Sunday, February 20, 2011
Authors and Publishers: How to Sponsor Kindle Nation Daily
Welcome to Kindle Nation's Sponsorship Info Page for authors and publishers. Over the past few years we've built a special relationship with some of the greatest readers in the world, people who read on Kindle. If you have a good book that is available on Kindle, sponsoring Kindle Nation and our partner sites can be an excellent way to bring it to the attention of readers. The purpose of this web page is to explain how sponsorship works and to provide you with direct access to sponsorship sign-up via PayPal as well as all the information you need to choose your sponsorship options wisely and make the program work as well as possible for you.
Just to be clear, we don't promise that your sponsorship will "pay for itself," and we don't even consider it an ad in the usual sense, because what we write about each book, or even whether we accept it as a sponsor, is entirely up to us. But we do guarantee that when you sponsor Kindle Nation you'll get a great deal of exposure, and we believe good exposure can give a good book a chance to connect with readers.
The only rigid requirement is that your Kindle edition must be priced at $9.99 or below, since the Free Book Alerts are all about helping our readers find great reads that are also great bargains. However, we strongly encourage you to take further steps -- title, cover image, product description, reviews, price, and of course the quality of the book itself! -- to make your book as attractive to readers as possible so that you don't waste your money, our time, or our readers' attention.
After you sign up and send us information and materials on your book, we'll respond within 7 business days with a schedule for your sponsorship to appear. (We appreciate your patience with our response time, which is a result of our time-consuming effort to make sure that all sponsored titles meet Kindle Nation Daily standards. We reserve the right to reject any sponsorship and will refund a prospective sponsor's full payment immediately upon make such a determination.)
We do make editorial decisions based on our sense of our readers' interests. If for any reason we choose not to provide you with a sponsorship opportunity we will refund your payment in full. Please be aware that we must occasionally make small changes to sponsorship schedules -- usually involving no more than 2 or 3 days -- due to our efforts to provide the best possible reading experience for readers and subscribers.
CONTENTS:
We update these public spreadsheets daily to show complete, fully transparent results for our sponsors:
Please be aware that we provide valuable exposure, but it's up to you to make your book attractive to prospective readers. You may find it helpful to click on the links above to see how different sponsoring titles have performed depending on price, genre, title, reviews and ratings, cover art, and other factors.
As of April 5, 2011 the closest available dates for the several sponsorship options are as follows:
SIGN UP AND PAY WITH PAYPAL OR A CREDIT CARD
Please use the pull-down menus and buy button on this page to select an option that works for you.
Just to be clear, we don't promise that your sponsorship will "pay for itself," and we don't even consider it an ad in the usual sense, because what we write about each book, or even whether we accept it as a sponsor, is entirely up to us. But we do guarantee that when you sponsor Kindle Nation you'll get a great deal of exposure, and we believe good exposure can give a good book a chance to connect with readers.
The only rigid requirement is that your Kindle edition must be priced at $9.99 or below, since the Free Book Alerts are all about helping our readers find great reads that are also great bargains. However, we strongly encourage you to take further steps -- title, cover image, product description, reviews, price, and of course the quality of the book itself! -- to make your book as attractive to readers as possible so that you don't waste your money, our time, or our readers' attention.
After you sign up and send us information and materials on your book, we'll respond within 7 business days with a schedule for your sponsorship to appear. (We appreciate your patience with our response time, which is a result of our time-consuming effort to make sure that all sponsored titles meet Kindle Nation Daily standards. We reserve the right to reject any sponsorship and will refund a prospective sponsor's full payment immediately upon make such a determination.)
We do make editorial decisions based on our sense of our readers' interests. If for any reason we choose not to provide you with a sponsorship opportunity we will refund your payment in full. Please be aware that we must occasionally make small changes to sponsorship schedules -- usually involving no more than 2 or 3 days -- due to our efforts to provide the best possible reading experience for readers and subscribers.
