Getting your e-books published

With all the competetion today, how many are seriously trying e-publishing? I know 2-3 people who seem to be doing quite well, not getting rich, but selling 20-30 books a month through Amazon and Barnes / Noble.

I did a quick search of amazon and found they have a tutorial and a program to help with e-publishing.

I haven't tried it yet. I've considered it. But I wanna at least try the traditional route first. If that didn't work, I'd consider going the E-book route. I think a part of me just wants to really hold a hard-copy of my book in my hands. If E-book is the only way to get my work out there, I'll try it. But it's kind of a last resort for me.

I have really been interested in this e-book thing since readig about the author who made the NY Times best selling list with her e.novel. The hard copy publishers still refused to publish it.
While I agree a nice hard copy bound between two covers would be great, being able to SELL something would be pretty good as well.
As I prepare for "retirement" I am starting to go through my notebooks and want to assemble a few short story things that I will try to sell one chapter at a time in e-book form. I have found quite a few writers selling 10-15 page chapters on Amazon for .25 to $1.00 each chapter.

It'd be tempting to release it all one chapter at a time but I'd likely bunch it together for a full novel at a reasonable purchase price. I'd like it if I could sort of have it both ways, get it e-published with a limited number of hard copies for myself and family/friends. If I could get that deal, I might consider it. But I'd love to get a publisher to publish the book if I can. I do think my works are relatively commercial with possibly just an ounce of literary appeal. (Maybe. lol)

Commercial is good. I always think about the Steven King quote
"There are 100s of writers far better than I am, don't know why I was lucky."
or something to this effect..

Commercial is good. I definitely think the plots are relatively commercial. But I think there will be some hindrances due to some of what goes down.

I have worried about the "what goes down" factor for too long. There is a time when the story will either sink or swim. But this is problematic for most writers I believe. I recall the time I was sitting at an open-mic night at the JAck Kerouac School of DIsembodied Poetics and Ann Waldman or Billie someone was doing a reading. I turned to the woman sitting near me and said, "We are just as good as she is." The woman looke at me like I was crazy. Then I rephrased the statement and said "I am as good as she is." LOL....


Write something to suit yourself and many people will like it; write something to suit everybody and scarcely anyone will care for it.
Jesse Stuart

I definitely agree. You can't worry too much about an audience. Worries like that are just unavoidable. (ie I know many people I know would NEVER read my novels. lol) Not really acting on them too much. Just need to learn a bit more about the industry and try to see what options are best for me. I got 8 books collecting figurative dust so I'd really like to do SOMETHING. Just gotta find that window and jump through it.

I have been reading the tutorials on uploading to kindle that are posted on Amazon. It sounds easy enough. I am going to try and finish editing a 38 page book of poems and hopefully have it uploaded by January? Might just be the foot in the door..