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... 