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Nine five-star Amazon reviews
Happy to share this little success...
Last month I printed 100 hardback copies of my latest self pubbed history book and sold out in 13 days!
Since then nine readers have posted reviews on Amazon (though none bought the book through Amazon - I sold them all myself) and they have all given me five stars (out of a maximum of five). None of the reviewers are known to me - I mean, they are not friends, family or stooges.
To think that, only six months ago, I had serious doubts about whether to publish the book at all! Phew!
I've just submitted it to the Writing Magazine SP awards. Fingers crossed!
Helena
PS the book is Jack the Ripper At Last: The Mysterious Murders of George Chapman.
Comments
Have you considered an e-book version as well?
OMG the e-book has caused me more stress, hassle, work and frustration than producing the hardback!
After three months of ever increasingly annoying attempts, the only way I can publish this on Kindle is to strip it of its images, footnotes, tables and maps. I will get around to doing that once I have the paperback out.
I don't know anything about Kobo or all the other ways of making e-books.
Helena
Kobo takes e-books in ePub formatting. If you go to Smashwords and read the info they provide it might help. They provide Kobo, Apple and other e-readers.
Do have a look at some of the self-publishing threads on here, and last year one of the Talkbackers had an article in WM taking you through the ebook process a stage at a time.
I've been engaging on Amazon Kindle forums on this subject for a good six months, and had five professional e-book converters try to do it. It cannot be done.
Hubby managed to add images to my books - but it was fiddly! I had included letters inside boxes in fancy fonts and these were recognised as images, plus in a poetry book for children I had actual pictures.
I have produced two Kindle books before, and they were easy as they had no footnotes, tables or images. My book has 650 footnotes, 110 high res images, etc etc. I have also discovered that the number of high quality images causes download problems or exceeds the maximum MB size of the file. The mere thought of having to reduce the 110 images fills me with horror.
I'm afraid my book is not suitable for Kindle unless I produce a sort of dumbed-down version, which I will do sometime this year.
It's not just the formatting nightmare... there are SO many other problems with Kindle and other ebooks as well ... the way readers have come to expect to buy at rock bottom prices, the amount of royalties taken by Amazon, leaving precious little profit per book. I'd have to sell thousands of Kindle or e-books to make a decent profit, if the profit from each one is only going to be £1 or £2. What is more, no matter what I do I cannot get Amazon to pay me in sterling. And every time I bank one of their dollar "checks" my bank changes me £10. I received a check yesterday for $14, so it's not worth banking it.
Also, ebooks probably reduce the sale of paperback and hardback editions, so perhaps it's better to wait until the paper editions have been on sale for a year or so before doing an e-book.
I made a clear £13 profit from each and every hardback I sold. That amounted to £1,300 in 13 days. To make £1,300 from a Kindle book I'd have to sell not 100 but 1,000.
Helena
I am going to ask a stupid question here. I have people who have bought books directly from me but said they can't load reviews onto Amazon as they didn't purchase the book through Amazon. I am wondering how your readers managed to do it. If anyone knows I would appreciate it if they could let me know. Thanks.
I've got both types. The 'verified' purchase reviews are supposed to be better as it means the book is definitely bought by a stranger as it were.
You do have to go through the rigmarole of logging in and making yourself an identity, i can see why people might be reluctant to do that if they are not very computer savvy.
I only printed 100 copies and sold them for £20 each. I only sold them direct to readers so I didn't have to pay any retailer to sell them, as is usual in the book trade.
It will be a different story when the paperback comes out! I will have to give Amazon and all the other retailers their cut. It's very painful.
Well after about 200 hours of slog, involving three people, and tearing my hair out, I finally uploaded the Kindle version of my book on 23rd January.
Was it worth it?
No. I have sold exactly 14 copies in 8 weeks, and after Amazon takes its share that has netted me £56.
On the plus side, I've sold 100 hardbacks, and I've just had 100 paperbacks printed.
Also, those 9 five-star reviews are now 14 five-star reviews. Plus one more to come, by a man who cannot remember his Amazon log in!
I've found a really top quality printer who is incredibly cheap, so if anyone is self publishing hard copies do PM me and I will pass on his details.
Helena Wojtczak
I was lucky. Because my book is about a Ripper suspect, I had a ready-made readership amongst what are known as "ripperologists". I'm actually rubbish at marketing, and trying to sell the book to the big wide world out there is something I don't think I am going to succeed at. My strategy is currently stick it on Amazon and hope that true crime buffs will find it. Yeah, I know, not good, is it? Anyone got any better ideas?
Helena
Any possibility of writing an article for the true-crime type magazines?
I took delivery of 100 copies of the paperback on 18th March and have 20 left. Of the 80 sold, 49 were sold by Amazon in the last week of March. (Another 100 arrive from the printer tomorrow.)
Helena
Now to look at the blogs.
I am the opposite of an expert, but have you thought of starting a blog about your book? That might get the word out into the wider world if you link it to Google.