CONTENTS:
- CHECK OUT OUR TRACK RECORD
- SELECT A SPONSORSHIP OPTION
- CHECK ON AVAILABILITY AND SCHEDULE IN ADVANCE
- SIGN UP AND PAY WITH PAYPAL OR A CREDIT CARD
- SEND YOUR EBOOK INFORMATION AND MATERIALS AND AWAIT OUR SCHEDULING EMAIL
- TIPS AND IMPORTANT INFORMATION
We update these public spreadsheets daily to show complete, fully transparent results for our sponsors:
Please be aware that we provide valuable exposure, but it's up to you to make your book attractive to prospective readers. You may find it helpful to click on the links above to see how different sponsoring titles have performed depending on price, genre, title, reviews and ratings, cover art, and other factors.
SELECT A SPONSORSHIP OPTION
- Option 1 - Free Book Alert Sponsorship - 1 Day: Kindle Nation Daily Free Book Alert sponsorship live on web and pushed directly via Whispernet to over 6,000 Kindles owned by paid subscribers.
- Option 2 - Free Kindle Nation Short Excerpt Email Sponsorship - 1 Day: Free Kindle Nation Shorts excerpt and sponsorship to be emailed to 5,000 opt-in free email subscribers and pushed directly via Whispernet to over 6,000 Kindles owned by paid subscribers. It's your choice whether to sponsor another author's Free Kindle Nation Short or your own, but the most powerful option is to sponsor your own.
- Option 3 - Free Book Alert Sponsorship - Weekly Newsletter Email Blast: Weekly Kindle Nation newsletter email blast sponsorship emailed each Tuesday to 5,800 opt-in free email subscribers. This is one of our most powerful sponsorship options because the free opt-in newsletter with live web links to your book achieves a very high level of engagement and response. This option tends to be sold out 6-8 weeks in advance, so schedule early if possible!
- Option 4 - Gold Sponsorship: This is a powerful medley of sponsorships that includes Options 1, 2, and 3: the Free Kindle Nation Short Excerpt Email Sponsorship, the Free Book Alert Sponsorship - 1 Day, and the Free Book Alert Sponsorship - Weekly Newsletter Email Blast. Since the Weekly Newsletter Email Blast option tends to be sold out months in advance, it is important to plan ahead for the Gold Sponsorship. (If you sign up for a Gold sponsorship, please specify whether you prefer to have all of your sponsorship days occur in the same week, or to have your daily and excerpt sponsorships occur as soon as possible rather than being held to occur in the same week as your weekly sponsorship).
- Option 5 - Silver Sponsorship: The Silver Sponsorship combines options 1 and 2 and allows a savings of $10 on the package.
- Option 6 - eBook of the Day Sponsorship - 1 Day: This package includes several elements: a one-day Planet iPad Free Book Alert Sponsorship; a small linked mention of title and author near the top of the Kindle Nation Daily website for at least 18 hours; a single "Kindle for the Web" sample post on the Kindle Nation Daily website at some time between noon and 8 pm Eastern, with brief linked mention of title and author; one Facebook status post and one Twitter tweet linking back to the "Kindle for the Web" sample post; one sidebar "eBook of the Day" box on the Kindle Nation Daily website for at least 18 hours, with linked title, author, and cover art; and an "eBook of the Day" box on key pages of the Kindle Lending Club website for at least 18 hours.
- Option 7 - Platinum Sponsorship: The Platinum Sponsorship combines options 1, 2, and 6 and allows a savings of $20 on the package.
- Option 8 - Kindle Lending Club Sponsorship - Weekly Newsletter Email Blast: Weekly Kindle Lending Club newsletter email blast sponsorship emailed each Wednesday to over 12,000 opt-in free email subscribers. Since this option is available for just one sponsorship each week, you may wish to schedule early if possible.
- Option 9 - Ruby Sponsorship Package: The Ruby package combines options 1 and 6 and allows a savings of $20 on the package.
