Business End

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

Marketing Monday: Platform Building The Tortoise Way

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If you’re a highly sensitive person like me, then you’ll understand how stressful marketing yourself, your product or your business can be. If you aren’t an HSP, then today’s marketing landscape with its hurry, scurry push in social media probably doesn’t bother you. You may, in fact, thrive on the pressure, the excitement. The downside to that is that mistakes can be made at a faster rate and be more challenging to correct.

It’s also true that HSPs will suffer more stress and anxiety if we jump into all of the things we’re told we should be doing before we take the time to fully plan where we want to end up or if we don’t pace ourselves the way we need to — at a slower rate than the rest of the world. Regardless of whether you’re thinking about blogging or using Twitter or Facebook or any other social media, as an HSP it is imperative to think it through and take your time.

I’m currently working my way through Kristen Lamb’s WE ARE NOT ALONE: The Writer’s Guide to Social Media, which I highly recommend, but I have to continuously remind myself that I am not in a race. As Kristen has pointed out in previous blog posts, writing is more of a marathon than a sprint. Building an author platform goes right along with that. I may not be able to fit in 15 minutes each for Facebook, Twitter and MySpace (or whatever other social media outlet I’ve chosen) everyday, but I can certainly spend that much time on one per day, blog at least once per week and still have time left to work on my “masterpiece”.

Jumping into anything before you’re truly ready, or even mostly ready, gives a higher possibility of failure. It also means a greater possibility of losing your passion to write altogether. Still, it’s very difficult to reign in our enthusiasm, especially if we’re newer to the process. As Jody Hedlund says in her post The Pressure To Jump In Too Soon, “It’s hard enough to have patience. Therefore, when we get involved in the cyber writing world, eventually, we might begin to feel left behind or the pressure to keep up with what others are doing—even if we’re right where we need to be.”

Jody suggests 5 things newer writers can do to keep those feelings of pressure to a minimum, which I think really speak to HSPs:

  1. Concentrate on your writing because that is what will sell.
  2. You can put aside the book you’ve written without editing it. Consider it a project to revisit later when you’ve had more experience.
  3. If your story isn’t working or you’ve lost the passion for a project, it’s okay to put it away unfinished.
  4. Take the time to try out other genres. You may find your best writing isn’t in the genre you thought it was.
  5. Most importantly, spend less time thinking about what everyone else is doing and more time being you. As an HSP you know you’re unique. Capitalize on it.

It’s not the popular choice to take the slow lane when trying to forge ahead in a writing career, but for highly sensitive people it can be the best way. What other ways have you discovered to keep your career moving ahead while maintaining the balance you need as an HSP?

 

 

This is a reprint from Virginia Ripple‘s The Road to Writing.

Here Iz Some Mental Gymnastics. Let Me Show You It.

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So, I was talking with a friend of mine, Jackie Barbosa (who, btw writes some REALLY great historical erotic romance you should check out), and we were discussing changing attitudes toward self-publishing and in particular RWA which is Romance Writers of America.

I’ve never joined RWA, and I don’t see that reality changing. They would have to change their attitudes pretty severely to be more embracing of all types of genuine publishing achievement and not just publishing achievement that props up the old guard. They would also have to talk about relevant publishing topics and not just NY print publishing as if that’s all that exists or the “one true way to making a living”.

For example, right now, unless things have changed while I wasn’t looking, you aren’t a full member (i.e. acknowledged as a published author and allowed on panels at conferences and to officially promote your work and etc), unless you have been published by a publisher they have “approved” as a “really real publisher”.

This leaves out some epublished authors (last I checked. Sometimes epubbed authors are “real authors” in RWA world and sometimes they aren’t. I’m not sure if that tempest in a teapot has died down yet), and it leaves out all self-published authors.

RWA also has book awards called the RITA. Jackie was commenting on the midlisters who have left their publishers to go indie and said it will be interesting to see what kind of mental acrobatics RWA has to perform to explain and justify why one of these author’s St. Martin’s published book is eligible for RITA consideration, but the author’s self-published book, which has made her more money than any of her trad pubbed books… isn’t.

I’m dragging up the popcorn if/when that justifying goes down. Because it will be hella entertaining.

RWA basically bills themselves as a professional organization for romance authors whose main goal is supposedly to help romance writers get to the point of making a living writing. This is ostensibly what most official, large, genre writing organizations are about. But here is the thing…

It’s not really about that and never has been. It’s about validation, and ego, and wait for it… vanity.

So all this time, when people have said: “People just self-publish for vanity and because they are impatient and stupid and lame and can’t write…”

Well, sort of the definition of vanity is when you do something just because it “looks good” and makes you feel “validated”. What is the trad pub circus but a validation parade? Again, I don’t hate NY publishers. Most of the drama and silliness isn’t even being perpetuated by NY publishers. It’s being perpetuated by writers and writer organizations and a handful of agents who are too out of touch with reality to bother mentioning.

I am not in any way bitter. Why would I be? I’m thankful that I was smart enough to avoid all the drama and heartache that seems to be inherent in that system from start to finish for most authors.

Only 1% of authors make a living writing fiction. And here is where the intellectual dishonesty with many of these writer organizations start to show through. I’m in that 1%. I’m making a lot more than most NY published authors. And yet… according to RWA’s litmus test, I’m not a published author.

Huh?

So is publishing as a career about vanity or is it about business? Because I thought it was about business. Wouldn’t it be much more fair, if the genuine goal is about making a living, to do things based on income/sales levels?

RWA has always seemed like a hen party/social club to me. Which is why I’ve never joined and don’t foresee a future in which I would, unless I was treated like a “real author”. Because, I am one. When someone is making a career-level income, you can’t keep pretending they don’t have a career just because they don’t have a certain label on the spine of their books.

As things continue to change in publishing these organizations with special rules for those who have at some point in their past had a NY pub, even if they don’t have one now, is going to look more and more dishonest and just plain silly. I can’t wait for the show to start.

 

This is a reprint from Zoe Winters‘ Weblog.

Do Pre-Publication Promotion And Sanity Go Together ?

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So someone writes a book and wants other people to buy it.

The day that book comes out, there will be at least 2,000 other books seeing the light of day.

