Author Websites: Part Two – Hosts With The Most!

January 26, 2016 by Publetariat

In Part One of Author Websites – The Domain Name Game! we talked about buying a domain. The next step is deciding what type of host to use that works for your particular situation. Below you find the different options with the pro and cons of each.

Social media pages
Examples – Facebook, Instagram
Pros – free and hey social media, that’s cool right?
Cons – harder to share with other social media, harder to customize, not as professional.

With so many different social media options out there, which one should you choose? Don’t waste your time on the latest and greatest hot new site or app. Your goal is to get people to notice and hopefully buy your book. New platforms take time to become mainstream or they fail and all your hard work is wasted.

Unless your book has a lot of pictures or is about photography you will probably want to stay off sites like Instagram or Pinterest as your main contact point. Twitter is a great tool for marketing but not really designed to be an author page. Which leaves Facebook.

While Facebook is trending for older users, it is still a force to be reckoned with. With over 1.55 billion users in fall of 2015, that is a lot of action. The ability to create a book or author page where you can post updates and interact with your fans makes this a winner.

The downside to having a social media page for your author site is it is much harder to control, and to share with other sites. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a Facebook site, Twitter account, or other social media as part of your marketing strategy. What most professional people have is a website/blog that acts as a center hub to promote out to social media. However, if you are a one-time author and low on funds, this is as easy and quick as they come.

Platform hosts
Examples – Blogger, WordPress.org
Pros – easy to set up, low cost, often free
Cons – doesn’t look as professional, your domain url will end with their platform name. For example instead of authorname.com you would have authorname.wordpress.com. Harder than a Facebook page to set up and maintain.

This is definitely a step up from having a social media page for an author site. You are able to create content and interact with people, while having a main hub to post to social media from. There are a bunch of free themes and plugins to help.

Side note on free themes and plugins. Beware, you get what you pay for. Often programmers who are starting out will give away items because they are not established in the marketplace yet. This means that the free stuff might not be well written, have security issues, and are rarely updated. There are exceptions to this, and a good way to tell is to see how many people have downloaded or used the item. People have to make money somehow and if they can’t, they disappear to do something that will make them money. Even paying .99 cents for theme brings the quality up massively. Your .99 cents plus a couple of thousand other people’s .99 cents adds up to a normal amount for a solid theme or plugin.

While this is a step up from a Facebook page, it can be more technical. If you are not comfortable with technology, then you might want to get help just to get set up. But if you are going to do that, then you might as well get your own site, as explained in the next example. Once your site is set up, then it is much easier to update. If you can use MS Word, then you can write a post.

Shared hosting
Examples – HostGator, Blue Mountain, etc.
Pros – your own domain, domain email, very professional
Cons – costs a little money depending on your preferences, and can be harder to setup

This is the most professional of the options. You have your own customized url, your own host that you control the look and feel of, and professional emails. This is also a little more difficult to set up so don’t hesitate to ask for help from your host provider or hire someone to help you. Most hosts have one step WordPress install features or will gladly install a WordPress site for you for free or a small fee.

Once you have WordPress installed it is very similar to the platform host setup, where you can use plugins and themes to customize your site. Please see the side note above on plugins.

The best way to pick a good host is to open your search engine, such as google, and type “top rated web hosting”. Go through the links on the first page of your search results. You will start to see some names show up again and again on the different rated lists. Write down the top three names you see the most, look at their sites and pick the one you like. Don’t pick a host based on their super bowl commercial. You will be setting yourself up for a world of hurt.

Costs vary on hosting, but most places will have a sale going on at the time of purchase. Lucky you! Don’t buy more than you need, a basic package is usually good enough for a starter site, and if you need to upgrade, your host will be happy to provide assistance.

Self Hosting
Examples – server in your garage, Amazon cloud
Pros – complete control
Cons – costs a lot more money and needs a lot more technical skills, especially dealing with security issues.

Unless you already have good tech skills, this option is more than most people will need and is beyond the scope of this article. Seriously, this is for the big boys who don’t need to read articles like this and have paid minions.

So there you have the different hosting types broken down so you can decide what is right for you. The next article in the series will be a step-by-step process to set up a customized Facebook page.

