An Author's Plan For Social Media

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This post, from Chris Brogan, originally appeared on his site on 5/29/10.

Here’s a freebie: if I were an author looking to get the most out of the social web (and I am), I’d do something along the lines of what I’m about to share. Your mileage may vary, but here’s a decent approximation of the things I’d do. Please feel free to share liberally. Just link back to An Author’s Plan for Social Media Efforts, please.

 

An Author’s Plan for Social Media

  1. Set up a URL for the book, and/or maybe one for your name. Need help finding a URL? I use Ajaxwhois.com for simple effort in searching.
     
  2. Set up a blog. If you want it free and super fast, WordPress or Tumblr. I’d recommend getting hosting like Bloghost.me.
     
  3. On the blog, write about interesting things that pertain to the book, but don’t just promote the book over and over again. In fact, blow people away by promoting their blogs and their books, if they’re related a bit.
     
  4. Start an email newsletter. It’s amazing how much MORE responsive email lists are than any other online medium.
     
  5. Ask around for radio or TV contacts via the social web and LinkedIn. You never know.
     
  6. Come up with interesting reasons to get people to buy bulk orders. If you’re a speaker, waive your fee (or part of it) in exchange for sales of hundreds of books. (And spread those purchases around to more than one bookselling company.) In those giveaways, do something to promote links back to your site and/or your post. Giveaways are one time: Google Juice is much longer lasting.
     
  7. Whenever someone writes a review on their blog, thank them with a comment, and maybe 1 tweet, but don’t drown them in tweets pointing people to the review. It just never comes off as useful.
     
  8. Ask gently for Amazon and other distribution site reviews. They certainly do help the buying process. And don’t ask often.
     
  9. Do everything you can to be gracious and thankful to your readers. Your audience is so much more important than you in this equation, as there are more of them than there are of you.

Read the rest of the post, which includes 12 more steps for authors to use social media effectively, on Chris Brogan‘s site.

A Report On Handselling My Self-Published Books

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I really must apologize for not keeping this blog as up to date as I would like. I’ve talked about a number of self-publishing processes and experiences, about our bookstore, The Book Barn, in Leavenworth, Kansas, and the status of my writing and preparing my books. I’ve also mentioned niche marketing and several of the eight public domain books I discovered of interest to people in our area. Now I thought you might find it interesting to learn of some of my in-person handselling experiences for both my books and these historical fiction/nonfiction public domain books in our store.

 
First I need to explain this time of year, between the graduating Command and General Staff College class at the fort and the arrival of the next year’s class makes for some serious down time. It can be as traffic ridden as a hot day in the middle of the Sargasso Sea—total doldrums. Given that, sitting at my table in the store and cheerfully greeting the few out-of-town visitors who come in has been an interesting experience. I politely ascertain if they’re new to the area. I then mention my historical book about how our community was founded if they would like to know more about it and offer them a copy to peruse. I also ask what kinds of books they like best and steer them toward those sections. Once they have a chance to scan the shelves, I ask if they like mystery series set in a particular locale. If they do, I mention my mysteries and show them a few. That ofttimes results in a sale of one or more. Then I ask them if they like frontier history. If so, I show them the public domain books. Again, this often results in additional sales.
 
If they have just moved in, I ask if there are any books they haven’t been able to find. If so, I do a quick search of Baker and Taylor’s data base and if I find them, I explain our speedy special order service where we get books in 2-3 days with a 10% discount and no s&h. Again, this often results in an order or several. When they come back to pick up their books, they often will ask for other titles, which means they should become loyal customers.
 
My wife gets so busy with the day-to-day stuff, she doesn’t always have the time to do all this; however, we’re finding it’s sometimes doubling and even tripling our daily averages. Having a real live author talk books with the customers raises the store’s credibility. They like getting their purchases signed and personalized too.
 
I am so glad I decided to go back into self-publishing because it’s having a positive impact on our store business. We are also raising the community’s awareness of us as folks who are interested in the history and day-to-day of our town. This is all to the good. It’s also beginning to bring me a few book packaging clients of people who can see we know how to do all this. It all pulls together the various aspects of book production and retailing so that while other independent bookstores are having a tough time of it, we’re surviving and even doing a little better. It isn’t about doing just one thing. It’s about doing many related things in a cohesive way. To round it out is our reading of many books which we in turn can recommend, again making us a valuable resource.
 
I realize not many authors/publishers own their own bookstore; however, examine how we use all these different elements and consider how your books could fit into such a model. Convince bookstore owners and staff that your book or series is worthy of their personal attention to recommend and handsell to customers. This is why a poor turnout at a booksigning isn’t a disaster. It allows you the interface and time to connect with staff and owners and become their friend. Ofttimes the real success of a signing is in the handselling that takes place later.

 

This is a reprint from Bob Spear‘s Book Trends blog.

God? Really?

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A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.
–James Feibleman

The missionaries go forth to Christianize the savages — as if the savages weren’t dangerous enough already.
–Edward Abbey

We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing/all-powerful God, who creates faulty humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.
–Gene Roddenberry

Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a God superior to themselves. Most Gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
–Robert A Heinlein

Properly read, the bible is the most potent force for Atheism ever conceived.
–Isaac Asimov

Faith does not give you the answers, it just stops you asking the questions.
–Frater Ravus

All thinking men are atheists.
–Ernest Hemmingway

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
–Mohandas Gandhi

I am myself a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope that every kind of religious belief will die out.
–Bertrand Russell

Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration–courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth.
–H. L. Mencken

If God has spoken, why is the world not convinced?
–Percy Bysshe Shelley

It is easier to suppose that the universe has existed for all eternity than to conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it.
–Percy Bysshe Shelley

Religions are all alike – founded upon fables and mythologies.
–Thomas Jefferson

The Best Way to rob a Bank in the wisdom Age….Get your own Bank

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 Much has been said on the issue of wealth creation and paradigm of success. In the wisdom age, one needs not to break down his chromosomes trying to get wealthy. There exist already made wealth templates in the psychic pool of wealth in the cosmic cornucopia. The banks of this world only store money and not wealth in its vaults across the globe. To attempt robbing a bank from the outside is as good as diving straight into the Atlantic Ocean without a slightest knowledge of swimming in the pool. It is far better you opt for the knowledge on how to own a bank than think of robbing one around.

