E-book Opportunites For Newbies, Old-bies & Anyone Who Wants To Take A Crack At It. Part 1/2

Unlike traditional publishing an e-book costs nothing to produce and nothing to place the book online to sell. It almost sounds like a badly written sales pitch, ‘No capital? No worries! Living below the poverty line? It won’t cost you a cent’. In a horror movie it would end with something along the lines of, ‘Just your soul….’ But there is really no hidden skeletons when you do your research.

Reputable sites exist, such as Smashwords.com, which allow an author to produce their book for free, and market it in major online bookstores such as Amazon, Sony, the Apple store, and Kobo (Borders). All rights are retained by the author and if an author decides to remove their book from the Smashwords site, they can at no cost. All Smashwords ask is a 15% commission for selling through their site and those of the online stores they distribute the author to. This means the author receives a higher commission of ~85% per novel as opposed to ~40 cents per novel received through a traditional publisher. You can crush a traditional publisher's e-books with prices a fifth of what they charged and come out with more money. The reality is, if you don’t do it in your niche, in your genre, others will. There is no use standing in the bull ring with a fluttering flag when all your competitors have scaled the wall above you.

Ok all you tight lipped balls of negativity spit it out. You are dying to say that a site that charges 15% Commission is NOT free. At the final sale this is technically correct. However, it is free to PRODUCE your work, as in set it up in the right format, have a cover put to it and then save it in several different formats. This is all free! It does not cost you a cent, a penny, a wooden bead in cash or barter items to produce this (You would be spending large amounts of time on the book anyway if you were doing it through a traditional publisher).

You DO NOT have to put it up on the Smashwords website to sell. You can take it and go, whether to try and sell it yourself or give it to your friends, aunt’s dog groomer, it doesn't matter. You have already done the hard work revising and editing already, it only takes a couple of hours to make sure that the words look right on the page and you don’t print the font small enough to require a magnifying glass.

It does not cost you to print the books, it does not cost you to ship them to the book stores, it does not cost you to hire an illustrator (Though you should if you are serious. Just ask Matthew Reilly). You pay no upfront costs, unlike a traditional publisher who is putting their money on the line to publish your book. Though the author doesn't have to pay, the publisher has spent all their money printing and suddenly your marketing budget is looking A LOT leaner.... With no upfront costs you aren't out of pocket.

Initially self-publishing meant you went through Lulu.com and they printed out 2000 copies of your book for $5000. Those books then sat in the author’s garage, gathering a veil of dust and mouse droppings, not being able to shift because the author didn't have the connections. Then, they were left with 2000 nice paper weights AND they were broke.

This scenario is not true of e-books, because they are digital files that can be distributed through the web. A commission only comes out when you get paid for a download. Thinking in the traditional publishing sense, a publisher takes a 90% commission, where as these e-book bookstore websites only take a 15% commission. How much more does the author get? That’s a lot more per sale. You need these online bookstores to sell a reasonable number of copies of your e-book. Just like you need a traditional bookstore to sell hardcopy books. You can try to do it yourself off your own websites, but these take a whole new set of knowledge to set up (Some of which we will learn in our marketing section). People go to the online bookstore because they know that is where they can get books! By selling your book only from your website you are amputating your leg and throwing away the crutches. It is a win-win situation, you do not have to pay thousands of dollars to print and distributed the books or to hire people to do the layout. You get placed on a site (like Amazon) with high traffic that only takes a 15% commission from books that are sold (Not ones sitting in your garage at home) rather than the 90% commission taken by a publisher.

Earning 75% more from my novel? Now THAT’S a good day…

TOMORROW: The opportunities for emerging, established and popular authors. Part 2