Thursday 2 February 2017

Internet Radio 2016 - your own online radio station


Internet Radio
2016

Launching your own online radio station


on Kindle
and 'in print'

  

Earlier this year I published a book called "Internet Radio 2016". It tells readers what's needed and where to find everything that you need to set up and run your own Online Radio station. It is a mighty work - around 77,000 words and was designed as a reference work as well as an educational read.   The reaction has been very good - and we know of several who have launched stations with the E-Book's help. 

It is difficult to gauge the response of niche books such as this. My previous books have sold up to 10,000 copies but this one, well, perhaps we are expecting not quite so many!   To print and bind large numbers of books is very expensive, and you need to do so on a large scale otherwise the costs (for short runs) quickly escalates until the actual cost of a book goes well beyond what most buyers will be willing to pay for a title.  

The size of this book for a Kindle was around 350 pages, and to print and bind up 1,000 copies used to cost about £50 a copy, so we decided to go with the initial publication being as an eBook.  

Many people are convinced that this digital route to publishing is the future of book publishing, although if you look at any crowded book store any Saturday afternoon, you will see there are still tens of thousands of books being sold every week. Most of them are about cookery, or children's stories, such as the highly successful Harry Potter series but there is still a good market for popular books.  But a book will only ne successful if sufficient marketing is done and the title is of interest to the public.  You can have the best book in the world, but if no one knows about it, then it simply will not sell. 


Where can I read E-books?

E-Books are more versatile than the printed editions, as you can incorporate audio and video recordings into them as well as web links to other sites for more information. You can read an eBook via any device with a screen: a desktop computer (Apple Mac or Windows, they work on all types), laptops, tablets (such as the iPad) or even Smartphones.  And of course the many Kindle based devices, including the Amazon Fire. One huge advantage with eBooks is that the reader is able to vary the size of the print to suit you eye's capabilities. It’s so easy to increase the size of the print, which makes for a really easy reading experience. 

Similarly, pricing is just as important as availability.  We studied the few books that are available about radio stations, and the number is not huge. (There is a section on them in the Internet Radio 2016' book; the Bibliography includes a guide to the content of such radio books.).  The average price of general radio books, the semi-autobiographical ones, is from £10 to £25, and the more information, technical and academic books that impart knowledge, etc, sell for about £30 to £45, as anyone who has had to buy text books for university courses will know!


Internet Radio 2016  - now IN PRINT 

We decided to pitch the "Internet Radio 2016" book in its printed form at £25 or so. By removing a lot of the logos and using a slightly smaller text size we have been able to trim the size down to 280 pages and the cost to just below £25 24.50 in fact, which  includes post and packing!

So, in answer to those who want a hard copy of the Internet Radio 2016 book, its now available, either via bookstores (who take a few weeks to stock such specialist items) or via AMAZON's excellent mail order service, which can get YOUR copy despatched almost immediately and in your mailbox by tomorrow!