The best way to rob a bank in wisdom age is to own one. To create a pyramid scheme with viable products is the easiest way to own unending cornucopia of wealth. That is a multilevel marketing business that mints you money like crazy automated teller machine, and for life times you will be in money. Your business will grow across the globe and people you will never meet face to face will work for you and work for your children till your last generation on earth. It is explosive way to create your own bank and mint your own money.

The Federal Reserve will not make the poor rich rather make the rich in the land richer and create even more vital opportunities for them. But you have more than the Federal Reserve on the inside of you. Just discover who you are, what you are and where you are in the geometry of time and space of life in this wisdom age. Look up and look hard enough to see your wealth shimmering in the womb of the earth and give vent to it. You do not need a bail out to come out of poverty but a vision loaded enough with clear purpose is the magic wand you need to plot your way to the cosmos cornucopia of wealth.

The best way to lead in the wisdom age is to lead the way to bank robbery and live your golden dream here on earth beyond the imagination of the universe. To lead the robbery on banks you need a wealthy mind, healthy body and sharp focus to cut through the rough edges of doubt and numbness that belittle men in their prime. Then, create your own income grid using the legal instrument of the bank leverages, and float your own bank. This way you rob the most secured bank in the world even without a mask on the face. Get richer, do it legally, do something useful with it once you have got it, put something back and keep some of this stuff under your hat which is your claim to greatness.

Ritchie Felix,

Copyright By Ritchie Felix

 

Presidential Stuff

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Presidential Quotations
Assembled by Michael LaRocca
http://www.michaeledits.com

Laws made by common consent must not be trampled on by individuals.
—George Washington

The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion. —John Adams (often misattributed to George Washington)

The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster: cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites.
—Thomas Jefferson

The fetters imposed on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defense against real, pretended or imaginary dangers abroad. —James Madison

The best form of government is that which is most likely to prevent the greatest sum of evil. —James Monroe

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. —John Quincy Adams

Any man worth his salt will stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly better man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error. —Andrew Jackson

As to the presidency, the two happiest days of my life were those of my entrance upon the office and my surrender of it. —Martin Van Buren

A decent and manly examination of the acts of government should not only be tolerated, but encouraged. —William Henry Harrison

I can never consent to being dictated to. —John Tyler

There is more selfishness and less principle among members of Congress than I had any conception of, before I became President of the U.S. The passion for office among members of Congress is very great, if not absolutely disreputable, and greatly embarrasses the operations of the Government.
—James Knox Polk

The idea that I should become President seems to me too visionary to require a serious answer. It has never entered my head, nor is it likely to enter the head of any other person. —Zachary Taylor

Nothing brings out the lower traits of human nature like office-seeking. Men of good character and impulses are betrayed by it into all sorts of meanness.
—Millard Fillmore

The maintenance of large standing armies in our country would be not only dangerous, but unnecessary. —Franklin Pierce

The ballot box is the surest arbiter of disputes among free men.
—James Buchanan

The bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.
—Abraham Lincoln

It’s a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.
—Andrew Johnson

I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution. —Ulysses S. Grant

Nothing brings out the lower traits of human nature like office seeking.
—Rutherford B. Hayes

The President is the last person in the world to know what the people really want and think. —James A. Garfield

I may be president of the United States, but my private life is nobody’s damned business. —Chester Arthur

A man is known by the company he keeps, and also by the company from which he is kept out. —Grover Cleveland

We Americans have no commission from God to police the world.
—Benjamin Harrison

War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed.
—William McKinley

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. —Theodore Roosevelt

The world is not going to be saved by legislation. —William Howard Taft

I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.
—Woodrow Wilson

Progression is not proclamation nor palaver. It is not pretense nor play on prejudice. It is not of personal pronouns, nor perennial pronouncement. It is not the perturbation of a people passion-wrought, nor a promise postponed.
—Warren G. Harding

I don’t know much about Americanism, but it’s a damn good word with which to carry an election. —Warren G. Harding

Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business. —Calvin Coolidge

When large numbers of men are unable to find work, unemployment results.
—Calvin Coolidge

Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die.
—Herbert Hoover

Remember, remember always, that all of us… are descended from immigrants and revolutionists. —Franklin D. Roosevelt

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward. —Franklin D. Roosevelt

The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.
—Harry S. Truman

It’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose your own. —Harry S. Truman

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear. —Harry S. Truman

Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed. —Dwight D. Eisenhower

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired is, in a final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. —Dwight D. Eisenhower

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. —John F. Kennedy

Evil acts of the past are never rectified by evil acts of the present.
—Lyndon B. Johnson

Certainly in the next 50 years we shall see a woman president, perhaps sooner than you think. A woman can and should be able to do any political job that a man can do. —Richard M. Nixon

We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another – until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.
—Richard M. Nixon

I know I am getting better at golf because I am hitting fewer spectators.
—Gerald R. Ford

Things are more like they are now than they have ever been.
—President Gerald Ford

China should not pay any attention to anything that is said in America during an election year. —Jimmy Carter

Government does not solve problems, it subsidizes them. —Ronald Reagan

I have opinions of my own — strong opinions — but I don’t always agree with them. —George H.W. Bush

The era of big government is over. —Bill Clinton

I’m a uniter, not a divider. —George W. Bush

If you’re not with us, you’re against us. —George W. Bush

I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job.
—George W. Bush

I remember meeting the mother of a child who was abducted by North Koreans right here in the Oval Office. —George W. Bush

BARACK OBAMA QUOTATIONS
Assembled by Michael LaRocca
http://www.michaeledits.com

A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, ‘Huh. It works. It makes sense.’

