by Lucius Trae

Created on: May 12, 2010

Modern economics explains why traditional publishing is preferable. As a writer, you want to focus on making money using and developing your talents. This means writing regularly, researching, reading, and a variety of other tasks. Internet Marketing is an industry as complex as anything else - if not more so. It's incredibly unlikely you will do even 1/4th as well as a traditional publisher at marketing your book. That means you'll make less money.

Unless you have a lot of wealth, traditional publishers provide an additional advantage. They can invest a high amount of money in advertising your work because they know the sales will eventually make up for the loss. Or at least, they do so frequently enough that the practice makes them money. You probably don't have the assets to market your book or you may be uncomfortable taking the risk because the financial security of you and your loved ones is at risk.

In order to sell a book online, you have to price it reasonably and develop a following of people who will recommend your book to others. Depending on your books popularity, it will spread to a certain amount of people. If I read a book, I don't usually tell someone about it unless they ask. I only recommend books or talk about them if I think they are exceptionally well written. For most people, this is the case, and that means you might not get a lot of people recommending to their friends. I read a lot of highly respected authors, but I still don't like them enough to go around telling people how great they are. It has to come up in conversation.

Most likely your book will need to sell for a low price. You will have to investigate sites that can place your book online for you. Ideally, you maximize your traffic, but you also have to recognize that the more popular your book becomes, the more likely it is someone will make your book available for free. This happens all the time. Even websites that sell e-books may sell your book without informing you, and it's difficult to pursue legal action when many sites operate in crafty and untraceable ways.

You have to read the fine print. If your book becomes popular online, does the e-book company get the rights to sell it in print? They might on some sites. Will they give it to other e-book sites and not share the profit? This is a crafty way for companies to avoid paying you, and it happens. There all kinds of factors including scams and income thresholds (you don't get paid if you don't make X). Traditional

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