Tips for Self Promotion, Sales, and Advertising discussion

Can anyone recommend some good web sites (high traffic, clean design) that sell ebooks? I have 2-3 printed titles that I'd also like to make available in electronic format. They would not work for kindle as there are many pages that the customer would want to print out and fill in (charts, etc..)

Thanks for any and all feedback!

Dani,

You should probably head over to Smashwords. It offers your book in more formats than Kindle which is only DRM. Even better, Smashwords is in the process of having their ebook catalog listed on BarnesandNobles.

Thank you Kevis!

This seems to be exactly what I was looking for + more.

Hopefully Amazon will have more options in the future as well.

I just looked at smashwords a bit. I may look into it more when I'm ready to go with e-books. Looks like a pretty good site. Thanks for sharing the info.

The only downside I see so far is that it seems limited for heavily formatted books. They require the source files to be in Word - which is a nightmare to use for those who know and love InDesign. Oh well, I'll be spending some fun nights with word.

I'm happy with Smashwords. They seem to know what they are doing.

I'm hoping that I can use OpenOffice, since I am running a Word version that is not supported by much of anyone or anything these days. MS Word 2000--does anyone remember that? lol I've found that there is not much file-sharing I can do with that version anymore. And it strips out formatting from the later versions of .doc files that others send me. What a shame. I can't upgrade, though. So, I'm hoping OO will work with smashword when I'm ready.

Dani wrote: "The only downside I see so far is that it seems limited for heavily formatted books. They require the source files to be in Word - which is a nightmare to use for those who know and love InDesign...."

Good luck! I'll pray for you. ;-)

BooksOnBoard.com is a great ebook site! You don't have to pay any membership fees etc, and they have always have excellent prices and promotions going on.

I'm anti-ebook, but I can't ignore it any longer.

Lori, when you listed your book with smashwords, did you have to do anything extra to get it listed with Kindle?

How are your sales?

Hey Lori;

Been thinking of putting my books up into Smashwords but I'm unsure as to how they pay the author. What does 'credits' mean? Is there a place to link paypals into the site?
Any information would be very useful.
Thank you.
Jo

Uuummm have you looked into myebook? You get ALL proceeds.

I'm here for you.

But... I won't have Internet connections until the very end of December. I'm off to Mexico...YIPPEE!!! All packed and leave tomorrow. Taking my 2 daughters (a graduation present with the catch...they had to take their mother...lol).

Have a merry Christmas.

Jo

There's also jexbo.com

You set your own price, pay 5% to the site... but you might have to pay PayPal a commission.

It's not high traffic yet, but as more authors list, it will probably grow, especially if we keep prices lower than what the pirates are charging on EBay.

Never heard of that site, Rowena. I'll have to look into it when I return.

I'm hoping I can share my inner fears with all of you...I'm worried that we're going to cut-throat our real value of our work if we set our prices too low.

Finally, we, as authors, are in the driver's seat. With eBooks and online distributors willing to supply a site for us to display our books...like, this is FABULOUS! For such a long time, we had been at the mercy of traditional distributors. We paid for printing & shipping charges and then had to give the distributor a 35-65% cut even before we paid for everything else. When it was all done...we had pennies for our hard work ...and I mean OUR WORK!

Like what's wrong with this picture? Just doesn't make sense...

But, I look at our farmers, here in Saskatchewan, and they're in the same situation. Folks around here pay $36.00 for 12 beer, and yet the farmer would get around $.05 for the Barley that goes into the product. Again, just doesn't make sense.

Now, as authors, we are in control. Through eBooks, we don't have the expenses of printing and shipping. The distributors online (like myebook & smashwords) are doing us a service by distributing for us for free...then, why would we set our standards/prices so low?

I do believe our ebooks should be quite a bit less than a physical book, but we have to be careful not to set the price too low. This is our turn to be in control, so let's not blow it but lowering our standards and our OWN WORK.

Thoughts on prices? Would love to hear your thoughts.

Blessings to all of you.

Jo

I don't sell other books from my ebook site- but it's a good place to go to see how to do your own. I started in 2002 when there was zero ebook competition on the market- things have changed drastically now. My webmaster and marketing director just redid the site so that it has more free information and much better keyword placement. We have always used google adwords- but it's now so expensive it takes a professional to keep it going in my field of mental health. If you have any questions about selling ebooks, just let me know. I have done it for a long time!

www.bipolarhappens.com

Julie

Myebook http://www.myebook.com/ppromotionals/ has worked very well for me; yet, it shows that the combination of both books has been viewed almost6,000 times, I've only sold 1 ebook. Does this seem strange to you?

The process is painless. The presentation is attractive...just seems wierd that only 1 book has been sold.

Any ideas?

Was wondering if anyone has any other ebook sites they could recommend?

Marc, same thing here . It's been 4 weeks since I sent them an email and nothing but an auto-response.

If anyone here has a direct link to B&N's publisher section or know how or who to contact there, any info would me most appreciated.

It makes you wonder how they want the Nook to succeed if they make it virtually impossible to for authors and publishers to get their content on it.

