Quote:
Originally Posted by SensualPoet
Having a strong cover is really important -- that absolutely cannot be overlooked.
Please don't overlook kobobooks for international distribution. Amazon Kindle is obviously critical; but so is customer access to a fully commercial ePub platform.
Lastly, at some point existing large publishing groups will figure out that, in fact, they CAN make money from their backlist by simply making it available.
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Actually, the question of covers is one I haven't seen proved one way or the other. Sure, a good cover might get that initial click for a closer look. But my own numbers don't clearly indicate that people are gravitating toward the books with better covers. (And there's no mistaking the better ones; I did the others myself. Sooner or later I'll replace them.)
Pretty much everyone who sells through Smashwords is also selling through Kobo, Sony, Apple, and Diesel--it's part of the package, though you can opt in or out where you choose. A lot of us are going directly to B&N instead of going through SW. (Which, of course, is a fully commercial epub platform, also.) But for me, and for many, sales at B&N and Amazon are the huge majority.
The large publishers
are putting backlist into ebook; it just takes time. And in many cases, they probably don't have the rights. This is an important time for authors to make sure they protect their own rights to those books, if they have the slightest desire to do what we're doing.