Seven tips the authors who sold over 1 million yen in publishing e-books by their own

ByColton Witt

Although I think that there are many people who have an image that profit margin is not profitable if they say self-published publications,E-bookMany authors are publishing books as hobbies and making great profits because they can publish almost without cost. "E-book author" who has published such electronic books during the main business and achieved sales of more than 10,000 dollars (about 1,050,000 yen) per year is the seven tips that are important for making profits with e-books We are publishing.

The Leanpub Blog | Guest Post by Josh Earl: $ 16,920.12 earned, 1054 copies sold: Lessons learned from a year as a self-published author
http://blog.leanpub.com/2014/01/leanpub-ebook-sales-guest-post.html

Live in Pennsylvania, USA, 2012Josh EarlThought that some people gained big income by publishing e - books, thought that I could do it, I decided to sell them e - books on their own. Since many of the authors who earned large revenues published books on their specialty areas, Earl, a software developer, also made use of his knowledge of programming to create e-books "Sublime Productivity"(Hereinafter referred to as SP) to publish.

Earl used to sell e-books as "LeanpubIt is a net service called. Leanpub is an e-book sales site that allows you to set the lowest price and the desired price to sell e-books. Readers are able to get e-books if they pay the lowest price, and adopt a mechanism that allows you to pay consideration beyond the minimum price if you value highly. Also, in leanpub, what kind of books are sold is the author's freedom, and it can be said that it is a net service that can easily sell e-books.

In September 2012 Earl started selling e-book SP with leanpub. After that, I recorded sales of 16,920 dollars (about 1.78 million yen) in 16 months.


Seven important tricks useful for those who publish e-books that Earl analyzed and found on their own are the following.

◆1: Run for the time being

ByThomas Hawk

Mr. Earle published the SP in beta state without completing it until the end when publishing it. The SP at the time of release is incomplete in spite of misspellings and contents. Earle who tried to release it as an e-book for the time being, it seems that the joy who published the book than the anxiety at that time was winning.

According to Mr. Ear, feedback from readers who bought unfinished books is very valuable, and SP will be completed by adding and improving the content of books by making the most of it I was able to take it. I told that I was able to maintain motivation to continue the e-book project rather than publishing it in an unfinished state.

◆2: The price of a book is decided by content

BySepehr Ehsani

Everyone thinks that "the cheaper one can sell", but Earl says that books should not be bargain-sold just for the purpose of making it easy to sell. The SP published by Mr. Ear was a software design know-how book, and the target reader was a software developer. Mr. Ear thought software developers should spare money if they know how to shorten daily task time and set the lowest price to $ 19.99 (about 2100 yen). Since it was relatively high pricing among e-books sold at leanpub, it seems that many criticisms were received from users at the time of release, but Mr. Ear never sold away at a low price is.

As a result, it seems that 38% of readers have paid more than the minimum price as a consideration for SP, and it was shocking for Ear that some people paid 50 dollars (about 5,200 yen). Earl says book prices should not be set cheaply in order to make sales competitiveness, but should be commensurate with the book's value. Also, high pricing has the advantage that you can leave room for a price cut campaign with a due date.

◆3: Promotion tool is mail royal road

ByAnonymonk

Mr. Ear asserts that the most effective promotional tool for selling books is e-mail. Actually, Mr. Ear said that, except for his own blog which has not had much fans, there was not any place other than e-mail to be able to appeal to readers when SP releases SP. However, thanks to the purchase of SP from 15 out of 157 mailing list registrants, it is said that I was able to make a big profit in the month I launched.

As opposed to e-mail being effective, Earl says that books can not be sold so much on Twitter.Cyber ​​MondayI sent a discount code to both the mailing list members and Twitter followers to investigate the reaction and found that the percentage of people who purchased books was 11 times that of the Twitter followers.

◆4: Extend the entrance
Earl says that e-books can not be sold on Twitter, but he says that Twitter is a very important tool to sell more books. Earl says that it is relatively easy for a follower to participate in a mailing list, although it is difficult to have a book directly bought by Twitter followers. As mentioned earlier, if you have a mailing list to participate and you regularly read the mail, the probability that you will be able to purchase the book will increase. Mr. Ear thinks Twitter is very effective as an "entrance" to attract readers.

Earl is eager to increase the number of followers.


◆5: Set sale is valid

ByPascal

Selling related books as a set and selling at a discount price is very effective in raising sales. Earl is planning to publish a new book related to SP so that it can be sold as a set.

◆6: Good things happen when you keep on selling
It is said that e-books are sold only immediately after release, and there is almost no condition to sell at all after that. Earl 's SP gradually got sluggish as time went by, and he seems to be discouraged. However, when I continued trying various things to make the book more popular, I heard that there was a chance that I had not imagined.

Mr. Ear was reading the blog of Mr. Jessie Liberty who is doing his professional designs, instruction manuals for programming, and so on. Earl had the opportunity to have the SP praised by Mr. Liberty 's blog. In addition, I was invited to Earl who thought about writing a book for set sale, another e-book author made a proposal as to whether or not to sell each other's books, and I was able to raise the sales. Earl says that if you persistently sell books, there should be unexpected opportunities.

Sales may be up abruptly.


◆7: Start small

ByTambako The Jaguar

When I start publishing e-books, my feelings are high and I am often willing to sell magnificent works, but the more it is a large episode, the more difficult it is to get to the release. Earl, who departed from the beta version at the end, said that when he looked back on his own experience, he felt he was overdoing. It seems to be a secret to start small and gradually increase it.