Sell – Publetariat

Self-Publishing Success Story: Roz Morris, British Indie Author

January 29, 2018 by Publetariat

It is always nice to hear from people who have made it and maybe find out how they managed to become successful. With that in mind, here is today’s offering from the Alliance of Independent Authors.

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Self-Publishing Success Story: Roz Morris, British Indie Author

By Roz Morris

In this post we turn our Success Story spotlight on British phenomenon Roz Morris, who has come out of the shadows as a ghostwriter to emerge as an acclaimed self-published novelist in her own right, as well as diversifying into other genres. She’s also an authoritative writing coach via her series of how-to books about novel-writing. Here she shares her top tips drawing on her own multi-faceted experiences, including:

drawing inspiration from other art forms
having the courage to diversify will draw readers to your work in other genres
following the processes practiced by traditional publishing houses to make your self-published books the best they can be

View the full post at Alliance of Independent Authors!

Quick Link: Carolyn Howard-Johnson Says, Promote Your Own Way

January 17, 2018January 17, 2018 by Publetariat

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

I admit it. I am sharing today’s post because not only is it a good one by Carolyn Howard-Johnson at Insecure Writers Support Group, but also because I now have the earworm “Go Your Own Way” by Fleetwood Mac running through my head and I thought I would share. You are welcome. Also how cool is it that her last name is “Howard Johnson” like the old restaurant chain? This much kismet and awesomeness from the universe must be shared! “You can Promote your own waaaaay. You can make it a promote daaaaay.”

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson Says, Promote Your Own Way

Today we’re excited to have Carolyn Howard-Johnson as our guest. She has provided us with a dynamite post about promotion, something writers must do, but sometimes dread or simply don’t know where to start doing. Carolyn’s a savvy, successful promoter who shares her expertise as she has here, but also in her multi-award winning books. More about those below!

A Promote-Your-Own-Way Case Study

Saturday Night Live Writer Uses

Article/Essay Route for Marketing

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By Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning

HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers

In the second edition of the flagship book in my multi-award-winning series of books for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter, I suggest writing articles and selling them (or giving them away free). It is an especially good way to get exposure for authors who are shy or think they’ll hate marketing but admit they love writing. So I was pleased to see an op-ed piece in the LA Times written by Patricia Marx, former Saturday Night Live writer and a staff writer for The New Yorker.

Read the full post on Insecure Writers Support Group

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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 or leave a message below.

Quick Link: Five Shots At Your Own Sales

January 5, 2018January 5, 2018 by Publetariat

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Are you your own worst enemy and unconsciously sabotaging your sales? Find out in this great post from Dean Wesley Smith!

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Five Shots At Your Own Sales

by Dean Wesley Smith

This Was a Fun Post in Late 2011…

Still all true going into 2018. Sadly.

I actually did two posts on this topic because I had to shoot off all ten toes of indie writers. But for a bring forward, this one is the fun one.

See if this almost completely holds up after six years. I think it does and I find that amazing.

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I started noticing how indie writers shoot themselves in the foot as far as sales. And not just once, but often so many times that it guaranteed that no sane reader (past family and friends) would pick up their book.

And they did it all purposefully. And were often very proud of the fact that they did what they did, having no idea what their decisions were doing to their sales.

I call that “Shooting Yourself in the Foot.”

You hold the gun, you aim at your own foot, you pull the trigger. You have no one to blame but yourself when you indie publish.

So, let me detail out a few of the “shots” I have seen indie writers take at their own feet lately.

Read the full post on Dean Wesley Smith!

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Quick Link: How Book Bloggers Boost Sales for Indie Authors

December 12, 2017 by Publetariat

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

What is an indie author on a budget to do to get reviews and sales? Shayla Raquel, expert editor, seasoned writer, and author-centric marketer has some great tips on how to reach out to book bloggers, including some helpful templates on what to say.

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How Book Bloggers Boost Sales for Indie Authors

by Shayla Raquel

Got a $0 book marketing budget? No fear! Book bloggers can help you reach your audience without breaking the bank.

What is a book blogger?

A book blogger is someone who will read your book (in ebook or print form) and write an honest review on their blog and/or social media.

Most book bloggers do this for free because they love reading. However, when some book bloggers have accumulated thousands and thousands of followers, they’ll usually charge a fee. And that’s okay and well deserved (getting just one photo of your book on an bookstagrammer’s account can be huge). However, you can focus on the book bloggers who do not charge when you first get started.

Why should I pitch my book to them?

Read the full post on Shayla Raquel!

