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Selling Well Is The Best Revenge by Linda Gillard (view source)
Revision as of 14:03, 3 March 2018
, 14:03, 3 March 2018no edit summary
The way I see it, I can't lose and have everything to gain. And to paraphrase that old saying, "Selling well is the best revenge."
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[[Category:Linda Gillard]]
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|name=Lucy Johnson McDowall
|verb= said
|comment=Hi there,
Your article answered a question burning in my brain after downloading a couple of under £1 reads to my new kindle: how the heck can an author make any money from that sale?
I use my Kindle for commercial fiction and my physical bookshelf for literature, commercial fiction I would keep rather than take the charity shop when I'm done, and quality non fiction which makes me look good when on display (grin). Books for me have an aesthetic value as well, and I want my child to grow up naturally exposed to books, so I cant see myself going entirely ebook.
Can I ask how you manage to solve the thorny problem of editing and marketing? It seems that print authors who have established a following will find the move to self publishing easier.
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{{comment
|name=Linda Gillard
|verb=repled
|comment=Hi Lucy
Thanks for your response. I will never go entirely e-book either. Since [[House of Silence by Linda Gillard|HOUSE OF SILENCE]] became an e-book bestseller (I sold 5000 in the first 2 months and I'm currently selling about 100 a day) I've spent some of my earnings on joining the Folio Book Society and buying some beautiful hardback books. I think you'll see the logic of that. ;-)
re editing and marketing... Disclaimer: I'm no expert. Publishing fiction is my only area of expertise and what I am about to say applies to Amazon and Kindle e-books only.
Editing is not a problem for me because I've always edited myself before my manuscripts went to the publisher's editor. (In any case I was a journalist long before I was a novelist.) Editorial skills can be learned online or from books, but you can also pay people to do editing and proof-reading for you. At an informal level, any teacher or person who writes professionally - even a keen amateur - will be able to give your manuscript the once-over and advise about things like grammar and spelling. (Don't forget the spell-check on your PC, though that won't pick up all errors.) I'd recommend joining a writers' group and sharing your book with them. Someone will pick up inconsistencies of plot & character, punctuation & grammar errors, etc.
Having said that, there are a depressing number of e-books out there which have clearly not been through this process and it doesn't seem to have bothered readers. (Well, not many. I think the most damning thing I've seen in e-book reviews on Amazon has been comments along the lines of "This read like a teenage ''What I did in the Holidays'' essay."
Marketing is a much bigger problem. I've done well with HOUSE OF SILENCE because I already had a loyal fan base and a good relationship with bloggers and review websites like Bookbag. I also have a [http://www.lindagillard.co.uk website] (essential these days), a Facebook author page (very useful) and I knew how to market myself and my e-book on the internet. (I learned to do that with my earlier books because publishers do very little to promote books and nothing at all after the first 3 months. Publishers now expect minor authors to do most of the marketing themselves, so in this respect e-publishing is no different.) But again, there are loads of e-books selling in quantity because they are free, very cheap or because they belong to genres for which there is a massive market, eg paranormal & soft-core porn. If you want to sell your e-book and you are unknown or little known, you have to make it very cheap or, better still, free. If you don't, you won't make it into the Amazon rankings. That means not only will readers not know about your e-book, Amazon won't promote it. (Amazon promotes what sells - that's the only criterion - and they are very good at selling.)
Once you are selling, you could then charge a modest amount for your book. With Kindle e-books you can respond to sales figures and put prices up or down. Plenty of people do that but obviously it looks better if you put prices up than if you put them down.
Unless you are prepared to put a lot of effort into marketing your e-book, don't expect to sell. You can skimp on editing, you can give your book a lousy cover, it can be amateurishly written and it ''still'' might sell. If you don't market your book, it cannot sell because no one will ever know it exists.
I hope this is helpful. Good luck if you are planning to e-publish!
Best wishes
Linda
[http://www.lindagillard.co.uk www.lindagillard.co.uk]
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[[Category:Self-Publishing]]