
Rules to sell thousands of copies of your ebook - madrobby
http://mir.aculo.us/2012/10/20/5-rules-to-sell-thousands-of-copies-of-your-ebook/
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aw3c2
The promised five rules about selling thousands of copies are contradicted by
three to four of them:

 _Rule #1: No publishers. Publish the book yourself._

A publisher usually has marketing and distribution options at hand that you
could only dream of.

 _Rule #2: No 3rd-party sales channels. No Amazon/Kindle, iBookstore, etc._

If your goal is to spread it as much as possible than you've got to use any
possible option.

 _Rule #4: Publish as a PDF. Optionally also as EPUB, depending on
topic/audience. No dead-tree version, please._

To sale thousands of copies you should try to offer a diversity of formats.
While there is no reason why you should not print the book to sell to those
who prefer it, a "dead-tree" book is no ebook and thus the submitted post is
correct that you should avoid that when trying to sell your ebook. I guess.

 _Rule #5: Price high. Price for the value you provide, not for what feels
right._

To sell thousands you should probably not use a high price, but price rather
low.

I pulled my answers out of the air just like madrobby. Yeah, I am getting sick
and tired of these marketing fluff unscientific best-practise posts. Same
level as the usual life improvement blogs for me.

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madrobby
Are you an author who is successfully publishing books?

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aw3c2
I don't see how that question is relevant. Anecdotes do not make good rules.

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madrobby
It's very relevant because you pull stuff out of your ass while I'm actually
doing this (successfully).

With "anecdotes" you mean repeatable strategies that work every time for me
and for other book authors we know?

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aw3c2
"air, not "ass".

Which of my rebuttals are false and why?

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madrobby
Disclaimer: I'm the author of the book and blog post.

I've been asked on Twitter about student discounts, short answer is don't do
it. Long answer: if you have a book specifically targeting students, price it
so they can afford it, otherwise don't bother as it's more work for you and
they probably won't buy it anyway.

~~~
ilamont
Do you use affiliates? I know this was one of the primary sales channels for
"Evernote Essentials".

~~~
madrobby
No—I've had the experience that it doesn't work for the types of technical
books we (my wife and I) write. Or we're just really better at
email/twitter/blog marketing. :)

But it's definitely a good option for many types of books.

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williamle8300
To Thomas Fuchs: How would you modify your tips for those publishing non-
fiction e-books?

I work for a company that publishes non-fiction in the major digital
marketplaces, and we're doing fine right now. One of the major perks that we
see with using these marketplaces (ex: Kindle) is that they provide perks
which we could not provide had we been selling e-books ourselves and asking
our customers to sideload content to their devices. For us, we see the
royalties to them as necessary costs.. or investments to make buying and
reading content as convenient as possible.

Love to hear your on this Thomas. Thanks.

~~~
madrobby
This is advice for non-fiction ebooks. :) The most important thing really is
to learn how to do marketing right. It's not that hard at all and will yield
great results.

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arbuge
Isn't distributing your ebook as a simple pdf an invitation for people who
don't want to pay for it to copy and circulate it for free? How do you get
around this?

~~~
nathan_long
You can require a password to download the book in the first place, which is
like a "please don't steal" sign. Many people won't. Those who will can't be
stopped by any technological means; DRM doesn't work, and devalues the product
for honest customers.

You can hope that the freeloaders end up increasing the book's popularity and
attracting more paying customers. But there isn't much you can do to influence
that except make good stuff.

~~~
madrobby
I don't have a general download link, when you buy it I'll send out an email
with a personal download link that will expire in a week or so, and can only
be used 5 times.

Of course you can just write to my support email box and I'll send you a new
link if you loose the file. I also send out free updates whenever I update the
book.

