Is There Money in Writing Ebooks for Children & Young Adults?

Posted on December 13, 2010 by Lindsay

If you write stories (or plan to) for children or young adult readers, you may wonder if there’s a market. Sure, YA and MG books are doing well in print editions, but do kids actually have ebook readers? Or is this club predominantly ‘adults only’ for the time being?

The good news is ebook readers are taking off in popularity amongst all age groups. As the prices drop for the entry level models, more and more people are picking them up. With several readers under $150 this holiday season, they’re no longer too expensive to give as gifts to family members. A lot of the new color ebook readers also make viewing picture books an option. Other readers are being designed specifically with kids in mind.

Over at the MobileRead Forums, I asked if anyone had given their kids ebook readers (or planned to), and quite a few people chimed in with positive responses.

A blog post this summer over at Teleread pointed out that even young children are using ebook readers.

Stores like Barnes & Noble are going out of their way to attract youngsters with their Nook Kids program.

There are even people toting the educational benefits of these devices. A Kansas State University professor believes kindles can motivate less enthusiastic readers.

I noticed over at Amazon that many of the books I enjoyed as a kid are popping up in the Kindle store, but they’re often priced as expensively as paperbacks ($7 for Old Yeller and A Wrinkle in Time). Watership Down is $13, gee whiz. If you’re an indie author writing good stories for children, your $2.99 ebook might just appeal to parents trying to make their e-dollars stretch. (And, as an indie selling at Amazon, you’ll take home 70% of that $2.99, so we’re hardly talking peanuts.)

With so many encouraging posts out there, it seems likely the number of e-readers in kids’ hands will grow and grow in coming years. So author friends, if that’s your target audience, write on!

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Where to Get Cover Art for Your Ebook

Posted on December 10, 2010 by Lindsay

You’ve spent months (years?) penning your masterpiece, and now you’re ready to turn it into an ebook. You’ll want it to appear at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, etc., and you’ll want it to look good! Just like a print book, an ebook needs a cover.

The cover art will be displayed in the online bookstores, and it’ll play a big part in getting readers to buy your work. Yes, it’s true even with ebooks: people judge a book by its cover.

Unless you’re an artist yourself (lucky you!), it’s probably best to hire a professional. For custom artwork, expect to pay between $200 to $500. If that’s too much, you may be able to find an up-and-comer or someone from another country to work for less (make sure your artist understands English well, since you’ll have detailed instructions to relay). Remember, though, the cover art is a huge factor in selling books, ebooks included, so paying a little more now could benefit you a lot in the end.

Where can I find an ebook artist?

Deviant Art is a great place to look for artists, and it’s where I found Jason, who did my Goblin Brothers cover art. From comic-style art to realistic paintings, it’s there.

I recommend making an account (free) and posting on their Job Offers Forum (also free). Explain what you’re looking for and how much you can pay. As long as you’re offering a respectable amount, you’ll hear from lots of interested artists. Browse through their galleries, and find someone whose style meshes with your vision.

Don’t be afraid to hire someone who hasn’t done a cover before; if you like their other art, they probably won’t have a problem creating something to your parameters.

I won’t go into legalities here, but you may want to have a contract drawn up (or the artist may want this). You should go over what rights you’ll need for the artwork. For example, you may think you only need electronic rights, but what happens if you decide to create a print version later? Or do you expect the artist to do this as a work-for-hire and hand over all rights?

How big should my ebook cover art be?

One of the questions your artist will ask is the dimensions of the illustration they’re going to do. There isn’t a set industry standard somewhere, but Amazon suggests nothing less than 500 pixels wide. If you have the option, have your artist do something bigger, as it’s easier to shrink an image down than make it larger. As for resolution, 300 dpi is going to give you a high quality picture to use.

Any thoughts or questions on cover art? Feel free to comment below!

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Thriller Author Makes $620 a Day Selling Kindle Ebooks

Posted on December 8, 2010 by Lindsay

Though this blog is new, I’ve already mentioned Joe Konrath once or twice (Ebook Authors Making Good Money), and I’m sure this won’t be the last time. He’s quite the inspiration to us indie ebook authors!

Last week, he posted some of his recent sales numbers to his blog. Wow.

In the past six weeks, my twenty self-pubbed titles on Amazon Kindle have earned over $26,000. In November, I sold over 9000 ebooks on Kindle. That averages out to 300 a day.

