Self-publishing on Kindle

JennyP

Sixer wrote: »

What is your genre if it's fiction and what is your topic if it's non-fiction.

This is a competitive area and you need to find what they call "key influencers" for promotion. Bloggers have a lot of influence in the book world, so you need to find the most influential in your niche, then offer them a free copy of your book and hope they'll like it enough to review it.

There are many self-publishing and Kindle-based community sites, so join those and chat for England, don't just post links to your book.

Before you do any of this, though, you need to make sure your product is top-notch. Has it been copy-edited? Who by? Are your English skills as good as you think they are (not saying they're not, but I've seen a great many self-published books and the standard isn't generally very high).

Genre is non-fiction. I suppose it's self-help!

I know a couple of the key influencers already - one has promoted me. One hasn't. She has a rival book so I can't expect her to really although I promote her book a fair bit because it's so good. She's been kind though - encouraging messages and she already has a copy.

As for my English, it is pretty good (Languages degree and mum was a very strict English teacher who still shouts at the TV if she sees an out of place apostrophe on the subtitles!!!) There are one or two typos in it. Someone is proof-reading (another English teacher!) and weeding them out!

genieswish

I don't have any constuctive advice but just wanted to say WELL DONE! I'd love to write a book but wouldnt know where to start...

you could try being really cheeky and trying to get someone well known to review it, like richard and judy's book club, wrong genre i know - but someone that writes for a magazine or something?
Just don't give up and keep on plugging I guess..rollercoaster has a big following on the book club forum, is there any on facebook/twitter where you could get a cheeky plug in?

JennyP

genieswish wrote: »

I don't have any constuctive advice but just wanted to say WELL DONE! I'd love to write a book but wouldnt know where to start...

you could try being really cheeky and trying to get someone well known to review it, like richard and judy's book club, wrong genre i know - but someone that writes for a magazine or something?
Just don't give up and keep on plugging I guess..rollercoaster has a big following on the book club forum, is there any on facebook/twitter where you could get a cheeky plug in?

Thank you. That's a really nice thing to say.

I know a couple of celebs (work in TV) but I am too chicken to approach them. Did wonder about asking one of them to write me an intro. She could only say no, I suppose.
I've never heard of Rollercoaster! What's that?

I have to say that discovering all this stuff I didn't know about marketing and publicity has been great fun in itself. It's good learning new stuff.

If you really want to start writing, but don't know where to start, try reading The Artists Way by Julia Cameron. It's great fun and really inspirational (and applies to writing, art, film-making or anything creative - not just for artists!)

Kerrypolka

I've been thinking about doing this as well, publishing short how-to e-books (15k-20k words) as a way of making passive income. I'd be curious to know other people's experiences with Kindle self-publishing; I'm not set on it as a way of making major income, but I have a dream of setting a few e-books out to fly free and bring me a few pounds a month.

rosie383

As others have said already, please make sure you get your books proof-read. I download maybe 5-10 books per day, and the biggest bug-bear I have is poor grammar and spelling. It will put me off a book quicker than anything else and seems to be one of the reasons for negative reviews. If I have read any even half-decent books I always leave a positive review but have only ever left negative for a couple of books that had horrendous writing.

macman

As above. But proof read and copy edited-not the same thing.
Design is the main give-away for self published titles-it's glaringly obvious if the pages have not been professionally laid out, either in print or in e-Book format.

advanta

macman wrote: »

You can hire your own publicist, which is what most publisher's do who don't have in-house publicity depts.
Your publisher (if they're any good) will know what sells and what doesn't. That's why they'll have wanted to edit what you write to make it more commercially viable. Remember that the vast majority of successful books are commissioned, they're not picked off the slushpile. The inference being that the publishers' know fairly precisely what they want for their particular market.

I have to disagree with this, sorry.

Publishing is in my experience the worst industry in the whole universe. I had two books published in the States. The publisher's main contribution was to bind the book. One went bust, the other stole my royalties (Tens Of Thousands Of Dollars there was no feasible way to recover). I negotiated sales with distributors and promoted the book almost exclusively.

The problem with publishers is that they use macro-strategies in what is increasingly a series of micro-markets. They'll fling out a whole host of general books to the general market. Increasingly people want specific information-they can wiki the basics of virtually any subject for free. Why on earth would any one buy "Java for dummies" or whatever when the information is available online on a hundred different sites?

If I publish anything ever again, it will certainly be self-published. I did all the work anyway, publishers contribute nothing.

JennyP

advanta wrote: »

I have to disagree with this, sorry.

Publishing is in my experience the worst industry in the whole universe. I had two books published in the States. The publisher's main contribution was to bind the book. One went bust, the other stole my royalties (Tens Of Thousands Of Dollars there was no feasible way to recover). I negotiated sales with distributors and promoted the book almost exclusively.

The problem with publishers is that they use macro-strategies in what is increasingly a series of micro-markets. They'll fling out a whole host of general books to the general market. Increasingly people want specific information-they can wiki the basics of virtually any subject for free. Why on earth would any one buy "Java for dummies" or whatever when the information is available online on a hundred different sites?

If I publish anything ever again, it will certainly be self-published. I did all the work anyway, publishers contribute nothing.

Similar experiences.
I made £1000 from the first book that was commissioned from me from a normal publisher. From the second, I made only £500. Hard to understand when I did signings and sometimes spotted my book in major book shops when I was out and about. A large part of that £500 went on my travel to the photoshoot and materials for the photoshoot. I was naive. I didn't negotiate with the publisher for that stuff.

I make a bit each year in library fees but that's about it.

I know Amazon gets a bad press for only passing on 35% or 70% royalties to authors, depending on which price structure you go for - but my "real publisher" gave me a 10% deal.

Of course, there was a lot of kudos in being published properly but there's been a lot more fun and a lot less stress going down the self-publishing route! Good luck to anyone else trying it!

Surprised there's not lots of people on here publishing journals of their money-saving adventures on Amazon. That'd make good reading!

Kerrypolka

macman wrote: »

As above. But proof read and copy edited-not the same thing.
Design is the main give-away for self published titles-it's glaringly obvious if the pages have not been professionally laid out, either in print or in e-Book format.

That's a great point - I work as a copy editor myself so I have a great appreciation for the difference. I have a Kindle myself so hopefully it will be easy to check the formatting and so on first. Thank you for the advice!

macman

advanta wrote: »

I have to disagree with this, sorry.

Publishing is in my experience the worst industry in the whole universe. I had two books published in the States. The publisher's main contribution was to bind the book. One went bust, the other stole my royalties (Tens Of Thousands Of Dollars there was no feasible way to recover). I negotiated sales with distributors and promoted the book almost exclusively.

The problem with publishers is that they use macro-strategies in what is increasingly a series of micro-markets. They'll fling out a whole host of general books to the general market. Increasingly people want specific information-they can wiki the basics of virtually any subject for free. Why on earth would any one buy "Java for dummies" or whatever when the information is available online on a hundred different sites?

If I publish anything ever again, it will certainly be self-published. I did all the work anyway, publishers contribute nothing.

How? In a conventional publishing deal, the publisher takes the entire risk. The author gets an advance, even if after publication not a single copy is sold. The publisher bears the cost of editing, design, reproduction, printing and binding, warehousing, sales, publicity and distribution.
Clearly your experience with US publishers' is not typical. They can go bust, just like any other business.