Hence, all the talk about pre-publication promotion, author platforms, and a writer’s audience.

If you try to do everything that everyone says to promote a book you’ll evaporate in a cloud of angst.

My book will be published in late May and I began pre-publication promotion about a year and a half ago–long before I began writing the book. I took the idea and themes of the book and shared them as widely as I could. It gave me some valuable information on the small percentage of people who would be interested in the book I would write 🙂

There are not as many people interested in a book that tells the story of going from seemingly interminable war to an enduring and noble peace as there are folks who would rather escape reality with a good vampire story.

I’ve got nothing against anyone’s reading appetite but I do need to be clear about my book being potentially hard to sell.

So, for months now (since the book was being written and through the editing processes), I’ve been trying various recommended ways to promote it.

I learned early-on to steer clear of people and sites that were trying to sell me some amazing method they claimed would guarantee  sales of my book when it’s released. I guess I’m just an Eskimo and those folks are trying to sell me snow…

The key approach I’ve learned is called, by some, Relationship Marketing:

Let people get to know you, share your goals and philosophy, give them support in what they’re doing; then, maybe they’ll be interested in your book…

And, even if they don’t want your book, they may know someone who does.

Before I learned some of the finer points of relationship marketing, I was introduced to Seth Godin’s book, Unleashing The Idea Virus (buy it here or download it free here).

Very basically, he talks about finding “hives” (or tribes) of people and unleashing your idea, thereby “infecting” people with it. The best thing that can happen is for the tribe to have a lot of “sneezers”–people who naturally share anything they like as widely as they can.

Relationship marketing contains elements of Godin’s ideas plus social networking.

I tried, as hard as I could, to utilize Facebook and Twitter but I’ve pulled my involvement in both way back; the signal to noise ratio is just too heavily weighted toward “noise” for a book like mine to make much impact.

During the months I was trying to use those tools, I slowly became quite temporarily insane 🙂

Luckily, I also started this blog and worked to build friendships with other writers with blogs…

I’ve also been using the virtual world, Second Life, to build a network of friends who might like my book. You can read more about that here and here.

Now, here I am, a little over two months from book launch, brain-frazzled, but willing to forge ahead and work my way back to sane coherency in my promotion efforts.

I’m also going to try to squeeze in more time on the forums at BestsellerBound 🙂

My methods and mistakes are certainly not a guide for any other writer. Each of us has to evaluate the potential pools of readers and how best to approach them; each must select their own set of tools.

One bit of advice I think could apply across the board is to incorporate relationship-building into your promotion efforts. I think you’ll find the results will last a lot longer 🙂
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Follow the “co-author” of Notes from An Alien, Sena Quaren:
On Facebook
On Twitter
AND, Get A Free Copy of Our Book

Why Some E-Books Cost More Than The Hardcover

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This post, by Nathan Bransford, originally appeared on his Nathan Bransford: author blog on 3/10/11.

The good people at Reddit recently noticed something peculiar and engaged in a spirited debate about it. The topic? A bete noir for many an e-book reader:

E-books priced more than their print edition.

How could this possibly be? Paper costs more than electrons, so surely e-books should be cheaper, right?

Believe it or not, this isn’t a glitch. And it’s not happening because publishers are asleep at the wheel either.

Come down the rabbit hole with me into the wholesale/agency tunnel, and I’ll tell you why this is happening.

Ye Olde Wholesale

First, as always, we have to start with some dry background information. For a very long time publishers have had a system where they set the suggested retail price and take roughly half of that. Whatever the bookseller wants to charge from there is their business.

So, napkin math, if a book is listed with a $24.99 cover price the publisher would get about $12.50 of that, which they would split with the author, cover their costs, hopefully make a profit, etc. (Further background here.)

If the book sells for $24.99 the bookseller also gets $12.50. Or, if the bookseller discounts it to $19.99, well, that comes out of the bookseller’s take and and the bookseller gets about $7.50. Heck, the bookseller could charge the consumer $10.00 and take a loss. That’s their business. The publisher still gets their $12.50.

For a long time this system worked without too much disruption. Then came Amazon.

Enter the Kindle
 

Read the rest of the post on Nathan Bransford’s blog.

Book Launch: Breakdown Of The Pentecost Launch Process

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OK, the dust has settled and it’s time to report back on how the launch of Pentecost went. Many of you have been asking so here it is. I also did a podcast about book launches with the marvelous Zoe Winters if you’d like to listen as well.

I’m baring my soul here, so please do leave a comment with your thoughts on how you think it went! The more we help each other, the more we can rise together.

The Results

Amazon change their rankings every hour and I did sleep during launch week but Pentecost by Joanna Penn made the Amazon bestseller lists – these were the best rankings.

# Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #370 Paid in Kindle Store
* #4 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Fiction
* #5 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Religious Fiction
#62 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction
#1 in Movers & Shakers on 12 Feb
#93 on Amazon.co.uk in Kindle > Kindle ebooks > Crime, Thrillers & Mystery > Thrillers.

Total sales were 683 books between 7 -28 February. 133 print and the rest ebooks. It’s not blockbuster sales but it’s my first novel in the religious thriller/action-adventure genre and as my back-list grows, so will the numbers. Most authors start off by selling low numbers and then they grow over time, so I am content with this as the starting position.

The following are the aspects that went into the launch. I hope it helps you with planning your own.

 

Base Author Platform: The Creative Penn Blog.

Without this baseline, I wouldn’t have been able to do most of the following so I consider my blog to be the most important asset I have to market myself and my books. I’ve been blogging here for over two years now, posting an article, video or podcast every two days consistently.

In terms of basic stats, The Creative Penn has just over 5000 subscribers from RSS and email lists and 21,000 uniques per month according to Google Analytics. The Alexa ranking for the US is currently 31,266. The Creative Penn podcast is getting around 2000 downloads per month mostly from the US, China and UK, around 40% of that on iTunes.

I’ve blogged the whole journey of Pentecost – click here for all the posts. You guys have helped me choose the book cover as well as refine the back blurb and have witnessed my growth as a fiction writer. I’ve shared it all and I think that helped sales because some of you like the religious thriller genre and were ready to buy the book when it launched, even just to support me. Thanks so much for your support!