I’ve also noted before how ebooks are like a pyramid scheme. Once they’re live, they keep earning money, and more people review them and tell others about them, growing their fanbase. As an author, I add fuel to this fire by writing even more titles, biggering my potential for discovery and for new readers.

Q: You’re really making $620 a day?

A: That’s just on Kindle. If we include other ebook venues, Createspace, my print deals, and royalties and subsidiary rights, I’m probably one of the better-paid authors working today. Who woulda thunk that you can actually make decent money writing?

Of course, Mr. Konrath has been in the writing business for years and had traditionally published novels before turning to ebooks, so he’s definitely a professional (despite using ‘biggering’ in a blog post *g*). Those of us new to the business aren’t likely to see quite this kind of success, though, if you follow his blog, you’ll see him pointing out other authors (who have been indie from the start) making it big.

The possibilities are out there for those with the talent, perseverance, and marketing sense to go after them.

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Cover Art for the First Goblin Brothers Ebook

Posted on December 7, 2010 by Lindsay

For those who have expressed curiosity (you know who you are!), here’s the cover art for my first collection of short stories. I’ll be getting this puppy formatted and online this week. If all goes well (and probably even if it doesn’t), this will be the first of many ebooks for me.

Goblin Brothers Vol 1 Ebook Cover Art

The artwork is by Jason Dube from Scattered Comics. Thanks, Jason!

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Should You Buy Advertising on Book Review Blogs?

Posted on December 6, 2010 by Lindsay

Last week, we looked at a few online advertising options for our ebooks. For the most part, I talked about large, established sites that receive a lot of visitors every day. If you think the rates are on the high side or the wait is on the long side (or you’ve already tried them and are looking for more ways to advertise), you may want to check out other options.

A lot of small book/ebook review blogs are starting to offer sponsorship packages. I’m not going to say yay or nay as to whether these are worth the money, but I’ll throw out some things you may want to consider before plonking your virtual coins down:

How much traffic does the site receive?

A brand new site that gets three visitors a day probably isn’t going to generate a lot of sales for you. You can get a general idea of traffic by looking the site up at Alexa. The lower the traffic rating, the more popular the site. You might type yours in or other ones in the industry for a comparison.

A lot of bloggers are great about giving you a big ad (maybe a full blog post), including interviews, excerpts from your ebook, others’ reviews of your ebook, etc. etc. etc., but if the eyeballs aren’t there, you have to ask yourself if any of that matters.

That said, a highly targeted blog with low traffic may give you much better results than a less well targeted blog with high traffic. For example, an ebook review site with fifty visitors a day may sell more books for you than a general e-reader forum with hundreds of visitors. People don’t generally go to forums to buy things, but if they’re looking for reviews, chances are they’re in a buying frame of mind.

Can you get your ebook mentioned without paying for an ad?

A lot of the review sites have submission guidelines posted and/or invite guest posts. If you can write a guest post and include a link back to your site and to your book at Amazon, you could save yourself a few dollars. Too, people tend to respond more positively to informative blog posts than ‘sponsored posts’ or advertisements.

Are there a lot of other advertisements on the site already?

I saw a brand new ebook review blog the other day that had so many Amazon and Adsense ads on it, my eyes crossed. And that’s coming from someone who makes a living running ads on her sites. I’m not against a blogger trying to make money, but a lot of clutter will detract from your ad.

The ‘can’t see the forest for the trees’ adage applies here.

Do you get a permanent link to your site out of the deal?

Even if all I’d checked the big fail box for everything else listed above, I’d probably pay for an advertisement that included a permanent link to my site (i.e. in the form of a blog post that remained on the site long after it’d been shifted off the front page).

The more links pointing to your site the more ways people can find you. Also, search engines assume sites with lots of links pointing to them are authorities in their niche. You’ll end up ranking more highly in the search engine results, so you’ll get more organic traffic from Google, Yahoo, etc. in the long run.

A banner ad that appears on a site for a month, then disappears forever is worth a lot less to me (add to that the studies suggesting people have been banner blind since the 90s and don’t click them nearly as often as text links, and I’ve little interest in banners, period).