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Quick Link: 5 Things Indie Authors Need to Consider Before Giving Up

November 27, 2017 by Publetariat

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

You did it, you wrote your book and have it out there for people to buy. But it isn’t selling quite as well as you thought it would. What do you do? The people behind Author Marketing Experts know. Check out their post and let us know if you have any great marketing tips!

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5 Things Indie Authors Need to Consider Before Giving Up

“My book isn’t selling.” It’s something I hear from indie authors all the time.

If you’ve felt this way, know you’re not alone. But also remember that sitting around assuming you’ve failed isn’t going to help anything.

I’ve constructed a short list of 5 things indie authors really need to take a hard look at before they decide the market just isn’t interested in their book.

Are you doing enough?

Sure, maybe you feel like you’re always marketing your book and getting nowhere, but it’s not about doing everything.

It’s about doing everything that matters.

Read the full post on Author Marketing Experts!

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Quick Link: 5 steps To Building A Successful Author Platform Before you Publish: Donna Galanti

November 15, 2017 by Publetariat

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

When is the best time to start marketing your book and looking for an audience? Before you even start writing it! Head on over to the Self Publishing Advice Center of ALLI and find great ideas for building your author platform or improving the one you got! I am taking notes!

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5 steps To Building A Successful Author Platform Before you Publish: Donna Galanti

This post is part of Frankfurt Book Fair Indie Author Fringe, an online author conference that showcases the best self-publishing advice and education for authors across the world — harnessing the global reach of the Alliance of Independent Authors’ network. Our self-publishing conference features well-known indie authors and advisors, for 24 sessions over 24-hours, in a one-day extravaganza of self-publishing expertise straight to your email inbox.

We hope you enjoy this session. Let us know if you have any questions or input on this self-publishing topic. Visit our Hot Seat and join in the conversation there, or leave your questions and feedback in the comments section below.

Read the full post on Self Publishing Advice Center

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Throwback Thursday! Book Trailers: 11 steps to make your own

November 9, 2017 by Publetariat

Throwback Thursday – sharing some of our great older posts that still are important today!

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Book trailers are videos posted online and distributed via video networking sites like YouTube. These can be big budget blockbuster movie clips, or budget MovieMaker slides to music. You can make it an advert or a social media fun clip that people want to watch. It can be a human interest story made more like a documentary. It can be a cartoon. Essentially, it is anything you want it to be. Anything that catches people’s attention.

You can get a professional to make you one or you can make your own for little or no money. I made this one with Windows Movie Maker (which is on on most PCs). It took me several hours but was essentially free, and you don’t have to be too techy to make one too. Here are the steps you need.

1. Research other book trailers that are similar to what you would like to do. Just search for book trailers on YouTube. decide what you like and don’t like (and what is within your capacity and budget)

2. Write a brief script for the trailer so you can get it straight in your head and understand what images and text you will need ( I just did this on Microsoft Word)

3. Find and download images to match your words. You can use your own or get free ones online by googling “royalty free photo”. I use iStockPhoto which I find easy to use with a variety of pictures and I did pay a small amount for some photos. You can also use movie clips (which I am still learning about!)

4. Import the pictures into Windows MovieMaker (File -> Import Media)

5. Order the pictures.Drag them into the movie bar at the bottom of the screen in the order you want. Right click and Cut to remove again. Basic drag and drop functionality. Remember to save regularly!

6. Add script by clicking on the picture in the movie bar and then clicking Edit -> Titles and Credits. You can add text in various styles, colours and transition effects here. You can add text before, on top of or after your picures.

7. Edit.Once you have got the basic pictures and text setup, see how long your movie is. Most book trailers are no longer than 1 minute 30 seconds. Edit as necessary by clicking and dragging the size of the boxes to shorten the time frame they show on the screen.

8. Find music to match the length of your movie (or cut to fit). I used SoundSnap.com but you can google “royalty free music” to find other sites. I searched on audio length within classical music and listened to a few before choosing.

9. Check you are happy with everything and then Publish your movie to your computer.

10. Find tags.Now you have a file you can publish it to the internet movie sites to get some viewers. You need to know what tags you want to add to your video when you upload it, so I suggest you also research what people are searching on in your genre. I use Google Keyword Search which has a number of tools and recommended related words.

11. Upload your video to appropriate sites.

I have loaded mine to YouTube and Google Video so far. It takes some time per site, unless you use a video submission site like TrafficGeyser which is expensive and really only for companies with lots of video. You can submit manually to sites like Revver, MySpaceTV, Metacafe, Yahoo Video, Book Trailers, AuthorsDen. No doubt there are many more! Remember to also use the embed links to post to your own website, blog and social networking sites.

