Ebooks

Articles specific to writing and publishing ebooks.

Why People Buy Ebooks: A Comparison Between Countries And Kindle Marketing Techniques

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So I’ve just moved from Australia to England and it’s fascinating to me how different ebook and Kindle sales are here, on the other side of the world, albeit in a similar culture. In the video I explain the different reasons to buy ebooks in Australia vs UK, and there is text below.

In Australia, the Kindle justifies itself on the price of books. A brand new print book is usually $30-$40 and a Kindle book $11 – so you can read 3x as many Kindle books and indeed, I found getting a Kindle reinvigorated my fiction reading amazingly after years of being very careful about what I bought because of the cost. So that was my main argument to people – it’s worth it for the money.

Here it is a very different matter. For a start, there is VAT on ebooks and not on print books. I am astounded at this and just can’t understand it. This means that ebooks can be more expensive than their print counterparts. In fact, you can usually buy 3 books for the price of 2, or get amazing deals in Waterstones etc that mean ebooks are not worth it on price.

So Amazon are selling on other factors. There are posters on the London underground, in the weekend papers – they are everywhere. The Kindle is sold at Tesco, a large supermarket, similar to Walmart. So what are these factors that potentially deal with the price issue?

  • Speed and choice. Think of a book and start reading it in 60 seconds. This is indeed a marvel and I often take the Kindle to bookshops, browse and then buy on the Kindle. Super-duper.
  • Weight. This is the going on holiday, oversize luggage question. Travelling in Europe is very cheap with base costs very low and then heavy charges for luggage. If you want to read 6 books on holiday, that’s a lot of excess luggage. The Kindle solves that problem.
  • Space. Londoners don’t have much living space, and the UK is a densely populated country. If you have thousands of books, that is a lot of living space taken up, but the Kindle solves that problem.

They also mention the 3G wireless with no contract and the long battery life, now nearly a month.

I would add sampling which adds a lot to my life, and the fact I can switch between books as I travel. I am now commuting 45 mins each way on the London Underground and with a loaded up Kindle, I am never without something to escape into. Yes, I am still a die-hard Kindle fan!

How are ebooks and devices being marketed in your country? Why have you bought one – or why haven’t you?

 

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

Copyright Agency Limited Releases Results From Digital Publishing Trends Survey

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The full article is here but I thought I’d pick out the key points and comment on them as it makes for interesting reading. And you know how I like to comment on stuff. CAL conducted a survey of members to learn more about their views of, and experiences with digital publishing in Australia. Over 2,000 CAL members responded, making this survey the largest of its kind in the Australian publishing environment. The survey was sent to all CAL members, ranging from international publishers to self-published authors, asking about their digital experiences and thoughts on the future.

Here are the key findings, in bold, with my comments after:

Both authors and publishers think the benefits of digital publishing far outweigh any of the downsides

I think this is a given now. There are very few people left, I think, who see digital publishing as a problem.

Around half of all authors and publishers create digital products

This surprised me – I thought it would be more by now. But more on that lower down.

The majority of publishers are still developing their digital strategies

This is not really a problem, but I see it more as a reaction to a rapidly changing environment. I think publishers will be constantly developing their digital strategies to keep up. It’s not something that will settle for a long time yet.

Only 15% of publishers have a competitively differentiating digital strategy

This is a problem. Digital needs to be seen as something different to the standard, existing print model of publishing and has to be treated differently. Publishers are already being left behind due to a resistance to accept this change and the longer they prevaricate, the harder it will be to catch up. Which they will inevitably have to do.

To date, 26% of publishers have no digital strategy at all

This is astounding! Just over a quarter? This is fiddling while Rome burns. It’s playing bowls while the Spanish Armada hoves into view. It’s foolish in the extreme to simply ignore the digital publishing revolution. Whether you like it or not, it is happening. It’s going to continue happening. It’s not a passing fad. There will be paper books and traditional publishing for a long time yet, but e-publishing is racing to catch up and will be rolling alongside as completely mainstream very soon.

To digress slightly, there seems to be a large proprotion of people that ask: Are you into paper books or ebooks? It’s not an either/or situation. I regularly buy both. I enjoy both. The vast majority of readers will be the same. But there are a lot of things now that I’ll buy as an ebook that I would never have bothered with in print – for cost, storage and ease of reading reasons – which makes the combination of print and digital far better than simply one or the other. Videos didn’t kill cinema, television didn’t kill radio. Ebooks won’t kill print publishing. But to completely ignore the rise of digital and have no strategy for it as a publisher is idiotic.

Digital publishing currently contributes less than 5% to the income of most authors and publishers – however, around 10% of authors and 14% of publishers currently make more than half their income from digital publishing

These are slightly rubber stats, but interesting nonetheless. Overall, the 5% figure stands, but that will be growing and will continue to grow until it is a much larger number. I’d say the authors and publishers making more than half their income from digital are the self-published, indie publishers and small press. And they will continue to grow in number as well. The digital options now make self-, indie- and small press publishing far more viable options than they ever were before and that’s very exciting.

Lower costs and improved access to markets are the greatest benefits for authors and publishers alike

See above.

Technical expertise, market dominance of multinationals and piracy are the three concerns shared by authors and publishers

This is no real surprise and is always going to be the case. Keeping up with technology and feeling the pressure from the “big guys” is a concern in all forms of business. From the corner store threatened by the massive super mall, to the indie music label threatened by the big labels, to the cottage industry threatened by the conglomerates. It’s always a battle in a capitalist environment. And piracy is something that affects all creative industries – film, music, television and publishing. Hell, I remember borrowing my friend’s Dungeons & Dragons rule books and spending hours photocopying them in the school library, because I couldn’t afford to buy my own.

But remember – the only thing worse than piracy is obscurity. It’s not going anywhere and we have to accept it as part of the digital landscape.

Low-level technical skills are the most significant barrier to market entry

I think this is more a fear than a reality. Anyone who suggested this has probably not tried to publish digitally because they think they won’t be able to. It’s actually bloody easy, and getting easier all the time.

