Real Space promotions for e-books

Hello, Shara,

One thing that occurs to me is to publish in POD print as well as on line. Although e-books are growing very fast as a percentage of the book market and will, I'm sure, one day overtake print books by a huge margin, at this point in the game print book sales still exceed those of e-books. As there are print-book POD outlets that will publish your work for free, there is really no reason I can see not to do both. And of course you could do book signings with a printed version.

A good place to do print books IMO is Wordclay: http://www.wordclay.com/. Their system is a little easier to use than Lulu, and there's no pressure from them. When I initially marketed my ebook to my social network, there were quite a few people who expressed a preference for the printed version, even though it was almost three times the price, so I find it's a good thing to do.

Wordclay's basic service is free. For that you get a printed version of your book that people can order from their web site, on which you earn royalties that you set yourself (which affects the price of the book). They have other services that cost money. Some of those IMO push the whole thing into the category of subsidy or vanity publishing, boo hiss, but a few of them, like the professional editing and proofreading or cover design, might be worth looking at if you don't have that taken care of already. (Although honestly you should.) One thing that I am seriously thinking about purchasing is their basic marketing service which puts the book on premium outlets such as Amazon and B&N for $99 (one-time fee). I may or may not do that. So far I haven't paid them anything, and you don't have to.

If the book is available only as an ebook, IMHO meatspace promotion is almost always very inefficient. Most people have only a foggy notion of what an ebook is and don;t want to buy one, even now. Exceptions might be conventions devoted to epublishing, internet tech and other groups more likely to be ebook readers.

Make sure your ePublisher are alright with you selling printed versions of your book. They've put time and money into editting, formating, and the cover too - you may find, for example, that you need to source your own cover if you're going to print it yourself, as your pulisher will have bought only a limited set of rights. Also, many ePublishers now have a print aspect - if a book sells well or is over a certain number of words they may wish to offer it in print at some point too. A couple of books for your own shelf and your darling mother's probably wouldn't bother anyone, but if you're getting into serious promotion you don't want to undercut your own publisher.

Assuming that you are with a publisher that also provides POD copies, you can attend various conventions/meetings/re-enactments that apply to your genre and have the books on hand.

Kerry

Shara,

I would think promoting your ebook in 'real space' would be difficult. People who buy tangible books often are not interested in ebooks. Or they are not computer-savvy enough to know how to even buy/download an ebook. Self-publishing as mentioned in another post might be something to think about.

BTW, in addition to being a writer, I've been an online business owner for several years. I currently own and operate six websites. Recently, I started thinking about putting up a website that would help ebook and self-published authors promote their books. It would include author interviews, as well as promotional copy about the books (I used to be a website copywriter). Maybe the author interview would help meet your 'fantasy' about signings. ;-)

Anyway, if/when my new website comes to fruition, I plan to let forum members know.

Nan

Some e-books are copy protected, which means you may not be able to download a copy onto a cd. You need to check with your publisher. The reason for this is very simple, to try and prevent pirating...

You have the print rights to your manuscript, not the edited, formatted book and its cover. So be careful. Also if you exploit the print rights the publisher may then decide not to, even if sales would otherwise warrant it. Before printing any copies I would suggest clearing it with your editor.

Hi, I wonder what happens with the copyrights for an epublished book. What if it's a shorter work and can be placed in a print anthology? When selling print rights, are anthology rights included there? I get confused with these legal things.

Thanks!

If in doubt, read your contract and ask your publisher. If it is short, there's a good chance your ePub wouldn't want to print it on its own (there's a reason novellas aren't popular with print publishers), but they may not be too happy about it appearing somewhere else that could impact on their sales. After all, if a person buys the anthology, why would they then buy one of the works in it again?

Right, nkkingston, that could be a factor. I'm just thinking about how to expand distribution of the print version since the epub I'm eying sells the print version online as well, and we're not from the same country anyway so perhaps my plan will work (actually I will need to check this point again, I'll wait till the publisher gets back).