the DONT GIVE UP PAGE (your ebook wil do great..eventually)

[Weirdna Bar]

Hey everyone. Just wanted to let you know that in this ebook journey of mine, which has taken up the greater part of my attention span over the last 6+ months, from production to promotion,(read TOTAL OBSESSION) the greatest single find of that journey has been mobileread.com. Its the one place I go where I feel I recieve the greatest amount of support and can return the support as well. Look at the upper part of your screen and right between the words search and quicklinks it says community and I truly believe that most of us on here treat mobileread like a true community in the most positive definition of that word. Where am I going with this most utterly corny and sappy monolouge that is being spouted here. Have I no shame! (of course i dont, who else other then a shameless one could believe ebooks may be the path to their salvation. JKkinda)
I thought that it would be nice to start a thread where people who have invested so much of their time in ebook production but are not seeing their dream results right away can maybe whine a little, sigh a little, tell there sadsack story (such as I created what I think is a great work of literary genius but the only people who have bought my book are me, my mother, and my boyfriend/girlfriend who feel sorry for me and my quixotic quest (haha I'm not being self-referential, well maybe a little)) And then on the flipside you can also come to this thread to be a professional cheerer-upper and remind the down ones that this is a marathon and not a race and not give up and such and such etc. Imagine all the great life karma you will receive from making someones day. I know some of you may be thinking that this would be playing too much into the hands of the "everybody deserves a trophy era and youre special no matter what you do" mentality and perhaps I, myself, am a bit guilty of that but I also know that some of the all-time greatest authors, illustrators, and poets(oh boy, especially poets(im not a poet, but I do know some)) are among the most sensitive creatures who walk this earth and can easily be crushed by slights and blows and once crushed can descend into permanent lunacy. So lets give these artists a little love or at least a sounding board for their ebook creating angst.
As for all you wiseguys and wisegals and smart alecks and smart alexis's who might want to come here and pick on us for being so "chicken soup for the soul- give us a hug corny", we get it, you are the funniest person alive who has a witty putdown for every occasion but just dont do it here. For everyone who has read this entire post and is still here and do not think I am the namby-pambiest soul who ever lived I truly appreciate the time you gave to hear me out. I go through these weird stages where being nice and supportive actually makes me feel good. I try not to be nice for nice sakes and I do try to offer true and honest support because no one wants to be pandered to (except for me, i love it) but....alright you got me I'm a nice-aholic and I need help and my nice-aholicness is spinning out of control again and I only use your sorrow to feed this nice-monster inside of me whose appetite is never fufilled and is alawy searching for new souls to cheer up and I need to go to mean rehab and....did I mention that I am probably insane or have you already picked that up?
Anyways don't give up, its a marathon not a race.

[teh603]

I had to unpublish my first ebook. It needs massive editing, of the kind I can't figure out how to do without massively compromising the story. No sales either. =(

I just published my second- a low fantasy short story- an hour ago. Its low fantasy of the lowest- you can't get much lower outside Mos Eisley, but hopefully it'll do better. Maybe I should add some of those postage stamp thumbnails to my signature and see if I can't draw some attention?

[CalmApparatus]

For the last while I have spent probably 12 to 15 hours a day trying to make a buck or two through eBookery. 3 novels, bunch of shorter fiction and non fiction, fitness guide, etc. I put so much time and effort into it, but see no returns. I try every day to be of use to other writers online and I get very few offers to be of assistance. I will be honest, I am discouraged right now. I guess I was hoping that perhaps my writing could save me from this destitution, and from this economic collapse where I have no work, no opportunities, and no potential for moving forward and upward.
Again I say, if there is anyone out there that is having a hard time, please, let me alleviate my own suffering and give me a chance to be of service to you.

May 2012 bring you the attention, prosperity, and success you so rightly deserve. Cheers

--Damien

[morriss003]

My first book, "Surviving the Fog," did pretty well, and I even made a couple thousand dollars before Amazon discovered that it could be found for free at Smashwords. Since then, the book has been downloaded about 45,000 times as a free book, mostly to good reviews.
Since then, I have not had a lot of sales at all, and this is after publishing five more books. I think that one of the reasons is that there are so many more ebooks out there now. Surviving the Fog was published in 2009, and that was close to the beginning of the ebook revolution. I would suggest that new authors make their first book free so that they can get name recognition, but I'm not sure that has worked for me.