Authors and publishers share some common views in relation to e-book royalties

Well, that’s good. We need to see the explanation to understand this point. So, from the original article:

Even in the contentious area of e-book royalties, authors and publishers shared some common views. No doubt there was some divergence of opinion, but the differences were by no means extreme. Similar numbers of authors and publishers (16.9 and 17.8%, respectively) thought e-book royalties should be set in the range of 11-20% of net receipts. Another 16% of authors and 13% of publishers thought that range should be 21-30%. Unsurprisingly a large cluster of authors (16.3%) felt the range should be 41-50% (whereas only 4% of publishers agreed). Interestingly, only 14.3% of authors felt the royalty should be 51% or greater. It should also be noted that when asked about the topic of ebook royalties, there was a significant proportion of both authors (24.3%) and publishers (38.8%) who chose not to express an opinion.

I think you’ll also find that a lot of authors are seriously considering retaining their e-rights and self-publishing their digital catalogue, so the percentage of royalties to a publisher becomes moot. But, speaking personally, if my publisher will cover all the technical aspects of design, layout, editing and so on, and leave me to write, I’m happy to split the royalties, just like regular publishing. Percentages will vary a lot, as they already do with print.

2/3 of CAL members believe that digital sales will eventually overtake print for the Australian publishing industry as a whole

And I agree with them. As I’ve said many times before, print will not die, but it will become boutique to some degree. Plus, does Print On Demand count as digital or print? Because the vast majority of paperback sales are likely to be POD before too long, in my opinion.

Of all the 2,090 CAL members surveyed, almost 19% own an iPad and over 12% own a Kindle

Given the supposed resistance to the rise of digital publishing, these are very revealing figures. There are also a lot of other ways to read ebooks and I don’t know if those were covered. It’s happening and only a handful of grumpy old bastards are really complaining.

These are exciting times and we should be enjoying the greatest change in publishing since the invention of the Gutenberg press!

Go to the original article on the CAL site and have a read. Especially check out the italicised comments at the end. So, what do you think?

 

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

The Future of Book Publishing

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Last week I was invited to attend a fascinating presentation about technology trends, delivered to a group of hospitality industry technology professionals by Peter Leyden, who is the former managing editor of Wired magazine and author of The Long Boom, a History of the Future 1980-2020. As an author and publisher, two main themes stood out to me:

1.    The tablet computer changes everything.

2.    The use of video will continue to grow rapidly.

During his presentation, Leyden cited the huge growth in sales of ebooks and the next big trends in book publishing: apps and multi-media ebooks with images, audio, and video integrated into the text. 

I have been writing a lot about ebooks lately, with good reason. Consider these recent developments:

  • Publisher’s Weekly just reported yet another month of falling sales of printed books and surging sales of ebooks.
  • In January of 2011, Forrester Research predicted that by 2015, 82 million U.S. consumers (one-third of U.S. online consumers) will be using a tablet computer. Some analysts say that projection is too conservative.
  • Right now, the Apple iPad owns the tablet market, but a number of new competitors will soon appear. Last week, CNET reported that Amazon is planning to release its own Android-based tablet PC by the Fall of 2011. Think about what a game changer that could be.
  • Here’s a quote from a recent press release from Barnes & Noble. Notice how they refer to NOOK Color as a "tablet" and mention apps before books.

"Barnes & Noble continues to make its bestselling, critically acclaimed NOOK Color Reader’s Tablet even better, delivering customers a wide array of high-quality apps, books, interactive children’s books, magazines and more. The company announced it doubled its number of NOOK Apps since recently introducing a broad collection of popular apps."

  • Ebook publisher Smashwords recently announced that their ebooks are now available to the app marketplace through ScrollMotion, which is developing applications for mobile platforms including Apple iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7 and WebOS.

As authors and publishers, we need to capitalize on these trends by making our books available on tablets like the iPad and looking for ways to integrate multi-media features and create apps. The future is here!

Related Articles

Sales of Ebooks and Reading Devices Soar 

6 Reasons Why You Need to Publish Ebooks

How to Publish an Ebook for Multiple Platforms

Quick Start Guide to Marketing Your Kindle eBooks Like a Pro!


About the Author

Dana Lynn Smith, The Savvy Book Marketer, helps authors and indie publishers learn how to sell more books through her how-to guides, blog, newsletter, and private coaching. For more book marketing tips, get her free Top Book Marketing Tips ebooks, subscribe to her blog, follow BookMarketer on Twitter, and connect on Facebook.

 

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

Kindle For The Web: How It Can Be Used By Authors

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In September last year Amazon introduced a new tool, Kindle for the Web, which allows users to read and share first chapters of books without leaving a web browser.

In addition to a good-looking preview interface, there are two useful features: sharing and embedding. The latter one is a very good, yet underestimated tool which can be used in many ways by authors who publish their books at Amazon.

Before I’ll list benefits and explain how to embed the preview in a blog, I’d like to point out to one very important fact. Despite the name, Kindle for the Web is not available on a page with a Kindle edition of a book. Just the opposite – you’ll see the green widget with a Read first chapter FREE button (picture 1) on a page with a print version of a book… and linking to Kindle edition.

This is misleading many people, who look for previews where they are not available. As a result they stop searching for books at all.

Why Amazon decided to profile the tool this way? A simple explanation is that by giving a chance to read a sample of a print book they want to convince people to try Kindle editions – and buy Kindles.

What’s related, and essential for authors, is that Kindle for the Web is available only for books with both print and Kindle editions.

Why it’s good to use it?

I was extremely interested in this tool since the very beginning as it opens a couple of new opportunities for authors. Let me list the most important ones.

1. It helps differentiate your social media activity

Instead of tweeting “buy my book” all the time, you can write “read first chapter of my book for free”. Remember, we never know what is the current mood of our followers on Twitter or friends on Facebook. Some of them are willing to buy, some – to test before buying (but don’t feel like downloading a free sample to their Kindle or tablet).

