I’ve been looking at my author website again trying to understand modern publishing as it’s currently working in the trenches. Here’s where I landed this week.
What’s Process and What’s Content
- Process is about the author’s life and working habits. The process of creating.
- Content is the end product – the book, the video etc
Top selling authors share all the process but monetize all of the content.
That’s why all the how-to articles on my website were unpublished and why some of the posts are being added to my gardening ebooks. Here’s the first of these improved ebook – Tomatoes
My Fiction Sites
These have also been reimagined and separated into process and content.
My Income Depends On Readers Buying Content
And if this is the case, giving it away doesn’t make much sense.
Reimagining The Attention Economy
I’ve obviously misunderstood the Attention Economy thinking that gaining reader attention was the primary, driving force. My understanding was that by gaining attention and building reader trust – sales would follow.
I’ve obviously done it wrong. I gained lots of attention and book sales were mediocre.
When I mostly abandoned the websites and adopted Amazon advertising, sales went up.
When I mostly abandoned the website building by unpublishing hundreds of how-to posts, ebooks sales went up.
Even I’m getting the message now that content is what I sell and process is what I write about. The task is to make both things interesting and valuable.
But at least I now know which is which.
p.s. The garden website is currently being rebuilt and modified. That one has too many posts to modify easily.