Post by gooberguy on Feb 28, 2021 8:30:54 GMT
Hi folks.
I'm Goober from Goober's books. The little guy on my arm is my very best pal, Crackers the parrot. He sure loves his polly treats. He also loves to narrate my books for me, which is a good thing because as we all know, St Bernard's can't talk. Luckily, they now make special paw-boards so we can type.
You may have not heard of us and our Classic Collection of children's books all over the place.
Why is that? because we try to sell through places such as kindle and smashwords.
As we all know. Kindle, for instance, is a joke. They take the lion's share of the royalties.
They give away our eBooks to their most avid readers. People who read the most books join their membership and read all the books they want for one low yearly price. It's similar to amazon prime.
They even steal our books. I read post after post, people complaining that they know they sold a copy of their book to a friend, yet no payment was received. And, this was on kindle's own forum.
Shortly after listing my first book with them, I looked it up to see how it looked and read the preview. I noticed the strangest thing. Although I had not yet sold a single copy, they had a listing for this book as a used book. How could some distributor have used copies of my book, if none were yet sold?
Plus, it's near impossible to find your book through a keyword search. Try typing in the genre you listed your book in as a customer would do when looking for a book to read would. Good luck finding your book. Unless, of course, you spend gobs of money on advertising. I had a hard time finding my book when going to the Kindle site and typing the book's name. It had to be typed exactly as I listed it. Comma and all.
Worst part is, compared to some so called companies out there, they're the nice guys i this business. There are so many 'companies' out there that prey on our desire to sell our books. They promise to do all kinds of things the can't or won't do. Often, they offer worthless things that sound good to the naïve writer. They're playing on our vanity and desperation.
Here's one example. I saw an add claiming that for $99.00, they will put your book on top.
One top of what?!?
On top of their tiny website that no one but other authors might see. (If they're also looking for an angle to sell their book, that is.)
Plus, only one book can be on top at one time. Once some other dumb shmo shells out a C-note, your book gets bumped down one slot.
Companies offer to read your book and give their opinion. Big deal. Unless they are Random house publishers, for instance, what is their opinion going to do for me?
Are you catching my drift?
I've read several articles warning us that there are far more scam companies out there than legit.
I've seen bunches of offers to sell our books without us giving them a commission.
While paying a company too big a commission is a mistake, paying a company a flat fee is a much bigger mistake.
Once they have your money, is their motivation to sell your book? Of course not! They're too busy being motivated in finding the next new author who's desperate to hand them a wad of hard earned money in hopes of selling their book.
Face it: If we want to sell our books, we need to do it ourselves.
To do this, we need to develop marketing strategies. Granted, it's not easy. It takes work. But, this is how indie authors did it prior to Kindle coming along. And back then, they sold books!
It seems to me that most people who join forums do so to plug their books. This won't work. We are marketing to a crowd of people like ourselves. People who are too poor to buy books because we can't sell our books!
Seriously though. We join forums to sell books, not buy them. How many books have you sold through a forum? 5? 10? Retire on that.
I'm hoping to attract a group of people who are interested in sharing ideas that will result in getting our books into the hands of readers. I'm looking for people who are motivated enough to do some research and share what we learn. Perhaps we can form a private club where freeloaders will be banned.
I'm not saying we will be suddenly selling tons of books tomorrow. This will take time and a little dedication from all of us. But, in 2 years time, do you want to be a successful author, or wishing you did something to become one 2 years prior (Now)? And, together we can accomplish much more than each of us can on our own. We'll share our ideas, research and talent. United we stand. Divided, we'll watch some other authors make the best seller's list.
One thing I believe we will each need to do is create a website. There are options. The most affordable way is to make it from scratch. This will also give you the most control over how it looks. I've also been turning all my books into website format for the eBooks. If you've turned one of yours into eBooks, you know how limited you are concerning how it looks using programs like kindle reader or Calibre, for instance. I'll try to add an image of one of my books here. The template based 'easy' website builders are quite limited and extremely expensive. Especially with all the plug ins needed.
I've also read that we need to build a mailing list on our websites. We can offer a book a month give-away. To qualify, one has to get a friend of theirs to join the list. Then, you create hype of your existing books and upcoming ones. I imagine there are other ways a mailing list helps sell books. I haven't researched it much. I just know that all the successful indie authors swear by mailing lists as part of their strategy.
We can help each other create our websites.
We can also get together and create free sites through WordPress and other free places. We can all list our books. I imagine these free sites do not include eCommerce tools, such as payment, to sell them. However, we can provide links from each of our own books description to our own websites.
If we develop close enough relationships with each other, we could even chip in to pay for a hosing plan of our own. With an eCommerce hosting plan ($6.00- $10.00 a month) they offer unlimited websites.
If we all put our heads together, the options are almost unlimited.
Who knows? In time, we could build a good reputation. Places like Kindle have built a very poor reputation.