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit to be posted on this site or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com

THE E-PUBLISHING REVOLUTION IS DEFINITELY NOT OVER (Regardless of what you’ve heard)

January 13, 2016 by Publetariat

Today’s offering is in the spirit of why Publetariat was created. Agent Laurie McLean gazes into the future to let us know what to expect on Anne R Allen’s Blog. Too bad she couldn’t give us the US winning Powerball numbers – I would totally share with you. What do you think of her predictions? Let us know in the comments.

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THE E-PUBLISHING REVOLUTION IS DEFINITELY NOT OVER (Regardless of what you’ve heard)

We’re honored this week to host literary agent Laurie McLean of the Fuse Literary Agency. If you’re looking for an agent, we have great news for you! Although Laurie is not accepting unsolicited submissions, she will accept queries from readers of this blog! Scroll down for more info in Laurie’s bio. And now, here’s Laurie!… Anne

Agent Laurie McLean, Founding Partner of Fuse Literary, Looks into Her Crystal Ball

Thanks, Anne, for once again sharing your audience with me for my annual predictions of the year ahead in publishing. From the title of this post, you can tell I’m at odds with the notion that the digital publishing revolution is now over, ebooks are slipping in popularity, print is once again king of the world, indie bookstores are back on a steady footing, and adult coloring books are saving the world.

Well, except for that last one. I agree with traditional publishing that adult coloring books are propping up print book sales big time. But as far as the other “facts” go, I say hogwash.

That’s a lot to digest, so let me bullet point these 13 predictions for ease of digestion…and hopefully inspiration…for 2016!

1) Ebook sales are NOT stagnating.

I’ve always been a firm believer that you can make numbers and statistics dance to any beat you play and I believe the Big Five are skewing these numbers with their newly won agency pricing models.

Last year I saw several of my clients’ debut novels come out with an ebook price that was higher than the print book price. Check it out on Amazon. I’m not kidding. That’s part of the “decline” scenario, because honestly who would not buy a hardcover print book if it was cheaper than a digital book. Most people would make that choice.

And because of this, ebook sales from traditional publishers large and small seem to be declining.

Once you add Amazon ebook sales into the calculation, however, it all falls apart. Unfortunately that is not what most reports have done. They only concentrated on traditional retail sales numbers from their usual cast of publishers. So you’re getting fed false numbers. Ebooks are healthy and should continue to be healthy throughout 2016 and beyond. They are here to stay.

Once ebook pricing stabilizes, because while I’m sure the traditional booksellers and publishers are trying to help their physical retail partners (aka bookstores) by increasing print sales, they will see that they went too far and the smart ones will adjust. At least that is my opinion.

2) Physical bookstore sales will continue to decline.

Amazon already sells the vast majority of print and digital books. They are a healthy company. Heck, they signed up 3 million new Prime members at $99 a pop during the third week of December alone!

So I’m betting that they will continue to discount books, support indie authors through KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited, and the local bookstores and chains will simply not be able to keep up.

I’ll talk about Google and Apple as possible white knights a bit later, but for now I’m predicting that Amazon is just going to keep growing and taking market share from bookstores in 2016.

Read the full post on Anne R Allen’s Blog

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How to Market Yourself as an Author Before You Have a Book to Sell

January 6, 2016 by Publetariat

On The Write Life, Chuck Sambuchino talks about the importance of making connections and setting a marketing plan in place before you even have a book published. I hate to use the term marketing here, because you want to make sincere connections and offer something of value to people, even if it is yourself. But Chuck does a good job of explaining that. Do you have any helpful tips on how to connect? If so please share in the comments, thanks!

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How to Market Yourself as an Author Before You Have a Book to Sell

September 2015 saw the release of three of Chuck’s new books, the 2016 Guide to Literary Agents, the 2016 Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market, and his anti-clown humor book When Clowns Attack: A Survival Guide.

Let’s say you have a book out and want to promote it. So you contact a website and offer to write a free guest post (or several) for them.

In exchange for providing the free content, you have some requests:

You want the column(s) to be accompanied by your book cover
You want the column(s) to be accompanied by your headshot
You want the column(s) to be accompanied by your bio, with a link in the bio that will redirect readers to a buy page for the book — Amazon or IndieBound or whatever you ask

Some people may have further things to promote, like classes or workshops or consultation services or an eBay profile full of knickknacks. It doesn’t matter.

