Writerpedia discussion

Do you market to kindle customers? I just read they buy 3x more books than average readers.

If my books are on Kindle, and some are, I do put on my website the links to get it, plus when do promo on yahoo groups on they're in my promo along with rest.

No, I don't market to Kindle, yet, and don't know how to go about it. I've heard a lot of buzz about Kindle over the past couple of months, though. But is it a fad, or here to stay? Any thoughts??

Two of my books are going up on Kindle in the next two weeks. I'm pretty excited about it.

I've searched the books available on Kindle and a lot of my favorites are there. So I'll be one of those downloading a lot of books. A lot easier than hauling around books to read as I travel. Kindle will replace a physical book for me, but I can appreciate the convenience.

I would be on Kindle, but that choice is under the publisher's control. So far, iUniverse isn't going that route.

Malcolm

I have been thinking about it. I would love to hear from someone who has done so. I am using LightningSource, I have to check to see if that is an option.

www.SkinnyDippingWithTheSavior.com

I too would have my books on Kindle but I live in Canada. You have to be a US resident to upload....

Julie's right. I was just talking to a Canadian author who was told she had to have a U.S. address and SSN, which is a shame because I belong to a chat group of independent publishers who've put their books on kindle in recent days and their sales are starting to jump. Very frustrating.

I have an ebook out from Eternal Press. I don't know about the kindle but between the publisher site and Fictionwise, it's available in a number of formats.

I have three of my own books on Kindle (Miracle, the novel; Threads, a Blaine Horney Mystery--writing as Kris Karrel; and The Implausible Hero)plus another book by one of my authors--Brady's Run by Joseph Collum. I will have a fifth up soon--The Nightwing's Quest by Stirling Davenport.

Here's some stuff you might want to be aware of:

I didn't go directly through Amazon because their converter sucks. I went through Mobipocket (owned by Amazon)whose converter isn't a lot better.

You will have to massage the book block files--by that I mean, you will have to open the coverted files in a text editor like Notepad and delete or change unnecessary tags and correct the formatting, doublechecking as you go along by opening the same file separately in a browser and then refreshing or reloading as you save your changes in your text editor to ensure the book is formatted the way you'd like. Mobipocket has special tags you need to add for pagebreaks and that sort of thing. Sounds daunting I know, but once you've done it the first time, you'll see the process is not that difficult. It's just time consuming.

If you go through Mobipocket and sign up for direct deposit (and are in America), then all your Kindle sales will be paid once a month by Amazon. But you have to keep an eye on Amazon, too. I just had a go round with Amazon that started last September when I sent them an email asking why I couldn't see my Kindle sales reports for certain months. Long story short, they paid me some more money, but I still don't trust them.

Another place you might want to consider submitting your eBook is Smashwords (www.smashwords.com). They, too, require you format your book file in a certain manner, but their directions are easier and once you've done it successfully, your book will be available for purchase in the same mobile versions as Mobipocket offers, plus Kindle (although it won't be listed on Amazon's pages), plus several other formats. I actually did both Mobipocket and Smashwords for Brady's Run, although I plan to get up to speed with Smashwords for the rest of the books I offer through Mobipocket and Kindle.

For Mobipocket, I don't think you need a US address to submit your work since they're based in France. You may not be able to get direct deposit with Amazon however, going this route, but you will have your book in Kindle. Mobi pays quarterly.

Hope this helps some...

Mari

I have both of my books on kindle A Field of Greens and A Sweet taste of Africa. They are cookbooks and kindle sales have not been that great(print yes!) but my book of poetry A Press Release from the Color Black is doing very well. I guess kindle readers do buy more books beacuse they are cheaper than print books but also they are buying certain types of books. Technical books such as cookbooks have not caught on yet.

I've been considering putting Son of the Great River on Kindle for the marketing purposes, but I've also heard some questionable things about Amazon's practices not only with your book but with their sales reporting on Kindle users. The conversion practice sounds like a hassle, but I suppose that's just part of the experience (Where's my digital media specialist hat?).

Sales reporting by Amazon is a joke. Having caught them trying to skate out of paying me for Kindle sales, I have no doubt their inefficiencies are more by design than stupidity.