I also sent out review copies to people who were willing to write reviews (no, I didn’t influence what they wrote!). Check them out on Amazon.com. These really help sales so I appreciate every one. Authors really value reviews so that is always a great thing to do if you love a book.

Cost: Blogging takes a whole lot of time but very little setup cost. I also love it and blog as a hobby anyway :) Totally worth every moment I spend on growing this site! (Click here to read about my Blogging for Authors and Writers short course)

Social Networking: Twitter and Facebook

Twitter is my main social network and I love it! I’m very active on it @thecreativepenn and have set out my principles here before. The aim is always to be useful and so I have spent the last two years tweeting links about writing, publishing and book marketing as well as networking. This meant that I had a good audience of around 17,000 followers for launch week. I used that network to tweet links to my guest posts as well as rankings and buy now links. The response was excellent during the week with followers telling me rankings overnight in America and being very encouraging. It’s hard to measure tangible results from Twitter but there was definitely a buzz during launch week!

The Creative Penn Facebook page is a growing place where I can interact more freely with people and there are around 1200 fans so far. We have some more in depth conversations and I post almost every day there. (Come and join us!) Again I shared the journey and links to videos, posts and other things but I think this audience overlaps with Twitter and the blog, so it is more of a gathering place than somewhere specific for the launch.

I did setup a Pentecost novel Facebook page which I used more heavily for the launch and also post specifically to re guest posts, interviews and things. It has free chapters and buy now links and currently has 165 fans. I’ll keep this going because I intend to continue marketing the book and search on Facebook is increasing.

Cost: $0 but a lot of time! Again, I find so many benefits from twitter especially, I think it is absolutely worth the time investment.

Book Trailer

I personally think book trailers are awesome. They give an overview of the book in one minute and you know whether you’re interested. I have bought books based on trailers and I think they will only get more popular in 2011 and onwards as video search grows. Also, if you get into video now, you’re still ahead of the pack. Google “thriller novel” and check the videos. Pentecost and other videos by me on thrillers rank on the first page. Awesome. You can’t do that with text posts anymore!

Cost: This was one of the most expensive items at around AU$200 which was for the high quality video and images. Click here to find out how I made it. Worth it? Some may not think so but I am a believer in the power of video and this is an evergreen business card for the book so yes, I think the cost was worth it.

Blog Tour/ Guest Posting/ Interviews

In launch week, I appeared on 32 other blogs doing text articles, video and audio interviews as well as people posting reviews or Q&A with me. It was a significant amount of work to prepare all this in advance and to write that many good articles as well as continue my own blog, the day job, life etc – you know the score! I wrote for large blogs like Problogger and WriteToDone as well as niche blogs for authors. Click here and scroll down for the full list.

Guest posting is worth it for the incoming links to your blog which boosts Google page rank PLUS/ the personal branding boost that goes with having your name on the bigger blogs.

I was able to appear on most of them because of relationships I’ve built up over the last two years and also because I know how to write a decent blog article (after much studying!) . None of these sites would have accepted a bad post even with an online friendship. If you’re considering guest posting for blogs, you need to know how blog articles work. Definitely subscribe to Copyblogger for tips on this. You can find my guest posting guidelines here.

Cost: Again, $0 but a lot of time and my brain is dead from so many guest posts as well as my own launch material.

It was worth it for the exposure and general personal branding benefits but I don’t think it impacted the launch sales figures significantly. It was more about growing awareness of The Creative Penn and something I will continue to do more of but not for the launch date specifically, more for building profile and presence before a launch. Perhaps the longer blog tour works better. I shall do this differently next time.

Launch Day competition

The point of a competition is to incentivize people to buy the book on a particular day in order to impact the Amazon rankings. I offered a Kindle or access to my Author 2.0 program and personal coaching as well as Amazon vouchers. Clearly my own courses don’t cost me out of pocket but they offer a lot of value.

As it happened, the winners of prize 1 & 2 both took the Author 2.0 program (sells for US$297) over the Kindle and winner 3 took $50 Amazon voucher. To enter the competition, people had to email me the receipt of Pentecost to show they had bought it on 7 Feb and there were 98 entries.

Cost: $50 as the other prizes were intangible. Worth it because of the number of sales in one day which pushed me up the charts although not everyone who bought was in the competition.

Kindle Nation Sponsorship

This is something anyone can do and should absolutely go on your list. Kindle Nation Daily goes out to thousands of mad keen Kindle book buyers and they definitely buy based on recommendations. There are various levels of sponsorship and I went for the Silver package. This mail-out shot me back up the charts to a higher position than the first launch day.

I sold 300 ebooks on that one day so this is definitely the most worthwhile cash investment I could have made. I will be interviewing Steve Windwalker from Kindle Nation in a few months time for the podcast so you will hear more about this. I have also re-booked for Pentecost Sunday when I will do another mini-relaunch. Recommended tactics are to make sure the price is low and you have reviews on Amazon already so people feel confident in purchasing.

Cost: $169.99 DEFINITELY worth it!

What I did well

Champagne to celebrate the launch!

The launch was successful because I’ve spent the last two years learning all about writing, publishing and book marketing and growing an author platform. It’s not Amanda Hocking style numbers but she started off selling hundreds of books per month which soon went up as she added more books to her backlist and got book bloggers involved. So I feel like this is a good start to my fiction career.

I’m also reminded of Seth Godin’s recent brilliant post about the “siren song” of launch day and how it’s more important to have longevity in book sales than a high peak at launch.

In terms of things done well, I’m really glad I used a professional cover and book designer (Joel from TheBookDesigner.com) and also pro editors and pro ebook file converters. I’m proud of the book so that is definitely worth paying for.

Compare this to three years ago when I put “How To Enjoy Your Job” up for sale and sold 10 books to my family in 6 months because no one knew who I was. That disappointment led directly to the creation of this blog and onwards to my first novel. I’m still selling that book and the sales of “From Idea to Book” have also gone up this month with the Pentecost launch.

Maybe you think I should have reached #1 in the Kindle store – it would have been nice, but let’s face it, I haven’t paid my dues to fiction writing yet. Most authors make it somewhere after they have written 3, 4, 5 or more books. So watch this space :)

What I could have done better

Clearly I could have written a vampire romance and that would have sold better than a religious thriller! But that just isn’t me :)

You can watch this video to find out why I wrote Pentecost, or listen to this Thrillercast episode where I’m interviewed by authors David Wood & Alan Baxter.

