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its publisher is quite small still and does not advertise effectively enough to bring buyers to his site. My contract with him allows me to go seek a print publisher for this book as well, though. I plan to pursue that in the next year or so (I have a new book to write at the moment, so takes priority).

Then there are several stories and one book that I've had listed on an online site that sells downloads only, and there, after some half dozen years, I get maybe $50 per year in royalties from sales. Again, part of the problem is the enormous amount of competing material massed and layered at the same site.

The big problem has been and remains that of "gate-keeping", or somehow channeling would-be customers through massive amounts of other people's stuff to yours. This isn't a problem, obviously, for the Big Name Author, whose books the buyer goes to immediately because she knows she loves Anne Rice, say, or Stephen King (the same is true in the physical bookstore, of course). But for those of us who must somehow seek out and connect with readers who haven't hitherto been aware of us (or of the arrival of our newest, under-advertised book, just being in a catalog of everything on website does us no good. Being on a shelf within physical reach of people's hands - and in some proximity to the work of the Rices and the Kings, so that interest in them might spill over onto us - gives us a fighting chance.

Learn more about this author, Suzy Charnas.
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