viernes, 1 de agosto de 2014

Return of Investment

Check Dean's post. It's the basis.

Now, I've had the same discussion, from a slightly different perspective, with Kris. To wit, take into account time when you calculate your ROI. Submission time, time to asnwer, time to reversion... A market that pays you 100 bucks tomorrow and requires your story for two months is better than a market that pays 500 but needs 3 months to put your story up an wants it for a whole year. Unless the publicity pays that off.

Ok, priors covered. Now, a thought on Amazon and ebooks and such.

There's already people who only publish through Kindle. Amazon's ebook market is so big it's not worth for them to loose the benefits of KDP and work extra to upload to other markets. I don't like it, but it's their choice.

The time for that is reaching paper. Many bookstores don't order from small publishers, much less indie or self. Some avoid Amazon titles. Amazon reaches every single one of their buyers, and beyond. In print. But they prefer to gate their borders.

I know some people who're exploring the market of POD and small press runs in Spain. Besides the requirement of fixed price and something similar to Library of Congress registration, and some legal juggling, there's a requirement with most catalogs, to get an ISBN (about the price of some nice cover designs, out there; besides the fact that the damn Spanish ISBN web looks like a vanity scam, they don't seem to realize you can get US ISBNs for half the price). To say nothing of the convoluted (and often vanity-pressy) road for ebook publishing in some venues, here.

Amazon puts your book on sale without extra payments (through CreateSpace). No ISBN required unless you want frills and tassles. And so on. No convolutions, no roundabouts. No wated time (money), no payments (money), no sunk costs.

As is, for many kinds of book, it's simply cost-effective to forget about other channels. You can always waste your time there when you've started recouping your investment. But, so far, what for?

Take care.

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