Quote:
Originally Posted by Kemp
I think my main issue is patience; I sadly don't have a lot of it. There's a big gigantic (scary) internet out there, and there has to be universes of untapped potential and hundreds of readers who wouldn't mind getting something free. Sigh...
Well, I think I'll just have to sit back and content myself with what reviews and the possibility word of mouth can spread, and maybe I can tackle the untouched avenues in a month or two. Versatility, as in having more than one piece of work, will most likely serve me much better in the end.
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Yup. I'm another person without much patience, and I found it really frustrating to just hang back a bit and not stress about exactly how many downloads, reviews, etc I'd received.
I've thought about this a bit more, and here are some other things I did which helped:
Ebooks Just Published is a site where you can create an account and submit a 'press release' type post about your ebook. It needs to be DRM-free and, I think, published in the last 6 months? I found this to provide a huge short-term jump in downloads, and trickles every now and then.
FeedBooks distributes free ebooks to a lot of mobile phone apps, like Stanza. I have a sneaking suspicion that it's easy for people to download a few dozen ebooks all at once via Feedbooks, and therefore the download figures may not reflect readership numbers very accurately, but they're still pretty impressive numbers
12000-odd and counting for DEAD(ish).
B&N has surprised me. I didn't expect DEAD(ish) to make much ground in a commercial environment, up against traditionally-published ebooks, even being free. But I found that the 'critical mass' number of downloads is actually relatively small, and what's really required is to get that number of people to download the book - and preferably review it. If you can get a free ebook into the top 100 or so, and into the 'Free Ebooks' pages on B&N, it practically takes care of itself. Of course, B&N take a fair while to get the ebook from Smashwords, format it, list it correctly, make it available, index it, then categorise it... the process took months, and all I could do was watch and chew my fingernails