E book publishing?

[Rugster]

In a previous life, I was a Realtor and was successful. I wrote a book to help my business and used it as a way to help FSBO (For Sale By Owners) sell their home, but had a section detailing how a Realtor could help them, if they were unable to sell it and decided to look for a Realtor.

I had good success with it, helped some people sell their home on their own, helped some people sell their homes with my services.

I have been kicking the idea of reworking the book to put an emphasis on how to choose the best Realtor to sell your home and give real life examples and stories of some of the characters I met while a Realtor. I think it would informative and funny and would give people a lot to think about when selling or buying what is more than likely their most expensive item in their life.

But, it's been several years and I don't know the best way to publish an E book. I printed the book and used it person to person. I wonder if a book like this would have a market and how much might be possible saleswise.

If anyone has any firsthand knowledge of a good platform and any estimate of sales or possibilities, I'd love to hear it.

I think I'm about to have a lot of free time and this might be a very good way to spend some of that time.

 

[WriterMs]

Rugster,

The good news is that you can self-publish on by far the largest book marketplace in the world and it will cost you zero dollars. The marketplace is Amazon and they have a complete system set up to walk you through the whole thing. I use it for my novels, Bob uses it for his book and lterry uses it for her novels -- just to name a few of us on this forum.

The self-publishing of your book as a digital/electronic version is called Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) -- just search for that on Amazon. There are tutorials, but the main thing is to have your book in a Word document or another approved format (I think it can even be in PDF). Everything you need to know about margins, etc. are in the guildelines supplied at KDP. There is even a free cover creator that will make your look professional.

Don't be concerned that this arm of Amazon is called Kindle... people can read Kindle books on any device from a phone to a computer to a tablet or iPad (and of course on actual Kindle reading device).

You only need to have an Amazon account so they know who you are (you are a real person with rights to your book, etc.).

The Amazon company for a print version of your book is CreateSpace. You may wish to start there, as CreateSpace can convert your print edition book to a KDP digital book with a click of a button.

So... all you need is time. NO investment on your part to give it a try. Well, when you do the print version of your book, they do recommend that you order a physical book to proofread and check for any layout errors -- but that is only a few dollars as you get your author's price.

There is no way to judge how well it might sell. It would have a limited niche market. But, again, once you invest your time, there is no costs to you. And the book can be passive income that sells forever (as long as you keep the content updated.

 

[GrantRobertson]

One thing I am concerned about with KDP is: Can you also publish via other means? Or do usage/licensing agreements mean that once I have published a work via KDP I am locked in.

 

[WriterMs]

KDP owns no rights to your book;YOU are the publisher. As a matter of fact, the process makes you check a box to acknowledge that you do own the rights to publish (it's there to affirm you are not publishing someone else's work).

Amazon is merely the marketing vehicle.

So, yes, you CAN sell your book through other channels. The exception is if you want to participate in KDP Select. If you do the Select program, you agree to market the digital version of your book ONLY though Amazon (I think it is for a 90-day period minimum; it renews unless you choose not to renew.)

There are several benefits to the Select program -- the main one for me being that when a Prime member "borrows" my book I get a payment based on how many pages are read by the borrower. If your book is 200 pages and people only seem to read the first 50, this may not be a big selling point for you (Amazon tries to reward authors who have good content and keep people reading.) I have found that I get almost as much (within 10 cents) per book as I get with the regular 70% royalty from my novels that are sold versus being borrowed.

OK.. all that being said, please note the above is my own understanding of how Amazon operates. I have been with them for over 4 years (and I did try about 6 months also selling on Barnes & Noble -- went right back to being exclusive with Amazon). SOOOOO.... read the details of how it operates when you visit the KDP web pages and evaluate it all for yourself. Some details may have changed that I'm not aware of, etc.

They really break it down and make it simple. PLUS, there is a community forum where you can post questions and other more experienced authors post replies, etc.

