The Independent Book Publisher's Association has invited me to be the guest on a free 90-minute conference call Monday at 1pm Eastern titled, "How to Develop and Implement an Ebook Strategy."We'll be giving away a free Sony Reader Pocket Edition to one lucky listener, courtesy of our good friends at Sony Electronics and the Reader Store from Sony.
The conference call will follow a Q&A format, moderated by Florrie Binford Kichler, president of the IBPA.
If you're new to ebooks (and who isn't??), I invite you to attend. We'll cover a lot of ground, including almost everything you need to know to produce, publish, distribute and market your ebooks. No, this is not a Smashwords advertorial, so even if you don't work with Smashwords you're welcome to attend and join the conversation with your questions.Topics we'll address include:
* What’s the latest market data on ebooks?Florrie has prepared dozens of questions to ask me, and we'll also take live questions from listeners on the conference call and from folks on Twitter who use the hashtag #IBPA.
* What’s driving the growth of ebooks?
* Overview of ebook reading devices
* How do ebooks fit within an overall publishing strategy?
* Which books work best as ebooks?
* Tips on ebook formatting
* Deciphering the alphabet soup of ebook formats
* How is the ebook supply chain evolving?
* What's DRM, and do customers really know or care?
* How do I price my ebooks?
* How do I market my ebooks?
This call is a follow-up to an online seminar I presented back in July for the IBPA's Publishing University Online series. Over 120 people paid up to $69 each to attend that class. There were so many great questions we couldn't get to them all. After some pondering, we decided to do a free conference call, open it up to everyone (even if you're not an IBPA member!), and make it 100 percent Q&A for 90 minutes!
Post-Call Update:
Great call. Thanks everyone for attending. Access the conference call replay at 712.432.1085 (free, but your long distance rate, if any, applies) with passcode 405513.
I'll be traveling then, so it'd be great if you could post a downloadable version for those in situations like mine.
ReplyDelete#1 - Thank you to IBPA for hosting the call and to Mark Coker for his excellent overview of the e-book market and how Smashwords has become a valuable resource for the independent author.
ReplyDeleteI listened to the recorded version of this call, and found it to be very informative, enlightening, and constructive in my personal attempts to forge a strategy for marketing my books.
Had I been on the live call, I would have asked the following question, and possibly someone can offer some insight...
Do print book publishers and agents scour the e-book environment looking for potential authors to represent?
Given the ubiquitous growth rate of the e-book phenomenon and the support from the hardware manufacturers, it is easy to see that e-books and e-book authors will continue to become a major factor in the overall book market.
Hi Doug, thanks for listening to the call. I'm glad you enjoyed it. In answer to your question, I'm sure they do. Since ebooks are only around three or five percent of the market now, this practice will probably increase if ebooks continue their torrid growth. Agents are looking for great books with strong commercial potential. If you can demonstrate commercial potential via your self-pubbed ebook or print book, they'll take notice. Keep in mind, though, that the vast majority of self-published books (e- and p-) don't sell very well, so it'll be up to you to not only write a great book customers will encourage their friends to buy, but you also need to market the he** out of it.
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