It’s easier than you think to get a video book trailer on YouTube! Let us know how it goes!

Reposted from http://www.TheCreativePenn.com : Writing, self-publishing, print-on-demand, internet sales and promotion…for your book.

Throwback Thursday! Blogs: 10 reasons authors should have one

November 2, 2017 by Publetariat

Throwback Thursday – sharing some of our great older posts that still are important today!

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Blogs are a few years old in the tech industries, but now they are a must-have for authors who want to get the word out. If you don’t have a blog yet, here’s why you need to get blogging!

1. People can find you and your books on the internet.

Google loves blogs and regular content updates. Blog software allows you to update your blog whenever you like, creating extra pages for your website. These are indexed and over time you can build up a great internet presence so people can find you when searching.

2.Connect with like-minded people.

Being a blogger opens up a new world of networking. You can connect with other authors who blog, or literary agents, publishers and communities all over the world.

3.Two way interaction and feedback.

You can allow comments on your blog so people can connect with you directly by leaving a message. You can also comment on other blogs. This allows an interaction that cannot be achieved by a static website or email.

4.Marketing you as an author.

You can add all sorts of information about yourself at your blog, including photos, videos and examples of your work. You can list your publishing credits, your ebooks, articles, media appearances and anything else you want to use to market yourself as an author.

5.Book promotion.

Have a special page for your book where you can add photos, your book trailer, downloads of chapters and any other information on your book. You can do special blog posts, for example, an interview with you talking about your book, or a giveaway.

6.Online sales channel.

You can use your blog as a place to sell your books and services. If you integrate with a shopping cart or use a service like Smashwords or Clickbank, you can add links for these Buy Now pages.

7.Writing practice.

Blogging is a very dynamic way of writing. Sometimes you will get an idea and want to blog on it immediately. You will do some research, try to write something catchy or useful, and then post it all very quickly. Sometimes you might spend a lot longer on one piece, but generally you write between 500-800 words and get it out there. If you get “bloggers block”, then chances are you are not interested enough in the material to sustain a blog on it, so move on!

8.Blog your book.

You can use your book as the key material for your blog. Take excerpts and use them as posts, and then spin off from those posts into new things. This will get you traffic related to your topic/book subject so make sure you have a sales page that allows people to buy your book.

9.Build an audience.

People can subscribe to your blog through an RSS feed which means you can build a following who read your work. You can build relationships with these people and get direct feedback through comments and seeing how people respond to your posts.

10.Build your platform.

Publishers these days want a “platform” meaning that you have a following, people who will buy your books. If you are self-published, this is even more important as you will need to sell it yourself. Blogging enables you to build this platform in terms of a body of work, an online presence, knowledge of the industry and marketing as well as hopefully some people who are interested in what you have to say.

Quick Link: The 3 Biggest Pitch Mistakes This Editor Sees Every Day

October 23, 2017 by Publetariat

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

For those of you trying to get some extra writing jobs here is a great post by Nicole Dieker at The Write Life that will help you up your game!

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The 3 Biggest Pitch Mistakes This Editor Sees Every Day

by Nicole Dieker

The Write Life wants to help you get better at pitching! We’ve compiled our best tips into a simple, printable checklist for you to use time and time again. Best of all? It’s free. Click here to grab your freelance writer’s pitch checklist.

As an editor, I read a lot of pitches.

Some of them are really easy to say yes to — they’re the pitches that outline a strong, clear narrative with a takeaway for the reader. Other pitches are easy to say no to — they’re either poorly written, irrelevant to the publication or (as is often the case), both.

It’s the ones in between that are hard.

Every day I see writers pitch ideas or topics that could be great stories if they’d done a little more work or written a slightly better pitch. Sometimes I ask them to rework their pitch.

Sometimes I take a chance and hope there’s a good story in there. But often, I say no. After all, I have plenty of better pitches in my inbox.

If you’re a writer who’s sending out pitches but not getting a lot of assignments, maybe you’re writing those in-between types of pitches — the kind that could be really good with a little improvement.

Here are three of the most common pitch mistakes I see every day, along with how to fix them.

Read the full post on The Write Life!

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Quick Link: How to Sell Thousands of Books When You Don’t Have an Audience

October 13, 2017 by Publetariat

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Sometimes it feels like a no win situation. People can’t find you because you don’t have any sales but you can’t make sales until people find you. Getting that initial lift is hard for a new author. Thankfully Frank McKinley from Postive Writer has some great basic tips on how to do the best you can to find your initial audience.

