Month: January 2012

4 Simple Steps to Creating a Vanity URL for Your Amazon Author Central Page

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Amazon now allows authors to create a "vanity URL" or personalized web address that points to their Author Central page on Amazon.

Author Central is a great place to feature your bio, videos, and latest tweets and blog posts. It’s especially important for authors with more than one title for sale on Amazon, because it shows a summary of all of your books.

My vanity URL looks like this: https://www.amazon.com/author/danalynnsmith

Here are four simple steps to creating your own Amazon Author Central vanity URL:

1. Login to your Amazon Author Central account. If you don’t already have an Author Central account, you can create one at this same page:

https://authorcentral.amazon.com

2. Click on the Profile tab.

3. Click on the Add Link button at the top right of the page, next to Author Page URL.

4. Enter your preferred URL name and click Save. Most authors will probably use their author name in the URL, but give it some consideration first, because you can’t change it once it’s assigned.

[Publetariat Editor’s Note: don’t forget to update any links you may have pointing to your old Amazon author page URL, such as on your author website, blog, in your social media profiles, etc. etc. Creating a custom URL will break those links.]
 

AuthorCentralURL

Learn more about optimizing your presence on Amazon in my how-to guide, How to Sell More Books on Amazon.

 

 

This is a reprint from Dana Lynn Smith‘s The Savvy Book Marketer.

Ebook Buyers: Can You Afford To Lose Them?

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I recently read a guest post by Chris Keys, author of The Fishing Trip – A Ghost Story and Reprisal!: The Eagle Rises!, about the difficulties of selling self-published books.  According to Chris, he’s only sold about a dozen books.  It seems typical of independent authors, but here’s the catch: I looked for Chris’ book The Fishing Trip – A Ghost Story on Amazon and found that he only had it in print.

 

What really bothers me about this is that he used CreateSpace to publish his book.  I would think putting out a Kindle edition as well as a print edition would have been a no brainer.  It’s really too bad Chris didn’t go with both because I was poised to purchase an eBook edition, provided the price was right, on the spot.  I wishlisted the book, but that doesn’t mean I’ll remember to go back and buy it later.

I’m left wondering how many indie author sales are lost because of this kind of shortsightedness.  Between earning higher profits on lower prices and the immediate delivery (aka immediate gratification) of eBooks, how can anyone afford not to publish in electronic format?  That’s especially true now that epublishing is free on major bookseller sites like Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

I suppose many authors cringe at the idea of formatting their manuscript into eBook format. It’s not as difficult as you might think, though it does take some time. There are numerous articles on the web on how to do this, including “How to Format Ebooks” by Jamie Wilson and “How to Format an Ebook” by Smashwords’ Mark Coker. If you use Adobe InDesign, check out EPUB Straight to the Point by Elizabeth Castro. For basics on Kindle formatting browse Joshua Tallent’s Kindle Formatting web site.

If you still don’t want to try formatting your own book (or find you just can’t wrap your mind around it) then find someone who can. Indie Author April L. Hamilton of Publetariat warns us of taking the cheap route and simply converting a manuscript rather than having it formatted properly. It’s better to spend a little money on putting out a great book, than lose readers due to poor formatting.

Formatting is different from conversion in that formatting standardizes the manuscript and creates any companion files needed for the eBook while conversion is simply loading the work into a program and clicking a button. Conversion is easy. Formatting takes more time and effort.

Regardless of whether you choose to do it yourself or have someone else do it for you, if you want to get your book into the hands of more readers, don’t neglect the eBook format.

 

 

This is a reprint from Virginia Ripple‘s blog.

Publishers, Pay Better Attention. Authors, Don't Pay for Contests.

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This post, by Tominda Adkins, originally appeared on her The Elysium blog on 1/30/12 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission.

Here’s the story: I recently got an email heralding a book contest. Nothing to really shake up my Sunday, but I read on, because the contest is being put on by an organization which exists to support indie authors. The contest is exclusively for self-published books, and the judging panel consists of seasoned agents and publishers who are seeking "overlooked" talent to professionally represent. Maybe. If they love it. As in: no guarantees, even for the first place winner. Okay, it all sounds a little insulting, but I’m still listening. Like any other writer, I’d love for someone else to handle the publishing side of things. Maybe Vessel has a shot here. I then scroll down to the submission details, and my focus lands on the entry fee. Suddenly, my tempted interest turns into disgust and outrage. The fee is big. Triple digits, people.

[Editor’s Note: strong language after the jump]

Let me get this straight, panel. You are looking to find and assist (and ultimately benefit from) talent that has been overlooked. Overlooked by YOU, the agents and publishers. You want to take a second look now, now that we’ve all done the legwork ourselves, by pitting us against one another in a contest. And if I win, I might get represented, if you love it? And you want me to pay $150 to get my work in front of you?

Yeeeaah . . . NO.

Seriously. It’s like being spit in the face. I am quietly enjoying my Sunday morning here, drinking my earl grey, and you pop up and spit in my face.

