Entertainment & Music Published authors amoungst us

Was chatting with a forum regular this afternoon and he mentioned he's published a book in late 2015. He's quite shy but I convinced him that it would be cool to give it a plug here!

Way to go Peter Parker aka @Spiderman !!!

Minimum QRP: Doing more with under five watt amateur radio.
Minimum QRP: Doing more with under five watt amateur radio eBook: Peter Parker: Amazon.com.au: Kindle Store

A very specialist field but it's receiving excellent reviews and Peter tells me that it's far exceeded his sales expectations (a little extra cash flow on the side is nice too).

If you've got a friend or family member that's self published something, give them a plug!

 

well done Peter. aka @Spiderman Congratulations

 

great thread
well done Peter

 

Xenia I thought you wrote a book too?.

 

I think there are a number of us here who love to write.
Mine is not as technical as Peters but yes have 2 published and currently writing 3rd book.
I need something to do when internet is not working lol.

 

Can't wait to read your book @Xenia had a flick through... looks interesting....(got to finish my current pile of books first). Have you put it up on Amazon Kindle for sale?

To teach (write) is to learn .... and serve humanity

 

Congratulations @Spiderman ... great achievement !

 

Is this available in a real book that an 88 year old amateur might have a show of reading?

 

Nice work @Spiderman

 

Good one @Spiderman , I'm glad someone understands all that stuff.

 

Kate, this is not entirely accurate. To write WELL is to serve humanity.

Writing drivel (99% of all published works) serves no one.

 

Thanks everyone for their comments.

If you're procrastinating I can only recommend you DO IT! No special software or computer skills are needed. If you can write a Word document and insert pictures into it you can write an ebook.

Electronic publishing has opened up so many opportunities for independent specialist authors. There's no dealing with publishers, carting books around to Sunday markets (and returning home with most unsold) or trying to convince bookshops to stock them. Prices are lower than dead tree but your overheads are virtually zero, percentage profit margins are higher and Amazon takes care of the transactional stuff.

In a specialist area you can market the book far better than any publisher and very often at no cost. If you have an established online presence on Twitter or YouTube you can leverage this to generate sales. It is possible to find freely-accessible groups on social media which have a 100% correlation with your book's target market so conversion rates and buyer loyalty can be high (in other words sales are generated by readers blogging about your book).

On the other hand the majority of ebook authors neglect these aspects. It would be fair to say that most ebooks have low sales of 1 book/day or less. This hardly justifies the effort writing unless you have other reasons. As well some ebooks may be poorly presented with unattractive covers and/or be too short to provide good value.

Writing successful ebooks has potential to be a semi-passive income stream that when combined with proceeds from other investments or businesses could aid financial independence. In my view, it has higher returns than ads on personal websites, YouTube and perhaps affiliate marketing (which I haven't tried).

Unfortunately not. With my hard-nosed business hat on I've thought about it but the number of requests for hard-copy books is less than 0.5% of total sales so I'm not convinced it should have higher priority than, say, writing another book.

 

Wow @Spiderman you're peter parker? I learnt heaps from your website years ago when I used to tinker around with electronics and amateur radio. I actually printed a lot of your content and still have it with me today.

 

I'm a published author, but nothing most of you lot would want to read about
And no money... but I do hold a couple of fancy university titles instead.

 

I have published works. Academic papers not some crappy children's novel or mills and boon.

 

What are we classing as published? A book by a known publishing house, a journal or magazine/editorial etc? Or self published/ebooks/pdf on website with a photoshop front cover of a paperback etc?

 

@Bran what have you had published?

 

I'll guess its medical journal related....

 

Well done @Spiderman . I don't even understand the title!

 

I would want to read it.

1000 years ago I was a research scientist and managed to get some things in scientific journals too http://www.alexarealestate.com.au/images/xenia-papers.pdf