The answer is, sometimes yes, sometimes no, the fact is most books sell very few copies in either the traditional world or the web world. That is just a fact of publishing and what people want. It is kind of a cruel world. But what you can do is help yours along, you can effect and control the marketing. It is your baby and hopefully you have some connection and touch with your market. If you are blogging your book you can watch which post attract attention, which get searched on, you can put Google Analytics on your website or blog and track, measure and adjust as you go. You can watch your book’s Facebook fan page, Twitter feeds etc. You will see why it is sometimes good to write your book on line, you can adjust while you are writing, much easier than trying to catch up.
Step four. Push your book out in lots of different formats and markets. Once the text is done you can distribute it many different ways. CreateSpace.com from Amazon.com offers lots more than just books, you can send them a mp3 files that can be set up for podcasts, put your book into a PowerPoint presentation, click the Make Movie option, create a .mov file and load it up on YouTube and turn your book into a course that you can sell on a DVDs. Put it on Kindle or the Nook, e-publishing is starting to explode and pretty much all they need is a word file that you have already made.
The world is changing a lot and media is being delivered in and on many different devices and formats and for many different uses. A book is more than a book. A last point here is that not all books are actually books, sometimes they are lead generators for something else, maybe for consulting, or as a thank you gift, a bonus for something else. It may look like a book but that isn’t how you are using it.
