I do plan on sharing my thoughts here on the site soon for those of you who were unable to attend, but in the meantime, Internet Retailer Magazine has done a good job summarizing my main points.  If you’d like the quick recap version, I recommend you read their article.  My own recap will be posted later this week soon.

Also, here’s a photo I found from one of the attendees of the presentation.

To help spur this trading/sharing, he’s offering a zip file containing multiple formats of the e-book on his site. He’s also encouraging those who download the file to upload it to all the file sharing sites they use and distribute it in any way possible (or, if they prefer, not distribute it at all).  Basically he’s giving permission for people to steal his book so he can see if it really hurts sales.

The problem with this experiment however, is that it’s really nothing more than a marketing tactic. By giving permission for people to share this book he’s not, in any way. embracing piracy, but rather he’s embracing alternative distribution channels.  Copyright law grants the copyright holder or administrator the right to determine the price and distribution allowed for any work owned/administered, so obviously if he’s telling people to trade the file and download it without payment, that’s his right to do as the copyright holder. All he’s done is lowered the price of this book to zero for the duration of his experiment.  (If this non-price will continue to be enforced once the thirty days are up, and if so, whether he decides to do anything about it are unknown.)

This is the point I’ve been trying to make (and my core argument in Starving the Artist): a creator absolutely should have the right to determine the price and distribution of his or her creation.  If someone wants to give away their work, that’s up to them.  In this instance, however, Konrath is not telling people to download all of his books in eternity for free – nor is he encouraging the more explicit pirates to actually print up copies of his book in printed format and sell them on their own (with no portion of sales going to Konrath).

What this “experiment” is is really nothing more than a version of the “free sample.”

Think of it this way: Let’s say you’re at the grocery store and they are giving out samples of a potato salad they’re trying to sell.  They have little paper cups filled with the potato salad, complete with little plastic spoons for you to eat it.  The goal is to get people to try it out and, provided the potato salad is any good, a percentage of those people sampling it decide to buy a pound for their barbecue.  For extra bonus points some of them even come back next week and buy it again (and the week after that, and the week after that).

Konrath’s experiment is really nothing different.  The blog post promoting this endeavor states, “JA Konrath, known for the Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels thrillers set in Chicago, offers this collection of short stories and novellas from the Jack Daniels universe.”  So what Konrath is doing here is offering one part of a larger whole of product.  In this case, his product is the Jack Daniels thriller brand. In fact, for this experiment it’s actually a sampler of samples, since the book being promoted is a series of short stories.  The point is, if someone downloads this collection and likes it, Konrath wants people to want to read more (and this time, pay for them).

Again, this is just simple marketing: offer part of a whole for free so people can decide if they like it or not, then encourage them to buy either the whole thing or your other, related products. Konrath’s positioning this as “testing if piracy is harmful” is really just semantics – it’s not piracy if he’s allowing it.  What’s more, by engaging in this promotion and all the press it has received (like the article you’re reading, or the one on Techdirt), is this anything more than a stunt to get those who don’t know about him to find out?  Or maybe even to encourage pirates to buy from him to strengthen their argument that piracy doesn’t hurt sales?

So, Joe, this is where my questions come in.  I’ll be interested to see the answers once they’re available.

1. What percentage of people downloading your book for free read it?
2. What percentage of increased sales are due simply to the extra press you’re receiving from this promotion?
3. What percentage of people who downloaded your free book paid for another one?
4. What percentage of people who downloaded your free book decided that, since you set your price at zero, the rest of your books were worth zero as well?
5. By pricing your book at zero, have you decided that your work is really worth nothing – and everything above that price point is gratuitous?

Here are my final thoughts:

It’s great to use free wisely; it’s an extraordinarily powerful tool. But by doing so, do we diminish the perceived value of other creative works?

When you give someone permission to take your work, you’re not encouraging piracy. Instead you’re giving away your work. The motives for doing so are yours alone.

The other portion of the cost that both of these types of items have is the cost of actual manpower to create.  There’s someone designing the underpants, just like there’s someone writing and performing the music. This even includes if a waffle was made by some sort of automatic waffle maker – that automatic waffle maker was created by manpower (or the robots that created it were created by people who programmed the robots). Or, if the music is completely computer-generated, someone created the computer program that allowed the music to be created. If a person’s time or talent has value, then creation has a cost.

