Posts Tagged Apple

Book Bonanza September 13th to 17th

Posted by Sally Jenkins in Books, Promotion on September 13, 2017

A lovely group of indie authors has got together to offer a cross-platform e-book 99p/99c special offer – and they have very kindly invited me to join them with the psychological thriller Bedsit Three.

There are more than 75 books on offer across 13 genres, such as Fantasy, Romance, Action and Thriller. And the great thing is they are ALL reduced to 99c/99p. Unusually, this isn’t just a Kindle special offer. Many of the books are available across multiple platforms such as Apple, Nook, Inktera and Smashwords.

Take a look at the 99c Book Bonanza Page and try a new genre or a new author. But do it today – the offer finishes September 17th 2017!

 

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Bedsit Three Sells 1000 Copies

Posted by Sally Jenkins in Self-publishing, Successes on May 2, 2017

Last month total sales of the psychological thriller, Bedsit Three, passed the 1,000 mark.

Bedsit Three by Sally Jenkins

At this point it’s worth reflecting on the breakdown of sales across retailers. It’s not what I was expecting 18 months ago when the novel was first published.

Kobo                                                                                       764
Paperbacks direct from me                                                119
Kindle                                                                                       91
Createspace (i.e. paperbacks from Amazon)                   34
Overdrive (via Smashwords)                                                 2
Apple (via Smashwords)                                                         1

I expected Kindle to generate the largest number of sales because it is still, by far, the largest ebook sales platform. However, Bedsit Three was shortlisted for a competition organised by Kobo and Silverwood Books. On the back of this, I contacted Kobo and was able to get the book included in some promotions, which obviously paid off.

The lesson going forward? Don’t get obsessed by the benefits of KDP Select (which requires authors to keep their books exclusive to Amazon). Dip your toe in the water and try other ebook retailers as well.

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Getting to Grips with E-Publishing

Posted by Sally Jenkins in Computers & Technical, Resources, Self-publishing on January 12, 2013

Last week I went to an E-Publishing seminar with the lovely ladies (and one gentleman) from the Birmingham Chapter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association. It was run by one of our members who has been successfully publishing her erotica in e-book form for the last 12 months (unfortunately we didn’t have time in the seminar for her promised session on erotica – so that treat is still to come!).

I came away with my head buzzing with jargon such as .mobi, .epub, Smashwords, US Tax Identification Numbers and lots more. I was tempted to throw up my hands and pay a professional to format, design a cover and distribute the modest project that I have in mind. But I’ve decided to have a go myself for three reasons –

  • I doubt that I’ll earn enough from the book to recoup the costs of a professional
  • E-publishing is definitely the future and therefore as a writer I ought to get to grips with it
  • I’m a computer programmer by day, so if other people can master e-publishing – why can’t I?

So the other day I started. The first thing I did was download the Smashwords Style Guide to my Kindle. This is the e-publishing ‘bible’ and, as well as giving lots of background information, it describes how to format a Word document so that it is acceptable to Smashwords. This is supposed to mean that the format will be acceptable for Amazon Kindle too.

Although Amazon still has the largest share of the e-book market, it’s important to make your work available on Smashwords as well. Smashwords sell e-books directly to the public and they also distribute to many of the other e-book retailers such as Barnes and Noble, Kobo and Apple.

I found the Smashwords Style Guide very useful. It shows how to get first line paragraph indentation correct (get rid of those naughty tabs and spaces if you’ve used them), how to ensure that the whole document is the same style and how to do a linked table of contents . One thing slowed me down – the Guide gives instructions for different Word editions up to 2007 but doesn’t mention 2010, which I am using, so sometimes I had to play around for a bit until I found what I was looking for.

Now I have my document formatted (I think – I won’t know it’s right until I try to upload it), so it’s time to do the cover. I’m feeling nervous about this. The Guide recommends hiring a professional cover designer (and will even send you a list of low-cost cover designers) because first impressions of a book are important. But our wonderful seminar leader does it herself and gave us lots of tips.

So that’s my next step …

By the way, if anyone’s got any e-publishing tips, I’d be most grateful!

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