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Articles about book / author promotion and marketing, and author platform.

Upcoming West Coast Book Publishing Events for Indie Authors

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One of the staples of an author website or blog is the Calendar page. Fans can find out the next stop on your blog tour, where you might be speaking at a live event, or other notable happenings.

The problem is, in practice, these Calendar pages rarely get updated. It’s quite common to go to an author’s Calendar page and find out where they were speaking two, three, or four years ago. This makes me sad, so I’ve never put a Calendar page on my blog.

Instead, I’m listing right here the upcoming events I’ll be speaking live at, with links to the registration pages for each. These are all excellent educational opportunities being run by great organizations for writers and indie publishers.

 

Not only that, it gives me a chance to meet up with blog readers and indie authors, something that’s a lot of fun for me.

Here’s the lineup.

San Francisco Writer’s Conference

San Francisco Writer's Conference
“Bestselling authors Lisa See (Snow Flower and the Secret Fan) & Lolly Winston (Good Grief) will join legendary editor Alan Rinzler as keynote speakers at the 2012 San Francisco Writers Conference.”

San Francisco Writer’s Conference

Pre- and Post-Conference Sessions Flyer (PDF)

This conference runs Friday, Saturday and Sunday February 17 – 19, 2012 in San Francisco. In addition, there will be a “Self-Publishing Bootcamp” on Monday February 20 as well. Always well-attended, you’ll meet writers, editors, agents and others in the publishing business for sessions with over 120 presenters.

I’ll be presenting a session on blogging as well as one on book design in the Bootcamp. Check the schedule for details.

IBPA Publishing University

IBPA Publishing University

“Haven’t published yet?—IBPA Publishing University’s the place to learn how.
Just published?—IBPA’s Publishing University’s the place to learn what’s ‘now.’
Been publishing awhile?—IBPA’s Publishing University’s the place to learn more”

IBPA Publishing University

For the first time, the Independent Book Publisher’s Association (IBPA) will hold their Publishing University on the West coast. This is a major opportunity for writers, self-publishers and indie presses to get both basic and advanced training in the business of publishing.

March 9 – 10, 2012 in San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf area. I’ll be presenting a session on book design, and another on blogging. Come by and say hello!

Redwood Writers Conference

Redwood Writers Conference

“Our conference, themed ‘Next Step,’ offers you the opportunity to learn about the evolving publishing industry, to find new ways to promote your books and yourself, and to enhance your skills in the craft of writing. We offer four tracks—Craft, Genre, Marketing, and Publishing—and 16 breakout sessions. We wish, and you will wish, that you could take all 16.”

Redwood Writers Conference

Redwood Writers, a branch of the California Writers Club, is holding a full-day conference for writers and indie authors on Saturday, April 28, 2012 at the Santa Rosa Junior College in Santa Rosa, California. This is about an hour north of San Francisco.

I’ll be presenting a session on using your blog to market your books as well as participating in a panel discussion. If you come to the conference, be sure to look me up.

Ed: As usual at my presentations, I’ll have some kind of special bonus offer for attendees. But I don’t publicize these, so you’ll just have to come to get in on the good stuff.

As longtime readers know, my belief is that education is the most important part of getting ready to publish your own books. These conferences all present opportunities to take your own education in publishing to a whole new level. Added to that are the terrific opportunities to network, meet other authors, talk to vendors, and basically get a huge amount of information and education in a short period of time.

I’d love to see you at any of these events, and I hope you can make one of them if you’re in the area.

 

 

This is a cross-posting from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer.

An Indie Author’s Manifesto

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This post, by Martin Lastrapes, originally appeared on his Inside Martin site on 1/17/12.

(This is an extended and revised version of the article “A Self-Publisher’s Manifesto,” which was previously published in Self-Publishing Review on 7/27/11)

I am an indie author and this is my manifesto.

 

If you’re a reader, a simple lover of books, someone with no aspirations of ever writing or publishing, then there is a very good chance you’re unaware of the culture war that has been going on within the world of publishing for what feels like forever.  The war is between the large publishing houses, primarily found in New York, and indie authors.  For almost as long as the publishing industry has been a relevant cog in the entertainment machine, publishing houses have served the purpose of finding, publishing and, essentially delivering to the literary world the best authors they could find.  But they didn’t do this alone.  Literary agents—who not only represent authors, but also serve as gatekeepers for the large publishing houses—helped them.

Most any writer who has ever aspired to get published has learned the hard way that finding a literary agent to represent you is, arguably,  harder than actually getting your manuscript accepted for publication by a large publishing house.  And this is not by accident.  As gatekeepers, the literary agents weed out the “bad” talent and wrangle in the “good” talent, making it easier for the large publishing houses to pick which handful of writers they’ll be publishing during any given year.  As someone who has been rejected by more agents than I care to count, I have a pretty good grasp on how the system is intended to work.

First, the author writes a manuscript (i.e. a novel, a memoir, a collection of short stories, etc.).  Once they finish, the author writes a query letter, which is, essentially, a one-page pitch to a literary agent.  In the query letter, the writer should not only tell the literary agent what their book is about, but also why anybody would bother reading it or, more importantly, buying it.  This last part is important, because agents earn money on commission, which means they only get paid if they can sell your book.  So, even if they personally love the book, but don’t think they can sell it, they aren’t going to represent it.

If the agent likes what you’re pitching in the query letter, then they’ll likely ask you to send them the first 10-15 pages.  If they like those pages, then they’ll likely ask for a partial, which are the first 50 pages.  If they’re still satisfied with what they’re reading, then they’ll ask to see the full manuscript.  After looking at it, they will either decide to represent your book or reject it.  There is also the possible middle ground where they might ask you to make revisions to the book that will, in their estimation, make it more attractive to publishers.  And even if you’ve gotten this far and the literary agent decides to represent you, it’s going to take nearly a year (sometimes longer) before you come to that agreement.

