Publishing Options | Bloggers Lair | Yakezie Forums

I wrote an eBook but it wasn't all that successful.  Whatever you do, be ready to market the hell out of it beyond anything you can possibly comprehend.

I think ebooks are easier to sell and you get to keep more of the profits. If it goes big enough you may even have a publishing company notice it and then take you on. There is always the option to do both. You can look at places to publish on a book by book basis for those who are old school and prefer to hold a book in their hands. http://lulu.com is a site that can do that. Your profit margin would be a lot less, but at least it's another option

Thanks Eric, sorry to hear.  In retrospect, did you analyze why it wasn't that successful?

NarrowBridge said:

I wrote an eBook but it wasn't all that successful.  Whatever you do, be ready to market the hell out of it beyond anything you can possibly comprehend.

Thanks will check out lulu!

cazcraig said:

I think ebooks are easier to sell and you get to keep more of the profits. If it goes big enough you may even have a publishing company notice it and then take you on. There is always the option to do both. You can look at places to publish on a book by book basis for those who are old school and prefer to hold a book in their hands. http://lulu.com is a site that can do that. Your profit margin would be a lot less, but at least it's another option

Maximizing Money -  What was the book you published on Amazon Kindle?  I have plans to publish a book there in the next month or two and would be interested in hearing about your experience.

From what I've read once you have published a book on Kindle it is fairly simple to publish it on Amazon's Createspace for not too much money.  My plan is to see what kind of response i get to the Kindle version and if it is good I'll publish via Createspace as well.

Whatever takes the least resources in terms of publishing, etc… so I would start out with ebook and similar formats. Once I had built up some rep I'd go for the traditional route.

Post edited 8:40 am – January 15, 2011 by TightFistedMiser

maximizingmoney said:

Hey TightFistedMiser,

I published a short fiction book, about novelette length, which is basically a collection of interrelated short stories about my grandmother's life and decent into Alzheimer's. Here's my general-use description.

GRANDMA MESSNER'S MEMORIES OF ALZHEIMER’S echoes the disconnected recollections of a family matriarch as the filters of her life are lifted, casting her on a metaphysical journey amidst several generations of her relatives as they seek to reconstruct her collective meaning.

Here's the link on Amazon. You'll notice I wrote it under a different name, long story, but that's it.

http://www.amazon.com/Grandma-…..0045OUSFE/

If you want, you can read the first chapter of it here.

http://themagzine.com/publishi…..lzheimers/

Anyway, excuse my shameless self-promotion…

Yeah, publishing on Amazon Kindle is really easy, the most difficult part for me was just getting it electronically formatted, so that it reads nicely, as you want to make sure all of your spacing and stuff is correct and easy on the eyes in the electronic medium.

It was very easy though, and you can control the pricing.

 

Thanks for sharing the link to your book.  I downloaded a sample to Kindle and will read it when I get a chance.  I'm not an expert but I think if you changed your cover and wrote a longer description you would sell more books.  Check out the Kindle boards for more information.  From what I've read you need to do a lot of promotion to make your book a success on Kindle.  You can use your knowledge from promoting your blog and use it to promote your book.
 

It would be cool to have a book published by a traditional publisher but you might do better on your own.  Check out J.A. Konrath's blog.  He makes a ton more money publishing his own books than he did with a traditional publisher.  He also writes about lots of others who are making thousands from publishing their own ebooks.  That kind of success is a longshot but it is possible,.

Great thread–thank you all for your information and experiences.

I published two books with CreateSpace and it was incredibly easy.  One was a textbook that I use when I teach personal finance and the other was a biography of my grandmother  for her 90th birthday.  I decided to put it on CreateSpace to make it easy for family members to get a copy.  What I like is that because of the affiliation with Amazon, folks can easily buy my books there.  Also, because they are hard copies, I can buy a few at a discount to take to workshops or sell out of the trunk of my car if I want.  ;-0

I've been thinking of going the eBook route too.  I think that I can do it the same way in CreateSpace and just choose a different format or even choose multiple formats.  Of course, my 'cut' will be much higher on the eBook format.  I'll let you know how it goes!