The New Intimacy

Selling Books - Where to start?

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Contributor: Falsepast Falsepast
Teachers always told me I was good at writing. I'm starting to write stuff that I plan to sell. Currently I find that it would be supremely easy to sell it on Amazon as a Kindle book, but it would limit my audience to Kindle-users only, and I would get about 35% (I think it said that).

I don't like the sound of that, so does anyone know how to start selling books online?
I want to be paid for my work and not just 35%. If I'm writing it, I expect at least 50%.

PS I'm writing erotica currently, but will probably change it up. I plan to write short stories as well as long ones. Hope they end up good.
06/08/2012
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Contributor: ghalik ghalik
Quote:
Originally posted by Falsepast
Teachers always told me I was good at writing. I'm starting to write stuff that I plan to sell. Currently I find that it would be supremely easy to sell it on Amazon as a Kindle book, but it would limit my audience to Kindle-users only, and I ... more
35% is actually very generous. If you want to do print books you will either have to self publish or get much less than that. Or did you mean ebooks but not through Amazon?
06/08/2012
Contributor: Falsepast Falsepast
Quote:
Originally posted by ghalik
35% is actually very generous. If you want to do print books you will either have to self publish or get much less than that. Or did you mean ebooks but not through Amazon?
35% is GENEROUS? But I wrote it! Stupid publishers are completely unfair!
06/08/2012
Contributor: K101 K101
Quote:
Originally posted by Falsepast
Teachers always told me I was good at writing. I'm starting to write stuff that I plan to sell. Currently I find that it would be supremely easy to sell it on Amazon as a Kindle book, but it would limit my audience to Kindle-users only, and I ... more
Ummm... I don't know about just up and selling. I've been taking college courses for writing and graduate this year and from what I've learned, the process is a bit more complicated than that. I believe starting out with that percentage is actually pretty good. It's not so easy to sell a book. I'm still in the middle of a novel now, but I've learned that getting published elsewhere for a while is a really important step. I'd try magazines and such before diving into a book sell. You'd probably want to talk to a few different agents as well to find one that works for you. I'm not sure I'd even go for selling with Amazon to be honest.
06/08/2012
Contributor: Geogeo Geogeo
I work in a book publishing house and I can tell you that self-published books do not sell well. It's really best to go with a publisher who has a distribution centre.
06/08/2012
Contributor: Envy Envy
If you're just doing ebooks, you could try Smashwords. I think they also list things on Amazon and other sites, too, but am not 100% sure.

For actual physical copy books, you might be better off going to an actual publisher for that.
06/08/2012
Contributor: PassionateLover2 PassionateLover2
Quote:
Originally posted by Falsepast
Teachers always told me I was good at writing. I'm starting to write stuff that I plan to sell. Currently I find that it would be supremely easy to sell it on Amazon as a Kindle book, but it would limit my audience to Kindle-users only, and I ... more
You should contact my former mentor, 'Aliceinthehole' who is very skilled in this type of work. She has self-published her own poem book which you will find linked at her Public Profile above! I hope this helps. Mention my Screen Name if necessary! Good luck!
06/08/2012
Contributor: Chilipepper Chilipepper
35% is pretty much average for self-publishing and listing through Amazon. That's a hell of a lot more generous than industry average for publishing through a house.

During my internship, I found that e-book sales make up about 70% of any publishing house's revenues, which is why publishers are scrambling to get their stuff uploaded for e-readers (and why there's so many code problems with it, since publishers are in too much of a hurry). In other words: you'd have a much wider audience than you would with hardcopy books. You can likely do both if you have the need to break into that part of the market. I know Lulu publishes hardcopy books that you can list on Amazon, though I think you'll have to store your own books and mail them to customers yourself. You'll also have to do your own promotion and advertising.
06/08/2012
Contributor: Librarian Librarian
Quote:
Originally posted by Falsepast
Teachers always told me I was good at writing. I'm starting to write stuff that I plan to sell. Currently I find that it would be supremely easy to sell it on Amazon as a Kindle book, but it would limit my audience to Kindle-users only, and I ... more
It might be worthwhile to go through Amazon, get some followers who really love your stuff, and then if you feel that you really aren't making much money at it, you could try a different publisher and take to them the knowledge that you have X many buyers/followers of your writing, which may make your more appeal-able to more mainstream publishers...and who knows, you may catch your break self-publishing, it's happened plenty of times already.
06/08/2012
Contributor: Petite Valentine Petite Valentine
Quote:
Originally posted by Falsepast
35% is GENEROUS? But I wrote it! Stupid publishers are completely unfair!
It's extremely generous. Most first-time, untested authors get between 10%-15%, and that's only AFTER they've sold a minimum number of copies.

Though Amazon currently has about 70% share of the e-reader market (down from 90%), and 35% is VERY generous, be aware that you give away certain rights when you publish through them. For starters, Amazon controls the discounting of your book, not you. And that 35% share you get, is from the sale price, not the retail price.

For example...

You publish an e-book on Amazon and price it at a respectable $9.99.
Three people download it, you earn $10.49

Amazon decides to lower the price to 99¢ to tempt more buyers.
Thirty people download it earning you $10.39

The Top-100 free books on Amazon, becomes stale, so they decide to offer your title for FREE.
Three hundred people download it, you earn $0.00.

Yes, when they lower the price they earn less too. However, they get 65% of the sale price, and they're able to tout more free content for their e-reader, which is a big ticket item that they get to keep 100% of the sale price of.
06/08/2012
Contributor: petite-n-sweet petite-n-sweet
Yeah, I would consider Amazon as free advertisement only... If this is your first ebook and you make money consider yourself lucky =)
06/08/2012
Contributor: srval69 srval69
like
08/12/2012