Of course, getting a literary agent is no guarantee of getting published.  They still have to try and sell your manuscript to a publishing house.  There are plenty of authors who have secured literary agents, only to find out that the agent couldn’t sell their books.  But if you are one of those rare authors who have cleared all the hurdles and have had your book published by a large publishing house, one of the first things you will learn is that you’re going to be on your own when it comes to promoting and marketing the book.  Publishing houses have limited budgets for marketing their authors and first-time authors aren’t likely to get much support.  Ironically, if your book doesn’t sell, then the publisher will be less likely to buy your next book.

 

Read the rest of the post on Inside Martin.

25 Things Writers Should Start Doing (ASAFP)

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This post, by Chuck Wendig, originally appeared on his terribleminds site on 1/17/12.

Consider this, if you will, a sequel to the gone-viral post, “25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing (Right F***ing Now)” — sort of a mirrored-reflection be-a-fountain-not-a-drain version.

Now, a warning, just in the rare instance you don’t come to this site all that often:

Here There Be Bad Words. Naughty profanity. The sinner’s tongue. Lots of “eff-this” and “ess-that.”

If you’re not a fan of profanity, no harm, no foul. But you might want to turn your tender gaze away before your eyeballs foam up and ooze out of your poor innocent head.

Please to enjoy.

 

1. Start Taking Yourself Seriously

This is a real thing, this writing thing, if you let it be. It’s not just about money or publication — it’s about telling the kind of stories only you can tell. Few others are going to take you seriously, so give them a 21-middle-finger-salute and do for yourself what they won’t: demonstrate some self-respect.

2. Start Taking The Time

Said it before, will say it again: we all get 24 hours in our day. Nobody has extra time. You must claim time for yourself and your writing. Time is a beast stampeding ever forward and we’re all on its back. Don’t get taken for a ride. Grab the reins. Whip that nag to go where you want her to go. Take control. Hell, pull out a big ol’ electric knife and carve off a quivering lardon of fatty Time Bacon all for yourself. (As a sidenote, the Germans had a name for that phenomenon: Zeitspeck. True story I just made up!)

3. Start Trying New Stuff

Branch out. Get brave. Look at all the ways you write now — “I write in the morning, sipping from my 64-ounce 7-11 Thirst Aborter of Mountain Dew, and I pen my second-person POV erotic spy novels and it earns me a comfortable living.” Good for you. Now punch that shit right in the ear. Okay, I’m not saying you need to change directions entirely — what kind of advice is that? “Hey, that thing that works for you? Quit doing it.” I’m just saying, mix it up. Make some occasional adjustments. Just as I exhort people to try new foods or travel destinations or ancient Sumerian sexual positions, I suggest writers try new things to see if they can add them to their repertoire. Write 1000 words a day? Try to double that. Don’t use an outline? Write with one, just once. Single POV character? Play with an ensemble. Mix it the fuck up. Don’t have just One True Way of doing things. Get crazy. Don’t merely think outside of the box. Set the box adrift on a river and shoot it with fire arrows. Give the box a motherfucking Viking funeral.

4. Start Telling Stories In New Ways

Another entry from the “Set The Box On Fire” Department — with the almost obscene advances in personal technology (the smartphone alone has become more versatile than most home computers), it’s time to start thinking about how we can tell stories in new ways. A story needn’t be contained to a book or a screen. A story can be broken apart. A story can travel. Your tale can live across Twitter and Foursquare and Tumblr and an Android app and Flickr and HTML5 and then it can take the leap away from technology and move to handwritten journals and art installations and bathroom walls and — well, you get the idea. Let this be the year that the individual author need no longer be constrained by a single medium. Transmedia is now in the hands of individuals. So give it a little squeeze, and find new ways to tell old stories.

5. Start Reading Poetry

Poetry? Yes, poetry. I know. I see that look you’re giving me. “What’s next, Wendig?” you ask. “We all hold hands and dance around the maypole in our frilly blouses and Wonder Woman underoos?” YES EXACTLY. I mean — uhh, what? No. Ahem. All I’m saying is, all writing deserves a touch — just a tickle — of poetry. And do not conflate “poetry” with “purple prose” — such bloated artifice has no room in your work.

6. Start Saying Something

You are your writing and your writing is you, and if you’re not using your writing to say something — to speak your mind, to fertilize the fictional ground with your idea-seed in an act of literary Onanism — then what’s the damn point? You have a perspective. Use it.

7. Start Discovering What You Know

Ah, that old chestnut. “Write what you know.” Note the lack of the word only in there. We don’t write only what we know because if we did that we’d all be writing about writers, like Stephen King does. (Or, we’d be writing about sitting at our computers, checking Twitter in our underwear and smelling of cheap gin and despair.) The point is that we have experience. We’ve seen things, done things, learned things. Extract those from your life. Bleed them into your work. Don’t run from who you are. Bolt madly toward yourself. Then grab all that comprises who you are and body-slam it down on the page.

8. Start Writing From A Place of Pain

You also know pain. So, get it out there. Don’t build a wall and hide from it. Scrape away the enamel of that tooth and expose the raw nerve — meaning, it goes into what you’re writing. Our pain is part of what makes us, and if we speak to that honestly in our writing, the reader will get that. Audiences can smell your inauthentic contrivances like a dead hamster in the heating duct. A reader wants to see their story in your story. They want to relate their pain to the pain on the page, and if that pain isn’t honest — meaning, it isn’t born out of experience or empathy — then your work will come across as hollow as a gutted pumpkin.
 

Read the rest of the post on terribleminds.

Can Your Readers Find You?