Americans… still believe in an America where anything’s possible — they just don’t think their leaders do.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.

I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we’ve struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We’ve made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.

I think when you spread the wealth around it’s good for everybody.

I’ve got two daughters. 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.

If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists — to protect them and to promote their common welfare — all else is lost.

If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.

Issues are never simple. One thing I’m proud of is that very rarely will you hear me simplify the issues.

My job is not to represent Washington to you, but to represent you to Washington.

No one is pro-abortion.

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.

We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times… and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK. That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen.

We have an obligation and a responsibility to be investing in our students and our schools. We must make sure that people who have the grades, the desire and the will, but not the money, can still get the best education possible.

We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old — and that’s the criterion by which I’ll be selecting my judges.

We need to internalize this idea of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent.

What Washington needs is adult supervision.

 

Free E-Books

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There’s a lot more to my site than that, once you drop down past the "lemme edit your writing" crap, but I think you’re most interested in the freebies.

 

http://www.michaeledits.com

 

Editing, Proofreading, Manuscript Evaluation

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Next Day Proofreading by Michael LaRocca

If you live in the Americas, send me your document when you leave the office and you’ll find a clean copy waiting for you the next morning. I live in Thailand, which is 12 hours ahead of EST, and I have over 20 years of proofreading experience. One cent per word.

Fiction and Technical Editing by Michael LaRocca

I’ve edited over 300 published novels and textbooks over the past 20 years. Two cents per word, and that also includes proofreading because I simply can’t stop myself.

Manuscript Evaluation by Michael LaRocca

Maybe you’re not ready for such in-depth work yet or you simply can’t afford it because you’ve written over 100,000 words. My favorite service is my Manuscript Evaluation service, and it also happens to be my cheapest, at only $1 per 250 words. It may also be my most helpful.

 

http://www.michaeledits.com

 

Blackberry Picking & Hay Making

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Again my living in the country got in the way of being able to work at the computer last week. Not that I’m complaining. I love being an author and a country gal. I’m the one who set out blackberry vines twenty years ago. I dug the starter plants out of my parents ditch. One more plant at my house that has a family attachment. It took a few years for the plants to get established and attached to the barb wire fence back of the garden. Now the vines are so thickly entwined we don’t know the fence is there until we come in contact with a barb. Then we can’t be sure if what punctured our finger was metal or a sticker.

My favorite pie and jelly are blackberry. I make a blackberry syrup for a revel to run through homemade vanilla ice cream. The vines are between a row of spruce trees and cherry bushes and a field of 8 feet tall corn plants. However, I consider picking the berries, in the hottest month of the year and in a spot where absolutely no air moves, worth the effort. This year’s crop has been overly abundant because of all the rain.

When I bat at the deer flies and mosquitoes, I think about what berry picking was like when I was a kid in southern Missouri. My brother and I picked blackberries with our mom every other day for two weeks until all the berries ripened. She sold what berries we didn’t need to pay for sugar, flour and coffee at the grocery store. July days are hot and humid in the Ozarks. We were made hotter yet, because Mom made us wear long sleeve shirts to keep from getting scratched. We wore our cowboy hats with the bead on the string to shade us from the sun. Mom bought vanilla flavoring from the Watkins Salesman. She believed that to be the best for baking. The salesman was good at the over sell pitches. He told Mom she could rub the vanilla on our ankles to keep chiggers from crawling on us. Mom thought the idea was worth a try. We smelled like raw cookie dough and still had bites all over us. The sweet smell probably attracted the chiggers to us.

In the early morning hours when the day was as cool as it would get, we had a quarter of a mile walk down a lane lined with Osage Orange hedge trees to the pasture where the milk cows grazed. It was about that far across the pasture to the blackberry thickets. Cattle didn’t try to eat in the thickets because of the stickers, but snakes like the grassy shade under the vines. So we got the usual cautions from Mom to watch where we stepped. We each had a pail. Once in a while, a popping bug would fall in the berries. I’d have to stop picking to get rid of it.

Back then, I liked the cobblers and jelly Mom made with the berries. She canned and stored the jars in the fruit cellar behind the house for winter use. Even so I was always glad when we had all the ripe berries picked for the day so we could go home for lunch. We were sweaty and tired. Usually Mom had a fresh pitcher of real lemonade waiting for us in the ice box which was something to look forward to. A glass of that lemonade and the shade of the maple tree was as cool as it got in those days.

Back to the present with hay making. We finally got the hay baled. That job always makes me nervous. Last year, the tractor had a smoking problem that turned out to be two wires rubbed together. The smoke came up in my face through the steering wheel. I panicked and jumped off the tractor just about the time the smoke stopped.

This summer has not been good hay making weather. We usually cut hay the first of June, in July and again late August. Almost every day in June, we had rain. We needed the days to be hot and dry. When we saw this last week was going to be rain free, my husband cut the hay on Sunday. The timothy, clover and alfalfa plants were tall, two cuttings in one actually. The windrows were thick which made them hard to dry. By Thursday afternoon, we were ready to bale. My husband warned me to go slow and watch not to plug the baler with the hay. We’d sheer a pin. Just what I needed to hear, but in three hours, we didn’t have any trouble and three wagons full of hay for our efforts. I thought a problem had by passed us this time and found out I was wrong.

