Novels, Agents, and Making money with E-Publishing

Hi, fellow Hubbers,

I went ahead and published Born To Be Rich on Kindle and then I decided to see what the rest of you are saying about the Kindle system. Akk! As usual I did it all in a backward manner but it all turned out well. I’m not going to rehash all the information I found on HUB, but can tell you to search for “Kindle Publishing” and you will see everything you need to get it going.

One of the articles pointed out that the old system of submitting your work to agents and publishers is now an out-of-date system that has little going for it—particularly if you are a niche writer. I’m writing for the mainstream and ran up against a brick wall. I would still go with them because they have the marketing channels in place that pretty much guarantee some decent royalties. They work with substantial sums of money and can run your book through their tried-and-true channels and get your project onto the shelves of the booksellers.

In short, Kindle is a revolution that is steamrolling the competition as never before. Book chains suddenly cannot sell enough products to keep their doors open. For the writer, it is a blessing that opens the door directly to your readers. No agent can declare that they are kinda busy and your manuscript is not exactly what they were looking for. “Good luck with placing your project elsewhere.” Yeah— it was closed doors until Kindle. And the royalties with Kindle is 70%!

“Holy Moly, Batman, are we living in an alternate reality?”

Agents and publishers rake off most of it and leave you with somewhere around 15%. If a writer were lucky enough to sell a ton of copies, there is a world of difference between 70% and 15%! Little wonder Kindle is doing so well!

If you have a wild card book to sell, I’d recommend sending it to half dozen or so agents as you could get lucky. It’s nice to have a sales force behind your project and that would leave you more time to write! Heck that’s what we really want to do—Write, write, write!

More than likely you’ll receive rejection slips encouraging you to look elsewhere. OK then, you gave them their opportunity. Now time to go to Kindle and get you published in one day. You’ll set up your author’s corner—a free internet site with comments and ratings—a place for others to discuss your project—sweet! Link it to your HUB, Face book, Twitter, and you’ll be busy all day long with the adoring fans.

But wait a minute! What about the eBook publishers?

They offer forty to fifty percent royalty, but they tell you up front that about all they do is list it in their store (big deal?)

And from there you are on your own. "Holy Pub, Batman—we might as well go to Kindle and skip these guys too!” Why would you want your book lost on some forgotten internet site when you can be in the big leagues where all the customers are congregating—KINDLE!

What about promotion?

Yep—that’s the killer. In the final analysis, we are all on our own. I do not have the answer for you, as I haven’t gone that far yet. I do plan to find local sponsors and make myself a local celeb via newspaper, radio, television and public appearances. This is all free. You make a phone call or send an email to the local organizations and they book you. I’ve set up the Skype studio in my home and can broadcast to the entire world without ever leaving. You can see a photo of it in this article. I’ll try to get myself on the cable news networks as an expert on Somalia, pirating, money issues and the like, and if they are not interested, I will live without them. I figure the worst they can do is tell me to go elsewhere.

There are professional agents who can book you on speaking tours, and that would be another route. I know nothing about this, but imagine it will work for those of you who don’t mind hitt’n the road.

That’s all I have for you now. I hope I can have more to report in the future. And that we can use the comments (below) to share information and ideas about our plans to join the revolution. “HOLY HUBS, BATMAN, anyone reading this is a HUBBER and already a part of the revolution!”

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◊See this Hot HUB for novel publishing secrets. Forget the Agents and Publishers and get your Money Machine Rolling!

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Update: Fourth month published

Kindle works well while Smashwords has done little for me up to this point. Amazon./Kindle is where the readers are congregating and they have a borrowing and giveaway prgram that works well for finding readers and generating sales. Here is a simple plan that works and costs nothing.

1. Write a terrific book.

2. Give away as many copies as you can at Amazon with their KDP program.

3. Word of mouth generates sales.

That's it. You don't need to sign books in stores, appear on television, or get your name in the local paper. In four months, this simple program has thousands of readers reading my books and several hundred sales. I receive a direct deposit to my bank account from Amazon each month, can monitor sales reprorts each day and make adjustments to my titles, covers etc. based upon the daily reports. I have read many times that successful authors have started from these humble beginings and worked their way to the best seller lists. Read a much more detailed article about all this. The good news is that "Forty Days to Armageddon" is firting with the Political Thriller Best Seller Lists.

Eight month update:

Everything is still on track.

Smashwords continues to do nothing. I participated in a spring promotion with discounting my books. Nope—nothing there. Two more books were written including Eternal Defilement co authored with the amazing Amara. In that it was a heart rendering tale of her childhood, I felt I would contact the usual list of New York agents and not a one would take a look at it while one of them snatched up Pattie Maillette’s (Justin Bieber’s mom) tale of woe that could not come close to our book. Good news (again) is that we are doing well at Amazon and hit #2 in it’s genre several times over. Sales are nevertheless disappointing, however the numbers seem to be growing as the word of mouth gets out. I tried a bit of advertising on Goodreads.com and after the first week, it looks like we may very well be onto advertising that works! That is rare indeed as I mention in ‘Born to be Rich” that advertising is a place where one can lose all their money if not careful.

I’ll post an update in a few months so stay tuned in.