On Our Own January 2009 Newsletter

Hello! It's been a long time.

2008 was an ... ahem ... interesting year and although 2009 has had an interesting start, I'm hoping for the best, for everyone.

The Indie Anthology has not been forgotten, only delayed. I hope many of you have short stories, poetry, and excerpts you will submit when we're ready to start accepting them for review. We will be looking for the best of the best of indies, as I have hopes for this to be a nice marketing tool as well as showing what we can do.

In the meantime, I see that one of our members is included in an anthology of WDC sci-fi writers!

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Congrats to Ŧĥē Beŋ and best of luck with it!


What pushed me into mailing the group is a market I found for publishing Ebooks that would meet requirements I wanted.

SmashWords.com allows indie authors to upload their books and make them available as Ebooks in any format (pdf, mobi for Kindle, html, lrf for Sony Reader etc), still with all rights remaining with the author. You set your own price, even free if you wish, decide how much of it to make public for a sampling (they recommend 50% -- I figured 20% should be plenty), and can unpublish it again whenever you wish (given that those already sold will remain available to the buyer). The free sampling part of it is also searchable by the main search engines, which expert promoters say is very useful. The site says you receive 85% of the sale price, which is a bit inaccurate since the cost to send money you earn comes out of your 85%, but it's still about 75%.

I uploaded "Finishing Touches" last night and priced it at $3.50 -- after their percentage I get $2.65 per sale; fair enough for something that doesn't cost me anything but formatting time.

You DO want to read and follow the site owner's directions on formatting but it's easy to follow and the site is much easier to use than Lulu.

I plan to upload my other books, also, possibly in parts since they are quite long, as well as a few short stories -- some free to draw interest and others for a small fee.

http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/lkhunsaker

If you go to my page and click on Finishing Touches, you'll find all the available Ebook formats. You can make your books available in only those you select or in all forms. I figured I might as well go all the way!

For those worried about possible piracy -- copying it for friends and such, I've had the same concerns. However, musicians take that risk with every CD. Even print books can be, and are, passed from person to person. That will happen. SmashWords tells its readers plainly that it's illegal to copy and share the books, and unfair to the authors.

I want to be read. I want my name out there. POD books are expensive and hard to sell, especially fiction, especially long fiction by an unknown author. So I'm willing to take the chance.

If you sign up, let me know what you think!

Note: This is information only. I accept no responsibility for suggesting the site and have no relationship with the site or owner.

If you have indie markets to share with us, please feel free to mail the group. No personal promo, though!

I hope you all have happy, creative, joyful new years!

LK Hunsaker