The point is that if you’re writing the column for free, what you want out of the exchange is the chance to promote something. Simple and easy.

This is Guest Blogging 101, and everyone wins in this deal.

The best time to promote yourself: now

But what if you don’t have a book or anything to sell yet? What are you selling then? Simple: You’re selling a connection to yourself.

Sure, you don’t have a book for sale now, but you will in the future — so you need to connect yourself to interested individuals now so you can inform them of the book release down the road.

You can encourage potential readers to stay connected to you in a few simple ways:

Follow you on Twitter
Sign up for your free email newsletter
Like your Facebook fan page, or befriend you on your personal page
Subscribe to the RSS feed for your blog

Read the full post on The Write Life

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Author Websites: Part One – The Domain Name Game!

January 3, 2016December 7, 2015 by Publetariat

Now that you have decided to create your own author website, the first step is figuring out what your domain name is going to be. Even if you plan on hiring someone to do most of the heavy lifting for you, it is good to understand the process.

According to Wikipedia, a domain name is “an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet.” Yea. If that made sense to you, then congratulations, you don’t need this article. In plainer words, it is what people type in their browser to pull up your site.

As discussed in the post What is in a name? Everything if you are an author. Why you need your own author site, the best choice is to use your author name if you can. To find out if it is available, you can go to one of the many domain search engines on the web. I personally like namecheap.com. I am not getting paid in anyway to promote them, I just like them. Feel free to use whomever you want.

If your author name is not available, consider adding extra words to your name such as “author” or “books”. For example AuthorJoeName.com, or JoeNameBooks.com. If you are blessed with a heritage that leans towards long and unpronounceable last names, go ahead and shorten it to something that is easily type-able. Anastasios Papademetriou from high school, I am talking to you. You want to make it easy for people to find you.

The nice thing about these search tools is they will offer you suggestions if your desired domain name is already taken. Beware, they will often show you your domain name with other available domain extensions like .biz. Don’t waste your money. Really, when most people search they will be going by a .com name. If you buy the .club, .biz, or any of the other options, the .com is what people will find first. You will be spending your time trying to educate people about how the yourname.com is not you. The only exception would be if you are writing on behalf of a charitable organization, then the .org could be used or if you are writing x-rated material, then the .xxx is perfect for you.

So you found your domain name is available. That is awesome! While you are looking, go ahead and see if your book title is free too. You can always have more than one domain redirect to one site. So for example, you could have AuthorJoeName.com, JoeNameisreallylong.com, and Joenamebook.com all end up at the website AuthorJoeName.com. (I will go into this in later posts!)

So now you are ready to purchase! You can either purchase from the place where you did the search, or sometimes you can go through the web host. I will have more on that next week’s post – Author Websites: Part Two – Hosts With The Most! A lot of web hosts will also allow you to purchase domain names, and even help you set things up.

A side word on “Whoisguard”. Whoisguard is a service that blocks the public display of your domain registration information. To register your domain, you need to provide personal information including your name and address, things you don’t want to be public. When you go to purchase your domain, you might be offered Whoisguard for a year free, or for purchase for a few bucks more. Do yourself a favor and get the Whoisguard.

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How Indie Authors Can Use Preorders to Crack the Bestseller Lists

January 3, 2016December 3, 2015 by Publetariat

Today’s post is by Mark Coker, off of the Publishers Weekly website, on November 20, 2015. He discuses how self publishing authors can use preorders to boost their rankings and be a part of a good marketing plan.

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Imagine you could press a magic button that would make your next book launch more successful. The magic button is the e-book preorder, which gives indie authors a sales and marketing advantage.

Over the last 12 months, nearly two-thirds of the top 200 bestsellers distributed by Smashwords originated as preorders. This statistic is all the more impressive when you consider that only one in eight books published at Smashwords during this period was listed as a preorder.

A preorder is an advance listing of your e-book at major retailers that allows your reader to reserve a copy of your book up to 12 months before the release date. When the book is officially released, the customer’s credit card is charged and the book appears in her device’s library.

Although preorders are standard practice for traditional publishers, most self-published authors don’t yet know how to take advantage of them. Let’s fix that problem right now.

