Manuscript arrives in house, is edited, finalized. Cover art designed. Now we must make decisions about our publishing format and schedule. I'll be quite candid in saying that we have no idea how many books this first-time author will sell (actually, no publisher ever knows that). The fact that most of our marketing is going to be done online, rather than through traditional bookstores is one of those good thing/bad thing scenarios. Bad because there will be no pre-orders upon which to base our calculations for print runs. Good because most of our sales will be directly to readers--we'll have very few bookstore returns (a practice that seems unique to bookselling, among retailers).
Our decision is to start with an initial short run using Print On Demand (POD) technology. And we'll go heavily into the e-book markets. Experience with several other titles shows us that e-book sales figures are at least equal to, and sometimes higher than, print books. Toward that goal, we get Freedom Island - Kindle edition immediately set up on Amazon.com. Ta-da! We have a place where people can actually receive the book--now.
Within the week, we also plan to upload the book to our supplier for all other electronic formats--Barnes & Noble's Nook reader, the Sony Reader, and others, including PDF formats that can be read on any computer. We can now easily get copies of the book out to reviewers and to fill any early sales that might come in from word-of-mouth contacts. In the meantime J.R.is getting busy on Twitter and other social media sites.
Although the book is now available in some formats, we still need to get actual printed copies in our hands. And we need to set an official "launch date" toward which we will gear our main marketing push. Did I mention that it's getting a little crazy here in our offices?
Lee Ellison
Secret Staircase Books
Next: Holding that book in your hands!
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