Why Kindle?
Week 2, Month 9
After the release of my first book on Amazon, I'm sure a
number of people that received the launch announcement are wondering, 'Why
Kindle?' Well, that is going to be
answered here, along with a number of other questions that you may, or may not
have considered.
So, first off... Why Kindle?
Why Self-Publish?
I'd be lying if the 70% royalties weren't a factor, and I'd
also be lying if I thought that I expected to make any significant amount of
money on this first book (Last time I checked, total downloads was at 23...
Considering it’s just a day from launch, that isn't bad). This book was the one that those swindler
vanity publishers wanted me to spend 4K on publishing through them, so I'd say
that turned me off paid self-publishing big time. This is also a book that I have attempted to
get published the traditional way with queries to agents and so forth.
The reason I abandoned that is in large part because of my
experience with agents and editors over the last year or so, combined with just
how much I actually write a day.
It has taken, on average, around three months for any of the
editors or agents I queried to answer me, by which time I could easily have
already written two or more books. It
has taken six months for Analog to reject one story, and to put it bluntly... I
am not the most patient person when it comes to things like this. Call me part of the internet generation with
it's instant downloads, regular updates, and willingness to abuse language.
Not only that, I am also living hand to mouth at the moment,
barely making ends meet (I do not have sufficient income tutoring to really be
called independent at all, and while I did land an interview for a college
teaching position, I didn't get the job.
So at this point any income is welcome income. Even the $4 or so I've made before the launch
promotion kicked in. It'll pay for my
coffee while I write another 2K words.)
There are some other benefits for publishing an eBook with
kindle, so I might as well list them...
1. Complete Control
The cover, the formatting, and the words are all under the
author's control. This is a double edged
sword, as it means there's more work for the author to do then simply writing
the words. My cover, for example is made
by my teenage sister (I have an informal agreement with her for the use of the
image). I have had to do the conversion
of the book to filtered web page format, and while I could have paid an editor
to edit the book... I am poor and therefore did that myself as well. This actually leads into my second point
about publishing via kindle or any similar system.
2.) Loading Updates /
Patch in Progress...
How many publish authors have flipped open their books and
found an error, or even found an error during the editing process that didn't
get fixed before the first printing?
Hell, I sure have found errors in books and not just from mid-list
authors either. Guess what? Find a
mistake or spend some money to have a book you have already released edited,
and you can update it with just a click of a button. Boy wouldn't Tolkien have loved to be able to
do that with the Hobbit?
On the flip side, I have a number of print books I bought
and continue to buy that are riddled with typos, spelling, and even grammar
errors. Stackpole Books are particularly
bad this way, especially when they're publishing translations of German memoirs
and books. Do I keep buying them? Yes...
In fact one of my particular favorites is "Messerschmitts over
Sicily". It’s a great book.
The single most important function of language is to clearly
communicate an idea or image. Grammar
rules and standardized spelling are a creation of the 19th century to make such
communication clearer and easier to understand.
So generally, so long as you are communicating clearly, following the letter
of the law on grammar rules isn't going to be that much an issue.
This isn't to say that there is no use for editing, that'd
be a blatant lie, but I feel that while I may not be the greatest editor in the
world, I'm good enough in this environment to make my works ready for public
consumption. In the era of blogging,
webcomics, and ebooks expecting the first published release to be perfect isn't
as necessary as it used to be. It has to
be very good, but perfection isn't a requirement.
The ability to update the books also allows you to do things
like this later on:
1. Add a preview of the next book in a series to the back of
the story...
2. Update any list of books also written by the author...
3. Potentially add illustrations...
4. Update the cover...
5. Add a reference to my blog... (I'm waiting to finish a
logo for Starry Night Works, my primary blog spot)
What else is great about publishing via Kindle?
3.) Instant
International Availability.
Of my first two purchase orders, one was from another
country. A quick check of my KDP account
shows that my book has been downloaded by people in: Brazil, Canada, Japan,
Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. If I published conventionally, that would not
have happened or at least not have happened immediately.
I like to consider myself a globalist of sorts, in that I
think every nationality has it's pros and cons.
I try to write stories that include an array of characters from a
plethora of backgrounds, not just Americans.
With a style like that, I think the release of an e-book internationally
is a great thing and really fitting. I
also consider myself immensely thankful that I was fortunate enough to have
English as a birth language, as learning it is a bitch if you weren't born with
it.
4.) Speed
Less than twenty-four hours passed between me getting the
final cover design from my sister to my first sale on Amazon. With a polished and edited draft, the
conversion process from a book draft to a formatted e-book can take less than
twenty minutes. The time it takes for a
kindle book to go from upload to sale is a mere five hours or so. This is also about the time it takes to
update a kindle book (as it was around midnight when I pressed release and
missed a typo on the information I entered).
So, lets break it down.
I write around 2K words a day, writing for around three hours a
day. The average 'light novel' which
most of the works I plan on releasing will be is around 40-45K words. Assuming time for revision, polish, and
editing we're talking around 40-50 days to take a book from plotted out to a
finished product awaiting release. At
the same time I commission a cover or do one myself (I may have a go at that),
so I'd say... it takes around two months to write, revise, polish, edit, create
a cover, and release an e-book.
The time it takes from a paper book to go from acceptance to
being on the shelves is around a year, at a minimum. The amount of time it takes to get an agent?
Well... at least two to three months for a query in my experience so... five
months? Maybe? So total time around 15
months as a minimum for one book. So I can release 7 books in the time it takes
to release 1 conventionally published book.
Amazon sells more e-books then they do print books.
Why shouldn't I roll the dice and see how it goes?
Checks KDP account... Well, in the two hours it took to
write this post downloads went from 23 to 42.
Those are all free copies, but that's a lot more then I expected. If I manage to break 100 downloads a day,
well maybe amazon will start recommending it. XD
Breakdown of Downloads:
1st Place: The United States with 27 downloads.
2nd Place: The United Kingdom with 10 downloads.
3rd Place: Deutchland with 3 downloads.
Tied for 4th: Nihon and Brazilia with 1 download each.
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