Showing posts with label self-publishing for free. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self-publishing for free. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Publish your book for free on Amazon.com (3)
My book of short stories is now available on Amazon.com as an ebook. It's titled Battles and other stories. The author's name is listed as Richard Hughes. This is not what I meant it to be. I wanted it to be R Patrick Hughes, so I obviously did something wrong. I'll leave it the way it is for now. I priced it at $2.99. I'm now trying to figure out how to link it to my blog. And there is much more to learn. I may eventually make it a POD book as well. But it's kind of short, at about eighty-five pages. I plan on adding to it as time goes on. If any of you read the book, please give me your feed-back, even if you don't like it. That's one of the ways for me to learn and improve.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Publish Your Book for Free on Amazon.com (2)
Well, I finally decided to do it. I've published a collection of short stories "Battles and other stories" on Amazon.com. I'm using the pen name R Patrick Hughes. It should be available by tomorrow. I thought about those stories that were just sitting in a drawer gathering dust, stories that will probably never be published in magazines or in any other way. They've all been read by my writing group, and I feel they'll never undergo any more revisions. They're history. So why not publish them?
Deciding to publish them was the first decision. The second decision was how much to charge. I could give them away for free, but I see no reason to do that at this time. Maybe in the future. I thought about charging 99 cents, but that seems cheap to me, as if I don't value my own work. I decided on $2.99, which may be too high, but I feel that my hard work is worth something.
I don't plan on making a lot of money on the book. For the most part, short story collections don't sell. I'm an unknown. And I've got to figure out how to make it known to the world that the book is available.
I feel good about it, but I'm realistic. Self-publishing is not the same as publishing through the writer-agent-publisher matrix. I'll continue to try the traditional method for my novels. But, if I feel that the traditional method is not going to work, I'll self-publish my novels as well.
For me, self-publishing my short stories is a learning experience, one I'm sharing on my blog. The first lesson learned was the mechanics of publishing it. The next learning experience is how to advertise it. I think for me, that will be more of a challenge than the first lesson.
Deciding to publish them was the first decision. The second decision was how much to charge. I could give them away for free, but I see no reason to do that at this time. Maybe in the future. I thought about charging 99 cents, but that seems cheap to me, as if I don't value my own work. I decided on $2.99, which may be too high, but I feel that my hard work is worth something.
I don't plan on making a lot of money on the book. For the most part, short story collections don't sell. I'm an unknown. And I've got to figure out how to make it known to the world that the book is available.
I feel good about it, but I'm realistic. Self-publishing is not the same as publishing through the writer-agent-publisher matrix. I'll continue to try the traditional method for my novels. But, if I feel that the traditional method is not going to work, I'll self-publish my novels as well.
For me, self-publishing my short stories is a learning experience, one I'm sharing on my blog. The first lesson learned was the mechanics of publishing it. The next learning experience is how to advertise it. I think for me, that will be more of a challenge than the first lesson.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Publish your book for free on Amazon.com (1)
I've recently learned that you can publish your book for free on Amazon.com. It can only be sold on their site to Kindle users, or through their Kindle softwear. You set the price and earn 75% royalty. (There are several other similar sites.) You set a low price, say $2.99 (to get the 75% royalty). You can even give it away.
Of course, there's a limited audience, but it's a place to begin testing your book's appeal. I'm considering it as an option for some of my books. I won't jump into it for the same reasons I'm not jumping into POD. I want my books to be as excellent as I can make them. But it seems worth a try. And you can't beat the cost. If I decide to do so, I'll report on it here. For right now, I'm staying the agent-to-publisher course.
Update:
I've decided to publish a book of short stories on Amazon.com. I'll probably put a price on it of $2.99. I don't expect to make a lot of money selling it; I'm doing it more for the experience and to put something out there that will probably never be published through the traditional method, at least, not any time soon. I can learn the ins and outs of epublishing.
Of course, there's a limited audience, but it's a place to begin testing your book's appeal. I'm considering it as an option for some of my books. I won't jump into it for the same reasons I'm not jumping into POD. I want my books to be as excellent as I can make them. But it seems worth a try. And you can't beat the cost. If I decide to do so, I'll report on it here. For right now, I'm staying the agent-to-publisher course.
Update:
I've decided to publish a book of short stories on Amazon.com. I'll probably put a price on it of $2.99. I don't expect to make a lot of money selling it; I'm doing it more for the experience and to put something out there that will probably never be published through the traditional method, at least, not any time soon. I can learn the ins and outs of epublishing.
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