Five Big Benefits of E-book Preorders

1. More effective advance marketing of your book: Most authors use Facebook and other social media to communicate with readers about works in progress. By providing a preorder link every time you share news about your upcoming releases, you can capture readers’ orders when you have their greatest interest and attention.

Read the full post on Publishers Weekly

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com

The Most Super-Duper, Exhaustive, Comprehensive, and Current Listing of Free and Paid Book Advertising Websites and Ideas

January 3, 2016November 24, 2015 by Publetariat

Today’s post is by Ana Spoke, off of her site AnaSpoke.com on October 8, 2015. Ana gives a pretty decent list of marketing options that she has tried or researched. Full disclosure, as a Freelance Software Engineer I do work for Windwalker Media as a General Manger.

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The Most Super-Duper, Exhaustive, Comprehensive, and Current Listing of Free and Paid Book Advertising Websites and Ideas

Hi, everyone,

As mentioned in the previous post, I have found the hard way that advertising books on social media is not a very good or even a decent marketing strategy, if it is, in fact, your one and only strategy. As an update, I have to let you know that it does work, though – I have ignored Twitter for a few days last week in the wake of this realisation, and my book sales dropped from an average of 11 per week to 3. Not a huge difference in numbers, but let’s express it in percentage points…OH MY GOD, I’VE LOST 75% OF SALES! Sorry for yelling, but you get my point, right? Keep working at social media, but do consider doing what the pros have always done – broadcast to unsuspecting masses.

I hope I can help by sharing this list of book marketing sites and ideas with you. I intend for it to be a continuous work in progress – I plan to update it as I go and then reblog once I have something super exciting to report. Even if you don’t want to advertise a book, the sites below are excellent resources to find free or bargain-priced books. Marketing Mix Signpost With Place Price Product And Promotion

First, how about the NUMBER ONE THING I’VE LEARNED from doing this research? It’s simple – you must plan an overall sales strategy, preferably over the whole year. Why? I’m glad you’ve asked:

The main reason for this is that once you’ve had a sale or a free promotion for your book, many sites WILL NOT CONSIDER promoting your book at a higher price for 30-90 days (see below for details on each site).
Some sites you can notify on the day of the promotion, others you have to notify well in advance.
Holidays. You might want to schedule your sales to be around Christmas? Or beach vacations? Or Independence Day?

And now, without further adieu, here are the advertising sites (some of which I’ve used), in alphabetical order:

Addicted to eBooks: Can post a free or low price ($5.99 or less) ebook only for free! The catch is that you will not know when it is posted on the front page, but at a cost of nothing, why not? They don’t accept erotica and you have to have at least 5 reviews. You can only submit your book once.

My experience: I have applied for an account on 25 September and got approved on 28 September. Created a profile and Shizzle, Inc ad on 28 September. Considering paying $15 for a week-long sidebar ad and a Facebook post, although the profile by itself has not made any impact on the sales.

Ask David: They have 43,900 Twitter followers as of October 2015. $15 promo package or free service for KDP Select freebies. Schedule free days up to 30 days in advance.

Author Marketing Club: subscribe to get marketing tips. 25K+ subscribers. Free subscription or optional premium membership. Very flashy website, and it kept sending me to the premium membership form – I almost gave up, but luckily found the Free Membership Form eventually.

My experience: I have signed up to try some of the tools.

Awesome Gang: Appears to be run by the same person that runs the Discount Book Man. I was pleasantly surprised that the top books in their “featured” list had great Amazon rankings (not to say it was all due just to the Gang, no matter how Awesome). That’s only for $10!! They say their newsletter goes to 4,600 subscribers, and they have almost 50K Facebook fans.

My experience: I was pretty impressed with the apparent value for the money, so submitted Shizzle for a promo on 10 October for a $10 USD. UPDATE: hard to say, as I had another promo on the day, however I’ve heard from other writers that they’ve been disappointed. I’ve tried contacting them after to ask when they’ve sent my book out – no response whatsoever.

BargainBooksy – see FreeBooksy.

BitTorrent: this is a bit “out there” idea, as this is the site often blamed for piracy. It has over 200 MILLION users. This seems great if you have a series – just give away the first book in the series for free, to build a fan base which will come back to buy the rest.

BookBlast: now called Booksends (below).

Booksends: claim that big-name publishers advertise with them. NOTE: the promo price has to be the lowest of any within the previous 90-day range.

