The Kindle experiment

I still seem to be mentally stuck on the book thing! I had a good conversation with the book publishing mentor type person, but I'm still not sure what I get for my £1500 expenditure. I'm not even sure if I get a book for that!

So I had a nice think in the sunny climes of a First Great Western train today on the way up to London, and decided at the end of it - and what can only be described as the second best cup of coffee I have ever had on a train, and that ain't a high hurdle to leap - that I would try an experiment.

The world is changing so quickly, and yet we don't realise how quickly. A few thoughts:

90% of singles are sold as download, yet only 10% of albums are sold the same way

In 2000, 90% of job applications involved paper, either post or fax. Now 90% are done electronically

So after a thought from a few people, I thought that I would try an experiment. Amazon Kindle is a whole system in itself, but also has access to the two most powerful online sales system so far ever invented: Amazon.com and iTunes! So as long as you have some form of eReader on your device - anything from an intelligent phone through a Mac to a PC - you can read books placed on Amazon Kindle.

So I have decided to take just one of our eBooks from our existing process, and experiment with it. Inline with what a friend suggested to me - I don't have mentors or coaches, I have friends with expensive tastes in food and wine - I have also decided to outsource it. This little experiment could have two distinct advantages:

I action something on the book issue, and close that out mentally

I try a new way of selling eBooks that I so far haven't tried, and decide if we can sell a "lite" version of the course via Kindle

What ever the result, go bad or indifferent, its running ahead of and hence piloting the main project

I like this experiment, it achieves a few extra things and won't take a lot of effort to complete.

The rest of the week is now devoted to website design, spec completion, and - if they remember to call me on Friday - a conversation with the SEO person. Next weeks goal is to get the blog up and running.

Surely, publishing a book can't be THAT difficult?

Monday was a failure. I had an appointment booked with a book publishing advisor at11:00, and didn't hear from her. Tried calling, got vMail = DAM!

So today, between doing interviews in the day job, I rang her again. I had read her website before the call, and wondered if there was a one-route solution? That was horribly confirmed in the following 30min phone call: "The answer is write a proposal to a publisher, so that will be £1500 please." She had a dodgy phone, which on hearing the price dropped out!

I am thinking that I am getting the order incorrect here on business launch. Even if I self published at a cost of around £3,000, it would still be six months+ - so September - before the book reached the shelves of Waterstone's and the High Street book retailers. I think you can do Amazon Kindle for less than $100 in a month.

Lets go back to basics here: you don't have to get it right, you just have to get it going. So I think we will get the website and course going first, and then think about changing the draft eBook into something physical.

Book publishing task complete, by dismissing it!