It was 7 o’clock that night. The day had been perfect with a breeze and not too hot. My husband suggested we put a load in the barn right away while it was cool. I unload the bales from the wagons onto the conveyor which isn’t so bad with a breeze. My husband stacks in the loft which is hot any time. We were down to the last layer on the first wagon when the chain on our 40 year old conveyor broke. My husband fixed it. I put one bale in the loft and the chain broke. By then it was too dark to see how to work on the chain. My husband did repairs the next morning and about three other times after that. Only about six bales had gone up to the loft. Then a sprocket bent and a chain broke. I’d been trying to talk my husband into getting a new conveyor so I was relieved that the conveyor was finally unfixable. We spent the rest of the day putting 200 bales in the loft by hand. My husband threw the first wagon load in the loft window while I carried them back out of the way. The next wagon, he stacked 15 at a time on the tractor loader bucket and raised it up to the window for me to pull inside. What a relief when we had that last bale stacked.

Saturday, we checked on a new conveyor. The salesman is going to call on Tuesday to let us know the cost and delivery date so I have to keep my phone line free. I definitely want that call to come through so I’m making my blog posts today. By the next time we make hay, something else will have to go wrong. The conveyor is new and the tractor is fixed. That only leaves the baler.

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

Who Let That Fool In Here

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When Mamie Jo Hill was a young virgin, a doctor assured her she could never get pregnant. After seeing her firstborn son, she wished he’d been right. Little Michael was dumb as a brick, and he had a face that could sink 1000 ships, a face that could make a freight train take a dirt road. A quick peek at http://www.michaeledits.com/ will establish that, unlike a fine wine, I have not improved with age.
 
As I got older, I learned to compensate for my lack of ability by BSing my way through life. 1982 WHO’S WHO IN AMERICAN WRITING. Four books published in 2002, one in 2004, another in 2005. Three EPPIE finalists. Won some Reviewer’s Choice Awards at Sime~Gen. One of WRITERS DIGEST’s Top 101 Websites For Writers. And all without a lick of talent.
 
Now I teach English in China, where I can BS to my heart’s content.
 
But I’m not all bad. My cat really loves me. My wife loves me too, but she doesn’t know any better because she’s Australian.
 
{Update: We moved to Thailand in 2006 and I quit teaching, but I still BS to my heart’s content.}

Happy Independence Day!

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Publetariat is taking the day off on Monday, July 5 in observance of Independence Day. Site members can still post to their blogs and use the Publetariat Forum during this time.

See you back here on the 6th!             – Editor

Storyist Software Offers Easy ePub to Self-Publishers

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About a month ago I came across the software Storyist for the first time. I was taken by Storyist’s idiosyncratic interface and knew right away that it had to be the work of a single individual. You don’t often get quirky hybrid software from a committee.

The man behind Storyist is Steve Shepard, a high-tech entrepreneur and writer who created it to solve his own dissatisfaction with the software tools for writers that were available.

 
It’s really an immersive environment, and if you find the Storyist interface to your liking, it will probably become addictive, because no other program I know provides this type of interaction with your writing project.
 
The complete Storyist set of modules or features includes:
  • Word processor
  • Page layout
  • Outliner
  • Storyboard
  • Manuscript and Screenplay formatting
  • Style sheets, style editor, project wide searching, links, etc.
storyist epub files self-publishing

Click to see the Storyist interface full size

Storyist isn’t only a word processor, it has the ability to track your plot, your characters, even the settings in your book or screenplay. Storyist handles screenplay formatting and straight narrative formatting, producing what it calls “submission-ready” files for output.

However, none of that, even though it’s interesting, is what made me stop and take a second look.
 

Storyist: ePub Conversion for the Masses?
What really attracted me to Storyist was the announcement a few weeks ago that they had added support for ePub conversion right inside the program. As ePub becomes more prevalent, I think we’ll see more and more consumer level tools with the ability to “Save as” or export files direct to ePub without the need for a separate program, or for an outside contractor.
 
ePub conversions are notoriously uneven. The format also has critical limitations in its ability to deal with graphics, tables, charts and other non-text elements.
 
But after watching Shepherd’s video demo of how to create an ePub, I just had to try it. It’s a terrific demo and I really sat up and paid attention when I saw how easy it was.
 
I’m not going to repeat the steps that Steve Sheperd outlines in the video, I don’t think I could improve on it. But in brief, here’s what I did, and what you can do too.
You’ll have to be the judge of whether it makes sense for you to try to do your own ePub conversions. Depending on how complex your books are, and how good you are at techie stuff, learning how to do this properly is going to take time and energy. Should you work on your writing or marketing instead? Maybe. Having said that, the promise of an ePub export that’s as easy as creating a PDF is pretty enticing. That’s the origin of this story.
Step by Step to the iBookstore (sort of)
I grabbed the first part of a manuscript I’m editing for publication. It’s a lecture from the 1980s and it seemed perfect for ePub because it’s got virtually no formatting, just paragraphs. I might have spruced it up a bit, but I was more interested in whether this super easy ePub conversion could really be as simple as it looked on the demo.
 
I wanted a Report Cover look to go with the text, since the document was only about 10,000 words, and I wanted to see how the iBooks software would render this style of cover instead of a book cover. I created one in Photoshop and saved it as a JPG file. Here’s what happened next:
  1. I dropped the text file into Storyist and applied some basic formatting with the Styles dialog. It was easy to edit these styles for a better appearance. Every paragraph has to be styled for best results, so the easiest way is to assign everything the “Body Text” format, then just change the headings as needed.
     