Whose idea was this? Are you sure you’re talking to authors? People who are not exempt from the recession, who have bills to pay, who go to work and come home and postpone rest, sex, social interaction, and proper nourishment just to get some writing or marketing done? I’m willing to pay a modest fee (I consider that $30 or less) for any contest in which I have a fair chance at winning, be it a costume contest (my Halloween costumes fucking OWN) or a book contest. But these people, and frankly any people who charge struggling authors top dollar for something that offers no guaranteed benefit (publicists, self-publishing "gurus", conference speakers) are missing a grand point: indie authors don’t have that kind of money. The money they have is better spent elsewhere, and they know it. Well, some of them do. 

If you don’t know that, and you write, listen:

You DO NOT have to wait, pay, perform, or grovel to get someone in the industry to say your book is worth something. You get it in front of readers, period, and they decide.

If readers love it, congratulations. Do what you can to make yourself more visible, and more readers will find you. And if a publisher comes along and thinks you’re worth representing, that’s great, too. But for Christ’s sake, don’t pay a guy $150 to take a second look at what he missed the first time around!

Take that $150, and improve your book’s chances of being discovered and enjoyed by readers. Here are some things I’d put that $150 toward, off the top of my head:

– Professional editing, proofreading, cover design, or typesetting for my next book 

– A new title setup on Lightning Source

– A run of advance reading copies 

– A redesign of my website

– Prizes for contest winners 

– Ads on GoodReads, or on popular categorized sites through Project Wonderful

– Groceries 

– A massage 

– Booth or table space at a promotional event 

– More Sexodus Tour T-shirts

– A round of beers after the Vessel series lands a publishing contract or movie deal

And in case you were wondering just how serious I am about those Halloween costumes, here are my last three, plus a prize-winning Lady Gaga Dance-Off getup. Note: none of these cost over $30 to make. WIN.

 

Link (2010) and Edward Scissorhands (2011)

 

Secretary (2009) and my getup for "Show Me Your Teeth" (2010)

 

 

Maybe next year I’ll go as Thelma Harper . . . 

 

Kindle Millionaires, Meet the Worst Book Signing in the History of the World

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This is a guest post from bestselling novelist Nick Earls.

Years ago, as a junior hospital doctor, I met Australia’s last surviving veteran of the Boer War. He was 108 at the time and could still share some fascinating details of the war he had fought in 1900, when he was 20. If I can live long enough, I can be that guy for the publishing industry of the late 20th century, and I can wax anecdotal about the things we did to sell books, back when they only came on paper. And the listener will be amazed and I will sound like someone who walked with dinosaurs.

I will by then be one of the last relics of book tours and stock signings and days of back-to-back regional radio interviews. If I can live to 108, I may be one of the last authors telling his/her Worst Book Signing in the History of the World story.

Let’s admit it – any author who has toured enough has one. We can’t let them go and can’t resist the masochistic urge to keep telling them – whether to fake self-deprecation or as a cautionary tale or because some wounds just won’t heal but we’re addicted to the talking cure.

You know what’s next: The True Story of the Worst Book Signing in the History of the World. It’s of course mine, and it’s offered here for the edification of all recent authors thriving from the comfort of their own homes with the help of KDP Select and all the other cunning means of selling books in 2012, while at the same time thinking, ‘It’s great to have sold a million on Amazon, but I wish I could go on a book tour.’

Yes, you know you’re missing expense accounts, room service and a lot of pre-recorded flattery from publicists needing to boost frequently flagging author morale, but you’re also missing having your own Worst Book Signing in the History of the World. Rest assured, it would not have been worse than mine.

The incident occurred in a regional Australian city, in a franchise store located in a shopping centre that the citizens were in the process of abandoning for a more glamorous new centre down the road. More than half the shops were empty. There was a card table waiting for me outside the bookstore, and for the next ten minutes I watched occasional clumps of people in the distance moving between discount stores in flannel shirts and Ugg boots.

Then the bookstore owner, with the whiff of failure already in his nostrils, came over to me and tried to sound upbeat as he said, ‘This’ll fix it.’ He tossed me a name tag, with my name recently written on it in blue marker pen in a spidery hand. Misspelt.

No one was coming within 50 yards of me. It was only going to work if the discount stores were selling truckloads of two-dollar binoculars. Which they weren’t.

Another ten minutes passed. By which I mean 600 seconds passed, each with the slow-motion drag of the last weeks of a too-long childhood summer vacation, but this time with the horrifying overlay of a feeling of abject failure.

Then the owner appeared with a PA system that looked like it had done its best work around the Big Band Era. He turned it on, and static seared the empty halls of the shopping centre. Way in the distance, a few heads turned. And then turned away again. Undaunted, he proceeded to read from a shiny faxed copy of the book’s media release, which my publicist and I had spent a lot of time writing and which I had, until that moment, thought was pretty funny.

By ‘read’ I mean misread, of course. It hadn’t faxed clearly, there were lots of awkward pauses and he pounded any punchline flatter than pizza dough. Fortunately, the distortion was so bad as it echoed through the empty labyrinth that not a word could be heard clearly, and it sounded more like an industrial accident in progress rather than a human reading something. Meanwhile, the rep from the publishing company stood next to me mouthing ‘I’m sorry’ over and over.

At the forty-minute mark, with not a single books sold, a girl ran over to my table. The rep smiled. The shop assistants smiled. The owner put his microphone down and beamed. The tide was turning. Our first sale beckoned.

And then the girl said she needed to write down a phone number and could she please borrow my pen? I said she could keep it, and called time.

