3 ms·

I monetized my German science fiction novels by publishing them on Amazon, but so far have regretted it. They generally get great reviews and sure have their re

by 13415 4y ago

I monetized my German science fiction novels by publishing them on Amazon, but so far have regretted it. They generally get great reviews and sure have their readers, but mostly just one of them (by far not the best) sells well continuously. The rest would require marketing that is a completely different activity than writing books, and really not fun to me at all. Moreover, you invariably get the occasional bad or intentionally misleading, if not downright evil review, and if you happen to get one of those in the beginning by accident, then your book will never sell - nobody is going to buy a self-published book with a score below 4 stars and future reviews will be lower than deserved due to the anchoring effect. I'm no longer sure the benefits of getting a few hundred readers and the corresponding royalties outweigh the substantial efforts of getting a book ready for publication, which have nothing to do with the joy of writing. Seeking for channels to give away your work for free like open source or creative commons can make more sense. Software is another issue, by the way. I used to sell shareware for Macs for 20 years, and the problem is it can cause a lot of work if you want to support your customers after initial sales have cooled down. It can easily turn into a chore.

victorstanciu 4y ago
First of all, congrats on finishing the novels. That's a huge accomplishment in itself! Writing sits comfortably in the territory of hobbies which require neither money nor storage space to perform, so I can totally understand how someone would choose to forgo money completely in order to not have to deal with the unpleasant aspects of self-publishing. Speaking of which, I assume you've already decided against traditional publishing?
ffhhj 4y ago
You should convert them into ebook apps, something I have noticed is that nobody reads the reviews. Maybe give the first chapters for free and the rest paid. Just make sure the user knows that's the deal so they don't get frustrated.
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ghaff 4y ago
I've published a few non-fiction books in the tech space--one through a major publisher and couple independently. Certainly some people do well but, in the main, the finances don't really work. I've never done a serious marketing push beyond book signings at some industry events (with someone else paying for the book copies) but I'm not at all confident that incremental sales would cover significant PR/marketing activities. What it has done in my case is a likely pretty significant enhancement to my visibility/stature professionally. Which has been very beneficial. I did shareware for a while too back in the 90s (MS-DOS mostly). I enjoyed doing it for a time, liked interacting with my testers and other users, was part of the shareware community, etc. And made reasonable side hobby business money. But certainly not at my day job level.

by 13415 4y ago

victorstanciu 4y ago

First of all, congrats on finishing the novels. That's a huge accomplishment in itself! Writing sits comfortably in the territory of hobbies which require neither money nor storage space to perform, so I can totally understand how someone would choose to forgo money completely in order to not have to deal with the unpleasant aspects of self-publishing. Speaking of which, I assume you've already decided against traditional publishing?

ffhhj 4y ago

You should convert them into ebook apps, something I have noticed is that nobody reads the reviews. Maybe give the first chapters for free and the rest paid. Just make sure the user knows that's the deal so they don't get frustrated.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ghaff 4y ago

I've published a few non-fiction books in the tech space--one through a major publisher and couple independently. Certainly some people do well but, in the main, the finances don't really work. I've never done a serious marketing push beyond book signings at some industry events (with someone else paying for the book copies) but I'm not at all confident that incremental sales would cover significant PR/marketing activities. What it has done in my case is a likely pretty significant enhancement to my visibility/stature professionally. Which has been very beneficial. I did shareware for a while too back in the 90s (MS-DOS mostly). I enjoyed doing it for a time, liked interacting with my testers and other users, was part of the shareware community, etc. And made reasonable side hobby business money. But certainly not at my day job level.