Tuesday 5 April 2011

Should I Kindle Or Not?

I don't know; should I? Keith got me an android phone for Christmas and I love the Kindle app I downloaded on it. I also bought a free copy of Little Women from Amazon.co.uk and I have been reading it avidly on my phone, but the idea of putting my own titles onto Kindle has, so far, left me thinking, mmmm, dunno...

Coming from a library background, I'm still a bit cynical about ebooks. Most library users I know like to see their information in print format. It's very difficult to read on screen, but then we're talking non-fiction and academia, for novels I suppose it's a different story. Personally, though, I like the physical copy in my hand, and it's very satisfying indeed to see your book in print with a real cover.

Then there are authors saying to me, 'You'll get more sales with Kindle!' It seems to be working for them, why not for me? But I write for children and young adults. Do they use Kindle? I'll have to find out how popular it is with them. There's another problem: Kindle is limited only to Amazon. I don't promote my books in e-format anywhere else. I've decided to make my earlier titles Goalden Girl and Abbie's Rival available on Kindle, and of course I would market them as being available there, but I would like people to be able to buy them in other stores, too. I worry that even with VAT for an electronic resource, readers will only buy the Kindle editions because they happen to be slightly cheaper, when I'm doing all I can to make the printed editions as cheap as possible.

Meanwhile, Big Brother is developing into a bizarre, creepy kind of sci-fi tale that it's even beginning to scare me! I'm finding it hard to balance a full-time job with writing so I try to make notes when I can. Of course I write a lot at the weekend. I've also re-established my Google adwords campaign to advertise my site and get more people to see my books.

2 comments:

Shirley said...

Hi,
I write books for children and YA too. I've put one on Kindle and like you am wondering what the sales will be like as do teens have Kindle?
It will be interesting to see what happens.

Unknown said...

Hi, Shirley, that's why I'm just testing the water. I don't know if they'll be interested, but a 13-year-old read Goalden Girl on her phone. I'm hoping they'll find the Kindle app for their phones cool!

I see you have a blog, do you also have a site? If so I'll be happy to put a link on my home page for a reciprocal one. I'm also on Facebook and Twitter.

Tracey
Tracey