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Published novel on Kindle - readers and authors - how do people find your book
Hello to all who may read this. I'd be honored to receive your feedback or comments for me or others who may post here.
My name is Joseph Komen. I've just published my first full-length hard science fiction novel in Kindle format (I haven't gone through the process and expense of printing yet - all please feel free to leave comments regarding that).
Here is a description of my book:
Ships are sent from Earth to the seven nearest stars. Those ships sent to the five nearest stars are never heard from. Everyone who saw the departure dies. Over 200 years later, a great scientist, Tomoyuki Sasaki, receives an image sent from the ship sent to the Lalande star; one of them had made it. The greatest nation on Earth is in decline and the president feels the impending doom of his civilization. While in despair, the president hears of an enticing scientific breakthrough regarding a new discovery called Quantum Expansion from the world’s preeminent physicist, Dr. Long. He believes that their singular hope is to exploit the capabilities of their new technology and prevent his country's demise. Dr. Tomoyuki Sasaki who gave up his dream of traveling into the void to please his wife is called upon to go. He is to prepare a new world away from Earth where the president can maintain his nation’s political vitality. It is the confluence of these two immense projects that the president attempts to recover lost supremacy. However, something goes wrong and Tomoyuki attempts to save the world and to see his broken wife whom he had abandoned.
I hope everyone considers buying my book...but aside from that, I'd like this to be a discussion regarding readers finding books and the desicions they go through in purchasing a book and authors who want to satisfy the needs of readers.
Thank you in advance.
My name is Joseph Komen. I've just published my first full-length hard science fiction novel in Kindle format (I haven't gone through the process and expense of printing yet - all please feel free to leave comments regarding that).
Here is a description of my book:
Ships are sent from Earth to the seven nearest stars. Those ships sent to the five nearest stars are never heard from. Everyone who saw the departure dies. Over 200 years later, a great scientist, Tomoyuki Sasaki, receives an image sent from the ship sent to the Lalande star; one of them had made it. The greatest nation on Earth is in decline and the president feels the impending doom of his civilization. While in despair, the president hears of an enticing scientific breakthrough regarding a new discovery called Quantum Expansion from the world’s preeminent physicist, Dr. Long. He believes that their singular hope is to exploit the capabilities of their new technology and prevent his country's demise. Dr. Tomoyuki Sasaki who gave up his dream of traveling into the void to please his wife is called upon to go. He is to prepare a new world away from Earth where the president can maintain his nation’s political vitality. It is the confluence of these two immense projects that the president attempts to recover lost supremacy. However, something goes wrong and Tomoyuki attempts to save the world and to see his broken wife whom he had abandoned.
I hope everyone considers buying my book...but aside from that, I'd like this to be a discussion regarding readers finding books and the desicions they go through in purchasing a book and authors who want to satisfy the needs of readers.
Thank you in advance.
Tags: author, buy, decision, fiction, find, publish, reader, science, to
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Kim Nunez on -
Hi, my name is Jackie. I'm the author of many books, but just a few are available on kindle. My friend set this membership up
for me and told me to log on and tell your group about myself.
I've uploaded my favorite character, Ruby Gordon, in one of her adventures. When I wrote the novel it wasn't politically correct and
I wasn't able to get a big NY publisher. It was published by a small press to good reviews including Publishers Weekly
Barely Maid is on kindle for $1.59 tell me what you think. I have additional books in this series that I can upload.
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Permalink Reply by Joseph Komen on -
How do your market your work? Do you als have it in print? Which sells best? Thank you.
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Permalink Reply by Joseph Komen on
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Thanks for the reply Michael. I think you can use the approach of basically giving your first away for free so that people will pay full price for sequels...it won't work if you only have 1 book (as for me). Several people are doing that (e.g., Red Mars for fre) which then entices people into buying the sequels. I didn't like Red Mars that much (think my book is much better) but the strategy seems to work at least in part.
I don't want to give away my book for free ... think it isn't fair and I know I won't continue to write if I can't earn enough to support my family. That being said, I know I have tried new and different authors to see how they write. Once I like one author's books, I'll read others. I find it hard though to find people who want to try mine. It is frustrating sometimes. I've only had 2 sales ($4.79 on Kindle) in a month. Pretty bad. But I know at least at this stage it isn't because people don't like my writing they just aren't trying my book (either can't find it or don't care enough from my free preview to read the rest of the book - but either way I've never heard any response).