2. It makes your blog more attractive

If you embed a book in a blog post and stick this post to a home page, you’ve got a very inviting entry, what’s more: saying right at the beginning that this is a blog from a published author.

3. It changes the reader’s attitude

Let’s say you want to share a first chapter of your published book. The difference is that when you make a regular blog post with it, it’s just a regular blog post. When you embed Kindle preview in a post, well, that’s a different story – you are showing a first chapter of the book.

4. It helps focus on reading

This is one of my favorite topics: reading in times of distraction. If you use Kindle preview in your blog, there are bigger chances that the reader will read it, as it removes all the distractions (like banners and sidebars) after a full screen option is clicked.

5. It helps you manage your author’s profile

Some authors, including me, published a book some time ago, started a blog to support it and drifted into areas where they can be more useful – sharing experience or writing tips and advice.

You were a mystery romance writer and now you are a writing expert. Sometimes it’s hard to fight with this strong new profile. Using Kindle for the Web will make your readers more willing to accept your other face.

6. It allows to earn more money

Finally, but most importantly, you can earn extra money, if you are an Amazon associate. When you are getting a code to embed, you can also provide your associate tag. Thanks to that any book sold via link from a Kindle preview on your blog will bring you money not only from a royalty (author) but also from a referral fee (associate).

If you haven’t joined Amazon affiliate system, it’s a good moment to try. There is nothing to be ashamed of. What’s really interesting is that Kindle for the Web with a pattern to switch to Kindle ecosystem can be also a natural opportunity to sell on your blog Kindle e-readers.

How to embed a preview in a blog?

The minimum size of the embedded window is 500(width) by 325(height) pixels. Therefore the places to consider are either a page or a post.

1. Go to a print version of your book, find the green widget entitled Kindle Edition and click on a Read first chapter FREE button. A Kindle for the Web window will pop up.

Kindle for the Web window

2. Find Embed button in the upper right corner and click on it. When you expand it with a Customize option, you’ll see a window like this.

Kindle for the Web - embed box

3. Type the size of a window. Ideally the width could be exactly the same as your blog’s page/post. In the Associate Tag field, type your tag.

4. Copy the code and paste it into your blog’s new page/post (in HTML preview). Done. Now you can share it with your readers.

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Although adding Kindle for the Web to a blog is a relatively easy task, there are a couple of conditions when you may not be able to do it:

– your blogging platform does not support html scripts (WordPress.com or Posterous)
– you are not familiar with html and/or don’t want to bother with it
– your blog has a very narrow page/post area – if it’s less than 500 pixels you won’t be able to do it

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You can always take advantage from a feature I added to Ebook Friendly, my site designed to make browsing for e-books a more friendly experience. There is a special section called Read Online, where Kindle for the Web previews are perfectly tailored to e-reading application design. What’s important, authors can provide their associate tags and earn money as they would do it on their blogs.

If you’re interested, read more details in this post.

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Kindle for the Web is a great, easy to implement and very engaging tool. Until now I’ve seen it used mainly on book review sites. I think it’s not the reviewers, but authors, who should benefit the most.

Self-Publish: Is It A Dirty Word?

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This post, by Liliana Hart, originally appeared on her site on 6/26/11.

I’m new to the self-publishing world. It was a long and dirty fight for me to get to this place (mostly I was fighting with myself). What I want you to understand is that I’m proud to be an indie author. I know there are other authors in my position who have felt the same triumphs and disappointments I have over this tumultuous journey, and they’re struggling with something that slowly eats away at a writer’s delicate soul: self-esteem. It could also be called ego. All writers have issues with this. I don’t care who you are. Whether you’ve sold millions of copies or one. Writers are needy creatures. We need to be reassured. We need pats on the back and words of praise. A bad review can spiral us into the darkest depression, while a complimenting fan can make us sit down behind the keyboard with enthusiasm.

I had another author respond to that statement on another thread with derision. He said he didn’t have an ego or need pats on the back. He was only writing for the money. My response to that was, WTF? It took me by surprise because I’ve never met anyone before who said, "I’m going to start a business and get rich. What should I do? Oh, I know, I’ll be a writer." It’s absurd. Writers write because they love it. It’s too hard of a profession to just take up on a whim. So if anyone else falls into the camp of the guy above, just know you’re in the minority and good luck with your business.

That being said, I have a confession to make.

I was wrong… (I know, it’s hard to narrow this statement down. I’m wrong a lot. Mostly about haircuts and infomercials, but that’s another blog topic).

I’ll gladly admit my attitude has changed since I joined the ranks of indie authors who seem to be popping up like proverbial daisies on the Interwebs. There are more than 700,000 self-pubbed authors out there, folks. And most of them don’t sell more that a single book a month. But they’re doing it, and they have hope.

There seems to be a negativity that follows indie authors around. Maybe you’ve felt it. I’ve certainly felt it on more than one occasion–that I might as well have a scarlet letter of shame tattooed on my forehead (Insert inappropriate comments here).

Let me explain…

I finished my first book almost almost seven years ago. I was 24 years old. The idea of ebooks taking over the industry was laughable. New York agents and editors were at the top of their game. Publishing houses turned their noses up at the idea of anything being better than print copies. I was bound and determined to see my book sitting on the shelves at a "real" bookstore. Nothing else would do. And it didn’t help that the organizations I was involved in seemed to separate themselves from authors who chose a different path. Loyalties were divided. Arguments were had. Many arguments.

I fell into the camp of thinking that ebooks were an inferior product. Once again, I was wrong, so hear me out. I listened to my published friends. I listened to my various writing groups. At the time, that thinking was the majority. I was on my first agent (the first of three I’ve had in my career), and I was sure the next big contract was going to be mine. But as the rejections came, and I moved from agent to agent, my thinking changed somewhere along the way.

 

Read the rest of the post on Liliana Hart’s site.