The new ways of selling books may mean fewer scars like that landing on the souls of authors. The world will be just a little diminished as the anecdote supply dries up, but authors will be saner.

It’s expensive to tour an author, and usually more sensible not to. I want to ignore that and I still want to do it. I still love bookstores, still buy paper books at my favourites and hope to keep doing events in them indefinitely, but there’s a whole world of readers who will now only point and click and then read from a non-paper-based device. They’re rapidly shifting the cost/benefit analysis of a lot of author tours.

Selling e-books, it seems to me, is not so much about working out how we sell p-books and adapting that. It’d be extreme to say it would be as relevant to look at how we sell chickens or Toyotas, but maybe not completely out of line. Selling a physical object in a particular place is very different to selling a blast of digital signal.

This is a new paradigm, not a slow evolution. It’s frighteningly fast, giveaways abound because there are no unit costs, and millions of people have found new ways of browsing that we may not have properly pinned down yet.

An e-book needs to be findable and discoverable. It needs to have the right look and the right price. And perhaps it needs to be pitched into promotions that will see a lot of copies given away in the hope that talk and reviews and sales will follow.

In the end though, when I’m 108 and the young intern is re-siting my drip, I’ll be telling her/him that the most important thing has always been word of mouth, even if, by the early twenty-first century, the author needed a whole new bag of tricks to kick-start it.

We may be selling it in a new vessel, but a story is still a story and what will matter most is what happens when it’s read.

You can find Nick’s work on Kindle here, and on Nook here.

Is Amazon Select Really The Big, Bad Wolf?

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This post, by Andrew E. Kaufman, originally appeared on The Crime Fiction Collective blog on 1/27/12 and is reprinted in its entirety with that site’s permission.

I woke up Wednesday morning to a barrage of emails. It appeared an independent author’s sample anthology, to which I belong, was being taken down. The reason was that it violated the terms of Amazon’s new Select program (several of the authors are enrolled in it). The anthology offers excerpts from our books, and according to the exclusivity agreement, enrolled work cannot be distributed digitally elsewhere. This includes excerpts shown on websites (that’s right folks, if you’re a Select author and running excerpts from your book on a website or anywhere else, you may want to take them down).

Word of this sent the emails a flyin’.

Very quickly, the discussion turned hostile with lots of anger aimed at Amazon and its Select program, as well as the authors enrolled in it. Some complained that they were being punished because of the actions of a few. Others insinuated that Amazon is underhanded, manipulative, and self-serving. One person even went as far as calling them an “evil empire.” There was even talk of staging an indie author boycott of Amazon. For my part, I chose to stay out of it. I didn’t agree with much of what was being said and felt the facts were being skewed.

Now I realize I’m going to take some flack for this, but I’m having a hard time understanding all the anger directed at Amazon. I mean, let’s face it–we wouldn’t even be here having this discussion if it weren’t for them. There would be no indie movement, no platform to showcase our work, no audience to read our books. Many of us would still be on the outside looking in, trying to break through those iron-clad gates, the ones kept locked up for years by the mainstream publishing industry.

Amazon helped us find our audience much more than any traditional publisher ever did. They gave us a platform, then they gave us the tools necessary to make money at it, offering an unprecedented seventy percent royalty for our books, something previously unheard of with traditional publishers.

In short, they let us in and put the power where it belongs: with the readers.

As for  the Select program, I don’t understand the anger there, either. Amazon isn’t forcing anyone to enter exclusive deals; they’re offering them an opportunity. The program is completely voluntary. Those who wish to enroll are free to do so; those who don’t, can go on with business as usual, selling their books wherever and however they wish. For those who do choose to go that route, they’re being compensated with cash which Amazon has taken out of their own pocket.  Many authors would still jump at the chance for an exclusive deal with a publisher, and yet they’re balking at the idea of doing the same thing with Amazon.

Amazon isn’t evil; it’s a business just like any other. Lest we forget, they invented the e-reader. Everyone else jumped on board after that with their own versions. Is anyone faulting them for trying to cash in on the craze? Of course not—it’s business. So what’s so wrong with Amazon trying to stay competitive in a market they created? I say, nothing.

Are they forcing a monopoly?  I doubt it. Even if Barnes & Noble goes under, the Nook will likely live on under another name, and there is this other company called Apple, who, when I last checked, is getting ready to launch their own digital publishing platform. And I’d say they have the muscle to be a formidable competitor.

A Fiction Author Reviews iBooks Author App: Should You Try It?

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This post, by Cheri Lasota, originally appeared on her site on 1/26/12 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission.

There’s a great deal of buzz on the Internet about Apple’s iBooks Author App. Most authors and pub­lish­ers haven’t used it or refuse to use it, usu­ally cit­ing Apple’s EULA agree­ment. Controversial as it may be, the announce­ment of the Author app was exactly what I’ve been wait­ing for. You see, I’m obsessed with ebooks. More than that, I’m madly in love with enhanced (inter­ac­tive) ebooks. What fol­lows is a fic­tion author’s take on the EULA Agreement as well as a run­down of my expe­ri­ence using the app to re-​​release my first novel this past week. Curious about the app? Read on.

