along a few books on the night, and see if anyone would like any. I almost always sell a couple of books at these things, at least. By the same token, reading nights are places where people interested in new books show up, so you might meet your future publicist right there.
You’ll also have established a tie with an indie book shop owner and you can start seeing about them stocking your book. They might be up for it. They will most likely want a pretty big cut of the profits, but I suggest you let them have that, because once you’re in a book shop, you’re like a traditionally published author, and probably making only about 50p per copy sold, but that’s OK, because your book is in the shops. Of course that’s only my opinion.
About e-book sales. I won’t say much on this because I
"Don’t over-price your book, don’t under-price it, either."
don’t know that much, and there are better articles out there. Don’t over-price your book, don’t under-price it, either. 0.99 or 1.99 is a bad price, it sounds like bargain basements and reeks of valueless crap. 5 or 6 Euros, on the other hand, is a bit too much.
Do something in the middle, and your e-book sales will be fine. Use social media for this, probably twitter better than facebook. Try to stay on top of hashtags on twitter, so you can make your book current and interesting from all these angles every day afresh.
And finally: Be Happy. Do as much or as little of this as you can. Always a pleasure, never a chore. I have sold just shy of 200 copies of my self-published book.
For many months after first getting my book out, I didn’t want to do ANYTHING about it because I was completely exhausted from my crowdfunding campaign, the writing of the book, which had taken years, getting everything ready and so on. And I was broke, too, because I had invested quite a lot of time during which I could have been doing freelance work and earning money, but wasn’t.
I released my book on halloween, 2013, and it wasn’t until around Easter time, 2014, that I started attending readings with it and talking to bookshops owners, contacting book reviewers etc. You’re a self-published author. You decide the pace. This is for you.
Photo by Polly Trope
A quick list of Ebook Do’s and Don’t’s for indie authors on the up and up
Smashwords, the popular ebook site, has done some research on the behalf of indie authors everywhere and given us some tips on what does and doesn’t sell in the ebook world.
It’s a steep curve: Most books sell extremely few copies, a few sell extremely well. Readers prefer longer books.
The best profits are to be made by pricing your book between 2,99 and 3,99. The authors who make the most money sell at the lowest prices.
Ebooks which are available to readers for free are read just under 40 times more than paid books.
Books which you can pre-order tend to sell better. Very few authors use this pre-order possibility. Series sell better than one-off books. Books with a word count below 50,000 sell markedly less well. If the first book of a series is available for free this has a marked impact on the success of the series which it kicks off.
Factual books sell for a higher price than fiction. People who buy factual books are less worried about the price of a book. Most people who sell their factual books online do so at too low a price.
Article by Noel Maurice
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