  2. Then I dropped the cover file into Storyist.
     
  3. After choosing “File/Export” from the menu, I was presented with a series of dialogs which are explained briefly in the demo video and more fully in the Storyist documentation, but there was nothing difficult. You choose your files, make sure they’re in the right order, complete publication information, and add metadata to your file.
    I was struck with the complete list of choices you have for assigning metadata. (Checking the documentation, it turns out the metadata fields correspond to the fields specified by the Dublin Core Metadata initiative. Controlling this metadata is critical to self-publishers in the digital space, and bears more discussion than I have room for here.)

     

    storyist epub metadata self-publishing

    Click to see the metadata record filled in
     

  4. Storyist wrote the book files in ePub format to my drive.
     
  5. I dropped the ePub file into iTunes and plugged in my iPad. iTunes, recognizing the ePub format as that used by iBookstore, automatically loaded my brand new eBook into the iBooks Library, ready for reading, as you can see in the screenshot at the top of this article.
iTunes metadata self-publishing

Click to see the metadata in iTunes

Not including the time it took me to work out the Storyist interface, stumble over technical obstacles I simply didn’t understand, email back and forth with Steve Shepard to get help for my newbie questions, create the cover file in Photoshop, this whole process was incredibly fast, well under an hour.

Of course, with all those things, I’ve been working on this about three weeks.

Self-Publishing In the Age of Instant Gratification
Granted, in my process my “book” only ended up in my iBooks library. But this is the file format you need to submit your book to the iBookstore, or to an aggregator for listing on your behalf. It’s the same file type used by Sony Reader, B&N Nook, and other eBook readers. I opened the file without a problem in Calibre as well.
 
What I was struck by at the end of this experiment was the speed with which you can put a book together and publish it in eBook form. I could sit at my Mac right now and start typing, and when I finished I could have the resulting book, along with a graphic cover, online and potentially available within an hour.
 
I was amazed at the speed, flexibility and ability to radically reduce the financial risk of publishing you gain from using digital printing and print on demand distribution. But this was a different order of magnitude. This was the closest I had come to feeling like I was Being the Media, publishing a product—not a blog post or a story—so directly and immediately.
 
I’d like to say what the implications of this are, but I’m curious about you. What do you think of this ability to quickly and easily “publish” right from your desktop? Will it affect you?
 
Ed. note: Cheryl Anne Gardner points out in the comments that I failed to mention whether the ePub files that I created in Storyist were epubcheck compliant. I created two ePub files when I was preparing this article, and ran them both through the epubcheck software. One passed inspection and one did not. Walt Shiel tells me that this error refers to duplicate entries in one of the ePub files. I have no idea how Storyist would handle more complex formatting, or what percentage of files it produces are epubcheck compliant. To be accepted into the iBookstore, your files will have to pass this same compliance test. I would encourage anyone who wants to make use of this tool for ePub formatting to download the free sample and try it and, if you have problems see whether they can be resolved by Storyist support.
 
Ed. note number 2: I received a note from Steve Shepard about what likely caused the error on my ePub file that wouldn’t verify. It was a simple fix and turned out to be something I simply forgot when making the file. After correcting it—putting the cover in the proper order in the file list—the resulting ePub passed epubcheck 1.0.5 with no errors. Your mileage may vary.

 

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

Proofreading Your Own Work

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In the previous post I mentioned various proofreading methods I considered for my short story collection, The Year of the Elm (TYOTE). While the objective in all cases was the same — eliminating nagging typos and errors — each method had different strengths and weaknesses.

Because I knew TYOTE would be read by almost no one, and would bring in almost no revenue, I decided to pursue the option that promised to teach me the most about the proofreading process, and about my own ability to spot mistakes. Against all advice, and despite knowing in advance that I could not be one hundred percent successful, I decided to proofread the final draft of the collection myself. (Full disclosure: one other person gave the stories a proofreading pass early in the process.)
 
Having written professionally in a number of mediums I know I have a decent eye. Not great, but good enough to catch a lot of common errors. Still, like every writer, I have my nemeses. For example, I am constantly transposing ‘from’ and ‘form’, and no spell checker can save me from that fate. Even when I consciously watch for that mistake, slowing my eye to a letter-by-letter crawl, I invariably miss an instance. (Case in point, when I originally wrote ‘from’ and ‘form’ above, I wrote it as ‘from’ and ‘from’ — and didn’t catch the mistake until re-reading the sentence for the umpteenth time.)
 
Too, it’s worth noting that much of my professional writing has been script work, both in the motion picture and interactive industries. While I certainly don’t want typos in my milestone drafts, a typo in a script feels like less of a crime simply because a script is a blueprint, not a finished work. When I really came to terms with the fact that I would be producing a finished product with my name on it, my level of concern (and vanity) about typos markedly increased. Where I previously felt that typos in a script were unprofessional, I suddenly felt as if typos in my short story collection would be a personal criticism of me.  
 
Given this heightened sense of responsibility, it probably seems incongruous that I decided to trust myself to find all the mistakes I’d made. I grant the point. The missing factor — beyond my desire to learn as much as I could about proofreading my own work — was my competitive desire to defy conventional wisdom. If I failed miserably, and I almost hoped I would, I would forever relieve myself of any obligation to track down mistakes on my own. On the other hand, if I succeeded, I might improve my craft as well as demonstrate the kind of attention to detail that authors and publishers look for in a freelance editor.
 