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Author websites and blogs are an essential book promotion tool. But far too many websites lack contact information for the author or make the contact information hard to find. This seems to be especially true of author websites that are on the Blogger platform.

What if someone wants to ask a question about you or your book, interview you, request a review copy, invite you to guest post on their blog, tell you how much they enjoyed reading your book, or suggest a joint venture? How will they find you?

While it’s important to make it easy for people to contact you, it’s a good idea to protect your email address from spammers who harvest email addresses online. One option is to use a contact form on your website. There are various plug-ins that work with WordPress.org sites, or you can use a service such as EmailMeForm.

Another option is to use an encrypted email link. I use the Enkoder form from Hivelogic. If you click the "email me" icon below my photo in the right column, a blank email addressed to me should automatically pop up. Encrypted email links are not entirely foolproof, but they work well.

However, I have found that there are a few email programs that are not compatible with the Enkoder, so I have also added an image just below it that contains my email address. Because this is a JPG image, rather than text, it should not be visible to bots that are harvesting email addresses.

Some people try to disguise their email address by inserting various characters such as myname*at*website.com. According to my research, many bots are sophisticated enough to see through that tactic. Probably the worst thing you can do is to place an actual link to your email address on your site. That would be highly visible to bots that are searching for email addresses to sell to spammers.

Take a look at your website now and see how easy it is for people to find you and whether your email address is secure.

Want to see more articles like this? Subscribe to The Savvy Book Marketer blog so you won’t miss any posts.

 

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

ThrillerCast is back for 2012

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ThrillerCast – the podcast I co-host with thriller/action adventure author, David Wood, is back for another year. We chat about anything to do with thriller and genre fiction, and regularly have cool guests on the show.

The first ep of 2012 has just gone live and it’s a corker. We talk about our plans for the year, discuss KDP Select, have some free books to give away AND have a chat with Myke Cole, author of the Shadow Ops books – the first one, Control Point, is out next week from Ace.

 

ThrillerCast ThrillerCast is back for 2012

The books sound great:

Cross The For­ever War with Witch­world, add in the real world mod­ern mil­i­tary of Black Hawk Down, and you get Control Point, the mile-a-minute story of some­one try­ing to find pur­pose in a war he never asked for. – Jack Camp­bell, New York Times Bestselling author of The Lost Fleet series

I’m definitely looking forward to reading that. Myke is a great guy too, and a total nerd for roleplaying games. It’s a fun chat.

Check out the new episode here.

And check out Myke’s site here. You can pre-order Control Point now.

 

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

The Challenges of New, Digital Lit

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Note: I’ve made my latest book, Overshare, available for free download through this Friday, 1/20/12 – it may be informative to download a copy and look at it in the (free) Kindle Reader app or on a Kindle Fire (it’s presented in full color, so viewing it on a monochrome Kindle won’t give you the full experience) before reading this post.

These days, authors and publishers are beset on all sides by pundits and industry watchers telling them they must innovate, they must redefine the meaning of the word "book", they must experiment with new forms, make use of multimedia and transmedia if they hope to stay relevant in the new, digital frontier of literature and publishing. All of which is well and good, until you take their advice.

 

The relatively minor transition from hard copy to ebooks has been difficult enough, and there are still plenty of readers who prefer the feel (and even smell!) of "real" books so much that they’ve sworn they will never switch to using an ereader. There goes a chunk of prospective readers, if you’re intending to release something in a digital format.

Next comes the form the experimental content takes. We’ve all heard of Vooks, "enhanced" ebooks and ebook apps. But how many of us have actually bought, or even seen one for ourselves? Think about it: if those of us who are in the publishing and literature business aren’t invested (or in many cases, even interested) in these new forms, why on Earth should we imagine casual readers would be? So now your prospective audience has been whittled down further, to include only those ebook fans who are also interested in experimental, new forms of digital lit.

Finally comes the quality of the content. Once you’ve brought the experimental digital lit fan to the table, it’s much the same as winning over any reader. If your content appeals to the specific tastes and preferences of a given reader, he’ll like it and maybe even be so kind as to leave you a nice review on Amazon or Goodreads. If not, he will deem the book a failure. And unless he leaves a negative review somewhere, detailing the reasons for his dislike of the work, you’ll never know if it was a failure of form or of content.

Overshare is an exclusively digital release, and it’s presented in an unusual form. When the reader "turns" to the first page, she doesn’t find the typical chapter heading followed by paragraphs of text. She finds what looks like a Facebook page. After a few such pages, she finds what looks like a Twitter stream. Then a post on the protagonist’s blog. And so it continues: social media pages and blog posts, lots of pictures, but nothing else. No narrative is provided, the reader must construct her own.

I’ve sent out MANY advance review copies of Overshare. The responses seem to fall very clearly into two camps. On the one side, there are the people who rave about it and respond with genuine excitement to its non-narrative, heavily graphic presentation. On the other, there are the people who initially say they’ve begun to look at it and find it "fascinating", "intriguing", etc., but then never respond in full. Obviously, these readers ultimately did not find the book to their liking, but I’ll never know if it was a failure of form or content from their perspective.

This is frustrating, since it’s impossible to refine or improve either the form or content of other works going forward if I don’t know what needs to be improved. It’s also possible that any kind of experimental thing, simply due to its experimental nature, will always create a sharp divide of opinion.

Experimental digital lit is a tough sell. The non-narrative form of Overshare makes it very difficult to promote. While regular users of social media—my target audience—know how to interpret this material right away, others don’t know what to make of it. When my own father, who does not use social media, was out for a visit recently, he asked me, "How do I read this book?" One hates to discourage ANY sale, but I have to accept that people outside my target audience aren’t likely to "get" Overshare to any extent, and their negative reviews can be a liability.

