I’ve struggled with online promo of the 3 books I have available. I’ve used KDP Select to no greater sales results. I wanted to know why having my book available in paperback and on sites besides Amazon was the best way to publish, thanks to your reply comment I now know.

It’s finally clicked in my brain! Thank you a million times! You don’t know how confused I’ve been every day for the past year.

Amazon, B&N, Diesel, iTunes, Kobo, Smashwords, Sony . . . got links to all of them for each book or short story.

(Except for the newest ones that are waiting for Smashwords to distribute.)

Once the POD editions go live (in December, I hope), I’ll track down and post those links as well.

Right now . . . back to writing!

I remember spending years trying to track down a series that had been published in the late 70′s (several years before I was born). I called every used book store in 5 states trying to track it down, tried to special order it, had relatives combing book stores in 3 more states, asked on a listserve to see if anybody had it and was willing to sell it to me. A year later, I got an anonymous email with a Word copy of each book in the series out of the blue and I was dancing with joy. The series was re-released about 2 years ago, with the ebooks costing $15 each. 15 years ago, I would have paid that without thinking twice.

I don’t ever want someone to have to go through all that work just to read one of my stories. It’s one of the reasons I’ve been trying to talk some of my fellow writers out of going exclusive to one platform.

These days I see that more and more of some of my longtime favorite writers are getting their rights back and have started publishing their backlist. In one case I had the German translation of the first book and the three following books in English. Once the series became available as an ebook I bought the whole series again just so that I had a) the first book finally in English and the whole series in a nice ebook-format. And now I can once again happily recommend that series to my friends because after decades it’s finally available again.

For me as a reader that’s a really, really good thing. And I have spend days hunting after one book or finding someone willing to ship it to Germany at a resonable price.

Unfortuntely not all writers are there yet so that there are still a few cases where I have to decide if I’m going to buy a used copy or not.

I also remember times when used copies of specific books were sold for $300 or $400. Not special editions, normal paperbacks. And no I didn’t sell my editions . Maybe I should have but I liked rereading them too much to part with them.

I know a lot of heavy readers who wait until ALL the books are out in a series before they start reading. Mostly, it’s because they don’t like waiting a year between each book, and want to be able to read the next one right away. If the series doesn’t get finished, they won’t read it at all.

It’s a strategy to reduce frustration. And another reason why sales go up as additional books come out.

An eARC is an Advance Reader Copy…an unproofed manuscript … well in advance

These cost far more than the finished e-book but folks buy them. Then later those same folks will purchase the proofed e-book.

After reading Mark Coker’s email blast yesterday, I’m tempted to go back to five bucks with the first book three bucks, but I also think about what you and Dean say about underpricing. Maybe I’m just jumping the gun and need to sit tight. Perhaps my problem is what you (or was it Dean) said about having access to sales info on a regular basis. It’s so hard not to look!

I regularly get emails from readers telling me they loved my 100K book and read it on their iPhone! Because they were asking for the next book in the series, I decided to work on that next instead of other projects.

I have a newsletter, but subscription is small right now. Probably need to work on that. I need to write faster, too. Though your husband’s posts really help with that.

In the traditional world the life of the book was weeks or months and I think NY is discovering to their horror this isn’t the case anymore. This is why they are creating such onerous contracts now and trying to hold on to the licenses for such a long time.

Your comments about respect for the readers is important and many NY houses really don’t understand this one at all.

Thanks for another great post.

This isn’t limited to German publishers BTW. A few years ago, I met a woman who runs a website for French romance readers and she told me that the French publishers would publish series out of order or omit books altogether and tell her, when she contacted them about that, that she was unusual, because she was a “true fan” and that regular readers wouldn’t care. After all, romances were just disposable entertainment.