I'm trying to figure out Google's ebook service, but having little luck at it. Anybody used them before?
Haven't bothered. Go with Smashwords and publish to the extended catalog. That'll cover all the important ones.
Just wanted to say I really admire everyone who has posted their books on Amazon/B&N. Once I finish the book I'm reading, I think I'll go through the thread and buy a few of them. I've written two myself, one of which I think people might even like, but haven't really had the courage to go for it. I guess I'm afraid that once you self-publish, the normal publishing industry would look at you as tainted goods. Any ideas on this?
Whether self-publishing will hurt you or not depends entirely on how well you do. I know someone that self-published and became very successful with a single novel. The New York Times covered it and she was contacted by agents and publishers without even having to go to them. She declined because she was making more money with her self-published book than she would've made with a traditional publisher. Her take home in December was something like $53,000 from books sold, mostly on amazon in ebook format.
Most indie authors don't see that kind of success, but if you sell say 5,000 or so books as a self-published author then you have some good leverage. Otherwise, if you do seek the traditional publishing route after self-publishing you may as well not mention it as it won't improve your chances any.
There's a lot of negatives to the traditional route, which is why indie authors are becoming more and more common. You have the long wait (up to as much as a year just to get a response sometimes), many publishers not willing to take risks (only publishing the same stuff that they know will sell, like vampires for example), and low rates for the author.
After everyone has taken their cut the author might only see pennies on every book sold with the traditional route. It's been like this for years now, and agents have changed drastically over the years. Most of the new ones all try to play editor and don't fight for their authors, so the author ends up screwed in the end. This, and the above reasons, is why I personally opted to not go that route in the end. I started to, but after making contacts in the industry, doing research, and seeing what things were really like I decided it wasn't worth it.
For example, here's a common trap that authors run into. Publisher A wants to give them $5,000 up front in an advance, however publisher #2 wants to give them $8,000 up front. The author sees that extra 3 grand and at first look it seems very obvious to go with.
However, the royalties offered by publisher #2 are significantly lower than publisher #1. The money that you, as the author, are paid up front by the publisher is basically an estimate on what they think the book will sell. Many authors go for the higher up front and then their royalties are so low they never make that $5,000 or $8,000 back in royalties. And so they never see a penny for their book after that.
It doesn't help that many new authors don't receive much backing from the publisher in the form of advertising. They'll publish the book and then just toss it out there. I've seen quite a few traditionally published authors sell as much or less than the typical indie author just because their publisher neglected to put out any advertising for their novel.
That's the reality of how things are in the market. There are, of course, exceptions to every rule, but that's the gist of it. At least with self-publishing I only need to give a small cut to Amazon and I keep the rest. The only difference between myself and a traditionally published author that's been given little to no backing by their publisher is the name of the publisher on the cover.
It's not easy doing everything yourself, and you really shouldn't expect success just because you put your book on Amazon. You have to plan ahead, put out early release copies, get reviews, and get people talking about your book before you put it out. Otherwise, it's going to drown in the sea of ebooks never to be seen again. Doesn't matter how good your book is if nobody knows about it.
So, there's some food for thought.
