Sandy Nathan's YOUR SHELF LIFE

Do I mind giving my work away? Not all all. A book given away yields the same profit as one not sold. I’d rather get new readers than have my work sit in Amazon’s computers hoping that someone will see it’s value. (And mine . . . DO NOT confuse your personal value with what your books sell for.)

I look at pricing in terms of profit maximization, not “how much my books are worth” or “how much I’m worth.” Our books worth a lot and so are we. We deserve to make a great deal on them. But what’s the worth of a book that doesn’t sell? Nothing.

If you sign up for Amazon’s KDP program, Amazon will sell your book for nothing for five days during the 90 day slot you’re required to enroll. Yes, they’ll sell your book for nothing, allowing you to do all sorts of marketing shenanigans, like this. What is the cost of the program? Nothing. That’s right, they’ll give your book away gratis.

Sounds like a whole lot of nothing going on. I’ll find out.

Tomorrow, July 21, is my first FREE DAY for my book The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy with Kindle’s KDP free book program. The day after that, Sunday, July 22, the second FREE DAY with the same book. I’m using my friend Cheryl Kaye Tardif’s How I Made Over $42,000 in One Month Selling my Kindle eBooks (Known at $42K hereafter). This is a really good guidebook outlining what Cheryl did to make a small fortune in eBooks. It’s all there, step by step.

This is a really great book. If you’re an author or aspiring author who wants to sell a bunch of books, you should buy it and put what it says into practice. It’s like having a strategic marketing coach who cares about you tucked away in your Kindle. You can buy it here.

That’s the business portion of this review. Having that out of the way, let’s hang out and get acquainted.

I bought this book approximately thirty seconds after the nice people at the Amazon Digital Platform sent me a press release saying that John Locke had passed the one million downloads mark, the eighth person in history to do so and the only self published author.

I had never heard of John Locke.

I’ve read the book four times now and can say that this is one of the most exciting books I’ve read in a long time, both for what it contains explicitly and for what isn’t talked about. The book is a how-to focused on John’s marketing plan and a case study of John Locke, both of which I find fascinating.