The point I’m trying to make here is that everything has some sort of cost involved in creating it. Nothing is free to create.

With this cost come questions for creators. Do I pass any of that cost on to the consumer? What is my purpose for creating?  What is the price of my creation?

If any of the reason for the creator is monetary, then there must be some price to be paid by someone for some aspect (no matter how vaguely connected) to your creation.  If it’s not monetary, then what did you create it for?  Was it simply to better the human race?  Perhaps it was to strengthen the acceptance of a cause you feel strongly about. In both of those cases you’re at least charging the cost of a person’s time to consume your creation. There are plenty of creations out there that fall into all of these camps, and a lot more.  As such, there’s a lot of competition out there.

The easiest way to compete in business is by offering a lower price. If you are okay with assuming your time, knowledge, talent and effort are worth nothing monetarily, then it’s easy to offer your content for free.  With millions of people creating content today, a percentage of them are willing to offer their creations for free, and that percentage of a lot of people turns out to still be a lot of people. So what we have is a lot of content for free, competing with some content with a price. How does one compete with free?

Again, the easiest way to compete is by offering a lower price – and there’s no lower price than free – so instead, many individuals compete with free by offering free, plus something else for free (in an example of an e-book, think of an e-book but with a free bonus podcast).  So what ends up happening is that free competes with free in an effort to increase consumption. To what end that consumption is encouraged is up to the creator or distributor, but the battle right now lies ultimately in consumption.

If we back up to the cost of a creative work, however, the vast majority of that cost really is in time, effort, talent, skill and knowledge. Costs exist, but in our previous world where bits and bytes were not free (or nearly free), they cost raw materials to reproduce.  People actually paid for a physical object.  The fact is, however, that what they paid for was much more than the cost of the raw materials – it was the cost of the raw materials, plus all those skills, efforts, hours and smarts (put into an equation of expected sales volume, marketing costs, etc) that made up the price the consumer paid.  The consumer, however, placed their value on the physical product that they paid for, rather than the information or aesthetics that were portrayed via those physical media. When someone paid $15 for a CD, they said they paid $15 for a CD … not $15 for the music that Nirvana recorded and distributed to individual listeners for a cost that was below the actual cost of recording the music but was hopefully made up for (with little left over to pay for food) via volume.

Due to this idea of paying for the physical product rather than the creation within, it was easy for us to start viewing the actual media itself as the item with a price.  Therefore, when the media was no longer required and the new distribution options had little cost (I’m already paying for Internet access, why should I pay to access things via my Internet access) it was also easy for us to feel that the creations really weren’t something we should start having to pay for.  We didn’t pay for books before; we paid for the paper they were printed on and the shipping and the store shelf space.

The price was nothing. In the world of music, the new digital price actually started as nothing. The music industry wasn’t first to start offering their music online, but instead it was people – people who had been trained to think that the music itself really wasn’t what one paid for. After all, one doesn’t pay for the radio. So what happened was that by distributing music for free from the beginning, an anchor point was set for music to be worth nothing.  The fact that the music industry was very slow to respond with any sort of model on their own only reemphasized this idea.  The price at which music was available online was zero. There was no alternative – or if there was, people didn’t know about it.

A really simple explanation of the way pricing works is as follows: Costs are determined and volume is estimated. A profit goal is set. The minimum price should be equal to your total cost + your total profit goal, divided by volume (or units). Or, as a mathematical equation:

(Total Cost + Total Profit Goal) / Units = Price Per Unit

In today’s world of a digital economy, however, one can easily be led to believe that volume is potentially unlimited. Since the costs are only up-front for a creation that is distributed digitally (that is, the only costs are those costs to create the work in the first place – replication has no cost), and volume is unlimited, price can be set almost to zero and the profit goal can still be met, even as the profit goal reaches infinity. But if the profit goal is zero, and a lot of people have no profit goal (or if they do, they are assuming they can make a profit through another channel, perhaps through speaking engagements, branded automatic waffle makers, etc.), they can easily set their price to zero.

So when the monetary costs of raw materials are virtually zero, and one is willing to value their own time and work monetarily at zero, we end up with creations that are priced at zero. With a small percentage of a lot of people doing this, we end up with a lot of people pricing their content at zero.  There are also a lot of people pricing their content at prices much higher than zero. But regular people (consumers) are seeing a lot of stuff priced at zero. They then ask, “what’s with these people asking for monetary compensation?”