For those who wish to celebrate "Read An Ebook Week" with a free book, Richard Curtis is giving away some of his authors' ebooks.

http://www.ereads.com/

Guido wrote: "Marc, same thing here . It's been 4 weeks since I sent them an email and nothing but an auto-response.

If anyone here has a direct link to B&N's publisher section or know how or who to contact the..."

It is very easy to publish an ebook on Barnes and Noble through Smashwords.com. It is free, relatively simple to format and to get included into a catalog that uploads ebooks to BN every month or so. Otherwise, I am not sure BN works with individual authors without a go between.

Okay...here's a great ebook site: LEBRARY.COM Here's a post a wrote about it: http://bit.ly/bjqI5d

Have a wonderful weekend!

>Hugs<

Jo

There's also Fictionwise.com

The Gutenberg Project for pub domain classics

I'm selling my book on Smashwords and Scribd. Scribd takes PDF files so you can put up some pretty highly formatted stuff. The only downside is it might not look good on an eReader like the Kindle.

Smashwords has been great and I noticed yesterday that my book is now being sold by Sony and Barnes & Noble via Smashwords. Very cool. I also should be on Apple's site, but I don't have the iBooks app so I haven't actually checked.

Only thing is Smashwords says they'll put my book on Amazon, but it appears they won't do it until they update their software or something. Anyone have any idea when this will be finished and they'll send books to Amazon?

Adam wrote: "I'm selling my book on Smashwords and Scribd. Scribd takes PDF files so you can put up some pretty highly formatted stuff. The only downside is it might not look good on an eReader like the Kindl..."

Better to go to www.dtp.amazon.com straight, and upload your file there to the Kindle store directly. It's much more convenient, and you have more control over the pricing, description, etc :)

I love Smashwords too. I've a book on Scribd. Lots of views, but no sales there (I hardly check my account there, lol!).

@Adam, "We, The Watched" is available in the Apple iBooks store, I just checked.

I agree with the others, you should list your title on Amazon directly. In fact, if you ask me, you should go directly wherever you can, including Apple, Barnes&Noble,and others. Not only does it generate more revenues because you do not have to split whatever is left of the royalties with Smashwords.

In addition, it is simply a matter of security. If Smashwords goes into bankruptcy tomorrow, you're out of luck and will potentially lose all your royalties. By going through more distribution channels you are not only making more money, but you are also minimizing your risk.

Lose all my royalties? Do you mean the ones they haven't sent a check for? My understanding was that I didn't give up ownership of my novel by listing it on Smashwords. Also, will it mess anything up if I sell through Smashwords AND go directly through Amazon, assuming Smashwords eventually sends my book to Amazon?

Yes, I meant, the unpaid, outstanding royalties. Since there is quite an accounting window, depending on your sales, this amount can be quite significant. This may just be a brain game for now, but I've been dealing with too many companies that went belly up in the past and left me standing in the rain with unpaid bills, I am simply not taking any risks.

No, it will not mess things up. However, once you decide to do Amazon yourself you should disable them in Smashword's Distribution setup, just to avoid having the book listed twice under two different publishers.

If you go directly through Amazon, you should go into your Smashwords distribution page and tell them not to send your book to Amazon. It's a checkbox. Just that simple.

Thanks for the advice. I think Smashwords will send you money after you have at least $10, so I guess it's not a bad idea to get the cash before it gets a lot higher in order to minimize any potential losses.

All said, at this point I'm just happy to get my book out to as wide an audience as possible.

Thanks for the heads-up...and clarifying the ease of opting out for distribution to Amazon in Smashwords.

I jumped all over that one...:).

One of the reasons I go through Smashwords is that instead of trying to figure out how to modify the same files over and over, I did it once. That means, to me, more time to write new stuff and promote the old. Which means more royalties. Speaking of which...

With Smashwords, I get paid by ONE entity, and given that most of these sales outlets won't pay you until you have at least $10, it makes sense to have the payment coming from ONE entity, instead of seven bucks held up here, and six there.

I wish Amazon would get over themselves where Smashwords is concerned, especially as Amazon's already eaten some of those royalties they were holding up. Yep, they vanished into thin air. When I realized that, I didn't bother finishing converting the second Demo Tapes anthology, and I haven't even considered doing it for Trevor's Song.

Smashwords has been great for me. Especially with their site-wide promotions; the exposure's been phenomenal.

I know not everyone feels as I do. And as far as I've heard from Mark Coker, the head dude, the company's solvent and in no danger of going under.

I've had no problems and in fact have been very happy with Smashwords, too, and agree with a lot of your points, Susan. I would however, still like to get on Amazon, and wonder if I should wait for Smashwords or just apply directly to Amazon.

I didn't mean to imply they are not solvent, though with private companies that is always a hidden risk regardless of what they tell you. No company CEO will ever tell you - or any employee for that matter - when the end is looming.

Either way, it may make sense to have one source of income when the amounts are very small, because ultimately it doesn't matter if you ever receive those $10 or not, but once you're talking real money, it does become an issue and a considerable risk.