I absolutely should have launched on the same day as the Kindle Nation sponsorship because the two rankings separately shot me up the charts, but together perhaps I would have made #1 on religious thriller. Having the launch over a week spread the sales out more and meant the rankings didn’t go so high, but Zoe Winters did point out that Amazon thinks you’re gaming them if you peak too high all on one day. Hmm, Amazon algorithms are top secret so we will never know!

As also pointed out above, I would have spread my guest posts over a month or so prior and not saved them all for launch day. This would have meant more readers on the blog in general which may have led to more sales. Hard to tell though!

I have also recently launched MysteryThriller.tv to have a more genre specific place to interact with readers, but it wasn’t in time for the launch. Come and join me if you like mystery/thrillers/action-adventure novels and would like to see some reviews.

I am also becoming more active on Goodreads and Shelfari if you want to friend me there. I realize the importance of interacting with readers which I didn’t focus on prior to launch. I have learned that lesson!

If you’re a book blogger and would like a review copy of Pentecost, please let me know. I didn’t reach out enough to that market before the launch but will be correcting that mistake over the next year.

Next Steps

Clearly marketing a book is an ongoing thing! But it goes on the backburner now as I relaunch some of my Author 2.0 products and start the next novel in the Morgan Sierra/ARKANE series, Prophecy. I have started a signup page for Prophecy here which is already getting sign-ups which means the next launch should be easier!

What do you think about the launch process? Let me know what you agree with and what could have been done better or how you have fared with your book launches.

 

This is a reprint from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.

Solution for Ugly Photo Ribbon on Facebook Fan Pages

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This article, by Joan Stewart, originally appeared on her The Publicity Hound’s Blog on 3/9/11 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission.

If you haven’t converted your Facebook Fan Page to the new platform, it will look very different when you log on tomorrow, Thursday, March 10.

The tabs at the top will disappear.  In their place, you’ll see an incredibly ugly photo ribbon that includes the five most recent photos you’ve posted to your wall. Here’s an example I found on someone else’s page:

  


I voluntarily converted to the new platform a few weeks ago and almost dropped dead when I saw the horrible photos that appeared at the top of my own Fan Page. They were as bad as the ones you see above.

Ugh!

One photo showed me standing next to another woman at a networking event.  The photo was so small, you you couldn’t even tell it was me.  Another photo showed a guy with the bottom of his head cut off.
     
    
How I Solved the Problem

I figured out that I could buy attractive, inexpensive stock photos for just a few bucks each, upload them to my Fan Page and then “assign” them to that photo ribbon and actually use them to promote my business without being obnoxious. Here’s my new photo ribbon:
  

 

 

 

 

No more ugly photos!  And another marking tool! (You can download that photo of the cute Twitter “Follow Me” bird and an entire package of similar photos, for free, at ProductiveDreams.)

But I want you to see what it looks like on my Fan Page and how it works:

1.  Go to my Page (the link is below, read these instructions first) and click on the Like button at the top of the page.

Faebook Like button

2.   Click on each photo in that ribbon–directly from the ribbon, not from the arrow that appears on the right side of the first photo after it opens.

3.  Look at the copy I’ve written at the bottom of each photo and click on the links to see where they take you.

Go here now, Like the page, and click on the first photo in the ribbon.

Isn’t that clever?

That’s only one of the new changes, and I just want to warn you not to freak when you see what your page looks like tomorrow.
     
    
More Facebook Help is On the Way

I’ve fielded dozens of questions from Publicity Hounds about what’s new on Facebook.  And I’ve quickly scheduled a webinar for 4 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, March 15, featuring Facebook extraordinaire Christine Buffaloe and me.

We’ll walk you through the changes and explain how to take advantage of them to actually promote your expertise, collect more fans and do more business.

It’s called “12 More Ways to Avoid Missed Opportunities on the New & Improved Facebook.” If you attended a similar webinar we hosted on this three years ago, DO NOT follow the advice we shared then.

Facebook has undergone so many changes and has so many new features that some of the tips we shared, which were good then, can actually waste your time now.

Take a look at what we’ll be teaching, and register for Tuesday’s webinar.

Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound


I’m a publicity expert, speaker, trainer, consultant and former newspaper editor who will show you how to use traditional and social media to establish credibility, enhance your reputation, position yourself as an expert, sell more products and services and promote a favorite cause or issue. Email me: JStewart@PublicityHound.com
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Making Ebook Conversion Decisions

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Last week I wrote an article with a Kindle uploading mini-tutorial using my Self-Publisher’s Quick & Easy Guide to Copyright as an example. In the comments to the post, one reader asked some questions about ebook conversions:

I’m curious to know (a) why you used a paid-for service (ebookconversion.com) to do your conversion rather than use software like Calibre (free) or Quark or Adobe CS5 which now accommodate eBook conversion formats; and (b) why you have chosen to send the second of your publications to a different conversion service (ebookarchitects.com) – is it perhaps because it’s the one with the complex layout?

Both good questions, and ones I didn’t address in the article. Since most indie publishers are going to face these same questions, it seemed like a good topic to address in a larger forum.

eBook conversion: DIY or Outsource?

There are lots of tasks in self-publishing that you can either do yourself, or hire someone else to do. The question we face is how to decide which is which?

Should you edit the book yourself? Most people advise against it if you want to produce the best manuscript you can. Can you proofread your own book? Not that effectively, unless you are a trained proofreader. It’s surprisingly difficult.

The list goes on and on. Design the book yourself or hire a designer? Do a cover design with some template tools on a website somewhere, or hire a cover design specialist to produce the packaging for your book? Try to do your own fulfillment, or pay someone else to do it? Write your own press releases, or outsource them to a publicist to do?

This question is so urgent for self-publishers to answer, it can become the single biggest decision you will make on your publishing journey. Down one road, the DIY path, you’ll find:

 

  • great pride in achievement
  • a lot of time spent training to do new tasks
  • complete control of the project
  • output that will probably look or read like it was produced by amateurs. Which it was.

