New Books

I’m going to blow my own trumpet in this blog post (for a change) and tell you about the twenty-two new books I have spent the last two days uploading to Lulu and Kobo. I have had pretty poor experiences with both of these companies in the past, but I will tell you what happened with each one separately

Lulu: we began our relationship over three years ago. I struggled to put my first couple of books up, but got the hang of it and soon had more than a dozen in various formats. Then, about eighteen months ago I couldn’t get anything published and I got no sensible help, so I put in support tickets and left the books in what they call draft, but which were abandoned.

I didn’t bother trying again until recently and then only because my Amazon sales have been falling. I never did hear anything about those support tickets. Anyway, I got three more new books up last week and the problems started again. I put in fresh tickets and a very nice man called Paul got back to me with solutions that worked – the first time for two years.

I can now upload my eighty other new books and retire all the old, outdated stuff.

Kobo: earlier this year, I thought I’d rather keep a higher percentage of my sales revenue by not using aggregators like Lulu whenever possible. I started with Kobo. Their interface is very easy to use and their file converter is a pro version like Kindle’s, not one that requires mollycoddling like Smashwords’ or Lulu’s.

I uploaded seven books on the first day, but two were rejected – one for being involved in ‘suspicious behaviour’. I submitted a ticket and waited; then another, and another and another. Seven in total, and received automatic responses from a computer, but nothing from a human. Five months later a woman told me that that book could not be displayed because Smashwords were selling it on Kobo on my behalf. That was the suspicious behaviour that it took them five months to explain to me! That a guy named Owen Jones, who had an account with the same name was trying to sell books written by a guy with the same name?!!

I’m sure you can guess what I thought of that. It’s complete stupidity like that that makes me want to thump the desk and scream…

In five months, they have sold only three books for me, so don’t get your hopes up and be prepared to wait for your turn with support.

I have refreshed or uploaded for the first time, twenty-two new books to Kobo and Lulu in the last couple of days, and now I’m going to start on Kindle and Smashwords, then it will be the turn of CreateSpace and XinXii and finally my three remaining book-related websites.

Finally, if it ever finishes, I will start on my eighty-odd ‘How to…’ books that are currently only available on Kindle.

You can view my books in my bookshop here

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: New Books