Hey all, I'm working on a book about self-publishing that I plan to use as a promotional eBook. I want to include a section regarding the most common mistakes newbie self-publishers make. If you have any stories to tell, go right ahead and I'd be happy to get you a free copy of the book when done. What were your pain points? Where did you struggle the most? What did you do to succeed? If anyone wishes to help, post below!
Here is one for you, @Ryan W. McClellan , from another thread of mine When I started posting "The Eagle and the Dragon" for publication via Createspace, I elected to purchase a Gowker ISBN @ $100. I chose not to launch with extended distribution, as I wanted to keep the price down. Last week, with Kindle selling well, I decided to elect extended distribution, to get it into B&N and Ingram. The three choices for extended distro are Bookstores, createspace direct, and libraries and institutions. The first two were selectable, the third greyed out as ineligible due to non-CS ISBN. No matter, I went ahead and also raised the price accordingly. After a few days, only my short story "Come, Follow Me" showed up on B&N. A call to CS told me that the CS ISBN is required for all three, just not the last one that was rejected. My option are to give up B&N, Ingram and the route to Nook and overdrive, or to republish under a CS ISBN. I am holding off on making the change, and backing the price back down. I would like to get recommendations on this: in particular, if I retire the current paid-for ISBN, can I retain it for future use. It is, I understand, now permanently linked to my name and title. Comments please! CS does not make this clear at ISBN selection, or I don't recall they did. Everyone should be aware of this before purchasing an ISBN for CS publications. Annoyance point for me: while CS has excellent tech support, live humans who speak good English and know their stuff, I find that KDP is crickets. I have yet to find a telephone number to call, just submit a trouble report and hope for a good answer. I rate their tech support as poor, though to date it has not been a problem. Like Amazon marketing. I like to talk to people, compare options, get reassurance, as after all I am doing this for the first time. But no phone number. I signed up for Amazon Sales Central for $120/month to find that they provided what I already got for free. I had to call the telephone number on my credit card bill to talk to someone and get this cancelled. They were, however, nice enough to cancel everything retroactively, so I wasn't out anything. I also would like to talk to someone at Amazon about how to make my books free (aside from Kindle giveaways... I have done them twice). Book Bub talks about free eBooks, but I don't know how to give them free copies of my eBooks. I would also like to know, once I get extended distro started, how to get my Kindle into Nook formats and onto Overdrive, but again, crickets and no telephone numbers, just FAQs. Amazon is not the only one to not give out phone numbers. BookDaily is unhelpful as well. If you submit an on-line description of your problem, you will get an-e-amil in a few days telling you it is solved, or was not a problem. I have not had a two-way converstation by phone or e-mail with anyone there. I had problems updating my profile and my book data, getting errors when I hit the submit button and the update not taking. On a chance I tried using MS Edge instead of Mozilla, and it worked like a champ. Again, their tech support is near the basement, and gives a bad impression of their operation One thing I would like is a concise bible on marketing a self-pubbed book. I have used BookDaily and boosted FB posts, which are generating sales but not yet paying for themselves. Hope these help, Ryan. The good news is the book is selling itself like crazy, 375 cys in 5 months, not bad for a 550 page self-pubbed book by a first timer
this is the third time you've posted this Ryan, and you still havent answered the question about how you are possibly qualifed to write a book on publishing when you have one book which hasnt had an amzon review since 2008, hardly any sales, and a really amateur website. I agree with lew that a concise bible on marketting a self published book would be good, but i'd prefer it to be written by someone who knows what they are talking about
This is all a bit tech-y speak for me ...but are you saying that if you use Create Space you should buy your ISBN number from them? Or you'll have problems with them later on?
In short, yes - I think Joanna Penn covered this on her blog the other day... if I recall correctly she suggested using both Ingram and Createspace and buying an ISBN from creates space to use with them, whilst buying your own to use with Ingram ... if i can find the link i'll edit it in. ETA I can't find it, but you don't need to buy a create space isbn you can get a free one
BTW if anyone thinks we are being mean and nasty to Ryan the back story here is that he's previously claimed 22k sales for his book and to be some kind of expert... this isn't however born out by his sales rating on amazon or the complete lack of reviews, or by the website that pretends to be a publishing group but doesn't even have an Url to match its name (or by the book which has missing words in the first paragraph and shows little sign of having been editted) He's also claimed that income from books is residual and thus tax doesn't have to be paid on it, which doesn't sound right to me. People can of course write anything they like, but a) it rubs me the wrong way when people pretend to be something they aren't, and b) it worries me that people new to the writing world could think that all advice is equal when it comes to advice books (Joanna Penn who i mentioned above by contrast has 12 fiction books and 8 writing help books to her name and makes a six figure income from writing .... on which she pays tax)
@Ryan W. McClellan, I checked your book rankings on Amazon and at #3.5M and #1.8M; that means you have sold to your immediate friends and family, and not recently. So I hate to be critical, but you really should be honestly asking for advice on how to help sell your books, or to determine why they are not selling, not attempting to write a tutorial on self-publishing, because this is not something you seem to have yet mastered. I feel that you took me in, and like @Homer Potvin and @big soft moose, I feel like you are pretending to be something you are not. @jannert, in response to your questions, ISBNs are free through CS, and they work for extended distro. However, I opted to buy one via Gowker, an option provided by CS on setup, and just found myself locked out of extended distro because I did that. Nuisance. But perhaps you can answer a question for me. I check the Amazon.UK sites for my reviews there, since they do not show up on the US site, and UK accounts for about 1/3 of my sales. I notice that the Kindle edition is not listed as an option, but I am selling Kindle editions there by my royalty reports. What gives? And looking forward to seeing you next month! Checked the train schedules, more via e-mail
For me @Lew its showing as Kindle Unlimited only (and paper) did you sign up for unlimited instead of normal kindle distro ?
Yeah, I think I know why I can't see the Kindle, because a US customer can't download Kindle from UK site, so the option is not presented? I don't see the Kindle button on this side of the pond, but it has a ranking in UK Kindle store and I know it is being purchased there. Thanks! Get a copy before they are all sold out!
@big soft moose, unless my daughter and her husband take me for a drive, that may be a bit far. Deven down by Exeter, in the direction of appropriately-named Land's End. Flew into an RAF base in Salisbury once, but didn't go to Stonehenge, regrets
I've driven past Stonehenge. I could see the hippies from there, and decided that was as close as I need to get.
Dear Misser McCallum, I got my great story for your book when I was writing my chapters day after day on the Wordpress on my own and the chapters didn't match anything or have a conventional sequence like other so-called writers, some days I writed a chapter seven some days a chapter before or a paragraph really not necessarily five or six chapter heading sometimes negative chapters I will call a minus chapter, probably the only writer of negative chapters, although occasionally go positive all day like everybody else [the losers]. This was after Facebook in my early years, I don't go there at all, no longer. I think your readers will find my experience very entertaining so please send my copy to my houseboat. I am laughing still, thank you. Matthew
CLARIFICATION: Subsequent calls to CS told me that the extended distro was exactly as indicated by the greyed out portion to libraries and institutions, but that it may take up to eight weeks for my titles to appear. As of today, both E&D and CFM are listed on B&N, and Ingram, which doesn't have a public facing website (subscription retailers only) was happy to confirm that my two ISBNs are registered by title. So sorry for any confusion over ISBNs, the only problem I had was a lack of patience!