I have an account through their Vendor Central and whole months of Kindle sales reports were missing last year. I sent them an email in September, and didn't hear back from them until the end of January, then we went round and round until they finally sent me what they said was an accurate spreadsheet of my sales. Using their own numbers against them I was able to demonstrate they'd dropped the ball in payments to me. Come on now, this is basic math and accounting we're talking about here, not rocket science. Ain't even algebra. While I've accepted the fact that I'll never know the true total of all my sales, mainly because I know now beyond a shadow of any doubt that I can't take their word for anything, I did get some more money out of them in the end.

I haven't spent a dime at Amazon since they used strongarm tactics in February 2008 to force subsidy publishers to use their substandard company BookSurge to print books POD or face having their buy buttons turned off. I only market there as a necessary evil--for the time being--but I for one will not be sorry when their whole house of cards collapses. And it will. The signs of cash flow problems, although very subtle, have been there for a while now. Amazon has all these quotable fancy excuses to the news media for keeping its Kindle sales numbers under wraps, something they would not do if it were truly the wunderkind of e-reader world as they would like the world to believe. They were out of stock so long last year, I guessed their supplier might've put them on prepay because they were so slow to pay. Recently I read where they've decided to consolidate warehouses and lay off 200 people. They know, however, as well as I do that if their investors or Wall Street ever gets wind of just how bad I think things are financially at Amazon, their stock would tank faster than a big rock dropped in a mud puddle.

In my opinion, Amazon has never been any friend to authors, publishers or their customers. I would not want their karma, not for all the money in this world.

That's just my two cents, however. Your mileage may vary.

Mari

Thanks, Mari, that echoes a lot of what I've been hearing. It seems like there's still a general consensus that eBooks aren't as enjoyable to the reader as the real thing (I read an enormous amount of academic papers in PDF, so I think I'm a bit different when it comes to the medium) and so I think if I do go with Kindle it'll be from a marketing perspective and not for sales.

Glad I could be of some small help, Elijah. I just received an email today from John Kremer who said Amazon is removing the reviews written by any author that mentioned his or her book, either in the review or in their sig line. And like Kremer says, I believe this is stupid, stupid, stupid on Amazon's part. They could focus on customer service, especially in regards to vendors like authors and publishers that must wait for weeks and months to hear back from Amazon for the simplest issues, but no, they want to penalize folks who took the time to write reviews (in some cases hundreds and thousands of reviews) for books just because their own book got a mention...

Authors and publishers saved Amazon from going out of business in the 90's. I remember Jeff Bezos pleading for help. We all helped. And this is how he and Amazon repays us. Kremer is looking for an alternative to Amazon.

I started a bookselling site called 45 Caliber Books, www.45caliberbooks.com and any author or publisher with a new book to sell can list there for free. We ask ten cents a sale on the honor system, meaning we're not in it for the money. Really. The honor system. We're not tracking sales, in other words. The listing author or publisher takes the customer's payment through Paypal and then ships out the book or sends a link to the download (in the case of eBooks, etc). Some of our listing options like featured on the home page cost a dollar a year, payable up front, but that goes toward operating expenses. This is a labor of love mainly. I would love to see it take off because I believe if Amazon doesn't change its ways, it is not long for this world.

Mari

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M.L. said:
For Mobipocket, I don't think you need a US address to submit your work since they're based in France. You may not be able to get direct deposit with Amazon however, going this route, but you will have your book in Kindle. Mobi pays quarterly.
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I don't know if anyone responded to this but if not:

I recently went through mobi and amazon. I use mobi to convert.

Mobi does require some sort of legal address and tax information depending on your country of origin otherwise they won't pay you. At least that's the message I got (I live in Colorado), so I need to update my tax info.

So far someone has bought my book on mobi :D yay I made 30 cents.

lol

Anyway, it's definitely worth trying out. Network as much as you can! Try as many sites as you can!

Kevin said: (at least I think it's Kevin) "Anyway, it's definitely worth trying out. Network as much as you can! Try as many sites as you can!"

I absolutely agree about trying as many sites as you can. I don't find any one site more beneficial than others, although I attended a conference recently where the panelists (all multi-published authors) were finding Twitter and Facebook to be the most useful. Both of my mystery novels (Fatal Encryption and Taxed to Death) were made available on Kindle over the past few months and since I began joining forums created for Kindle users, I found that my sales are starting to climb. Kindle users are definitely receptive to reading unknown authors possibly because the price of a book on Kindle is much cheaper than the print version. Also, it must be kind of cool to have so many books downloaded into a device that you can carry around so easily.