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How to Sell Thousands of Books When You Don’t Have an Audience

by Frank McKinley

Do you have a book inside you that needs to be shared with the world?

I know how you feel. You should write it and sell it, even if you don’t have an audience yet…

But I’m an Unknown Author

I started writing books 4 years ago.

It all started with a series of leadership articles I wrote for my client to give to his customers. As he read them, he told me time and again, “You need to make this into a book!”

I said, “You know. That’s a great idea!”

After the third time he told me, I knew he meant it.

Isn’t the Market Saturated?

The last time I checked there are almost 70 million books on Amazon.

That’s enough to make you wonder whether anyone at all will see your book.

Sure, there’s a lot of garbage uploaded to Amazon every day. After you read this, you won’t be one of those authors who set themselves up to fail.

Trust me, there is always room for good books. People are still buying them, reading them, and raving about them.

Are you ready to join the club of bestselling authors?

Get your marketing hat on and let’s get started!

Read the full post on Postive Writer.

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Quick Link: Fringe Highlight: Should Indie Authors Go KDP Exclusive or Go Wide?

October 2, 2017 by Publetariat

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

For all you indie authors out there or even traditional authors who are curious, The Self-Publishing Advice Center has a great article/podcast on what you should think about when you decide to go KDP exclusive with Amazon or Go Wide.

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Fringe Highlight: Should Indie Authors Go KDP Exclusive or Go Wide?

By Jay Artale

As part of our new #AskALLi weekly podcast we’re releasing popular Indie Author Fringe speaker session highlights as podcasts. This means you can catch up on sessions you may have missed, and listen to them on-the-go or in your car. We are also publishing transcripts for those who prefer to read rather than listen.

This week, we’re showcasing the session between Pippa DaCosta and Susan Kaye Quinn. If you’re wondering about the pros and cons of being exclusive with KDP or going wide with as many retailers as possible, our show hosts will explain which model works best in different book distribution scenarios.

Susan is exclusively KDP, and Pippa makes her books available in as many outlets as possible and they deliver insights and experience from both ends of the spectrum.

Pippa DaCosta @pippadacosta is a hybrid author. Before securing a traditional publisher, she published the Veil Series (a x5 book urban fantasy series) independently in 2014. She has also published two science fiction books, with more planned for 2016. Pippa is traditionally published with Bloomsbury and Random House Germany. Her work has been featured in the Galaxy Chronicles anthology, part of the Future Chronicles series. Pippa continues to independently and traditionally publish her work.

Susan Kaye Quinn @susankayequinn is a rocket scientist turned speculative fiction author. She writes young adult science fiction, with side trips into adult future-noir and sweet royal romance. Her bestselling novels and short stories have been optioned for Virtual Reality, translated into German, and featured in several anthologies.

Read the full post on The Self-Publishing Advice Center

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Quick Link: Driving Down the Price of Publishing

September 14, 2017 by Publetariat

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

This article hits home for me. I used to love creating quality ebooks for authors. Whatever you wanted I could do, things like drop caps, special inserted quotes, linked references all no problem. It is all just HTML/CSS to me. But I couldn’t compete with people who were offering to convert a whole book for $35. It didn’t matter that my quality was great and their quality wasn’t. On the other side, I do understand that indie authors are often under a tight budget and can’t spend a whole lot for a lot of different services. It is a lose – lose situation. Having less than stellar work out there makes the whole industry suffer. I don’t have any answers but Mercy Pilkington at Good E Reader shares her thoughts. What’s your opinion on this mess?

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Driving Down the Price of Publishing

By Mercy Pilkington

Not too long ago, self-published authors were collectively admonished about the need to invest in their work. Hiring quality editors, proofreaders, cover designers, and formatters before attempting to sell a book was the constant mantra of industry experts. While some hapless writers continued to slap their Word docs up on Amazon and hope to snare a few readers, authors who took their careers seriously made the proper investments.

Around that time, a number of startups emerged, all billing themselves as eBay-like marketplaces for author services. Many of those startups have shuttered their virtual doors, while a few that produced meaningful connections between authors and publishing service providers have managed to thrive. But that hasn’t stopped newcomers to the game from trying to continually undercut the concept of paying for quality work.

“When I first began finding clients through online freelance postings, the self-publishing industry was a different place,” stated one editor who did not wished to be named. “Authors who had done their homework not only knew how much editing might cost, but they also knew enough to have sent their work to their writing group for critiques or even beta readers before declaring it ‘ready’ for editing. Now, I find new job postings almost daily requesting full edits of an 80,000-word book for $100.”

