I was so excited to finally get my ebook out on Amazon. And it was real, real exciting that, in the first five days of offering free downloads, the book shot to #58 in the Kindle free books category. Almost seven thousand downloads. I guess when things are free, folks respond!
After publishing the book, I opted into Amazon’s KDP Select program. But… that prohibits ANY duplicate content, even on my own website. So I had to pull duplicate content off the world wide web. Even though I’m the author, I couldn’t even post the recipes on my website.
I finally removed my book from that program, so now I CAN post all those recipes here. They’re still in the “Soup’s On, Made From Scratch” cookbook, but they’re here too. Yay!
Meanwhile, the ebook was NOT flying off any shelf. In the virtual book publishing world (ebooks, that is), it won’t collect any dust. But it might disappear into oblivion! Ah, the problem with the glut of writings in this information age, right?
Maybe the book could sell if I devoted more time to marketing. But, like many authors, I’m not as into marketing as I am into creating a book. I have a “real” job, and it’s in the real world, at The New Deli, not in the virtual world!
I still occasionally dream of creating a book like the one I want for myself. What would that look like? It wouldn’t be digital, because I want a hard copy in my greasy little floured-up hands, to add notes to, to access when I’ve turned off my electronics. You know?!
That book would still have color photos, since it’s easier to be inspired to make something if you see an actual picture. (Not to mention, the photo can remind you of how the recipe’s supposed to look…) To make it available to others would be difficult though, since color printing still is pretty cost-prohibitive.
That book would also have ALL my fave recipes, in one place. I did publish a small version of that book (“From the Land of Milk and Honey“), back in 2006, but I’ve developed a lot more recipes in the past ten years… I need to get those all organized!
Alas, all our hungry deli folks would probably rather that I just MAKE the stuff, and sell it to them, haha. So, for now, back to my real job 🙂