Case Study in Ebook Publishng, The Wishmonger

                                                                         

A little over seven years ago I started writing a story that is now available as my first ebook novel. The book is called, The Wishmonger and its available on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00M5MU37Q?tag=pulist-20

Since I had not posted here in a while, I thought it was a good opportunity to share with other writers about my publishing experience. Here are three things I think you should consider when self publishing.

Picking a Platform

I know that word gets used a lot, so let me explain. A platform is simply a publishing website and for ebooks there are many. Three things you should consider are:
1. Royalties: How much do you get for each copy (Amazon and Smashword set the bar pretty high at 70%)
2.Traffic: two things here, first, big sites get lots of traffic, however, that means lots of competition for eyeballs on your book. Second, a site with moderate traffic, but less competition might be better. You can download seo add ons for some browsers that help you determine rankings, etc. My favorite is SEOquake. Compare carefully before choosing, or go with a site that does not require exclusivity and hit several!
3. What kind of promotions do they offer, and how much do they cost? Larger sites, like Amazon will promote a book that starts to sell, generally at no cost to you. Smaller sites may do some, but have limited resources, so most of their promotions will cost something.

Three sites you should look at to start, Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing, Smashwords, and Lulu.com.

Promoting Your Book

I mentioned above that most sites provide some promotion, but relying on a single site to drive traffic to your sales page may not be the best approach. Here are some thing to start thinking about and looking at, before you are ready to launch your book.

1. Book review sites: these come in three flavors. first there are self posted review sites like Good Reads.com. I put my book here and that listing came up at the top of Google for The Wishmonger the very next day. Next, you have a variety of free  book review sites. All of the ones I visited recently had some pretty strict guidelines and long waiting times, but that doesn't mean they won't work. You may need to lay a little ground work, such as getting a few  sales, and some reviews before you can be successful here. Third there are the pay to play sites. It used to be true that if someone asked for money to review your work it was a scam. Not so much anymore. These sites usually don't charge much, and if they have good ranking and traffic, a link from one or two certainly can't hurt.

2. Social Media, you know the drill, put it on Facebook, Tweet about it, invite your Linked in connections to visit your authors page, etc. The key is persistence and consistency. Do a couple of posts several days a week to get things going, then find out what it takes to keep people talking, and do that. With The Wishmonger, I have used Facebook both talking about it on my personal profile and on my authors page.

3. Blogs: yes, this post is completely self-serving, but it also has a lot of good information in it. A great way to get traffic to your book is to get mentions, or guest posts on high traffic blogs, but barring that, both blogger and Wordpress have free blogs available that anyone can start, as many as they want! I recommend blogger, since Google owns it, it seems to show up faster.

Writing the Next One

The smart money these days is on the guy with a whole truck load of titles for sale. Not only does it make it easier to get repeat sales from customers, every time your promote a new title, the old ones get a bit of a boost as well. The Wishmonger is the first in a series, with the second one set to come out after the first of the year.

So, there you have it, and here is the link to my fabulous  novel, which I know you now are dying to read. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00M5MU37Q?tag=pulist-20