CHECK ON AVAILABILITY AND SCHEDULE IN ADVANCE
Our sponsorships are very popular with authors and publishers and are booked well in advance. Check here to get a rough idea of the availability of different options and packages before you sign up. Please be aware that we update this availability information manually as we are able, so at any given time actual availability may extend a week or two further out on the calendar. Once you sign up, we will be in touch with you within seven business days to schedule your sponsorship formally. Signing up holds your place in the scheduling queue, provided that you send us required information and materials promptly.As of April 5, 2011 the closest available dates for the several sponsorship options are as follows:
- Option 1 - Free Book Alert Sponsorship - 1 Day: JULY 25, 2011
- Option 2 - Free Kindle Nation Short Excerpt Email Sponsorship - 1 Day: OCTOBER 5, 2011
- Option 3 - Free Book Alert Sponsorship - Weekly Newsletter Email Blast: JANUARY 31, 2012
- Option 4 - Gold Sponsorship (The Gold package is composed of options 1, 2, and 3, so each component's availability is based on its specific options' availability. The decision, then, when someone signs for a Gold sponsorship, involves whether she prefers to have all of her sponsorship days occur in the same week, or to have her daily and excerpt sponsorships occur as soon as possible rather than being held to occur in the same week as her weekly sponsorship.If you sign up for a Gold sponsorship, please specify whether you prefer to have all of your sponsorship days occur in the same week, or to have your daily and excerpt sponsorships occur as soon as possible rather than being held to occur in the same week as your weekly sponsorship).
- Option 5 - Silver Sponsorship (The Silver package is composed of options 1 and 2, so each component's availability is based on its specific options' availability.)
- Option 6 - eBook of the Day: JUNE 25, 2011.
- Option 7 - Platinum Sponsorship (The Platinum package is composed of options 1, 2, and 6, so each component's availability is based on its specific option's availability.)
- Option 8 - Kindle Lending Club Weekly Newsletter Email Blast: JUNE 22, 2011.
- Option 9 - Ruby Sponsorship (The Ruby package is composed of options 1 and 6, so each component's availability is based on its specific option's availability.)
SIGN UP AND PAY WITH PAYPAL OR A CREDIT CARD
Please use the pull-down menus and buy button on this page to select an option that works for you.
If you have any difficulty using this feature, please email us at hppress@gmail.com or free to simply PayPal the indicated amount to hppress@gmail.com and follow up with an email stating the option you have chosen and providing the material on your book as specified in the next section.
SEND YOUR EBOOK INFORMATION AND MATERIALS AND AWAIT OUR SCHEDULING EMAIL
Once you have signed up for a sponsorship, it is important that you send an email to us immediately at hppress@gmail.com with the following information:
- your title, 10-digit Kindle Store ASIN, and Kindle Store link;
- up to 150 words to help us describe your book to Kindle owners (but please note that we generally will take descriptive text and cover art from your book's Kindle Store page);
- any preferences regarding dates (although we are not always able to honor such preferences);
- and an e-copy of the entire book, as a review copy for me, in any format (MOBI, DOC, TXT, RTF, HTML, PDF but NOT EPUB, AZW or DOC-X) that I can easily send or convert to my Kindle; this may help me to provide a personal testimonial as well as your sponsorship copy. Please send the actual copy rather than a gift coupon or that sort of thing.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are selecting the Free Kindle Nation Short Excerpt Email Sponsorship (Option 2), the Gold package (Option 4) or the Platinum package (Option 7), you will also want to email us the excerpt that you would like us to run as a Free Kindle Nation Short.
For Free Kindle Nation Shorts submissions, I recommend at least 5,000 words and no more than 20,000. When sending a Free Kindle Nation Short excerpt, use DOC, TXT, RTF, HTML, but NOT MOBI, PDF, AZW or DOC-X. Try to make the submission substantial enough to differentiate it from the "free sample" that is available on every Kindle book page. (The FKNS feature does not have to be an excerpt, but that often works well. Something else that might work in some cases would be a discrete short story that observes one or more of the same characters in a different situation....)
Please note the following when sending your ebook information and awaiting our response:
- If you send your sponsorship materials from an email address other than the address associated with your PayPal payment, it is essential that you include the PayPal-associated email address in the subject line of your email. Otherwise we will not be able to link the two emails and schedule your sponsorship.