Down the other path, where you have a budget and hire professionals, you’ll find:

  • the support of a team in your publication
  • a collaborative approach to design and marketing
  • a lot more money spent on your book before publication
  • a book that should look and read like the product of professional book people. Which it was.

eBook Choices

I’ve written here about some of the eBook conversion software Averill mentioned in her question. Calibre is a terrific translation and management tool for your eBook library. We’ve seen how Storyist and Pages can output ePub files that pass compliance checks, especially on simple books.

However, we’ve also seen Liz Castro’s EPUB Straight to the Point. This book, which shows how to take the files produced by Adobe InDesign’s ePub export feature and turn them into beautiful and consistent eBooks. However, the book is about half HTML and CSS code, necessary for anyone to learn who wants to mess with the innards of ePub and Kindle eBook files.

Of course, once you create your ePub files, you have to have the skills to translate them into files for Kindle, a different format. My question for most authors is this: If you are only going to do this once, or maybe once a year, why do you want to learn to do it yourself?

There’s a huge difference between books that are converted by someone who is paying attention and knows how to manipulate the files to get the best result, and more or less automated conversion that give you whatever comes out the end when you push the “convert” button.

One Self-Publisher Decides

Taking all this into account, it was really a non-decision for me. I have no desire to spend time learning the ins and outs of HTML and CSS, it simply isn’t a good use of my time. The Quick & Easy Guides are heavily formatted, with bullet lists, numbered lists, headings and subheadings, graphics and other effects. For $99 each I got terrific conversions into both Kindle and ePub formats, fully corrected, with all graphics in place and links active and working. I think that’s a great deal. If these books can’t earn back the $99 I shouldn’t be publishing them anyway.

This also goes to answering the second question, too. I try as much as possible to use the best vendors I can for my own books. But I’m also interested in experiencing as many options as possible so I can get a real, first-hand look at what you’re going through when you set out to do the same things.

Not only that, Joshua Tallent, from ebookarchitects.com, is very busy and can’t schedule books for at least 12 weeks. I needed my Guides on sale sooner than that, so the decision was easy.

You can find over 40 companies that convert books to ebooks listed in the eBook Conversion Services Directory. We continue to upgrade this resource to make it more useful so, if you haven’t seen it, check it out.

I’ll continue to experiment with different vendors and different ways to get our books into print so I can come back and report on them here.

If you have any questions, leave them in the comments and I’ll try to help out.

 

This is a reprint from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer.

Self-Publishing, A Source Of Innovative Thinking And How To Benefit From It

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This post, from Piotr Kowalczyk, originally appeared on his Password Incorrect site on 3/3/11 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

The presentation you’ll see below was prepared for Ebook Lab Italia conference. I wanted to highlight a prevailing characteristic of self-publishers, not yet discovered and fully utilized by publishers and readers. It’s the innovative thinking.

In digital times, times of over-content, the front line is the attention of a reader. Technology leads to equal chances. Both big publishers and self-publishers use the same on-line tools and services to find the reader and convince him to buy the book. But obviously there is a difference: it’s the money at disposal.

Self-publishers usually don’t have money, so they use all their energy to be creative and innovative. In a presentation there are several examples of innovation in both a self-promotion run by single authors and joint actions taken by self-publishing community:
– 3D1D project (3 days, 1 dispatch) – a draft of a novel written live in under 72 hours,

– Bathrobe Guru – a short story written using Google Wave,

– Indie Call to Action – authors cross-reviewed and promoted their books using social media,

– Friday Flash – a large group of writers share their new flash-fiction stories on Twitter with a tag #FridayFlash.

Truth is that not every self-publisher is as successful as Joanna Penn. She made her debut novel, Pentecost, a bestseller within 24 hours from launch.

What can self-publishers do if royalties are just not enough? Again, they are innovative enough to find other ideas for earning money. You’ll also find the examples in a presentation.

This year self-publishing is on the rise. In January there were as much as 18 self-published books among top 50 bestsellers in Kindle Store. There are big chances that self-publishers will be noticed and get the attention they deserve.

 

Self-publishing – a source of innovative thinking and how to benefit from it on Prezi

 

If you liked this article, please click on a Facebook Like it button. Buy my geek fiction ebooks ($.99 each at Kindle Store) or get a free sample: Password Incorrect and Failure Confirmed. You can subscribe to one of RSS feeds here. Let’s also connect on Twitter.

 

Beyond the Book #218: Tips For Ebook Success

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This podcast interview, from Chris Chris Kenneally of the Copyright Clearance Center, originally appeared on Beyond the Book on 3/6/11 and is provided here in its entirety with that site’s permission.

A first-hand report on the e-book revolution from Angela James, executive editor of Carina Press, the “digital first” imprint from Harlequin. A prolific blogger, James is leading the charge to create a business model for e-books in trade publishing.

“Avoid thinking of it as immediate return. Yes, it’s digital. Things happen much more quickly. But you still have to have a solid business plan and be in it for the long haul,” she advises CCC’s Chris Kenneally. “Avoid trying to do it with only existing personnel. And I know that sound painful because now we’re talking about more money, but you want to do it also with people who are really invested in the digital community, understand how digital works, and most importantly, somebody who can help you think outside the box.”

 Tips For E-Book Success [12:03m]: Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download

 

Authors Write Their Own Paycheques

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This article originally appeared on the nzherald.co.nz site on 3/7/11.

It is a truism in the publishing industry that very few Kiwis get rich by writing a book.

While many receive a pittance for their creative efforts, there are some authors who have become millionaires – some many times over – by cutting out the middlemen and middlewomen in the publishing industry and marketing themselves to a global audience.

The most recent self-publishing success story is cooking star Annabel Langbein, who has broken all previous New Zealand records by selling more than 110,000 copies of her latest cookbook, The Free Range Cook. The book now sells in more than 70 countries and negotiations are underway to sell the accompanying TV series in several major markets.

Langbein is credited by many as a smart cookie who has carefully and patiently planned her career over many years. She admits to having turned down offers just because she didn’t think the timing was quite right.

She says she initially wanted to manage her own books simply because she enjoyed the creative challenge. But along the way, she has sought advice from some of New Zealand’s top businesspeople, including staff at Auckland University’s business incubator, The Icehouse.