Game Changer – J K Rowling, Pottermore And Ebooks Without A Publisher

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The internet has been abuzz lately since mega-billionaire-super-author, J K Rowling (of Harry Potter fame, in case you’ve been a monk in a cave for more than ten years) announced Pottermore. In a nutshell, it goes like this:

After seven books and eight films and more merchandising than you can fit in George Lucas’s ego, Rowling has now announced a website which will be a complete interactive experience for all ages based on her stories. Along with that she’s announced that for the first time ebook editions of the Harry Potter series will be made available. Well, legal ebook editions that is. Rowling truly is the master at monetising her ideas and characters, having turned some books about wizards at school into an international behemoth across all media.

With Pottermore, as the press release says:

For this groundbreaking collaborative project, J.K. Rowling has written extensive new material about the characters, places and objects in the much-loved stories, which will inform, inspire and entertain readers as they journey through the storylines of the books. Pottermore will later incorporate an online shop where people can purchase exclusively the long-awaited Harry Potter eBooks, in partnership with J K Rowling’s publishers worldwide, and is ultimately intended to become an online reading experience, extending the relevance of Harry Potter to new generations of readers, while still appealing to existing fans.

It’s a pretty inspired concept. Of course, Rowling with her riches and business partners is the kind of author with the kind of clout you’d need to make something like this happen.

The real game changer among all this, however, despite the partnership comment above, is that the ebooks will be essentially self-published. Her publishers, Bloomsbury, Scholastic, etc., don’t own the eletronic rights – and I bet they’re really happy about that. So Rowling is planning to make the ebooks available directly through Pottmore. Of course, when Rowling self-publishes, she’s has a team of people behind her and her own company on the case, so it’s not like she sits there on her own and uploads files to Amazon. But the key here is the lack of a third-party publisher.

The Kindle will accept epub format ebooks soon and the announcement that the Harry Potter ebooks will be available from October seems to fit in with that, so it’s likely the books will be in epub. That certainly does seem to be the prominent format and, aside from Amazon’s mobi format, has been the industry leader all along. Once the Kindle accepts epub too, we have the first stage of industry standardisation and that’s a good thing for all of us. Perhaps we have Rowling to thank in part for forcing that change – who knows who talked to who while this was getting off the ground.

Authors leveraging their existing print success to manage their own ebook releases is nothing new – just see J A Konrath’s example for one. But nothing on this scale has happened before and we can see things shifting a little more on the axis. I’ve said it before – we’re living in exciting times in writing and publishing and the ride ain’t over yet. I wonder how many kids will get an ereader with a set of Harry Potter books on board for Xmas this year? This will be a big step in mainstreaming ereaders, which are becoming more and more mainstream anyway. On a recent flight to Melbourne I noticed several people reading from Kindles and Sony Readers while waiting for my plane.

The kind of cross-media storytelling and promotion which Pottermore represents is certainly not new, but we’ve seen nothing on this scale before. Just the official announcement video is better than any book trailer a lowly author like myself could hope for. I wonder where we go from here?

Here’s the official release video from Rowling herself.

And here’s the Pottermore site.

Interesting times indeed. What do you think? Is this a good thing or not? Where do things go from here?

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

Your Second Storefront

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This post, by JA Konrath, originally appeared on his A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing blog on 6/24/11.

I just had a long conversation with Barry Eisler (no, we’re not writing this one down) and one of the things we touched upon was what makes a bestseller a bestseller.

I’ve argued that brands, name recognition, and fanbases aren’t as important as we’d like to think they are. In short, the authors who are famous bestsellers right now might not be famous bestsellers in the near future. Rather than repeat the reasons why, you can read the argument here.

In the legacy world, the more books you had in print, the more you’d sell, because you took up a lot of shelf space (both in a single store, and in thousands of stores.)

But in a digital world, every ebook has one slot on the shelf. You can increase shelf space by having many ebooks, but there are only a handful of stores (Amazon, BN, Smashwords, iBookstores, Sony, Kobo, etc) rather than the thousands of bookstores and thousands of other stores that sell books.

This is a much more even playing field. And while I disagree that name authors lowering their ebook prices will hurt my sales much (at low prices, people buy more), I do recognize the importance of standing out among the millions of other titles.

It is easier to make a sale in a digital world, but there it is still a multi-tiered process.

1. A reader must discover that your book exists.

2. A reader must be compelled to look at it.

3. A reader makes a decision to buy it.

4. A reader makes a decision to read it, and then possibly buy your other titles.

 

Read the rest of the post on JA Konrath‘s A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing blog.

Book Marketing Q&A With Joanna Penn

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In this podcast [see bottom of this post], I go through your marketing questions submitted as part of the blog survey a few months back.

I recorded this about a month ago before I left Brisbane in anticipation of the change to come. I will try to update you in the next podcast or video, but basically I am in temporary accommodation so haven’t got my blogging/video/audio routine together yet. I am also working from 6am as I have a project in Brisbane so my early pre-work slot is gone which is when I used to do a lot of creation. I am adjusting but some things will be changing once I settle in as I also have a much bigger commute. The day job is manic, but I am LOVING the culture! Last weekend we went to St Martin’s in the Fields to listen to Mozart’s Requiem, and then saw David Tennant in Much Ado About Nothing (Dr Who & Shakespeare – geek heaven!). Marvellous! This weekend I am going to Paris for a research trip for the next novel, Prophecy – more on that to come! On with the show.

