Business End

Articles about the business aspects of publishing and self-publishing.

Quick Link: Should You Start a Video Blog?

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Bless Laura Drake for being braver than me! She decided to start a video blog and posted her experiences and why you should start a vlog. She even included her first one at Writers In The Storm for you to check out!

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Should You Start a Video Blog?

By Laura Drake

 

I’ve read so much about how video blogs are the next big thing. I swore I’d never do that. I mean, come on. I’m old, I’m fluffy, I don’t think well on my feet, don’t know anything about the tech involved, and I say ‘anyway’ all the time.  Oh, and I’d have to do my hair and makeup. Other than that, sign me up!

But then a few things happened. I read that in January 2016 Facebook announced there are more than eight billion video views and more than 100 million hours of video watched on the platform daily.

That’s an amazing stat, but it doesn’t negate even one of my arguments above.

Then I ran across this video:

Oh my God. I’ll bet I’ve watched that 9 times by now, and she has almost a million hits on it (more, after today, I’ll warrant). Do I judge her for being goofy? Hell no. She’s badass.

Dammit, this woman just negated all my arguments.

I eased into this the same way I convinced myself to write my first book – I’d write the book, get it out of my system, then hit delete!  NO one would ever have to see it. Boom.

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Quick Links: Looking for a Book Editor? Here’s How Much You Should Expect to Pay

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If you have never hired a book editor and are curious at how much they cost or want to compare what you have paid, then read on for Blake Atwood’s post at The Write Life. Be warned, you might want to gird your loins for sticker shock. But while these services don’t come cheap they are often necessary to produce a quality (and sellable) book.

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Looking for a Book Editor? Here’s How Much You Should Expect to Pay

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I wish I could tell you that proofreading will always cost one cent per word, copyediting two cents per word, and developmental editing three cents per word, but the truth is much hazier than that.

While I will provide hard numbers, you should first know certain essentials about hiring an editor.

This information may help you understand why editing costs seem to vary widely from one editor to the next, but it should also assist you in comparing possible editors.

How much you can expect to pay an editor depends on at least eight variables:

1. What kind of editing are you seeking?

Developmental editing (aka content editing, big picture, or macro editing) costs more than copyediting (aka micro editing), and copyediting costs more than proofreading.

2. What’s your total word count?

Editors charge by word count or page count. Some may charge by the hour, but that’s rare, especially for editing long books.

Knowing your total word count is essential to an editor’s cost estimations for taking on your project.

3. How complex is your book?

Editing academic work to a niche style guide will cost more than editing a novel per the Chicago Manual of Style.

Editing a book with hundreds of footnotes or endnotes should cost more than editing a book without citations.

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Quick Link:How to Start Your Own Publishing Company

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Not every indie writer needs to become a publisher, but there are a lot of advantages even if the only books you publish are your own. But it is always nice to give back and if you have figured out how to self-publish, there are a lot of people out there who could use your help. In that spirit, Writer Unboxed‘s shares her experience with us.

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How to Start Your Own Publishing Company

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Over the past few months, we’ve talked about what it means to be an ‘indie’ author and why some writers choose this path. Today we’ll discuss how to turn your writing into a business by starting your own publishing company. While today’s publishing platforms don’t require you to start a business in order to publish your work, doing so offers many advantages—maximizing tax write-offs, controlling and protecting your work, shielding your personal assets in the event of a lawsuit, conveying professionalism, and, of course, the pride of running your own business.

Indie Navigator founder Mary Shafer believes that starting a publishing company can create plenty of value for self-publishing authors, whether you’re about to publish your first book or you’ve been at this for a while. “Creating a publishing company does two main things: it establishes you as a serious indie publisher who may or may not handle the work of other authors, rather than simply a self-published author. It sends the message that you take the business end of publishing seriously, even if you only publish your own work. Second, it gives your products a professional quality that makes them a lot more attractive to book buyers, librarians, and other parties who may be interested in buying or licensing rights to your work. Plus, it makes your company a lot more attractive to buyers should you ever decide to retire. ‘Sun City Press’ is a lot more impressive-sounding and easy to market as an imprint than ‘Joe Schmoe Books.’”

