"Trad books" is a shortened term for traditional books. It refers to physical books made of paper and bound together, as opposed to digital or electronic versions.
Full definition
Finally, one of the biggest advantages
for trad books on Amazon is now available to self - publishers: pre-ordering.
Eric, It's not that the ratio of good to bad in indie books is the same as the ratio of good to bad
in trad books, it's just that the good indie books rise to the top.
«e-books are NOT currently cheaper
then trad books, or at least, not initially; you have to buy a lot of new hardcovers to cover your $ 360 Kindle 2.0 purchase.»
You are right in that there are a lot of bad indie books out there, but I also think there are a lot of
bad trad books out there... some of which are indie publishers that got picked up by trad publishers because readers loved the books.
And there's a lot of crap written by traditionally published authors out there (I caught some horrid grammar errors in a
few trad books already), though I will agree, the shit wave is mainly composed of indie works.
When you both mentioned the many areas where you've skewed figures
toward trad books favor I wanted to point out one other factor.
I guess the next question is, «were these readers buying traditionally published books and moved away or had they never been
reading trad books and found books that met a need.»
If the profit on indie books were substantial enough to outweigh the profit on
trad books with the 35 % royalty in place, Amazon's algorithms would reflect that.
2) e-books are NOT currently cheaper
then trad books, or at least, not initially; you have to buy a lot of new hardcovers to cover your $ 360 Kindle 2.0 purchase.
Not long ago I was talking to a traditionally published author who saw what I was doing — stories, novellas, novelettes, non-fiction, backlist (all in addition to
my trad books)
While my self pubbed titles are doing almost as well as
my trad book, I will still always consider shopping future titles to publishers because of the exposure and level of professionalism having that team behind you can bring.
In
the trad book world, hardcover books are given freely to reviewers, but in Amazon's world, where a free video game or computer may be given to a reviewer rather than a mere book, it can seem like a bribe.
You can use your indie ebooks to drive success of
you trad books, and you can use your trad books to drive success of your indie books.