What happens is a product or service is set at a price, and if enough items are priced at that level for a long enough time, people accept that price as the price of the item. For example, if a pair of pants typically costs $70 at Banana Republic, one then assumes that a pair of pants at Banana Republic is worth $70. When the pants are on clearance for just $40, it’s a great deal – even though a pair of pants at JC Penny might only cost $40 normally.  By JC Penny setting their price at $40 normally they’ve set the value of their pants at $40 – so for their pants to be a great deal, even if they’re exactly the same as the ones at Banana Republic (in this example let’s just pretend they’re the same), they need to drop the price considerably.  The same was the case with CDs – when they cost $18 at Sam Goody and Best Buy started offering them for $12, Best Buy had the better deal. Suddenly $12 was a great deal – but over time, $12 started to become normal (the anchor point) and $18 seemed overpriced.

When music was offered for free online, an anchor was set. Other media, such as books or movies, was also susceptible, but didn’t catch on at the speed music did.  By the time the music industry was ready to compete they had to deal with this anchor, as well as the anchors they had set via the physical model.  A digital download of a song had some value, they argued, but that value was also less than the cost of a CD divided by the number of songs on it, since a CD also had physical raw material costs involved. As such, $.99 sounded like a fair price.

Still, more and more music is being offered for free – but this time it’s being offered for free by the bands, labels, etc. This is because, as I stated earlier, the easiest way to compete is by setting your price to free. By doing so you have set no barrier to entry other than the time it takes the user to download, the time it takes the user to listen (if they even do is another question) and the tiny bit of space it might take up on their hard drive if they save the song (which nowadays they don’t, since streaming is ubiquitous).

Of course, this phenomenon is not unique to music, but has expanded into all realms of content that can be recreated and distributed digitally. What’s happening though is that with more and more creations being set to a price of zero, the anchors are moving as well. Over time, the expected price for most creations will be zero.  This is the issue that the newspaper industry is battling now – and it’s the reason that Rupert Murdoch is setting up a pay wall for the Wall Street Journal. He has decided that his content has value – the work his journalists do has a cost – and their knowledge and expertise is actually worth something. This is why he’s charging – he’s attempting to reset the placement of the anchor.

Where anchors are set is purely subjective. Anchors are a battle of what creators want to be compensated versus what other creators are willing to sacrifice for their work. They’re a battle of what goals the creators are attempting to accomplish – is it to make money or to make a difference? Where they end up being set is ultimately a choice left to those who create, and what their goals are.

Whether consumers are willing to pay the prices asked is really a question of whether or not they have a cheaper alternative with a perceived value higher than the cost they paid.

But remember: the easiest way to compete is by offering a lower price. It doesn’t mean you’ll win the competition.

For further reading on the topic, check out this article by Monica Valentinelli.

Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition (IRCE) 2010

Topic: The Anatomy of a Successful Twitter Campaign
When: June 10, 2010 2:45 PM-3:15 PM
Where: McCormick Place West – Chicago, IL

Description:

Tweeting is not just sending messages to consumers who have signed up for them. To be a successful Twitterer, a retailer must possess a plan that includes clear objectives, useful information, attractive offers, and the ability to talk and listen. Our speaker, whose company MusicNotes.com has been tweeting daily for two years, will discuss how MusicNotes determined goals, how it created a plan of execution, what Twittering requires from management and staff, what MusicNotes has learned as its Twitter program has evolved, its plans for more tweeting and what it’s gotten out of tweeting.

E-Tail East

Topic: Panel Discussion: Redesigning Your Site to Increase Conversion Rates & Better Engage Customers
When: August 11, 2010 1:50 PM
Where: Hilton Baltimore

Description:

When is the right time for a redesign? And how do you go about identifying your strategic goals? Our panelists have all recently undergone site enhancements or full site redesigns. They will take you through the process of setting their vision, planning ahead, and overcoming many of the unforeseen obstacles. They’ll also discuss how they employed customer feedback into their strategy to ensure they were delivering the most relevant functionalities.

