4 things I loved and 2 things I hated about Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success by Mark Coker:

Loved:

1. The book contains lots of good information about the indie ebook market. Coker cites statistics based on a study of thousands of indie releases. It reveals interesting stats both big and small such as the average word count of best selling indie ebooks and the average profitability of different price points, among many others.

2. There are many general strategies for marketing an ebook touched upon. Obviously, this is a pretty complex topic, but I give the author credit for looking at many different angles of ebook marketing in his book.

3. The author uses real indie authors as examples, in some cases via a few quotes from interviews, and in other cases by looking at graphs of daily sale histories that show the wide variety of paths to indie success and discussing what factors lead to the peaks and valleys in the sales chart.

4. The book exudes an encouraging tone. I’ve read a variety of these kinds of books on a number of topics, and this one feels more genuinely positive and nurturing than most.

Hated:

1. The author repeats himself. A lot. Not only are concepts repeated chapter after chapter, in a few cases precise turns of phrase are repeated.

2. Most of the marketing strategy aspects are vague. The book speaks primarily in abstract concepts rather than providing a hands on how to of entering the indie ebook world and executing some of these tactics. It’s the difference between someone saying “use social media to promote yourself” vs. providing a step by step walkthrough of what different authors do to promote themselves on twitter. Considering the author runs an indie ebook distributor, I would’ve preferred if he mixed in more hands on advice about the mechanics of using his (or other) distribution services.

On the whole, it was well worth reading and informative.