E-Books: The Future of Self-Publishing Part II

Last month’s post focused on the advantages of making your books available on Amazon Kindle. This month, I’m going to talk about the practical considerations, like e-book conversion, pricing etc.

Some Practical Considerations

Create a Quality Book
If your book has not been edited and polished, it will probably not gain a large audience. This is a hard point for some self-published authors to hear, but an important one. Refer to my post on Editors and Humility.

Converting to Kindle
If you are a self-published author, you can either convert your books for the Kindle (using trial and error like I did) or use a conversion service. These services, however, can be very expensive for something you can do yourself. And…although this process can be very tedious and tricky, especially if there are photos involved, once you go through the conversion process once or twice, it will be less challenging.

Smashwords has an excellent free guide for converting books into many different e-formats:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/download/52/1/latest/0/0/smashwords-style-guide.pdf

Determining price: I had no idea what price I should set for my Kindle books. Initially, I set it at 6.99 looking at similar books. I sold one or two e-books a month and the ranking was coming in at about 400,000. Six months later, I decided to experiment and set my book prices lower, to 2.99. After all, Amazon offers 70 percent royalty, so I would still receive $2.05 per book.

A few weeks later, I checked the ranking and just about fell off my chair. One of my Kindle books, In Name Only (a Catholic romance) was regularly ranking in at about 40,000 out of a million books (not best selling status, but certainly pretty good) AND my print books were now also selling. Now, In Name Only is regularly in the top 100 of Religious Fiction Books.

If you have several books, pricing one of the shorter books (or even a collection of short stories) for .99 will gain you more fans and entice them to buy your other books.

Here are some other considerations for setting the price…

1. Your ebook MUST BE priced less than the print equivalent (and I’m not just talking about a dollar or two less). Potential customers expect this, because they know your production costs (paper, printing, shipping, middlemen) are less. Even famous authors should follow this. Consider Nelson DeMille’s novel “The Lion.” The Kindle price is 14.99, but the paperback, hard copy price is 9.99. While perhaps DeMille’s publisher can get away with this sort of price jacking, relatively unknown self-published authors cannot.

2. While in principle, a longer book deserves a higher price than a shorter book, if you’re unknown, setting it at a lower price will gain you more sales because the reader knows he or she is getting a bargain.

3. Consider the likely market of your book, and the cost of competitive books, then price accordingly. Experiment with different prices.

Smashwords (www.smashwords.com) is another e-book publisher, and they offer your e-book in many different formats, not just one.

Whether you’re a first-time author or an established writer, there are many advantages of putting your book on Kindle: you can receive more exposure, make more money, sell more print books (without financial costs of printing) and gain more fans. E-books are the future of self-publishing.

Questions? Feel free to contact me at info (at) fullquiverpublishing.com

Ellen Gable Hrkach is the vice president of the Catholic Writers Guild. She is a freelance writer and award-winning author of three novels and one non-fiction book. Her new book is called “Come My Beloved: Inspiring Stories of Catholic Courtship.” Her website is www.ellengable.com She and her husband and five sons live in Pakenham, ON Canada.