exceedingly untalented as an artist, and because I know I need an editor, and a proofreader, and all that jazz. But my first publisher was all about self-marketing.

I like Twitter, because you can schedule a tweet and have it released weekly, or daily if you’re at release time. Facebook is great for launch parties, and I did a Rafflecopter giveaway thing, and all sorts of fun stuff. If you have a blog, blog about it and link the blog to other places, like an Amazon author page (free) or a Goodreads page (now owned by Amazon, but they pretend to be separate).

As far as where to sell it, even if for free, I would strongly advise not to have anything to do with Kindle Unlimited. Keep your options open, so you can distribute your work on other sites, like Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, or via your blog itself, if you’re so inclined. KU will restrict you to only their service, and when you decide to offer something for money, they have a very odd algorithm to determine how much you earn, one which is not fair to the authors in my opinion. Kindle itself is fine, but Kindle Unlimited is not.

[Anesor]

Are you planning to make the price free permanently? Or just as a temp promotion? My downloads went really high when I made one free, but it did not help much with my other unrelated releases. Some authors make one free permanently, but that seems to work for multibook series to get readers into that universe.

[LuciieSpirit]

On 01/09/2017 at 0:48 AM, BronxWench said:

I use a publisher, because I am exceedingly untalented as an artist, and because I know I need an editor, and a proofreader, and all that jazz. But my first publisher was all about self-marketing.

I like Twitter, because you can schedule a tweet and have it released weekly, or daily if you’re at release time. Facebook is great for launch parties, and I did a Rafflecopter giveaway thing, and all sorts of fun stuff. If you have a blog, blog about it and link the blog to other places, like an Amazon author page (free) or a Goodreads page (now owned by Amazon, but they pretend to be separate).

As far as where to sell it, even if for free, I would strongly advise not to have anything to do with Kindle Unlimited. Keep your options open, so you can distribute your work on other sites, like Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, or via your blog itself, if you’re so inclined. KU will restrict you to only their service, and when you decide to offer something for money, they have a very odd algorithm to determine how much you earn, one which is not fair to the authors in my opinion. Kindle itself is fine, but Kindle Unlimited is not.

Wow that really helps thank you. Yeah I use kindle because you get to actually copyright your shizz before casting out into the world. And I did some reasearch this week on where else to put it and you have mentioned all the places I have found so thank you  Have you had an experience with KU then? My first ebook is with them and I want to follow your advice this time and not use it but I wondered what you have seen from it...

[LuciieSpirit]

20 hours ago, Anesor said:

Are you planning to make the price free permanently? Or just as a temp promotion? My downloads went really high when I made one free, but it did not help much with my other unrelated releases. Some authors make one free permanently, but that seems to work for multibook series to get readers into that universe.

Yes I think so, its a side story from my main series so its kinda a promotion in itself. 

[Desiderius Price]

22 minutes ago, LuciieSpirit said:

Wow that really helps thank you. Yeah I use kindle because you get to actually copyright your shizz before casting out into the world. And I did some reasearch this week on where else to put it and you have mentioned all the places I have found so thank you  Have you had an experience with KU then? My first ebook is with them and I want to follow your advice this time and not use it but I wondered what you have seen from it...

Don’t forget to register the copyright (I’m assuming US law here).

[BronxWench]

4 hours ago, LuciieSpirit said:

Wow that really helps thank you. Yeah I use kindle because you get to actually copyright your shizz before casting out into the world. And I did some reasearch this week on where else to put it and you have mentioned all the places I have found so thank you  Have you had an experience with KU then? My first ebook is with them and I want to follow your advice this time and not use it but I wondered what you have seen from it...

So far, I haven’t self published, so I have nothing with KU. But some authors I know have put work out via KU, because it is good for exposure. KU readers will often purchase works from authors they first found on KU for free. However, Amazon uses pages read as a method of calculating payment, and there have been issues. One issue I’d heard about some time ago was that a feature Amazon added, to allow readers to fast forward or skip back in a book, caused the page read count to be shown as one page. Not great if you get paid by the page… That may or may not have been fixed.

But what I did hear recently via Twitter was that Amazon allocates payment from a total pool of revenue, based on pages read. (I do not know if this is limited to indie authors, but I would assume so, since no publisher would want this deal.) In any event, some authors reported being paid as little as $0.004 a page. Given how much it can cost for cover art, editing, proofreading, and formatting, when a three hundred page book earns you $1.20 per reader/sale, it’s going to take a good long time to recoup your outlay and make any profit at all.

[CL Mustafic]

I’ve actually been thinking of throwing something into KU, maybe a short novella. I’ve heard it helps as far as exposure goes. I guess I’m just nervous because I don’t want to lay out tons of money on editing for so little return if it doesn’t extend my reach for the books I have with the publishers. 

What are your thoughts on that? Think it would be worth it, basically giving a book away on the chance you might get discovered by the KU hordes?

[BronxWench]

26 minutes ago, CL Mustafic said:

I’ve actually been thinking of throwing something into KU, maybe a short novella. I’ve heard it helps as far as exposure goes. I guess I’m just nervous because I don’t want to lay out tons of money on editing for so little return if it doesn’t extend my reach for the books I have with the publishers. 

What are your thoughts on that? Think it would be worth it, basically giving a book away on the chance you might get discovered by the KU hordes?

