Posted on 01/11/2012 5:32:07 AM PST by PJ-Comix
I am interested in self-publishing on Kindle. Eventually I would like to publish a book but first I want to publish articles via Kindle of just 500 to 1000 words each. I would like to make the articles available for FREE to the public. This is to familiarize the general public with my humor and would be great publicity for my book.
So what I want to know is if it is okay to publish stuff on Kindle that would be available to the public for FREE. Also is there some sort of Kindle index in which such articles would be listed?
Including 500 to 1000 word articles. I would like to write about 2 per week available to the public for FREE. Then later in the year, publish a book for which there would be a charge. Also can the charge for books be as low as $4.99? Five bucks seems to be what a lot of folks will pay without thinking too much about it. $9.99 might be too high.
Thanx for the info. So obviously Kindle publications are available for FREE. Now to find out if short article length publications can be made available to the public for free. BTW, I was thinking PRINT when I put the upper word length limit at 1000 words. I see now reason why I could publish articles of up to 3000 or even 5000 words in length.
If I could publish individual articles via Kindle then perhaps Charles could publish his many parody songs via the same method.
It's fairly easy to create an eBook. First, if you haven't already, download and install Calibre. It's a free eBook database application that will sync with your eReader as well as convert HTML, PDF and eBook formats from one to another.
Then, develop your eBook in Microsoft Word (or OpenOffice Writer if that's your preference). If you're looking toward the Kindle file format, follow the instructions from Amazon at the links in this thread for formatting so it will appear properly. When you save it, save it as an HTML file.
Finally, add the HTML file to Calibre, then use Calibre to convert it to the ebook format of choice (for your intention to go Kindle, that would be Mobi). If you want, you may want to delete the HTML file after your eBook has been created, but you don't have to. Calibre will show both formats.
Would there be a market for text versions of songs? I don’t know. To me, those would be better published if they could be put to music, then distributed as mp3 songs, say at a bit rate of 192 or so.
There are thousands of things on kindle for free. They also have blogging and what they call singles. I am not sure what the word length requirement is for each of them.
When reading up on the subject for my own nefarious purposes, the optimal price point for self-publishers seems to be $2.99 — any lower and you don’t get enough additional sales to cover lower margins, and and higher and you lose too many sales.
That’s interesting info. Thanks!
Nope...not me.
Converting a book to Kindle format is challenging. What I find missing is software to be able to open and edit the document already in the mobi format.
Self Publishing
I recently self-published my book “Up From Down” and it is on kindle and at all major outlets. Let me tell you what I learned.
First of all, do not use Westbow, an imprint of Thomas Nelson Publishing, the largest Christian publisher in the world. Despite calling themselves Christians, their main interest is in overcharging authors. Sad to say but their Christianity doesn’t get in the way of their greed much.
The traditonal publishers including Westbow are engaged in a conspiracy to keep E-books at high prices, $9.99 but there are ways around it.
Somebody mentioned Createspace and that is a lower cost option.
However, may I suggest you investigate Smashwords at wwww.smashwords.com They will distribute to all major outlets including Amazon and kindle so why confine yourself to just Kindle?
You can set your own price or no price at all and there is no cost to do so but they do take a small commission if you are charging for your book.
The only costs associated with Smashwords for me were new cover design (Westbow claimed rights to my cover even though I designed it and they followed my instructions). It cost me $50 to get a new cover designed for the e-book. I also payed $50 to have the book formatted to upload to Smashwords. So for $100 you can get any book published and widely distributed. If you are pretty smart you can even format the book yourself (they give instructions) but it is a lot easier to have someone else do it. So if you are talented you could design your book and even format it yourself. In that case, you could write and distribute your book widely for free.
Hope that helps.
My book is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwordsm, and just about everywhere else. You can find out more about it at www.upfromdown.info
Use Calibri to convert to HTML. Then open in Word and do your editing. Re-save to HTML then again convert to Mobi.
self-ping me too
No. I mean just publish them for FREE on Kindle. Then later when he develops a fan base, publish a Kindle book for $$$.
How are the sales going?
So far, it seems like Smashwords seems like the way to go since it would appear in many formats. Would it also be free publishing just articles of up to about 3000 words of length?
ping
Thanks. Thirty more pages and done.
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