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Quick Links: Author Blogs: 5 Bad Reasons for Authors to Blog and 5 Good Ones

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I LOVE this post by In my day job, you know the one that pays the bills, I develop WordPress sites for people.  I still get people who think that if they put a post or two, the world will throw money at their feet. I feel bad and I try to explain to them that a blog is like a baby. It needs constant feeding and care for many years before you see any results. Alas, there are a lot of people out there that will tell you differently. So go check out Anne R. Allen‘s post on her blog and see if you agree!

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Author Blogs: 5 Bad Reasons for Authors to Blog and 5 Good Ones

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5 Bad Reasons for Author Blogs

1) Getting Rich Quick

Nothing infuriates me more than those books and blogs promising writers they can make a gazillion dollars of “passive income” with a blog in the next month if they take this overpriced course or buy that book of rehashed advice from 2005.

The only people making a lot of “passive income” from blogging are the people selling the overpriced courses and worthless advice. Pyramid schemes always provide “passive income” for the people at the top of the pyramid. That’s not going to be you at this point. The boom is over.

Blogging is work. Writing is work. There’s nothing “passive” about it. Anybody who tells you otherwise is lying.

I used to subscribe to a couple of hype-y “how-to-blog” blogs, but I had to unsubscribe because these people are getting so desperate. One blogger now sends an email 15 minutes after you click through to read his post saying, “You’ve had enough time to read my post. Now share it to Facebook.”

Creepy!! I’d just shared his post to Twitter, but I deleted the Tweet and unsubscribed. You’re not the boss of me, dude. And I’m not responsible for your bad life choices. If you really were making the fortune you claimed to be making a decade ago, why didn’t you invest it?

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Quick Link: Top Time Savers for Social Media and Blogging

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A really great post from Elizabeth Spann Craig on how she saves time with her social media responsibilities. Worthy of a bookmark!

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Top Time Savers for Social Media and Blogging

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

The biggest complaint I hear from writers is that there aren’t enough hours in the day to do all that we need to do.

Tasks facing writers include reading publishing-related news, doing research, promoting, updating websites and social media…on top of working on our books.

And most everyone is doing the above in addition to a day job, parenting, or caregiving.

It’s a lot, for sure.  The only thing that I can recommend is that we save time where we can.

With that in mind, I’m sharing my own biggest ways of saving time.  With these methods I give myself more time to do…whatever.  It could be more time to write, more time to do housework/cook/run errands, more time to spend with my family.

I started to include all of my tips in one post, but realized it was far too long for a post. I’ve divided them up by category: social media and blogging, writing, book production, and general tips.  I’ll run this series on Fridays for the next month.

Social Media

It’s commonly referred to as a time suck and it certainly can be. For this reason, I keep myself off of social media as much as I can. If I spent as much time on Twitter as I appear to, I’d never get anything done.

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Quick Link: 7 Essentials for Your Book Launch

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Today’s offering is about that most wonderful of things, getting ready to launch your book!  Hooray for you! But before you break open the champagne, check out the post by Keely Brooke Keith at Helping Writers Become Authors to make sure you have the basics down!

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7 Essentials for Your Book Launch

by Keely Brooke Keith

Congratulations, it’s a book! You accomplished something rare and impressive just by completing your masterpiece, not to mention surviving blood-boiling revisions and the agony of the publishing process. Now, the book launch date has been set and—surprise!—you have more work to do!

Orchestrating a book launch sounds daunting, but people need your book. Take a long slow breath and relax into the creative process of promoting your release. While there is no one-size-fits-all promotion plan, there are certain essential tasks that both traditionally published authors and independent authors should do to ensure a fulfilling book launch.

How to Prepare for Your Book Launch in 7 Steps

Following, are a few basics to get you started.

Book Launch Step #1: Ready Your Website

Your author website is the online version of your professional office or storefront. It could also be your catalog, your bulletin board, or your yearbook. It should not be a cobweb-covered single page you set up years ago and haven’t touched since.

Unless you’re an avid blogger, the author website won’t be how readers discover you. Instead, it’s where they will come to learn more about you. Your web address should be the simplest form of your author name as possible and should be the link you share more than any other.

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Quick Links – Should You Pay for a Publicist?

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posting at Jane Friedman, shares her experiences and costs of hiring a publicist.  As an indie author, you should be willing to spend a little money on a great cover and a great editor, but is it worth it to spend more money on a publicist? What have your experiences been?

