TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home
News & views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics
How Read an E-Book Week improved my sales and popularity, and got me a new job!
Sunday, February 22nd, 2009Editor’s Note: Here is the first article by a new TeleRead contributor, author Steve Jordan. You can find his bio here. I met Steve at the TOC Conference and after I heard his story, over lunch, I badgered him into writing it up for us. Hopefully it will be the first contribution of many to come:
I know, I know, the title sounds like a 1965-era deodorant commercial. But in point of fact, Rita Toews, the founder of Read an E-Book Week, has done a great service to everyone who hopes to see the market for e-books grow and prosper, and I am honored to report that I am one of the many recipients of that service.
First, a little background: I registered www.SteveJordanBooks.com in 2005 and began self-selling my novels in e-book form, after I was unable to convince a publisher to even bother to look at my work, much less judge them publishable. I got off to an okay start, but after a year sales at the SJB were beginning to flatten, and I knew I’d need to increase my presence in the marketplace to keep sales strong.
Enter Rita Toews. She got in touch with me, having heard about me through my regular contributions on the MobileRead web site. Initially she asked for advice on how to promote REBW, and was looking for some pointers on web design as well. As web development happens to be my “day job,” I was happy to oblige. One thing led to another, and I found myself offering my services as a web producer to redo the REBW site, which was pretty simple and not too friendly to all web browsers.
