I have studied the traditional publishing routes for authors, have queried and had an agent approach publishers. That method isn’t off the table but in this economy it is incredibly hard to be considered!
Self publishing has also been researched. Now it was the time for me to turn my eyes to e-books.
It depends on how flexible you are to embrace change. I was quite resistant to the idea assuming that e-books was another form of self publishing …and so it can be. Upon further research I found that as of last July, Amazon was selling 143 e-books for every 100 hard bound book. That was almost a year ago and the numbers have continued to grow! The wave is going that direction! The numbers for England and Canada were the same as the US market! There will always be paper books but the strong trend is toward e-books.
E-books are greener both in usage of paper and in recycling/landfill costs. You can carry several large volumes on your “tablet” and never get dogeared pages and tattered covers. Many people who commute by mass transit find the tablets compact and efficient. It isn’t just the Gen X or Y using the tablets. People older than me (we won’t get specific here) absolutely love the convenience.
I got lucky in that I literally fell into a name of a Digital Publisher that also had a POD (print on demand) arm to the business. They didn’t accept any book. You have to query as they are establishing a reputation for quality books. They are a royalty based house with nice numbers. Where in the traditional paper publishing route the author would earn about 8%, this house (Red Willow Digital Press) has it set up that they would earn 50% of net. Net is a bit of a moving target as it depends upon which distributors sell how many and what their take is but it shakes out at approximately 20% per book.
They also edit, market and contract for distribution.
Hey what have I got to lose? I’ve sent in my query submission.
1 Comment
I bought the etinre collection of books for my kids, and also for my nephews who live in California. The kids’ ages range from 4-10 yrs. old, and all of them enjoy the books. My kids find the books to be funny and fun to read. My husband and I appreciate the creative way that the books reinforce the Armenian language and culture to our kids. Great initiative by the author to capture in story-form what we as Armenian parents have experienced during our youth. As more and more generations of American-Armenians grow farther away from our foreign-born parents’ customs and rituals, these books allow us to bring the concepts back and share the funny anecdotes with our children so that they can continue to exist in their repetoire of the Armenian culture.