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Should You Pay for a Publicist?

by Jane Friedman
You’ve written a great book and—if you’ve self-published—probably shelled out for the services of a good editor and cover designer. The last thing you want is to pay for a publicist. But in a sea of authors, how will potential readers know about your book?As a traditional-turned-hybrid author publishing with She Writes Press, I foot the bill for all the publishing costs but reap a much higher percentage of royalties for both print and ebook sales for my debut memoir, Accidental Soldier: A Memoir of Service and Sacrifice in the Israel Defense Forces. My book is distributed like a traditional one, in all the retail channels; distribution is a major challenge facing self-pubbed authors, and traditional distribution is an advantage of my particular press.

I invested in a publicist to break into mainstream media, which led me to identify a number of online and print women’s media sites that would be perfect for my coming-of-age memoir and mother-daughter story. Of course I could have tried approaching these editors on my own, but that would have been time-consuming, and I didn’t have the established and nurtured contacts. Accidental Soldier has been featured with The Reading Room, Brit + Co, Writer’s Digest, Reader’s Digest, SheKnows.com, Working Mother magazine, Teen Vogue, and Seventeen—and that’s just a few. I would have never gotten that far on my own.

However, good publicists are not cheap. They command higher payment than a quality editor because they spend more hours over a longer time period working for you and your book.

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Quick Links: The 5 Most Common Mistakes Writers Make When Seeking Book Reviews

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Reviews are very important for all authors, but especially for indie authors. Good reviews help legitimize your writing and encourage other readers to check out your book. But getting reviews are very difficult.  At Live Write Thrive, Gisela Hausmann gives out tips to avoid stepping on your own toes when trying to get reviews.

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The 5 Most Common Mistakes Writers Make When Seeking Book Reviews

Today’s guest post is by top Amazon reviewer Gisela Hausmann. This content originally ran on the Huffington Post, and it is reprinted here with her permission.

The day before yesterday, I received an email asking me to review an indie author’s book. Somewhat ironically, this request email stated, “As you liked (title of book), you might also love my newest book, (title), because it’s in the same category as the book you already reviewed . . .”

I remembered the book I supposedly “liked.” I didn’t like it at all; I had awarded it with a negative review.

Obviously, this indie author made a mistake; most likely, because he rushed trying to find as many top reviewers as possible to whom he could offer his book “in return for an objective and unbiased review.”

Desperately Seeking Reviews

Seeking reviews from Amazon top reviewers is a common practice among indie authors. Since only about one percent of readers review the books they read, indie authors, who don’t have a huge marketing budget, try to build up the number of reviews their books receive by asking top reviewers like me to read and review their books.

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Quick Links: How To Best Optimize Your Blog Posts for SEO

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You have probably heard about SEO, and even know that it means Search Engine Optimization and that having good SEO means your site gets better traffic. However, SEO is a tricky thing, even for professionals. Over at Bad Redhead Media, Rachel Thompson shares some great tips on how to optimize your blog posts to get the most you can out of them. 

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How To Best Optimize Your Blog Posts for SEO

By Rachel Thompson

When I talk with authors about optimizing their blog posts for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), most look at me as though I’m speaking in tongues. And maybe I am: SEO is a different language when you think about it. Authors aren’t socialized to learn this stuff. It’s only through understanding the importance of book marketing, and how SEO fits into our author platform, that we realize, “holy shit, this optimization stuff truly does have an impact — maybe I should take it more seriously,” and so we do.

Well, some of us anyway.

What is Blog Optimization?

According to Hubspot:

When you optimize your web pages — including your blog posts — you’re making your website more visible to people who are looking for keywords associated with your brand, product, or service via search engines like Google.

Once I got serious about this publishing career thingy, I studied, took classes, hired a professional (Barb Drozdowich of Bakerview Consulting who is amazing) and switched to WordPress.org (from Blogger — if you’re an author, WordPress.org is, by far, the preferred publishing platform of the industry). My decades in Big Pharma didn’t prepare me for the enormity of the multitude of tasks required for online publishing, but it certainly helped me to embrace it.

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Quick Links: Breathe! The Copyeditor Has Your Back

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One of the most important things you can do as an indie author is hire professionals to help you. According to author and freelance editor, Dario Ciriello one of the best choices is a good copyeditor. Read Dairo’s post at Janice Hardy’s Fiction University and see if you agree. 