• Creating a redesign roadmap – outlining your core redesign objectives, method and design considerations
• Ensuring your redesign is aligned with your overall customer experience strategy
• Allocating the budget and internal resources that you will need to reach your project goals on time
• Best practices for site redesign from the home page, product page to checkout
• Small changes that can make a big impact
• What works and what doesn’t
• Developing the features and content that will be the backbone of your new site
• Will your new site include web 2.0 functionalities?
• Examining the ease of your checkout process and where are customers abandoning
• Ridding your checkout of distractions

Note this is a panel discussion that also includes Josh Himwich, Director of eCommerce Solutions for Diapers.com and Ralph Mondeaux, VP of Website Marketing for Overstock.com.

You can watch the presentation here. Note, my part starts at about 20 minutes in.

The thing is though, your personal “brand” needn’t be like everyone else.  What’s really important is what you want to define yourself or your brand as.

I’ve been silent for a long time – not because I don’t have anything to say, but rather because I’ve been taking the time to embrace silence.  Spending time updating a blog on a regular basis doesn’t really accomplish a lot for me, especially given the fact that life has limited time.

So instead of trying to position myself as a master of web marketing and usability, or an independent author trying to find a readership, or a dabbling artist, or a gamer, or a reef enthusiast or a father or any of those things – I’ve been actually doing. In the past months we’ve gone through the holiday season at Musicnotes, and grew sales at a fantastic rate (up over 20% for 2009).  Musicnotes has also undertaken a huge project that’s still in its early stages, but one that takes time and focus to do in order to do it right.  I’ve been actively working on being a better father and husband, and I’ve completed the first draft of that nonfiction piece I mentioned earlier.

In short, I’ve been silent so that I can focus on mastery.  There’s always a lot to say, but to be honest, it doesn’t always need saying.  Instead the time spent talking could be time spent doing or thinking.

As such, my silent period is likely coming to a close.  I have some very useful things to share, and they’ll be coming out soon.

In the meantime, I recommend you all consider just what it is you are trying to accomplish by “building your personal brand” online.  Rather than writing articles of speculation or being a “thought leader,” actually be a leader.  Take the time to go silent and stop worrying about how you present yourself online.  Instead do something fantastic and grow yourself as a person – as you accomplish, people will take notice.

This is the year you’ll likely hear quite a bit from me – and it’s because I’ve taken the time to stop talking.

Sure, there’s a lot of talk about making sure that you’re Google-search-safe and “OMG what if my prospective employer looks me up on Facebook” – but for the most part we’re fairly secure of anonymity. Or maybe we’re just understanding of the fact that the world is changing, and that we all might have some warts and that that’s okay.

Regardless of the reason, we definitely live in a time where it’s okay to say what we think or feel, and to share our experiences with friends or strangers. In a time when a person can have thousands of Twitter followers and not really know who most of them are, but still share their innermost thoughts, it can be assumed that for those who take part in this culture, they’re a fairly understanding and accepting group.

So, when we feel this safe and secure, it’s tempting to use the media at our disposal as an opportunity to lash out or to give praise – or in instances where we’re extremely bored, to comment on mediocrity. It’s an era of truth, at least truth of the moment – and it’s why I’m grateful for living when I do.

As the guy in charge of watching over both the design and marketing of one of the top 500 retail websites (at least according to Internet Retailer Magazine) I have a pretty vested interest in making sure that we succeed in our mission. I’ve been at Musicnotes.com for just about nine years now, and for most of that time I’ve been fairly involved in the direction we take (I started out as a marketing assistant, but that was a LONG time ago) – and the main deciding factor behind pretty much everything I ever pushed for (and continue to push for) is for what we call the “customer experience.”

Yeah, it sounds pretty generic when you hear it, but it’s really what we’re always looking at.  Our goal at Musicnotes is pretty simple – to help people (quickly and easily) find sheet music for songs they want to learn, buy it at a reasonable price (while we pay the songwriters a respectable royalty), print the sheet music and get over to the piano (or guitar or whatever instrument you might play) and play the song.

That’s it. You want to play a song? We want to help you.

So, over the years we’ve been focusing on trying to make that easier and easier.  We watch web analytics, we get feedback from customer service, we go through the process ourselves again and again and try to find the spots where thinks get a bit wonky – and then we try to make them better.

But lately it’s a lot different – there are tools at our disposal that let us be silent observers of our customers, as well as those who abandon us well before becoming customers.  There are systems like Google blog search or Technorati or Whostalkin or Twitter search or any of the other ways to keep a gauge on what people are saying about Musicnotes.com – and they are indisposable tools.  They let us see what people love about us, as well as what people hate about us – and this kind of uncensored but explicit feedback is extraordinarily valuable to us.

My personal goal at Musicnotes is to make it so that you never have to go anywhere else for sheet music.  It’s a pretty straightforward goal, and pretty narrowly focused – but that’s what it is. I want to give our visitors the best possible experience they can have, while still making sure the company and the songwriters and publishers are fairly compensated as well. To hear from people when they have a great experience at Musicnotes brings a smile to my face, especially when it’s related to something one of my teams has recently done – but to hear when we’re doing something wrong is much more helpful.  Of course we don’t want to do anything wrong, but sometimes we do – and we can always improve – and the kind of feedback that’s out there today really helps us do so.

But this is where problems arise.  Today there is such openness about experiences, but there’s also little awareness that those we’re talking about might be listening in. I have to.  I can’t help but listen. I need to hear about the joyous experiences, as well as the frustrating ones – and I need to engage pretty much everyone who’s taken the time to say something about us.  After all, to say something positive really deserves thanks – and to take the time to say something negative means that we have a problem we need to address.

I’m sure it freaks people out sometimes, to get a twitter response from our team trying to help resolve what might have been a negative experience.  As Twitter becomes more mainstream these kinds of unsolicited responses might feel even stalkerish, but honestly, it’s part of the tool.  To let someone cry out in frustration or pain, and to hear them, but do nothing about it frankly would break my heart.

I love our customers, including those who aren’t customers – and even though a response from a “corporation” might seem a bit impersonal, there really is a person behind it.  There are a lot of people, really – and they respond because they care and because they want you to be happy.  They want you to get off our site as soon as possible and play some music – because that’s what you came here for.

Remember that if you’re out there working for or running a company today.  Show some love, even if it appears corporate – as long as it’s honest. Because, as Nat King Cole sang in his song “Nature Boy,” “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn, is just to love – and be loved in return.”

So when I pose the question “Do I Want a Publisher?” I’m really asking “Do I want to be published by a traditional publishing house who has multiple clients and an established place in the publishing marketplace?”

My next immediate question, and the question I encourage all authors (or any creator for that matter) is this: “Why would I want a publisher?”

For those who haven’t given it much thought, it’s time to do so. Traditionally authors work with publishers, who they usually get through agents (if they are lucky enough to get representation in the first place) – but what is the purpose of a publisher?  What good is the publisher going to do you?

Some Pros of Having a Publisher:

1. You instantly appear to have more credibility.
2. Most of the layout work will be done for you.
3. You can much more easily get into traditional brick and mortar stores.
4. Potential help with marketing.
5. A potential for up-front payment (although don’t expect more than a few grand if you’re a first-time author).

Some Pros of Being Your Own Publisher:

1. Complete creative control.
2. Much higher profit margins.
3. Avoiding the bureaucracy of working through a larger corporation.

Of course, there are plenty more pros (as well as cons) to both option – and some pros for me may be cons for you. What is important is that you know what you are getting into with either option, and that you choose the one that is right for you.

As for me, I self-published by choice.  I didn’t submit my novel to agents or publishers because I knew I was going to be self-publishing to ensure I could create exactly the book I wanted to create.  Of course, I still did plenty of editing and rewrites based on feedback from my editors and some early “beta” readers, but other than those changes, the book is free of outside meddling.

In my decision to self-publish, however, I also accepted the fact that the entire burden would be on me, and that most of my sales would be through online retailers.  In actuality, I prefer this – which again is why being my own publisher is the right decision for me.

So, back to my original question: Do I Want a Publisher?

The answer, as you’ve likely gathered, is “probably not.” I am positive I could have had The Trouble With Being God published through a smaller publisher (I am fairly certain it’s not the kind of book any of the major houses would have picked up), but frankly they aren’t able to do much that I can’t do on my own.

It’s not a decision to be taken lightly. If you’re planning on publishing on your own, you must be prepared to do it all – including putting in a lot of time and your own money into marketing. Just having a book in print doesn’t mean much if it’s not selling – and it’s not going to sell if a.) it’s not any good, and b.) if no one has heard of it.