Show Notes:

  • Do book trailers work? Should you make a book trailer? I am a believer in meeting people where they are and YouTube is a major search engine now so to me, it makes sense to be there. I did a book trailer for Pentecost that has been viewed over 1386 times. Here’s my post on how I made it. Video is also growing and few authors use it effectively now so I think it is a growing niche (and publishers are just realizing this which means we may have missed the curve!)
  • Are there people who can be hired to do marketing for you who will charge based on results? In marketing it’s very hard to know what works vs. what doesn’t work. Marketing professionals are generally paid on a retainer basis where they will do a list of things and some may work. Some online people have programs for authors, e.g. Aggie Villanueva Promotion a la Carte. You need to be sure of what you want and what you’re getting for your money. But you will always be your best ambassador as you care and you know your book.
  • Selling when you’re an introvert. Don’t think selling, think marketing. It’s about relationship and content marketing. Be useful, provide good information and people will notice you. Attract people to you and then provide them with what they are interested in, at some point they may buy your book. None of us want to be over the top salespeople. I also interviewed Ruth Ann Nordin on marketing as an introvert here. She’s also written a little ebook on marketing.
  • Is Twitter worth my time? I’m an evangelist for twitter and it’s my #1 social network. Here are all of my Twitter tips. I explain why I share other people’s links – one reason is relationships and most of my podcasts have come from people I’ve met on twitter. It’s important to be useful and also you must focus. So if you spread your energy across a lot of networks, you won’t be successful on any of them. Choose your network and focus.
  • Effective blogging patterns. See this article on Content Marketing for Authors for the overall concepts and types of posts. Longevity is critical. You need to last at least 6 months before you get any benefit and a number of years before you really make an impact. The 6/7 figure bloggers have been blogging for 5-6 years. Blog regularly, I blog every 2-3 days and consistently (you can schedule posts while you’re on holiday). You also need to blog a niche so it has a focus – you wouldn’t like it if I started to talk about weight loss on a writing blog! Centering your blog around your personality is important too as you will change over time. Quality information is important as is multi-media so you stand out. Getting traffic is about a hub and spoke effect (check out the Author 2.0 Blueprint for more details on this – bring people back to your central hub). Go where your audience is.
  • How can I get email addresses to market my book online? Here’s the article on this topic. Basically, you need to give something useful away for free in exchange for the email address – example is my Author 2.0 Blueprint. I use Aweber (affiliate) to manage my list which fits the anti-spam laws.
     
  • How do I manage my time with marketing? I’d rather be writing. I explain how depressing it was when I wrote my first book and didn’t sell any. The writing time was “wasted” because I had no platform for readers, no one knew who I was. So you have to determine whether, if you just write the book, who is going to buy it? Agents & publishers want a platform now, it’s not just for indies.
  • Blogs for authors, not readers. What’s the point? Most people blog about what they know and experience. You do need to go elsewhere, so I have a book review blog MysteryThriller.tv. in order to connect with readers of the genre. You can also use Goodreads or Shelfari. You can also connect with book bloggers.
  • What if you are a private person and you don’t want to share your life on the internet? I use the example of Zoe Winters, paranormal romance writer who has been on the podcast twice now. That’s not her real name and I don’t know what she looks like. CJ Lyons also uses a pseudonym as she is a pediatrician. I don’t even mention my husband’s name and people use other names for their children e.g. Mur Lafferty’s daughter is The Pink Tornado, Tee Morris’ daughter is Sonic Boom. Justine Musk also uses a lot of fake names on her blog as she knows some high profile people. You can still hide yourself online.
  • How do you get public speaking bookings? I believe successful authors need to know how to speak publicly so this is critical. People will buy your book if they know, like and trust you and being a good speaker is an excellent way to do this. I got my first speaking events through being approached on my blog. If you have an ‘authority’ presence, people will find you and want you to share. You also need a speaking page on your website and make it clear you’re available. If you want to be a professional speaker, join an organization like National Speaker’s Association which has chapters everywhere. Here are my 7 tips for speaking about your book.
  • On the fear of putting yourself out there. Think about what will happen if you don’t – i.e. you won’t sell many books, and that is the aim of pro-writers. You will have time to grow into your presence, so just start and things will happen slowly. Very few people become overnight successes on the internet – most of them have been working for years and then a tipping point happens.
  • How the hell do I get people to notice me? It’s about word of mouth and it is slow! Be useful, put yourself out there, write great stuff and someone will notice and tell their friends, then they will share and so on. This is not get rich quick, people!
  • Marketing for fiction vs non-fiction authors. I think the principles are the same. Any of these strategies can be applied to any type of book or any business. It’s about building a platform and getting attention. Find where the people who will buy your book hang out. I think having a personality blog is critical so your audience can grow along with your writing. I’m intending to write in other genres as I’m intending to write until I die (in a long time!) and hopefully some of you will grow with me. We all need to cultivate a long term market.

All my best marketing posts are here => Marketing for Authors and Writers

Podcast: Download (Duration: 37:00 — 25.0MB)

What are your marketing questions? Maybe I’ll make the Q&A a regular segment – what do you think?

 

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

Metadata For Self-Publishers, Part I

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Metadata—even the word sounds hard to understand. meta comes from the Greek, and means “above” or “enclosing” Metadata is simply data about data.

In other words, metadata is information about your data. You can think of data as being an electronic document, file, music file, book or any other form content presented in electronic format. Metadata is meant to summarize the key characteristics of the underlying work—in our case, our books—for the purpose of making the work itself discoverable to electronic searches.

An Example

Think about it for a moment. Suppose you want to know how to train your dog. You’d like a book that describes the step by step actions you can take to teach your dog to stop barking every time he hears a little sound in the bushes. You punch up Google and look for a moment at the search bar. What are you going to type in?

This is the moment you need to understand when it comes to the book you’re trying to market online. There’s simply nothing as important as understanding what’s going through the mind of your potential book buyer when they are thinking of how to search for the information they need.

Let’s say there’s a really good dog training book that would answer this searcher’s question. Suppose the author has titled the book “Getting Along With Man’s Best Friend.” Notice that the words “dog” and “training” don’t appear in the title. How would Google or any other search engine know that this book could possibly be a great find for the searcher?

The answer is: Metadata.

Filling In All the Blanks

When this book was published the author (or publisher) had an opportunity to enter metadata about the book. The principle place this is done is in the Bowker information file about the book. Usually self-publishers fill this out when they buy their ISBNs and then forget about it.

That’s a mistake. This seemingly inoccuous-looking form that appears to be just a nuisance to get through as fast as possible is actually a key to how well your book will sell. Why?

Metadata.

