Ebooks, eh?

[TheArdentWriter]

So I am currently finishing a book that I have been working on for about three months now and instead of going through the publication process, which I plan to do later, I am going the Ebook route because it is virtually all profit. I personally don't buy or use Ebooks so I would like some tips from the community on how I should go about this.

How do I sell an Ebook on a personal site?
What are some sites besides Amazon that sell Ebooks?
What is a good way of advertisement without being intrusive and irritating?

Maybe I am just posting on the wrong site and I will get no response but don't know unless you try.

[Count Roland]

Many people prefer actual books though, and because of that won't buy the ebook, which can lead to poor sales which might lead publishers to believe your book is not financially feasible, leading to them not publishing it and it dying!

[TheArdentWriter]

Many people prefer actual books though, and because of that won't buy the ebook, which can lead to poor sales which might lead publishers to believe your book is not financially feasible, leading to them not publishing it and it dying!

I know that but Amazon allows the sells of both hardback and electronic. I am looking into the hardback on Amazon's DTP.

[Endoperez]

I have no idea how the business works. However, there is a chance the publishers who print physical books might want to also get the publishing right for ebooks.

Still, I think it's worth it to try the Ebook route. I mean, if you haven't gotten your works published before, it is probably hard to get publishers interested. Even if you can't sell this one, it might help future deals, if you've previously published a book as an ebook.

I can't help for the business stuff, but for advertising, you're on the right site. Look how Wolfire gathered interest with the daily blog posts.
Do you have a blog? Are you marketing the blog? Have you written useful, interesting articles for your blog? You are a writer. You should be able to write a blog which catches people's interest. A blog which gets more and more regular visitors as time goes on. It will take time - but if you take that time, the effects can be phenomenal. Look up Natural Selection 2/Overgrowth bundle. Check the first Humble Indie Bundle, and what blog posts they made during that time.
I still think that was online marketing at its best. They couldn't do Humble Indie Bundle before they had a large enough following that would spread the word. Once the word was spread, a risky try like that was suddenly featured on reddit and diggit and such, and gathered lots of attention. Even as that was going on, they posted a flame-baiting article - OpenGL vs DirectX - that specifically catered to the people who belonged to their game's market audience, and that article too featured on reddit and who knows where.

To bait people, you have to give them something, and you have to make them come back for more. If you're a good writer, you can probably do the first. For the second, a regular update schedule is good. Look at webcomics, and how they work. Some webcomics are huge, some are small. Most of the huge ones update more than once per week. Some of the huge ones rely on a community forum that keeps the people coming back even when the webcomic isn't updating (Order of the Stick / giantitp.com dichotomy is a great example).
Some very simple webcomics are much more popular than you'd think from the skills of their creator(s). XKCD, for example, is very simplistic, but it has a very clear target audience - math jokes, physics jokes, programmer jokes etc are rare, so the simple style works. Some simple comics are simple by choice, not because their creator lacks artistic ability (Order of the Stick, sprite comics). Sometimes this is done so that the updates can be daily.

Could you write short vignettes, daily? Or rather, have a backlog of vignettes and post one of them every day, always having a few week's worth of them ready? Could you write about writing in general so that it interests people? If you want to write novels of a specific genre, write stuff that your potential readers would be interested in.

Also, if this sounds like a lot of work... imagine what it would've been like to gather the interest of all those people, if you had to do it before internet.

[TheArdentWriter]

I have no idea how the business works. However, there is a chance the publishers who print physical books might want to also get the publishing right for ebooks.

Still, I think it's worth it to try the Ebook route. I mean, if you haven't gotten your works published before, it is probably hard to get publishers interested. Even if you can't sell this one, it might help future deals, if you've previously published a book as an ebook.

I can't help for the business stuff, but for advertising, you're on the right site. Look how Wolfire gathered interest with the daily blog posts.
Do you have a blog? Are you marketing the blog? Have you written useful, interesting articles for your blog? You are a writer. You should be able to write a blog which catches people's interest. A blog which gets more and more regular visitors as time goes on. It will take time - but if you take that time, the effects can be phenomenal. Look up Natural Selection 2/Overgrowth bundle. Check the first Humble Indie Bundle, and what blog posts they made during that time.
I still think that was online marketing at its best. They couldn't do Humble Indie Bundle before they had a large enough following that would spread the word. Once the word was spread, a risky try like that was suddenly featured on reddit and diggit and such, and gathered lots of attention. Even as that was going on, they posted a flame-baiting article - OpenGL vs DirectX - that specifically catered to the people who belonged to their game's market audience, and that article too featured on reddit and who knows where.

