You’re writing ebooks, but you have an agenda. You don’t just want to sell copies, you also want to build your platform. Your hope is that a major publisher will see your sales, and will take you on board.

The major publishers, the “Big Six”, are all about the numbers and whether they can make money publishing you. This makes the price of the ebooks you’re selling all-important.

Therefore, you may want to forget offering your ebooks for free, or charging 99 cants. You’re going to have to charge more.

If you’ve been keeping your eye on ebook prices at the Kindle store, for example, you’ll see that Big Six ebooks are often between $8 and $10, sometimes much more. Publishers are experimenting with prices, and I’ve seen backlist titles set at an eye-watering $17 and over.

You have to wonder what these people are smoking. I won’t say who the publisher was, but one test ran the $17 price point for at least a four weeks that I’m aware of, before the price of the ebooks (we’re talking books first published in the 1980s), dropped to $7.50 on average.

To reiterate, big publishing is all about the numbers, so a 99 price, even if you’re selling lots of copies, is too low.

This article, How Low is Too Low? | AARdvark, reports:

“Anecdotally, I’ve heard that $3.99 is the breaking point; that if a book can sell a solid number of copies or become a bestseller while priced at $3.99 or higher, mainstream publishers become interested.  Below that point, they don’t care too much. ”

So there’s your challenge, if you want big-publisher attention, your price point needs to be tasty enough to interest them, and of course, you need to have the numbers.

Kindle Publishing Is Hot: Want to generate cash from your kitchen table and quit your day job?

Others are making money from Kindle publishing. The lucky few are making millions. Some are making great money — and that money increases each month.

What about you?

Imagine generating cash from your kitchen table. You can let Amazon do all the heavy lifting. Amazon’s got a proven publishing system, after all — discover Fast and Easy Kindle Publisher: Turn Free Stuff Into Kindle Cash, and discover four different ways to turn free stuff into Kindle cash.

2010 was an amazing year for digital books. The iPad joined the Kindle, and the age of the ebook finally arrived.

Judging from this article in Publishers Weekly, Digital Book World: Publishing CEOs Optimistic About the Future publishers are gearing up to seize the day:

“‘It’s the end of the beginning’of the digital transition, Friedman said. Macmillan’s COO said publishing is entering a ‘golden age,’ but added that the question is will it be a golden age for publishers.”

The question is, what does this mean for authors — for YOU?

There are no easy answers. It depends on what you want to achieve.

If you’re a new author, the world’s your oyster. Go ahead and publish your book on the Amazon Kindle. You don’t need technical expertise, and you have a market of millions.

That said, you’ll still need to promote your book. Taken as a group, writers are fearful of marketing. You’ll give your books the best chance of success if you accept that you need to promote. I created a promotions guide to help you along the path.

If you’re a published author, you have a decision to make too: will you go the traditional publishing route, and try to get a publishing contract? Or will you self-publish?

Either way, you need to focus on promotions too, and build your platform.

Authors have more opportunities than they’ve ever had. You no longer need a publisher. Nor do you need anyone’s permission to publish your books, and sell them. Even if you’re a technophobe, you can publish on the Kindle.

If take advantage of the tools you have available to you, you can be successful beyond your dreams. It may well be the down of a golden age for authors.

It’s up to you to take advantage of the myriad opportunities.

The Write A Book Collection — the ultimate toolbox for writing and selling your books

These days it’s crazy to spend years writing a book, without having any idea as to whether or not you can make money from it. If you want to write, you can – you have a global market, which is hungry for information and entertainment. And YOU can provide it… even if you’re a brand new author.

As you may know, I write and sell many writing guides. I also sell information products in many other areas than writing.

I want to show you how you can do the same, if you wish. Your dreams of writing a book can be the spark which changes your life.

I’ve collected everything I know about writing and selling your books into my brand new Write A Book Collection: it’s the ultimate toolbox for anyone who wants to write and sell books in 2010 and beyond.

Barnes & Noble is leaping aboard the electronic publishing express in a big way. In addition to their Nook ereader, they’ve announced PubIt, a digital publishing platform for publishers and writers.

Their press release Barnes & Noble Announces PubIt!(TM), An Easy-to-Use Digital Publishing and Distribution Platform for Independent and Self-Publishers – MarketWatch says:

“NEW YORK, May 19, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Barnes & Noble, Inc. (BKS 19.77, +0.27, +1.38%) , the world’s largest bookseller, is extending its deep and longstanding tradition of supporting authors and publishers with PubIt! by Barnes & Noble, an easy and lucrative way for independent publishers and self-publishing writers to distribute their works digitally through Barnes & Noble.com and the Barnes & Noble eBookstore. The easy-to-use publishing and distribution platform offers qualified independent publishers and authors of self-published works expanded distribution, visibility and protection that only Barnes & Noble can offer.”

The details haven’t been announced yet. It’ll be interesting to see what kinds of royalties they offer, and whether they demand exclusivity.

There’s BIG money in ebooks – just read how much money you can make by writing and selling ebooks.

However, the ebooks which sell best are non-fiction, because people visit the online world for information.

That said, I know several writers who are blogging their fiction, and others who serialize their fiction via email. Virtual Tales sends 1500-word installments of novels to email subscribers.

And they’re looking for writers.

Virtual Tales – Becoming an
Author for Virtual Tales reports:

“We are currently looking for complete novels or novellas of at least 20,000 words to sell through the Virtual Tales website and other partner sites in eSerial, eBook and print formats. We will also consider the following:

Short story collections with a strong central theme
Reprints of previously published works, including previously published print versions (or those currently published print editions outside of North America), so long as the author owns the electronic rights to the story and North American print rights
Previously published eSerials (through defunct sites such as KeepItComing.net)”

So if you’re writing a novel, serialize it. You can’t lose. It avoids the slush pile. If the novel becomes popular, no doubt a traditional publisher will pay you for the print version.

Great idea… wish I had time to write a novel this year.

Discover Private Label Rights (PLR) , a sizzling HOT new way to make money as a writer

The basic idea of PLR content is that it’s content which is sold to people to edit, mash up, or use directly on their Web sites. PLR content may be articles, ebooks, reports, or even audio. It’s CONTENT – stuff for Web sites – in its generic form.

If you can write ten PLR articles in a week, you can make $4000 a week

Sounds weird, but it’s true. Many writers are already cashing in on PLR, and you can too.

“Instant PLR Author: Make Money Writing Private Label Rights Products” shows you how.

Here’s an interesting story from MarketingSherpa.

MarketingSherpa: How Elsevier Created New Ebooks From Old Content to Lift Revenue 15%: “SUMMARY: Libraries and other institutions continue to add online content databases to their collections. So, opportunity calls for publishers to digitize even more specialty content for these customers.

See how one reference book publisher repurposed content by digitizing thousands of print titles for its paid content site and pushed usage through complimentary downloads. Conversions were strong enough to lift book revenue 15% in 2007.”

(This article is available until February 23)

Your takeaway from this? Basically this: As important as electronic rights have been for the past decade, they’re even more important now, so make sure that both you and your agent are up to date on e-rights, and that you place a strict limit on the length of time for which you license them.