 

The usual way to code ebooks. *sigh*

When Spirehouse Books released my novel, Artemis Rising, last September 2011, I went all out design­ing that thing with spe­cialty cod­ing. I spent about four months learn­ing how to design, for­mat, and code dif­fer­ent ver­sions for iPad, Nook, and Kindle. The process was clunky, glitchy, and slow. I loved every minute of it (remem­ber, I’m obsessed?), but I found myself yearn­ing for a bet­ter way.

Until now, there wasn’t a bet­ter way. Authors often men­tion Smashwords as their go-​​to aggre­ga­tor for pub­li­ca­tion. But Smashwords’ cod­ing and design is plain and lacks the capa­bil­ity for enhance­ments. Because ebook read­ers are essen­tially still in their infancy, they are rid­dled issues that require non-​​standard cod­ing, workarounds, or sim­ply giv­ing up on desired design ele­ments because valid code won’t work.

 

Enter the iBooks Author App.

I snapped up an iPad and I already had a MacBook. I just spent a cou­ple of days learn­ing the Author app and cre­ated an iBooks 2 ver­sion of my novel, which I suc­cess­fully uploaded. I’ll get to the details in a moment, but my ini­tial reac­tion? FREAKIN’ AWESOME.

Here’s a run­down of the ele­ments I used most often in the process:

Video

It took me four months of research, test­ing, and fail­ure to real­ize I couldn’t man­u­ally code in my book trailer  (still have no idea why it wouldn’t work). How did I do it with the Author app? I dragged the .m4v  file from my desk­top into the Intro Media sec­tion of the app. Done. (And no coding.)

 Photos

Took me a cou­ple of weeks to learn how to cen­ter a damn pho­to­graph for iBooks. I kid you not. But once I learned how, it was easy! *dou­ble sigh* One of those fun glitches in the iPad cod­ing, you know. Anyhoo, as you can imag­ine, drag­ging and drop­ping pho­tos into the app is effort­less. What’s really cool is that as you move pho­tos around the page, smart rulers and arrows help you line them up to other ele­ments. Can’t tell you how help­ful this was, as I had spe­cial glyph GIFs and another large image of a map on all 28 of my chap­ter header pages. Whoa. Resizing is a cinch, but the app is not set up to allow you to edit the pho­tos them­selves much. I sus­pect they’ll expand that capa­bil­ity in a later update.

Fonts

iBooks fonts kick everybody’s butt. Seriously. iBooks sim­ply has more font selec­tion and more typo­graph­i­cal fea­tures to add to your design. No other device  even comes close in this regard. Took me a bit to test the app’s lim­its on font manip­u­la­tion, but in the end I just went with what pleased my eye. I really wanted to delete the chap­ter header text and insert my own graph­i­cal title for chap­ter head­ers, but alas, I couldn’t get it to work. I’ll keep test­ing, because I could hand­code it (took me sev­eral weeks to fig­ure out that spe­cialty cod­ing too) in the pre­vi­ous ver­sion of my iPad epub file. I’ve not even attempted to try any cus­tom html cod­ing in the Author app. To be hon­est, I didn’t want to bother with cod­ing since most of what I needed was already avail­able in the app.

Inserting text

I’ve not played with every method or tried to import text from mul­ti­ple sources. I sim­ply copied the orig­i­nal text from my Word file (which was prop­erly for­mat­ted with clean styles, etc.) and dumped the whole man­u­script into the app. I hear from other sources on the Internet that there are eas­ier ways. But I was play­ing around with how I wanted to for­mat chap­ter header pages, so I wanted to try this method and take it slow. I then added in a chap­ter header page after decid­ing that that was prefer­able to using the “Preface” page for a novel. Which brings me to….

Chapter header pages

Everyone knows chap­ter pages are where most of your design ele­ments shine. And Apple does an amaz­ing job here, design­ing some beau­ti­ful ele­ments that take advan­tage of the hor­i­zon­tal and ver­ti­cal views of the iPad. A note on the views though: in gen­eral most ele­ments on the chap­ter pages must be designed twice: once for the ver­ti­cal view and once for the hor­i­zon­tal view. And just because your design looks purdy in one view…Well, much of my pre­view­ing and edit­ing work involved dou­ble check­ing both views to ensure that the read­ing expe­ri­ence was opti­mal all around. I spent a lot of time play­ing with the first chap­ter header page, because I knew that once I had that per­fect, I could then dupli­cate that page for all my chap­ters to save work time. That was fan­tas­tic. After the chap­ter header pages were set, I sim­ply added one page to each chap­ter and dumped my chap­ter text into it. Pages were added by the app to fit the text. Voila!

Glossary

Artemis Rising has a glos­sary of Portuguese and Latin words in the back mat­ter. In the old method, I used InDesign to hyper­link every word and then exported the book as an epub file (a very time-​​consuming process). The glos­sary fea­ture in the Author app is to-​​die-​​for easy to use. I high­lighted each word and added it to the glos­sary with the click of one but­ton. Later I went to the glos­sary sec­tion and pasted in each def­i­n­i­tion. That’s it. When the reader clicks on one of those spe­cial words, a lit­tle bub­ble pops up and gives them the def­i­n­i­tion right there. They don’t even have to nav­i­gate away from the page. Woot!

Preview

Previewing my design progress was ridicu­lously easy. I have iBooks open on my iPad. I plug the device into my MacBook. I hit the Preview but­ton in the Author app. I wait a bit. Presto! The new ver­sion pops in and I get to check out my updates.