Langbein is unsure how many books she has sold in total in her career so far, but guesses it would probably be in the millions. And she genuinely believes she is only just getting started.

Read the rest of the article on the nzherald.co.nz site.

Numbers, Numbers, Numbers: To An Indie Author, What Do They Mean?

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9,093; 2.99; 2,049; 99; 15,570; 440; 7135; 4,882, 10,281; 1517; 94; 54; 18; 89; 229; 28; 18; 5; 10.264; 539; 20,505; 1577…

For a writer, supposedly dominated by my right-brain, I seem to have become obsessed with a left-brained fixation on numbers. On reflection, I think this obsession with numbers may be related to the important role marketing (or selling-depending on how you define it) plays for me as an indie author. L. J. Sellers had an interesting blog post on Publetariat the other day, where she argued that one of the reasons that self-published authors seemed more motivated to get out there and sell their books than traditionally published authors is because the “…steady income and the sales data provide a great incentive to spend time everyday blogging, tweeting, posting comments, and writing press releases.” I tend to agree. That daily Amazon count of books sold (and the fact that I saw a dip yesterday in blog hits and sales) probably has a lot to do with the fact that I am writing this blog post today!

So what are the numbers I am obsessed with and what do they mean? First, in the past fifteen months I have sold 9093 copies of my historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune, at a selling price of $2.99. I have sold 2049 copies of my short story, Dandy Detects, at the price of 99 cents. The combined income from the sales of my book and short story through January (don’t have February figures yet) has been $15,570. This means that I have made as much in the past year selling my writing as I was making as a semi-retired teacher. It meant that I could retire completely in January so that I could become a full-time writer, a life-long dream.

The next set of numbers deal with trends in my book sales. The first seven months my book was on sale, I sold 440 copies. The next seven months I sold 7,135. It took me those first seven months to get reviews, get my website and blog up and running, learn how to promote the book, and get it put in the right Amazon category. Those seven months taught me patience. The next seven months showed what could happen if all the work you do to promote begins to come together and demonstrated the reality of the ebook revolution. I sold 4882 books in the months of December and January alone, and ninety-six percent of them were from the Kindle store. I was clearly one of the indie authors who benefited from all those new Kindle and iPad owners.

But December and January sales were also an aberration, and in the month of February I sold far fewer books, 1517 in all. So while I averaged 94 books sold a day during January, my average for February was down to 54. Yet, this drop did not bring me back down to pre-holiday levels. The holiday bump in sales (which ebooks in general experience) increased my sales significantly from before the holidays. In November I had average only 18 books a day, so I am now selling three times the number of books than I did before the holidays, and there is no indication that this increased average is going to disappear.

The next set of numbers reveal something about my use of social media. I have 89 facebook friends, 229 twitter followers, and I have posted 28 times on my blog, The Front Parlor (over a fifteen month period). I am clearly no social media maven. But twenty of those posts have been reposted to Publetariat (giving me a much wider audience), and while I only average 18 hits a day on my blog, this is up significantly from my average of 5 hits a day in 2010. In addition, what these numbers do not reveal is the number of times I have commented on other people’s blogs, on Kindle Boards, or yahoo groups, or the number of people who have run across Maids of Misfortune on the various review sites and lists where I worked hard to get it placed.

In the end, however, I believe that the last numbers may have the greatest meaning for me. I finished teaching my last classes in December of 2010. In January, 2011, I carved out nineteen days to write and wrote 10,246 words on my next novel, Uneasy Spirits, averaging 539 words a day. In February, although I only got in 13 writing days, I wrote 20,505 words, averaging 1577 words a day. What does this mean? It means that all that left-brain number-crunching has given me the time and confidence to let my right brain loose, to fly on those wonderful flights of fancy. Those word counts are the best numbers of all.

 

This is a reprint from M. Louisa Locke‘s The Front Parlor.

The Uprising in Book Publishing

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In the dark alleyways of publishing, an author uprising is brewing against Big Publishing.

I’ve been thinking a lot about revolution lately thanks to the events unfolding in North Africa.

My wife, Lesleyann, has friends in Egypt, and they’ve kept us up to date via email. Their dispatches alternate between fear, uncertainty, optimism and celebration.

Revolutions are an awkward and messy business. They represent the end of one paradigm and the beginning of the next. While the root causes can trace back decades, when the uprising arrives it can occur with alarming rapidity.

The events in North Africa have recalibrated the meaning of “revolution” for me. I’m thinking now about revolution in the context of a popular uprising.

At the heart of any revolution is a loss of faith in the prevailing regime. In Egypt’s case, a number of catalysts precipitated the revolution; chief among them an oppressive political environment that offered little opportunity for democratic participation, freedom of speech and economic opportunity.

Frederick Nietzsche wrote, “God is dead.” I recall my philosophy professor at U.C. Berkeley 25 years ago explaining the quote with great passion. He said the beauty of the quote went beyond its immediate religious connotation – it was a metaphor for the power of faith. When you believe in something, your faith powers that in which you believe.

If we lose faith in an institution, a regime or a belief system, the very survival of that institution is imperiled.

Every institution is powered by faith. If your house catches on fire, you have faith the local fire department will respond. If you purchase a tomato from your local farmer’s market, you have faith the item you purchased will indeed taste like a tomato.

Often, faith is based on some future expected result. You can’t touch, smell or see it in the present. If we are rewarded for our faith, such as trusting that fire truck to come when we expect it, then our faith in that institution is reinforced.

Faith is the single most important force-of-nature driving all human experience.

Faith, religion, revolution, and publishing. Trust me, I’m going somewhere with this. The embedded PowerPoint below represents my attempt to pull it all together and make sense of where the publishing world is headed.

The Uprising in Book Publishing

In the presentation, I draw parallels between the catalysts for the Egyptian revolution and the author uprising I foresee taking root in publishing.

If authors – the beating heart powering Big Publishing – lose faith in Big Publishing, then big publishing as we know it will die. By “Big Publishing,” I’m referring to the old, pre-self-publishing system embodied by the Big 6 New York publishers, in which the publisher serves as the author’s judge, jury, gatekeeper and executioner.