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Breathe! The Copyeditor Has Your Back

By Dario Ciriello

Part of the Indie Author Series

One of the things a good copyeditor will do, beyond dealing with infelicities of grammar, syntax, style, composition, and general meaning, is cover your back. And I mean totally cover it.

In my experience, what most indie authors require is actually a combination of line, copy, and general editing1, not least because the cost of the several editing passes a big publishing house would do (general/developmental edit, line edit, copyedit) can add up to several thousand dollars, a prohibitive cost for the vast majority of indies.

When editing a manuscript for an indie client, the copyeditor is in a watchful mode, consciously noting and monitoring a broad swath of detail and information. The characters’ physical characteristics, the revealed details of their backstories, geographical locations, dates and times events take place, even character names—all these are prone to inconsistency and slippage over the course of a long work and revisions, and it’s the copyeditor’s job to spot these errors and fix them. But that’s just the beginning.

A copyeditor takes little for granted. If, say, I find a reference to a company called Datavision in the text, my first instinct is to wonder if it might not be styled DataVision, or Data Vision, and I’ll google it right away to see if a correction is needed. If I’m working on a science fiction novel and the author states that the universe is 13.8 billion years old, I’ll check that this figure is current and correct—science and tech are especially tricky, since our knowledge is increasing at such a rate that “facts” are constantly changing.

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Quick Link: Clause by Clause: Options

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We have another great post on contracts from at Pub Crawl. This time the topic is options clauses!

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Clause by Clause: Options

  Aug 8 2016
Hi everyone! This is the first installment of a new series I’m going to be writing here at Pub Crawl: Clause by Clause. As our resident contracts expert, I’m going to do my best to demystify this part of the publishing process for you, one clause at a time. Today I’m talking about Option Clauses.What is an Option Clause?
In publishing, an Option Clause gives the Publisher the first look–dibs, if you will–on the next book an Author writes.

That’s it. Really.

Rewards
Why is it important to a Publisher to get the option on your next book? And what are the advantages for you, the Author? Publishers want to form successful business partnerships. They choose to publish authors they believe in, ones they think will bring a good return on investment, and whose books they like and want to champion. If they find an Author who does all of the above, of course they want to continue to work together. Publishers–like agents–can have a vision for your career and often want to be a part of building it. Allowing them the first look at your next work is a courtesy, an acknowledgement of all the time and money and effort they’ve already put in on your behalf, and it gives them the opportunity to persuade you to stay and take the next step in your career with them.

“Wait, persuade me?”  you might ask. “You mean, if the Publisher has the option on my next book and makes an offer I don’t have to take it? I can still walk away?”

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Quick Link: Selling Books on Social Media: 4 Steps to Less Wasted Time

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Want some help getting your social media responsibilities under control? (This is coming from someone who just spent way to much time on Pinterest.) Chris Syme has some great tips on how to make the most of your social media marketing over at Anne R. Allen’s Blog.. With Ruth Harris.

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Selling Books on Social Media: 4 Steps to Less Wasted Time

by Chris Syme

A mind-boggling 78 percent of Americans have a social media profile. And a little over half of them are on more than one channel. It is a given that authors can develop loyal audiences and sell more books with the help of social media. But how many social media channels are enough?

Even though it may be true that you have potential readers on every social media channel, it is a waste of your time and resources to try to connect with people everywhere. As the emphasis in social media marketing switches from number of fans (reach) to connecting and building loyal fans (engagement), it’s time to build a social media strategy around developing a troop of engaged followers that will help carry your valuable content to their friends.

It’s time to learn how to get more engagement with less social media.

Four Steps to Less Wasted Social Media Time

There are four key steps to building this new less is more strategy with social media marketing: find your audience, designate your primary channel, build your outpost channels, and upgrade your content quality. Before we dig into the four steps, let me define the terms primary channel and outpost channel.

What is a Primary Channel?

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Quick Links: How to Write (and Not to Write) an Author Bio

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At Fiction University, guest poster Gail Carriger writes on how to give your author bio a little pizazz and make it part of your marketing tools instead of something to just check off your to-do list. On a personal note, I am a big fan of Gail’s Parasol Protectorate series. If you like humor, steampunk, and a little romance check them out!

