Thread: Kindle Self-Publishing

I've been searching the threads and have found a couple of people who've mentioned trying Kindle self-publishing, but has anyone had any success with it? I live in the UK and it involves getting an American TIN number and various interesting tax things and I'm just not sure if it's worth it. I'd love to publish my own work but I also don't want to shoot myself in the foot if it's going to make my paperwork a living hell. Any ideas or anyone with experience with this?

Cat xx

I don't know much about Kindle as a sole means of publishing. I hear a lot of people use it to get their print/ebook titles to more people, this guy's a pretty good example -

Dead Beat (Zombie novel by Remy Porter)

Also this guy -

The Keeper's Curse and Other Stories (Short story anthology, and a shameles self-plug of my art!)

The second is a collection of previously published work so the stories all found a paying home elsewhere. Not sure how much either of them are making from their Kindle sales but I figure they're more enhancement rather than sole income.

Anyway, just my two bob's worth. Maybe others with more firsthand knowledge will chime in.

I've just done it. First time ever with an ebook. My self-publishing a kindle ebook has been successful. It has not been easy, especially for an old man.

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Unfortunately my local Singapore friends are not able to buy my ebook. Amazon.com says my ebook is not available for purchase in the Asia Pacific region.

I self-published my first short title via Kindle last month. Sales have been slow, but I haven't been doing much promotion. However, if you want success stories, you only have to look at people like Amanda Hocking or JA Konrath - two of the most often quoted examples of success in the medium. So it can happen, people do break out - but it's still, like any traditionally published book - down to skill, marketing, and a little bit of luck.

Is this vanity publishing for the internet age?

Originally Posted by The Thing

Is this vanity publishing for the internet age?

Are you jaded and cynical, Thing...?

Healthily so, yes.

I nearly fell to the temptations of vanity publishing about 15 years ago, but my dad wisely talked me out of it by telling me that if my stories were worth buying someone else would publish them.

What do people think of the Kindle's search engine? If I already know the title and author, I can find what I am looking for, but if I search by subject or genre I get a non-alphabetized phone book. Am I just using the search engine all wrong, or have other people had the same experience? Potentially, the search engine is an excellent tool for readers to find new authors, but not if the engine doesn't work.

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I prefer to use Amazon.com to search online for books and ebooks.

Thing - That was then. This is now. The world has changed.

15 years ago publishing a book cost a lot of money. If you wanted to self-publish, you had to pay for printing the book. Few people could afford the cost, and even fewer could afford the added expense of distribution and advertising. Many people who self-published had maybe a thousand copies printed, then were stuck with 900 copies they never sold. Today if you sell a hundred copies you make a little money. You can still call it vanity publishing if you want to, but it has more to do with good business and with making available to the public books which have a value but which would never be published by one of the big houses.

And when you talk about the big publishing houses today you should know that the various systems of epublishing are the wood lice that will eventually bring those houses down.

Today, with epublishing, the people who pay you for your book are the readers. In the not-too-distant future, epublishing will be primary, print publishing secondary, and the big publishing houses will be gone. 15 years ago your dad was right. But today self-publishing electronically is less about vanity and more about good business.

What does anyone think of this? I know e-book sales have not been around long enough to answer this factually. I'm more interested in theories or opinions. With traditional publishing, a certain number of books get printed. They all hit the market at the same time. Once all of the books are sold, you either have to print more or accept that you will make no more sales. Do we think that e-books will follow a similar life cycle, with gradually rising sales, a peak, then a taper off as everyone who is interested in your book reads it then you make no more sales, or will e-book sales remain more or less constant forever?

Originally Posted by C.M. Aaron

What do people think of the Kindle's search engine? If I already know the title and author, I can find what I am looking for, but if I search by subject or genre I get a non-alphabetized phone book. Am I just using the search engine all wrong, or have other people had the same experience? Potentially, the search engine is an excellent tool for readers to find new authors, but not if the engine doesn't work.

I have to agree that the searching on the Kindle is a pain if you don't know the author's name. It's not so much a problem with books with fairly unique titles, but some searches will turn up hundreds of results.

garza - Totally agree with your point to Thing. Times have changed, and will continue to do so.

CM Aaron - It's too early to really say, but I believe that they'll remain more or less constant. With no way of going out of print and disappearing, they can be bought forever. And as new readers discover authors, they'll continue to check out their back catalogue - and in doing so, create the steady sales that ebooks will (I believe) see.

Originally Posted by The Thing

Is this vanity publishing for the internet age?

Not really; unlike vanity publishing there's no fee (yet) for publishing an ebook and it gets distributed in the online bookstores alongside Stephen King and Dan Brown where anyone can buy it rather than sitting in a box in your basement.

Certainly most self-published ebooks are awful, but if you self-publish a competently written book with a good story you can make money from it.