Oh.. I also wanted to suggest to Rugster to look on Amazon for other books in the real estate category. Go to product details and see what the "sales rank" of some the the best selling books are. Check it for the most "general" category. What constitutes a "good ranking" and the resulting sales will vary, but you can get a relative idea of how various books do within the business or similar general category.

 

[Rugster]

Thanks for the information, I'll definitely go read about it, that sounds like exactly what I want. Thanks again!

 

[Mobilesport]

@ Wrighter Ms  , lets say i sale a ebook to a online community , what keeps one person from buying my ebook and then copying /posting/sharing online for free and killing all the profit that i want to make for all the work i put in it?
Thanks for your time

 

[Thunder Dan]

@ Wrighter Ms  , lets say i sale a ebook to a online community , what keeps one person from buying my ebook and then copying /posting/sharing online for free and killing all the profit that i want to make for all the work i put in it?
Thanks for your time

There is no guarantee that someone won't copy your book and make it available to others without paying. DRM is easily cracked and you can find thousands of books online for free. The simple truth is that if people want to copy it without paying, they will.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't write and sell ebooks. There are plenty of honest people out there who are willing to pay for a product they find has value.

 

[blars]

Baen is a publisher who trusts their customers and does not use DRM. Sort of like a store that does not search you on exit to see if you are shoplifting.

 

[akrvbob]

Amazon gives it's Kindle authors the choice of whether to use encryption or not and I chose not to.

To me the key is usabiity and I love reading books on my Kindle or Smartphone because it's simple and inutitive, but I hate reading them as a .pdf. I think most people are that way and the hassle of stealing the book and unpleasant reading experience is not worth it. Especially since my book costs $2.99, why not just buy it?

Lots of authors give them away for awhile just to get word-of-mouth so I'm not in the least worried about a very few thefts. You can't stop them anyway, so why bother?
Bob

 

[SoulRaven]

I was never an ebook publisher, however I was an ebook seller, and still do it to raise money for projects.

I would either procure resale rights to a product, or partner with the author to handle the marketing end. I did only high end ebooks priced in the $20-$40 range.

I would proceed with a marketing blitz for a month, sell +/- about 1,000 copies in that month, then I was done long before any illicit copies would turn up in any of the search engines.

I very quickly learned that the customers preferred format was .pdf, so it could be read on any device or platform.

 

[WriterMs]

I very quickly learned that the customers preferred format was .pdf, so it could be read on any device or platform.

From my research and experience as a self-publisher on Amazon's Kindle format, I'd have to disagree about the PDF. That, I'm sure, is preferred by sites that sell ebooks OTHER THAN Amazon.

BUT...Amazon sells quantities of Kindle formatted ebooks that dwarf all other online booksellers combined. The figures I have are for 2014, but my guess is Amazon's share has only gone up. Amazon sells 67% of all ebooks (digital books). They sell 64% of all print books sold online.

The Kindle format is so far superior for readers to use ...adjusting type and page format for sizes from smart phones to computer screens, that (as Bob said) PDFs then seem cumbersome. The Kindle app to read ebooks from Amazon is FREE and can be used by almost any device -- no Kindle device is required.

My first two novels were each hi-jacked and offered for free from some scam sites. I use Google Alerts for my book titles to watch for such things. Letters to those sites offering the free book seem to have worked and my titles were taken down. Again, Bob is right -- most people know they are stealing if they get the books for free. And most want the security and readability of using Amazon (again, they sell 67% of ebooks leaving only 33% of sales for all other online sellers).

 

[BradKW]

I'm to the point where I only read Kindle formatted ebooks. The convenience of cross-platform syncing means I can pick up exactly where I left off on my phone, kindle, or tablet.

The advent of self-published ebooks has really been interesting to watch...there's an amazing amount of talent that would never have been published through the old network of print. It also seems that we're reaching a saturation level which makes things difficult, because for every hidden gem, or gem in-the-rough, there's a handful of things that just should never have seen the light of day. I never actually appreciated what a professional-level publisher brings to the table until I had to wade through the results of taking them out of the equation.