It’s no secret that ebooks have taken over the world thanks to Kindle and the iPad.
With the explosive rise of Amazon’s Kindle, readers have become accustomed to paying just a few dollars for ebooks. Mr. Nelson Semanu Korkor, an author, speaker and entrepreneur is one of the Ghanaians who greatly benefited from the ebook market. His
book, how to keep going when the going gets tough: cultivating the attitude of perseverance was published in 2013 and on sale on amazon.com. Additionally, he has also written two books; one published in September last year (the power of a fighting spirit). The latter titled how to set goals and achieve them with ease is yet to be published.
Business Day has a chat with and he has the following information to share with existing and potential authors:
How has having your book online imparted sales?
“One of the benefits of online publishing is that, it gives you a global mileage, because if I print books without any attempt to promote the book online, or to put it on digital platforms for sale, there are lot of people across Africa and even in west Africa who may not know about me as an author.
There are several benefits that come with publishing as an author, so if you are not known, when the opportunities come up, there’s the likelihood that nobody may get to you because people don’t know you. And the world is now more digitalize, so it means that whatever you are doing, you must take it online, and that’s why even today they are selling phones online, electronic items and stuff online. Because if you don’t put it there, there are a lot of eyes that are online throughout the day.
When we published the book last year, though we didn’t put it on an e-platform per say we used digital media to promote it, and it works so fast, than just printing the books traditionally and putting it in the book shop. We made use of social media, because people are always on WhatsApp and Facebook. So you need to promote yourself on those platforms as an author for you to get the benefits that come to you, when you publish your books, so it really translates into these sales”.
What was the marketing stratagem used for the sale of your books?
“The first one, what I did (of course that was my first book and a little bit inexperienced at the time) so I just used my direct marketing channels. I used a number of book shops, got representatives in churches to try to do person to person marketing, and myself I drew out a list of all the people I know, tried to call them and meet them up for delivery.
Before we published our book last year, on ‘the power of a fighting spirit’ there was about six
months’ campaign on Facebook and LinkedIn particularly about putting the contents of the book out there on a daily basis. So we did free promo on Facebook, so by the time the book was launched, we were getting calls all over the region and we were doing deliveries”
What is the cost of publishing your books on amazon?
“The act of putting the book on amazon itself is not expensive, in fact you can even learn how to do it yourself. However, it is appropriate to get professional book publishers to do it for you, because when you publish your book, sometimes in an attempt to get it on amazon or any of the digital sales platforms, you’d be advised to change the cover. Even the layout of the book, you’d be advised to do some changes. I spoke to Innovation Books, they are in Accra to work on my next book on how to set goals and he mentioned that I need to pay about Ghc 1200.00 for them to do that for me professionally. So they will do and they will help me manage the book on Amazon. But if I want to do it on my own, I can get somebody to teach me and offload it on Amazon and that would come at virtually no cost at all”.
How many e-books have you sold after publishing your first book online?
“the one I did in 2013, which I can remember, we were able to sell close to hundred copies about six months after we launched on Amazon. Since then, I have not really followed up technically to see the sales over the period”.
How profitable is the e-book space for the Ghanaian market?
“So if you are a Ghanaian and you put your book online, you are likely to get very few Ghanaians to buy it. But outsiders who may not even know you, maybe because of the title of your book, can easily go there and buy copies. But for a Ghanaian market, the print book does better, far much better than online books. If you ask those who are publishing online, they will tell you most of their buyers are not even from Ghana”.
How do you see the future of the e-book market in Ghana?
“Five years from now, would be a good time to make a good judgement, because things have taken up. I was surprised when I met the second publisher, who is working on my current book and he told me that he does e-publishing on Amazon. Interestingly he has even written a book that provides guidelines on how to load your book on amazon, how to market and all that and being an author for years, this is the first time I have seen something like that. It means that there are improvements and people are making the attempt to shift from the hardcore publishing to digital publishing. I think there is a lot of improvement and within the next five years we should be getting some statistics”.
What is your advice for upcoming authors?
“My advice to them is to explore digital publishing. In fact, the interesting thing is that, you can publish your book online before you even think about getting the money to print the hardcopy. So whether your book is sixty pages, twenty pages, even a little book that is even less than fifty pages or whatever; the first test is to publish it online. When you publish it online, you can give an opportunity for people to even download the book for free, without paying. So you have many people reading it, and later on you put it back and put a price tag on it. If you are an emerging author, you need to explore digital marketing and with emphasis on using social media to promote your books”.
Background
Mr. Nelson Semanu Korkor is an author, speaker and entrepreneur. His book, how to keep going when the going gets tough: cultivating the attitude of perseverance was published in 2013 and on sale on amazon.com. Additionally, he has also written two books; one published in September last year (the power of a fighting spirit). The latter titled how to set goals and achieve them with ease is yet to be published.
Gifty Danso