- If you sign up for a sponsorship, please expect to wait about 7 business days (10-12 days overall) before you hear from us. We generally vet submissions before scheduling them, and even if we have already vetted yours, we schedule on a first-come, first-served basis.
TIPS AND IMPORTANT INFORMATION
- Remember that the combination of a $2.99 price and a well-targeted marketing campaign may help to turn your book into the kind of easy impulse buy that can help it to climb the bestseller list in its category. For more information on the real effect of prices in the Kindle Store, see this inexpensive ebook on pricing and royalties for Kindle books.
- A $2.99 price may not seem like much, but with the 70% Kindle Store royalty it could earn you over $2 per each copy sold, which compares favorably with paperback royalties from Big Six publishers.
- A Kindle Nation sponsorship will do a lot to shine a positive light on your book, but you can also help to make the most of that if your book has received some genuine positive customer reviews before the sponsorship occurs.
- Please pay close attention to file formatting specifications, or you will end up wasting significant time for both of us. When sending a review copy for me, use MOBI, DOC, TXT, RTF, HTML, PDF but NOT AZW or DOC-X. When sending a Free Kindle Nation Short excerpt, use DOC, TXT, RTF, HTML, but NOT MOBI, PDF, AZW or DOC-X.
- Sponsorships are generally posted by 12 noon Eastern time. Sometimes sales and sale rankings can take a few hours to update on the Kindle platform and in the Kindle store, so be patient. Most of our sponsors see a positive bump in sales and sales rankings about four to six hours after their sponsorships go live.
- While the vast majority of our sponsors have experienced dramatic short-term and long-term results, please be aware that we can't make a silk purse of a sow's ear here, and we can't even make a silk purse of a silk purse if the Kindle page for it makes it looks like a sow's ear. When a sponsor submits an erotica title with a full-color cover photograph of a model's hindquarters and 0 customer reviews (or poor customer reviews), there's a fair chance that the thousands of avid readers among our thousands of very discriminating subscribers will feel more insulted than inspired.
- We generally send you a link and a copy of our first tweet when we've posted your sponsorship, and you should feel free to use social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook to pass the word along and retweet our message.
- A number of our sponsors have asked me how they could best keep track of their sales rankings over time. I use free services called NovelRank and Title Z and they do a good job of tracking historical patterns.
- I should say here that although $9.99 is the maximum price we will allow for a sponsored title, our experience says that most authors sell so many more copies in the $2.99 to $4.99 range that it is well worth their choosing the lower price point in order to attract readers and maximize royalties.
- Please be aware that some of our sponsorships, including eBook of the Day and Free Kindle Nation Shorts sponsorships, actually post very late in the day and tend to have more impact the day following your scheduled date.
- If you request a cancellation or postponement of a sponsorship date after it has been scheduled, please understand that we may charge a change fee of $25 based on the time involved in processing your changes.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Plenty of Good News for Indie Authors and Publishers in the the Winter 2011 Kindle Nation Citizen Survey
by Stephen Windwalker
Why would an author or publisher be interested in the Winter 2011 Kindle Nation Citizen Survey?
Well, first, we all know that without other authors we would be nowhere, and one of the best things about other authors is that, with a very few, largely inexplicable exceptions, authors are voracious readers.
So, as a reader, you have every right to click here and participate in the survey. The deadline to participate is midnight Hawaii time Monday, January 31, 2011. There are 15 questions and most people tell me it takes them about 10 minutes from beginning to end.
But equally important is that the survey results are already shaping up to spell good news dramatic significance for indie authors and publishers. You can wait until you've completed the survey and you will be delivered automatically to a survey results link, or, if you're not the waiting kind, feel free to go ahead and click here to see the results now. Here are a few of the takeaways from the first 1,900 respondents:
Respondents continue to have strong positive feelings about bestselling authors (56% positive, 3% negative), but they don't think much of the big agency model publishers (10% positive, 41% negative). Indeed, they have much more positive feelings, for instance, about:
- Independent and emerging authors (52% positive, 1% negative)
- Small independent publishers (35.5% positive, 4% negative)
- Kindle Nation Daily (71% positive, 2% negative)
Influences such as electronic and print media reviews, bestseller lists, Oprah, or big bookstore displays in pointing readers to the books that they actually buy are in decline. Instead, respondents ranked the following, in order, as far more likely to influence them to buy books:
- recommended or listed by Amazon.