Step 1: Read and Repeat
The process I followed was pretty primitive: start at the beginning and read through the whole draft, fixing mistakes as I found them. When I was done I started in again, lather-rinse-repeat style. My goal was a full pass which revealed no new errors, although I knew that would hardly be a guarantee of success. Rather, it would simply signal the point at which I had become blind to my own work despite all efforts to the contrary.
 
How many times did I go through the whole book? I can’t tell you. It was easily four times (and here I mean four times during the final proofreading process), and probably six or seven. While that may seem like a lot (or not), what amazed me most is that I kept learning new things about the collection. Sometimes I found a subtle error between different stories (something an editor of almost any pay grade might miss), while other times I suddenly discovered obvious, in-your-face mistakes that made me wonder if I could proofread my own name.
 
What did I learn along the way? One thing I continually demonstrated to myself was that rewriting even a single sentence during the proofing process almost necessarily introduced new mistakes — either in the newly-written text, or when taken in context with the rest of the work. Because I kept finding sentences I wanted to tweak I made sure I revisited the changed text multiple times, over and above each full proofreading pass. (All word processors include highlighting, underlining or other marking functions that allow an author to easily identify changed sections of text, to say nothing of more complex revision/editing features which track changes in real time. If you make any revisions during the proofreading process, mark that text for review the next day. You’ll be amazed at how many mistakes you find.)
 
Step 2: Learn As You Go
The most useful thing I learned while proofreading TYOTE was to keep track of discovered mistakes, consistency concerns and usage issues in a separate list. As the final step in the proofreading process I worked through the list, item by item, using the ‘find’ function in my word processor to locate as many instances of the (potential) problem as possible. For example, once I realized that I had written ‘Mom’ as ‘mom’ in several places, I wrote ‘Mom/mom’ down to remind me to check all uses of the word for appropriate capitalization.
 
For TYOTE, here’s the list I ended up with:
  • Mom/mom
  • any more = 2 words
  • ‘em only in dialogue
  • start/ed/ing
  • very
  • really
  • just
  • too – no rule/see blog post
  • even
  • it’s/its
  • possessives
Many of these are obvious and would apply to any work. Because TYOTE was written from the point of view of a child, however, usage that might be improper for an older or more educated character was proper, but still required judgment on a case-by-case basis. The words ‘very’, ‘just’ and ‘really’ were checked not only for usage in each sentence, but relative to the overall work. The goal was to allow the main character to talk the way kids talk without turning the work into a colloquial swamp. Checking the use of such words in a dedicated pass allowed me to make those judgments in a way that would have otherwise been impossible.
 
The Stopping Point(s)
The best part about this two-step process is that it simply runs its course. You read and re-read the text until you can’t find any more mistakes. Along the way, you compile a list of words/issues to check across the breadth of the entire text. When you can’t find any more mistakes in your read-throughs you turn to the list, and when you’re done with the list you’re done.
 
Again, the fact that I ran out of things to find doesn’t mean there aren’t fifty (or five hundred) obvious mistakes in The Year of the Elm. It simply means I will never be the one who spots them. Having said that, the fact that I kept drilling down and finding more issues actually made me fell like I did a decent job. Had I made one pass, fixed some obvious errors, then found nothing to fix on my second pass, I would have had little confidence in the outcome.
 
In that sense I think any author can use this two-step process both to improve their proofreading skills and to gauge their own ability to proofread content. If you find almost nothing that needs fixing, chances are that your eye may simply not be up to the task. On the other hand, if you keep finding mistakes, and your knowledge of the work grows as you comb through the copy, the odds are that you’ll do a fairly good job of cleaning up the text. (Or at least a better job than you might have otherwise.)
 
For me, the best and most surprising thing about this process was that my authorial knowledge of TYOTE continued to grow even after I thought the creative process had effectively concluded. Not only didn’t I expect that, but having seen the benefits firsthand I can’t imagine not following the same process with subsequent works — even as I will certainly involve others in the proofreading process. (Again, my goal with TYOTE was to learn as much as I could about proofreading, and about myself in that role. In that respect the process I followed paid incredible dividends, and improved the collection in ways I could not have replicated using other approaches.)
 
Results So Far
The punchline is that no one has pointed out a typo or other mistake in TYOTE. While it’s tempting to believe that I really did perform some sort of miracle edit, the truth is more banal.
 
First, the number of readers is but a handful, so I can’t lay claim to any sort of crowd-sourcing or broad-based sample. Second — and I know this from having written online for years — readers almost never report mistakes. And why should they? Not only isn’t it their job to spend time fixing things I should have gotten right in the first place, but it’s a risky thing to do emotionally. Will the author be thankful, indignant, or simply ignore the message? I tend to think most writers are appreciative when notified of a mistake, but I’m sure there are irascible exceptions.
 
The final takeaway from this process, for me, is that editing your own work may or may not be viable, but in order to know – to have some measure of certainty that you’re not simply deluding yourself — you’re inevitably going to have to run your work by others. They may not find anything either, but that’s the only way to know for sure whether your text is clean.
 
I’m now convinced that my job is to give my text to others only when I’m sure it’s as clean as it can possibly be. It’s not my job to let others find and fix my mistakes because some of the changes I made to TYOTE during the proofing process could not have been conceived of by anyone else. My job is to work on the text exhaustively, until I literally have nothing left to give.
 
And then get help.

 

This is a reprint from Mark Barrett‘s Ditchwalk.

Getting Back On Track As A Writer

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It’s been a bit challenging lately to keep things in some semblance of order. The balance of different tasks has been difficult to maintain. In other words, I’ve felt overwhelmed and confused. All writers feel this way at one time or another. Even someone who prides themselves on being organized and on top of things can slip into this position, given the right set of circumstances. For me, the trouble started when I was trying to make things better.

