• Café Life is the Colony's main hangout, watering hole and meeting point.

    This is a place where you'll meet and make writing friends, and indulge in stratospherically-elevated wit or barometrically low humour.

    Some Colonists pop in religiously every day before or after work. Others we see here less regularly, but all are equally welcome. Two important grounds rules…

    • Don't give offence
    • Don't take offence

    We now allow political discussion, but strongly suggest it takes place in the Steam Room, which is a private sub-forum within Café Life. It’s only accessible to Full Members.

    You can dismiss this notice by clicking the "x" box

Craft Chat Kindle Direct Publishing UK wants you

Invest in You. Get Full Membership now.
Status
Not open for further replies.
I am contemplating selling my soul to the devil that is Jeff Bezos—it may be a fruitful endeavour—or I could end up as just another crispy critter!
 
I am contemplating selling my soul to the devil that is Jeff Bezos—it may be a fruitful endeavour—or I could end up as just another crispy critter!
But is it selling your soul or simply investigating ways to get your books to readers?
 
But is it selling your soul or simply investigating ways to get your books to readers?[/QUOT

Having previously published 44 titles on Smashwords and Amazon, I have mixed feelings about ebooks. I like the freedom of uploading a book, publishing it instantly, but this ignores the need to publicise the thing as a commercially available product. Without some razzmatazz, one's book disappears like a bucket of water emptied into an ocean.

Remembering Marshall McLuhan's phrase The medium is the message, I appreciate that, theoretically at least, Amazon is an ideal place to flog ebooks. The site's customers are tuned into doing things online, and may well prefer ebooks to traditional hard copies.

The problem comes when this symbiosis breaks down, owing to Amazon's stringent contracts, along with the secrecy and doubletalk I mentioned in another thread. I value my idependence, even if it is hard to attract attention to my market stall. Amazon certainly has the oomph, but their authors are virtual slaves.
 
Just don't have anything suitable at present....
 
Invest in You. Get Full Membership now.
This is a marketing technique to get people to sign on with Kindle Direct Publishing. Amazon profits from the fees they charge for this service so the more signed up, the more they like it. Years ago I looked into self-publishing through Amazon and the contract appeared to give far too many rights to the company while offering very little to the author.

However, if you enjoy contests, don't mind signing up with Amazon, and have a lot of relatives to buy your book and post nice comments about it to help you win, it could be for you.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Further Articles from the Author Platform

Latest Articles By Litopians

  • The Shadow Durian
    As a lifelong foreigner, I’ve learnt that being open to new things smooths the path considerably. ...
  • Goodbye Eeyore, Hello Tigger
    Granny was churchy. She grew up in an era that saw living by the Bible as an important British chara ...
  • 21st Century Song of Summer
         It’s sobering to think that while summer is celebrated in some parts of the world with mus ...
  • Falcon Theory
    “So,” said Goethe to his friend Johann Peter Eckermann, “let us call it a Novelle, for what i ...
  • The Joy of Lit Mags
    While my first novel is tentatively making its way towards agents who already have too much to read, ...
  • Advertising and Social Media
    There has been much discussion in writing circles about how much a writer has to self-promote these ...
  • Future Abstract: Fights at Night
    SATIRE ALERT: The following abstract is entirely fictional and does not represent actual events or s ...
Back
Top