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How to Write (and Not to Write) an Author Bio

By Gail Carriger, @gailcarriger 

Part of the How They Do It Series

I still have readers who tell me they purchased my first book because they liked the bio. Sure, the cover got them to pick it up, and the description got them intrigued, but they bought it because of the bio. I think this is uncommon. I took a risk with my bio and it worked.

But first, here’s what most authors do…

Your Fill-In-The-Blank Author Bio

[Name] lives in [City] where she pretends to be a [pithy comment on boring day job] when she would rather be writing. She spends her free time [standard hobby] and [less standard hobby]. She also likes to [quirky and slightly off base skill – like fencing or black belt in some combat thingy ]. She lives with a [tolerant, saintly, long-suffering] spouse/partner and two [witty descriptor] [cats/children] and a [dog/garden].

So, that’s your formula.

Why would readers pick up a book written by someone who doesn’t have the imagination to come up with a unique bio?

My recommendation? Break from tradition.

How?

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Quick Links: Where Do Consumers Get Their e-Books From?

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Ever wonder what the breakdown of e-book purchases looked like?  While not a comprehensive sample, at Good EReader ran a poll to find out where people got their eBooks from, and the results are still interesting.

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Where Do Consumers Get Their e-Books From?

By

buy nowThere are many places where readers can find and download e-books. There are a number of online retailers such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo that sell them directly.  Your local library likely has a robust digital collection or sometimes piracy is just a click away. Good e-Reader has been running a poll for the past three weeks where we asked the question “where do you get your e-books from?” Over 827 people responded and we now have some fairly comprehensive data.

Unsurprisingly Amazon was the most popular digital ecosystem that people get their e-books from. Over 258 people, which represented 29% of the vote regularly purchased all of their e-books from Amazon.

Amazon releases new e-readers and Fire tablets every year, so their hardware has a high rate of adoption. Not everyone upgrades their device to the latest and greatest, some continue to use older devices, while others use the Kindle app on their smartphone or tablet.

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Quick Link: Publishing: Kindle Scout Case Study

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Do you Kindle Scout? I do, as a reader I love it. I love being able to help authors generate buzz for their titles and finding new works to read. If your book is selected by Amazon, you get a contract and I get a free book.

Even if your book doesn’t get published by Amazon, you can still self-publish. The readers who voted for you are notified so they can buy the story. I have, especially if the price is right. would know how great Kindle Scout is for authors. Check out her Kindle Scout experienc at Self Publishing Advice Center

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Publishing: Kindle Scout Case Study

kindlescoutBy Katherine Hayton on July 14, 2016

New Zealand novelist Katherine Hayton shares her inspiring success story about her fourth novel’s success in a Kindle Scout campaign, leading to a publishing contract with Amazon’s own imprint, Kindle Press.

Back in January, I ran a Kindle Scout campaign for my fourth full-length novel, The Three Deaths of Magdalene Lynton, and was accepted for publication by Kindle Press on the 8th February. After the effort of the campaign, I was excited to be selected, and so far my experience with Kindle Press has shown me they can sell a lot more of my books than I could manage on my own. I’m in my second month (release date 29th March) and I think I’ll have earned out my advance by the end of this month, or early next month, so it seems on track with their expectation of 25k over five years.

Regular Promotions by Kindle

Because they’re an Amazon imprint, they have access to place their published books on the advertising slots available to Amazon, and their aim is to place each book in some kind of promotion every ninety days or so. These range from month long $1.99 promotions in genre selections to individual book titles featured on the $0.99 Kindle Daily Deals. From talking with other authors in Kindle Press, there are mixed results among the books they’ve selected. Some authors have taken a year or more to earn out their advance of $1,500, while others have earned over $12,000 in their first year.

Degree of Author Control

An author with Kindle Press retains a lot more control than they would with a larger press, so I had final say over all edits, title, cover, and book description. Anything else (eg categories) can be suggested but not necessarily taken on board. The pricing is determined by word count and seems unshakable apart from a book’s inclusion in discounted pricing promotions. If there’s anything about the book that Kindle Press thinks will harm the chances of promotion slots, they’ll discuss it directly with the author so they have the chance to either change it or stick to their own vision.

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