NUMBER THREE

I put another new book up on Kindle yesterday. It's a children's book, a middle-grade chapter book called THE EXPLODING WIZARD'S RIGHT-HAND BOY. (The cover is on the left sidebar—it's also a link.)

Actually, the book went up the night before, but I took it down to change the categories and keywords.

It's a kid's book, but I couldn't find it in the category "children's fiction."

Here's a problem with Kindle (and Amazon): The categories you get to select from when you publish do not sync up with the search categories customers use.

I put the book in both "fiction" and "juvenile fiction." There is no category called "children's fiction."

After I amended the categories and adjusted keywords (I added "children's fiction" to the list), I tried the search again.

Now I can't even FIND the search category called "Children's Fiction."

I opened Shop by Department and clicked Children's Books under Books. In that category, I found my book.

Search: Books/Children's Books/SF & Fantasy/Fantasy & Magic with the keyword "alternate history" and you get 13 hits. I'm number 2 on that short list.

Search all of Children's Books with the keywords "wizard, los angeles" and you get 5 hits. I'm at the top of that page.

But you can't search "Juvenile Fiction" because that's not a category.

By the way, if you search Books with the keyword "fiction" you get 2,967,070 hits.

Search Books/Literature & Fiction with "fiction" as the keyword and the number goes down to 2,000,501.

So...good luck.

The hardest part of selling books on Kindle (unless you already have lots of fans from somewhere) is getting your work discovered.

With traditional publishing, your book sits on the shelf of a store for a few months. The selection is very limited, so you might stick out to a casual browser in your particular category. Especially if you have a good cover and the book is shelved with the cover showing.

The problem is the limited time you get. If the book doesn't start selling in a few months, it's a ghost—pretty much forever.

I've read of store owners who would rather order a new title than reorder something already on the shelf—even if your book sells every one of the four or five copies he was sent. About the only way to get the guy to reorder your book is if it sells out VERY fast. Otherwise, he'd rather take the chance the next book he orders will take off fast.

And if your publisher doesn't get reorders, your book is dead. And maybe your next one, too.

Even if you sell every copy they printed, you might get dropped.

If the publisher only printed a limited amount—but you sold every single one of them—you STILL didn't sell very well in raw numbers. That's the publisher's fault, but you'll take the hit for it.

Maybe in a few years of no activity you can get your publisher to revert the rights to you. Then you could try again—with a book tainted by past failure.

On the other hand, if your next book becomes a bestseller, you have a chance of re-releasing your backlist.

But nowadays, going with a trad publisher might mean having to sign a contract that will NEVER allow reversion of rights. All they have to do is keep an e-book version up on Amazon and the title remains "in print." That could be a big problem.

The three best things about indie publication are higher royalty rates, flexibility and control in marketing and pricing, and the "infinite" shelf life.

Traditional publishers gobble up the first two of those. Perhaps not that good of a deal, in the long run.

So how do you get visibility without a publisher?

I've got together a list of sites that promote Kindle books. My next move is to visit a number of them, put up a book posting, and see what happens.

I'll let you know.