Publishing Ebook How to: "I did it all by myself"

Now for the second instalment of creating your very own ebook. Last post I described what places you should plan on posting you book(s) on. Now I'm going to go into further details on how to do it.

If you have decided to go the route that is harder but makes you more money than doing it by yourself is the way to go.  Though you must keep in mind that some sites only allow aggregators to publish their books (ex Smashwords), like the Sony store.  If you’re American you’re in luck, you can publish (if you have the patience and requirements) at the iBookstore, Amazon.com is A LOT easier, and you can use PubIt! to publish on Barnes and Nobel. 

There is only one way to not take a loss and that is to have customers purchase your ebook off your webpage.  Quite a few people don’t have their own website and even less know how to throw a shopping cart on it.  I have my own webpage, but I don’t see the sense in making a shopping cart.  You might be asking yourself, why wouldn’t you want to make a 100% profit? My answer: Nobody knows who I am. why would they go to my site and buy me ebook? 

I think having your own site and own checkout is a great idea, but if you’re not established I don’t see it generating much income. If you’ve released a few ebooks and they are doing well then I would definitely consider this option and promote your website to your readers. Ex, put your website at the end of your ebooks, develop a fan page on facebook and tell your readers where to find your ebooks.

Now you have to decide where you want to release your ebook, the best thing to do is to release it on as many sites as possible. Please see my previous post for all the sites you can release it on.

Some tips:

Release your ebook for .99 cents (I know who wants all their hard work to get them less than a dollar, I sure don’t!) BUT people are much more likely to give an author they never heard of a chance for .99 cents.  Don’t fret though, you could set a goal for yourself like, if I sell 2,500 books I’m going to start selling my ebook at $1.99, and if your sales don’t drop after the price change you might say to yourself, if I sell 10,000 I’m going to change it to $2.99, etc, etc.  I wouldn’t go any higher than $3/4.99.

An Important thing to remember is once you start selling your ebooks don’t hike it up right away, you could deter people and then get less reviews than you want.  I am a strong believer in reviews if I see a book released with 300 reviews compared to one with 3 I am more likely to look at the 300 reviewed one, aren’t you?  SOMEONE out of those 300 is going to have a well detailed opinion, and we humans are drawn by popularity. We would trust a 4 star book with 300 reviews than a 5 star book with 3 reviews?

The more popular your book is the more popular it will become, period.  So don’t cut your books growth short too soon by hiking up the price to make a few extra dollars.

Option two (if you didn’t like the last option you’ll like this one even less) release your ebook for free and when it gets popular (set a goal for this two like maybe 10 reviews or 1,000 downloads or maybe just free for the first 2-4 weeks) start selling your ebook.  If you peeps have learned anything from my site, if it’s free I give it a go!

Next Wednesday: I'll be talking about converting you .doc to other files.