Why Your Book Might Not Sell Well (in the Kindle Store)

I just had an exchange with a PressBooks user, who wondered why their book is not selling well in the Kindle store, which, I imagine, is a common question for authors. I answered:

  • imagine that your book is in a bookstore
  • imagine that bookstore makes it very easy for readers to find a book if they know the title or author
  • now  imagine that that bookstore has 1.7 million books in it
  • what will inspire people to look for (and buy) your book, rather than another one?

To put that in context: imagine you live in Kansas  City (population 1.7 million), and that a tourist is visiting your city. What are the chances that that one tourist will buy you a coffee tomorrow? About the same chance that they will buy your book, if it just happens to be in the Kindle store. (Statistician’s caveat: there are far more visitors to the Kindle store in a day than there are tourists visiting Kansas City).

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PressBooks August News: new designs, pricing, distribution, import from WordPress, CSS improvements, and Book!

 Dear PressBookers,

Happy August to you all. Here are some quick announcements from PressBooks Worldwide Headquarters, including the following:

1. New front page
2. New webbook / readview designs
3. Pricing announced
4. Distribution (to Kindle, Nook, iBooks etc)
5. Import from WordPress
6. Improved CSS
7. Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto Part 3 – unofficial launch

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Including a PDF in an EPUB

I got a request from a PressBooks user, who asked the following:

my plan is to burn the epub file with a reader on a CD and have direct links to some pdf files in my CD as well. how do i link them?

I misinterpreted what the user wanted, and *thought* the question was: “Can I include a PDF for download in an EPUB?” For some thoughts on that question, see below.
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