Sunday, February 15, 2015

All Aboard the Book Launch Train!

My first book, Apocalypse Idaho, is now available for pre-order!

The publishers and agents were all lining up to get their hands on this one, but I was all like, please, I am on the self-publishing-book-launch-train, not the traditional-publishing-book-launch-train!




One of the biggest advantages in the world of self-publishing is that I can price my books significantly cheaper than the publisher would, and I still get a bigger percentage of books sold. Here is what I get in case you are curious.
  • Smashwords - 80%
  • Kindle - 70% but it can get complicated if bought from different countries
  • Apple, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, etc. - 60% (through smashwords)
  • Paperback - about $1 (of $11.99) but it's complicated

I am going to make some mad stacks!!!



Seriously though. I will probably actually lose money.

I assumed the process of making an ebook would be easy for someone technical, and from some aspects it is, but making formats so that they look correct sucks. It is what I imagine it would be to get websites looking right if your only tools were frontpage or dreamweaver. The problem is that you generally have to upload one format where it is transferred to other formats by magic, and then devices consume them with different clients. Smashwords, for example, requires you to upload a Word .doc in order to "meat grind" into something consumable. I know how messy .doc is. I work at Microsoft.

It would be better if you could modify things directly, maybe if all devices supported epub in a standard way. But they don't, and you can't.

Anyway, I am still figuring out what a writer's blog does. I guess this?

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