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<how are you doing with the paperback version you have available on Amazon? I assume it isn't selling as well as the ebook, but is it worth the effort?>
The paperback isn't doing well enough to justify itself, and I don't plan on doing a paperback again. I gave figures on a thread on the Kindle forums and am willing to do it here. (I was very grateful to Konrath for the figures he put out when I was investigating all this.) My Kindle sales averaged just over 8 per day for the 3 weeks the book was out in February and are averaging 10 per day so far in March, so 416 so far. Paperback sales are at 15, and Smashwords 4. There are indie authors who are selling many times that per day and of course some selling fewer. Price is certainly a factor. After much agonizing, I priced my book at $1.99 for the Kindle. More people are willing to take a chance on an unknown at that price, but I have one review that admits they almost passed it over in the belief nothing that cheap could be worthwhile.
The only reason I did a paperback this time is that my particular book, as you can see, is called "Rottweiler Rescue," and is a dog mystery that features Rotties. The Rottweiler National Specialty Show is coming here to Colorado next month. The local rescue group will have a booth at the show and will sell copies of my book as a fund raiser, and I am donating a dozen or so copies that will be given to people who bring dogs they have adopted and participate in the rescue parade they have at the show. The paperback was much more difficult to format properly and put out (you are basically trying to typeset using word processing software unless you have access to some of the more expensive programs designed for that) and unlike the Amazon DTP, there is some expense involved.
Again, I think all this is very individual, but knowing some people are doing well enough to be encouraged is certainly something to be factored in to anyone's decision. I don't know that I would have done this if I still had any notions at all of wanting a traditional publishing deal, but now I'm sitting here thinking - if only I had half a dozen of these ready to go . . . .
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