I've never been a Smashwords fan because even though they make it simple for authors to convert their eBooks, have you ever looked at the results? All too often, the output their Meatgrinder generates is simply broken and defective. Their support for formats also varies hugely. They may generate great-looking Kindle files, but their Palm output is shoddy and defective at best.

Converting an eBook from one format to another is - in my case - a matter if 30 seconds. Palm files require a bit more work and take about 15 minutes, while I completely redo my PDF files in Quark XPress from the original print versions. It is a process that takes no more than 5 minutes either, so really that time-saving aspect of Smashwords is not really a valid point.

What Smashword does do is that it takes away the requirement for authors to learn the most basic technical skills to create their own eBooks. Personally, I do not think that is a good thing, but I am in the minority with this, I know, because I like to have control over the files that go on sale with my name attached to them. Hand-crafting my eBook files gives me that control, even though it may take 30 minutes of extra time.

On a side note though...
Ironically, I found that the time-saving is not there either, really, because most authors who use Smashword are constantly struggling with creating properly formatted word processor files and getting Smashwords to accept them and converting them halfway properly. For me that is not a problem at all and I have to invest absolutely no time in this, as I do all my formatting on an HTML base level that immediately translates - and correctly displays - on all other eBook platforms.

I will agree with you that their Palm output is inadequate, and Mr. Coker has assured me that they are working on that.

I'm using Mobipocket for Palm for my own reading, but I do want good pdb files out there. Other than the Palm and plain-text formats (both have the same problem), I've had no trouble getting my book to convert. The issue appears to be that they start with Word files, and when a Word file is converted to plain text, the quotation marks are destroyed and replaced with garbage characters.

Julie,

You are absolutely correct, the conversion from any word processor file causes way too many problems to make it an adequate approach at all.

If you have a very basic understanding of HTML - and hopefully a Mac user because of the better tools - it is VERY easy to create absolutely flawless eBooks in a matter of minutes. Ping me if you want to know more about my process.

In a matter of minutes?

Okay, I'm impressed. I can write perfectly good HTML, but it will take much longer than that just to convert the garbage into HTML characters. Are you starting with plain-text files?

To begin, I create an HTML template file that contains header and basic style definitions like this


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>








The first two steps will take you to the 95% line of the final output.

First I copy all the text from my manuscript to the clipboard via "Cut'n Paste" into TextMate, my ASCII editor, between the and tabs. After this, every paragraph in your text is actually printed in a single, long line - which is crucial for the next step.

Next I hit the "Bundles" in TextMate, which are macros that can do A LOT of work for you. In the HTML bundles there is one that says "Wrap each selected line in open/close tags." What this does is wrap every one of the paragraphs with a <p> and </p> tag.

The second step is to run the Bundles->HTML->Entities->Convert characters to Entities excl. tags macro on the entire selected text. This will make sure that all special characters in the text, including quotes, dashes, umlauts etc are converted to the proper HTML entity tags, such as &emdash; or &ldquot; and so on.

We have now finished 95% of the conversion of the text to a nicely formatted eBook. What is left is to locate all text that needs to be italicized and wrap the sections with <i> and </i> tags, which can be a little tedious, depending on how much you use it in your text, but is not a real problem.

Another step would be to make sure chapters have a proper page break. Depending on how you've been marking you chapter beginnings, a quick search and replace of "<p>CHAPTER" to

CHAPTER" will do the trick if your chapters start with the word CHAPTER. Otherwise the search term would have to be tweaked accordingly. Of course you could also do it manually, locating the chapter beginnings and changing the basic <p> tag to

That is essentially it. Everything else is tweaking cosmetics. You can change the style sheet to have different paragraph indentations, different font settings for the chapter headings, whatever you wish. Keep in mind that the "look" of a book is controlled by the style sheet not your actual HTML tag markup. If you remember that, things will be very easy because a change to the style sheet will automatically make these changes visible throughout the entire book.

With the proper tools it is really very easy and quick to do.

Aside from the fact that I don't have a Mac, the big issue for me is getting rid of all the garbage characters Word put in there. My original files were plain-text, but those have not been through the most recent round of proofreading.

I'm not sure what garbage characters you're referring to but cut and pasting the text from word into an ASCII editor should get rid of all that.

Here is also a website that does the HTML entity encoding for you one the fly, which is one of the major time savers in the entire process.

http://centricle.com/tools/html-entit...

What are you using to convert the file to pdb?

I told you guys I am half blind. ha ha on me. I answered the question about the PDB file above, but I read it as PDF and thankfully after I posted it, I could see how to delete it. Being blind is not half bad, but it often leads me into humorous mistakes. My sense of humor is not lacking.
Dr M

S'okay. I figured out a way to get a PDB that works. Still polishing it, but it seems to work.

For pdb files I am using Dropbox. Super easy and superfast.

Thanks! That was the bit of info I was looking for.

I am now on Amazon kindle so save a few bucks and read a great travel adventure this summer.
http://www.amazon.com/Living-Beneath-...
Jeff

Sorry, I just noticed I made a mistake. The Software is called "Dropbook," not "Dropbox." Sorry.

Thanks...I figured that out and it worked like a charm.

Drop what.