Marketing consultant BM recently wrote me:<\/p>\n
“Bob, I am so proud! I just published my first Kindle e-book!”
\nIt was a business title.<\/p>\n
Of course, I congratulated him.<\/p>\n
But being the negative nelly I am, I felt compelled to tell him
\nwhat in my opinion is the awful truth about writing and
\npublishing a Kindle e-book. I wrote:<\/p>\n
“I think with rare exception there is almost no money to be
\nmade and very little prestige to be gained in producing Kindle
\ne-books, precisely because everyone can do it and seemingly is.”<\/p>\n
Kindle e-books have greatly devalued the status of being an
\nauthor.<\/p>\n
It reminds me of a line uttered by Buddy, the bad guy in the
\nmovie The Incredibles.<\/p>\n
Buddy is jealous of superheroes. Being an inventor, he designs
\nan outfit that gives him the ability to fly and shoot paralyzing
\nrays.<\/p>\n
He intends to sell the suit design to the highest bidder,
\ngleefully noting: “When everyone is super, then no one is.”<\/p>\n
It’s the same with Kindle: when everyone is an author, then
\nbeing an author isn’t special.<\/p>\n
BM replied:<\/p>\n
“Well, I agree, but having the Kindle e-book makes for good
\nmarketing and it elevates my image in the eyes of some
\nprospects.”<\/p>\n
Again, I am an argumentative cuss, so I countered: “I am not
\nsure how it helps with marketing. The best way to use the book
\nwould be to offer it online as a free download, not sell it for
\nten bucks on Amazon, who will not share the customer’s name with
\nyou.<\/p>\n
“And I do not think being a Kindle e-book author does anything
\nto elevate image. A REAL book does that.”<\/p>\n
BM agreed: “I have a real book, so I agree with you entirely,
\neven though it was self-published. I sold about 500 and gave
\naway about 300, and that book landed me huge projects.”<\/p>\n
I have booked hundreds of thousands of dollars in copywriting
\nand consulting projects, and speaking gigs, because of my
\nphysical books, all published by major publishing houses.<\/p>\n
One of the problems with Kindle e-books is that, while they are
\ncheap and easy to publish, the end result is simply having an
\ne-book that people can buy on Amazon.<\/p>\n
Amazon doesn’t market or promote these Kindle e-books in any
\nway.<\/p>\n
Therefore, once posted online, the majority sit there, and many
\nsell a pitifully small number of copies.<\/p>\n
One author, DY, told me proudly that after heavy promotion over
\nthe course of a couple of years, he sold 540 copies of his
\nself-published book. He then admitted he barely broke even on
\nthe venture.<\/p>\n
Yes, I know there are Kindle e-book authors that have sold books
\nby the truckload and made small fortunes. But these are a
\nminiscule minority.<\/p>\n
The vast majority of Kindle e-book authors toil in obscurity and
\nbarely make enough on their book to take the family to a nice
\ndinner at Outback.<\/p>\n
Most Kindle e-books, including my two — a collection of my
\nscience fiction stories and a collection of these e-mail essays,
\n“Don’t Wear a Cowboy Hat Unless You Are a Cowboy” — are vanity
\npublications.<\/p>\n
The author produces them for his own ego and from a desire to
\nmake his writing available to the wider world.<\/p>\n
But in most cases, including mine, the wider world has little or
\nno interest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Marketing consultant BM recently wrote me: “Bob, I am so proud! I just published my first Kindle e-book!” It was a business title. Of course, I congratulated him. But being the negative nelly I am, I felt compelled to tell him what in my opinion is the awful truth about writing and publishing a Kindle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=966"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":976,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966\/revisions\/976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}