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I know most of the people in this thread are writing fiction, but for a taste of something different, we're experimenting with self publishing business books. I run a blog (lawyerist.com) for solo and small-firm lawyers, mostly about the business of running a law practice. Here are our first two eBooks: Law School Exams, published March 5, 2014. 11 sold. Law Firm Finances, published May 9, 2014. 100 sold. Both are based on content I pulled from the blog. In typical fashion, I put a ton of effort into editing and revising the law school exams book, and nobody bought it. The law firm finances book is basically just a long post I copied and pasted into a Google Doc, and it sells a couple a day. Results from our second try were encouraging enough that we're working on several more substantial books, and planning to use CreateSpace for a physical book option. (We think our audience might be more into paper.) And we haven't tried iBooks, yet, just because iBooks Author is a bit more intimidating than just exporting a Word file from Google Docs. So is formatting for print, for that matter. I'll probably try doing it myself, first. I do the web design for our site, so I'm no stranger to typography and layout, but I'm also far from an expert. I'm wondering if I would be better off just hiring someone. We don't have any reviews yet, which is annoying, but I suppose we really haven't sold that many books, either. I've tried a couple of limited giveaways, but no luck. Plus, since our blog is probably the main reason people are buying the book (as opposed to finding it on Amazon), I'm worried any more extensive giveaway would just cut into our sales. So is anyone else doing non-fiction? (There are a ton of sites out there, but most of them manage to sound kind of slimy and are mainly pushing affiliate sales on software and services.) What about print?
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Jun 4, 2014 15:10
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Social media can definitely help you spread the word, but email is still gold. It's possible that email means less for teenagers, but adults still use email. And even if they check Twitter or Facebook religiously, they'll miss a ton of what flies past their feed. Most people at least look at everything that lands in their inbox, even if they don't open all of it or click on everything.
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Jun 5, 2014 16:24
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I've been through lots of email marketing options, and have settled on MailChimp. If you just want something simple and friendly, I would probably try TinyLetter first. TinyLetter has more of a personal-updates kind of feel, while MailChimp is definitely more marketing. In the end, though, you're just sending emails, and either one will get it done. However, if you want to get fancy with autoresponders and stuff, MailChimp is the better way to go. Aweber has some different options for marketing automation, but the UI isn't great and the people at Aweber are jerks about letting you import email addresses from any other platform.
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Aug 15, 2014 00:12
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Bobby Deluxe posted:IF YOU SIT DOWN AND WRITE, THAT IS THE REWARD YOUR BRAIN WILL GET USED TO. I'm 100% certain this is true, but it's so hard for some of us to get there. I'll spit out thousands of words over a day or two, then write almost nothing for a week. Then "inspiration" will strike again. Repeat ad nauseum. My problem seems to be that my day job is writing blog posts and white papers about law practice, and then I'm also trying to write a book about the same stuff. I think I have about 1,000–1,500 words a day in me, on average (although like I said, this comes in fits and starts), and I don't know how to double that so I can actually get this book written. My current strategy is to wake up at 5:30am, go downstairs, and open my laptop to write until I need to wake the kids up. This works sometimes, but I'm so groggy at 6am that my mind is easily distracted. Then I'm back where I started, trying to find time to fit the book in during the day, which is full of distractions. Maybe I'm just making excuses. If I keep trying to build a writing habit, I know I'll get there eventually. It's the gap between here and there that's frustrating.
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Dec 4, 2014 18:28
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