: Re: Publishing and selling ebooks What are my: options caveats / pro's & con's reasonable expectations for publishing my work digitally as e-books? I remember Stephen King did something along these

@Sent2472441

Vote Up Vote Down

Although Ralph is 100% correct in his statements I notice his answer kind of assumes your expectations, when you have asked what your expectations should be.

So to deal with your bullets:

Options: Anything from producing a PDF using OpenOffice to as complicated as you want to make it. You can publish e-books on Lulu, Amazon or directly into a "sharing" service like Scribd. What you do rather depends on what you want out of it. For which reason I'll slightly reorganise your bullets:
Reasonable Expectations: Maybe three readers if you give your stuff away free. I'm being unkind actually. If you really pimp your stuff I imagine you might be able to get twenty or thirty people to read for free. I don't push my stuff on anyone and the downloads of my entirely free e-novels are non-existent. Just because it's free people don't browse and download accidentally, it doesn't happen, that's a fantasy. If you want people to read your book someone has to grab them by the collar and shout "read this!" into their faces insistently; metaphorically speaking. People in the modern world just don't have the time to read obscure stuff, I know I'd be hard pushed to find a slot for a new author I have a reading list good for about four or five months at present and no shortage of new stuff to get through after that. I'm a keen, open-minded reader and I'm a very rare breed. Most people just won't care about your stuff at all; you will always lose to established names. It's what publishers have spent the last century training the readership to and the problem with independents is they don't have the marketing muscle to retrain the audience. The Kindle/Nook explosion may have an impact but it's still early days.
Caveats: See above. Do not expect to be buying a country house and signing the dotted line for a multi-million dollar six book deal any time soon. Expect to work hard and feel unfairly treated no matter what you do. It's all a matter of degree. Seeing a Stephen King or a Dan Brown gives new authors a sense of entitlement I see over and over. Lose it. Lose it quick. Those guys are the exception not the rule.
Cons: If you DIY e-publish you will have a lot of work of your own to do to get very few readers.
Pros: If you publish via what people would describe as a "legitimate publisher" you must subscribe to a world view which states that surrendering control of the means and method of production of your product, how its bought and sold and how you, therefore, interact with the world as a writer is just part of being a writer. If you retain control you are almost 100% certain to kiss goodbye to the dreams of multi-million dollar success but you have a chance at winning success as a writer on your own terms. The difficulty with that is that you have to know what your own terms are. One day I would like 100 people to buy one of my books. Not one of the ones I have available currently, one of the ones I have written but not finished. One of the ones I'm really proud of. That's all. Or at least, that's my current goal. If I achieve that goal I'll work on something else. I don't want someone else to control the way my work is presented and I am happy to remain a hobbyist because of that. If that's not for you then this e-publishing lark isn't either.

(0)

Login to post a comment!