The best-selling author of The Four Hour Work Week, Tim Ferriss, just posted an insider’s article to current state of the book publishing world. Thing are changing quickly because of the iPad and Kindle.
Some keys:
- Though digital books are hot, he only gets 1.6% of his royalties from digital versions.
- Hard covers have the best overall royalty. Don’t move to paperback too quickly.
- Digital doesn’t count towards best seller list.
- Books are not a good revenue stream. It’s your other activities.
Tim also shares some books he used to learn how to become a best seller.
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/08/23/seth-godin-and-print-publishing/
Here’s a bonus article where Tim shares more specifics on how he got his book published: http://okdork.com/2007/04/24/how-to-get-a-book-deal-with-world%E2%80%99s-largest-publisher/
I’m still surprised how many people I meet that “want to make it big” in some arena of media and yet they don’t take the time to learn from those who have already done it. It’s called “modeling”, one of the cores of NLP. Save time, learn what the best in the business already did, and do that, making it your own.