Who, in your estimation, are the top e-book publishers? Or is the general consensus to just publish yourself via Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords, etc?
E-publisher or self publish?
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For eBooks especially I'd say self publish. The amount of time you spend looking for a good distributer might be the same amount of time looking for a good publisher and in both situations if you find a good one, you get more royalty from the former. Plus eBooks have similar advantages that POD had in making self-publishing easier.
Ask yourself what the publisher is doing for you. If the work justifies the price, then go for it. If not, self-publish.
My general opinion from observation is that publishers do a better job of preparing and editing the ebook, but not as good at the marketing and promotion side as I think they should be able to. Naturally, this also varies by genre.
Jeff
My general opinion from observation is that publishers do a better job of preparing and editing the ebook, but not as good at the marketing and promotion side as I think they should be able to. Naturally, this also varies by genre.
Jeff
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The usual. If you can edit content, design covers, and promote yourself, most small e-publishers don't have much to offer. Most authors are not able to do those things, however, even if they think they can.
But some e-publishers, such as Carina, are associated with larger, high-visibilty print edition publishers and are better able to not only promote your e-book but to put it into print publication with an established imprint if e-book sales warrant doing so.
The industry changes so fast, however, that today's opinions are tomorrow's folklore.
But some e-publishers, such as Carina, are associated with larger, high-visibilty print edition publishers and are better able to not only promote your e-book but to put it into print publication with an established imprint if e-book sales warrant doing so.
The industry changes so fast, however, that today's opinions are tomorrow's folklore.
(bolding mine)
But the big question is - can they do it BETTER than you?
and what do you think you can do that they're missing?
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Hey Portable..I'm in the baby stages of looking to e-publish a middle-grade fantasy. Any words of wisdom?
E-publishers pay a smaller royalty than you'd get by self-publishing, and so far, I haven't seen anything that indicates going with an e-publisher results in greater sales to make the smaller royalty worthwhile.
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What reports have you seen with reliable sales numbers for either publishing option? I don't believe those data are available to the public.
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I'd pretty much decided to go thru Kindle but the formatting thing scares me. (Almost) everyone says its easy and don't pay someone to do it but where to start?
jkababy, even if you decide to go to Kindle exclusively, I advise you strongly to flit over to Smashwords and download the free style guide. It takes you step by step through the format process. Once you master that, it's much easier to handle the Kindle format (Amazon's guide isn't quite as instinctive as Mark's and seems to have more of a learning curve).
The next piece of advice is to approach your formatting step by step. Remember "SAVE AS" is your friend. You want to maintain a pristine MASTER that you can go back to, if you goof up. Don't rush the process, just work at your own pace.
The next piece of advice is to approach your formatting step by step. Remember "SAVE AS" is your friend. You want to maintain a pristine MASTER that you can go back to, if you goof up. Don't rush the process, just work at your own pace.
I haven't seen reported sales numbers, this is just anecdotal. People I know who have seen sales figures for some e-publishing platforms have not been impressed with the sales. Like some books from epublishers only selling a scant handful of copies.
The problem with e-publishers is that there don't seem to be any that become the go-to place for particular genres, so that people who think 'I want to read sci-fi' would go to a particular e-publisher and scan the listings there. Maybe Ellora's Cave for erotica, but other than that?
What EngineerTiger said. The Smashwords Style Guide. If you format your book so it will meet the Smashwords Guide, the same doc will work for Amazon.
For my mystery, I followed the Smashwords Style Guide - and it's really not complicated, a bit time consuming but nothing that you need to pay someone else to do. It uploaded at Smashwords with no problem.
So I took the same original document and uploaded it to Amazon - again, uploaded without a problem.
Be advised, though, to upload the original document to Amazon. Taking the Smashwords formatted-for-Kindle version over to Amazon is a no-no. Upload the Word doc to Amazon.
It's not hard.
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Okay, understood. You said:
But that's not all books from the e-publisher, I assume. Don't some of them do well? And, conversely, don't many self-e-published books bomb?
Of course - but the person I talked with said that the best sellers sold 'in the hundreds', which is what many a self-published author could say.
The problem (IMO) with e-publishers is that too many writers believe that the publisher is going to do everything for them, and all they have to do is write. Maybe the e-publishers are providing decent editing and formatting and cover art, but what I'm not seeing from them is marketing. And it's the marketing that's the biggest time suck.
So if a person has to do all their own marketing anyway in order to get the book noticed and bought, what does the e-publisher provide that's worth half or more of the royalties an author would get by self-publishing?
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Must be a small e-publisher. I know of at least one small press print publisher who tells potential authors to not get their expectations very high and to expect sales only in the hundreds.
Then let's take it one step further. Why bother to publish with Smashwords or Kindle and surrender their take? Why not release the e-book on your own website, do all your own promotion, and keep all the proceeds?
If the author is going to have to do self-promotion (blogs, facebooks, etc) - that would happen no matter who the publisher is and it is the author doing the work.
The publisher is going to put the ebook on Kindle, B&N, etc. The author has access to those same distribution chanels (unlike the trade/brick-n-mortar argument). Does the publisher have their own distribution channel for ereaders?
So, again, what marketing does the publisher bring to the mid-list author of an ebook other than their ISBN instead of a KDP ISBN?
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Typically they list their e-books on their own websites as well as upload them to KDP, B&N, etc.
That depends on the e-publisher. And you'd have to ask them individually. Such questions have come up on the BRBC forum in threads about specific publishers. If I was considering any kind of publisher, that's where I'd start doing research.
I think some e-publishers can get you reviewed and interviewed more easily than you can do it yourself if you don't know how. And they seem to have staff that takes care of coordinating all that, sending out eArcs, and so on.
Word of mouth has to be jump-started, and interviews with and reviews by popular bloggers can help you do that as long as you promote those events through your own channels.
You are, however, in charge of promoting yourself, and your name is what sells books. But that's a given with print publishers and e-publishers, trade or self.
At least in the romance genre, the answer is a very resounding YES. Ellora's Cave, Carina, and Siren-BookStrand are just a tiny representation of the epublishers that have their own distribution channels and are very good at it. They also do PoD for certain novels, have robust support for their authors and are considered the "go-to" sources for their genre.
I realize this doesn't apply to all genres, but the larger romance ePubs have a lot to offer.
I kinda sorta self-published my ebook (I went through the press that my dad set up to self-publish a book my mother wrote.) Mostly I did it just to see what the process was like in terms of formatting a manuscript and getting it set up on places like Kindle and iTunes. (Kindle is dead easy. iTunes is a little more . . . demanding.)
And the result? About five copies on the Kindle, last I looked. Maybe one copy on iTunes. I haven't looked in a while, because I didn't want to make myself crazy with it.
I pretty much suck at marketing. I'm not built that way and I don't expect I ever will be. I've made my peace with that. In the meantime, I'm working on a dirty book with the intent to sell it to the kind of publisher that will do the heavy lifting for me.
(And, hey, if you want to check out my little 99-cent weebook, there's a link in my sig. There, I marketed.)
And the result? About five copies on the Kindle, last I looked. Maybe one copy on iTunes. I haven't looked in a while, because I didn't want to make myself crazy with it.
I pretty much suck at marketing. I'm not built that way and I don't expect I ever will be. I've made my peace with that. In the meantime, I'm working on a dirty book with the intent to sell it to the kind of publisher that will do the heavy lifting for me.
(And, hey, if you want to check out my little 99-cent weebook, there's a link in my sig. There, I marketed.)