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So for the last year, I've been experimenting with ebooks, putting out one original novel (THE WOODS), two backlist novels (THE BONES OF GOD and CRYSTAL MEMORY), and two short story collections (A TAPESTRY OF TWELVE TALES and A RAIN OF PEBBLES). Thus far, the experiment is pretty much a dud.
In every case, the ebooks put out by my regular publisher (DAW -- with the Cloudmages Trilogy and the Nessantico Cycle) have enormously outsold the ebooks I've put out on my own. So have the books I've re-released through Phoenix Pick (Arc Manor Books): DARK WATER'S EMBRACE, SPEAKING STONE, THE SHAPE OF SILENCE. And hey, with DAW and Phoenix Pick, there's an actual print book as well, which I have to admit I still prefer to ephemeral and insubstantial bytes on an electronic device. The books I've put out on my own earn me a significantly larger percentage of the sales, admittedly… but the sales have been, well, dismal.
Yeah, I know several of my peers talk about the three (and sometimes four) figure income they're pulling in each month from backlist ebook sales. I'm glad they're doing so well. My monthly sales will about buy me lunch at Wendy's one day a week. They're not about to pay my utility bill or our mortgage.
Maybe that's my own fault. Maybe I don't have a good grasp of the marketing end of things. Maybe the covers just suck so badly that potential readers push the "back" button frantically to get away from the page before their eyes melt. Maybe I'm not being patient enough. Maybe I just don't have enough of a following. Maybe I should be all over Facebook and Twitter and LJ, doing guest posts on every friend's blog and metaphorically waving my books in front of people and shouting "Buy my book! Buy my book!"
Maybe.
I'll admit that marketing excites me not at all. I'll admit that all I want to do is write the next book and the one after that, and leave the marketing and publicity part mostly in someone else's hands. In competent hands. Maybe that's stupid on my part -- but it's me.
So maybe the reason I'm seeing so few sales on Amazon, B&N, iBooks, Kobo, and other outlets is mostly my own fault. But I don't have the time, energy, money, or inclination to do much more than I'm doing on the marketing end. So…
News will follow later when contracts are signed, but for now I think that I'm going out of the self-publishing business unless things take a dramatic turn for the better. Hey -- feel free to make a liar out of me and have a few hundred sales of those books in the first paragraph move this month and the next. But right now, I'm feeling like a dinosaur right after the comet hit...
In every case, the ebooks put out by my regular publisher (DAW -- with the Cloudmages Trilogy and the Nessantico Cycle) have enormously outsold the ebooks I've put out on my own. So have the books I've re-released through Phoenix Pick (Arc Manor Books): DARK WATER'S EMBRACE, SPEAKING STONE, THE SHAPE OF SILENCE. And hey, with DAW and Phoenix Pick, there's an actual print book as well, which I have to admit I still prefer to ephemeral and insubstantial bytes on an electronic device. The books I've put out on my own earn me a significantly larger percentage of the sales, admittedly… but the sales have been, well, dismal.
Yeah, I know several of my peers talk about the three (and sometimes four) figure income they're pulling in each month from backlist ebook sales. I'm glad they're doing so well. My monthly sales will about buy me lunch at Wendy's one day a week. They're not about to pay my utility bill or our mortgage.
Maybe that's my own fault. Maybe I don't have a good grasp of the marketing end of things. Maybe the covers just suck so badly that potential readers push the "back" button frantically to get away from the page before their eyes melt. Maybe I'm not being patient enough. Maybe I just don't have enough of a following. Maybe I should be all over Facebook and Twitter and LJ, doing guest posts on every friend's blog and metaphorically waving my books in front of people and shouting "Buy my book! Buy my book!"
Maybe.
I'll admit that marketing excites me not at all. I'll admit that all I want to do is write the next book and the one after that, and leave the marketing and publicity part mostly in someone else's hands. In competent hands. Maybe that's stupid on my part -- but it's me.
So maybe the reason I'm seeing so few sales on Amazon, B&N, iBooks, Kobo, and other outlets is mostly my own fault. But I don't have the time, energy, money, or inclination to do much more than I'm doing on the marketing end. So…
News will follow later when contracts are signed, but for now I think that I'm going out of the self-publishing business unless things take a dramatic turn for the better. Hey -- feel free to make a liar out of me and have a few hundred sales of those books in the first paragraph move this month and the next. But right now, I'm feeling like a dinosaur right after the comet hit...
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From:
no subject
The comet is still coming down. Digital content is not going away. Whatever you put up is working for you and your future.
From:
no subject
Deciding how to invest in the future is exactly the issue, and for me, I don't feel that being the publisher, editor, publicist, and marketing department as well as writer is in my best interest. I work a full-time job. I have a finite (and too few) number of hours in which to write -- and my writing income is a substantial portion of our annual household budget. I'd rather be producing new work in those hours, instead of dealing with the 'peripheral' issues of publishing, none of which really play to my strengths.
Add to that the fact that I'm not seeing the vaunted "long tail of digital" in the backlist books I've self-published -- they're not selling 'slow but steady,' which would be okay. Rather, I'm seeing decent sales in the first few months, then they drop rapidly off to almost nothing -- whereas I'm selling far more books (and creating a much better income for myself) via the big traditional publisher and small press route.
So it seems to me that the best investment for my future is to continue along that path -- and to concentrate on producing new work.
No, digital content's not going away, I entirely agree. But for the moment, I want someone else to handle that part of the business for me who knows what they're doing.