By making things better, I mean that I was trying to improve my writing productivity, while also making serious changes to how I organize my days. It’s been an all-out change revolution.

Unfortunately, I think I tried to do too much at a time. When you’re dealing with the process of putting words on the page, struggling to make coherent thoughts and ideas take appropriate shape, it is important to have some stable point of reference. Now this anchor may be anything. It could be how much time you spend on the work, the time of day you’ve established as "writing time," or it could be the type of writing you do at different points. Now, if you’re working one a single, massive project like me, there isn’t much time to get tossed about by different subject matter. Instead, you may find that the weight of that single work itself is enough to collapse on top of you when you let procrastination drop on top of you.

In The Mix

Right now, I have a book that is taking up the majority of my time writing. This alone is enough to occupy every stray creative thought I have. But, that’s not all I’ve been doing. I’ve been looking at submissions for my small publishing company, I’ve been contemplating another book, I’ve been attempting to organize my thoughts regarding different aspects of business development. Meanwhile, I’ve also been dealing with more domestic duties like training a child to use the toilet. Fantastic stuff, let me tell you. (I’m glad he’s finally making strides in that department, let me tell you!)

I know what some of you must be thinking. Why are you letting all this stuff pile up at once? There’s no need to get drawn into so much at once. Honestly, you should cut out this stuff or do something more to manage you time and delegate things when you can. You know what, I couldn’t agree more. I should have a plan in motion.

Yet, the act of planning has been a source of confusion and agitation – needless agitation I’m sure.  So what is my plan for getting back on track? How do I do it?

Back On The Track

Yes, it is a very good question. Simply put, I have to put things on pause long enough to truly evaluate what is most important and then do a wee bit more prioritizing.  That simple act would go a long way to curbing the force of this relentless confusion and weariness. Setting proper priorities is a tough step when you’ve let things coalesce into a whirlpool of chaotic thoughts and ideas. It takes time to remove the debris and see what’s waiting beneath.

This process will take me a while. Part of the process for me will also involve being more present on this blog. I’ve become lax in my posting and I would like to stop that. I want my readers to have a reason to receive my blogs in their in-boxes. I also hope that my renewed presence here will give me the opportunity to bring in new readers. I have much to say about the business of writing and publishing. I want to take the opportunity to voice some of my ideas and talk to you, the readers, about some of my plans.

That, at least, is one idea I will make good on. The other priority for me is getting that book done to the best of my ability. There is a lot at stake. It will also be a wonderful milestone for me. Wish me luck, folks!

 

This is a cross-posting from Shaun C. Kilgore‘s site.

Right On Schedule, Amazon Changes the Arithmetic of Publishing By Launching 70 Percent Royalty Option for Kindle Digital Text Platform

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Right on schedule, Amazon followed through today on the promise it made in January to offer a direct 70 per cent royalty option to authors and publishers who use the company’s Kindle Digital Text Platform.

As we said here when Amazon made its initial announcement January 20, the effective doubling of direct author royalties is "a move that is likely to bring dramatic changes in the way that authors and publishers view their ebook publishing options."

The 70 percent royalty option will also have an enormously beneficial effect for Kindle owners and other Kindle content customers, in part because it will further accelerate the velocity with which new content comes to the Kindle Store. Equally important, the conditions upon which eligibility for the 70 percent royalty option is based will be a powerful force in organizing Kindle content prices into a mandatory $2.99 to $9.99 price range and setting a maximum price ration of 4:5 between a qualifying Kindle book and "the lowest list price for the physical book."

How big a change is the new royalty option? It’s more than just a matter of upgrading DTP royalties from their previous 35 percent level, although that’s nothing to sneeze at. Instead, Amazon vice president of Kindle Content Russ Grandinetti suggested in the January 20 press release, it has the potential, for authors and indie publishers, to transform the economics of trying to earn a living by writing and publishing:

"Today, authors often receive royalties in the range of 7 to 15 percent of the list price that publishers set for their physical books, or 25 percent of the net that publishers receive from retailers for their digital books. We’re excited that the new 70 percent royalty option for the Kindle Digital Text Platform will help us pay authors higher royalties when readers choose their books." 

The stunning arithmetic involved here is bound to get the attention of well-established authors who have plenty of choices when it comes to publishing their books, because all of those choices, at present, involve far lower per-unit compensation. As always, the point where the rubber hits the road in these equations involves the number of units that becomes the multiplier for per-unit royalty rates, and more than a few mid-list as well as bestselling authors are likely to get out their pencils and try to calculate how important their publishers are in generating book sales.

In an interview last week on Len Edgerly’s The Kindle Chronicles podcast, Grandinetti directly questioned the roles both of publishers and of Amazon and its retail competitors as intermediaries in the changing worlds of publishing and bookselling:

"Any of us in this business, publishers and retailers, aren’t that necessary. Really the only things that you need are an author and someone interested in his or her work, and all of us in the middle have to figure out how to add value between those two parties….

"We’ve long said that part of our work is to become a more efficient retailer, a more efficient intermediary between suppliers, publishers, authors, and cusrtomers and I think we’re reasonably well known for working hard to lower prices for customers. But if we think about authors as our customers, then making it easier and more feasible for an author to sustain a living writing is a great way to make our store better and to grow our business, so taking some of the efficiency that digital book publishing affords us and passing some of that efficiency back on to authors is a really great way to let digital publishing and digital bookselling drive a better customer experience.

"There are myriad examples out there of authors how self publishing allows them to earn a better income at their craft. We’re happy to take advantage of it but I don’t think we’ll be the only ones. That’s just going to happen as the book business shifts more and more to digital," said Grandinetti.

