Sunday, February 5, 2012

Amazon vs Nook vs Me

About once a month I get an e-mail about why I don't publish my books on the Barnes & Noble Nook platform (ePUB format).   The reason is simple: SALES.

I have about a half-dozen books published on the Amazon Kindle platform.  The basis was derived by publishing the same book on both Kindle and Nook and watching the numbers.  To be fair, I included Google as well.  The book was "The Visual LISP Developer's Bible, 2011 Edition".  That was in 2010.  As of February 2012, none have sold on Google, and I've sold a total of 2 copies for the Nook.  Two.  Compare that with 172 for Kindle.  The choice was (is) clear for me.  I'd say it is a "no brainer" actually.

So please, do not ask me to publish on Nook.  It does add time and effort to publish to different formats (they are not the same at all) and each publisher mandates their own policies and tools to contend with.  Amazon is by far the clear winner in the general e-book publishing realm.  Nobody else comes close.  The market numbers are very clear on that, as well as the tiny slice of numbers I see from my own experience.  I am not John Gresham, or Dan Brown.  I have a day job and four kids at home.  It's surprising to me that I have had the time to crank out even one book, let alone six or seven, and I'm not sure I can do any more.  I just don't have the time and it's not really a major source of income.

Please don't ask for a PDF version either.  That's the same as giving it away FREE.  I'm not about FREE anymore.  My time isn't free, as I'm sure your's isn't either.

If you don't own a Kindle, there's still hope:  Use Amazon's FREE online Kindle "Cloud Reader" or one of their FREE reader apps for iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Blackberry and whatever else.

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