Ultimately… it’s your decision

I wanted to offer some Devil’s Advocate advice here, but I know that ultimately a lot of writers are just happy to support folks who are reviewing books, especially the ones who go out of their way to help out indie authors. If you have the money to do that, then don’t let me stop you. However, if you are keeping ROI in mind and need to make sure each advertising dollar counts, then please consider these points before paying for sponsorship.

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How Much Money Can Indie Ebook Authors Make?

Posted on December 3, 2010 by Lindsay

ebook royalties So, you’re ready to publish your first ebook and you’re wondering how much moola you can rake in. While the money is ultimately tied in to how many books you sell, I can at least tell you the cut the main ebook retailers are offering.

Note: this is for authors who are uploading their ebooks straight to the marketplaces without a middleman (AKA publisher). The downside of being an indie author is that you have to handle the cover art, copy-editing, and formatting yourself. The upside is in what you get to keep at the end of the day!

Amazon Kindle Ebook Royalties

Amazon is interesting in that your cut changes, depending on the price of your ebook. Between $2.99 and $9.99, you receive 70%. Less than or more than that and it’s 35%. Fortunately, that’s probably where most of us will want to price our ebooks anyway. You won’t find many buyers at higher prices, and, though you may get more sales at $1.99 or $0.99, you may be doing yourself a disservice going lower (lower perceived value by customers + many more sales required to recoup expenses and turn a profit). That said, for a novella or short story collection (such as I’m starting out with!), $.99 may be a fair price. In which case, we just have to suck it up and accept that 35% royalty rate.

Upload your book to the Amazon marketplace via their Digital Text Platform.

Barnes & Noble Nook Royalties

Load your manuscript to the Barnes & Noble marketplace via their PubIt site, and start earning 65% of the list price for ebooks priced between $2.99 and $9.99. For titles priced lower or higher, it’s a 40% royalty.

Apple iBookstore Royalties

Apple makes you jump through some hoops to upload your ebooks, but if you’re game, you can earn 70% for your titles.

Smashword Ebook Royalties

This big indie ebook marketplace offers the most attractive cuts for authors, though they get fewer eyeballs on their site than the mainstream book sellers. They will give you 85% of the list price for each ebook you sell.

You’ll earn less if ebooks are sold via affiliate links (meaning someone promoted your ebook on his/her website, made a sale, and will earn a cut), but those are books you wouldn’t have sold anyway, so don’t begrudge affiliates (in fact, you may want to become an affiliate yourself and earn a few extra bucks).

Smashwords also acts as a distributor and can handle getting your ebooks to Apple, B&N, Amazon, etc. if you don’t want to deal with each company yourself. They also handle getting an ISBN for your ebook (which most of the marketplaces require). It follows, of course, that they take a cut if you go this route: “For most retail distribution partners, Smashwords pays the author/publisher 85% or more of the net proceeds to Smashwords, which works out to 42% or more of the suggested list price you set for your book.”

Visit their publish page to get started.

Anybody else we should mention here? Any numbers that need a correction? Feel free to chime in below!

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Ebook Reviews: Are They Vital to Sales?

Posted on November 30, 2010 by Lindsay

ebook reviewsA new ebook author on the Kindleboards asked if reviews are vital to ebook sales.

To me, the answer seems obvious (yes), since I doubt I’d buy an ebook from an indie author without several reviews posted on Amazon. Heck, I don’t even buy books from established authors without seeing some reader reviews first these days. Of course, I’m not representative of every reader.

Most folks in the thread did say, yes, readers are much more likely to download the sample and ultimately buy the ebook. We like to see social proof that others have done the same and not regretted the experience. Some authors said they’d received sales on books with no reviews, though, so not having one isn’t necessarily a death knell. You’re just likely to see more purchases with reviews.

This begs the question, “How does one get reviews in the first place if one needs to have reviews up to get people to buy?”

Catch-22, eh?