With Kindle, pretty much any monkey can type a minimum of 23 pages, format a cover that passes their template standards and list a book. Have you taken the time to see some of the previews of books listed there? Text on half the page. more misspelled words than correct. ( Speaking of which. Please excuse any spelling or grammatical errors. this is a forum. Not a book I've spent time to pro-edit) Many are horrible excuses of "books" Readers are aware of this. I bet they're itching to find a better source of books. There is no good reason we can't become that better source.
I forget the name of the distributor, but when I started to sign up to list my book, they wanted a credit card number for if I wanted to make revisions. (Edit. I think it was IngramSpark) What a joke. If we make revisions, their computer's file system makes the change instantly, for no cost. Since they get a commission form sales, it's also in their best interest if we decide revisions need to be made.
If you do go with a distributor, the best I've found is smashwords. They distribute to a bunch of places including Barns & Noble and iTunes. They also place your book in thousands of libraries around the world and give you the option of selling it in these libraries for a reduced cost or free. I listed mine in libraries for free. Besides the word of mouth angle, it's mostly poor kids who do their reading in libraries.
If you want to check out smashwords, keep a couple things in mind.
First: they only do eBooks. No hard copy.
Second; they have strict formatting standards. On their website, they have a styling guide you can download in pdf format. They want your book to look right in eBook form. Places they distribute to insist on it. For instance, a paragraph must be either indented or have a blank line between it and the last paragraph. But not both!
Next; When you finish a sentence and want to go to the next line, unless it's for a new paragraph, you must hit control and enter. Not just enter. If I remember correctly, they call it a hard return. Hitting just enter ( A hard return) can make it come out funky when your document is changed into eBook format. They explain the reasons for all their requirements much better than I can. Not being proficient with text editors, I had a real hard time with it. My effort was rejected at least ten times before getting it right. And, honestly, I have no clue what I did to finally get my manuscript accepted. I'm going to upload the cover of one of my books and one of the pages. Both are screenshots of my web browser. Perhaps I'll add a third if it will take such a large file size. The first is a book cover. Sure, you can add book covers with kindle or Calibre. The second is of a page within the book. As well as the cover, I made these banners with a program called drawpad. It a free version of photoshop. The third, if it uploads, is also a page. There is an image in front of the pages background image. I think the look of a book is half the experience. Who wants to read an ugly looking book? Try this with kindle!
Ok. That's enough from me for now. I hope we can form a nice, semi small close knit group and even develop professional and friendly relationships with each other. And, most importantly, sell a big bunch of our books!!
Thanks for reading.
GooberGuy
I'm Goober from Goober's books. The little guy on my arm is my very best pal, Crackers the parrot. He sure loves his polly treats. He also loves to narrate my books for me, which is a good thing because as we all know, St Bernard's can't talk. Luckily, they now make special paw-boards so we can type.
You may have not heard of us and our Classic Collection of children's books all over the place.
Why is that? because we try to sell through places such as kindle and smashwords.
As we all know. Kindle, for instance, is a joke. They take the lion's share of the royalties.
They give away our eBooks to their most avid readers. People who read the most books join their membership and read all the books they want for one low yearly price. It's similar to amazon prime.
They even steal our books. I read post after post, people complaining that they know they sold a copy of their book to a friend, yet no payment was received. And, this was on kindle's own forum.
Shortly after listing my first book with them, I looked it up to see how it looked and read the preview. I noticed the strangest thing. Although I had not yet sold a single copy, they had a listing for this book as a used book. How could some distributor have used copies of my book, if none were yet sold?
Plus, it's near impossible to find your book through a keyword search. Try typing in the genre you listed your book in as a customer would do when looking for a book to read would. Good luck finding your book. Unless, of course, you spend gobs of money on advertising. I had a hard time finding my book when going to the Kindle site and typing the book's name. It had to be typed exactly as I listed it. Comma and all.
Worst part is, compared to some so called companies out there, they're the nice guys i this business. There are so many 'companies' out there that prey on our desire to sell our books. They promise to do all kinds of things the can't or won't do. Often, they offer worthless things that sound good to the naïve writer. They're playing on our vanity and desperation.
Here's one example. I saw an add claiming that for $99.00, they will put your book on top.
One top of what?!?
On top of their tiny website that no one but other authors might see. (If they're also looking for an angle to sell their book, that is.)
Plus, only one book can be on top at one time. Once some other dumb shmo shells out a C-note, your book gets bumped down one slot.
Companies offer to read your book and give their opinion. Big deal. Unless they are Random house publishers, for instance, what is their opinion going to do for me?
Are you catching my drift?
I've read several articles warning us that there are far more scam companies out there than legit.
I've seen bunches of offers to sell our books without us giving them a commission.
While paying a company too big a commission is a mistake, paying a company a flat fee is a much bigger mistake.
Once they have your money, is their motivation to sell your book? Of course not! They're too busy being motivated in finding the next new author who's desperate to hand them a wad of hard earned money in hopes of selling their book.
Face it: If we want to sell our books, we need to do it ourselves.
