Other Retailers

Of course, Amazon isn’t the only e-book store: Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Sony all have online stores too. Every store has different, often complex, requirements. (Barnes & Noble requires you to have a U.S. bank account in order to collect royalties.) Rather than submit your e-book to every site individually, distribute it via Smashwords (www.smashwords.com) to save time and effort.

Smashwords handles the file conversion, so you provide only a Microsoft Word document, formatted according to the site’s precise guidelines. You must also add Smashwords edition (or similar wording) to the copyright page; if you’re uncomfortable doing so, choose a different method of distribution.

Your e-book will be available via the Smashwords site for readers to buy in a number of different formats. Smashwords pays 85 percent royalties, minus a small transaction fee, for sales via its site, and it pays 60 percent of the retail price for most sales via other stores. For more on Smashwords, see Chapter 14.
Marketing Your E-Book Online

After you’ve written and published your e-book, the hard work isn’t over. (In fact, many authors feel that this point is where it truly begins.) Of course, you’ve completed a fantastic task — your own book is out there on the virtual shelves — but chances are good that you won’t believe it’s a success until you have at least attracted interested readers.

You need to market your e-book, even if it’s available for free. Many authors shy away from marketing and its frequent association with pushy car salesmen, annoying cold calls, or scammy online websites. But your marketing effort doesn’t need to conjure up these unsavory images. In fact, you’ll be much more successful if you focus on sharing your message and giving valuable information to people who come across your marketing materials — even if they don’t eventually buy your e-book.

One popular concept in the online marketing world is attention marketing, which means using valuable content to draw readers to you instead of using ads and other forms of interruption marketing. This valuable content can be almost anything: a free sample of your e-book, a funny or compelling video, a Twitter account where you share useful tips and interesting quotes, or a blog or podcast where you cover topics related to your e-book.

In addition to being more effective than traditional advertising, attention marketing has the huge advantage of being cheap or even free. Though it costs you nothing to set up and maintain a Twitter account, Facebook page, or simple blog for your e-book, they all take time, of course — so know how to use that time effectively.