E-book Superstardom...Or Not

The Guardian published an article earlier this week called “How to become an e-book superstar”, a classic case of the Guardian sub-editors overly sexing up an article title. I guess they needed new employment after that Iraq dossier scandal. The article would more accurately have been called “Random and occasionally self-contradictory advice on e-publishing”. Quoting a successful self-published e-book writer’s sensible comment that you should "Write for the right reasons – i.e. yourself", the article immediately went on to say that only books in popular genres are likely to succeed and that you should pick your title according to what will come up often in online searches. “To thine own self be true, as long as thine own self wants to write teenage vampire fiction”, as Hamlet almost said.

But there was some worthwhile stuff in there as well, including advice to have your own website (already there on that one), to take some risks to get the word out (looking to send free copies of the paperback to editors of several publications once it’s ready), and to give your e-book away for free for a fixed time (looking into this as an option under the Amazon direct publishing package). I’ve heard the advice before to “Talk, don’t spam” but it bears reiteration. OK then! I promise I will put my effort into making these blog posts as interesting as I can, rather than inundating others with plugs.

In contrast to the implication of its headline, the article itself concludes by saying that the chances are e-book authors will make very little money from this. That seems to me to be a case for doing this for reasons other than fortune and glory, but to accept e-book superstardom with good grace if it should happen to come along! I won’t be holding my breath...