There are times when an ebook makes more sense.

 

About five years ago I finished reading a hardback book I'd had since 2009. Stephen King's 'Under the Dome.'  Six years to read a book! Actually it took me six years to start reading it. I had not read it because it is a massive book, 1093 pages. It weighs 1.3 kilograms (2.3 pounds) - too heavy to read unsupported. (Enjoyable book if you want to read it.) I'd looked for it as an e-book but due to the Amazon/Hachette dispute couldn't find it. In the end I read it in bed before sleeping, with it supported on my knees.

The trouble with big books is that they are heavy and bulky They are certainly not the best choice when going mountain climbing. If you are an older reader then you may find reading a heavy book can be a painful experience.

Yet people seem to like longer books; especially if the book is science fiction or a thriller. People also like books in a series and are fond of those bargain 'box sets.' My co-author and I have produced such a collection. It contains the first three books of our 'A Vested Interest' book series and has over 1,400 pages. An average reader would take over 37 hours to read it - great for keeping you occupied while shut in at home during a pandemic. It's ONLY available as an ebook despite the picture. Your wrists will thank us.

What's it about?

It's a techno-thriller. We started writing it in 2007. The concept is that in 5,000 years the earth faces the ultimate apocalypse when a wandering planetoid will collide with it. The impact will be similar to the one which created the moon 4.5 billion years ago. Nothing on earth will survive. We can't destroy or stop this planetoid - it's too big. To survive we must move and we must take with us every living thing on earth. BUT it's five thousand years in the future and even though we know it will happen we do nothing since it's, "not my problem."

Book 1 of this collection is Immortality Gene. To save the world the solution is simple we must make everyone immortal so that it is their problem. It's normally free. It's been  #1 in technothrillers, #1 in Science Fiction genetic engineering, #1 in science fiction adventure. It's long and involved featuring lots of technology we are developing now - including the immortality. It has medical advances, romance, murder, mystery and conspiracy. And it's ending will leave you hanging so you really need the second book.

Book 2 in the collection is Dark Secrets. It features a pandemic spreading a virus. We wrote this back in 2010 and it's eerily similar to how the Covid-19 pandemic spreads. Our pandemic makes people immortal though. It fixes their DNA so that genetic damage - the sort that makes people old - can't occur. old senescent cells are destroyed and replaced with young cells. People start to get younger! Eventually they reach an optimal apparent age of about 25 and there they remain. Does this seem far fetched? The reality is that the first person to live to age 1,000 is probably alive now and is probably considered old now. But that title? There's a conspiracy governing the world that has been a dark secret since the crusades.

Book 3 in the collection is No Secrets. It reveals more of the dark secret governing the world and brings together people forced apart by it. It does the very opposite of book 2 where a protagonist turns out to be evil and makes an antagonist turn good.

Get the collection - It will keep you entertained for hours and it costs less than getting the books individually, even if one of them is free.

Book Marketing for Beginners

On Quora a new author asked the following:

What's the most effective way for a person with a limited budget to market his e-books which have just been listed on Kindle, Nook and Smashwords?

Here's my answer (Updated September 2018):

What you really need is a magic button which will find all your books, work out things like the best titles, keywords and description, produce an astonishing book cover and then find low cost ways of promoting it.
Unfortunately no such button exists (but I am working on it) Instead, you’ll have to make do with some of the advice from the answers here.

I would agree with Tom Corson-Knowles - a new author with limited books available is probably best sticking with Kindle Select because of the boost that gives. If you are already published elsewhere that’s not an option though. Select has its disadvantages too—especially Kindle Unlimited which has been infamous for it’s ability to be scammed by unscrupulous ‘people’ (who don’t deserve the title ‘author’.

There are numerous book promotion sites. BookBub is the clear leader but it’s out of the question for someone on a limited budget. There are other cost effective sites too and unfortunately a great many which charge money but offer little in the way of a return. Try the list at List of 100+ Book Promotion Sites & Free Submission Tool. Reedsy Learning has recently produced a vetted list of book promotion sites which you can try here.

Remember that each time you promote, the spike in sales will quickly dissipate so it’s a mistake to target lots of promotion sites on the same day. Instead spread your spikes from promotion over a whole month. If you can do that - it’s almost impossible - then your sales will become self-sustaining.

Social media can be very effective but you need a LOT of followers and shouldn’t post promotions more than 10–15% of the time. Social media is all about interacting and that can eat up your time. Beware of fake followers on Twitter though. You will need to check each new follower for signs that they are fakes. Never auto-follow. Twitter can be automated but still needs personal interaction each day.

Advice given to join Goodreads is worth following too. Your book at Goodreads will raise it’s ability to be found by a Google search. Personally I hate the place - it’s full of trolls. Be very careful not to offend anyone there and NEVER sign in to Goodreads using your Facebook account! If you do then Amazon is likely to link the two and may reject reviews from some of your friends on Facebook.

Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) can be effective for marketing but it's a frightening place for an author on a limited budget. There you have two options - a book advertisement or to pay for your book to appear when a reader at Amazon searches for keywords. This last option is the best bet. The frightening bit is that this is a 'pay-per-click' service. You have no guarantee that your keywords will generate a click and no guarantee that a click will lead to a sale. The good news is that you can set a maximum budget and also that Amazon will usually not charge the full keyword bid price. Your advertisment may well cost you less than the maximum price you set. The bad news is that you are going to need a LOT more keywords than the 7 you chose at Amazon KDP. Do a LOT of research before you get involved with AMS. The same is true for using paid Google keywords.

One effective tool is to make use of email lists. At the end of each book invite readers to subscribe to this and make them an attractive offer to entice them to do so. You could offer a free book/short story. I offer a way for them to make money from ebooks—even though they didn’t write it. Smashwords works best for this and I see you use that.

As others have said the most important factors are:

• A brilliant cover which attracts attention. Remember the cover has to work at thumbnail size - see the one on the right for how big that is.
• A title/subtitle which appeals to emotions
• A description which in four lines makes the reader want to click the ‘more…’ to read the rest of it.
• Keywords/tags which people actually search for. The name really should be 'keyphrase' because they can be up to 50 characters long.
• The right price - see How to Price Your Book for Maximum Results During a Promotion - Written Word Media

Got a website/blog? Use it/them to promote your books and make sure they can be found.

There are lots of things you can do but none of them will prove to be your magic solution. What you REALLY need is luck. The secret of getting that is persistance,  searching the web for good advice and of course reading books on the subject such as the one on the right.
So get it!

Can a bookshop make money from ebooks? Yes!

Bookshops everywhere are worried. There's a revolution going on and they are losing sales because of it. The revolution is that of ebooks!

Oh I know there are those who say 'I love the feel and smell of a proper book' but these are mostly people who have not yet got an ebook reader. Once these people have got their hands on one it doesn't take long for them to change their minds. That means fewer sales of paper books.

Yet we all still like going to the library and browsing the books in a bookstore. Having found the book we like do we then buy the paper format or simply make a note of it and look it up at Amazon later to get it in ebook format? I have to admit, I've done the latter many times but felt guilty that I've denied the bookseller a profit from the sale. He/she has, after all, helped me in my book purchase.

So how can the bookstore make money from ebooks? I think there is an answer, and one which is simple to put in practice.

How a bookstore can cash-in on ebooks

The bookseller makes use of the many affiliate programs offered for ebooks. Smashwords seems to offer the best one but there are others such as Amazon and iBooks. Here's how to do this:

1. If you, the bookseller, have not already joined an affiliate program then sign up for them at:
   Smashwords - https://www.smashwords.com/about/smashwords_affiliate_documentation
   Amazon UK - https://affiliate-program.amazon.co.uk/
   Amazon US - https://affiliate-program.amazon.com
   iTunes (iBooks) - https://itunes-signup.partnerize.com/signup/en_us/itunes
2. If you do not have a Twitter account then sign up for that at
   https://twitter.com/
3. For Amazon, add the site stripe to your Amazon account
   https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join/landing/tools.html
4. For Amazon, on your computer navigate to a book's page at Amazon and click the Twitter button on the associate site stripe toolbar
   
   
   Copy the text as far as the 'via@...
5. If you're using the far more profitable Smashwords affiliate account the links are even easier to make - see here.
6. Paste that text into a QL generator page on Internet. I use the QR Code generator at http://goqr.me/
   
   At this stage you can edit the text to include the price and any other details you wish to include.
7. Copy the QR code generated and paste it into Word for further editing as follows:
   
8. Print this out on a self adhesive label and fix it to a bookmark provided by the author. You can leave a stack of these at your sales desk, insert them in books or fix then to a thin card placed inside the back cover of a book (or on the back if there's space). You might also need to make a few posters advertising your ebook service and where the customer can get a free QR code scanner app for their mobile phone. (Try QR Droid) 

Customers browsing your books can scan the QR codes and buy the books immediately using Amazon's 'one touch'. You get the commission on the sale. 

Of course there is no reason why this should be restricted to using Amazon as an ebook provider. If an author comes into your store promoting his/her books negotiate a deal with them to sell their ebooks through Smashwords - Not only do they support more reading devices but they provide a higher royalty rate to the author - 85% and the affiliate rate can be set so that you get a higher commission on the sale than you would get from Amazon 30-40% would seem fair. (I give 35% affiliate commission at Smashwords)

You might also contact authors and invite them to send you some bookmarks featuring their book with an area on which you can stick your QL code.

You might even end up making more money from ebooks than you do from paper books and you won't have to do a thing at the till!

And authors? Try making and having printed some bookmarks. Here's some examples: