Preditors and Editors ™

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Attention Authors!

Want to promote your first published book? In furtherance of our commitment to helping writers, P&E will help you announce your first book regardless of whether it is published in print or electronically.

Simply prepare a banner with your name, the title, ISBN (if available), and the publisher's name (and link, if available) or a scan of the cover. Be sure you also mention the URL for the link in the text of your email so we can accurately cut-and-paste that into an active link to where your book can be ordered or more information about it can be read. Then email the banner or cover to P&E. We'll post your banner or cover for a month for free.

The Experiment

Presently, P&E is performing an experiment on how well new books sell or are downloaded over the Internet. If you'd like to take part in our experiment, email P&E for details. We'd like to feature several books across multiple genres as well as at online or brick and mortar book stores or both.
At present, P&E is tracking one fantasy book which features free downloads. With absolutely no promotion and only one site to download it from, this book has so far been downloaded over 70 times in just one month. It's even been rated at 4.5 out of 5 though only a few readers have rated it. Interested writers can view and verify the specifications for themselves by visiting Scribd and looking up Karmic Warrior.
After two months (since 30 Jul 09), the first book has been downloaded 109 times and a second book (science fiction), for pay, has been placed in the same online site. We'll report how well the other book does after one month at the end of October without any promotion at all so we're not even going to give out the title at present.
Just so the genres are at least the same, a third book that's SF has been placed in Scribd. It's free and receiving no outside promotion either.
In the meantime, if more writers want to participate, please contact P&E. We're accepting participation from any writers and any publishers, even self-publishing, for our experiment.

title genre type book publisher & type date released cost to author customer price * sales/downloads online/B&M? ** rating promotion
Karmic Warrior fantasy ebook Scribd commercial 7/30/09 none free 351 online only @ Scribd 4.5 out of 5 mentioned here & one other site
Book 2 SF ebook Scribd commercial 9/27/09 none $5.00 144 online only @ Scribd none none
Book 3 SF ebook Scribd commercial 10/22/09 none free 139 online only @ Scribd 5 out of 5 none
Winkers SF ebook Scribd commercial 1/23/10 none free 155 online only @ Scribd none none
Winkers 2: Mid-Evil Worlds SF ebook Scribd commercial 7/4/10 none $3.00 66 online only @ Scribd none none
Winkers 3: When Evil Awakes SF ebook Scribd commercial 7/5/10 none $3.00 62 online only @ Scribd none none
Winkers 4: When Evil Roars SF ebook Scribd commercial 7/6/10 none $3.00 33 online only @ Scribd none none
Winkers 5: Awakening Desire SF ebook Scribd commercial 7/8/10 none $3.00 69 online only @ Scribd none none
Winkers 6: Where Evil Awaits SF ebook Scribd commercial 7/9/10 none $3.00 39 online only @ Scribd none none

* List price. Special sale prices are ignored. For purposes of comparison, vanity book prices will be considered a customer price even if the author is the customer.
** Available online or at brick and mortar stores.

It should be noted that some books may be rotten and will sell few or no copies. Some books may be excellent and still sell few or no copies. Likewise, some books will be rotten and sell many copies and some excellent books will also sell many copies. In other words, this is not an evaluation of whether a book is good or not.

12/24/09: One thing P&E has noticed is that the one book that's named is doing three times as well as the next best listings. We attribute that to the title being listed. Outside of P&E, no one knows the titles of the other experimental listings. We suspect the statistics for those might go up if those were also listed by title. Consequently, this tends to favor our suspicions that name recognition is important.
Additionally, we cannot attribute price as a significant factor since two of the listings are basically running neck and neck even though one is free and the other costs five dollars. However, P&E can't make any statements about that if only because the stats may very well be misleading. This is because P&E has no way of knowing if the book with a price was only sampled or actually purchased. That's because no statement has been received as yet. If it turns out there were no sales, then it will be clear only that the book, despite its low price, wasn't interesting enough to readers. P&E assumes the free books were downloaded simply because those were free and stats for those may very well be accurate.
One other thing that might be significant is the cover. Of the three listings, only one has a cover.
7/4/10: There are now six books listed, so some speculations may no longer apply. Obviously, the reading public decides for itself what it wants to read.