Tattered Essence

Some people are still wary of the ebook market, and maybe for good reason. Publishing an ebook still gets you published, but perhaps without the prestige of traditional or even self-publishing. But when it comes right down to it, there is no more cost effective way at getting your work on the market than to publish an ebook. The upfront costs are minimal, and people are buying. The ebook market is also the fastest growing book market. Sales in January 2009 were up 170% over sales in January 2008, according to Michael Smith, executive directive of the International Digital Publishing Forum.

And, with substantailly lower up front costs, you can sell a lot less and still have what is considered a successful ebook.

Blurb is a new option for self publishing for those authors with a lot of images or illustrations. You simply download their software that has the templates in it. Create your book, upload it and purchase one copy. Doing that makes it able to be listed in their store. Perfect for photography books or cookbooks!

Those of you that are into self publishing are probably no stranger to the name Aaron Shephard. He has written some books that are great resources for self publishers. And in my most recent SPAN newsletter there are links to some free downloads of a couple of Aaron’s most popular books.

In case you missed it, here they are:
Aiming At Amazon
Perfect Pages: Self-publishing with Microsoft Word

There is something new that you self-publishers might be interested in. If you need to publish things like DVD this will be of great interest to you. It is a company called CreateASpace. And it appears that they are a part of Amazon.com. You can create your product with them. And you can sell it through them and on Amazon. It’s like POD only for DVDs and such.

If you are publishing books for your self or even for other people as a small publisher you will not want to overlook libraries. Libraries are a great way to sell some of your books. However, it can sometimes be a bit difficult. Why? Because most libraries place their orders through Baker & Taylor. This is especially true for the larger libraries. But you can sell to libraries directly.

For some info on how to sell your books to libraries directly, check out How to attract librarians to your book.