Oy--I feel like a dinosaur hemmed in, slowly fading into extinction, my world of paper pages, my sustenance, shrinking and shrinking under the onslaught of digital bits, bytes, zeros and ones,  until my kind is no more. Thunk! I drop at last, cooling body buried slowly under layer upon layer of gibbering cyber text, hyper links, streaming media. No longer old and in the way, now ossified, my writing bones dug-up, displayed as an object of curiosity for public wonder--Oy.

Hey youngsters! What happens if the electricity fails, huh, huh? Answer yourselves that one, you, you, chipmunks!

What do you call half a byte...a nibble! Ha!

brosna11 wrote:

Nothing can replace a real book printed on good paper (not newsprint) and I buy them myself, give them to others, drop them at the library and Salvation Army or at the used book store.
Nadine

Old fogeys, unite!

I fear we are counted amongst the likes of King Canute The Great - though in truth, he was only making a point, as are we

Sigh...

BTW, Kindle doth not allow sharing.

Hi Sharlow and C. Lee Brown!

Just take us old fogeys down here at the bottom of the thread with a grain of salt. Thanks for the info about electronic publishing, which I do, indeed, find useful and may even attempt. What the heck! BTW, I should have said thank you before starting my blithering. Toungue-in-cheek as it was, there is an some element of truth in humor.

Nadine, of course, is a truth teller and never blithers but pounds the reader with opinions backed up with factual observations. That's why I love her.

Write well and prosper,
Bob (R A Keen)

Brosna and R A Keen hope you both keep wanting to feel the pages.
It's us old classical readers that sell books.
Most of my reading material is in Hard Cover on shelves in my den. In fact
all I have to do is lift my head to see Isaac Asimov, Clive Barker, Terry Brooks,
Tom Clancy, Stephen R Donaldson, J K Rowling, Terry Pratchett, Robt Heinlein,
Stephen King and more and that's just the shelves on this side of the window.
(Low end of the alphabet)
Hope you pick up a hard cover or at least a paperback of mine when it comes out.

Lee

Last edited by C Lee Brown (01-17-2010 17:03:34)

Hi all,

We published a Kindle version of My Writing Life. I'm going to put together a case study on what the experience was like. I hope to have it done in the next week or two.

Sol

Anyone,
Does poetry sell well on Kindle? One at a time or as a complete set of works?

Hi SolN,
Did you ever put together the case study on Kindle?

Sharlow & C Lee Brown,
How well is the Kindle experience going?

Love Ya, Spargo Postle.

Dear Sharlow,

Many thanks for the reply, most appreciated. I need to get myself more organised and better researched. If it's not too much trouble could I have the names of your books and the name you write under; for research and to brag to people that I have had a forum converstaion with someone with three published pieces of work.

Will speak again I have no doubt.

Love Ya, Spargo Postle.

Spargo Postle wrote:

Dear Sharlow,

Many thanks for the reply, most appreciated. I need to get myself more organised and better researched. If it's not too much trouble could I have the names of your books and the name you write under; for research and to brag to people that I have had a forum converstaion with someone with three published pieces of work.

Will speak again I have no doubt.

Love Ya, Spargo Postle.

Your welcome! I haven't been to TNBW in awhile, so sorry for taking so long to reply. Things are going quite well at the moment. My first year of learning and playing with prices is now over and I feel I've learned a few things. I have 5 books out now, and last year I sold 500 books. Not massive, but hey not bad. This year I decided to change my strategy around a bit and see what happens.

Well it's only been a month and were into the second month and my results are fantastic. January I sold 392 books. Almost doubling my sales and all but matching all of last years sales, in one month. Mostly it was just a price thing. This month is looking better then the last month, as one of my books has been consistently on the front page of the bestseller page for my genre on Amazon. As such in the last 4 day's I've 143 books this month. Looks as if I'm going to beat last months sales at this rate.

So yeah, things are looking up. Oh in the last post you were responding to, I mentioned a friend, mostly a forum friend that I talk with. She had 10k sales I mentioned. Well here's a link to a news story on her today. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qWOy4p4MvM  Amanda is like our poster child for self publishing. H.P. Malory just got a deal with Random house thanks to her Indy sales. She got a 6 figure advance and three book deal. Her Indy sales were 25,000 in Dec. and 35,000 in Jan.

Things are looking good in the Indy world these day's. I hope everyone is doing well here.

Spargo Postle wrote:

Dear Sharlow,

Many thanks for getting back to answer me. I have also published but only sold about 1% of you 2010 figure...!!! Starting to recognise that pricing and marketing is not only important but something of a skill that is important to get right. Therefore am doing plenty of research before going too far.

Poetry seems to download when free but not many prepared to pay too much, but then I think I have almost zero marketing and I have to calibrate the price to what is acceptable... Lots to learn, but having a huge amount of fun.

Glad to hear you are doing so well at the beginning of this year.

Love Ya, Spargo Postle.

Well it's been a year since that post and I hope your results have increased. Once again, my apology for being absent from these boards for so long. Marketing can be a pain, and to be honest I don't do much of it. I've tried the twitter/facebook route and seen no real upswing in sales from it. What I have found is that there awesome ways to stay in touch with your fans.

A few virtual book tours under my belt, and except for meeting new people it's a lot of work for no appreciable increase in sales. I think the slow grind of building a fan base that spreads your work by word of mouth is the best way to market your books. I think that's how it's been for me at least. Anyways I hope things are going well with you.