Read the full post on Good E Reader

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Quick Link: The Only Rule Amazon Truly Cares About

September 12, 2017 by Publetariat

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Oh-oh. Watch out Kindle Select authors, Let’s Get Digital‘s David Gaughran has a horror story to tell about a promotion gone sour and what he is doing to deal with it. Could this happen to you?

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The Only Rule Amazon Truly Cares About

by David Gaugharan

On Monday, I found out that some bug hit a German e-book site causing the reactivation of long-dead listings, including one of mine, putting myself and some other authors in breach of KDP Select’s exclusivity rule.

Amazon pounced into action and cancelled my Countdown deal which was scheduled for this week, screwing up a carefully planned promotion. And despite pledging to resolve the matter and restore the promo, Amazon has not done so.

I’m going to go through what happened in detail so you can be sure that I acted correctly at all points – because there is a lot of shadiness going on at the moment – but feel free to skim some of the details if you wish.

Read the full post on Let’s Get Digital

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Quick Link: How To Get Book Reviews As An Unknown Author

August 29, 2017 by Publetariat

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

The hardest thing is for a new author to get recognized. There are so many titles out there and other authors trying to get recognized as as well. With a limited number of resources, how do you get started in gathering publicity and reviews? At The Creative Penn, Joanna Penn helps you out with steps you can take.

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How To Get Book Reviews As An Unknown Author

by Joanna Penn

A few months ago, I started a new pen-name and have kept it secret in order to avoid ‘pollution’ of the also-boughts. But it has been SO hard because I have basically started from scratch – with no email list, no street team, no reviews, no platform, no social media.

The pen-name is slowly gathering steam, but it reminds me how hard it is starting out and getting those first reviews can be one of the hardest things.

In today’s article, Jason B. Ladd, author of Book Review Banzai gives some tips on getting reviews as an unknown author.

As an unknown author, getting Amazon reviews for your book is crucial to unlocking its full potential. But it’s not as easy as it sounds.

False Assumptions

You might think that downloads lead to Amazon reviews.

They don’t.

You might not know if Amazon has restrictions on reviews.

They do.

You might think reviews will eventually start rolling in with enough time and word of mouth.

They won’t.

It’s easy to get discouraged. You might think it’s impossible for an unknown author publishing their first book to get any traction with Amazon reviews.

It isn’t.

Read the full post on The Creative Penn

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You can’t force success

August 29, 2017 by Publetariat

You may have heard about The Handbook For Mortals scandal, where they tried to scam the New York Times best-selling list. I am not sure how they thought they would get away with it and not have people figure the situation out. It was pretty blatant.

Through out my career, I have had people ask me how to trick Google so they could be on top of the search engine. First of all, thank you for thinking I am that smart. But because I am that smart, I tell the truth. It isn’t worth it and it can’t be done. Why would you want to? I can see wanting to make sure your site is optimized the best it can be and I am so glad to help you with that. But as my wise old granny used to say “If it is too good to be true, follow the money.” What you want is your right audience to be able to find you. Including your searches.

I can get wanting to make money and be a success. Seriously, how cool would it be to make any best-selling list! Except if you scam the system, it isn’t really you on the list because of the quality of your work. You might make some money but everything lives forever on the internet, just ask Martin Skarelli who will be forever remembered as the pharma bro dude who was disrespectful to the Wu Tang Clan. People who seem to have the tendency to act like this, who are looking for the quick and easy way, never seem to have enough self-control to stop when they should.

I am not so naive to think that the system isn’t gamed because I totally think it is. But there is a difference between trying to get an advantage and thinking I am smarter than the world (which includes you!). Because if I had to bet on which would win, I would take the world all the time (and you!).

Have a good day!

Paula

P.S. You never ever never want to piss off Google.

P.P.S. Yes, I have had someone tell me that they wanted their site to be the number one search result for all Google searches.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson Says, Promote Your Own Way

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Five Shots At Your Own Sales

This Was a Fun Post in Late 2011…

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How Book Bloggers Boost Sales for Indie Authors

What is a book blogger?

Why should I pitch my book to them?

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5 Things Indie Authors Need to Consider Before Giving Up

Are you doing enough?

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The 3 Biggest Pitch Mistakes This Editor Sees Every Day

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How to Sell Thousands of Books When You Don’t Have an Audience

But I’m an Unknown Author

Isn’t the Market Saturated?

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Fringe Highlight: Should Indie Authors Go KDP Exclusive or Go Wide?

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Driving Down the Price of Publishing

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The Only Rule Amazon Truly Cares About

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How To Get Book Reviews As An Unknown Author

False Assumptions

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