Don’t Fear the Ebook [Live-blogging the DFW Writer’s Conference]

Russell C. Conner spoke on ebooks today, revealing some of his personal experience with the format. He’s actually found his self-published ebooks outselling his hard copies by 8-to-1!

The two C’s of electronic media:

• Convenience—it must be easy to download and customizable
• Cost—the price must be lower than its physical counterpart

Compare, for instance, the price of a book at Amazon:

• Retail hardback: $27.99
• Audiobook: $26.39
• Discounted Price: $14.50
• Kindle Price: $9.99

Even if you sell your ebook for $6.99, your royalty per book is $2.45—much more than you’d get through a physical book!

How to set-up a quick-and-easy ebook:

1. Use Times New Roman, no bigger than 16pt font
2. Use center, bold, italic and underline…that’s about it
3. Use asterisks as page breaks to keep it simple
4. Save from Microsoft Word as an HTML web page
5. Go to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing and upload
6. Go to Smashwords to get an ISBN for $10 and upload (but keep Amazon separate)