[CalmApparatus]

Originally Posted by morriss003

My first book, "Surviving the Fog," did pretty well, and I even made a couple thousand dollars before Amazon discovered that it could be found for free at Smashwords. Since then, the book has been downloaded about 45,000 times as a free book, mostly to good reviews.
Since then, I have not had a lot of sales at all, and this is after publishing five more books. I think that one of the reasons is that there are so many more ebooks out there now. Surviving the Fog was published in 2009, and that was close to the beginning of the ebook revolution. I would suggest that new authors make their first book free so that they can get name recognition, but I'm not sure that has worked for me.

You could not be more correct, it is like a double whammy to people that got in as early as you did.

Whammy 1) The depression has brought about tons of Amateur writers like myself. I had just written all that stuff as a means of clearing the cerebral cobwebs, tons of writing in college. Then boom, no work, economic collapse..."Hey! I could put my stuff on the net and make a buck." It will be another 6 monthish before people start dropping out like flies. It is extremely time consuming unless you hit it big with something for some reason or another

Whammy 2) The economic collapse is effecting the amount of money to go around. Sure there is definitely an eBook revolution happening...yeah..some would argue at the same time as the western world is on the brink of a social one.

You can go to my blog on wordpress under CalmApparatus and my latest post is about Amazons 4th quarter earning statement for last year including holiday sales, furthermore their expectations. The results were mixed...but...A) the consumer is not reflecting the supposed "recovery" and B) their earnings dropped like a rock

The point is, imagine what sales will be like when the real recovery happens, and it will (unless you're a doomer) for those who stick it out, keep getting product out there and expanding their library.

Cheers
p.s. sorry I dont really edit my e-mails/forum posts, yes I know I should lol

[Lazybones]

I hate to say this in an encouragement thread, but it's very, very hard to make a lot of money as a self-publisher.

That said, there are things you can do. Keep rereading your work, and editing, making it better. Try reading it aloud; you can often catch things that you wouldn't see just looking at the page, especially dialogue that sounds false. Get that boy/girlfriend or parent who bought your book to give you honest feedback, and thank them when they savage your literary baby! Join a local writer's group, which can provide feedback for your work. And keep writing. Malcolm Gladwell has written that it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to become really good at something, and I think it definitely applies to writing. I started writing in grad school, about 15 years ago. I wrote five novels then, and every now and then I go back to them, trying to see if there's anything there I can polish up to sell. Each time I realize they just weren't very good. It's a very difficult thing to admit because like everyone here I tend to fall in love with my own work. But they helped me improve my craft.

It took me many months to start getting steady sales for my books. I'm not in it for the money, but I still check my sales reports almost every day. While it's hard to make a living at it, there are many, many readers out there, especially with the traditional publishers shooting themselves in the foot with the agency pricing model. Keep writing, keep editing, keep improving, and you will make sales.

[davidwfleming]

I think a good approach for writers is to "focus their niche," look at themselves critically as if they were a company and ask themselves: "What is my core competency? How can I best thrive in my particular ecosystem?"

I see a majority of indie authors posting advice on how to be indie authors. But I don't see a lot of indie authors posting excerpts of their work online.

My strategy is to post short satirical fiction on my blog. I picked this strategy mostly because I thought I could do it competitively. If I posted tips about how to market, I doubt they'd be better than any of the other indie authors writing about marketing. Plus, writers write.

I used to have a podcast but I recently dropped it because I didn't think it was value added for what I'm doing. With all the new technologies out there it's hard to continually do the same thing in the same place so that you can make an impact and get noticed.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

The books that do well are the books people find.

Though I've done many of the things David, above, suggests (blog, free full novel, free humorous shorts), it's all for nothing if readers don't find your work. I've taken a sabbatical from writing in order to work harder on promoting myself, my site and my books... because if no one out there knows about my books, there's not much point in writing them, is there?