- recommended, listed, or excerpted on Kindle Nation.
- reading a free excerpt, author interview, or other material on Kindle Nation or another source.
- recommended by a friend, relative, or colleague.
Indie authors and indie publishers cannot survive without indie readers, and increasingly, readers are acting as if they are in charge when it comes to selecting the books they will read or acting as if they, the readers, are the final price-setting authorities:
- 89% of respondents identified with the statement, "I frequently choose to delay purchasing an ebook that I want to read if I believe that the price is too high."
- 76% of respondents identified with the statement, "If publishers keep charging higher bestseller prices, I'll buy more backlist or indie titles."
Here, if you are interested, are links for our previous Kindle Nation Survey Results:
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Kindle Nation eBook of the Day Results Rock, Available in a Separate Spreadsheet; Availabilities in February
By Steve Windwalker
One thing that's been exciting for us here at KND has been that our newest and least expensive form of sponsorship, the Kindle Nation Daily eBook of the Day, has recently been catching up with its more expensive alternatives when it comes to results for authors and publishers. I've just broken out a spreadsheet isolating the past 4 weeks' KND-EBOD results and it is now public at http://bit.ly/hD7EMM. We've added staff to help keep up with all of this, and we have availability as soon as February for KND-EBOD sponsorships.
One of the things that we've seen in the past month, as Rudy Kerkhoven suggested in his analysis above, is that the value of the same sales ranking as between, say, November and the present, has probably increased by a factor of 2 or 3 times. My hope is that by being totally transparent about sponsorship results we can help authors and publishers spend marketing dollars wisely, and also continue to play a role in helping to connect writers of distinction with the greatest readers in the world. (Pardon my sloganspeak, but what part of that is not true?) There are links to results for all of our different sponsorship offerings at the top of our Sponsorship Info Page at http://kindlehomepage.blogspot.com/p/sponsor-kindle-nation-daily-free-book.html.
One of the things that we've seen in the past month, as Rudy Kerkhoven suggested in his analysis above, is that the value of the same sales ranking as between, say, November and the present, has probably increased by a factor of 2 or 3 times. My hope is that by being totally transparent about sponsorship results we can help authors and publishers spend marketing dollars wisely, and also continue to play a role in helping to connect writers of distinction with the greatest readers in the world. (Pardon my sloganspeak, but what part of that is not true?) There are links to results for all of our different sponsorship offerings at the top of our Sponsorship Info Page at http://kindlehomepage.blogspot.com/p/sponsor-kindle-nation-daily-free-book.html.
Friday, January 21, 2011
indieKindle News for Authors and Publishers, January 21, 2011 - Featuring Indie Publisher David Niall Wilson's Post: "How Do I Sell My e-Book? A Publisher’s Thoughts"
Plenty of things to keep up for authors and indie publishers today, and here are just a few of them:
- First, some news for authors and indie publishers from Amazon. The company announced today that it is expanding its 70 per cent royalty program for Kindle sales, already offered in the U.S. and U.K., to ebooks sold in Canada. In the same press release, Amazon announced almost parenthetically that it was changing the name of the Kindle Digital Text Platform to "Kindle Direct Publishing." So, we stop saying DTP. We start saying KDP.
- Second, now that it has a spiffy new name, Kindle Digital Publishing launched a spiffy
new (apparently) monthly newsletter for KDP authors and publishers. If you haven't seen it already in your inbox, you can read it here in your browser. - Third, if you haven't noticed already, Kindle Nation is conducting one of its twice-a-year major surveys of our readers, and there is plenty there that will be of interest to authors and publishers. Our last survey got about 2,000 responses from Kindle owners, and several of our questions and choices this time around focus in on what influences readers to buy Kindle books, and what kind of things create friction that keeps them from buying books even if they are interested in reading them. Most authors I know are also prolific readers, so I hope that you will click here to participate in the Winter 2011 Kindle Nation Citizen Survey and here to see the results.
