Marketing

Back to Summer Street.

After you actually have everything finished as far as the work itself is concerned, there’s the problem of getting it where people can read it. You’ve got to sell it. Which raises the first question, sell it for how much?

I’ve been conflicted here, because the bottom line is that I don’t expect to sell a bazillion copies, nor do I expect to make a bazillion dollars. “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money,” is what Dr. Johnson said, and he’s probably right, but when push comes to shove, I think I’d rather side with the blockheads of life. At the same time, I already give away a bunch of writing, and I want to differentiate this from the freebies. People tend to assign values to items commensurate with their costs, which is unfortunate but something that must be considered. If I were to give the book away, it would not be valued particularly highly. If I were to sell it, people would think that it's worth more than if it were free.

So what should an ebook book cost? More specifically, an ebook by me? Well, I think it should be reasonable enough to qualify as a non-thought purchase. That is, I want people to buy it but not have to think twice about the price. If it were $15, say, that puts it into the category of the average big book by a big name. I don’t want to compete with that, and at the same time, when an ebook costs that much, I have second thoughts myself (even though I have nothing against paying $20 for the same book as a hardcover: the math of personal buying is an elusive beast). For Summer Street, I’m thinking somewhere ranging between $3 and $5, leaning toward the lower figure. Given that a third of any revenue goes to Amazon, I’ll never get rich at that rate. But as I already suggested, I didn’t write it to get rich. For that matter, I don’t think I have it in me to write to get rich. I write to write. What can I say?

After that, there’s the matter of publicizing it. Just making a book available does nothing to sell it, unless you are so sought after that people have been panting heavily since your last book for this one to come out. There are mere handfuls of writers in that category. For everyone else, you’ve got to let readers know its there. Honestly, I’m not looking forward to this part. I guess I’ll have to honk it on Facebook and Twitter, to the people to whom I’m already connected, a handful of whom might be moved to actually purchase it. I’ll sort of have to become the book for a while, with the image of the cover all over everything I do. Which is why the cover is so important. It is your core selling tool.

I’ve also figured I’ll record a little bit of it and give that away. Maybe the first chapter or so. I may not be the world’s greatest reader, but I’m not the world’s worst, and I certainly have a lot of experience performing Nostrum episodes. If I can handle the less than timeless prose of Jules and the Nostrumite, I ought to be able to handle my own. That, in fact, is my next step in the process, and I hope to get it done in the next week or two. I just need an afternoon alone at the Chez; the microphone is already set up to go. All I have to do is turn it on.

I may or may not be much of a writer; that’s for others to decide. But I know that I’m not an entrepreneur. Some people are born salesmen. I am anything but. But I’ve got to sell Summer Street, and I’ll do what I can.

Bear with me.