BookBub: you will need to set up an account, after that you can go straight to Submit a New Deal. The price to list a free promotion is $70, and a $0.99 sale is $140 FOR THE US ONLY. Ouch. Another issue that the sale price has to be the lowest of the last 90 days. Apparently it’s so popular that it’s difficult to get selected, despite the cost. There’s an excellent series of articles by an author Nicholas Rossis, which describe tips and tricks on how to get selected.

Book Goodies: post your book for free, but only once, and you have to fill in an author interview (answer questions). So, you first have to complete the interview, then wait 2-3 weeks for it to be approved, then list your book. Cumbersome – yes. Free – hells yes. Please note that you give the website the right to publish your interview and your photo (if you choose to upload a photo).

My experience: I have answered interview questions and it was live just a week later on Book Goodies website. I received an email notification of the interview being posted on 5 October and it already had 3 Facebook and 4 Twitter shares. On 8 October it had 14 Twitter shares, but that number has not increased since.

Book Gorilla: seems a cheaper option, while still being quite popular and famous. This explains why they are BOOKED UP TO 2 MONTHS IN ADVANCE. Once again, the price of advertising depends on the book price – $4 to $50. You can also ask to be “starred”, although they will decide if they want to do it, based on your book quality – that would be an additional $100. They themselves say that it’s not likely to make much difference.

Read the full post on AnaSpoke.com.

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com

What is in a name? Everything if you are an author. Why you need your own author site.

January 3, 2016November 23, 2015 by Publetariat

Have you ever googled your own name? You should. It is interesting to see what comes up. If you are an author what shows up when a fan or agent searches for you is pretty important. If you write, you need an author site.

Why an author site instead of a book site? With the focus on you as an author, instead of the individual book, you have room to grow. Each book can have its own landing page or subdomain under your author site. Fans want to get to know the author behind their favorite books. Read on for the reasons why you need your own author site.

Shows you are legit
There are a thousand new books being created each day. To stand out, especially from the “do-it-yourself-quick” crowd, you want to present as a professional author. Having a good looking site with well written content sets you apart. Agents and fans often google peoples names. To be the first result that pops up in a Google search is reason enough to have you own author site.

Social Media Anchor point
Social media is more powerful with a website, and an author website is more powerful with social media. It is a symbiotic relationship. Managing multiple social media outlets is much easier from a central website. In fact, there are plugins and options that will automatically post to social media for you, especially if you use WordPress or other content management systems.From your author site you can post to Facebook, tweet to Twitter, pin on Pinterest, or whatever your social media flavor is, while keeping a consistent message. Promoting from Facebook or Twitter to another platform is much harder. Which makes sense if you think about it. Each social media site was set up for a different niche. Facebook allows images but is more chatty. Twitter is text less than 140 characters. Pinterest and Instagram are more image driven. So you might not get as much traffic on your site as on your social media outlets, but having a website will make your life easier and will drive traffic through the social media sites. Plus not everyone is on social media, so it is good to have a place for them as well.

Control
An author’s site is their castle. You get to decide what goes on your site, and you are not restricted by Amazon or anyone else’s policies. In fact they will all have a place where you can put a link to your author site!There are so many cool options that you can provide on your own site. If you want to provide a free chapter you can. You can have press kits, media kits, official author bios, event listings, book club materials, testimonials, whatever you want. Sell your book off your own site and keep every precious penny!While this might seem overwhelming, having this freedom and control over your message is a beautiful thing. So guard it well and don’t fret. There are plenty of articles out there to help guide you. Start small and then grow.

Connections
This is what it is all about really. You wrote down words with the hopes that they would connect with someone, hopefully with many someones. The someones are going to want to connect back to you. The author site is about you, and because you have control over your site, you can manage how your fans interact with you. Interactions vary from providing a simple bio where you fans can learn carefully scripted information about you, to interacting directly with your fans through comments or even forums.You can set up your site to collect emails. Emails are golden! Having someone decide that they like you enough to take the action of filling out a form and trusting you with their contact information is a wonderful thing. This is a very targeted audience, no matter how small. Make sure you treat people’s emails with the respect they deserve. Offer them extra treats for being so cool, like bonus chapters, or even to be a focus group for your next book!

Of course creating an author website is not the end, you will need to set aside time for updates and maintenance. Updated content keeps the search engines happy. While this sounds like a lot of work, a good author site will be a solid foundation for your overall market strategy and it can be a load of fun too. In future articles, we will dive deeper in the process of creating an author website: how to create one, what you need on your author website, more on social media, and tools and tricks to help.

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com

Google may be copying your book without your permission. Here’s why that is a good thing.

January 3, 2016November 2, 2015 by Publetariat

Similar to web searches, Google is trying to create an online searchable library through Google Books and the Google Library Project. Approximately 30 million books have been scanned. The only larger collection is the Library of Congress, which has 37 million items of various media, not all of which is accessible online and the Library of Congress doesn’t point potential buyers to Amazon, any other merchant, or even an author website.

With the Google Library Project, Google partnered with libraries who provided select materials for scanning. The materials are often out of print, or rare books and publications. However, authors are not contacted for permission to use their works, which brought the attention of the Author’s Guild.

Google uses the scanned items to provide better literary searches along with “snippets” of relevant text, while the libraries have access to scanned copies of their materials. The libraries are still restricted by copyright law on how they handle the scanned content. A win-win for both parties, but what about the authors?

According to Google’s website “The Library Project’s aim is simple: make it easier for people to find relevant books – specifically, books they wouldn’t find any other way such as those that are out of print – while carefully respecting authors’ and publishers’ copyrights. Our ultimate goal is to work with publishers and libraries to create a comprehensive, searchable, virtual card catalog of all books in all languages that helps users discover new books and publishers discover new readers. ”

The Author’s Guild filed a lawsuit on behalf of the authors, with claims that the snippets of text shown in the search results through Google Books and the Google Library Project are against “fair us” and could be used to compile a copy of the text by enterprising hackers. It should be noted that Google does not make any money off of the links or run ads against the search results. Author’s benefit because links are provided to purchase the titles when available.

“Fair use is a legal doctrine that promotes freedom of expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances. Section 107 of the Copyright Act provides the statutory framework for determining whether something is a fair use and identifies certain types of uses—such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research—as examples of activities that may qualify as fair use.” – copyright.gov

Recently the Second Circuit Appeals Court unanimously exonerated Google from the lawsuit brought forth by the Author’s Guild.

As part of their findings the judges said “The ultimate goal of copyright is to expand public knowledge and understanding, which copyright seeks to achieve by giving potential creators exclusive control over copying of their works, thus giving them a financial incentive to create informative, intellectually enriching works for public consumption.””

The “snippets” show up as text in the search, just like the text of websites shown by Google currently, but as excerpts from the scanned books. There is an option for authors and rights holders to opt out. If there is an alternative source that will fulfill the search request, such as a dictionary, then that source is used. Parts of the scanned books are “blacklisted” and won’t show in the search results. You can see yourself, in the sample below.

In one part of the litigation process, The Author’s Guild and Google had come to terms where Google would pay a nominal fee to have exclusive rights to use the scanned texts. This was dismissed by the judge as providing an unfair advantage to Google and if approved would have stopped anyone else from providing an online book search.

From the judge’s statement “Google’s program does not, at this time and on the record before us, expose Plaintiffs to an unreasonable risk of loss of copyright value through incursions of hackers.” With less than 16% of a book used for the snippets, it is not possible for someone to recreate the book even if they wanted to take the time and effort to do so.

The judges went on to state “Google does not sell its scans, and the scans do not replace the books. While partner libraries have the ability to download a scan of a book from their collections, they owned the books already — they provided the original book to Google to scan. Nor is it likely that someone would take the time and energy to input countless searches to try and get enough snippets to comprise an entire book.”

While the judges conceded that theoretically the snippets might mean some lost sales to authors, reality is that someone looking for factual validation has many resources, such as Wikipedia. If more than a snippet of text is needed then the likelihood increases that the user will purchase the book and be able to use the handy links provided. While the majority of the current scanned texts are more esoteric and hard to find publications, who knows how far Google will take this project in its bid to become the comprehensive online library catalog. One thing all authors struggle with is getting their material in front of likely readers. Someone searching for specific material online is the author’s target audience and will be more likely to make a purchase.

