Last Saturday, Writer
Abroad attended TIPE, The Independent Publishing Event in Zurich. Here are some
of the things she learned:
- Independent publishing is great for niche books or books with smaller markets that may not (at least initially) interest a large publisher.
- To make a living as an independent author, you probably need not just one, but several books for sale on amazon. Series seem to work best in this case.
- To make $2 a book, you can sell an ebook on amazon yourself for $2.99 OR a publisher can sell it for you for $12.99.
- The ebook market is almost non-existent in the German-speaking world (about 1% of book sales). But ebooks outsell regular books in the U.S.
- There is a lot of potential for ebook growth in Asian markets. Who cares if no one knows your book in the U.S. if you’re a bestselling author in China!
- You can self-publish your e-book and still get an agent to sell other rights, i.e. print, audio, foreign language, film, etc.
- The Kindle is the leading eReader. The Nook is dying.
- Amazon is where you will probably sell the most ebooks. But you shouldn’t ignore other platforms like Kobo (Canada/Asia) and there are websites like smashwords and bookbaby that will format your manuscripts accordingly for all of these platforms.
- Beware of agents who want to help you self-publish as this is easy to do yourself (and keep the 15%).
- Getting an agent will be easy if you are a successful independent author. But by then, you may not want one. Or you may just want one for certain projects or to sell certain rights.
- The three main people you need to hire as an independent author are editors, proofreaders, and cover designers.
- Reviews are critical to selling books in an online platform.
- The right keywords are also critical to selling books in an online platform. Use them in the book title whenever possible.
- Printing on demand makes it possible to sell printed books without having to invest a lot up front. You should consider a printed book if your book would do well in European markets since print still outsells digital formats in Europe (especially in Switzerland).