TIP: Be sure to down­load the iBooks 2 app on your iPad before attempt­ing to Preview for the first time. Without it, you might run into issues. I did.

Elements I want to try next

I didn’t get a chance to use every fea­ture in this first go-​​around. But I have big plans. I want to build a photo gallery of my book trailer pro­duc­tion pho­tos (all taken by the bril­liant Beth Furumasu) as bonus back mat­ter. I want to cre­ate an inter­ac­tive map of my set­ting (I already have a map cre­ated in flash, but the folks at Apple are in a whiny fight with Adobe over Flash, so I can’t use it. Meh.) But I might be able to insert my own HTML5-​​coded map or use the inter­ac­tive wid­get within the app itself. Still explor­ing that. Doubt I can find a use for the 3D wid­get for my nov­els, but one never knows. =)

Should you use the Author app to design the iPad ver­sion of your book?

Would I rec­om­mend iBooks 2 and the iBooks Author App to indie authors and/​or small pub­lish­ers? A resound­ing YES, given a cou­ple of caveats:

  • You’ve obvi­ously got to have the hard­ware (an iPad and some type of Mac) and soft­ware (Lion OS X) needed. The app itself is free.
  • You’ve read the EULA and feel com­fort­able with what you are get­ting into.
  • You are inter­ested in doing an enhanced ebook–it’s great for fic­tion or nonfiction.

My ini­tial thoughts on the EULA Agreement controversy

The agree­ment itself is short-​​sighted and ambigu­ous. That goes with­out say­ing. But naysay­ers are for­get­ting one small detail that makes the cur­rent EULA’s stric­tures irrel­e­vant for now: the ebook files that the iBooks Author app cre­ates are far too com­plex for any other cur­rent e-​​reader device to dis­play prop­erly. In other words, you can’t read my Author-​​created novel on any other device than iPad, because devices like the Nook and Kindle aren’t sophis­ti­cated enough…yet.

I con­sider the Author app a beta. A test. A glimpse of the future. If Amazon is smart (please be smart!), they’ll hire a pro­gram­mer to cre­ate a sim­i­lar pro­gram and make it open to both PC and Mac users. And Barnes and Noble? They’d best get on it, too, or they’ll be the first of the Big Three to kick the bucket. I’m not even count­ing poor, dead Borders.

Apple’s most fool­ish move is to lock up their pow­er­ful pro­grams and apps from PC users. (Anybody else think it’s ASININE that we can’t read books we’ve bought through Apple on the Web? Silly. iCloud, where’s my damn book? *nar­rows eyes*) But in this case, that hoard­ing and elitest ten­dency is, as I said, irrel­e­vant. They are well aware that no other device can dis­play this con­tent. But that will some­day change, and once again, they’ll be left in Amazon’s dust. But that’s nei­ther here nor there.

My sec­ond thought on this: I can only sell an iBooks Author app ver­sion of my book through the iBook­store. I can sell my other ver­sions just how I always have. I have a spe­cially coded ver­sion for Nook and Kindle. I am curi­ous, though: can I sell two iPad ver­sions, per­haps giv­ing them both a sep­a­rate ISBN? One would be the Author app ver­sion and the other would be the “reg­u­lar” ver­sion. Hmm…anyone have an answer on that one?

[Publetariat Editor’s Note: for a differing, and more conservative, interpretation of the current iBooks EULA, see this post on the Passive Voice blog. The debate rages on among authors and indie publishers as to the correct interpretation of the EULA; as of this writing, Apple has remained mum.]

Next steps

We’ll all wait and see what hap­pens next in this yo-​​yo of an indus­try. The poten­tial of this app is phe­nom­e­nal, and no ambigu­ous EULA agree­ment will dimin­ish that. If you have a Mac run­ning Lion OS X, down­load the app and play around with it. Even if you don’t have an iPad. Try it out and see what could one of the great­est inno­va­tions ever in the short his­tory of ebooks.

I’ll say it again: FREAKIN’ AWESOME.

Want to see an iBooks 2 novel in action? You can down­load a sam­ple or buy Artemis Rising on your iPad. Here’s a link to the book.

Let me know what you think in the com­ments. And if you want to reprint this blog post, feel free. Just give me a credit.

 

Ooh! UPDATE: This is what might make us fall into fits of glee: an open plat­form ebook cre­ator! I just heard about this less than a minute ago.

One eBook Platform to Rule Them All

A com­pany known for long-​​form jour­nal­ism democ­ra­tizes tablet publishing.

http://​www​.tech​nol​o​gyre​view​.com/​b​l​o​g​/​m​i​m​s​s​b​i​t​s​/​2​7​5​1​9​/​?​p​1​=A3

Caveats: It’s not avail­able yet, still in pri­vate beta, and I have no idea what it might cost, if anything.

 

Upcoming West Coast Book Publishing Events for Indie Authors

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One of the staples of an author website or blog is the Calendar page. Fans can find out the next stop on your blog tour, where you might be speaking at a live event, or other notable happenings.

The problem is, in practice, these Calendar pages rarely get updated. It’s quite common to go to an author’s Calendar page and find out where they were speaking two, three, or four years ago. This makes me sad, so I’ve never put a Calendar page on my blog.