In response to the ruling, The Author’s Guild is planning to present the case to the Supreme Court. From their website:

“We aren’t challenging the benefits of Google Books search engine, just the seizure of copyrighted material,” explained Authors Guild President Roxana Robinson. Indeed, Authors guild members are perhaps the greatest users of Google Books search and know its benefits better than anyone. “But Google should be willing to compensate an author for copying her work for use in its database,” continued Robinson.

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com

Resources:

Click to access agvgoogle.pdf

http://copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html

Authors Guild

https://www.google.com/googlebooks/library/

http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/what-ever-happened-to-google-books?mbid=rss

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151016/08010632559/appeals-court-explains-yet-again-to-authors-guild-that-googles-book-scanning-is-fair-use.shtml

http://consumerist.com/2015/10/16/appeals-court-says-googles-book-scanning-project-is-legal-fair-use/#more-10220932

Authors — Using Business Cards to Build Sales

January 3, 2016May 28, 2014 by Publetariat

This post by Robert Bidinotto originally appeared on his blog on 5/24/14.

A common lament of authors is: How do I promote my books? I’ve tried to present a host of time-tested ideas in this blog.

Author business cards constitute one of the cheapest, easiest methods to build a readership and increase sales. I know that I’ve sold hundreds of books through the use of my HUNTER business card.

Before I begin, let me first give a tip of the hat to Robin Sullivan — wife and business partner of bestselling fantasy author Michael J. Sullivan — for providing 90% of the ideas and information in this post.

Robin used to maintain an invaluable website/blog, “Write To Publish,” which, sadly, has been defunct for some years. One of her most useful posts for me was “Author’s Business Cards…Get Them…Use Them.” Precisely because her information is so valuable, it deserves a new lease on life. So here I am, snitching it shamelessly yet publicly, giving full credit to Robin. If you read her article, then you won’t have to read this one.

Here, though, I want to indicate how I’ve adapted her methods for my own use.

In terms of bang-for-the-buck, I can’t think of many methods of advertising your books that generate a better return than business cards. For about an hour of time, plus the price of a restaurant meal, you can produce an advertising product that can generate thousands of dollars in sales and a host of fans.

First, like Robin, let me recommend as a source for inexpensive business cards GotPrint.com. Just today I designed and ordered 1,000 new cards for the forthcoming release of BAD DEEDS. These one thousand cards — two-sided, full-color, UV coated, on thick glossy stock — cost only $19.00. You read that correctly. I splurged for “rush” production, and spent $26.35. You have a variety of shipping options. Mine cost me an additional $14.63. Grand total: $40.98. And the quality is fabulous.

Click here to read the full post on Robert Bidinotto’s blog.

Death By Promotion

January 3, 2016February 12, 2014 by Publetariat

This post by Heidi Cullinan originally appeared on her blog on 2/11/14.

Getting Real About the Costs to Authors and Readers in the Current Marketing Environment

My name is Heidi Cullinan, and I’m here to write stories and publish books.

I’m not here to market. I’ll do a little of that because one must, because there is no cultural bulletin board right now my books can exist at, especially not mine as I’m a bit niche and still largely in my own pond. I strive to lift awareness of not just my work but works like mine, the whole LGBT romance pool, but even that is not the main purpose of why I’m here. I like to thank bloggers with ad purchases and guest posts and ARCs. I’ve made a forum for fans to chat, and if you link/@ reply me on social media and I’m able to see it, I’ll do my best to reply or at least like your post. I don’t buy reviews. I don’t ask people to buy books on a certain day at a certain hour at a certain place to game the system. I don’t send mass invites to “events” on Goodreads or Facebook. I don’t add people to newsletters who haven’t asked to be, and in fact I try to parcel out sub-newsletters for the truly die-hard to get ALL THE DEETS and those who just want release dates to not be spammed. I don’t cold-email other authors and ask them for pimpage or, even crazier, give them book recs. I don’t copy other people’s work because I can’t think of my own stories or hump sideways on someone else’s work because I’d sure like to scrape off some of their overflow. I don’t run around to ten million social media sites making sure I comment on every blog post, every review, every single mention of my work. I don’t join every new social media site and work up a huge presence there. I don’t stick my nose into reader conversations unless invited, and even if invited, sometimes I might decline. Because I’m a writer. I write books. I try to write a lot of books. That’s why I’m here. That’s what I do.

