Amazon’s new Kindle Unlimited e-book reader subscription program caused a real commotion in the publishing industry last month. But how will this “Netflix for books” model affect the self-publishing industry? Is Kindle Unlimited the best, or should self-publishers join the Scribd or Oyster programs instead? How do you get in? Read on for a comparison of these top three reader subscription programs and best recommendations for self-publishers who are looking to add these channels to their revenue streams.
AMAZON KINDLE UNLIMITED
Amazon requires that self-publishers join their exclusive KDP Select program to be included in Unlimited. If you’re already using KDP Select, or you’ve decided that joining the program may give your book launch a boost, then go for it! It’s only temporary.
Writing your business plan as a manuscript can be a fun way to do the necessary work (what some people refer to as drudgery) of planning. It can also help you identify and deal with hidden assumptions and the people (characters) that impact your business. Your subplots help you recognize the value of previously unsought opportunities, perhaps in non-bookstore markets. And your narrative can point of the interdependencies of market segments rather than dealing with them as isolated groups. Here are the Top Ten Tips for Writing a Plan As a Novel.
Should you write about what you know and love, or write about what will sell? The answer is, “Yes.” Your passion for your topic can be your ticket to greater well being as much as it should be a key to exceptional market performance.
Why are you writing your book? Is it to satisfy an internal desire to be a published author or to use your book as a building block in your business? Write to your passion but have a clear plan to translate your purpose into marketable product.
You can reduce your chances of commercial success if you do one or the other. So, do both. Your passion for what you love will sustain you through the months or years of writing, and it will also maintain your attitude through the years of marketing it.
There is intrinsic value to writing a book about your favorite subject, but it will not sell in large quantities unless it has value to your target buyers. The solution? Find your passion and put it to work
The purpose of this post is to define the terms aggregation and distribution and to introduce you to the tools and services I recommend so that you set out on the right publishing path.
Indie authors can upload ebooks to each online ebook retailer directly, but we might instead choose to distribute them using an ebook aggregator like Smashwords, IngramSpark, Vook or BookBaby. Likewise, we can upload our print book to Amazon via CreateSpace directly but distribute to other online print book retailers and brick-and-mortar bookstores via a distribution service like IngramSpark.
Yeah boy, that is a lot of geeky publishing terms! So let’s wind it down and go through it in slo mo…
Save the date! Wednesday, August 27th at 1:00 Eastern, join marketing guru Penny Sansevieri and publicist Sandra Poirios-Smith as they offer their expertise to independent authors in an hour-long webinar hosted by DCL and organized by Bowker. We’ll cover topics such as expanding your readership, contacting media, bundling books, digital vs print promotion, the difference between advertising and publicity, and much more.
More info about this informative session with these noted thought leaders can be found here.
You have options for getting your book into the marketplace. With today’s technology, you can sell directly to the reader, through your own website and many online retailers, acting as your own sales person. You can use social media to drive buyers to those places, but you’ll spend a lot of time and effort doing it, and unless you get really lucky and your book catches on (because all the previous components are stellar), you may not sell many books. You can hire people to help make this more successful, and who knows? It might land in the right hands at the right time, someone important will notice it and you’ll find yourself on the Today Show. But just in case, buy a lottery ticket today.
We’re authors. So for all of us, at some point, it became a dream to write the next great American novel. Some of us have been writing for a long time, and maybe some of us weren’t originally writers by craft. But we had a story to tell and knew it had value to others. A great story, maybe the next great best-seller. Just like in the movie, “Field of Dreams,” we thought “If you build it, they will come.” If you wrote a great story, people will buy it. We had to get it out there.
Now, you’ve written that book and you have boxes of it sitting in your garage. Now, you know it’s not that simple.