To do this, we need to develop marketing strategies. Granted, it's not easy. It takes work. But, this is how indie authors did it prior to Kindle coming along. And back then, they sold books!
It seems to me that most people who join forums do so to plug their books. This won't work. We are marketing to a crowd of people like ourselves. People who are too poor to buy books because we can't sell our books!
Seriously though. We join forums to sell books, not buy them. How many books have you sold through a forum? 5? 10? Retire on that.
I'm hoping to attract a group of people who are interested in sharing ideas that will result in getting our books into the hands of readers. I'm looking for people who are motivated enough to do some research and share what we learn. Perhaps we can form a private club where freeloaders will be banned.
I'm not saying we will be suddenly selling tons of books tomorrow. This will take time and a little dedication from all of us. But, in 2 years time, do you want to be a successful author, or wishing you did something to become one 2 years prior (Now)? And, together we can accomplish much more than each of us can on our own. We'll share our ideas, research and talent. United we stand. Divided, we'll watch some other authors make the best seller's list.
One thing I believe we will each need to do is create a website. There are options. The most affordable way is to make it from scratch. This will also give you the most control over how it looks. I've also been turning all my books into website format for the eBooks. If you've turned one of yours into eBooks, you know how limited you are concerning how it looks using programs like kindle reader or Calibre, for instance. I'll try to add an image of one of my books here. The template based 'easy' website builders are quite limited and extremely expensive. Especially with all the plug ins needed.
I've also read that we need to build a mailing list on our websites. We can offer a book a month give-away. To qualify, one has to get a friend of theirs to join the list. Then, you create hype of your existing books and upcoming ones. I imagine there are other ways a mailing list helps sell books. I haven't researched it much. I just know that all the successful indie authors swear by mailing lists as part of their strategy.
We can help each other create our websites.
We can also get together and create free sites through WordPress and other free places. We can all list our books. I imagine these free sites do not include eCommerce tools, such as payment, to sell them. However, we can provide links from each of our own books description to our own websites.
If we develop close enough relationships with each other, we could even chip in to pay for a hosing plan of our own. With an eCommerce hosting plan ($6.00- $10.00 a month) they offer unlimited websites.
If we all put our heads together, the options are almost unlimited.
Who knows? In time, we could build a good reputation. Places like Kindle have built a very poor reputation.
With Kindle, pretty much any monkey can type a minimum of 23 pages, format a cover that passes their template standards and list a book. Have you taken the time to see some of the previews of books listed there? Text on half the page. more misspelled words than correct. ( Speaking of which. Please excuse any spelling or grammatical errors. this is a forum. Not a book I've spent time to pro-edit) Many are horrible excuses of "books" Readers are aware of this. I bet they're itching to find a better source of books. There is no good reason we can't become that better source.
I forget the name of the distributor, but when I started to sign up to list my book, they wanted a credit card number for if I wanted to make revisions. (Edit. I think it was IngramSpark) What a joke. If we make revisions, their computer's file system makes the change instantly, for no cost. Since they get a commission form sales, it's also in their best interest if we decide revisions need to be made.
If you do go with a distributor, the best I've found is smashwords. They distribute to a bunch of places including Barns & Noble and iTunes. They also place your book in thousands of libraries around the world and give you the option of selling it in these libraries for a reduced cost or free. I listed mine in libraries for free. Besides the word of mouth angle, it's mostly poor kids who do their reading in libraries.
If you want to check out smashwords, keep a couple things in mind.
First: they only do eBooks. No hard copy.
Second; they have strict formatting standards. On their website, they have a styling guide you can download in pdf format. They want your book to look right in eBook form. Places they distribute to insist on it. For instance, a paragraph must be either indented or have a blank line between it and the last paragraph. But not both!
Next; When you finish a sentence and want to go to the next line, unless it's for a new paragraph, you must hit control and enter. Not just enter. If I remember correctly, they call it a hard return. Hitting just enter ( A hard return) can make it come out funky when your document is changed into eBook format. They explain the reasons for all their requirements much better than I can. Not being proficient with text editors, I had a real hard time with it. My effort was rejected at least ten times before getting it right. And, honestly, I have no clue what I did to finally get my manuscript accepted. I'm going to upload the cover of one of my books and one of the pages. Both are screenshots of my web browser. Perhaps I'll add a third if it will take such a large file size. The first is a book cover. Sure, you can add book covers with kindle or Calibre. The second is of a page within the book. As well as the cover, I made these banners with a program called drawpad. It a free version of photoshop. The third, if it uploads, is also a page. There is an image in front of the pages background image. I think the look of a book is half the experience. Who wants to read an ugly looking book? Try this with kindle!
Ok. That's enough from me for now. I hope we can form a nice, semi small close knit group and even develop professional and friendly relationships with each other. And, most importantly, sell a big bunch of our books!!
Thanks for reading.
GooberGuy
Attachments:
I've been using Smashwords since 2005 when it started! That's almost 20 years and you just heard of Smashwords it seems but want to tell us about it? 
You just published your first book and you wanna give out info like you are Stephen King. Please.