So, how does one get those first few reviews? Here are a couple suggestions from the thread and a couple of my own:

  • Find book review sites/blogs and offer a free copy of your ebook to the owner. Ideally, target folks who read and review in your genre and have already posted reviews of ebooks from indie authors (a lot of the bigger reviewers aren’t interested in ebooks or indie authors, but there are quite a few out there who specialize in these types of books).
  • Make use of your social networking contacts. If you’re a big chatter on the internet or if you’ve been planning a book-marketing strategy, you may already have a legion of Twitter followers, Facebook friends, or Goodreads buddies. (If not, get busy!) You might get a few nibbles if you get onto your favorite social site and offer some free copies with the subtle hint that a review posted at Amazon, B&N, etc. would be appreciated (even better, just put this request in the author notes of your ebook–i.e. thanks for reading and if you enjoyed the story, please post a review).
  • Join ebook forums, such as KindleBoards, MobileReads, and NookBoards, and look for members interested in doing reviews in exchange for free reads. Especially on the KindleBoards, I’ve seen several different members starting threads to let authors know they’re willing. You may get some people just fishing for free ebooks, but you’re not out anything even if that’s the case. You can always check the poster’s other threads to get a feel for them. Ideally, you’ll find a couple new fans who will leave reviews for you.
  • Ask your blog visitors to read and review your ebooks. This may seem obvious, but you don’t get what you don’t ask for. If you maintain a blog (and you should!), make sure there’s a prominent link to your ebooks in the sidebar, preferably above the fold (visible to people without scrolling down). Don’t make visitors surf through several pages of your site (or even two) to find the link that will take them to Amazon, Smashwords, B&N, etc. If you have free review copies to offer, also make it known right up front.

Those are a few suggestions for how to get ebook reviews for your babies. If you have others, let us know in the comments.

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The Speedy (sort of) Process of Ebook Publishing

Posted on November 26, 2010 by Lindsay

It’s Thanksgiving weekend, a few days after I thought I’d have my first ebook together and up on Amazon. Alas, it’s not there yet.

It took me a week or so to find someone who had time to proofread my short stories (I didn’t want to wait until Christmas or later) and would work for a price I could afford (I’m going to sell the ebook for 99 cents, so I can’t justify spending too much on the editing!).

I did get the edits back on Wednesday, and I’ve incorporated them. The writing is ready to go, and I’m just waiting on the cover art. I saw the black-and-white ink version of the cover today, so I’m hoping everything will come together in the next week.

Once I have shiny text and snazzy art, I’ll hand both over to Ted, the fellow who is formatting the ebook for me. I fiddled around, trying to format practice files on my own before deciding to hire someone to do it.

As a Mac user, I think I came up against a couple extra obstacles that I wouldn’t have if I’d had Windows (or maybe even bought Word for my Mac). For example, the indie ebook publisher Smashwords insists you upload a Word file and let its “meatgrinder” convert the file to epub, mobi, and various other e-reader friendly formats; unfortunately, it didn’t much care for the Word files I was able to create via the export command on Pages and Scrivener (my biggest issue was that it didn’t display the italics). Likewise, a popular program I found that converts Word files to Kindle files is only available for Windows. Next time I decide to tinker with this, I’m going to ignore the conversion programs and just create the html files from scratch, but, as I said, I ultimately decided to ask a pro to handle it for me this time around.

So, for editing, cover art, and formatting, it’s going to end up being at least a month from me deciding to turn some short stories into an ebook and having an actual ebook that people can purchase from Amazon, iBookstore, B&N, etc.

Compared to the traditional publishing world, this is quite speedy. Though I must admit it’s not as speedy as I thought it might be (newbie delusions!).

In the future, I’ll commission the artwork as soon as I’m solid on a title and have a decent middle draft done. Depending on how busy your chosen artist is, you might wait several weeks to have the cover image completed.

Editing, too, is another process that takes a couple weeks (maybe more if your piece needs a lot of work and/or you’re working with someone who has a number of other clients in the queue). My short story collection is less than 30,000 words total, and Faith of Have Faith Proofreading (cool name, huh?) got it back to me quickly.

A note on editing: this is the one place I recommend you don’t cheap out too much. I did on another project, and I’m going to have to have the manuscript proofread again. You don’t have to hire the most expensive editor out there, but get someone who does this for a living. You won’t regret it later. After I got my BA, I got the Certificate in Editing from the University of Washington (year-long course), and I still wouldn’t consider myself well-versed enough to do the kind of edit you need before publishing. You should spring for someone who has the style guides memorized because they do this work every day.

Well, there’s my status update for those (all two of you) who have been wondering. All in all, I’m enjoying the e-publishing process, despite various delays. There’s definitely a learning curve in this, and I’m sure future projects will run more smoothly. I’ll know what to expect at all the stages, too, so I won’t get antsy. Probably. Maybe.

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