Comments on: The Business Rusch: Content is King

By: Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Kristine Kathryn Rusch — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 18:56:30 +0000

I haven’t looked it all up yet, Stuart, because I’m in the same boat on some books. Anyone? Solutions for Stuart?

By: Stuart

Stuart — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 15:07:36 +0000

All these distribution platforms, it is very daunting! Smashwords looks like a solution, letting you get just about everywhere dealing with just them and Amazon. Unfortunately, for one of the items I’ll be putting up shortly I don’t have US distribution rights. Are there alternatives to Smashwords that don’t require world wide distribution rights, or am I stuck dealing individually with the non-US distributors?

By: Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Kristine Kathryn Rusch — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 03:59:00 +0000

Why not do both the short stories as standalones and the collection? Why is it either/or? And check out Dean’s post on pricing: http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=7891

By: Dave Bara

Dave Bara — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:33:34 +0000

So Kris, I just had my first book published by a small press, and it’s chugging along in sales, but I want to increase my online footprint. One of the ways I was thinking about doing it is putting up some of my published and unpublished short fiction. I guess the question I have is whether it would be better to put up individual stories (at .99c or whatever) or put out a collection of say 40k to 50k words. What’s your take?

By: DG Sandru

DG Sandru — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 19:48:17 +0000

How true! For so long we took it for granted that the medium (paper book) which disseminates the content is more important than the content. Now the cost for the medium (eBook) is zero. The content, which matters, finally gets paid fairly.

By: Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Kristine Kathryn Rusch — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 19:18:40 +0000

Edward, as a person who spent a goodly portion of her career running a publishing company that specialized in limited editions–which your friend is what did–let me tell you this: You can do all of it. The limited $600 edition must be special–artwork, signed, extra material, leather-bound, whatever. And it must be the first edition. After that, no one (not even the collectors) care if you do a trade edition, an ebook and an audio book, etc. Those are latter editions which collectors and people who want things Right Now don’t care about. So you can do it all. It’s not exclusive. And frankly, if your friend did it that way, he left a lot of money–and readers–on the table.

By: Edward M. Grant

Edward M. Grant — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 18:49:19 +0000

Only a Big Name Author can get people to pony up $600 a copy for limited editions.

I think it’s a safe bet that you’ve never heard of the author in question (if you had, you’d probably know exactly the book I’m talking about). In fact, he’s such a niche author I doubt anyone else reading this blog has ever heard of him.

What he has is a unique book that his audience wants and are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for. And that means he can make a lot more money selling from his web site than through book stores (print or digital).

I agree with Kris that the best answer is usually to sell through as many outlets as possible, and certainly not to be exclusive to an outlet like Amazon that you don’t control. I was just pointing out that it’s not always the best answer.

BTW, seems I got the numbers wrong originally and he actually sold 3,500 at that price, not 500. So make that $2 million, not $300k.

By: Debbi

Debbi — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 21:53:34 +0000

There’s also the option of using Kickstarter or Indiegogo to create and distribute your work.

I’m doing that now: http://igg.me/p/193358?a=964767

Best,
Debbi

By: Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Kristine Kathryn Rusch — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 19:15:21 +0000

Thank you, Russell. I appreciate all of the support, as well as where you found the piece from. Good luck with your work as well.

By: Russell Bittner

Russell Bittner — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 09:19:14 +0000

P. S. I found your article and your Website thanks to The Passive Guy at a Website called “The Passive Voice” (http://mail.aol.com/37001-111/aol-6/en-us/Suite.aspx).