I like your statement..See marketing is easy! Makes me laugh...easy to do something but how to get sales...?
I wish you muh success in your writing. If we can help each other as authors...that would be great. If I find anything useful for me that generates sales, I'll pass it on in this post.
Have a great day.
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Permalink Reply by Randy Benjamin on
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Hi Joseph,
I've got four books on the Kindle platform, and three of them are in paperback on Amazon as well. Sales vary between books. One of my books "How To Publish Anything on Amazon's Kindle" just passed the 1,000 copy mark in sales. I average about 2 to 1 Kindle over paperback. This title has been online since August of 2008 but most of the sales have come in the last 7 months. Actually, I've had my best sale recently. December 51 books, and 55 so far in January with 8 days remaining.
I started doing some promotion Jan 1 of 2010. Until then, I'd done ZERO...ZIP! I'm doing an article writing campaign submitting articles to article websites in order to drive some traffic to my website. This seems to be helping. I've increased traffic by about 60%.
Last night I uploaded another e-book, "How To Transfer Cassettes To CD" to Smashwords. It was pretty easy. Smashwords distributes to the other e-book readers and retailers. The Kindle is great, but it only part of the e-book market. Sony, Barnes and Nobel (Nook), the Iphone, Blackbarry, PDF, Epub, etc., are also potential sales. I'd say if you're marketing on the Kindle, you should investigate these markets as well. Like Kindle, it's free to go with them. They don't take any of your rights only a percentage (15%) off the top of what they sell as the distributor. You'll also have a percentage payout from the retailer. But it's money you wouldn't have received anyway if you only distribute through the Kindle format. http://smashwords.com is their website. Check them out.
Good luck on your novel. I've been very happy with Amazon. Check out Createspace for your paperback book. The only cost to get into print is $39 for the 'Pro' package. All of last year they were waving that cost, but the economy must have caught up with them because it's back in force again. Still, $39 is a pretty inexpensive way to get paperbacks distributed on Amazon.
Randy
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Permalink Reply by Joseph Komen on
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Dear Randy,
Thank you for your comments. I appreciate them. How do your sales of Kindle books versus sales at smashwords compare for the same novel/book? Also, do you know an approximate for how to calculate how much you would make? For example, if you set retail price at $5 at smashwords how do the prices approximately work?
Is it by way of example something like this: $5 retail; smahwords distribute for $2 and you get $1.70 from that?
Thanks foreverything and I hope all is going well for you. Sincerely, Joseph
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Joseph,
I just put my first book on Smashwords a few days ago. I'm going to put two more on in the next few days... Smashwords takes 15% off of the top. Then you have to deduct whatever the retailer takes on top of that. Using your $5 example...Smashwords would take 75 cents of the $5. Now, lets say the retailer takes 50% (These prices are using the retail price of the e-book.) That would be $2.50. So on a $5 book, you'd be giving up $2.50 + .75 = $3.25. Your profit would be $1.75 per book.
Actually, this is exactly what Amazon pays you for a Kindle e-book. You get 35% and they take 65%. But this percentage won't be the same with every retailer. I don't know what Barnes & Nobel are taking? They have the 'nook' e-book reader, but I'm assuming that they will also be selling e-books for other readers too....There are dozens of retailers that Smashwords will be working with.
I plan on working with other e-book retailers too. As long as I retain all of my publishing and author's rights, I don't see why it wouldn't be advantages to work with as many people as possible. That's especially true in foreign markets. Amazon is supposedly opening up these markets for Kindle sales, but I checked and none of my books are available in either Kindle or paper back formats on any of their world markets. Hopefully, that will change.
It looks like Epub is going to be the e-book standard. Amazon probably won't go along with this as long as they can keep their sales edge. But I'd guess the other e-book publishers will standardize the format soon. There's at least five or six formats out right now. That's really a pain in the butt for publishers. DRM (digital rights management) also needs to be worked out. I think many of the music distributors have done away with it.
I've been self publishing for the last twelve years. I had a syndicated newspaper column (23 newspapers) that I could sell through for my first three books so I had a built in market. I dropped the column in 2008 in order to write novels and music full time. Things have really gotten interesting since POD and e-books have caught on. For once, the little guy can play with the big boys. I just wish I was about 20 years younger!
Randy
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