One of my Kindle titles went free on Amazon three days ago. I was hoping for a little exposure, because "self-published" is pretty much synonymous with "invisible". Today I found out I've *sold* nearly 10,000 copies! I almost fell off my chair!
Thanks everybody! More exciting news - two days ago the book was nominated for the Maine Student Book Award. Even if I don't win, I'm thrilled to be nominated! Nancy, to answer your question, you can't set a book to free on Kindle, but if it is offered free elsewhere on the web, sometimes Amazon will match it. I simply got lucky.
Thanks Brooke! Yes, Jackie, it's voted on by 4th-8th grade students. According to their website (http://efolio.umeedu.maine.edu/~masl/msba/index.html), the committee nominates a bunch of books and then narrows it down to a final spring list. Last year the final list included 38 titles that the kids read and voted on. I have no idea how many nominations they start with. I'm just thrilled that one of the members stumbled onto my freebie and liked it enough to nominate it!
You are definitely an encouragement to me. I'm in the beginning stages of writing a children's series. I'd be interested in finding out how you "self-published" your book, if you are so inclined to share here or in another thread.
Sure Brooke. It took me eight years to finally bring my books to print. (That's why I have four published this year.) I finally got sick of dealing with the establishment. Now I'm learning just how much opportunity the digital world has created for self-publishers. I'd recommend publishing to the Amazon Kindle store above all. That one is the most visible, and it's where I make most of my sales. (https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin) It requires uploads to be in the HTML format. Smashwords (http://www.smashwords.com) is an up-and-coming publishing site that makes your work available for puchase in a variety of file formats. You can upload Word documents. They distribute to a variety of retailers, but I haven't sold much there. At the time, it was the only way to create a Nook Book, but now Barnes and Noble has a self-publishing program like Kindle's (http://pubit.barnesandnoble.com/pubit_app/bn?t=pi_reg_home). Again, you can upload Word documents to Nook. For paperback editions, I started with Lulu (http://www.lulu.com). They create a very high-quality book and have an easy do-it-yourself program. You can upload a Word doc and it will convert it to PDF for you, or you can convert it yourself and upload a PDF. But I found it quite expensive to make these paperbacks available on Amazon. Then in October I discovered CreateSpace (http://www.createspace.com), which is owned by Amazon. It requires files in PDF and is also very easy to use. The quality isn't quite as high as Lulu's, but you can place the books on Amazon for a much more reasonable cost, and you can order your own copies for a significantly lower cost. I've kept my books in the Lulu store, but I also published them on CreateSpace so they're on Amazon as well. And those are all the sites I have experience with so far. A word about assigning ISBN numbers - each of these sites will assign an ISBN number for the project you create with them for free, or you can buy your own and use them. I bought my own at first, but I've regretted it. I've found the ones they give you work just as well, and they're far easier, not to mention far cheaper. I've also found that creating the stories is the easy part. Getting your book out without a team behind you is an uphill battle! So far, my freebie on Amazon has given me the most exposure by far. My other sales have gone up significantly. Hope this helps, and good luck!! What is your series about?
I've been pondering this a lot lately, not because I think it is all that important but it takes up so much time! I know one page a day but each page you do is a page I won't do of something else because time is limited and I won't school all day. Play time, chore time, family time, exercise time are all also important to me. I've been thinking of starting with cursive with my younger two before printing but of course in most correspondence they will do, besides a few cards and letters, they will be typing or printing and honestly, if I get a thank you note in print I appreciate it just as much as if it is in cursive. So I really don't know. I am curious though which program you used if you did start with cursive. Oh I had to laugh at this line, "Also, you can’t carry a two-thousand dollar laptop or a typewriter, everywhere you go." from Blumenfeld's article. It wouldn't surprise me if there will soon be an app the records audio and maybe even translates it into print for you on a little Iphone someday.
I'm planning on starting a series of picture books about my dad. I hesitate to say too much. I'm so new to this that I don't want to give out any of my intellectual property. I have plans to publish them even if I do it myself in a comb-bound format just for my own use.
