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What's Your Biggest Challenge with Your Book?

I'd be interested to learn what authors/publishers on this network think their biggest challenges are with their book. I wonder if there's any common, pervasive challenge we all face.

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Theresa,

We don't know the book as you do, so your gut feel for combining them may turn out to be the best bet if it works so well with the book.

But typically, I like the idea of several smaller books rather than one larger book. My reasons:

1 - You can charge less per book, making it more attractive to buyers.

2 - You may be able to get more money per word by selling two smaller books.

3 - If they like the first book, you've got something else to offer them.

4 - Since we can now publish virtually free through places like CreateSpace, your only extra expense would be for a new cover. (If you pay for editing and layout, you'd have to pay that the second half/book either way.)

5 - A big strategy for some authors has been to give away the first digital book in a series, to hook readers on your writing and get your rankings up so that more people find your books and pay for the latter books in the series.

Just some thoughts.

J. Steve Miller
Author of Social Media Frenzy “Rethinking social media for authors.”
Author of Sell More Books! “What really works for low profile authors.”

My biggest challenge and I mean BIGGEST challenge is to get the point of sale positioning right in the bookstores. Who's going to find my book if it stays buried on the bottom shelf? I have more success selling SAVAGE IMPACT on-line and with independent retailers. 

Being a bilingual writer, I often find it difficult to navigate between French and English. I often have to use some linguistic strategies such as circumlocutions, guesses, intuitions…

A big challenge for me was to figure out how to upload a manuscript to the Kindle publishing platform. I've written a blog on my bookmarketingpage about my 'five problems and five solutions', hoping to keep other authors out of the pitfalls I fell into. Take a look at it if you're thinking of publishing another book, this time as a kindle. Like me, you may be taking some things for granted that you shouldn't.

Excuse me, why would the DOJ go after Amazon when their evidence concluded that Amazon had nothing to do with ebook price fixing? Unlike Apple, who was busted conspiring with publishers to screw over Amazon.

Everyone on here is well aware of your vehement hatred of Amazon, but don't let that rage turn to ignorance and blind you from the truth.

Also, if you hate the way Amazon does business, why don't you just take your books off of the site and be done with it?

I'm still waiting to hear what Amazon has done that needs to be investigated by the DOJ.

Undercutting isn't a crime. It's how businesses stay competitive through a free market. The way Amazon supposedly does it, via software, is dirty but it's not illegal.

I would also like to add that publishers, vanity presses, and sleaze ball agents ruined the book publishing industry a long before Amazon jumped on board.

You can accuse me of being blind, uneducated, or whatever have you, but the fact of the matter is Amazon is like any other major corporation who has their positives and their negatives. Plenty of retail outlets set the price, like Wal-Mart and Target, it's just how they do business.

I think we can all live within the bounds of the chains, Internet retailers, etc. if we focus on building traffic to our websites and blogs - where we can sell our books direct to our fans and followers.

For some tips on building traffic to your websites or blogs, check out http://blog.bookmarket.com/2012/05/top-10-things-you-can-do-in-2012...

There are a lot of books selling via Kindle for $4.99 to $9.99 - and, as the author and publisher, you get 70% of the retail selling price. That's better than what you'd get as a royalty from any publisher.

Readers are reading a lot of books via Kindle that are higher price. Sure, there are the scam artists, etc. who are pushing are tons of cheaply curated books, but Amazon is taking action against the most egregious of those.

Yes, Amazon is pushing the value of books down in the eyes of readers, but that was going to happen anyway as electronic publishing takes hold. Apple did the same with music, forcing a low-priced pricing model on music publishers. And they are also trying to do the same with book publishers.

The biggest challenge I find is how much time to spend marketing my existing book versus how much time to spend on the next book. There are only so many hours in the day and daily life has to go on

You can do a lot of marketing for the old book (or the new book) in 20 to 30 minutes a day. It really doesn't have to be a full-time job marketing.

Selling yourself !   You have to be really thick-skinned and just market, market, market, regardless of feeling awkward or embarrassed, all the while remembering that there is a huge difference between marketing and selling.

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