Instead, I’m listing right here the upcoming events I’ll be speaking live at, with links to the registration pages for each. These are all excellent educational opportunities being run by great organizations for writers and indie publishers.

 

Not only that, it gives me a chance to meet up with blog readers and indie authors, something that’s a lot of fun for me.

Here’s the lineup.

San Francisco Writer’s Conference

San Francisco Writer's Conference
“Bestselling authors Lisa See (Snow Flower and the Secret Fan) & Lolly Winston (Good Grief) will join legendary editor Alan Rinzler as keynote speakers at the 2012 San Francisco Writers Conference.”

San Francisco Writer’s Conference

Pre- and Post-Conference Sessions Flyer (PDF)

This conference runs Friday, Saturday and Sunday February 17 – 19, 2012 in San Francisco. In addition, there will be a “Self-Publishing Bootcamp” on Monday February 20 as well. Always well-attended, you’ll meet writers, editors, agents and others in the publishing business for sessions with over 120 presenters.

I’ll be presenting a session on blogging as well as one on book design in the Bootcamp. Check the schedule for details.

IBPA Publishing University

IBPA Publishing University

“Haven’t published yet?—IBPA Publishing University’s the place to learn how.
Just published?—IBPA’s Publishing University’s the place to learn what’s ‘now.’
Been publishing awhile?—IBPA’s Publishing University’s the place to learn more”

IBPA Publishing University

For the first time, the Independent Book Publisher’s Association (IBPA) will hold their Publishing University on the West coast. This is a major opportunity for writers, self-publishers and indie presses to get both basic and advanced training in the business of publishing.

March 9 – 10, 2012 in San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf area. I’ll be presenting a session on book design, and another on blogging. Come by and say hello!

Redwood Writers Conference

Redwood Writers Conference

“Our conference, themed ‘Next Step,’ offers you the opportunity to learn about the evolving publishing industry, to find new ways to promote your books and yourself, and to enhance your skills in the craft of writing. We offer four tracks—Craft, Genre, Marketing, and Publishing—and 16 breakout sessions. We wish, and you will wish, that you could take all 16.”

Redwood Writers Conference

Redwood Writers, a branch of the California Writers Club, is holding a full-day conference for writers and indie authors on Saturday, April 28, 2012 at the Santa Rosa Junior College in Santa Rosa, California. This is about an hour north of San Francisco.

I’ll be presenting a session on using your blog to market your books as well as participating in a panel discussion. If you come to the conference, be sure to look me up.

Ed: As usual at my presentations, I’ll have some kind of special bonus offer for attendees. But I don’t publicize these, so you’ll just have to come to get in on the good stuff.

As longtime readers know, my belief is that education is the most important part of getting ready to publish your own books. These conferences all present opportunities to take your own education in publishing to a whole new level. Added to that are the terrific opportunities to network, meet other authors, talk to vendors, and basically get a huge amount of information and education in a short period of time.

I’d love to see you at any of these events, and I hope you can make one of them if you’re in the area.

 

 

This is a cross-posting from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer.

Amazon Select: We Are All Junkies Now

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This post, by Libby Fischer Hellman, originally appeared on her Say The Word blog on 1/25/12. In it, she shares her experiences as an author in the KDP Select program, and the possibility that the program is training readers to wait until a book is free, rather than buy it at regular prices.

It’s been over a month since the Amazon KDP Select started, and we’re beginning to see the ramifications of the program. And although I’m making good money, I’m scared. 

For those of you who don’t know, Amazon created the KDP Select program to increase their base of Prime Customers (those who pay no shipping costs in return for an $80 annual fee — kind of an online Costco). The program allows customers to “borrow” one e-book per month free. Authors whose books are borrowed get a pretty nice royalty ($1.70 per borrow) if they enroll their books and give Amazon exclusive access to those books for 90 days.

But the real hook  for authors is the ability make their books free for 5 of those 90 days.  Free, you might ask? I thought you were supposed to pay for a book. True, but it’s widely believed that giving away a book for a limited time results in instant exposure. Theoretically, hundreds, if not thousands of people, will download your book, read it, fall in love with your writing, then buy all your other books.  Presto – you’re a best-seller (whatever that means in today’s environment). 

It sounded intriguing, so I decided to test the waters and enrolled a novella that wasn’t selling well at all. It went free on Christmas day, perhaps the biggest day  for Amazon downloads in the company’s history, and there were 8,000 downloads. Two days later, when it back to paid status, the sales and “borrows” rolled in, and this lovely little novella ended up making me a small fortune. 

A week later I entered my best-selling book and made it free for two days. There were over 16,000 downloads on the first day alone. I panicked and pulled it off free the next day (which I now understand was a taboo and for which I apologize.). Again, sales and borrows after it went back to paid were fantastic. 

I was hooked. And continue to be. The program has treated me well and has boosted sales of all my books, even those that aren’t enrolled. December was terrific, and it looks like January will be stellar. 

So, of course, I drank more Kool-Aid, entered 3 additional books, and made them free. The novel did well, with over 13,000 downloads, but my short story collection didn’t. For the first time, downloads were just okay, and I did not see any kind of bounce afterwards. I figured it was because short stories aren’t as popular and dismissed it. 

But then something happened.

