I have four books on Amazon kindle. My purported agent goaded me into writing them and promised sale within a day or two. It is two weeks now and no dice. Did he do wrong or did I?
Amazon is supposedly 'the' biggest platform for ebooks because they are so intensively analytical and market driven unlike the Big 5 who are more retailer relationship driven. The way I understand it, Amazon ranks books in part by number of reviews and by audience/consumer need.
I'm just learning this stuff myself but here's a link I got through Joanna Penn's The Creative Penn. It talks about how to get Amazon to rank your book.
http://www.savvyselfpublishing.com/onli … your-books
This leads to some really interesting stuff if you poke around after reading the article and follow where things lead. Great link.
Excellent reference. Thank you! (Interesting discussion here, too).
I think you should give him till one month and then approach him. To anwser your question; yes he was wrong because he promised the sales of your book within a specified time and did not meet up. However even though, he did not do his homework properly, i think you should also try and market your books to your audience or try and ask friends to assist you.
There is a whole marketing strategy for ebooks.
What genre are the books?
Hi
Tks
One book is about LOVE
one about SEO
one about pets
The last is about Provocative Christian thoughts
Um, if you had a real agent they would be placing your manuscripts with publishers--not having you self-publish them. I would suggest checking whether they are a real agent at all: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/for … y.php?f=22
Absolutely right,
Most traditional publishers will not touch a piece if it's been self-published. Amazon offer over seventy percent royalties on e-Books, a figure the traditional publishers cannot come anywhere near.
Having said that, they can promote your book in areas you cannot reach, allowing potential sales to come from a much wider demographic.
Just publishing on Amazon does not guarantee sales, you will have to promote it or them.
Having self-published however, you will not have to pay a percentage to that charlatan of an agent!
As well as promotion you need the title, cover, blurb and excerpt to be polished and appealing to a well-defined readership.
Nick B is right. Promotion today is entirely the author's responsibility. When you have actual books it is easier to consign them, take them to personal appearances, sell them at book fairs. When you have only ebooks your promotions will be mostly online. You must work at promotion every day. Google "book promotion" or "ebook promotion" and start doing what the authors say.
Check out agents' reputations at a site called "Preditors and Editors," http://pred-ed.com/peala.htm
Ditto, Sylvia.. as a published Author, marketing is strictly on our shoulders. Who has the greatest interest in making you money - YOU! Also, eBooks (not great money makers - were designed to sell at low-cost) - Oops, on your part.
Is it true that the Big 5 expect you to do a very large part of the marketing yourself unless you're already a blockbuster writer with a name?
I hate to tell you this, but yes! Believe it or not, when the internet reared itself paperback lost bookshelf I was told. Unless you are already FAMOUS and have carved out a space for your name and work, newcomers stand little chance of getting published. I bought a marketing package worth $250 or so with me book and what they did with respect to marketing me with a "Press Release", I could have done and I saw nothing from it.
I disagree, in many genres ebooks sell well and have higher profit margins. I make more of e- than print on several of my book titles that are available in both forms. Also nothing stops the author from making a print version of a self-published book if they wish.
The thing about promotion is that a good publisher brand is promotion in itself. Sales is something like = promotion x distribution + cover appeal - price (representative not a literal formula).
An unknown has a higher cold customer resistance-to-buying threshold to overcome, so they generally need to promote more. But it can be done.
I agree with you on all points from a print perspective....I haven't had much experience with the ebooks
I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as a first option, but for something like romance, erotica or self-help it works pretty well.
by M. T. Dremer 10 years ago
Has your experience with self publishing been positive or negative?For those of you who have self published a book (either physical or ebook), how would you say your experience was overall? Please consider things like production costs, self promotion, sales and reviews. What is the best thing about...
by jkchandra 13 years ago
I want to do e-book publishing but was advised by other experienced authors that it also has a real disadvantage to it because you might have a hard time going back to traditional publishing. Agents who discover that you have done E-book work before mostly tend to reject your query letter which is...
by Pamela Lipscomb 10 years ago
Hi guys, If you have written a book(s) and are selling it on Amazon.com, I would like to know what you think of the process? My sister has self-published a book and is a little overwhelmed about how to sell the book on Amazon. Any help will be very appreciated!Thanks
by Vicki Holder 9 years ago
Has anyone here ever self-published an E-book?If so, how did you go about marketing your book and generating sales?
by Website Examiner 12 years ago
With the growing number of Hubbers that have published or self-published a book, an e-book, or other literary works, why not give them a self-promotion forum. Allow them to post relevant links there, for the benefit of authors and readers. Also, let them describe their works and authorship, link to...
by M. T. Dremer 9 years ago
Which is more important for a self published author, physical or ebook copies?Both have advantages: ebooks aren't limited by stock or location and are generally cheaper. Physical books can sit on the shelves of local bookstores and can be handed to interested parties who aren't tech-savvy. But,...
Copyright © 2025 The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers on this website. HubPages® is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website.
Copyright © 2025 Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective owners.
As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.
For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy
Show DetailsNecessary | |
---|---|
HubPages Device ID | This is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons. |
Login | This is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. |
Google Recaptcha | This is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy) |
Akismet | This is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Google Analytics | This is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Traffic Pixel | This is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized. |
Amazon Web Services | This is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy) |
Cloudflare | This is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Hosted Libraries | Javascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy) |
Features | |
---|---|
Google Custom Search | This is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Maps | Some articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Charts | This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy) |
Google AdSense Host API | This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Google YouTube | Some articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Vimeo | Some articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Paypal | This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Login | You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Maven | This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy) |
Marketing | |
---|---|
Google AdSense | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Google DoubleClick | Google provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Index Exchange | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Sovrn | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Ads | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Unified Ad Marketplace | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
AppNexus | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Openx | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Rubicon Project | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
TripleLift | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Say Media | We partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy) |
Remarketing Pixels | We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites. |
Conversion Tracking Pixels | We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service. |
Statistics | |
---|---|
Author Google Analytics | This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy) |
Comscore | ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Tracking Pixel | Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy) |
Clicksco | This is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy) |