I thought I could build buzz initially within publishing and author circles, which are presumably more fertile ground for digital lit and experimental lit, and branch out from there to the general, reading public. Dan Holloway ran an interview with me on his eight cuts site, focusing primarily on the non-narrative aspect of the book (e.g., the book demands, or allows, depending on how you look at it, the reader construct his own narrative) and the Creative Commons licensing issues it raises. Joanna Penn ran a guest blog from me on the technical aspects of creating this heavily-formatted, graphics-intensive book. Both pieces generated a lot of reads and some comments, but scarcely bumped the sales needle for the book. I got a bit of discussion going on Facebook, where one commenter noted that by turning on the Commenting function of the Kindle, readers can insert themselves as characters in the book by adding their own "Likes" and "posting" comments to the protagonist’s blog. A very promising idea, I thought; but it still didn’t generate sales.

So now, I’m trying a giveaway. While it’s always been possible for prospective buyers to view a free excerpt, an excerpt doesn’t adequately convey what the book is all about, or how it’s supposed to be "read". People viewing the excerpt are just as likely to be confused as prompted to buy the book. When what you’ve got to offer isn’t instantly accessible and doesn’t immediately touch on familiar reference points for your target audience, sometimes the only way to get people to take a risk on it is to give it away at first. Even then, some people will decide it’s not worth the investment of their time to try the new thing.

But hopefully, many others will try it. And whether they like it or not, some of them will talk about it. Some will blog about it. Some will post reviews. And with any luck, after you’ve stopped giving it away, the book will have made enough of an impact that it can stand on its own two feet. Time will tell. If you’ve decided to download Overshare, and I really hope you will, I would very much appreciate your feedback: in the comments section here, in the form of a review on Amazon or Goodreads, or even sent directly to me via email (my address is readily available on my website, Facebook profile, Twitter profile and Blogger profile).

Circling back around to the whole question of whether or not dabbling in experimental digital lit is worthwhile…well, I’d say it depends. If your goal is to maximize the commercial potential of your work (e.g., to make money—and there’s nothing wrong with that) as efficiently as possible, then experimentation is not for you. On the other hand, if your financial needs are pretty well covered and more or less every manuscript you write is an experiment of a sort, you may want to give it a try. Those with some tech savvy will have an easier go of the writing, formatting and publishing steps, but once the book goes on sale, we’re all in the same, leaky boat.

 

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

Upcoming Book Awards and Contests

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Publetariat Editor’s Note: Publetariat is not affiliated in any way with the awards or competitions mentioned in this article, offers no specific opinion on any of them, and receives no compensation for their mention on this site. 

Deadlines are coming up soon for several book award competitions.

Winners of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award will receive a publishing contract with Penguin Books. Entries are accepted from January 23 through February 5, 2012, and it’s best to enter as early as possible. Unpublished manuscripts and self-published books are accepted.

 

If you published a book during 2011, consider entering one or more book awards programs to generate recognition and publicity for your book. There are a number of these competitions, and the entry fees can really add up, so you’ll want to be selective. Here are deadlines for several popular award programs:

The Ben Franklin Awards, sponsored by IBPA, is considered by many to be the most prestigious award for independent publishers. The deadline for entries has been extended to January 15, 2012.

ForeWord Book Awards – $1,500 cash prize, sponsored by ForeWord, a book review publication (January 15)

Nautilus Book Awards – for nonfiction books (January 31)

Next Generation Indie Book Awards (February 24)

IPPY Awards  (March 15)

National Indie Excellence Book Awards (April 15)

Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards – $3,000 cash prize (April 20)

There are also award competitions geared toward specific types of books. See this list for ideas. Be sure to read the eligiblity and submission instructions carefully when entering. 

 

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

2011 Round-Up. Achievements, Reflections And What Could Be Improved

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I’m one of those people who thrives on goal-setting and measurement. I’m always setting new goals and although I often change direction, I tend to achieve more than if I set none at all.

It is important to celebrate achievements so this is my annual round-up. It’s not meant to be horn-tooting, more of a record of the year.

I hope you have learned a lot from The Creative Penn in 2011 and I look forward to serving you further in 2012. I’d also love to know if you achieved your goals this year before we all set new ones in the coming days.

 

Fiction Writing

Pentecost, my first novel, was published in Feb 2011 and has now sold 16,034 copies.

Prophecy, the 2nd in the ARKANE series was published yesterday on the Kindle. Print, Nook & other versions to come in Jan but I still got it out in 2011! I won’t be officially launching it until January 20th but it is available on the Kindle store if you’d like to purchase!

I’m pretty excited about the future of fiction with digital publishing. I’ll be exploring more in this arena in 2012 and onwards. I have so many creative ideas I want to explore.

I have also started a blog for my fiction fans, JoannaPenn.com where I will be adding information about my research and more.

 

 

 

The Creative Penn

This blog has now reached it’s 3rd birthday (hoorah!) It has won the Top 10 Blogs for Writers for the 2nd year running (as one of the Top 10 after 2100 nominations and comments). I’m really pleased with that so thank you if you nominated me.

In terms of growth and online platform, I shall record figures here for posterity as it’s good to revisit these regularly and this has become my annual checkup.

There are currently 3162 subscribers to this blog on Feedburner, 6585 subscribers to the newsletter, 23,279 followers on Twitter, 2418 on Facebook/TheCreativePenn and 1034 on Google+. Considering I’ve only been on Google+ for a few weeks, I’m interested to see how fast that is growing and the engagement over there. I may well give up Facebook in 2012! (but never Twitter!)

The Creative Penn podcast has now reached 113 episodes. There have been 41,358 downloads, at around 3400 per month in the last few months. The top listening countries are US (53%), China (12%), UK (10%) and Australia (7.4%).

In light of all this, I may be looking for some sponsorship for the podcast in 2012! If you’re interested, please do email me direct.