 

Read the rest of the post to learn why Libby Fischer Hellman has concerns about the unintended consequences of KDP Select on Say The Word.

Author 2.0 Blueprint Rebooted For 2012

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Author 2.0 encapsulates the spirit of empowerment to create, publish, sell and promote with the amazing online tools available today.

I wrote the original Author 2.0 Blueprint over 2 years ago and things have changed a lot since then.

I have sporadically updated it but now I have rewritten 95% of it to create a 52 page ebook packed with useful information on writing, publishing and book marketing.

The Blueprint is entirely free so please download and use whatever part of it resonates with you.

 

It’s based on articles on the blog as well as information from other blogs. I link to many of the sites I personally find useful and I recommend further resources, some free and some paid, if you want to continue your research further.

Since The Creative Penn is a business these days, there are links to my own courses and affiliate links to others, but all of it is based on what I have found useful myself. I still aim to save you time, money and heartache on the writer’s journey, so I hope you find it useful.

You can download the new version here => Author 2.0 Blueprint 2012 Edition

It’s a PDF and if you’re having problems, please use Adobe Reader which is freely downloadable here.

You can also read it on Scribd.com, here, or have a look below

Author 2.0 Blueprint: Writing, Publishing and Book Marketing using online tools (2012 version)

It is Creative Commons licensed so please email it to people who might find it useful, embed it on your own site or use excerpts of it – as long as you don’t use it commercially and you cite TheCreativePenn.com as the source.

This has been emailed to everyone already on my list and anyone who signs up to the newsletter on the right will get the new Blueprint.

Please do let me know what you think in the comments [section on the original post], or by email: joanna AT TheCreativePenn.com

 

 

This is a cross-posting from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.

Editors Passed on Same Book Critique Group Loved: 6 Reasons Why

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This post, by Lynette Labelle, originally appeared on her website on 1/4/12.

You have a critique group and the members love, love, love your work. They’ve been nagging at you for months to send it out. You finally got up enough courage to submit and even received requests for partials and fulls, but in the end, nobody liked the manuscript enough to take it on. What gives?

Let’s take a look at six reasons agents and editors may not love your work as much as your critique group does.

1) The Relationship: This can mean different things depending on the group. For some, they’ve developed a friendship with the members of their group and can confuse “she’s a great person” with “she’s a great writer.” Some members may realize you’re not such a hot writer but don’t want to hurt your feelings, so they tell you what you want to hear instead. Others aren’t in the same league as you. Beginners will love stories written by intermediate writers and might even believe the book should be published, when in reality, it still needs a lot of work.

Lesson: Use a combination of your judgment, that of your critique group members, and feedback you get from agents and editors. If the rejections you’re getting are all canned, you really need to take another look at the book or start something fresh. If you’re getting personalized letters with specific notes on what’s wrong with the work or how to improve it, then you’re on the right track. Just remember, it’s your story. Only make changes if they feel right.

2) Super Premise: Your critique group loves your premise and thinks this is the next bestseller. They may be right. However, they don’t have the inside information agents and editors have. In this case, the industry experts may love your premise but if it’s too similar to something they’ve recently bought or something that’s currently on the market, they won’t want to touch it no matter how good it is.

Lesson: It’s not always about the writing or the idea. Sometimes it’s about who gets their idea out first.

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes four more reasons a publishing house editor might pass, on Lynette Labelle’s site.

SOPA and PIPA are Stupid, Oatmeal Nails Why

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I’m very much in support of sites like Wikipedia, which [blacked] out in protest of SOPA and PIPA. If you don’t know what they are, there’s this (the only Wikipedia page [that was] NOT blacked out) and this handy infographic. This is something that affects all of us, and it’s very important. Don’t think it’s only those crazy Americans and it doesn’t affect us – this affects everyone and is the start of a slippery slope.

[Publetariat Editor’s Note: mature content after the jump]

My books are pirated all the time. I see them on fileshare sites and there’s nothing I can do about it. And yes, it pisses me off. But it’s a part of the modern world. As the old saying goes, the only thing worse than piracy is obscurity. Sure, I’d like to see stricter controls in place to protect film and music piracy, and, of course, ebook piracy. It’s in my interests – it affects my ability to make a living. But I do not agree with SOPA or PIPA as anything like valid ways to deal with the problem. It needs to be crushed for the fucking idiocy it is.

Of course, my little corner of the web here won’t make much of a dent if I black out. Ironically, the only thing likely to happen is that I might lose a couple of books sales. But I will speak out against the bills. And I can’t think of a better way to do it than with this animated gif from The Oatmeal. It’s simply perfect:

sopa SOPA and PIPA are stupid, Oatmeal nails why

 

 

This is a reprint from Alan Baxter‘s The Word.

What Writers Need to Know About Formatting

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This post, by Brian A. Klems, originally appeared on the Writer’s Digest site on 1/23/12.

When writing your future bestseller you don’t want to have to waste too much time wondering if you should be leaving one space or two between sentences or worried that you’re committing other style faux pas. Here I’ve collected a writer’s set of FAQs about formatting (and formatting-related) issues that will help you navigate the basics.

 

What Are the Guidelines for Formatting a Manuscript?

One Space or Two Between Sentences?

When to Use a Prologue

Where Should You List Your Manuscript’s Word Count?

