Friday, 7 December 2012

Writing a best-selling e-book

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The Internet is awash with advice on how to write a best selling e-book.  Maybe one day I will able to add to that but the first time I looked, my book was 3,100 in the Amazon rankings. Not knowing any better, my instant reaction was absolute euphoria. Amazon sells loads of books; the last one I read was ranked 183.543. A few more sales and surely I would be up in the top 3,000. Soon it would go viral and I would be beating back the flock of movie producers desperate to sign me up.  Next day the book dropped to 7,000, then a couple of friends confirmed that they had bought it and I was back up to 3,600. That’s when I Googled, “Amazon Rankings”.  Thankfully. My average ranking for the first week of publication was going to translate into about 30 sales, I discovered. I cancelled the Ferrari and told my wife that she would have to put the Mediterranean beach house on hold for a while. She had proof-read most of my early drafts so she had got used to being unquestioningly supportive.

So, can I advise you on how to write a best selling book? Absolutely not.

But, if you are willing to bear with me I thought I might share the story of how I came to write an e-book. Maybe some day in the future I will be able to point to this blog and say, “well it all turned out OK in the end”. Or maybe not.

One thing is for sure. There is so much that that I know now that I wished I’d known when I started out. As I write this blog, I will try to share some of that stuff with you. I can’t tell you how to write a best selling book but if you bear with me, you may just learn from my mistakes.

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