Ok well I have to post a warning against mobipocket. I've had several major issues with their corporate side, they lost one of my sales (the only one I had and the only one I know for a fact that I had), they screwed with my tax information, and they have also caused problems with payment information.

MobiPocket has an excellent converter to the downloadable ebook reader format, but I have to start warning people away from MobiPocket and Amazon.com

They are not playing by the rules nor their own contracts you sign.

Amazon, and by extension Mobipocket, hasn't been playing by their own rules for quite some time. Up until June or July of last year, Amazon paid for Kindle sales monthly, for sales made the previous month. Then they stopped doing that, stopped reporting them properly. I emailed last September and did not get a response until January of this year. Their rep tried to blow me off, saying I'd been paid for my sales and even went as far as to send me a spreadsheet, and right there, using their own numbers and my bank records, I proved they had not paid me properly. They sent me some more money.

However, Amazon is once again behind in their monthly reporting and payments. I just recently got paid for January and February sales of this year. And there are not yet any reports for March or April at my Vendor Central account. What's most distressing to me is realizing just how much money Amazon could make each month by withholding just one sale from every author and/or publisher who has a book in their Kindle program.

I say, switch to Smashwords. www.smashwords.com There you can have your book converted into seven formats at once, including Kindle, and they take only 15% of the selling price versus Amazon giving you 35%. Just follow the directions for conversion in the guide posted there and it's easy.

If we authors and independent publishers who, in effect, saved Amazon from going down in the 1990's would only get behind friendlier alternatives, we could slap that 800-pound gorilla Amazon has become back down to size.

Now, Amazon is getting into publishing, as a publisher. If anyone had any doubt left about their intent to dominate the entire publishing business, and put all authors and publishers under their thumb, there's your proof.

Mari

Thank you for your information M.L. I will go visit smashswords.com ^_^

I am sorry for your troubles :(

What should be more worrisome to others who sell Kindle versions on Amazon is what Amazon is not reporting, and not paying.

And, you're welcome, Kevin! That's www.smashwords.com and no, I have no financial interest in them other than I'm one happy author/independent publisher of eBooks with them. Now, if you want to talk www.45caliberbooks.com that I have an interest in, but more in providing an alternative to Amazon than ever making any money.

Mari

Just put mine up in Kindle Books: http://www.amazon.com/Eye-of-the-Stor...

I'll let you know how the sales go.

In the mean time I'll look into smashwords, thanks.

When I last posted about this, I didn't have my books on Kindle, but I met a publisher last summer who wanted to publish both of my mysteries on Kindle and mobipocket. So, I said, sure. The first came out last Sept., the 2nd in Feb. Nothing much happend in terms of sales until I started promoting the books on sites for Kindle users. I've discovered that Kindle users buy a lot of books because they're much cheaper than print editions. So, now I'm a convert and really believe that Kindle versions of your books will gain you new readers.

Hi Debra,
Which Kindle promotion sites do you use. I've had one book up on Kindle for about a month with one sale. I know a writer who says he averages 1 to 2 book sales a day but credits his sales with spending money to advertise on a Google search engine.

Hi, Nancy,

Insufficient Mating Material was accidentally added as a Kindle last summer. It has now been taken down.

Since it was there, I added the url to my sites and to my sig file, and made a determined effort to promote it.

In six months, it sold 7 copies.

I think the market on E-books of any kind has yet to take. It seems Kindle is the most used, although I may be mistaken. But I haven't sold a lot through the Kindle format. My best month came last month, where I sold fifteen Kindle versions.
I have been told that reviewers and others in the publishing or authoring fields, people who read constantly, but can't carry all the books, use Kindle as it is an easy device to store many, many books. I hope it takes off and becomes popular. The more media types available to sell books on, the better for the author.

I have to say, I think the Kindle is less popular than Amazon wants the world to believe. I base this opinion on two things: one, on their refusal to release sales figures for the device, which any company as ruthless as Amazon would be touting as a marketing angle IF sales lived up to the hype; and two, because few people I know have one. I have never seen one being toted around by another, even someone I didn't know, no matter where I've went. I have never seen a Kindle live, up close and personal. The only folk I know who say they own a Kindle are on listservs and forums like this one, and they are still very few and far between.

