In late February or early March my next book, as yet to be titled, will be done and hopefully edited. Funds are tight with the oldest daughter in her final semester of college and while income needs to be generated, the available funds must be spent wisely. Does this scenario sound familiar to most self-publishing authors?
This will be the first of my books released in two versions, Kindle and paperback, by design from day one. The question for me, is which edition should I release first? Does it make a difference? Until someone can provide me with valid data proving people will by both a Kindle version and a paperback, I refuse to believe the idea that e-book sales will generate duplicate paperback sales.
With careful pricing I can make the same amount of profit per sale of either the Kindle version or the paperback. The question is, which will generate the most revenue the quickest and does it matter which version hits the market first or do they need to be introduced at the same time?
After my experience of introducing my first Kindle edition of a book already available as a paperback, I am fairly certain it will take me a bit longer to have the Kindle edition available for sale. Much of the work for either edition will be the same. The manuscript has to be written and edited and a cover has to be designed. The interior of the paperback will have to be formatted as will the Kindle version. The $69 fee CreateSpace charged was worth it to me. I do not need to learn how to complete the process and $69 was a more than fair fee for the completed version of the book I had converted to Kindle.
The version that is ready in its final form first will probably be the version released first. Once again, I will have to learn the hard way, through trial and error, if there is an answer to the question of which version I should publish first, Kindle or paperback.
This is a very interesting question.
ReplyDeleteMy suggestion is go with the paper edition first for the following reasons.
First, my experience is the majority of people who review books would like a print version to review. So if you have this edition out first you can be sending it out to reviewers that much more quickly. I found that my sales of all versions jumped once I got those reviews, yet it often took several months for the reviews to come out, so anything you do to speed up the process the better.
Second, my first wave of buyers were friends and family, and this is the group most likely to buy a print copy-in fact this is the group who was willing to actually by from the estore option (versus on Amazon) that is available through CreateSpace, so I got my highest royalties those first 2 months. After that I was into selling to strangers, which increasingly were Kindle users. So if you sell print version first, you will maximize this higher return market.
Third, while ebook sales can build slowly, and there really isn't a time-limit on this (no one seems to care that I didn't start to sell any large numbers of books for 5 months), however, if you want to sell through brick and mortar stores, they like to feature books that are "just out." For example if you want to do book signings, books stores like the idea that they are helping you "launch" that book. You will want to have a print copy available for that sort of promotion.
Fourth, I don't know about you, but although the bulk of my sales come from my ebooks, it still was such a thrill to actually hold the book in my hands, and frankly there are still a lot of people out there who don't really consider a book real, until they hold something in their hands-so just emotionally-I would do the print version first.
I am looking forward to what other people have to say on this subject.
If it was fiction, I would say the Kindle edition. But since it's non fiction, I think the best bet would be to just release them together.
ReplyDeleteMake sure the PDF is really perfect, so hopefully you only need to order 1-2 proofs, and then get Createspace to do the Kindle edition.
Your books sell each other, which is good-- but it's a "turtle" rather than a "rabbit" mentality. Nonfiction usually sells slow and steady, for years and years. You should consider each book to be a long-term investment, that will hopefully pay off even better than most stocks.