Publishing your book online

Publishing your self.

This is a very exciting time to be a writer. Imagine having your own personal book store where hundreds of thousands of people a year pop in to browse. And Imagine this store costs only a few hundred dollars a year to operate. Furthermore, imagine that you get 100 percent of the profits from any sales made in that store. A website is just such a store..

Old School Publishing

In the old days; about five years ago, the writing world, the real world, was run by publishers and big chain book stores. brick and mortar businesses that had a stranglehold on distribution. This business model ran on the backs of writers. The writer who did 95 percent of the work on any particular book in this model received 5 percent of the money. The folks that were responsible for packaging, distribution and marketing received up to 95 percent of the gross earnings for a book, and left 5 percent for the writers. In other words the guys and gals that actually wrote these books received anywhere from 5 to 7.5 percent of the sticker price. The publishers would pay writers 10-15 percent of net income. As in movies, net income is a tricky business. So while your hard cover epic might sell for 40 dollars, you have to minus about 50 percent of that for expenses and so the writer would get 10-15 percent of 20 dollars or two - three dollars per book. And this book would have a shelf life of 90 days. After 90 days the books were returned to the publisher for a full credit. One book retailer; Indigo tried to shrink the window for books on sale at their stores to 45 days because of pressure from online publishers. They have since delayed the implementation.of that policy.

It is reasonable to expect that a publisher and a book retailer would pick winners and losers. That with the best of intentions and with only so much space and dollars to promote their inventory, they would throw their weight behind a calculated few projects. They don't have imaginary money to promote each book equally. They must make choices, and their choices better be right or else they will go bankrupt, especially considering the online book phenomenon. The problem with selling books in a real world environment is the shelf space they take up. The stores can't leave books on their shelves forever. There are always new books coming out and so as we all know, the stores will eventually offer deep discounts to get rid of inventory, to get what they can from the books. Time in the bargain bin seriously affects the royalty rate.

It is apparent that the old model is collapsing. Many long time publishers and book stores have gone out of business and the ones that are surviving are doing so by building an online presence.

Your own publishing website

What does that mean for writers? It depends. It depends on what advantage the writer takes of this new web anarchy. It depends on how much time he or she is willing to invest in his or her own future. The web offers store space for a minimal capital investment, minimal rent, access to cheap far-reaching advertising, no inventory and a selection of free marketing tools.

Why not just do everything yourself? If you remove talent from the equation, the only thing stopping a writer from making money from publishing on Amazon or their own website or blog is promotion and marketing.

A writer can self publish by creating an ebook or a downloadable pdf book to be sold from their website. In this case the writer would retain 100 percent of the revenue

Simple math would suggest that you need only sell one book on your website to equal 20 from a publisher to make the same amount of money. To compete, you can also lower your prices online because there is no overhead.

When a publisher is responsible for a large number of books, they have to push the books they think will be winners in the market place. They make decisions based on economics, on what is best for them, as do the retailers. That is the way it is supposed to work, That is their business model. That is how they stay in business.

They can't spend an equal amount of time and money pushing a book that does not immediately take off, that has a cooler initial reception, that has an unknown author. That book will soon be off the shelves, to make room for the next best thing.

But an individual writer is able to devote considerably more time to promotion of their own work. They can continually market their work. While in the old-school model most books get turned out to pasture in second hand stores, to be found by only the most tenacious of book-hounds, writers with the web at their beck and call can make money for years off their work. Writers should promote their own works because they care about them. They can promote them. They have the time. They know the story. They never have to go out of print.

They care what happens to their book.

Writers in the digital age have a wonderful opportunity to get their voice out there like never before and to promote their work.

Learning html

It is very much worth a writer's time to learn html. If you are a writer and you learn html you can define your own destiny on the web. You won't be at the mercy of 'experts' because you will be one. You won't have to overpay for your presence on the web. In 6 months you can be an expert at building websites from scratch. This gives you control. While writers have been at the short end of the stick from publisher,s there is no need to continue the pain by surrendering your ability to market and sell your product by not learning the ropes of how to build your own online store.

And then there is Amazon

There are sites like Amazon where a writer can self publish his work and get 70 percent of the revenue. Amazon will provide the tools for you to make an e book as well as a link to your book.

Anyone can download the Kindle Generator and viewer and write a book for Amazon

Your job as it would be as with any brick and mortar publishing company would be to promote it.

Get bloggers to review your book.

There is not as big a difference between good and bad writers as there is between read and unread writers.

As an independent writer you need to promote yourself, and what better way to that then by doing what you do best; write. Promote your selling space, be it blog or website with articles, press releases, facebook pages, Linked In, Twitter and all the rest of the web properties out there at your disposal. Update your blog or website with samples of your writing, get your word out there. And keep doing it. Persistence does pay off.

You have a growing market out there.

In Conclusion

In the old publishing model, the bricks and mortar model, if a writer did get published he or she would get a small slice of real world, on-the-shelf earnings of 5-7.5 percent. After three months, the writer's books would disappear from the shelves. The writer had little or no control over his or her own work.

Now with the digital revolution online, writers have a variety of platforms with which to get their work out there. They can self-publish from a blog or website and retain 100 per cent of the earnings or they can have Amazon publish their work for seventy per cent of the cut. Plus an online book can stay in print for a very long time guaranteeing continued earnings.

The marketing tools available to promote your online book are vast, far-reaching and usually free

If you have a blog or website, learn the tricks of the trade for SEO, about pulling traffic and cash to your site.

There is tons of information out there. Free information. But more on that later.