If Big Publishing approves of your book, they acquire it. Post-acquisition, an author can die happy knowing they’re a published author with all the esteem, respect and future possibilities embodied in this blessing. At least, that’s what most authors are trained to believe.

Unfortunately, it’s tough to find a traditionally published author who waxes eloquent about their post-publication experience. It’s like the author goes to heaven and reports back via John Edward (the guy who talks to dead people) that they discovered famine on the other side of the pearly gates.

Big Publishing, although it employs thousands of talented and well-intentioned professionals, is built upon a broken business model.

The cracks are growing more apparent, and before long, authors – both traditionally published and otherwise – will lose faith in the institution. When that happens, the seeds of revolution are sewn. Some might argue we’re already there.

Ask Not What your Publisher Can Do for You

Two questions and their answers will drive the author uprising against Big Publishing:

1. What can a publisher do for me that I (the author) cannot do for myself?
2. Might a big publisher actually harm my prospects as an author?

Ten years ago, the answers to these simple questions validated the need for Big Publishing. Why? In the old print world, Big Publishing controlled access to readers. They controlled the printing press and the access to retail distribution.

Yet these same questions asked today yield mixed results. In the last four or five months, Joe Konrath started urging readers of his blog to abandon Big Publishing (he calls it “Legacy Publishing”). He contends indie authors can produce, publish, price and promote a book more effectively than Big Publishing.

Amanda Hocking, in her recent interview with USA Today, was quoted as saying, “I can’t really say that I would have been more successful if I’d gone with a traditional publisher.”

No doubt, much of Hocking’s success is because she’s an indie author. She writes great books her readers love. She prices her series-starters at only $.99 and the rest at $2.99. Great books + low prices + enthusiastic fans + an author directly engaged with her fans = viral readership. Few big publishers are prepared to play by these new rules.

Every week we hear of self-published authors who were previously rejected by Big Publishing finding success with self-published ebooks. My presentation lists 50 Indie Ebook Authors to Watch. Brian Pratt, profiled here in December, is one such author. Ruth Ann Nordin is another. Nordin’s An Inconvenient Marriage is the #2 best-selling romance title today in the Apple iBookstore’s romance category, and #35 among all paid titles at Apple.

Two or three years from now when ebooks account for more than 50% of the book market, the same two dangerous questions above will yield a more unequivocal answer in favor of self-publishing.

All the major ebook retailers – Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and Amazon – have embraced indie ebook authors and grant them equal shelf presence alongside Big Publishing authors. Smashwords is now distributing over 20,000 titles to most of these retailers (we’re not at Amazon yet). Readers, not publishers, decide what sells.

Do authors still need publishers in this new world order? I think it all goes back to my first question. To survive and thrive, publishers big and small must do for authors what authors cannot or will not do for themselves.

Welcome to the revolution.

Nietzsche And The Downfall Of Big Publishing

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This post, by Smashwords founder Mark Coker, originally appeared on the Smashwords blog on 3/3/11.

In the dark alleyways of publishing, an author uprising is brewing against Big Publishing.

I’ve been thinking a lot about revolution lately thanks to the events unfolding in North Africa.

My wife, Lesleyann, has friends in Egypt, and they’ve kept us up to date via email. Their dispatches alternate between fear, uncertainty, optimism and celebration.

Revolutions are an awkward and messy business. They represent the end of one paradigm and the beginning of the next. While the root causes can trace back decades, when the uprising arrives it can occur with alarming rapidity.

The events in North Africa have recalibrated the meaning of "revolution" for me. I’m thinking now about revolution in the context of a popular uprising.

At the heart of any revolution is a loss of faith in the prevailing regime. In Egypt’s case, a number of catalysts precipitated the revolution; chief among them an oppressive political environment that offered little opportunity for democratic participation, freedom of speech and economic opportunity.

Frederick Nietzsche wrote, “God is dead.” I recall my philosophy professor at U.C. Berkeley 25 years ago explaining the quote with great passion. He said the beauty of the quote went beyond its immediate religious connotation – it was a metaphor for the power of faith. When you believe in something, your faith powers that in which you believe.

If we lose faith in an institution, a regime or a belief system, the very survival of that institution is imperiled.

Every institution is powered by faith. If your house catches on fire, you have faith the local fire department will respond. If you purchase a tomato from your local farmer’s market, you have faith the item you purchased will indeed taste like a tomato.

Often, faith is based on some future expected result. You can’t touch, smell or see it in the present. If we are rewarded for our faith, such as trusting that fire truck to come when we expect it, then our faith in that institution is reinforced.

Faith is the single most important force-of-nature driving all human experience.

Faith, religion, revolution, and publishing. Trust me, I’m going somewhere with this. The embedded PowerPoint below represents my attempt to pull it all together and make sense of where the publishing world is headed.

 

See the slideshow, and read the rest of the post, on the Smashwords blog.

Book Publishers Need To Wake Up And Smell The Disruption

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This post, by Mathew Ingram, originally appeared on Gigaom on 3/1/11.

The writing has been on the wall for some time in the book publishing business: platforms like Amazon’s Kindle and the iPad have caused an explosion of e-book publishing that’s continuing to disrupt the industry on a whole series of levels and reshape the future of the book, as Om has written about in the past. And evidence continues to accumulate that e-books aren’t just something established authors with an existing brand can make use of, but are also becoming a real alternative to traditional book contracts for emerging authors as well — all of which should serve as a massive wake-up call for publishers.

The latest piece of evidence is the story of independent author Amanda Hocking, a 26-year-old who lives in Minnesota and writes fantasy-themed fiction for younger readers. Unlike some established authors such as J.A. Konrath, who have done well with traditional publishing deals before moving into self-publishing their own e-books, Hocking has never had a traditional publishing deal — and yet, she has sold almost one million copies of the nine e-books she has written in less than a year, and her latest book appears to be selling at the rate of about 100,000 copies a month.

It’s true that the prices Hocking charges for these books are small — in some cases only 99 cents, depending on the book — but the key part of the deal is that she (and any other author who works with Amazon or Apple) gets to keep 70 percent of the revenue from those sales. That’s a dramatic contrast to traditional book-publishing deals, in which the publisher keeps the majority of the money and the author typically gets 20 percent or even less. If you sell a million copies of your books and you keep 70 percent of that revenue, that is still significant, even if each book sells for 99 cents.