- And finally, I thought Crossroads Press publisher David Niall Wilson shared some important insights in his post today under the title How Do I Sell My e-Book? A Publisher’s Thoughts, so I was especially pleased when he agreed to allow me to cross-post it here. You may notice that there's a nice mention of the Kindle Nation Daily sponsorship program toward the end, but all I can say is that it was totally unsolicited and unexpected.
The post first appeared this morning here at David's eponymous blog. And while you've got that clicker working you might want to check out these Crossroads Press listings in the Kindle Store
.
.Here's David:
By David Niall Wilson
I have seen far too many ‘gurus’ chime in on this subject, and after nearly a year in the business of growing a digital publishing company, I feel like I have some value-add to bring to the mix. I’m not a ‘guru’ and do not ever want to be considered one, but I have been doing this for a while now, and I’ve observed some things you might find usesful. It’s worth the effort, I think, to try and get it all into perspective in my own mind.
First of all, books are books. Stephen King’s eBooks sell better than those of a new writer no one has heard of. Blogs about and reviews of Stephen King books get more notice than those of lesser-known authors, and generate more sales. Authors – in short – who were already popular before putting their titles out in eBook format are still more popular than authors who were not. Authors who bring an audience from mass market publishing to their eBooks sell better than those with no track record. These are facts, and no amount of blogging, posturing, or tears will change them.
So what do you do?
There are solid answers. Covers matter. That said, you don’t need to go out and break the bank on a professional cover designer to get a very good, commercial cover. I’ve done some extensive analysis on our titles, and I can tell you that there is absolutely ZERO evidence in my data to show that the cover art is a huge factor unless it is godawful. If your little brother did it in Microsoft Paint, or you let Calibre generate it for you, or the colors are all mis-matched, you’re going to lose sales for the same reason a similar cover would not work on a print book. It looks amateurish.
That said, there is a lot that can be done with Photoshop, and there are people out there with some amazing artwork that won’t cost you an arm and a leg. You just have to look for them. Join the community at Deviant Art and meet some of the wonderful artists there. Browse the public domain photo sites. You may pay some for the rights to an image, but you can often find one you’ll like for a very reasonable price – or even free. Then all you need is to study some books, see what sort of font and text arrangement appeals to you, and find someone capable of dropping it onto your image. All that is a fancy way of saying – most of you aren’t going to make hundreds of dollars on your eBook right off the bat, and investing a bunch of cash in a cover is a serious risk that isn’t really necessary, in my opinion (and experience). Some of the covers we’ve used that I think are the most mundane have resulted in great selling titles, and several titles with amazing covers have not done well at all.
Copy-editing and format matter. If you just run a word document through some conversion program and slap it up, it’s not going to look good. If you don’t get at least one other set of eyes carefully going over your work, it’s not going to read well – it’s going to have typos. Almost no-one is perfect enough to write without errors…and though you may see them easily in another person’s work, you may also NOT catch them in your own. Do yourself a favor and – even if you have to pay a small fee for it – find a proof-reader worth their salt. Then salt them.
On most eBook sites you can assign “Tags” to your books. This might seem trivial, but it is not. There are whole groups out there cross-tagging one another’s books to bring the numbers of people “agreeing” with them high enough to bump them up the search ranks. On Amazon, for instance, if you search the word BLOOD – the book with the highest ranking on that search term is going to come up first. Also, books that have the word BLOOD in their title may start getting that book listed in the “related” products and sent out in “you might also be interested in” e-mail notices.
