Using an app to get exposure

tricon7 said:

I've tried to find an agent for my novel for several years now. One was bogus, one never got anywhere, and I haven't had any luck this year in finding an agent. So I'm trying to think outside the box.

Does anyone try and get his book sold by using an app? Is this a possibility? If I could access a novel that sounded intruiging to me by paying $1.99 for it through an app-store, I think I would take the chance, and I wonder if the low price would encourage people to get it rather than paying a "regular" $12.99 physical book price.

Just a thought. I'm new to the electronic way of publishing.

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Making apps is expensive; there are probably off-the-shelf solutions but if you were going from scratch and can't code yourself, expect to pay four to five figures. Furthermore, the App Store is just about the worst method of selling books yet devised by humanity. It's as if, instead of a bookstore, you have a pit in the ground and every time someone releases a book it just gets tossed in there. Your casual browser will only see the top layer of books, soon to be covered over by the next day's releases.

I don't really recommend apps for novels unless they're enhanced in some sort of whizzy manner (e.g. the Papercut app that came out recently) which will catch Apple's attention and get them to promote it as a staff pick of some kind. Otherwise I fear your chances of getting the right kind of exposure this way are virtually nil.

Why wouldn't you just sell it as an ebook?

And meanwhile--write a new, and better book (to paraphrase AW's Uncle Jim).

veinglory said:

Why wouldn't you just sell it as an ebook?

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This was my thought also. If you were thinking of an electronic publishing solution, then why not have a look at Kindle or Smashwords?

www.smashwords.com

kdp.amazon.com

I'm on Kindle, Pubit, and Smashwords and the formatting isn't too painful after the first time. Dean Wesley Smith has some really good info about e-publishing here