You would think, you really would, that such a declaration would be rather like stating the obvious. Except every goddamn day that passes, I feel more and more like the last unicorn, and even though I can’t find anyone actually turning the screws, I feel more and more pressure every day to market, promote, to be a flaming brand across the literary horizon. It’s killing me, and I think it’s eating a lot of our souls.

Click here to read the full post on Heidi Cullinan’s site.

Building Your Platform

January 3, 2016December 3, 2013 by Publetariat

This post, by Carolyn Kaufman, originally appeared on her Archetype Writing site in July of 2009. While it’s over four years old, the post’s coverage of the basics of author platform is still applicable to any author just starting out with platform.

What is a platform?
A platform is name recognition of some kind. Celebrity, if you will.

Why do you need one?
A platform will help you attract the attention of an agent and later a publisher. Why?

Because having a platform proves that you:

* Care enough about your project to promote it
* Have some marketing savvy
* Come with a built-in fan based (read: guaranteed sales)

More importantly, a good platform will help sell your book when it comes out. Fewer and fewer publishers are putting money into promoting books — especially books by unknowns and newcomers. That means that the onus of promotion falls almost completely (and sometimes completely) on you, the author. You are the one who’s going to be making people aware of the book, and convincing them to buy it. You are the one who’s responsible for making the book a success.

Just sit with that for a minute.

Your job doesn’t end with writing the book. It doesn’t end with landing an agent or even a publisher. These days, you must also be a marketing expert.

The good news is, you can learn how if you don’t know. And I’m going to help you get started.

Do you already have the makings of a platform?

If you’re writing nonfiction, do you have any of the following in the area you’re writing about?

* Advanced degrees or certifications (e.g. MA, PhD)

* Teaching experience

* Speaking experience (e.g. you’re the pastor of a large church, you give presentations to large corporate groups)

* Professional (i.e. on-the-job) experience

* Expert experience (i.e. have you been quoted in newspapers or magazines as an expert on your topic?

* Published articles in local (good) or national (better) magazines or newspapers

* A polished, professional-looking website or blog

If you’re writing fiction, do you have any of the following?

Click here to read the rest of the post on Archetype Writing.

How Twitter is Blanding Branding

January 3, 2016December 2, 2013 by Publetariat

This post, by Kian Kaul, originally appeared as a guest post on Byzantine Roads on 5/3/13.

These days every writer is their own brand, we’re constantly told in advice columns on mid-ranking marketing blogs and rushed non-fic titles (many of which are only available in the Kindle or Nook store), but what does it mean to be a brand?

A brand is a name or title which represents a product, through an experience, communicated by a primary feeling. And that experience can change, sometimes drastically, depending on the needs of the market.

Coke is positivity, excitement and energy — but not too much energy, otherwise it would be Rockstar. Pepsi is all those things but in a blue can and with celebrity stunt casting. It’s also diabetes and tooth decay in excess, but that wasn’t included on the creative brief. Ralph Lauren was originally clothing intended for upper-middle class white people until “urban” black influencers assimilated the preppy style into their own cultural positioning. But these are the major brands, the celebrity brands.

When you’re a celebrity brand people just want to feel like they know you. When you’re not a celebrity brand you have to offer something. Anything. Don’t have anything? How about an intellectually unchallenging motivational message that may or may not have anything to do with the thing you’re selling?

If you’re a writer reading this, you’re likely not a celebrity or a major brand. You’re the fifteenth bottle of detergent from the left and you’re actively tweeting how “fresh” and “clean” your formula will make one’s clothes, but then again, so are all the rest. So, how do you stand out? Do you refine your message? Do you clearly define yourself and your approach so maybe your brand actually means something and carries some sort of significance?

Click here to read the rest of the post on Byzantine Roads.

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THE E-PUBLISHING REVOLUTION IS DEFINITELY NOT OVER (Regardless of what you’ve heard)

Agent Laurie McLean, Founding Partner of Fuse Literary, Looks into Her Crystal Ball

1) Ebook sales are NOT stagnating.

2) Physical bookstore sales will continue to decline.

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How to Market Yourself as an Author Before You Have a Book to Sell

The best time to promote yourself: now

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The Most Super-Duper, Exhaustive, Comprehensive, and Current Listing of Free and Paid Book Advertising Websites and Ideas

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