Price matters. If you are a known quantity,and you present new, original work, you can get more for your eBook. If you are NOT a known quantity, or if you are bringing back older work that can be bought used and cheap in print editions, don’t be greedy. If you charge the $2.99 league minimum at Amazon, you will get more per sale than you ever got from a print publisher per sale by a huge factor. Print books pay (average) 4-10 percent royalty. If you sell your book through Crossroad Press – for instance – you get 80 percent of $2.05 (about what Amazon pays us per sold title after deducting their “delivery” fee) – that’s a good chunk per sale, and it adds up fast. We sell new, original works higher – $3.99 and $4.99 – and those seem to be workable prices as well, but keep in mind what you are asking of your readers. Ignore everything else and buy my book. Give them as many reasons as you can.
Do a good write-up for the book. I sometimes have a hard time getting my authors to help with this, and I do what I can, but a good solid “hook” in the product description is crucial. In print publishing you usually have little or no input to what the publisher puts up as a description, but here – in the digital world – you can write it and even change it with impunity.
When you get reviews, respond to them positively, even the bad ones. Never drop to thelevel of a sour-voiced reviewer. You’re just playing into their game, and you’ll regret it before all is said and done. Remain professional.
Visit forums and bulletin boards and blogs that are related to a: your genre and b: eBooks in general. Be a pro-active part of their communities before blowing your own horn, or it will backfire.
Make sure your author info is available. Set up your Amazon Author’s Page. Set up your Smashwords profile. If you get reviews complaining about typos – proofread and re-publish. Never believe that because someone else did a thing, you can copy what they did and it will work for you…it’s not going to. Each book, and each author, is unique in some way, and requires an individual approach.
Product, product, product. If you have words sitting around out of print, or languishing for years without publication, I suggest you dust them off and get them out there. A body of work in eBook format can generate steady sales much more quickly and reliably than one, or two eBooks. One thing is certain – a story or novel on your hard drive for ten years unread made you no money at all.
The bottom line is – you don’t need a guru. You need hard work, patience, attention to detail, and the same bit of luck you always needed to succeed. It’s easier to get IN the door of digital publishing, but the doors are open very wide. In the old days readers clamored at the publishing door for more to read. Now those doors are big and revolving, and the readers disperse in all directions as they pass through. Latching onto them and drawing them to your work is a whole new ballgame. Pay attention, learn from what you see, don’t let ANYONE tell you the best way to do a thing is”blah blah” unless they can show that “blah blah” has worked for a lot of people over time. And just SAYING that it has worked isn’t enough. Show me stats on how that new expensive cover built sales. Show me, in other words, the money. And don’t do it by showing me someone already successful.
Also, don’t listen to tales of inflated sales. You can go to Novelrank.com and put in the ASIN of any book there and track it. If it’s already being tracked, you just log in and add it to those you are tracking. This way, when someone claims a thousand sales, you can check, and if you see a title upcoming you want to keep an eye on to see if something someone did worked for promotion – you have some (albeit imperfect) stats. I’ve seen some eye-opening whoppers told on the net about huge sales that I observed personally through Novel Rank to be much smaller. Keep in mind that Novel Rank is not perfect, and that it only tracks from the moment you START tracking, so any sales prior to that you can’t see. Hype is what it is.
(Ed. Note: Although I think Novelrank is a worthwhile tool, I do want to point out my experience here that its software tends to undercount U.S. Kindle Store sales, especially in times of rapid growth such as the past few weeks. This is natural given the fact that the software must be based on backward-looking algorithms, but I'm just saying that I wouldn't use Novelrank numbers to challenge anyone's sales claims. --S.W.)
I am happy to offer advice if asked, but that’s all it is. I don’t know how to make your book sell better for CERTAIN – I only know what is working at Crossroad Press. We’ve grown in leaps and bounds, sales are up (best month ever happening now).
One last thing…Kindle Nation Daily sponsorship. While this is not a guaranteed success – I have found that if you listen to them – go in with a good cover price, a decent cover, at least a couple of good reviews on your book already (and not fluffy, gushing ones either – real reviews) – you can generate a good number of sales that last over several days…
We have sponsored several books there, and at least three of them did very, very well. I would recommend their service to anyone.
Enough for one day…
-DNW
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