Publishing is a $35 billion
industry. Up until just a few years ago, that meant almost exclusively books,
magazines, newspapers, and other small items such as brochures and business
cards. Enter the eBook, or downloadable electronic book. Although early
versions of the eBook have been around since the 1970 s, it wasn t until late
in 2007 that Amazon s eBook Reader, the Kindle, was released, and not until
2009 that dedicated reading hardware was produced. According to the Association
of American Publishers, eBook sales rose 176.6% to $169.5 million in 2009. Another
report, this one conducted by Forrester Research, an independent research
company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders
in business and technology,
predicts that eBook sales will cross the $1 billion
line in 2011.
When I first realized that eBook
Readers were already starting to render the paperback book obsolete, I became
distraught. My novel was always meant to be a paperback; a handy little book
that could easily fit in a backpack or a purse. I knew the printing industry
was already getting hit hard but I figured the unique tactile act of reading a
paperback book still had a good decade left in it. I don t believe that
anymore. Of course, there will be die-hard paperback fans for many years to
come, but eBook Readers are already starting to mimic the experience of having
an actual book in your hands. Finding a publisher who is willing to invest
their time and money to print thousands of copies of a book written by an
unknown author is extremely difficult, to say the least. However, with services
such as Amazon.com and Smashwords.com, an unknown author can publish a
completed novel, poetry manuscript, or collection of short stories and make it
available for sale to basically anyone with internet access in a single day. I
did finish my novel and published it to Amazon.com s Kindle platform and
Smashwords.com for sale at $9.99. It s very exciting to see copies of my eBook
being bought by people who somehow found my novel among the millions of titles
already available through a number of online publishers. So if you ve written
your memoirs, or have a book length manuscript, or even a collection of short
stories or poetry, I highly recommend that you put them up for sale at
Amazon.com s Kindle Store and Smashwords.com. Remember, it s totally free. Simply
go to www.Amazon.com and find the
Self-publish with Us link at the
bottom of the page. Then simply click the
Get Started link in the Kindle
Books section of that page. According to the research I ve done, it s wise not
to price your book too low or potential customers will get the impression that
it s of lesser value than the higher priced options available in the same
category. I decided that $9.99 was a reasonable price for my book since it
consisted of 36 chapters containing nearly 120,000 words- the length of a
decent paperback. $9.99 may seem high for a paperback-length book but there are
thousands of eBook titles selling successfully in the $20-$30 range. Granted,
many of those higher priced titles are best selling books that have been
available to the general public for decades in print form. Make sure that your
manuscript starts out strong because one of the services offered by eBook publishers
is a free sample of your work, usually the first 20%. I invite all the readers
of this article to sample the first few chapters of my science fiction
novel Rise of The Kek and my poetry manuscript The Universe Can Never Be Complete for free. Simply search for either title at
Amazon.com or Smashwords.com.
