: 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

@Shelley992

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I thought I would add a little perspective as someone who has had some experience on both ends of this. I will try to be as honest as possible, so that you can see any bias that I may have.

First off, I had an idea for a book and started writing. Sought to a publishers, found one and started the journey. However, I soon started to far outpace my editor. I was writing maybe 15-20 A4 pages a week. It was draft, but my editor failed to keep up. I was one of many books she had on the go.
I was also writing a technical book, and although she had some experience, technology moves so quickly, she did not fully understand the subject matter, and this made it difficult. It felt very much one sided. I even started editing the book myself, so as not to let the process get too slowed down. I printed a copy, read it over and over, looking for grammatical errors, and good prose.

To cut a long, painful story short, we parted company when the book was nearly complete (or at least I thought it was, the editor felt otherwise). The main reason was that the book was not in the publisher's style, and I did not want to do a re-write when I felt I could have been guided much earlier in the process, and wasted a lot of time.

Instead, I decided to publish as an eBook. I made very few changes after parting company with the publisher, saved my book as a PDF and wrote a small website and implemented a little shopping cart and sold it myself. I manually emailed the book to buyers.
I advertised the book on the technology's technical forum, and sold 20+ in the first day. I quickly changed from my own emailing solution to using Lula.com as the provider. They charge a lot more (take 20%, plus about £0.66 for credit card charges and hosting), but they handle distribution for you.

My main reason for moving to Lula though, was that I did not realise that eBooks were liable for VAT in the UK. Made me wonder what else I was missing? So, I went with a professional solution that just handled everything for me. It also gives me the option to sell as a paperback book quite easily in the future quite easily.

A week on, I am still making steady sales, I won't make a huge amount, but I feel totally in control of my own work. The feedback I have had is excellent, so the concern that I cannot publish quality work without an editor has been unfounded.

I have found the self publishing route, albeit for a niche technical book with a very targeted audience, fulfilling and rewarding and very glad I chose to do it. I do not, and will not make a living from it, but my self esteem, and security are far far higher!

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