There are a lot of scandals happening in the indie publishing world right now. The latest one has to do with Amazon deleting KU reads from March: some authors have seen their page reads retroactively revised down as much as ninety percent. The speculation is that this is connected with Amazon deactivating several customer accounts,… Continue reading Thoughts on #AmazonClosed and disappearing KU reads
Tag: indie publishing
Is there a “summer slump” in book sales?
As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been crunching the data from my last seven years of indie publishing, and it’s yielded some very interesting information. Here’s another graph that I managed to pull out: This graph shows all of the monthly averages for royalties earned and units sold, across all my books, from… Continue reading Is there a “summer slump” in book sales?
Seven years of ebook pricing data
Last October, Dean Wesley Smith wrote an interesting blog post on the subject of pricing. As an indie writer (or really, as a small business owner in general), pricing is one of those things that’s constantly on my mind. Pricing too high can be fatal for any business, but pricing too low can be a… Continue reading Seven years of ebook pricing data
Thoughts on Mark Coker’s 2018 Publishing Industry Predictions
January is a time for making forecasts and predictions, and Mark Coker of Smashwords certainly did not disappoint. I have a lot of respect for Mark Coker, not only for being one of the pioneers of indie publishing, but for continuing to share his data and insights with us over the years. That said, I… Continue reading Thoughts on Mark Coker’s 2018 Publishing Industry Predictions
What I would do if I were starting out now
In a word, short stories. Write a bunch of short stories. One or two a week if possible. Keep that up for a year or two, tapering off at the end to transition into novels. But keep writing short stories even after novels have become the main focus. Make a serious effort while writing short… Continue reading What I would do if I were starting out now
Rethinking free
I recently read an interesting blog post on Dean Wesley Smith’s blog, about how, how not, and whether to make your books free. The conclusion he comes to is this: Free is short time, limited supply, and never on the major bookstore shelves. In other words, no permafree, no free pulsing, and no publishing free… Continue reading Rethinking free
Updating my backmatter
I read an interesting post on the Bookbub Partners Blog a couple of weeks ago, where they shared some of their findings on backmatter optimization. “Backmatter” is all the stuff that goes in the back of the book, like teasers, first chapters, buy links, author bios, and the like. Way back when I first started… Continue reading Updating my backmatter
Writing is not a business
I recently read Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. It’s a fantastic book, not only because it gives you a basic education on financial literacy, but because it gives you a solid foundation for making money in general. It’s one of those books that really deserves its bestseller status. About midway through reading it,… Continue reading Writing is not a business
So you’ve written a short story…
So you’ve written a short story, and you’re wondering what to do with it. You think it’s pretty good and you want to see it published, but you’re wondering what’s the best way to do that. I can’t guarantee that this is the best way, but it is the way that I do it. Let’s… Continue reading So you’ve written a short story…
Shifting Strategies
A couple of weeks ago, Kobo came out with some new terms and conditions for their Kobo Writing Life program. Under the new terms, the list price for a book (not the sales price) cannot be higher than it is elsewhere. This throws a kink in the works, since the only way I’ve ever gotten traction… Continue reading Shifting Strategies