If you fail to fill in all the fields, or use the many types of metadata available, your book will be harder to find. The information you’re providing is the same information that will come up in Google’s search. If the description of this book, for instance, says:

An easy to use, step by step guide to training your dog for behavior problems including barking, biting and sitting.

It’s quite likely that the book will be included somewhere in Google’s results. Without this information, how would the search engine know that this book is a perfect fit for the searcher? It’s your responsibility as publisher to make sure the metadata for your book is as accurate and complete as possible.

Back to the blank line

Try to put yourself in the place of the guy sitting there listening to the dog barking out back, and looking for a solution. What are some ways we could construct a query that might be similar to what the searcher will come up with?

You’ll quickly find that the most important part of figuring this out is keywords. One reason this is so is because we can’t actually guess how the searcher will frame his question. But we can have a pretty good idea of some of the words she will use in that question:

  • dog
  • bark
  • training

Just with this much we can start to do some research on keyword phrases or long-tail keywords (3 or more words used together as a keyword). Knowing the keywords that are associated with your book is essential to marketing your book online.

In the next part of this series, I’ll look at the way this metadata is stored and exactly where you can go to make sure you’ve got the strongest, brawniest, most focused metadata you can for your book.

 

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

Indie Author Mailbag: "Can you tell me the best way to ensure the success of my book?"

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In a word, no.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it too many times to count:
There is no one-size-fits-all, by-the-numbers success formula for indie authors. There is no specific template or blueprint that will guarantee lasting sales or readership for any book.

Assuming for the moment that your indie book is exceptionally well-written, immaculately edited and sports a compelling cover, it’s just a matter of getting the word out about it and pricing it reasonably, right? Wrong.

Every author is different, every book is different, and every sales climate is different. Consider the (originally self-published) book which launched me into a life of publishing punditry and activism,The Indie Author Guide: Self-Publishing Strategies Anyone Can Use. This was clearly a simple case of the right book at the right time. Writer’s Digest Books was happy to pick up the rights and republish the book in a revised edition because interest in self-publishing is at an all-time high right now and they saw it as the only truly comprehensive how-to, nuts-and-bolts book on the subject.

Had I self-published the same book just five years ago, neither Writer’s Digest Books nor any other mainstream publisher would’ve been interested in picking it up. The self-published edition of the book wouldn’t have been very successful either since self-publishing was widely viewed as a fringe activity up until about two years ago, engendering dismissal at one end of the opinion spectrum and open scorn and ridicule at the other.

Let’s take a look at some of the supposedly surefire success strategies for indie authors, as they apply to this book and my other, still indie novels.

1. If You Build A Quality Author Platform, You’ll Succeed.
I cannot deny that for anyone seeking a mainstream publishing contract, platform is key. Mainstream publishers want to see a pre-existing audience, and the potential to grow that audience exponentially. However, even for me, a retired software engineer with web developer skills of considerable sophistication, no amount of web presence or social networking savvy would’ve made my book a success five years ago. Even today, no amount of platform quantity or quality would make my book a success if it were poorly written or didn’t contain the specific information the target audience wants and needs.

With respect to my novels, platform has not, in and of itself, made much of an impact. Not only do I have a custom, professionally-designed author website, I’m also on Facebook and Twitter, I’m the founder and Editor in Chief of Publetariat.com, I’m a Technorati BlogCritic, on the Board of Directors for the Association of Independent Authors, and…well, I won’t bore you with the rest of this litany. Yet despite all this "visibility" and "web presence", my novels only do fair-to-middling business unless I’m actively and specifically promoting them. Why? Because the bulk of my platform activity pertains to serving the needs of self-publishing authors, not readers in general.

So yes, platform is important. But just getting your name and face and the titles of your books out there isn’t enough. Your platform activities must be targeted, with each piece of the platform puzzle helping to support the others. At this point, if sales of my novels were to become a priority for me, I’d launch a secondary platform strategy just for them because I know my established audience for The Indie Author Guide is more or less indifferent to my novels.

2. If You Price Your Kindle Books At .99, You’ll Succeed.
All of my indie Kindle books have been priced at .99 for over a month now, in a kind of pricing experiment of my own devising. Sales have ticked upward a bit, but not dramatically. It’s definitely worth experimenting with different price points on your Kindle or Nook book, since it’s easy and low-risk to do so, and you can see (and interpret) results of price changes pretty quickly. But it’s a mistake to think that a .99 pricetag is the shortest distance between you and blockbuster sales.

3. If You Make Your Books Available In As Many Formats And On As Many Sites As Possible, You’ll Succeed.
My novels are listed on Amazon, B&N, Smashwords, Createspace, Scribd, GoodReads, Shelfari, LibraryThing, and Audible.com, covering the spectrum from hard-copy through ebooks and even audiobooks. Yet no one on the NYT Bestseller list is quaking in his boots from fear of me and my novels. Sales of The Indie Author Guide, on the other hand, have benefitted greatly from the book’s visibility across multiple bookseller and book review outlets. Its availability through the Writer’s Digest Book Club has made a big difference as well.

Yes, it’s important to get your work out there and available through as many outlets as are feasible; just don’t assume that doing so will guarantee significant sales growth.

4. If You Get A Lot Of Good Amazon Reviews, You’ll Succeed.
My indie novel, Adelaide Einstein, has 47 Amazon reviews with an average star rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars. My other indie book, Snow Ball, has 16 Amazon reviews with an average star rating of 4.43. Adelaide has more and better reviews overall, yet it sells at a fraction of the numbers I see for Snow Ball.

When both books were first published in 2008, Adelaide Einstein sold better than Snow Ball. Now it’s just the opposite. I can only speculate as to why, but if pressed, I’d say that the chick-lit and hen-lit genres into which Adelaide fits are somewhat played out, whereas the mystery genre to which Snow Ball belongs is less trendy. It could also be that Snow Ball‘s darker tone of humor is more appealing to readers in these trying economic and social times.

5. If You Do All Of The Above, You’ll Succeed.
I’m already doing all of the above, and my novels aren’t doing gangbuster business. But that doesn’t mean the work and time I’ve spent on all of the above was (or is) a pointless waste.