The most popular podcast has been On Changing Your Life, Writing and Marketing a Book which just happens to be an interview with me! You can download the backlist here – there’s over 60 hours of free information on writing, publishing and book marketing with more every week.

My YouTube channel The Creative Penn has 395 subscribers and has had 63,997 views of 122 videos. The top videos have been Tips for Publishing on the Kindle (3690 views) followed by Pentecost Book Trailer (2544 views). The top countries are US, UK, Australia and Canada. Demographics: 51.4% male, 48.6% female. Over 50% in the 45-54 age bracket. Although this isn’t spectacular, I will continue to invest in video as I think it is a growing market and the more I do, the more I enjoy it!

Transition to full-time author-entrepreneur

This wasn’t even something I thought would happen this year but a combination of circumstances have made it so.

I left my consulting job of 13 years for the more precarious, but rewarding, life of an author-entrepreneur. I have also moved hemispheres from Brisbane, Australia to London, England.

For the full story, read “I am creative, I am an author. From affirmation to reality.”

For this transition, I primarily thank Amazon Kindle for the KDP publishing platform, and WordPress for enabling this blog as well as Twitter for my network. Together, those services have changed my life!

If you’d like to invest further in your education, I now have the following products available for sale, with a focus on mini-modules, not full-blown courses:

I shall be expanding this digital product range in 2012 and rewriting the Author 2.0 Blueprint and modules in order to update everything to this ever-changing market.

How did I do against my goals for 2011?

Here are my New Year’s resolutions from Jan 2011.

  • Publish Pentecost – achieved.
  • Go to ThrillerFest in New York in July & pitch a publisher. I cancelled this trip as we moved from Australia to London in May which changed the budget somewhat. I would still love to go to ThrillerFest and the flight would be cheaper from London. I’m not so bothered about pitching to an agent now though. I am very happy being indie at the moment. I do have a goal of 50,000 book sales and then I may decide to approach an agent.
  • Finish Prophecy – achieved.
  • Launch a new blog for mystery & thriller lovers. I did launch MysteryThriller.tv but to be honest, I have now stopped doing reviews on video and am just reviewing books I like on Amazon & Goodreads. I don’t have the bandwidth for more reviews in general. The aim was to get some advertising revenue from the blog but it wasn’t justifying itself in terms of time and effort. I can make more income from writing fiction and this blog, so I won’t be continuing with that. So yes, I achieved it, but it was a misplaced goal. You can follow my reviews on Goodreads here.
  • Enjoy 1 day unplugged a month. Hmm, I don’t think I achieved this … I continue to be a driven person who isn’t very good at stopping. My husband says I am like a Ferrari with no fuel gauge. I only stop when it all falls apart. This is my natural rhythm. I have tried meditation again this year but it stops after a few days. I continue to journal a lot though, which is a kind of meditation. I definitely do unplug, but not regularly enough.
  • Learn more about grammar, language and the craft of words. I have specifically read prize-winning literature and poetry in order to glean more about language. I continue to listen to podcasts and do training as well as read books and of course, interview people. I also learn A LOT from having my own work edited. If you read Pentecost and then Prophecy, I hope you can see improvements in my writing. So, achieved.
  • Continue to expand The Creative Penn. I’ve definitely achieved this but it’s not a stretch goal. It’s more of a maintenance activity now. I LOVE this blog, it brings me so much enjoyment to be useful to you and to share the journey. So please do keep commenting and keep emailing me with your questions.

[On January 2nd] I will be sharing my goals for 2012.

How did you do with your goals for 2011? Please do share your achievements and how it went. Let’s keep each other honest!

 

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

Top Posts of 2011: Promote Your Book by Commenting on Blog Posts

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This post originally appeared on Publetariat on 5/27/10 and has received 2101 unique pageviews since then. It’s been one of the most popular posts on Publetariat in 2011.

Commenting on other people’s blogs is a great way to get visibility, build relationships with bloggers, subtly promote your book, and get links back to your site (if the site gives "do-follow" links). But you can hurt your credibility if you go about it the wrong way. Here are some tips for successful blog commenting:

Actively look for relevant blogs to comment on. Subscribe to the feed of the most important blogs in your area of interest, and use tools like Google Alerts to keep an eye out for relevant posts on other blogs. You can also use Google Blog Search or blog directories like My Blog Log to find blogs that are a good fit.

Contribute to the conversation. Don’t just drop by and say "great post."  Instead, make a thoughtful comment that contributes something. You might offer an additional tip or real-life example, or expand on a point the blogger made. If you’re commenting on a book review, explain why you enjoyed reading the book. Your comment doesn’t have to be long, but you do need to say something useful and relevant. Do not give the impression that you are just there to promote your book or leave a link to your site.

Don’t make inappropriate comments. There’s nothing wrong with disagreeing with a point that someone has made (and many bloggers encourage disparate views), but do so in a polite, respectful way. I’m amazed at some of the rude and tacky things people say on blogs and in online forums.

Don’t be overtly promotional. Commenting on someone else’s blog is not the place to blatantly promote your book or services.  However, there are subtle ways to convey that you are an expert on the topic being discussed and encourage people to click on your name to visit your website.

You might work in a reference to your book related to the comment you are making. Here are some examples:

"Twitter is such an important tool for authors that I devoted an entire chapter in my book to promoting through Twitter."

"In researching my book, Selling Your Book to Libraries, I discovered that . . ."

"Because I write mystery novels myself, I really appreciated the way that the author . . ."

Depending on the topic under discussion, I sometimes sign my name with a tag line such as "Dana Lynn Smith, The Savvy Book Marketer" or "Dana Lynn Smith, author of Facebook Guide for Authors."  Some people include their website address in their signature, but many bloggers frown on this. Creating a signature that’s several lines long and blatantly promotional is not appropriate. Some people think that including any type of signature or reference to your book is too promotional.

