On the Self-Publishing Review blog, self-publishing author Rich Evans ponders whether it’s time to go e-book-only on his next self-published title. His first book, Asylum Lake, was self-published via an Espresso Book Machine, giving him a printed 6×9 paperback book for $10 each. He was able to start out with small print runs and sell them for $15 per book, plowing revenues back into getting more copies to have on hand.
He did all right selling the print book for a while, especially after promoting it by releasing the first six chapters serially on-line. The Facebook page for the book ended up with over 600 fans, which would represent $3,000 of profit if every one of those people bought the paper book—not too bad for self-publishing.
But the problem is that his reach is limited by being a physical self-publisher—anything he can do in person to increase publicity for the book has a very small radius of effect. But lately he’s discovered how effective e-book sales can be with a little on-line promotion:
Recently, I started to promote the e-book version of Asylum Lake via Smashwords and Amazon and have had some success. It’s still time consuming, but there are so many options at my disposal. I can tweak the cover art or description of Asylum Lake with the click of a button. I can use the Kindle Boards to promote and discuss how my title stacks up against others. I can generate coupons and giveaways on Smashwords for discounted and free copies. The possibilities are nearly endless.
And also, on Amazon the e-book is priced at a very reasonable $2.99—quite a bit below the $15 or $20 that the printed book costs.
Now that Evans is almost ready to release the sequel, he’s pondering whether he really even needs to go the print route at all with it. On the printed-book side, he likes being able to “walk into a library or bookstore and see my own titles next to those of the iconic Stephen King or his very talented son Joe Hill,” but I wonder how realistic it is to expect to be able to do that anywhere outside of his very small radius of effect.
Of course, as a couple of people pointed out in the comments on the blog post, the decision is a bit of a false dichotomy. There are other ways of self-publishing in print that would not be subject to the regional limitation of doing it in person via an Espresso, and would be a lot cheaper, too. But e-books certainly do have advantages in customizability and promotion that printed books can’t match.
No doubt eBooks should be the primary method for self-published authors to get read. The economics all point to it.
But physical books still have an important role. Book signings and being on the shelves at local stores. Don’t expect B&N to buy a lot – but they might stock in a few select stores.
One thing I will say, if he’s going down the Ebook route then he needs to pay more care to his product page on Amazon.
First word in the product description for Asylum Lake on the UK Amazon site has a spelling/typo error!