For Aspiring Novelists

[Elizabeth Ann West]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100120/ap_ ... JzcHN0b3I-

Amazon is announcing a new 70% royalty program for any ebook priced between $2.99 and $9.99 on their Kindle Digital Text Platform. Might be a great thing for anyone who wishes to self-publish. Imagine writing about your second novel to a brick-and-mortar publishing house and saying you have sales of 100,000 of you first novel. LOL.

It looks like the digital revolution that makes article publishing so easy is coming to novels.

On a personal note, I think I might be dedicating more time to novel writing, I have big chunks of a few different storylines. I threw myself into being back at C-C, but it seems like I've lost my selling touch Either I'm out of touch with the new pricing or my writing style just isn't grabbing buyers.

[Lysis]

Don't give up just yet. January/February is where everyone is making that resolution to create a new website. Lots of people gravitate to the mundane that's saturated already - tech, affiliate marketing, jobs, motivation, ebooks, debt resolution, etc.

Once the novelty wears off, March kinda goes back to the norm.

[Elizabeth Ann West]

Turns out it just needed to get close to the end of the month. I had two sales today, and I can't complain as one was for a high dollar article. It's hard when you've been away for so long to get back into the swing of things.

I will say, I've read more about the Amazon Kindle Store. And I have to kinda laugh when these people are selling NOVELS for $1.99 just to get their name out there, and currently only keeping 35%!!! (The 70% doesn't start until June) I began thinking about how some articles here sell for Use more than that! Granted, you'd be hard pressed to sell one article thousands of times like hopefully your book would (and some claim they have sold well) but really, article writing is sounding more profitable by far at the moment. Though I may still do it just to conquer that mountain, so to speak.

I will say that in reading their forums, it looks like they accept just about anything, in that you don't have to write a novel to sell. I know a few writers here have struggled with finding a market for longer pieces, and it looks like there is a niche over there for longer articles (2,500 words plus areas) and for collections of pieces. I'm not trying to take away business from Constant-Content at all, but we all know this venue doesn't accept everything in the written world.

[Celeste Stewart]

It's funny that you posted this. Earlier this week I uploaded my eBook to Amazon's Digital Text Platform and then the next day you were talking about it. I don't have big dreams of tons of sales there. Just thought the Kindle might be another avenue to try. Apparently it takes a few days for your content to be reviewed and approved. It will be nice when they up the percentage though.

[Elizabeth Ann West]

Read some of their forums... it almost makes you want to scream "Seriously people, I take 2 hours to write 1,000 words and sell it for $85 (minus the cut). Why on earth do I want to write 30,000 words and sell it for $1.99?"

I'm still working on that math myself. About the ONLY saving grace I can see is I can write fiction. But I have found writing fiction FAR harder than writing non-ficion. Probably just out of practice, it's been a long time since anyone asked me to do some creative writing. But I've been doing some of the exercises I remember from high school, and reading up on more. I minored in English Literature, not the writing of it, the critiquing side. So it's hard for me to not rip my own fiction pieces apart.

[Celeste Stewart]

I love writing fiction but I also enjoy non-fiction. I can understand why some writers would want to bypass publishers because finding an agent or publisher is ridiculously hard and slow. Unless you can hobnob at writers conferences, it's tough to get your query letters and manuscripts opened. I suppose the writers are hoping for thousands of $1.99 sales but they're going to have to work awfully hard to get those.

[Debbi]

I was afraid January was going to copy my sad December and sell next to nothing here, but I just logged on to see if my last article had been approved and found it had already sold! I love it when that happens And for a decent price too. Just proves to me I need to submit more. I wrote that one in an hour becuase I'd already done the reserach for something else.

I have had a children's book for sale on Amazone Kindle for over a year and have never sold one copy. It's primarily a picture book and beautifully illustarted (not by me, I can't draw my own name) and so I figured it wasn't selling because the Kindle was black and white. Isn't the new one color? Maybe preK-3rd graders don't buy many digital books. Or maybe it's too expensive. Only about 80 words for $1.99, heh.