After giving a sneak peak at My Exile Lifestyle last week, I want to give some more details about the book itself, and let you know what I’m doing differently this time than I did with my last book, Networking Awesomely.

Those of you who are subscribed to the Exile Lifestyle newsletter will have already seen some of these details, but it’s time to get everyone on the same page.

My Exile Lifestyle will be released July 1, and will be on sale through many different vendors (at the moment I’m planning on selling it through Amazon, iBooks, Barnes & Noble’s Nook store, Smashwords, and of course, Ebookling). The book will be sold for $2.99, and will be provided in as many formats as possible, based on what the vendor will allow (PDF and EPUB files will be included at Ebookling, while Amazon sells MOBI files, and Smashwords does EPUB, etc).

“So Colin,” you may be thinking, “why are you selling through services other than Ebookling, which you own? And why are you selling this book for $2.99 when your last book sold incredibly well at $20? Having you been smoking those funny cigarettes?”

Nay, fair reader, no drugs were involved in the decision-making-process. I do, however, want to figure out if a lower price would create a viable business model the way that higher-priced ebooks have for me in the past. I also want a better look at what the current indie-publishing eco-system looks like from the inside.

The benefit of selling for a lower price (as I see it) is twofold: first, it will allow me to get my work out to more people, as $2.99 is much more of an ‘impulse-buy’ price than $20, and second, it will give me the option of writing more books like this in the future, as a smaller price means a shorter buildup time, shorter launch, etc (because I won’t have to work so hard to make sure I’m selling sufficient copies to a smaller audience).

I’m hoping, essentially, to make this whole ‘writing books thing’ a bigger part of my income, and if I can justify writing more work and selling cheaper to a larger audience, that would be my preferred method.

As for why I’ll be selling cross-platform, not just through my blog or through Ebookling like I have in the past, I’ve been interested in taking a closer look at the existing indie-publishing scene and figuring out what’s working and what’s not from a truly practical standpoint, rather than the philosophical one I’ve been approaching it from so far (I’ve been in the scene, but on the outskirts because I wasn’t making full use of the more mainstream options). If I’m going to create a truly great site in Ebookling, though, not to mention better publishing plans for my own products, I’m going to need to know where best to apply my torque so that I don’t end up reinventing a wheel that doesn’t need reinventing.

These two big changes combine to make a lot of little tweaks that I’ll also be monitoring, to see how they influence the sales process and my personal publishing business model.

Affiliates, for example, won’t have the same monetary incentive to share my ebook (unless they intend to sell a LOT of copies), because they won’t be making much money per sale (whereas for most indie publishers, affiliate referrals represent a large portion of total sales). Additionally, there’s the chance that reviews will be too scattered between all the different vendors (so the book won’t see as popular or well-loved as it would be if they were all massed together in one place), and the perceived value of the book will be significantly less than my last one because of the low price, even though I would argue that this one is perhaps ‘worth’ more.

There are a lot of little experiments going on with this project, and I can’t wait to see what happens a few month from now when the dust has settled and I’m able to do some tallying and put together some charts. I will, of course, be sharing what I learn with you folks, and hopefully the results will give you a good idea of how best to publish your own work, or even just show you what the indie publishing scene looks like at this point in time.

If you’d like to be more intimately involved with my launch process in the future, sign up for my newsletter and you’ll receive very-infrequent-but-fun updates, and will have the opportunity to take part in pre-launch sales.

Otherwise, watch the blogosphere and ebook vendors all over the web July 1 for the launch of My Exile Lifestyle! Thanks for all your support!