This post by David Farland originally appeared on his site on 6/23/15.
I hesitate to mention problems with self-publishing. In some genres, such as romance or self-help books, the industry is doing great. But for those who are trying to sell fiction, it seems that the markets are contracting, and it appears that things will go from bad to worse.
If you’ve been self-publishing for the past few years, you probably remember the good old days. For example, a few years ago I put my novel The Golden Queen up as a free e-book for a week and forgot about it. I was going to mention on my social media what I had done, but seriously got busy with something else. Three days later, I got an email from someone who said, “Why don’t you take your free e-book down and let someone else have a shot at the #1 spot.” I’d given away 15,000 copies in three days, and had sold thousands of dollars in inventory on the other two books in the series.
Today, even getting readers to look at a free book is nearly impossible. People have seen so many promotions for bad books that they stay away in droves. In this past year alone, I’ve read that nearly three million e-books were created, and another three million are anticipated this year. With so much “white noise,” how is a good author to be heard?
Read the full post on David Farland’s site.