April 2019 an idea popped into my head! One of those ideas that hits you like a two-ton heavy thing — it’s clear as day and stops you in your tracks unable to say pretty much anything other than “Oh … WOW!“ What was this idea??? To write an e-book using the four free recipes already available on my site for you to download.
My plan was to publish this free e-book on certain online places that get more web-traffic than my lil-ol’ WIBC site — all intended to gain more attention to my book, Make Your Own Darn Good Cookies. In the book-biz this is called “permafree” — an e-book you publish and ‘sell’ for free, making a sample of your writing available to grow your audience. In two weeks time I banged out this e-book — content, cover-art — the works!
I was All Set To Go! I had my project uploaded to my target site and went to hit publish …. but then I found out they wouldn’t let me sell my book for $FR.EE (/sad face). OKAY — FINE — I went to another site. They wouldn’t let me publish an e-book that was for the purpose of advertising for a book I’m selling (you know, for money).
This past Thursday, while talking-shop and sharing-grumblings with author Eldritch Black this project came up again. He impressed upon me the value completing it now instead of after my current publication project.
So, I’m BACK TO WORK
on my permafree e-book!
I have been back to work on this permafree-project since Thursday evening and made quite a bit of progress! Instead of publishing 1 e-book with 4 recipes I may publish 2 — one featuring cookie squares, the other focused on biscotti. Keeping in mind December holidays, my guess … this endeavour will be launched around the end of the month. Maybe sooner, maybe later.
(BTW, here is Eldritch’s permafree book — The Night of the Christmas Letter Getters)
ALSO TALKING WITH Eldritch Black …
While Eldritch has been writing spooky tales to scare children since 2014 — which is ghastly, and we’ve pleaded with him to stop — for all his quirks he is not entirely without merit. Among other things he is rather well-studied with regard to book marketing. During our most recent meeting he tactfully pointed out that the cover of my book is only So-So as market effectiveness goes. Although I had this notion already, his feedback was invaluable! The pictures used for the artwork were ones I had &/or were taken shortly before I was ready to publish (er, the 1st time). Eldritch and I are going to talk in January — after all the holiday hub-bub — about getting a new design for my book-cover. New artwork has the potential to improve the marketability for my book — and I’m all for that!
RELATIVE TO THIS NEW BOOK COVER…
A few months ago I learned of Gorham Printing — right here in Washington! They print books like mine with one difference — they don’t charge an arm & a leg for color pictures inside of a book. I’ve seen their work and it’s nothing short of STRIKING!!! Most of the time if you want colour pictures inside your book it is price-prohibitive. While Gorham isn’t inexpensive either, they make it financially-fea$ible.
Once I have my new book cover for Make Your Own Darn Good Cookies I intend to begin ordering a small supply — 5-10 at a time. Obviously these will sell for higher than my Amazon copies. These colour copies will only be available through me — face-to-face sales or mail-order (+S&H) …. So get your PayPal accounts ready — I also have Square-Reader, I can take credit cards.
Best, Don
