Unfortunately, the print world is flawed. The business model--where books can be returned, and where a 50% sell-though is considered acceptable--is archaic and wasteful. Writers get small royalties, little say in how their books are marketed and sold, and simple things like cover and title approval are unheard of unless you're a huge bestseller.
I just try to write entertaining books that are easily identifiable. A reader doesn't need to know my name, my titles, or my characters, and they can still find me by asking a bookseller "Who does those thrillers that are all named after drinks?"
The easier you are to find, and to remember, the more books you'll sell.
I've sold 40,000 ebooks since last April. At first, I was amused to be paying my mortgage with Kindle earnings. But now it's turning into serious money.
This all happened by accident. Some Kindle owners emailed me, asking if I could make my early, unpublished books available for them to read. I uploaded them using Amazon's Digital Text Platform (dtp.amazon.com) and charged $1.99. Readers like low prices. And why wouldn't they? Two or three bucks is less than a cup of coffee. It's an impulse purchase, and perfect for intangible, digital content which costs almost nothing to copy and deliver.
Print publishers have said that a low ebook price "devalues" the book. That's silly. The value of a book isn't its cover price. The value of a book is how much money it earns. On several of my ebooks, I've earned more than the average advance NY gives to a debut novelist. And I'm earning more money on a $1.99 ebook than I earn on a $7.99 paperback.
Read the rest of the article for more pulp-inspired goodness. And for those of you at there in the moving picture world, wherever he says "book" substitute the word "film."
Ditto "comics" and "games."
If you don't understand this new paradigm then you have fallen behind the rest of the world. Seriously.
You can read Joe Konrath's Blog here.