I personally think eBooks will be the future, but not until the generation that grew up "tech" is the majority over those of us who grew up reading actual books. That could be a while yet in coming.

For what it's worth,

Mari

I have three books on Smashwords. Plenty of downloads, but few sales; then again, they tell you upfront you'll make little money. It does enable an author to expand their works to various reading devices, and it's inexpensive and easy to comprehend.

I've seen sales pick up slowly on Kindle. I'm now up to about ten sales a month at $3.50 in profit per book. I like that the numbers keep increasing but there's no comparison to sales of "real" books.

My novel Final Passage has been on Kindle for two months and sold 10 copies each month. Before that the free version on Smashwords had about 600 downloads in three months. The best ratings and reviews however have come from the Barnes & Noble site. I don't know how many downloads there as they are not reported. No ratings or reviews on Kindle yet.
It's quite encouraging for an unpublished author and the reviews are good motivation to continue (mostly).
Tim

My publisher wants to put my first novel up on kindle, but doesn't have the Word doc she needs for the formatting. So we're going the whole nine yards and getting it reedited and re-covered as well.

How do you market/publicize your books once they're up there?

Well, I'm not exactly an author. But I did enter the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest, and I've made the quarterfinals (top 500 novels out of 10,000!) You can download my excerpt for Kindle for free, and if you'd rate/review it that'd be awesome! :] Thanks.

http://www.amazon.com/Walking-Shadow-...

I have both my novels, Out of Time and Don't Mess With Earth, on Kindle. I have a pdf converter of my own, so I do it that way. I published one through Iuniverse and the other through Virtualbookworm and uploaded both novels myself, since neither offered to do it. I also have both on Smashwords, which I like a lot better, but Kindle gets more attention.

Marc,
You can promote your Kindle book on Amazon in the same ways you can promote your print releases.

Have you joined the "Tips For Self Promotion, Sales and Advertising" group on GoodReads?

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/6...

Request "Kindle" one of the tags you ask all your friends and colleagues and strangers to "tag", so that you become a member of the Kindle community and your book shows up in the Kindle community.

Once the tags that you are given + the tags you give to others put you in a variety of appropriate communities, (and tagging other people is much more effective than you might expect because it puts you at the top of the rankings for people who've tagged a certain word --check out "iwofa" and see where Charlee Compo is for proof-- and you are promoted every time someone visits your community) you should participate in discussions, add images, etc.

Endlessly promoting only your own book is not an effective promo tactic. But, talking expertly about themes and genres and issues that happen to be in your book is effective.

Generous authors gain the goodwill, so be sure to recommend your rivals.

All the best

Rowena Cherry
http://www.amazon.com/Mating-Net-eboo...

Tags I request "sfr", "iwofa", "futuristic romance", "science fiction romance". SFR has to be written in.

There have been some good tips here. I think digital is the way to go in some regards. Novels, fiction, etc. I also think that some genres do better on Kindle vs others.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0041VXDL2/

Experiencing Kindle for the first time.

I'm getting really excited about Kindle. All three of my books are posted there as well as being available as paper editions. Until July sales were unimpressive compared to the paper books. Since then, I'm selling more on Kindle than in paper and I just discovered Kindle doesn't even show my books in the "mystery series 4 stars and up" search.Who knows what may happen if that gets fixed.

The other thing is now that its possible to retain 70% of the sales price, Kindle is more profitable than paper books. (I have a micro publishing company, so that helps.)

If you read the fine print, you get to keep 70 percent of what Amazon sells your book for, not what you, the publisher, set as the list price. And if they get into another pissing match with Barnes and Noble (and they will), and they decide to sell your book for ten cents, you take home seven. What a deal. Not.

Mari

Hi Mari,
What I read says that Kindle may lower the price but that I get 70% of the price I selected which can't be more than 9.99. So far , it's working. If it changes, I can pull the books.

Nancy

Well, I hope you're right, Nancy. A bunch of publishers I hang out with on a few lists sort of hashed all that legalese out, and that's not what we came up with.