You will have to use your judgment to determine what is appropriate, but you might look at what other commenters on the blog are doing as a guideline. Just remember that you are a guest on someone else’s site and mind your manners. Comments, anyone?

Excerpted from The Savvy Book Marketer’s Guide to Blogging for Authors by book marketing coach Dana Lynn Smith. For more book marketing tips, follow @BookMarketer on Twitter, visit Dana’s Savvy Book Marketer blog, and get a copy of the Top Book Marketing Tips ebook when you sign up for her free newsletter.

 

Top Posts of 2011: 8 Simple Steps To Self-Publishing

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This post originally appeared on Publetariat on 5/4/11 and has received 1444 unique pageviews since then, making it one of the most popular posts on Publetariat in 2011.

Thanks go to Self-Publishing Coach Shelley Hitz for contributing this guest post. 

Are you interested in self-publishing a book?

It might not be as much work as you think. In fact, if you already own a website or blog, you can seamlessly transform your most popular content into a book. Think about it: you can take the same great content you’ve already written for your site and reformulate it into a printed book, PDF eBook or audio book to make the most of all your hard work. Follow these steps and you’ll be well on your way to becoming a self published author, like me!

8 Simple Steps to Self Publishing Your Book:

  1. Create an outline and chapter layout using the best articles from your website or blog.
     
  2. Enter your content into a template formatted for your desired book size (i.e. Microsoft Word).
     
  3. Save your book as a PDF file.
     
  4. Select a designer for your book cover or design it yourself.
     
  5. Select a self publishing [services] company.
     
  6. Sign up for an account with your publisher and upload your documents.
     
  7. Begin promoting and selling copies of your book online, via your website or blog and in person.
     
  8. Finally, convert your book into various formats to get the most out of your work (i.e. PDF eBook, audio book and Kindle eBook).

That’s it!

I stumbled upon the concept of self publishing books in the fall of 2008 when one of our colleagues, a fellow speaker, showed me a copy of his self published book. Not only were his books affordable-they only cost him $2-$3 each-but their quality was excellent. And he also gained the instant credibility of being a "published author."

I thought, "I can do this!"

And believe it or not, after about one month of hard work, I was ready to publish a 190-page book based upon my website, Teen-Beauty-Tips.com.

How did I do it? I followed eight simple steps!

The Nuts and Bolts of Publishing My First Book

Step #1: To get started, I assembled my first draft based on the best articles from my website. Once I selected the articles, I decided on an outline for my book and formatted the content into chapters.

Step #2: I then decided on a book title, "Mirror Mirror…Am I Beautiful? Looking Deeper to Find Your True Beauty," and began the process of copying and pasting the text of my articles into a Microsoft Word template.

Step #3: Next, I converted my Word document into a PDF file using the free edition of PDF995 (to do this click on properties, then advanced option and select the "statement [5.5 X 8.5] " from the drop-down menu for the paper format).

Step #4: Since I was working on a very low budget, I decided I would use a DIY design approach and used Photoshop to create my book cover.

Step #5: After more research on self publishing, I decided to use CreateSpace (affiliated with Amazon), to publish my book. Why? Well, there are no upfront costs, they list you quickly with Amazon and I can buy books for less than $4 each to sell at events.

Step #6: Finally, I was ready to upload my files and order my proof copy! My 190-page black and white soft cover book cost a mere $3.13 + shipping, with the help of the Createspace Pro Plan.

Although the Pro Plan requires a one-time fee of $39, followed by a $5 annual fee, these small fees are well worth it! With the Pro Plan you gain significantly higher royalties and can also buy copies at a much lower cost to sell at events. Therefore, I highly recommend the Pro Plan for anyone interested in self publishing with Createspace.

Step #7: What a great feeling to self publish my first book! I immediately began selling copies online through my website and at speaking events.

Step #8: My final step was to create other versions of the same book. I chose to offer it digitally as a PDF eBook and give a free copy away to my newsletter subscribers. In a very small niche-Christian teen girls-this has helped to build my list to almost 3500 subscribers in a relatively short period of time.

I also recorded an audio version of my book using the free software, Audacity, and a $30 microphone. Once the audio files were completed, I began selling the MP3 downloads of the book through ClickBank and the CD version of the audio book using Kunaki. With Kunaki, I can buy CD’s for as little as $ 1 (+ shipping).

Finally, I expanded my book’s influence by making a version available for the Kindle. To convert my book into the Kindle format, I removed all of the pictures embedded in the Microsoft Word template and saved it in as a HTML document. I then uploaded my book to Kindle Direct Publishing, text and began offering the Kindle version from my website as well. You can see my sales page here.

Do I Make Money Selling Books?

I’ll be honest. In such a small and specialized niche, I’m not getting rich by selling books from my website. However, I am receiving regular paychecks from both online and offline sales. And as my website traffic increases (now over 1000 visitors per day), my sales also increase.

If you want to "make it big" in publishing, I recommend that you hire a professional to design your interior book template and your book cover design. I also recommend hiring a professional editor. After taking the DIY route initially, I did eventually decide to hire a designer to update my book cover.

And finally, if you want to truly self publish, I recommend that you start your own book publishing company and use Lightning Source. Be aware that it does require more time, money and effort upfront. However, in the end, you can earn more in royalties by self publishing through Lightning Source, especially if you want to sell books to international audiences or in bookstores. If you’re interested in using Lightning Source, I recommend reading a book by Dan Poynter called, "The Self Publishing Manual" to help guide you step by step.

You Can Do It!

Since you’ve already invested so much time and energy into writing your website or blog, why not take a little extra time and get the most from your content by repurposing it into a self published book? Follow my eight simple steps and you, like me, will soon be selling physical products like paperback books, audio CD’s as well as digital products like Kindle books, PDF eBooks and MP3 downloads from your website.

