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With Ebook publishing becoming more and more popular, check out this list of 11 things you should know before hitting publish!
Writing for Ebook Publishing
1. Writing a series make it easier to sell more books, but writing with a cliffhanger often angers readers. Marketing a novella as a book can also frustrate readers and prevent follow through. Don’t follow the current trend of dividing what should be a single book into parts so you can have more books in the series. For long term reader loyalty, write longer books (60,000-100,000 words) in the series where each book has closure but still has enough of a hook that readers want to read more.
2. Publishing an ebook should be your first priority (over publishing a print book). Not only is ebook publishing cheaper, you can also sell it at a lower price, sell more copies, and reach more readers.
Uploading an Ebook
3. Amazon is the biggest seller of ebooks in the world. Make sure to publish your ebook with Amazon. If you aren’t in KDP Select, also publish your book on the other big retailers: iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Google Play.
4. There are a lot of distributors and aggregators that you can use for ebook publishing. Check out our blog post here to learn more about the options available to you.
5. Amazon charges a delivery fee based on the size of the ebook. To make your book a smaller size, try resizing your images. Unlike in print books, ebook images do not need to be very large.
6. Amazon, iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Google do not require ISBN numbers, but obtaining an ISBN allows your book to be eligible for bestseller lists like those sponsored by the New York Times and USA Today. Books will also show up in Bowker’s Books in Print database, and that may help you show up higher in a Google search. Aggregators who distribute your ebook to various retailers often do require an ISBN, but usually they will provide one for you if you don’t have one. (Note: you may NOT use the same ISBN number for your print and ebook versions.)
7. You can change/fix and re-upload your ebook any time you want. Some aggregator services do charge a fee, and others may make your book unavailable for purchase for a short time while the new file is being processed. If you upload directly to retailers, your book will normally continue to be available for sale without an interruption.
Pricing and Promoting Ebooks
8. You cannot charge the same price for an ebook as you can for a print book. Ebooks should be priced lower ($0.99 to $9.99 is typical).
9. Keeping one of your ebooks permanently at $0.00 is a great way to allow readers to discover you as an author, with little risk.
10. Promoting your ebook is never a one-time thing. Promotion needs to be done over and over again for your own book to succeed (it does get easier over time, though, as your fan base grows). The more books you have, the more you can promote, and the more you will be seen.
11. Even if you are with a publisher, you should be promoting your ebook yourself. Many publishers do little to no promotion.
We hope you’ve learned some things about ebook publishing! Let us know in the comments below
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