July 9, 2015

I really need to drop prices on my paperbacks

Kill me, but I don't remember why I have priced my paperbacks a particular way a while ago. I think I thought of offering paperbacks like an expensive souvenir since I give ebooks away for free, following Seth Godin's idea and the blue ocean strategy. Or maybe I read some article somewhere at some point, or copied the prices of other books. I can't remember exactly. I even wrote this post about pricing books recently, but today something shifted in my brain. Not sure why.

I'm sitting here reading Fablehaven by Brandon Mull—which I recommend to all of you—and the similarity to Rosehead struck me like a hammer. Not so much the story as the elements like an arrival at a mysterious house surrounded by a mysterious property, a mysterious grandfather, a sister and a brother (like Lilith and Panther) discovering hidden magical things about the place and those living in it. It was eerie. Then I glanced at the back of the book. $7.99. And the writing is superb, so much cleaner and better than mine.

June 28, 2015

Pricing your self-published books

by Ksenia Anske

Are you ready of a long tearful saga about pricing your self-published books? You better be. Go get your popcorn, I'll wait.

All done? Good. Let's proceed.

This will be the opening of a can of worms, talking about pricing. Not very appetizing but necessary to suffer through. I wrote a little bit about this here, and now I'll expand on it more as there are so many little variants that even if you want to set the price for your book at a specific number, say, $4.99, you might not be able to. This stuff is something we don't think about when going into a bookstore and picking up a book from a shelf, but publishers have been breaking their heads over for years, and we self-published authors are braving for the first time on our own and suffering through the torment that comes with it.

February 4, 2015

Switching extended print book distribution from CreateSpace to Ingram

by Ksenia Anske

BOOKSTORES ARE ASKING FOR MY BOOKS!

That's the good news.

MY BOOKS ARE DISTRIBUTED VIA CREATESPACE AND ARE NON-RETURNABLE!

That's the bad news.

But I did what Hugh Howey said to do! He published all his books through CreateSpace before he hit it big. He even got free CreateSpace ISBNs for all of them! Well, yeah, but after he did hit it big, his giant traditional publisher took care of the extended distribution. Actually, I don't know. I'd have to ask Hugh. I'm assuming it did. Now, before I confuse you any more, let me explain to you the hurdle I'm up against, what I did, what I will do, and what I suggest you do, if you're wading out into the self-publishing world for the first time and want your books to be available in bookstores and libraries.