Are You Ready to Get Started?

If so, I recommend that you go and download my free book templates and then sign up for a free Createspace account. It costs you nothing and yet provides you with an easy action step toward achieving your goal of getting published.

And have fun…soon you’ll be a published author.

Shelley Hitz is an entrepreneur, author and speaker. Her website, Self Publishing Coach, provides resources and tutorials that help you publish and market your book. Discover 200+ free book marketing and author tools in Shelley Hitz’s 36-page free report. You can also find Shelley on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Top Posts of 2011: Self-Publishing Resource Roundup

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This post originally appeared on Publetariat on 5/12/11 and has received 1773 unique pageviews since then, making it one of the most popular posts on Publetariat in 2011.

Since Publetariat’s launch a bit over three years ago, the site has become a trusted resource and thriving community for indie authors and small imprints. For that, I thank each and every one of you. It’s also become a favorite haunt for writers who are considering going the self-pub route, but don’t feel quite ready to come out of the shadows and stake a claim to a readership independently. To them, I offer this roundup of particularly useful articles and resources for those just starting out.

Choosing A Self-Publishing Service Provider

Mick Rooney’s POD, Self-Publishing and Independent Publishing made its name on its analysis and reviews of various service providers, and continues to post service provider reviews and commentary about them on a regular basis.

Over on their Greene Ink blog, Stephen Wayne Greene and Meredith Greene offer the recent results of a survey they’ve taken among indie authors, asking which service provider the authors preferred and why.

Considering Lightning Source? See this case study over on the Foner Books blog.

Joel Friedlander explains what a subsidy publisher is, and why you shouldn’t work with one, on his The Book  Designer site.

This free, sample lesson I wrote for Publetariat Vault University will help you crunch the numbers when comparing service providers, and I’ve made these worksheets I designed for my book, The Indie Author Guide: Self-Publishing Strategies Anyone Can Use, available online as a free pdf download, too.


Getting Your Book Ready For Print—or Ebook—Publication

Editing – there are LOTS of articles and tips on editing right here on Publetariat. Whether you’re looking for DIY editing tips, guidance on when and how to work with a professional editor, or how to find and hire a freelance editor, you’re sure to find what you’re looking for.

Joel Friedlander offers a kind of crash course in self-publishing on his The Book Designer site, from Getting Ready to Publish, to Planning Your Book, Understanding Fonts & Typography, and Making Print Choices. 

Joel also offers this post on Ebooks &  Ebook Readers, and I’ve made my Indie Author Guide to Kindle Publishing and my Kindle Publishing Workshop (from the Writer’s Digest Business of Getting Published conference, 2010) available as free pdf downloads on this page of the Indie Author Guide companion website. 

Author Platform and Book Promotion

You’ll want to visit Dana Lynn Smith’s The Savvy Book Marketer site for lots of great articles on book and author promotion, with a particular focus on using new media and social media.

Also be sure to check out Joanna Penn’s The Creative Penn, where you’ll find excellent how-tos on subjects like podcasting and making your own book trailer, as well as plenty of insight and firsthand accounts from Joanna herself regarding her own experiences as an author and speaker.

Once again, Publetariat has you covered with its own treasure trove of articles on author platform and book promotion.

Indie Audio

So you wanna learn how to turn your manuscript into an audiobook, and maybe release that audiobook in podcast form and make it available online for free? Podiobooks is the place to start. They’ve got a large and helpful community, a mentoring program, and excellent tutorials, all for free.

So you wanna release your indie book on audio and sell it? Audible has just announced its ACX.com service, which will allow you to do just that. Hey, if it’s good enough for authors like Neil Gaiman and MJ Rose, and Random House, it might just work for you, too.

Community, Support, and Motivation

The Association of Independent Authors is there for you, with resources, online discussion forums, and news from around the globe that affects indie authors.

If you just need a good old fashioned kick in the pants to get you motivated and excited about the possibilities of going indie, or need to feel like you’re not all alone out there in the indie wilderness, there’s hardly a better source than Zoe Winter’s Weblog. Whether she’s talking about her own struggles and successes, her writing, publishing and book launch approaches, or commenting on the state of publishing in general, Zoe tells it like it is and pulls no punches.

Mark Barrett’s Ditchwalk is another excellent stop, where you’ll find a mix of commentary and reportage on Mark’s own adventures in the world of indie authorship.

Finally, Publetariat’s got an extensive library of articles on the topics of motivation, writer’s block and the writing life.

Now get out there and do it!

 

April L. Hamilton is an author and the founder and Editor in Chief of Publetariat.

Top Posts of 2011: The Truth About Createspace's Free ISBNs

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This post originally appeared on Publetariat on 4/14/09, and has received 6296 unique pageviews since then. It’s been one of the most popular posts on Publetariat in 2011.

If you’ve heard about dire consequences of accepting the free ISBN offered by CreateSpace, or that those free ISBNs aren’t "real" ISBNs, you’re just hearing misinformation perpetuated by people who don’t understand what ISBNs are all about, who’ve never used CS’s services, and/or who have an axe to grind against CS.

 
 
The ISBN: A Mainstream Tracking Tool
 
The ISBN system was developed in 1966 to facilitate the creation of a single, standardized method publishers, booksellers and libraries could all use to track books.
 
Prior to the advent of the ISBN system, each publisher, bookseller and library had its own, internal tracking system, and none of those systems could easily share information with one another. This didn’t pose much of a problem until the mass-market paperback was introduced by PocketBooks in 1939. Prior to that time, only hardcover books were available to buy and they were very expensive; booksellers didn’t tend to move a lot of copies per month, and it wasn’t too difficult to track those sales or report them back to publishers.  
 