Under this new royalty structure, no DTP author with an understanding of the rules and of simple price-demand elasticity would ever price a book between $10 and $25, and few authors with any confidence in their product would ever price a book below $2.99. (This royalty structure does not yet apply to larger corporate publishers under the agency model, but they may create pricing trends that could affect all publishers, and Amazon has shown an interest in publisher parity and may try to move gradually in the future to bring larger publisher contracts into conformity with this structure.)

Here’s how royalties would play out at various price points, assuming a net delivery cost of 6 cents per unit:

Retail     Royalty      Net      Royalty
Price        Pct.       Delivery
                                 Cost
$0.99    35.00%    $0.00    $0.35
$1.99    35.00%    $0.00    $0.70
$2.99    70.00%    $0.06    $2.03
$3.99    70.00%    $0.06    $2.73
$4.99    70.00%    $0.06    $3.43
$5.99    70.00%    $0.06    $4.13
$6.99    70.00%    $0.06    $4.83
$7.99    70.00%    $0.06    $5.53
$8.99    70.00%    $0.06    $6.23
$9.99    70.00%    $0.06    $6.93
$10.99    35.00%    $0.00   $3.85
$11.99    35.00%    $0.00   $4.20
$12.99    35.00%    $0.00   $4.55
$13.99    35.00%    $0.00   $4.90
$14.99    35.00%    $0.00   $5.25
$19.99    35.00%    $0.00   $7.00
$24.99    35.00%    $0.00   $8.75
$29.99    35.00%    $0.00   $10.50

Here’s the guts of the Amazon press release this morning:

—————————————————————————————–

70 Percent Royalty Option for Kindle Digital Text Platform Now Available
Starting today, authors and publishers can earn more royalties from every Kindle book sold

SEATTLE, Jun 30, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced that the 70 percent royalty option that enables authors and publishers who use the Kindle Digital Text Platform (DTP) to earn a larger share of revenue from each Kindle book they sell is now available. For each book sold from the Kindle Store for Kindle, Kindle DX, or one of the Kindle apps for iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, PC, Mac and Android phones, authors and publishers who choose the new 70 percent royalty option will receive 70 percent of the list price, net of delivery costs.

Delivery costs are based on file size, and pricing is set at $0.15/MB. At today’s median DTP file size of 368KB, delivery costs would be less than $0.06 per unit sold. For example, on an $8.99 book an author would make $3.15 with the standard option and $6.25 with the new 70 percent option. This new option, first announced in January 2010, will be in addition to and will not replace the existing DTP standard royalty option.

In addition to the 70 percent royalty option, Amazon also announced improvements in DTP such as a more intuitive "Bookshelf" feature and a simplified two-step process for publishing. These features make it more convenient for authors and publishers to publish using DTP.

"We’re excited about the launch of the 70 percent royalty option and user experience enhancements in DTP because they enable authors and publishers to conveniently offer more content to Kindle customers and to make more money from the books they sell," said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content.

DTP authors and publishers are now able to select the royalty option that best meets their needs. Books from authors and publishers who choose the 70 percent royalty option will have access to all the same features and be subject to all the same requirements as books receiving the standard royalty rate. In addition, to qualify for the 70 percent royalty option, books must satisfy the following set of requirements:

 

  • The author or publisher-supplied list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99.
     
  • The list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest list price for the physical book.
     
  • The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights.
     
  • The title will be included in a broad set of features in the Kindle Store, such as text-to-speech. This list of features will grow over time as Amazon continues to add more functionality to Kindle and the Kindle Store.
     
  • Under this royalty option, books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices.
     
  • The 70 percent royalty option is for in-copyright works and is unavailable for works published before 1923 (a.k.a. public domain books). The 70 percent royalty option is currently only available for books sold to United States customers.

DTP is a fast and easy self-publishing tool that lets anyone upload and format their books for sale in the Kindle Store (www.amazon.com/kindlestore). To learn more about the Kindle Digital Text Platform, visit http://dtp.amazon.com or e-mail dtp-support@amazon.com.

 

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

Deaf With Belief

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There’s a story I once read, one of those email stories that get forwarded multiple times, about a group of frogs.  Each frog is doing its best to race to the top of a high tower, but one by one they drop off as they begin to hear others declaring, “What pain!!! They’ll never make it!” One little frog, though, just keeps hopping.

Higher and higher he climbs, until finally he reaches the top. Later one of the frogs who had dropped off asked the little frog his secret, to which he replies…

 
he is deaf.
 
I know another story, one I think most people are familiar with, about a little train that believed he could make it over an enormous hill. Turns out he was right. He could, and did, make it up and over that hill.
 
If you follow the line of thought from both of these stories you’ll begin to understand what it takes to be a successful Independent Author. In a world where consensus is the norm (and if you don’t think that’s true, then just watch what you do the next time you’re caught in a “highway swarm” as  Brian Ahearn of Influence People was), doing something that’s considered different is usually warned against — strongly. To be an Independent Author you have to be deaf to the “warnings.” I’ve found in most cases it’s best to just smile and nod, then move forward with your own plan.
 
Being an Independent Author takes a strong belief in your book, in what you have to offer, in you. There’s a lot of helpful information available to anyone who decides to self-publish, but it won’t do you any good if you self-doubt right along with it. While you won’t have to deal with a rejection letter from a traditional publisher and you will have complete control over every aspect of your book, those are only a few boulders removed from the giant hill an Independent Author must climb. The good news is that it can be climbed.
 
After you’re atop the self-publishing tower, after you’ve climbed the Independent Author hill, you can shout ”I knew I could!” on The Road to Writing.

 

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