Archive for January, 2009
Print On Demand Options, Part 1: Traditional PODs
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on January 20th, 2009
There are lots of paths to get your book printed, so you have to sort out what your goals are, then take a look at the tradeoffs in your particular situation. For me, my primary goals were to get In Her Name 1) onto Amazon, 2) into Barnes & Noble (preferably both on-line and in the brick and mortar stores), and 3) available for distribution to booksellers everywhere, which means distribution via Ingram and Baker & Taylor.
One of the available options for Print on Demand (POD) is what I’m going to call a “Pay-for-POD” company like Outskirts Press, which is my personal favorite in the features-for-price matrix. They offer a number of packages, ranging from $199 to $999, that have different services to help you get your book into print and distribution. So once you pay the package fee and get your book out there, you can start earning royalties.
For a short book, this might not be a bad option, assuming you wanted/needed the services that the packages offer. But for me, the economic model doesn’t work very well. Using the Outskirts Press calculator (and the other PODs are similar, or even more pricey), consider that for my book in trade paperback (6″x9″) format at 678 pages, the unit price for the $999 package with a discount of 20% and royalty of 20% comes to $23.95; for the $399 package it would be $26.95. My royalty would be $4.79 and $5.39, respectively.
“Well, hey, that’s not so bad!” you say. But consider this: with a retailer discount of only 20%, the only place that might consider picking up the book is Barnes & Noble and Amazon! No brick and mortar store is going to pick it up at such a short discount (they expect at least 40%). And even Barnes & Noble won’t be able to discount it much to their buyers; it would likely sell at full price, and most folks aren”t going to pay $23.95 for a novel, even one as good as In Her Name (Okay, okay! Shameless self-promotion! Big grin!). Read the rest of this entry »
Cats and Bathtubs
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Siberian Cats on January 19th, 2009
You really have to wonder what cats are thinking when they do things like this (okay, yes, I’m making the assumption that they’re thinking at all!). We have two Siberian cats, Nina and Sasha (sister and brother).
This is a picture of Sasha taking a gander at the tub while it was filling before I dived into it and turned on the bubbles to help work out a sore back. He hates getting wet, but that didn’t deter him from perching on the edge. I kept waiting for the goofball to fall in…
Increase Your eBook Sales
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on January 18th, 2009
My initial focus for publishing In Her Name was on the Amazon Kindle. And while the Kindle – in my opinion – is awesome (my wife and I each have one), and I definitely want In Her Name to be available to that growing market segment, I’ve discovered that an incredibly easy – and free! – way to expand your sales significantly is by publishing through Mobipocket.com.
Mobipocket is actually owned by Amazon (it was bought up a few years ago), and the Amazon Kindle’s file format is based on the Mobipocket eBook format. So, the beauty of it is that if you get your book ready for publication on the Kindle, you’ve done about 99% of the work to get it ready for Mobipocket, and vice versa.
But when you publish your book through Mobipocket, you open it up to a market that includes about two dozen on-line retailers, plus Mobipocket itself. It doesn’t cost you a thing, and you’ve already done almost all of the work. And you can actually do it all in one shot: if you publish on Mobipocket, they’ll also distribute to the Kindle store!
Self-Publishing Marketing Ideas
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on January 17th, 2009
I’ve given a lot of thought to how I should go about promoting In Her Name. None of this is rocket science, but it’s sort of a half-baked plan to at least start with. So, here are a few of the things I’ve been pondering:
- I’ve set a goal of posting a minimum of two messages on up to half a different message boards that reach potential readers (rather than just other writers!) every other day (or daily, if possible). These are to be QUALITY posts, not just cereal filler, with the “ad” normally just being my signature file with a link to the site, unless there’s an appropriate and tactful opportunity to link to the site or In Her Name on Amazon.
- Start sending out requests to exchange links with other sites. This seems to be a little known secret in many corners of the web, but exchanging links has a direct effect on how much traffic comes to your site. And I don’t mean just in terms of moving up the ladder in Google rankings, or whatever. In the largest of my other sites, which gets about 10,000 unique visitors per month, about 28% of the total visits are from search engines, while another 25% are from links from other sites. So even if that site’’s Google ranking dropped like a rock, I can still rely on those incoming links from other sites (and of course my site is providing traffic to them, too). So my goal for this is at least a dozen requests sent out every other day. The downside is that it seems like more and more sites aren’t interested in exchanging links. Blogs are a bit difficult, too, but like with all things, it’s a matter of perseverance (I hope!). Read the rest of this entry »
In Her Name: February Book Club – Setting the Stage
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Book News on January 17th, 2009
I thought I’d take a minute or two and start setting the stage for In Her Name so those who haven’t read it yet have a better idea of what to expect (and hopefully whet the appetite of any other folks who might want to check it out) when we plunge into the KindleBoards In Her Name Book Klub in two weeks. No spoilers, of course!
First of all, and perhaps most important, while the story is set in the future several centuries from now and has a number of science fiction elements, it’s not at all a typical sci-fi tale. It doesn’t fit neatly into any single genre, although it’s actually probably closest to epic fantasy. As one reviewer noted:
“[In Her Name] can best be described as an “epic space fantasy”. It has all the elements of an epic or high fantasy (the young hero coming of age, the war against an alien people, and the diabolical villain/traitor of our own race) save only that rather than being set deep into a medieval setting, it is set into a military science fiction novel.”
But most of all, it’s a love story that explores the bonds of love between the two central characters, and the love between friends who together must face some incredible hardships in a violent and unforgiving universe. Love is what binds the story together, regardless of the other elements that may come into play as the plot progresses, and it is this facet of the book that gives the story an emotional depth that is much more typical of romance novels. Read the rest of this entry »
Check Out This Poll on KindleBoards.com
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Other Stuff on January 16th, 2009
Okay, you just never know what you’re going to find on KindleBoards.com. As I mentioned earlier, the sub-board for the In Her Name Book Klub is now open, and our crafty moderator, Betsy The Quilter, set up a poll that cracked me up – come check it out!
