One possible part of the strategy for jndependent publishing, from my perspective, is that you might want to get your book content up on your website, for all to see, so that you benefit from ads (potentially) and more people might buy your print or ebook product.
However, another benefit of a website presentation of your book is that editors may see your work and may want to license it or commission you for parallel work. This has just happened to me again. I have the 30 chapters of my recent book Northern California Travel: The Best Options up on my website at http://www.fostertravel.com/category/norcal/.
An entity named Answers.com liked it and said the web presence was one reason why they decided to offer me a part-time position as their San Francisco Expert, paying me $9-20K per year. Here is the announcement:
“Lee Foster ([email protected]) has been contracted by Answers.com to be their San Francisco Travel Expert. Lee’s website within Answers.com can be seen at http://local.answers.com/g/sanfrancisco. Lee will develop 10 or more short 500-word articles each month for the site. Answers.com, competing with the other major players on the Internet, has decided to expand its Experts roster to Travel and has tapped Lee for the San Francisco Expert position. As of March 2013, Answers.com has been rated by Comscore as the 19th most visited site on the web, with about 52 million monthly unique viewers. Lee will draw upon his extensive San Francisco coverage in his articles, books, and app at www.fostertravel.com for this ongoing assignment. He will also welcome information from PR people involved in presenting San Francisco to travelers. Lee’s opportunities to report on San Francisco in this new structure are inexhaustible. His compensations for the contract will be both guaranteed cash and promotion of his own website and products.”
Hope to see you at the July 13 BAIPA meeting!
— Lee Foster, Foster Travel Publishing, PO Box 5715 Berkeley, CA 94705, (510) 549-2202, [email protected] http://www.fostertravel.com