With e-book sales having gone up over the holidays, there have also been a couple of new articles on the rise of e-books and indie publishing in mainstream news outlets:
The venerable BBC has discovered the indie publishing phenomenon and devotes a news article to it. They mention John Locke and Amanda Hocking, though not successful British indie authors such as Stephen Leather or Saffina Desforges. And they still present traditional publishing as the better solution.
USA Today has an article about the post holiday e-book sales surge. The article is focused neither on trad nor indie writers, but on the readers’ perspective.
The Austrian public TV/radio station ORF has an article on indie publishing from a German language perspective and interviews two German indie writers, Johnny Haeusler of the popular Spreeblick blog and science fiction writer Markus Hammerschmitt.
Another thing that’s interesting about the ORF article is that it finally gives us e-book market share figures for the German language market that are more current than the 0.8 percent that have been bandied about for almost a year now. According to ORF, 1.4 million e-books were sold in Germany in the first half of 2011. The market share of fiction e-books in the German language market in 2011 is estimated to be 1.4 percent, while a market share of 6.3 percent is projected for 2015. So e-books are growing in German language countries, so not as rapidly as in the US and UK:
Send to Kindle
sending...
Pingback: Taste Hierarchies and Genre Talk | Cora Buhlert
Ola! Cora,
Thanks for that, I’ve written three books and I wish to go the route of publishing it myself. I was wondering if anyone out there can tell me the best way to do this how much it costs, where to get a designer for the cover and other steps I need to take to get my book published.
Also I reside in forth worth tx so if you know any good places in or around that area let me know. I also grew up in sacramento ca and if there is anyone in that area who knows any good places let me know because i have several friends out there trying to help me plus I go back there every couple of months.
P.S
Life is a ***** when your a struggling writer.
I also write film scripts so if your another writer looking for someone to talk to about how to write a film or sell one just hit me up…indie directors too.
Nice One!
Hi Sharlene. Glad you like the post.
If you’re considering self-publishing, you should read the blogs of Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Joe Konrath and David Gaughran (as well as his self-publishing guide Let’s Get Digital). Lots of great information there, which helped me a lot starting out. The Kindleboards forum is a great place to find information as well as formatters, editors, cover designers, etc…, should you need them
For e-books, set up a Kindle Direct Publishing account with Amazon (if you have an existing Amazon account, you can log in right away). Only you want to go Amazon exclusive, also set up an account at Barnes and Noble’s Pubit (since you’re American, they should accept you directly), Smashwords who distributes to a lot of vendors and perhaps smaller sites such as XinXii and OmniLit/AllRomance. The account set-up is free. As for editing, formatting and cover design, you can outsource that or do it yourself. Smashwords has a free formatting/style guide at their site. Another site I have found very helpful with regard to formatting is Guido Henkel’s e-book formatting guide. It’s quite daunting at first, but you quickly get the hang of it and it saves you money.
For print on demand, the go-to places are Createspace or Lightning Source. I don’t have any experience with them, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to find someone who does.
I’m in Germany, so I don’t know any publishing services, etc… in Fort Worth or Sacramento, sorry.
Anyway, I hope this help. Good luck with your books.