Friday, September 19, 2014

Paperback, Kindle, E-book, or...

For those of you who read to review, or read to enjoy the drama of making the 'right' choice about self, partner, or regular publishing my seem moot since either way you get to read what's out there. For writers who long to be published, like me, once the all too often regaled publishers one thought would read and love their work, nixed it without a second thought, the plethora of options can be daunting...more so now because people are buying less of almost everything, and reading - that armchair spot of yesteryear - isn’t as entertaining to the newbies as is was to the you's and me's. 

Given the reality that most new authors books won't have a press release blitz before they are published unless the author does that for their book, and the staggering number of good to great books that go unnoticed every year, one wonders where to publish and what form their book should be published in. And that's where we're going, so hop on if you'd like, and tell me what you think after you've read this post. 

Since I became an author before Amazon's Create Space or Kindle were widely touted, as in, I'd never heard of them, and because 24 months after my first book was published, some well-known authors with longstanding relationships with their publisher were voiding contracts so they could self-publish, I'll start with Amazon's Dynamic Duo!

Of course, any one checking both Create Space and Kindle out would know that these two entities, though affiliated with Amazon, aren't Amazon. I mention this because it's important no matter who you publish with whether it be hardcover, paperback, Kindle, or a company like Smashwords who publishes in many e-book and other non-paper formats whom, figuratively speaking of you're jumping in bed with!

I, being an author because Messiah commissioned me, wanted to have my faith stories published in paperback. After a few years of hoping the publisher who published my book would market it, I  became an Indie Author. I now handle the PR and decided to publish my book on Kindle. Urged by the dear that formatted my e-book for Smashwords, I did that as well and discovered that doing as she suggested meant that my book could appear on more than 50 online booksellers as well as some lending and other libraries. 

With the publication of “Beginning Anew: The Naomi Chronicles, Book One,” I was a happy camper. Publishing was a breeze and I loved being able to market both my paperback and e-book as well as lower the e-book price so readers would check this book out.

 When I published my first LAMB Ministry and Purple Pitch books, I discovered that what I'd learned while writing a 'Teen Scene' column when I was fifteen is still true: readers drive that market, good writing is important, but most important of all is getting the book into the format that readers prefer. Based on sales of both my fiction and nonfictions, I know that I'm like most of today's readers, for I like them, prefer an e-book unless...But more about that next time.

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