#authorgate?

@DragonLady

I definitely understand the desire to get away from Amazon. I think that they aren’t a longterm reliable platform, but I think that since it is one of the  biggest (probably the biggest) book sellers in the world, you’ve got so mamy potential readers with Amazon ereaders. I guess I don’t see the point of not using it for as long as possible until you reach your goal of being independent. If you have a strong fan base of a thousand people already, I would say run with your idea and set up a way to sell an ebook from your website. Setting up a simple website is extremely easy. Putting together the finished product of a book (after it is written) is pretty simple too. I would guess your hardest hurdle is the payment processor, but people I’ve seen plenty of websites with a payment processors, so I am guessing it isn’t too hard. If you are at that point already, you could run it all from an email list to tell your fans you have a new book (and the best thing about an email list is that you can use it from any email platform).

My point is that it is a long journey, and as far as I can see, it is a long one. I just don’t think it is wise to dismiss any tool you can use to get to your goals (barring that tool isn’t unethical or evil or something)

(I hope this doesn’t come across as talking down to you at all. I’m just trying to lay out my thoughts as clearly and fully as possible so my position is not misunderstood.)

@DragonLady

Amazon has a whole portal dedicated to self-publishing. kdp.amazon.com if you want to check it out.  Barnes and Noble has a platform for it as well: press.barnesandnoble.com . These two allow you to publish ebooks as well as physical copies (They do print on demand, which means that when a person orders the book, they will print it for you and ship it out. It is an extremely cheap way for an author to get started because you literally don’t have to pay any money. You just write your book, get it to a polished state, and create the final product. The whole process has a little bit of a learning curve the first time, but it gets a lot easier as you go. Anyone who has already built and audience and who is writing a book is foolish not to self-publish, in my opinion. It takes a little bit more work, but you get a much bigger cut of the final profit.)

I know there are other platforms out there that allow you publish ebooks out there. I can’t remember what they are, but if you do a quick search for them, it wouldn’t be hard to find them.

I personally think an email list or your own personal website is the final goal for publishing. You will always want to be present other places to build your audience, but if you can get your fans connected to your website (usually via an email list), you can sell directly to them without going through a third party. The standard way it works is that you funnel people to a simple website through social media, and you give people something of value to sign up for your email list. This could be an a free chapter of your book, a whole book (maybe a novelette or something like that), a class, or even something like a reference people will actually use (like lists of books and things like that). This can be a lot of different things, and it really depends on who your audience is. If you can figure out something your audience really likes and wants, they will sign up for emails. I think some people don’t like this because it is asking someone to sign up for an email list, but I see it as a transaction. I created value, and you are paying for that value by giving me access to your inbox.

What do you do with the emails? You don’t bombard people with emails, of course. You find a way to keep people aware of you at the very least, and at the very most, you find a way to give people a high level of value. By giving people value, they grow to trust you. It is really similar to Youtubers. People like youtubers because they give some sort of value, and they are real people. And people have turned into fans of youtubers, and they are willing to support them in other ways. Roas (I think it was you Roas. Sorry if I’m wrong.) decided to create value and connect to people through starting a youtube channel. You could do that as well, and you could use those videos as some sort of content in your emails (Instead of having an email a day with the videos you are creating, you could create a hyperlink list of the top ones you have for the month). Besides youtube, you could also do the same thing through a blog. I put emphasis on getting people to sign up for emails because you can be kicked off other platforms and lose your fanbase. If you are connected to people via email, you can download the list and have the emails forever. Value is key though. If you can find a way to really give people value, they are going to be much more likely to pull the trigger, sign up for you emails, and actually pay attention when they get them. (But it is really hard, and it is a hell of a lot of work)

Once you’ve connected to your audience, and they’ve committed to getting emails (because they like you and you give them good stuff), you continue to give them value and stay connected through email once a month or so. You write your books, you decide to publish them any way you see fit (Amazon, a third-party printer where you can customize every piece of the book, your own basement printing press, etc. . .), and once you have a finished product, you take about 3 to 6 months and have a launch of the book. If you are working with a printer to create a book, the cool thing is that you will be able to do multiple launches because you will only be printing a certain number of books at a time, so you can do just what the big publishers are doing and have different editions (And the people who are part of your audience first will appreciate this because the books they bought when you were small-time will be more rare and more unique).

Again, the whole process is very hard. You might be able to make a little money on the side right away, but if  you do want to write and publish your own stuff, I think you should think of it as a long term project. I’ve heard from a lot of people that once you hit a thousand people who really love your stuff, your fanbase takes on a life of its own. That makes sense to me, and it is encouraging because 1000 isn’t a huge number. And if you had one thousand people who loved your stuff, you could do custom printings and launch it through an email list no problem (And if you could find out other products related to your work that those people wanted, you could live modestly off them liking your stuff. You would only need to have each of them buy $50 worth of stuff. You might even do that with a really exclusive, high quality book launch with a whole bunch of extra goodies added in).

Selling books and building a fanbase is damn hard though. I have mad respect for anyone who has gone through the process. I don’t think there is a magic bullet for either. Maybe some people get lucky, but I think most independent authors work like hell to make something really good and as much of it as possible.

I hope this isn’t too much information. I think it gives a good picture of how you could go using an email list. I’m sure if you grab some books on the subject, you could find a lot of other ideas for how to use it. I am certainly not the expert. If you decided to start building an audience through another platform such as social media or youtube, that would work as well, but a website is so cheap to maintain that I think it is worth it. If I were to start over, I would have started giving people value in some way right away, and I would have started building an email list.

(Through wordpress, you might be able to set up a website for free and then connect it to an email list service such as mailerlite or mailchimp. I can’t remember if you can or not. But if you could, then it would cost you no money at all, just a little bit of time making a really simple website, connecting it to one of those two, and creating the initial value that would get people to sign up for it (It is called a lead generator. If you do decide to go this route, I would suggest looking up more about it)

Yeah, so I am sorry this a long. There is a lot to say about the subject, and I probably went long because I just came off third shift and am close to falling asleep. Ask any question you want. Block me. Whatever. Lol. I’ll try to answer to the best of my ability.