A growing percentage of our clients are offering their books in both printed and digital (ebook) formats to maximize their market exposure. Now that ebooks have become established as a popular format, we can now see common trends digital book sales. Although the subject matter and the overall content quality of the book are critical factors to success, there are a few simple tips which can sell more ebooks.
- Keep Book Titles Short – Shorter titles are easier to remember and have historically performed better in digital book marketplaces. Smashwords provided data to show the top 100 sellers had an average title of 4.2 words. Lower ranking (by sales) books had titles which averaged 6 words.
- Revise Cover Art for Online Viewing– An entire article can be written on the merits of eye-catching cover design. When it comes to digital books, a hard to view cover will drive potential customers away. It is important to make sure all the wording and graphics are large enough to be read on varying screens. In addition, the file format used for ebook marketplaces should be optimized for online viewing. A .eps file format is perfect for yielding high quality PRINTED books , but will not always render clear on a monitor. File formats such as .png, gif or .jpg work better online.
- Lower Price eBooks Sell More > $3.99 appears to be the magic number – With the exception of FREE ebooks, recent data from Smashwords indicate the $3.99 price point currently yields the highest number of ebooks sold (on average). This is welcome news for those authors contemplating to drop their price down to $1.99 as a strategy to spur demand. The report also illustrated authors’ total income was 55% above the average compared to all other non-free price points.
- Stay Independent– I know we sound like a broken record, but there is NO reason to neither pay upfront money nor share royalties with an eBook publishers company. Selling direct via Kindle, Smashwords, and iBookstore will maximize your profits and offer you the greatest control. To quote Robert Heinlein, “There‘s no such thing as free lunch.” If an offer from online ebook publisher sounds too good to be true, it isn’t. As we found out during tax season, some of the popular eBook publishing companies are not equipped to report royalties for tax preparation. Do it yourself!