How Long Should Novel Chapters Be?

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes many more links to helpful articles and tips, on the Writer’s Digest site.

Can I convert my manuscript into eReader format or do I need to pay someone?

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It depends how skilled you are with computers. The way I produce eReader files is the following. I use Atlantis as my word processing program. One of its options is to save my work as an ePub file. I then transfer and open the ePub file using Calibre (a free program). I add my book cover and create an index. I can then use Calibre to convert the ePub file to any number file types, including MOBI for Kindle. I have successfully uploaded these files to a number of outlets (Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Google eBooks for example). Your word file needs to be correctly formatted to allow a smooth conversion for use in a eReader. It must be able to free-flow to accommodate the font size the reader chooses. As a result an eReader file does not have pages, headers, or footers. Follow the advice on file formatting given by Smashwords. The difficulty you have will be directly proportional to how jumbled up your word file is. Smashwords has guidance for that also. It’s not hard once you get the hang of it. I recommend installing the free eReader programs for Kindle and Nook on your computer so you can check your conversion before you up load it. Good luck.

 

An Indie Author’s Manifesto

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This post, by Martin Lastrapes, originally appeared on his Inside Martin site on 1/17/12.

(This is an extended and revised version of the article “A Self-Publisher’s Manifesto,” which was previously published in Self-Publishing Review on 7/27/11)

I am an indie author and this is my manifesto.

 

If you’re a reader, a simple lover of books, someone with no aspirations of ever writing or publishing, then there is a very good chance you’re unaware of the culture war that has been going on within the world of publishing for what feels like forever.  The war is between the large publishing houses, primarily found in New York, and indie authors.  For almost as long as the publishing industry has been a relevant cog in the entertainment machine, publishing houses have served the purpose of finding, publishing and, essentially delivering to the literary world the best authors they could find.  But they didn’t do this alone.  Literary agents—who not only represent authors, but also serve as gatekeepers for the large publishing houses—helped them.

Most any writer who has ever aspired to get published has learned the hard way that finding a literary agent to represent you is, arguably,  harder than actually getting your manuscript accepted for publication by a large publishing house.  And this is not by accident.  As gatekeepers, the literary agents weed out the “bad” talent and wrangle in the “good” talent, making it easier for the large publishing houses to pick which handful of writers they’ll be publishing during any given year.  As someone who has been rejected by more agents than I care to count, I have a pretty good grasp on how the system is intended to work.

First, the author writes a manuscript (i.e. a novel, a memoir, a collection of short stories, etc.).  Once they finish, the author writes a query letter, which is, essentially, a one-page pitch to a literary agent.  In the query letter, the writer should not only tell the literary agent what their book is about, but also why anybody would bother reading it or, more importantly, buying it.  This last part is important, because agents earn money on commission, which means they only get paid if they can sell your book.  So, even if they personally love the book, but don’t think they can sell it, they aren’t going to represent it.

If the agent likes what you’re pitching in the query letter, then they’ll likely ask you to send them the first 10-15 pages.  If they like those pages, then they’ll likely ask for a partial, which are the first 50 pages.  If they’re still satisfied with what they’re reading, then they’ll ask to see the full manuscript.  After looking at it, they will either decide to represent your book or reject it.  There is also the possible middle ground where they might ask you to make revisions to the book that will, in their estimation, make it more attractive to publishers.  And even if you’ve gotten this far and the literary agent decides to represent you, it’s going to take nearly a year (sometimes longer) before you come to that agreement.

Of course, getting a literary agent is no guarantee of getting published.  They still have to try and sell your manuscript to a publishing house.  There are plenty of authors who have secured literary agents, only to find out that the agent couldn’t sell their books.  But if you are one of those rare authors who have cleared all the hurdles and have had your book published by a large publishing house, one of the first things you will learn is that you’re going to be on your own when it comes to promoting and marketing the book.  Publishing houses have limited budgets for marketing their authors and first-time authors aren’t likely to get much support.  Ironically, if your book doesn’t sell, then the publisher will be less likely to buy your next book.

 

Read the rest of the post on Inside Martin.

Kindle Users and Library Patrons Made Equal in Privacy, but Only in California

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This post, by Ariel Bogle, originally appeared on the the Melville House Books site on 1/23/12.

It’s almost impossible to resist peeking at a friend’s bookshelf when we’re invited into their home.  But this sentiment becomes a little scarier when it isn’t a welcome guest snooping on us and noting that dog-eared copy of Harry Potter, but a mega-corporation who might sell such information to the highest-bidder.

 

MobyLives has always endeavored to keep track of the fast-moving privacy issues affecting ebook readers.  In this 2010 report, for example, Moby was concerned about the amount of information Amazon’s Kindle recorded about its customers. Beyond the reader’s name, email, address and credit card details, the Kindle records book searches and notes reader annotations, as well as the exact books and pages read. In a worrying twist — hidden in the fine print — Amazon reserves the right to share that information with law enforcement agencies, civil litigants and with Amazon’s own product suppliers.

This is alarming — what you read can reveal a lot about you. While librarians and bookstore owners fight ongoing battles against disclosing information about their customers, most companies that develop electronic reading devices are missing in action when it comes to bringing privacy protections into the digital realm.

 

Read the rest of the post on the Melville House Books site.