I decided to chronicle my journey as a writer into the world of Kindle. Mind you, I am no expert on E-book publishing and am just now getting my feet wet on this new paradigm I know will dominate the book industry in the years to come. Actually, we may be talking a year or few short ones at the most. Statistics produced by AAP indicate a 117% increase in Ebook sales in 2011 while adult hardcover and adult paperback sales lost 17.5% and 15.6% respectively: //www.mediabistro.com/ebooknewser/aap-reports-ebook-sales-up-72-in-december_b20563

To think that only a few months ago, I was pooh-pooing this new world order. “Bah, it will never happen,” I scoffed at a writer friend when he mentioned his intention of publishing with Kindle. “Total waste of time. People like to feel the paper, mark the book by folding the page. They love its smell and crispness.”

“You mean dinosaurs like you,” he countered. “Look around you, man.” He waved his hand across the café whose tables were crowded with latte-sipping, tablet-toting, I-phone oglingBerkeleystudents. I followed his gaze. Almost every person in the room had an open laptop, netbook, or tablet.

My mind went bling! It was like reading a blatant foreshadowing. The world was changing and I had been ignoring it all these years. If I didn’t get into the mix, it would leave me behind. The realization slapped me on the face.

That night, I scoured the Kindle FAQs and set out to create an account to republish my out-of-print novel THE BAND OF GYPSIES. To my technology-challenged relief, the process was painless. Just follow the yellow brick road. The system asks you to enter pertinent information such as the price of your book (I’ll be damned if I’d price it at 99 cents like so many others did, so I settled for $3.99), royalty arrangement (70%), the E-book rights, the account where you want your royalties sent, etc. Then you upload the book cover and the manuscript and viola. You’re published. You can even preview the book to see exactly how it looks on Kindle before it goes live.

Cracking my fingers, I was about to push the PUBLISH button when I stopped myself. Whoa! Think about this for a moment. What about your agent?  What would he think? You see, I’m represented by a literary agency inNew York. He is currently shopping A LIGHT IN THE CANE FIELDS, which just had a heartbreaking miss in the final acquisition meeting from the execs in Atria/Random House. There are certain things I’m not allowed to do contractually. That’s when an inner voice started making itself heard: “Pave your own way,” it coaxed. “You can’t wait forever for these publishers. Their myopic decisions are ruled by profits.” I convinced myself that my contract only binds A LIGHT IN THE CANE FIELDS.

It was with this frame of mind that I stared at Kindle’s PUBLISH button that seemed to be enticing me like a forbidden apple. Do it!  Do it!  Do it! it screamed. The “apple” was dripping with sweetness and promise. I took a deep breath. Grinding my teeth, I pressed the PUBLISH button, thus beaming THE BAND OF GYPSIES into the Kindle abyss.

A month passed and I forgot about the whole thing. I mean, who would find my book in that black hole? There are over 950,000 E-books on Kindle. Last month, my wife who handles our finances asked me about a series of $2.80 credits from Amazon on our January bank statement. I scratched my head, thinking that they were proceeds from the paperback version of THE BAND OF GYPSIES. But the book has been out of print for years. I logged on to my Amazon account and retrieved my sales report. Lo and behold, the credits turned out to be royalties (70%) from the Kindle downloads of the book. Over a six week period, I sold over a hundred E-books. True, I probably can’t earn a living with that kind of sales, but it was enough to buy us several nice dinners. And I got them without having to do anything.

I thought of the possibilities. What if I actively promoted the book?  And what if I had several E-books for sale?  Last month, I decided to put my mystery thriller, THE TWELFH FALCON on Kindle. Let’s see what happens.

Enrico Antiporda’s BIO

Enrico Antiporda is a writer and an artist who lives inNorthern California. He lived inBilbao,Spainfor two years under the AIESEC university exchange program (International Association of Students in Business & Economics). His experiences inSpaininspired him to write his first novel, THE BAND OF GYPSIES and the sequel, IBERIAN NIGHTS, a romantic thriller which will be released in 2012. THE TWELFTH FALCON is his first mystery thriller, which has just been released on Kindle. Mr. Antiporda was a former fiction editor of Conclave literary magazine.  He is represented by Jeff Ourvan of the Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency inNew   York.

His Facebook page is:  //www.facebook.com/people/Enrico-Antiporda/620740200
His ETSY artist page is: //www.etsy.com/shop/enricoart