Earlier this year I was approached by the folks at Kobo to help Beta Test their new KOBO WRITING LIFE program. I jumped at the opportunity because it fit perfectly in my plans. I had been inching my way towards exploring the world of the self-published author – and this new program seemed tailor-made for me.
My progress has been slow. I have only released the one e-book so far – FIGHTING WORDS – through Kobo Writing Life. Sales haven’t exactly been heroic – and I hold that to be my fault – because I have done very little to help market that particular e-book, beyond mentioning it in my blog and posting a few notices on Facebook. That is my fault – like I said – and I will not offer up a bag full of excuses.
So just the fact that there have been any sales whatsoever is a promising sign of the marketing possibilities with Kobo Writing Life. I’m just putting the finishing touches on my next Kobo release and hope to have a third release by the end of the summer – although this summer is getting awfully busy.
So I am woefully ill-prepared to offer up any sort of “this-is-how-to-do-it” advice on using the Kobo Writing Life portal beyond this. Kobo makes their portal very user-friendly. It is dead easy for a complete moron to figure out how to use it. They have gone out of their way to make it easy for a technologically handicapped old fart such as myself to figure out how to get his words into e-book format. The support folk have been very helpful with aiding me at every step of the way and I can only whole-heartedly recommend getting into this new self-publishing program.
Here’s a link to the Kobo Writing Life introductory page.
http://www.kobobooks.com/kobowritinglife
I really like the way that Kobo does not seek to bind you into only marketing through Kobo. And I like the way that you can keep the epub file of your book once it is released – which makes offering review copies very easy. The Kobo dashboard – which is where my sales figures are made visible to me as a Kobo author is very old-fart-friendly.
For more info on writing for Kobo check my blog entries –
https://stevevernonstoryteller.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/615/
https://stevevernonstoryteller.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/619/
yours in storytelling,
Steve Vernon
YOURS IN STORYTELLING... 
Sounds like something even an aged fart like me could deal with since in the past someone has had to format my books before putting them on Kindle for me. Does Kobo deal with ebooks only or do they do POD for self pub books also?
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David, if I can format my books for Kobo ANYONE can. There are about six simple little rules to remember – and they demonstrate them all in the do-it-yourself instructional video.
As for POD self pub books, Kobo hasn’t got into them yet as far as I know – but, as Digeredoo pointed out in the reblog I posted after this entry it is quite easy to enter your books into the Kobo portal and then save your epub copy and use it to boot-up a paperback version through Amazon Create Source.
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Thanks so much for sharing. Any sales are good sales and the best promotion is to keep putting books out there. It’s great that Kobo is providing such a strings-free service. Good luck with more sales!
BTW-loved Sudden Death Overtime, can’t wait to read some more of your stuff!
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Thank you Lauren. Glad to hear you dug SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME.
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