This is part 3 of the Aspiring Author Entrepreneur series. You can read Part 1 and Part 2 of my journey series.
Till now I got the user feedback that few people were interested in reading my E-Book and also completed my E-Book within a week's time.
Then came the dilemma. How would I distribute it to my readers. What were my possible options? I thought of hosting it in some file sharing service but didn't want to waste time searching for the best option. Then I decided, since the population was very less, I thought of distributing my E-Book through E-mail itself and made an update to the same google plus post giving away my email id and asking prospective readers to email me directly.
Probably not a very wise idea, but anyway it solved the purpose right then. Then those few people emailed me directly and I sent them my E-Book copy.
What I realized after giving my E-Book to my early adopters?
I thought I would get good feedback and waited a day or two. Since it was a short E-Book, I thought it would take only a few hours to glance and read through the E-Book. I thought people would enjoy reading it and they will reply me with all sorts of accolades.
But I was wrong. Another 4-5 days passed by, I didn't get a reply. Then I became a bit impatient and composed an Email asking for the feedback.
But again to no avail. I tried pinging a person directly who was in my contacts. He said he was too busy to read the book right away and promised to read the book whenever he got time.
"Then why should he ask for the E-Book in the first place?" was what that immediately came to my mind. But then I came to terms with reality. Then I decided that this strategy of emailing readers with my Ebook didn't work out. So I decided to Pivot (thinking of another strategy)
Key Learning
It is better to test out a strategy to check if it works. If it doesn't work, we can persevere a bit but not for too long. You have to take a pivot soon enough before losing interest or before we lose momentum.
Why I wanted a proper channel to distribute the E-book?
Now I needed to think of another strategy to distribute my E-Book. I began to search in Google and instantly got a reply that I can self publish Ebooks (for free) in places like Amazon which is probably the largest retailer of books. Especially Kindle, their popular platform hosts a large number of Electronic books. So I decided to go through that way. I planned to publish my Ebook through Amazon and market the Ebook through my blogs and social media. But I had to get the feedback from prospective customers.
This time I started a new discussion in another Google Plus group and asked for the devices and formats that people generally prefer. I got Kindle as the number one device, a mix of Nook, iPad and PC as the next. And formats, I got PDF as number one followed by Epub and others.
Key Learning
There is plenty of information available on the internet and most of them are free. So make use of it. Gather the information and filter it out and plan a strategy that suits you.
My First Big Mistake in this journey
With enough information, I began the process of trying to publish the Ebook on Kindle. With that I created an Amazon account and logged into Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) as it is called. KDP is the self publishing platform from Amazon which allows content to be uploaded in MS Word format and it converts it into .Mobi format which is used by Kindle.
The steps in KDP were very simple
1. Entering the book details like title, author name, description, edition, etc.
2. Verifying publishing rights
3. Specify Target Audience
4. Upload or Create a cover page (There is an inline editor with which we can create cover pages)
5. Upload the word document
6. Preview the content in different kindle devices (online)
7. Once ok, select pricing (There was a Free option as well)
8. Publish
Considering these steps, I thought of finishing them very quickly, but once I started reading the detailed Kindle content formatting guidelines, I was dejected seeing so many stuffs to be done. I tried different options and watched few videos on the formatting. I prepared multiple versions however I couldn't get proper preview as I was not doing the formatting correctly.
Then I searched in Google for Kindle templates, I couldn't find any free ones and I saw a paid one in http://www.self-publishing-coach.com/. At this moment, I had two options. One was to go ahead and buy the template for $50 and go ahead with publishing without any hassles. Two was to waste more time trying to do the formatting myself.
I took the former option. The reason being I didn't want to waste my time in doing things that didn't come to me and those that didn't directly fit my purpose. My job was to create good content and not doing formatting. With this thought, I went ahead and did my first financial investment. Yes, I was investing plenty of time but this was the first financial investment. A $50 investment or a Rs. 3000/- (Indian currency).
Having bought the template, I put my contents into the template and in a breeze, I went ahead with all the steps before the pricing. Now you would think that I happily published the Ebook.
But No. As they always say, "The Devil is in the detail", the devil for me was in the pricing page. Just when I set the pricing as Free and I was all set to publish, it told me that as a small publisher I can't set the price of an Ebook as free. I needed to be a bigger publisher in order to set the pricing as free.
What an irony? Why on earth would someone buy a book from a little known author. First of all, how would I make them realize that there is something in it for them to read. I had to think of another strategy because setting a price for a little known book from a little known author didn't make sense for me.
Key Learning
Never ever try to do something without proper research. Not doing proper research caused me a loss of $50 and some precious time in hitting the market. Remember every penny is costly and it should be used with utmost care especially in case of startups, which in my cause is pretty analogous.
What's Next?
Remember the ride of a startup or an entrepreneur or an author is going to be a roller coaster. In my next posts, I will cover
Which platform did I choose to distribute my Ebook?
What I learnt about my Ebook?
Major Learning in my journey
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