Friday, December 7, 2012

Getting success with your self-published ebooks on Kobo


Self-publishing ebooks on Kobo - Success!

One of the fastest and easiest way you can publish your ebooks is on Kobo - better than any other one I've found. Here's some of the reasons why:
  1. Yes, Kobo sells their own readers. Lots of models. Trick is that you don't hear about them in the U.S. so much - but go to one of the other 128 English-speaking countries and you'll see them probably more than Kindles or Nooks.
  2. That's the news which surprises. But not so much when you see how Kobo is set up. Because they started in Canada and quickly went international - over the border into the U.S.
    Now Brazil is their quick-start expansion, leaving Amazon and some others playing "catch-up ball' with their own events. 
  3. The Creative Penn is a great blog - and if you haven't seen it, these got a nearly-30-minute interview with Mark Lefebvre about Kobo's Writing Life, where he goes over all sorts of data on how they are letting publishes post and list their own books, different from having to go through other distributors such as Smashwords and Books on Board.
  4. Kobo Announces Self-Publishing Platform Writing Life (selfmkt episode 18)
  5. A video review of Kobo's Writing Life Announcement
  6. Above and below are some tips and guides for self-publishing on Kobo.
  7. And the kicker with doing this yourself is the higher royalties. I just saw today that some authors are starting to "jump ship" from their agencies in order to take advantage of these better payouts. Not too surprising, since even if you contract some editors and proofreaders, your royalties can be much higher for a total pay raise. 
  8. And here's a book I published just a couple of days ago. Got the paperback up on Lulu.com today...
  9. (Yes this is blatant self-promotion. And it also gives you a working case study of how it can be done. Ok, so I really am working on that how-to article - and thanks for asking...)
  10. It takes just a few hours to convert an epub to a pdf and post it. Too simple, really. And a speed which is incredible. Of course, that's me doing the artwork and editing. There's other shortcuts, but it does mean that anyone can have their own self-published ebook (and paperback...)
    - - - - -
  11. The trick with self-publishing is to fill specific long-tail niches - not much different than Internet Marketing and SEO in general. And the newer top fiction writers have found that out recently. But this post has a lot of great links in it as well...
  12. DiannaGraveman
    Tips from a Pro: Kevin J. Anderson Shares Writing Advice – Kobo Writing Life buff.ly/YODHhC
  13. IMakeAutoWealth
    eBook Formatting For Amazon Kindle and Epub Kobo Writing Life - A Step by Step Guide For Beginnersbit.ly/VK5knT
  14. And here's that linked article. (It's another reason I prefer blogs, PDF's, and video over EzineArticles - this is a lot to swallow and you don't see what she's doing.)

    Also, it's far easier to create the epub first and then edit it slightly for submitting to Kobo and Amazon. Use Sigil.
    But I"ll give you more as I can get back to this. Still have to get my 15 books published on Amazon and Google - miles to go before I sleep...

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