To bait people, you have to give them something, and you have to make them come back for more. If you're a good writer, you can probably do the first. For the second, a regular update schedule is good. Look at webcomics, and how they work. Some webcomics are huge, some are small. Most of the huge ones update more than once per week. Some of the huge ones rely on a community forum that keeps the people coming back even when the webcomic isn't updating (Order of the Stick / giantitp.com dichotomy is a great example).
Some very simple webcomics are much more popular than you'd think from the skills of their creator(s). XKCD, for example, is very simplistic, but it has a very clear target audience - math jokes, physics jokes, programmer jokes etc are rare, so the simple style works. Some simple comics are simple by choice, not because their creator lacks artistic ability (Order of the Stick, sprite comics). Sometimes this is done so that the updates can be daily.

Could you write short vignettes, daily? Or rather, have a backlog of vignettes and post one of them every day, always having a few week's worth of them ready? Could you write about writing in general so that it interests people? If you want to write novels of a specific genre, write stuff that your potential readers would be interested in.

Also, if this sounds like a lot of work... imagine what it would've been like to gather the interest of all those people, if you had to do it before internet.

Thanks for taking to the time to type all of this out. I have a free site that I made on webs.com that has a blog but I haven't used it. What I was thinking of doing was creating a tumblr blog and posting updates of what I am finishing in the book. Also, the idea for giving tips on writing could be something that attracts people; like making a guide on how to successfully write a novel without losing interests, which happens to a lot of would be authors.

Vignettes also sound good but I do have a backlog of Short Stories ranging from under 500 words to 4,000 words so posting those would be beneficial.

https://www.createspace.com/
I am going to use this site in cohesion with Amazon to sell my book.

[Endoperez]

Thanks for taking to the time to type all of this out. I have a free site that I made on webs.com that has a blog but I haven't used it. What I was thinking of doing was creating a tumblr blog and posting updates of what I am finishing in the book. Also, the idea for giving tips on writing could be something that attracts people; like making a guide on how to successfully write a novel without losing interests, which happens to a lot of would be authors.

Vignettes also sound good but I do have a backlog of Short Stories ranging from under 500 words to 4,000 words so posting those would be beneficial.

https://www.createspace.com/
I am going to use this site in cohesion with Amazon to sell my book.

Glad I could be of help.

Remember that when you start a blog, you have no readers. You have to gather those, too, but if you have interesting stuff to post that shouldn't be too hard.

[TheArdentWriter]

Thanks for taking to the time to type all of this out. I have a free site that I made on webs.com that has a blog but I haven't used it. What I was thinking of doing was creating a tumblr blog and posting updates of what I am finishing in the book. Also, the idea for giving tips on writing could be something that attracts people; like making a guide on how to successfully write a novel without losing interests, which happens to a lot of would be authors.

Vignettes also sound good but I do have a backlog of Short Stories ranging from under 500 words to 4,000 words so posting those would be beneficial.

https://www.createspace.com/
I am going to use this site in cohesion with Amazon to sell my book.

Glad I could be of help.

Remember that when you start a blog, you have no readers. You have to gather those, too, but if you have interesting stuff to post that shouldn't be too hard.

The one thing that I find hard is advertising the blog. What is an effective way to go about it?

[Endoperez]

The one thing that I find hard is advertising the blog. What is an effective way to go about it?

I have no experience with that. You could try asking the Wolfire guys directly. You could try asking John, I think he has studied economics instead of game development so I assume he is their PR guy. I'm not sure, though.

I assume lot of it happens through other blogs, or through Youtube, facebook, twitter etc. If someone comments on something your wrote, people who read his blog might go see what it's about. If you write a reply to something someone else wrote on his blog, and the original writer thinks your reply is interesting, you might get linked back. There are "similar blogs" and "friendly blogs" and "check these blogs too" sidebars, too.