Since you’ve read this far, I’ll share a little secret with you. There actually IS a surefire success strategy that works equally well for any book, movie, game or music release. And here it is:

Capture the zeitgeist in your work, then maximize your work’s exposure.

Yep, all you need do is figure out what the majority of the Western world’s populace will be interested in at a given point in time, create a work or product that serves that interest, time the release of the work to coincide with when interest in its content will be approaching a peak, and then make sure as many people as possible know the work exists.

It’s that first part that’s the tricky bit, the whole "right book at the right time" part. Then, for fiction at least, there’s the matter of actually caring enough about the work to imbue it with passion and soul. But even if the Fates smile upon you, you actually have the right book at the right time and it’s filled to bursting with passion and soul, the second part of the equation is just as important: maximizing exposure. So while none of the supposedly surefire success strategies is any such thing for books in general, couple the right book with the right time and #5 above, and you’re well on your way.

Unfortunately, since you can’t know if you’ve captured the zeitgeist until after your book is published and you’ve maximized its exposure, you’re pretty much stuck working every exposure and sales angle you can to find out. And even if your book hasn’t exactly captured the zeitgeist, if it’s a quality book in a broad-based genre, there’s no reason you can’t drum up respectable sales and interest through your efforts. But it will be an effort, you will have to pursue every promotional avenue available to you (given your personal time, skill and financial constraints), and there’s just no way around that.

If you’re looking for shortcuts or get rich quick schemes, you’re in the wrong business.

 

This is a cross-posting from Publetariat founder and Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton‘s Indie Author Blog.

A Tale of Two Indie Authors: John Locke Becomes the First Independently Published Author to Join the “Kindle Million Club,” and Amanda Hocking Goes Big League

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Here are two cases of very big news for the two most successful “direct to Kindle” indie authors to date.

First, Amazon announced moments ago that John Locke has become the first indie author to sell a million Kindle books, with the following titles:

“As of yesterday, John Locke has sold 1,010,370 Kindle books using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP),” said Amazon’s release.

Locke said he studied the ebook market, looked at pricing of ebooks, and decided to become the bestselling author of 99 Cent books bar none.

He did it.

His 10th book, a tell-all about how he marketed his way to success, breaks the pattern.  How I Sold 1 Million eBooks In 5 Months costs $4.99.

Congratulations, John! See the entire Amazon release at the end of this post.

Meanwhile, the author who could become the next “Kindle Million Club” member, Amanda Hocking, is the subject of a pretty interesting full-length article in yesterday’s New York Times Sunday Magazine. It’s a good read whether you are a Hocking fan or simply someone interested in what’s going on in publishing and the Kindlesphere.

Hocking was outselling Locke in the Kindle store until around the time she signed a $2 million four-book contract with agency model publisher, St. Martin’s Press (MacMillan). She’s still selling 9,000 books a day, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Does Hocking’s contract mean she is no longer an indie author?

Not to me. For one thing, one important characteristic that Hocking and Locke share is that each of them writes very fast. Very, very fast. Like it takes them a month or two to complete a novel.

So even if Hocking has four books tied up with a traditional publisher, that need not keep her from bringing beaucoup other books direct to Kindle. And when she looks back on the decade as a millionaire 35-year-old in 2020 or so, I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t find that she made a lot more money with direct publishing than she did with a traditional publisher. But we’ll see.

Here’s Amazon’s release today:

 

 
John Locke Becomes the First Independently Published Author to Join the "Kindle Million Club"
Locke passes 1 million Kindle books sold using Kindle Direct Publishing

SEATTLE, Jun 20, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) –(NASDAQ: AMZN) – Amazon.com today announced that John Locke has become the eighth author to sell over 1 million Kindle books, becoming the newest member of the "Kindle Million Club," and the first independently published author to receive this distinction. As of yesterday, John Locke has sold 1,010,370 Kindle books using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). Kindle Direct Publishing is a fast and easy way for publishers and authors to start selling to Kindle customers worldwide via Kindle, Kindle 3G, Kindle with Special Offers, Kindle 3G with Special Offers, Kindle DX, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac and Android-based devices. The Kindle Million Club recognizes authors whose books have sold over 1 million paid copies in the Kindle Store. Locke joins Stieg Larsson, James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Charlaine Harris, Lee Child, Suzanne Collins and Michael Connelly in the Kindle Million Club.

"It’s so exciting that self-publishing has allowed John Locke to achieve a milestone like this," said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content. "We’re happy to see Kindle Direct Publishing succeeding for both authors and customers and are proud to welcome him to the Kindle Million Club."

"Kindle Direct Publishing has provided an opportunity for independent authors to compete on a level playing field with the giants of the book selling industry," said John Locke. "Not only did KDP give me a chance, they helped at every turn. Quite simply, KDP is the greatest friend an author can have."

John Locke, of Louisville, KY., is the internationally bestselling author of nine novels including "Vegas Moon," "Wish List," "A Girl Like You," "Follow the Stone," "Don’t Poke the Bear!" and the New York Times bestselling eBook, "Saving Rachel." Locke’s latest book, "How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months," is a how-to marketing guide for self-published authors.

Like all Kindle books, Locke’s books are "Buy Once, Read Everywhere"– customers can purchase these books and read them on the third-generation Kindles that start at $114 with the new high-contrast Pearl e-ink display, as well on iPads, iPod touches, iPhones, Macs, PCs, BlackBerrys, Windows Phones and Android-based devices. Amazon’s Whispersync technology syncs your place across devices, so you can pick up where you left off. With Kindle Worry-Free Archive, books you purchase from the Kindle Store are automatically backed up online in your Kindle library on Amazon, where they can be re-downloaded wirelessly for free, anytime.

 

 

This is a cross-posting from Stephen Windwalker‘s Kindle Nation Daily.

The Arc of Publishing and Other Predictions

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This podcast and accompanying transcript are provided in their entirety by the Copyright Clearance Center’s Beyond the Bookcast.

