Support Forums: Message List - Ask the Community

Re: Marketing

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:00:39 +0000

Notjohn, So you've tried using that $100 Adwords coupon? I've received the same email, and thought about it, although I couldn't see it being that useful. I don't really know how many people click on those ads. But, was it really free? Were the any strings attached? And did you notice any increase in sales? Rudolf Kerkhoven Anyone Can Write (a Blog): Indie / Self Publishing with Amazon's Kindle http://kerkhoven.wordpress.com/

Re: first-day sales

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:51:31 +0000

I sold one yesterday and two today so far. I have yet to sell in the UK

Re: Screw $2.99... $9.97 is the PERFECT price

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:20:45 +0000

I've been a kindle author for two years. I originally priced my books to sell at $9.99, back when Amazon discounted everything. That's means that I set the list price at $12.95 back then. When Amazon ended all discounting on eBooks, I dropped the list price to $9.99. I didn't experience any change in sales volume. Then I dropped the prices to $7.99. Again, no change in volume, even though everyone was saying that I had to sell cheaper. After a few more months I dropped the price to $5.99. There was a slight increase in sales, but I was making less money overall. The price drop actually hurt my bottom line. I decided to drop one book to $2.99. This was LONG before Amazon picked that as the base for it's 70% royalty calculation. I sold a few more copies every month, but again, it hurt my bottom line. The number of extra copies didn't make up for the lost royalties I would have gotten at the higher price. I left the price on the one book at $2.99, but vowed I would never go lower. My higher priced books sell consistently, and I would never sell below $5.99 again. I've been considering raising the price on my one inexpensive novel. A few readers say in the forums that they will never spend more than $2.99 for an ebook. Well, so be it. The number who will, will more than make up for lost sales volume. A higher price suggests a higher quality book, so if your story is good, and the book has been carefully edited, I say go for all you can get. Thomas Paine said, "What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly.' That might not be an exact, word for word, quote, but I don't have time to look it up. :-)

Re: first-day sales

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:51:50 +0000

My sales were about average yesterday. I sold 43 of my more expensive books, and no sales of my $2.99 book. Today's sales stand at 14 so far. Again, no sales of my less expensive book. I think that k0pier is correct that the updates occur sporadically. I'll have no sales posted for hours, and then have 6 or 7 at once. I've still only sold 1 book in the UK Store, (none this month) and as you predicted, the sales ranking for that book has disappeared. I think that they're still tweaking the system, but if they don't allow our reviews to show over there, it's like our starting over. In the UK, I'm back to where I was here in 2008.

Re: Help!

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:49:06 +0000

> > I agree--that's about what I charge to complete an > > ebook, giving the author/publisher both an epub and > a > > mobi, > > as I keep saying I am ONLY doing kindle right now, ie > NOT epub, so $20 on top of the covers is fine by me, > given that my day job is teaching the old and > disabled how to use computers, for which I get zip, > zilch, zap and nilch. So $20 will get me a 6 pack so > I'm sweet. DD: I wasn't arguing with you; simply making a statement. Most of my clients want to be able to distribute on Apple's iBooks (iPad and iPhones), Nook, Kobo, Sony, Libre and the myriad smartphones. I put them into distribution deals so that they can manage all those platforms with one interface, so they only have to go to one control console for their epub sales, and the DTP for Amazon. I have a Kindle and I love Kindle; but I also respect the power of Apple, and I would never overlook the fact that Apple users are arithmetically more likely to take marketing efforts viral than Kindle users. On an iPad or iPhone, you can stop reading, and "tweet" your followers about what a great book you're reading, or what a cool paragraph you've just read in so-and-so's book. Apple users are big on social networks, also, and can do the same things there; pause their book and FB or MS their thoughts about it to the entire social network space. IMHO, it's crazy to ignore Apple. EDIT: FYI, I just read a review on Amazon about someone's book, and they gave it a bad review JUST BECAUSE it didn't have an active TOC. FWIW. Hitch hitch@booknook.biz I Produce Ebooks. Edited to add info about TOC. Message was edited by: bkhitch

Re: Help!

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:44:30 +0000

> Apple users are big on > social networks, also, and can do the same things > there; pause their book and FB or MS their thoughts > about it to the entire social network space. IMHO, > it's crazy to ignore Apple. > I totally agree that other retailers should not be overlooked. From what I've read many authors here actually do exponentially more sales from the iBookstore. It should be noted that Kindle users can also share paragraphs and passages to Twitter and Facebook right from their Kindle since the last software update.

Re: Indentations and Margins?

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:40:48 +0000

Don't bother setting the margins or indentations. The text must flow freely to accommodate the various devices on which it will be displayed. The reader software will set the default margins and first line paragraph indentations. As notjohn says, DON'T embed spaces or use the tab key for indentation if you want your output to look proper. If you know html, and intend to tweak the code after Amazon sets it up, I've found the blockquote tag to be effective for special purposes, but use it very sparingly.

Re: Indentations and Margins?

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:10:00 +0000

I think the most important thing is to use Style / Paragraph to set the indents, rather than the tab key or (worse) spacebar. But I work in html, where [b]

[/b] is all that's really required. Apparently the DTP has its own idea of what's an appropriate paragraph indent.

Re: Some newbie questions - ISBN, Copyrights, images

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:05:00 +0000

Just a couple of notes for future reference: When you use Word to save a Word doc as an HTML doc, it creates a linked folder containing any images in the document. Because Word and Windows are both MS products, if you're doing it on a Windows PC, somewhere deep in the system the HTML file and the folder are linked. Move one, the other goes with it. As you discovered, though, if you open and then save the HTML file with anything else (i.e. with anything other than MS Word), the link is broken. I usually see a warning message when I go to save the file from a text editor or whatever I'm using, telling me that the link to the folder will be broken. However, you can, if you want to, simply ZIP the HTML file plus the folder containing the images into a single ZIP file, exactly as they are (i.e. with the image files still inside that linked folder), and DTP will process it quite happily. I did that with the second book I put through the system here, and it worked perfectly well. - Donna

Re: Some newbie questions - ISBN, Copyrights, images

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:30:31 +0000

Hmm. I just needed to click on NEXT and it was done in a couple seconds. I was waiting for nothing. I thought "next" meant the next file I wanted to unzip. Dumb dumb dumb. But, now I know how to zip and unzip. The unzipped file looks fine. The only remaining task is to add the new Introduction and a few new comments at the end of certain chapters and I'll be all set to upload. I sent Bowker an email about the ISBN code. If I can add it after I've uploaded, then that's that last of the problems. Thanks everyone. Ed