Read the rest of the post on Gigaom.

A Writer Muses On Marketing And Sales, Part I

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What exactly is the difference between marketing and sales?

That’s a question I asked myself recently, and after studying the subject a bit I think I have a useful answer. This post and the posts that follow represent everything I think I now know about marketing and sales, but I claim no mastery in the matter. I simply have a better understanding of how each relates to my aims as an author, and I offer these posts in that spirit.

If the average person has a general conception of marketing and sales it’s that they are aspects of business that drive customer purchases — at times by any means necessary. While true, I think this consumer-driven perspective misplaces the emphasis for authors who would like to profit from marketing and sales. Why? Because it’s hard to imagine an author who would like to have fewer readers, which in turn implies that all marketing and sales efforts are inherently useful for every author. They’re not.

In the great majority of cases, marketing and sales are not a means by which otherwise disinterested consumers can be compelled to spend. All the marketing and sales efforts in the world are generally not going to encourage someone to buy a new stove if their stove is working just fine. Treating marketing and sales as weapons of war may be what amped-up marketing weasels do in caffeinated team-spirit huddles, but I don’t think that’s a useful point of view for authors to adopt. And not just because the opportunity to sell books in a predatory fashion is minimal at best.  

Intent
A better approach for authors is to understand marketing and sales as tools, to understand what those tools can and cannot do, and to understand when they should and should not be employed in the service of an author’s objectives. Unfortunately there is as much conflicting advice about marketing and sales as there are people professing to clarify confusion about the two terms.

Given that they do not naturally differentiate themselves, it’s understandable that definitions of marketing and sales tend to emphasize how the concepts are distinct. But I think it’s a mistake to start with the premise that marketing and sales are different things. From everything I’ve read (and for artistic reasons I’ll get into later) I believe it’s more useful to see marketing and sales as two ends of the same continuum. And that continuum is defined not by the properties of a product, but by the intent of the product’s creator.

If you make something for yourself, or for a specific person, you don’t need to think about selling or marketing that work. Whatever sales is, whatever marketing is, and however the two might or might not relate to each other, none of that matters in instances where a product is going to be conveyed to a specific person. And that’s true without regard to compensation. If you know who you’re delivering a product to it doesn’t matter whether the product is a gift or the fulfillment of a contract: there is nothing you need to know about marketing or sales in order to see your intention through. (Understanding marketing and sales may help leverage a present opportunity for future gain, but that’s not the issue here.)

While these observations may seem absurdly obvious, the implications are important. First, marketing and sales are not inextricably bound to the act of creation or production. Second, marketing and sales are not inextricably bound to financial transactions between two parties. And both conclusions hold whether the product we’re talking about is a simple item, a complex gadget or a creative work.

Reality Check
Marketing and sales matter in instances where either or both of the following is true:

  • The people who are interested in your product are not all known or aware of the product’s availability.
  • The price people will pay for your product has not been agreed to by both parties.

The problem, again, is that these criteria seemingly apply to every product. Worse, if you’re like most writers, the rationality of your entrepreneurial thought process is probably something like this. “I personally know two people who will read my work if I ask them, but I also know there are more than six billion people on the planet. Plus, there are a lot of planets we don’t know about yet, so there are probably at least a trillion potential readers out there I could market to. I also know that most books sell for X dollars, but because my book is special it will easily sell for X + Y dollars, and that’s before the movie comes out. So, conservatively, I’m probably looking at a potential profit of $74 million in the first year, give or take current exchange rates and how interested I am in doing a book tour.”

No matter who you are and no matter what you write, it’s a given that there will always be people who don’t know about your work, and people who aren’t willing to spend what you’re asking even if they think you’re the best writer in the business. That’s as true for you as it is for Stephen King or any other writer. Marketing and sales will never negate those truths no matter how much time, effort and money you throw at them.

Decision Time
What marketing and sales can do — as tools — is increase the likelihood that you will be able to reach more readers. That may or may not also translate into an increase in profits, depending on whether you charge for your work and how much money you spend on marketing and sales.

The effectiveness of your marketing and sales efforts also correlates with the clarity you have about your specific authorial aims. For that reason, nothing is more important than having an honest discussion with yourself about your personal goals as a writer, including whether you see writing as a business. What else could it be?

Well, any of the following:

  • A hobby.
  • A dream.
  • An escape.
  • An emotional release.
  • An obsession.
  • A secret obsession.
  • A double-secret obsession.

Being a professional writer is a tough gig to get and a hard one to keep. Then again, so is running a successful restaurant. If you are famous among a small group of friends and family for a few tasty dishes, you may be tempted or encouraged to open your own catering business — or even your own eatery. But you would probably think twice about doing so given the increased risk, responsibilities and complexities of the undertaking. Because writing is a solitary craft it’s a little harder to draw direct parallels, but that only means you should think about the question that much more. (Note: I’m not talking about the definition of a business that the IRS uses, although that’s something else you should probably familiarize yourself with.)

If you aspire to write professionally, or even to turn a profit with your writing, it’s never too early to commit to writing as a business. It costs you nothing to do so, at least up front, and will definitely save you time, money and stress down the road. On the other hand, if you have no plan to turn your writing into a career, then that’s something you should acknowledge as early as possible. It’s going to make your writing life a whole lot easier, if not also more enjoyable.

Admitting that you’re not trying to write professionally does not mean you have to give up fantasies about success finding you, or that you’re freed from the eternal obligation to produce the best work you possibly can for your intended readers. Nobody can predict what will happen once a work is written, and that’s part of the fun of writing. But by the same token you’d have to be loony to bet on a lightning strike. And most if not all of the marketing and sales playbook involves placing bets.

Anything you do to market or sell your writing is going to take time, money or emotional capital. And if you’re like most writers I know you probably have a limited supply of each. So take a few deep breaths, then consider the following question:

Are you in business?

From the point of view of marketing and sales there are only two possible answers: yes or no. To truly understand the difference between marketing and sales, and how those tools relate to your objectives, you need to pick one of those answers. You can change your answer at any time, but you should always know what your answer is.

 

This is a reprint from Mark Barrett’s Ditchwalk.