Month: December 2016

Answer: No.

Although the paperbacks do tend to help writers as it mind fucks with the reader to create the bogus perception that the writer is more legitimate than if just writing to the digital market, the answer is still no. I don’t play that game.

It may also help by creating a secondary way the reader may find the book in search.  Still.  The answer is no.

But why not?

Because I am a stubborn ass and the professional perception aside created by the paperbacks, the paperbacks cost the readers too much money and offer too little potential profit for me beyond helping me to sell digital copies of my book.

Also, we indie writers already have a multitude of ways we don’t make money.  Providing a paperback that may be sold 10 times plus–or whatever the velocity of a given paperback might be–without me making a dime from from each sale, is not on my to do list.  On the other hand I love making money from other people’s used books.  Yes.  I do. 🙂

With my websites and my eBooks I am about creating digital content. I am not ashamed of that. It is part of what I do.  I just wish I could make more money doing it.

If I saw paperbacks as a way to increase that revenue stream, I would be doing it.  I certainly wouldn’t be ashamed of being a paperback writer any more than I am ashamed of being a digital writer.  I have considered it.  My ego has desired the thought in thinking it might mean more respect.  I just don’t see the profit potential.  If you do and are making money from it: cool.

 

People either have not been reading my books in Kindle Unlimited or Amazon has me on the Peon Server/Cloud where they feel those writers can be cheated without any consequence.  I have no idea.  I wouldn’t say with any confidence that I am being cheated since I have not had huge success with Amazon / Kindle to measure against.  Other writers who were having success and then found themselves without reads have gathered pretty clear evidence they are being cheated and that so far amazon has no intention of correcting the problems.

I have no intention of enrolling my e-books in Kindle Select / Unlimited in the future.  Whether the system can be trusted or not, I have not had any success with it and that is the bottom line.

I am still trying to use Amazon as the cash register for my e-books.  My current strategy is to publish chapters, stories here and hope that if any reader is interested in the e-book they will go to Amazon and buy the book.  So far, my current sales are few to non-existent.  Believe it or not,  in the past I have sold some books though right now it doesn’t feel that way.

There was a while that Chuck’s Erotic Stories: Monsters And Other Scary Lovers sold some.  Then that stopped.  Billy Bingo: Sexual Blackmail sold for a period and then it stopped.  Erotic Western: Saving The Town sold okay for a bit and then that stopped.  Right now, it has all pretty much stopped.

When I first started putting books in Kindle Select / Unlimited and following the rules, I took down pages where people could sample large parts of my e-books and I do believe that hurt.   So I do think again allowing people to sample a large part of the e-books may help.  I hope.

I never pushed the fake reviews that a lot of writers did.  So when someone has decided they want to trash a book, it has hurt more than when there are a bunch of fake or glowing reviews.  The truth is the people who do tend to like my writing are not the kind of people who will leave reviews. So when a reader doesn’t like the conflicted gay characters or my more conservative politics on twitter or whatever and have decided they want to hurt me with  a bad review,  they have had success.

I do have errors in my writing.  That is the truth.  I do try to edit them out but with self-editing I have to be careful that I don’t introduce even more errors when editing.  And also when editing, an even worse potential problem is destroying the flow or effect that was originally accomplished when while writing in the zone.  When editing, that zone is gone and it is easy to mess the flow up.

To be clear, however someone may judge my self-edits, I have NO intention of paying someone to edit my books.  That is not going to happen.  People attempting to peddle their editing services are notorious for being the source of some of the bad reviews you may see on some books by various writers.

So to what percent of my e-books I will publish here to try to gain sales, I am not sure.  It pretty much depends on the sales.  If sales do not again start happening soon I may drop writing all together and better spend more time building and on farm stuff.

I need to make money.