With the advent of e-books, pdf, print on demand and non-exclusive rights we now have many many places and ways to sell our books. Things are moving fast in the self-publishing world in both where and how to make your book and where to sell it. In this post I am laying out some of the main sites that you can sell your book on.
What about selling in stores? What is not on this list below are actual physical stores. You can also sell there also but many of the chains and independent stores want to be able to return your book if it doesn’t sell. With print-on-demand you usually can’t. And e-books don’t really work there. Books from the traditional publishers can usually be returned to the distributor. What I have done when I sold to a brick and mortar store is to offer a bigger discount and free shipping with the understanding that these are final sales and the books won’t be returned. Again a lot of this kind of stuff is changing every day.
The top places to sell your book are:
Amazon.com
• Kindle e-books, mobi format
• CreateSpace for print-on-demand physical books. CreateSpace enhanced distribution will sell on many other web based stores
• Audio books
• I do both Kindle and CreateSpace
Apple’s iBookstore
• e-books, epub format
• Use iBookAuthor to create an interactive book for sale on iPads and Mac computer
Barns & Noble
• Nook e-books, ePub format
• If you select enhanced distribution on Amazon for your print books they will appear here also
Kobo, e-Readers
• e-Books, have started doing this
Google Books
• ePub and pdf format
• connections to other online retailers
Smashwords.com
• Aggregates ePub books across many different e-readers and companies. The format needs to be pretty simple.
Your Own Site
• PDF or ePub, using a services like e-Junkie.com, Gumroad.com or Scribd.com for handling the money and distribution. I do some of this
• Set up your own sales pages and direct traffic to the sites above like Amazon. I highly recommend doing this, this is what I do.
• Sell physical books from your own site. Package them together or with some other product like a workbook or DVD. Make it really special, offer someone one on one consulting using Google Hangout or Skype. You could charge $200-$500/hr or more for a series of sessions. The book is the teaser to sell the service.
Because you control all the rights you could put your books on most of these platforms at the same time. Though I would check on iBookStore, they have quite a few requirements. You also need to purchase an ISBN number for iBooks, I like free.
To learn more sign up over on the right and pick up a free pdf copy of my new book How to Publish Your Book, A Beginners Guide for Print, Digital and e-Books.
How to Publish Your Book Coaching Program
Starting with the new year I am offering a new coaching program to help authors publish their books. I am offering a package of 4 Individual Coaching Sessions on getting your book out of your computer and published on Amazon. The cost is $1,000 for 4 (1.5 hour each) sessions held over either Google Hangout or Skype. Contact me if you are interested.
