Chicken & Egg Problem

This site is currently suffering from a serious chicken and egg problem. The infrastructure is complete and it’s been open for business for a few days now - at least for authors and publishers. Unfortunately the uptake has been slow or perhaps it’s just me being impatient.

I’ve contacted a number of independent ebook authors and ebook publishing houses but so far I’ve only received a couple of responses. I do have a couple of authors I know personally lined up to announce their new books on the site but in order for this site to be a success I need a steady stream of ebook announcements.

One of the things that’s surprised me is that I haven’t had more of a response from the small independent ebook publishing houses. I would have thought they’d jump at the chance of another avenue to publish their catalogue and reach a different set of readers, especially considering it’s free. I have this horrible feeling that behind the scenes these publishing houses are all locked into some exclusivity deal which prevents them from promoting their books elsewhere. Perhaps once again I’m just being impatient and things move slowly in the ebook publishing business.

One problem I see is that the site currently looks like a template rather than a live site given that the only announcements visible are the sample ones I’ve created. I need a couple of brave authors to be the first to announce their books on the site. Once this happens, I can remove the sample announcements and the site will at least look like a real site, albeit one with very little content.

Another problem is there is no immediate payback for authors or publishers announcing on the site. I don’t  have the readers signed up to make it worth the time to create an announcement. I’m asking them to take a punt on the site becoming popular. Of course at this stage I’d be happy to create the announcements myself and allow authors to do a final review and any editing they want.

Once I’ve got half a dozen ebook announcements I can start to promote the site to readers. In some ways this should be a lot easier. There’s more readers than authors for one. Stopping by a website or signing up for an RSS feed or email newsletter requires a lot less effort or trust that publishing an annoucement on a site. I also have a steady stream of readers who visit my post The Top 13 DRM-free eBook Sites on the Text2Go blog who I can direct over here.

In the meantime I’ll continue to track down independent ebook authors and publishers. At least I’m discovering some great ebooks and authors in the process which is very encouraging.

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