That’s the real dilemma. KU does get you exposure. Because subscribers can read any KU book for free, they’re able to gamble on new names, or new genres. And if they like your work, the odds are they’ll be less hesitant to buy something from Amazon that isn’t a free KU read. Especially in the romance genre, readers are looking for new things, and erotica is not so much of a closeted genre anymore, either. It’s a risk, but it can pay off. You would just need to be willing not to make much profit from the KU offering. (On the other hand, if you are in the US and consider your writing a business, it’s a business expense you can deduct against any actual profits, just like the cost of cover art, editing, proofreading, and so on. You just need to show some actual revenue, and I suppose even $10 counts. )

Edited September 2, 2017 by BronxWench

[Anesor]

On 9/2/2017 at 2:04 PM, BronxWench said:

But what I did hear recently via Twitter was that Amazon allocates payment from a total pool of revenue, based on pages read. (I do not know if this is limited to indie authors, but I would assume so, since no publisher would want this deal.) In any event, some authors reported being paid as little as $0.004 a page. Given how much it can cost for cover art, editing, proofreading, and formatting, when a three hundred page book earns you $1.20 per reader/sale, it’s going to take a good long time to recoup your outlay and make any profit at all.

Yes they are very upfront about that pool, and you get a monthly update for the size of the pool for that month. Now a couple of my chapbooks went up that way and over the span of time I made almost half via page reads as I made in sales. You can set your KU to have a timer or reset anytime. I think I will resist using it for future releases though.

I’m using the publishing on the cheap class I took, but that had no substantiative help for editing. I just need to wean myself back off an all fanfic diet again.

[LuciieSpirit]

On 02/09/2017 at 2:43 PM, Desiderius Price said:

Don’t forget to register the copyright (I’m assuming US law here).

I’m from the UK would that be different?

[LuciieSpirit]

On 02/09/2017 at 7:04 PM, BronxWench said:

So far, I haven’t self published, so I have nothing with KU. But some authors I know have put work out via KU, because it is good for exposure. KU readers will often purchase works from authors they first found on KU for free. However, Amazon uses pages read as a method of calculating payment, and there have been issues. One issue I’d heard about some time ago was that a feature Amazon added, to allow readers to fast forward or skip back in a book, caused the page read count to be shown as one page. Not great if you get paid by the page… That may or may not have been fixed.

But what I did hear recently via Twitter was that Amazon allocates payment from a total pool of revenue, based on pages read. (I do not know if this is limited to indie authors, but I would assume so, since no publisher would want this deal.) In any event, some authors reported being paid as little as $0.004 a page. Given how much it can cost for cover art, editing, proofreading, and formatting, when a three hundred page book earns you $1.20 per reader/sale, it’s going to take a good long time to recoup your outlay and make any profit at all.

Ah, good point. Thanks

[Desiderius Price]

40 minutes ago, LuciieSpirit said:

I’m from the UK would that be different?

I’m only semi-familiar with the US law.  In the US, you’ve automatically got copyright for original works, but it helps to register with the library of congress?  Because, if you’re suing for infringement on a registered work, you have that statutory $150k the RIAA/MPAA likes to quote.  For an unregistered copyright, you’d have to prove damages instead.  Registration likely helps too in proving ownership, and I’m sure a good copyright attorney can tell you the other benefits for registering.

As to the UK law, I’d be hitting google.

[BronxWench]

I believe it’s much the same in the UK. You can elect to register your work (for a fee) and it does provide more substantial proof of ownership of the intellectual property (aka book).

[Desiderius Price]

I mentioned the copyright because even though you’re going to put it out there for free, that doesn’t mean that somebody more shady doesn’t take it and slap their name on it.  Having it as a registered copyright seems to be a good thing.

[BronxWench]

1 hour ago, Desiderius Price said:

I mentioned the copyright because even though you’re going to put it out there for free, that doesn’t mean that somebody more shady doesn’t take it and slap their name on it.  Having it as a registered copyright seems to be a good thing.

I’ve relied on the publication date myself, but then again, I haven’t self-published yet. I might think differently were I to self publish.

[Desiderius Price]

Having that $150k/violation could be useful when needing to attract a copyright attorney.

[BronxWench]

3 hours ago, Desiderius Price said:

Having that $150k/violation could be useful when needing to attract a copyright attorney.

That’s if you ever get it. I’ve never put a great deal of faith in that, since I’m pretty sure that’s an upper limit, and the actual payout will be limited to an estimate of lost revenues. Lawyers and insurance companies aren’t in the business of handing out money.

[Desiderius Price]

6 hours ago, BronxWench said:

That’s if you ever get it. I’ve never put a great deal of faith in that, since I’m pretty sure that’s an upper limit, and the actual payout will be limited to an estimate of lost revenues. Lawyers and insurance companies aren’t in the business of handing out money.

It’s certainly not something to base a business plan around…. unless you’re a lawyer who also specializes in being a patent troll.

IANAL, but as I’ve read the stuff around copyright, if higher damages can be proven due to the infringement (say, destroys millions in box office revenues), then that’s the liability.  The registration bonus simply says that you can assume up to $150k/infringement without proving it.  Of course, you’d have to convince a court/jury that it’s reasonable amount, and anybody big will have plenty of lawyers available to defend it.  So, the normal caveats, of the, can you afford to successfully prosecute a case to a court, apply.

While I’ve not actually registered because I haven’t reached the self-publication point (I am contemplating it), I’d imagine there’s some nice mental benefit of getting the library of congress to acknowledge your works too.  And, IIRC, the cost is pretty low ~$30 or so last time I checked.