In May at the annual BookExpo America in New York City, CCC’s Skott Klebe spoke on The Arc of Publishing.

“What I’m talking about is predicting the future,” he told the Javits Center audience. “And that’s really hard, right? People get the future wrong all the time… But some futures are very predictable. With that in mind, let me ask, does the future of publishing have a predictable arc?”

For his illustrated lecture, Klebe examined the characteristics of market disruption, and how they apply in the changing world of eBook publishing, with special attention to the author-direct publishing model currently gaining attention on the Kindle and Nook.

Klebe’s presentation earlier this year to the Tools of Change conference caught the ear of Andrew Albanese from Publishers Weekly. “Klebe’s point: with technology, the wars [over e-books will] never really end,” Albanese noted enthusiastically. “There is constant tension between innovators, and entrenched interests.”

 The Arc of Publishing and Other Predictions [51:49m]: Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download

View or download the accompanying transcript pdf here.

 

New YUDU Research Report Finds That Tablets Are Usurping e-Readers as Reading Device of Choice for Consumers

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[press release] Research Provides Detailed Insight and Statistics on the Rise of the e-Book Industry; 2011 Is Likely "The Beginning of the End" for Dedicated e-Reader Devices

CAMBRIDGE, MA–(Marketwire – Jun 15, 2011) – Digital publishing company YUDU Media (www.yudupro.com) today published a new report summarizing key research, facts and figures on the e-book market, which continues to grow at a blistering pace. The report, titled, "Rise of the e-book: e-book stats and trends," discusses some of the key components of the industry in its current form, aiming to provide analysis and insight into some of its most recent developments.

A sampling of the research included in this report:

  • E-book sales now outpace print book sales, as sales of e-books nearly tripled in the US from 2009 to 2010.
     
  • Tablets such as the iPad appear to be overtaking e-reader devices such as the Kindle as the platform of choice for reading e-books; Forrester predicts that by 2015, there will be twice as many owners of tablet PCs than there are of dedicated e-readers.
     
  • Apple’s iBookstore is gaining rapidly on Amazon.com as the highest volume sales platform for e-Books.
     
  • E-books have helped fuel success for self-published authors, who are no longer beholden to large, traditional publishing houses to get their works into the hands of readers.

"The e-book market shake-up is likely to become more pronounced over the course of the year, with a growing number of publishers and consumers alike choosing a tablet as their hardware of choice," said Richard Stephenson, CEO of YUDU Media. "While 2010 may be remembered as the birth year of consumer e-books, 2011 may well be considered as the beginning of the end for the dedicated e-book reader."

The e-book market in 2011 will experience exponential growth which will impact the book publishing industry as a whole. YUDU’s report offers a deeper analysis of the e-book industry with evidence that transitions in the market go beyond a simple upward sales trend. Ongoing technology innovations and shifts in consumer behavior are driving the continued growth of the e-book market, which publishers are embracing to meet consumer demand and factoring in as part of their overall growth strategy in order to compete in this rapidly changing environment.

Those interested in more detail can access the white paper online at www.yudupro.com/e-book_whitepaper or on the iPad/iPhone by downloading the YUDU Media App and selecting ‘e-book Report.’

About YUDU Media
YUDU Media is a web, mobile and tablet ePublishing specialist that’s been serving digital publishing solutions to book and magazine publishers since 2003. YUDU has customers in over 70 countries, produces up to 1,200 digital publications a day and has developed almost 100 iPad and iPhone Apps. YUDU Book customers include Wiley, AA Publishing, McGraw-Hill Ryerson and HarperCollins.

ARROW Hits the Bullseye

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This Beyond the Book podcast and accompanying transcript are being provided in their entirety by the Copyright Clearance Center.

Developed by a European consortium coordinated by the Italian Publishers Association (AIE), ARROW — Accessible Registries of Rights Information and Orphan Works — is a system to help libraries with the identification of rights status and rightsholders in digital library programs. ARROW is based on a pro-active search of rightsholders for works eligible for inclusion in any digitization program, and indirectly is a tool for the identification of so-called “orphan works.”

ARROW’s coordinator is Piero Attanasio, Head of International Projects, the Italian Publishers Association (AIE). He explained to CCC’s Chris Kenneally how the project meets one objective while approaching a solution for another. “ARROW was considered since the beginning to save the parents, not to identify the orphans,” he said. “That means to reconnect the works to the parents, that are the authors and the publishers.”

The dilemma of orphan works haunts rightsholders and users worldwide, particularly at this moment of mass digitization by libraries and others. “Whether the motivation was pure preservation of materials that were going to decline in quality over a period of time, or whether the motivation was simply to make wider and wider access over a network environment,” Michael Healy, Executive Director, The Book Rights Registry, noted, “you immediately encounter the constraints of the existing legislative and legal regimes. And those two things are not working in harmony anywhere right now.”

The Arrow System: Rights Management In Mass Digitization: A European Approach was presented at the 2011 Global Market Forum (featuring Publishing in Italy) as part of BookExpo America 2011.

 ARROW Hits the Bullseye [39:03m]: Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download

Click here for the accompanying transcript.

 

40 Years Of Ebooks (Infographic)

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When I finished the infographic and showed it to my wife, she said: “Forty years? No way. Four, maybe.”

“Four, maybe” – it’s what most people think. Most people are still convinced that e-books are a fad. That’s why I was looking for a convenient, all-in-one way to challenge this myth. I hope it works. Every year shows not only the information about e-books, but also other facts and achievements. This builds a good, thought-provoking time reference.

Share this infographic if you think it deserves it. I wanted to put it on the web before this year’s edition of Read an E-Book Week. 40 years of history are asking for a week of attention – this should work.

I dedicate this little piece of work to a true visionary Michael S. Hart. When he was typing the text of the US Declaration of Independence, the only word I was speaking was “ma-ma”.

via ebookfriend.ly

 

 

This is a reprint from Piotr Kowalczyk‘s Password Incorrect.