There’s a reason The Trouble With Being God is doing well – and it’s not just because of the positive reviews it’s been receiving. It’s because I made a conscious decision to be my own publisher, and to take all the good things that path entails as well as to trudge through the hard places as well.

If a publisher approached me today I would ask them: “Why should I publish with you?” – it’s a question I encourage you all to ask as well. The publishing world is changing, and traditional publishers have many uses – just not many for me (at least not without a sufficiently large check involved).

This is part two in a series on determining if self-publishing is right for you. Click here for part one.

As most of you know, I work for an online publisher/retailer (albeit, for music publishing) and we sell several million dollars of downloadable content every year. Some of this is extremely popular, and some of it has a very small, but very devoted fanbase.

Our top 20 sellers make up less than 10 percent of our sales. Most of our sales comes are of products that are quite far down the long tail (if you don’t know what that is, go read The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson). They are far down the tail in a combination of actual sales numbers on our site, as well as through general public knowledge.

The stuff we’ve done with some of the independent music artists has been much more valuable than what we’ve done with major ones. In fact, this year’s Song of the Year award (based primarily on sales) is for a song by someone who is considered an indie artist (I can’t name names yet, since it has not been officially announced). No major music publisher created official sheet music for it, and we did – because we knew the market and knew how to promote it to those who would enjoy it.

Yes, there are plenty of artist who submit to us who would like to have their music published on Musicnotes that we don’t publish, due to the fact they do not have a marketing plan of their own, and we don’t have the resources to market everything ourselves – but there are also a lot of independent artists that we work with that have built up a strong cult following.

So what I’m saying is this: when it comes to the music industry, being on a label doesn’t matter all that much anymore. What matters is that you create a quality product, you make it available, you market it, and you find someone to be your champion (or rely on viral marketing). It can work quite well, and by going the independent route you will reap huge benefits as far as royalties go (should you succeed).

The book industry will undoubtedly follow in the footsteps of the music (and film industry, at this point). I really hope you understand this – as it will be in your best interest to “get it” whether you get a deal with a major publisher or not. Keep an eye out for yourself, or find someone who really is working in your interest. Try to avoid signing away exclusive rights, and believe in the power of a quality work (and then market the hell out of it).

I am only speaking from experience, as the direct of marketing for one of the “Hot 100″ Internet Retail sites for 2009.

My writing skills are not part of this argument (that’s for all of you to decide) – but my knowledge of the publishing and intellectual property world definitely are.

I hope you all find this helpful.

As most of you are probably aware, tagging is the simple practice of adding relevant keywords to a product, similar to the way meta keywords were used in web pages. Instead of these tags being added by the creator, however, the tags are added by other members of the community, as it is assumed that tags from outsiders are much more relevant than those created by a self-serving advertiser/creator.

Amazon.com uses tags for their products as a way to easily filter what is relevant in a specific category.  They are primarily used within different groups on the site, as well as community discussions and cross-sell opportunities (tags on their listmania lists are used quite a bit in this manner).

So, what I’m doing now is focusing on getting my reader base to tag The Trouble With Being God with appropriate tags, such as “murder,” “crime,” philosophy,” “thriller,” “suspense,” and other tags they find relevant for the book to help drive the book up in relevancy in Amazon’s rankings.  Simply put: the more times a book (or other product) is tagged with a specific term, the more relevant it appears to be to that topic on the Amazon website.

My main interest here (other than selling books, of course) is to see if ranking high within specific categories has any direct influence on sales. Will my book sell more due to people finding it through these separate categories?  I obviously can’t track directly within Amazon, but I should be able to see how things progress as I receive more tag votes.

So, if you’d like to take part in this experiment, I encourage you to stop by the product listing for the paperback edition of The Trouble With Being God and check the boxes next to existing tags (or add tags of your own).  As I move farther up the list, I’ll be sure to give updates hereas to how this all works out.

Obviously there are other methods of increasing ranking on Amazon, or at least of increasing sell-through rates, such as reviews on the amazon site, reviews elsewhere, direct suggestions via word-of-mouth, etc. – and I plan to see how these other methods work for promoting the self-published author eventually as well… but for now my main focus is on the tagging system.

Do you have any suggestions of marketing approaches you’ve tried, or would like to try?  If so, send them along and I’d be glad to do some testing to see what the best methods of promotion for self-published or indie publishers are.