Tag: non fiction books

Ouch, bugger, yuck, is there any surprise why people give up on this game. You want instant satisfaction – buy chocolate is my only advice. Indie non fiction books is not  going to give it to you! Indie non fiction books aren’t going to make you rich overnight!

My September Stats are rubbish:

• Amazon.com 5 books sold
• Amazon.co.uk 4 books sold

Frankly I’m surprised that the UK sales are doing so (comparatively) well – for a book that is such an American search term- just goes to show that the English can read American but not the other way around.

I didn’t sell anything directly from smashwords.com – but thanks to their distribution system which sends my books to retailers I can’t get to  apparently back in August I also managed:

• Apple 1 book sold
• Barnes&Noble 2 books sold

So yes I guess it is worth getting your book formatted right and into their premium catalogue!

What I do have is a promotion plan going forward, I’ve developed it while avoiding writing the other books – because my brain does stupid stuff sometimes.

I’m building an email list. Its something I’ve resisted for years. As part of my “I hate marketing” mindset I of course particularly hate marketing email lists – after all I’m bloody expert on them – I am forever subscribing to them 🙂

But I have a new approach – and its not spammy, and its something I’d even admit to in public. It provides value to the subscriber AND its not even additional work for me!

But I’m not telling you the details. Why not? Its not original – the idea was provided in Zen Duck’s Forum – for free – you might want to check it out – and no that’s not an affiliate link. Really I’ve been in a lot of SEO forums over the years, kinda been there, done that. But Dave bullied me, and then he gave me a free membership, and I’ve got my money’s worth. I just think you would too.

Hell I might even get so enthused to start of a mail list here too …. just kidding, maybe…

OMG – Amazon has done it again – they have, in one stroke pretty much destroyed the paper back publishing industry, at least in my part of the world where a paperback can easily cost over US$25!  Yes there is a new Kindle out in time for Christmas 2011 (shipping late November I believe) – and its called … well there are four of them: Kindle, Kindle Touch, Kindle Touch 3G and Kindle Fire.

So why am I buzzing around telling you to go and check out the new Kindles now?  Well obviously I want my Amazon sales to boom at the end of the year.  Because, frankly, at $79 – why aren’t you giving everyone a Kindle?  I am certainly thinking that my partner needs to stop borrowing mine! And no,I wouldn’t pay for a teenager to have an expensive, fragile tablet – but I would consider the tablet version called Kindle Fire  at under $199.

No its not the cute new Kindles that have me excited – its the fact that when the Kindle 3 came out (the current one, why don’t they like version numbers?) last year,  the sales for Indie e-book authors went through the roof.  You see what do you do when someone gives you a new Kindle – yes – you spend the holidays buying books, cheap books,  that Indie’s put out for 99c – not the outrageously priced ones from the traditional publishers.

So if you want to check out the new Kindle models (you can still buy the “old” one too – which is the only one that now comes with a keyboard, here you go:

So now I REALLY have to get my act together and get the next five books I have in my head out into the pixels… This is going to be huge – and not just in the US. From what I can see I can get Amazon to deliver the new Kindle for less than I can buy them downtown.  They are also releasing some models through the  UK store for UK Kindle Store shoppers.

Why You Need To Buy a Kindle in 2011

And for those of you who haven’t got  e-books and Kindles yet.

Why the Kindle is cool:

• you can read it in bright sunlight – try that with your iPad or netbook;
• you can read it in bed without causing yourself or your partner concussion or hand cramps – try that with the latest 400 page trade paper back;
• you can read it without glasses because you can dial the font up to super-size – try that with a cheap book with crap typography;
• people who have serious sight loss can read it (or listen to it-  they will talk to you as well) – without paying a fortune for the very limited selection of large print books published;
• you can listen to it read your book while you are stuck in traffic – did I mention the battery life is still about 1 month?
• you can get the book immediately – you click its on your Kindle – I’ve read more books in the few months that I’ve had the Kindle  than I’d read in the previous year;
• once you have bought someone a Kindle – you never need to think of a present again -just buy them an Amazon gift card.

Why eBooks are cool:

• they are removing the gatekeepers – you don’t need an agent and a publishing contract to publish your book – you need a free Amazon publisher account and a free Smashwords account – just like iTunes did for music;
• the price of books are coming down, seriously down – while the percentage that (self-published) authors are going up – a lot.
• e-books mean you can take 3500 books with you on vacation and still pack light;
• you can read trashy novels, erotica or Shakespeare on the c0mmute – and no one knows;
• you can subscribe to a newspaper or magazine and be able to read it standing up, on-handed on the Tube (seriously that’s why the Brit’s buy them);
• you don’t even need a Kindle to read them – or any form of e-Reader – Amazon has free Kindle software for Macs, PCs, iPads, iPhones, Android and few others I never heard of.