Marketing - to Publishers Electronic book Sales

5 October 2011, Marketing - to Publishers Electronic book Sales

Introduction: I realized that I need to introduce this blog a little.  I wrote the novel Aksinya: Enchantment and the Daemon.  The working title was Daemon, and this was my 21st novel.  Over the last year, I gave you the entire novel in installments that included commentary on the writing.  In the commentary, in addition to other general information on writing, I explained, how the novel was constructed, the metaphors and symbols in it, the writing techniques and tricks I used, and the way I built the scenes.  You can look back through this blog and read the entire novel.

I'm using this novel as an example of how I produce, market, and eventually (we hope) get a novel published.  I'll keep you informed along the way.  At this moment, I'm showing you the marketing material I put together for a novel.

Today's Blog:  I think you can see how publishing and marketing is tightly interwoven.  The best and most lucrative method of publishing for most authors is classical publishing through the large house publishers.  Publish on Demand (POD) is the method of publishing books that almost every press is moving towards (if they aren't there already).  POD is also a great method to get books out on the Internet market.  POD isn't necessarily a means to get your books into non-Internet bookstores.

Beyond POD are electronic books.  I will make the claim again to inventing the concept of the electronic book.  I actually called it an ebook when I proposed it to a company in 1984.  I had written about the idea of an ebook in 1974 within my novel A Season of Honor.  You can read all about the original idea there.  I presented it to a company in 1984 and they thought it was a great idea, but ahead of its time in terms of technology.  So it goes.

Electronic books are a reality today and their sales are beginning to overcome the sales of print books.  All of my books except one are published as electronic books.  They are available in every format of electronic book.  There are great benefits to electronic books there are also some negatives.  Overall, the benefits are the potential profits to both the publishers and the authors.  The negatives are that the costs are driving the price of ebooks very low which decreases the profits for everyone.  The positives are that there is almost no cost to an ebook in physical material.  There is intellectual and service labor that is just as high as a printed book.

I don't know of any publishers that are focusing only on electronic books, but I'm certain there will be in the future. 
My presence in the electronic book marketplace is strong too.  I'll write more about electronic books tomorrow. 

I'll repeat my published novel websites so you can see more examples:   http://www.ldalford.com/, and the individual novel websites:  http://www.aegyptnovel.com/, http://www.centurionnovel.com/, http://www.thesecondmission.com/, http://www.theendofhonor.com/, http://www.thefoxshonor.com/, and http://www.aseasonofhonor.com/.