Despite the huge popularity of the paperback book, bookstores snobbishly refused to stock them until the 1950’s, seeing them as somehow inferior to the hardcovers on their store shelves. Nevertheless, millions of copies were flying off the racks at bus stations, drug stores and markets, and the need for some kind of standardized tracking system soon became apparent. 
 
From Wikipedia:
The International Standard Book Number, or ISBN , is a unique, numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster, now Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H. Smith and others in 1966.
 
An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation (except reprintings) of a book. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned after January 1, 2007, and 10 digits long if assigned before 2007.
 
Generally, a book publisher is not required to assign an ISBN, nor is it necessary for a book to display its number [except in China]. However, most book stores only handle ISBN-bearing merchandise.
 
How Important Are ISBNs, Really?
 
Over time, the ISBN has come to be associated with legitimacy in book publishing, since all mainstream-published, hard copy books have ISBNs and the ISBN system has been adopted industry-wide. The claim that a book without an ISBN cannot be stocked by any library or retailer is a myth, however. The fact that an ISBN makes it easier for them to keep track of their books makes them reluctant to work with books lacking ISBNs, but this is a matter of choice on the part of the retailer or library, not a rule backed by law or regulation. This is why indie booksellers are able to stock chapbooks and other books lacking ISBNs.
 
ISBNs are only important to the extent publishers, libraries and retailers rely upon them. For example, since the ISBN system hasn’t been uniformly applied nor enforced where ebooks and audiobooks are concerned—probably because publishers have never believed ebooks or audiobooks will ever comprise a significant piece of the publishing pie—, ISBNs are considered entirely optional for books in those formats.  
 
Are CreateSpace’s Free ISBNs "Real"?
 
R.R. Bowker is the official U.S. ISBN Agency; all ISBNs in the U.S. originate from Bowker, though they can be re-sold once purchased from Bowker.
 
The free ISBNs issued by CS are real ISBNs which CS purchases from Bowker in blocks just like any other publisher. However, when you accept the free ISBN from CS, CS remains the registered owner of that ISBN—ISBN ownership is not transferred to you.
 
Registered ISBN Ownership – Why Does It Matter? 
 
All the false claims I hear about CS books (that they can only be sold on Amazon, that they can’t be listed in Bowker’s or other bookseller catalogs, etc.) stem from the fact that CS remains the registered owner of the free ISBNs it provides. This isn’t as big a deal as it’s made out to be for most individual indie authors, and any author or small publisher who prefers to register her ISBNs in her own name can purchase her own ISBN and barcode block direct from Bowker (as of this writing, it costs US$150) rather than accept the free ISBN from CS.  It’s also worth noting, mainstream authors aren’t the registered owners of their ISBNs either: their publishers are. 
 
Registered ownership of an ISBN only becomes a pertinent issue in three cases: 1) when the book changes publishers/printers, 2) when the publisher or author wants the book added to catalog listings, and 3) in litigation over copyright, publication rights or proceeds from sales.
 
1) ISBNs, Once Registered, Are Non-Transferable
 
Since CS is the registered owner of the free ISBNs it provides, if the author chooses to withdraw his book from CS and publish it elsewhere he must acquire a new ISBN—but this is true of mainstream books as well. 
 
It’s not too likely to happen thanks to contractual obligations, but if Neil Gaiman somehow wrests control of his The Graveyard Book away from Harper and gets a different publisher to put it back into print,  the existing ISBN on the book will remain the property of Harper and the new publisher will have to purchase and assign a new ISBN for their printing of the book. And if that should happen, the old ISBN floating around in the system will cause confusion for people trying to purchase the book; a lookup on the title may point to the old ISBN, and the book published under that ISBN will turn up as "out of print".
 
Even if you elect to withdraw your book from CS and publish it elsewhere for some reason—and let’s face it, once the book is in print and listed for sale, this isn’t a great idea—you didn’t pay anything for CS ISBN so you’re not losing anything by letting go of that ISBN. You’re introducing the possibility of ISBN confusion, but that’s your fault, not CS’s.
 
Some people will protest that a new ISBN must also be acquired if you want to release an updated or revised edition of your CS book, but that’s true for any book within the ISBN system: each edition of any book being offered for mass-market, retail sale in the U.S. must be assigned its own, unique ISBN, regardless of who published it or how. 
 
2) Only The Registered Owner of the ISBN Can Create Catalog Listings
 
Only the registered owner of an ISBN can list the associated book with the Library of Congress, Bowker’s Books In Print (catalog for U.S./Canadian libraries and booksellers), Ingram (another U.S. catalog), or the Nielsen’s catalog (for UK/European libraries and booksellers), and CS elects not to create those listings for any of its ISBNs.
 
Most authors have been told these listings are crucial to their books’ success because libraries and book retailers generally rely on catalogs for all their book orders; if your book isn’t in the catalogs they won’t know it exists, and even if you tell them it exists, they won’t usually order it.
 
They could order direct from CS, but they’re not likely to do so since their entire system of ordering and tracking inventory is based on catalog orders.  Also, orders placed directly with CS aren’t returnable in the same way as books ordered in bulk through catalogs. As a rule, CS books are only returnable if the book is defective or was damaged in transit.
 
However, in my opinion this is a non-issue for the great majority of indie books because libraries and mainstream book retailers aren’t likely to stock our books anyway.
 
It’s true that if your book is listed in the catalogs you can tell potential buyers that your book can be ordered through any bookseller, but if the buyer must place an order for the book (as opposed to picking a copy up off a bookseller shelf), why wouldn’t he place that order on Amazon, where he’ll get it at a lower price and may be able to get free shipping as well?
 
I’m also fairly confident the big, chain bookstore is an endangered species (I blogged about it: Big Chain Bookstore Death Watch), so in my opinion there’s little point in spending much time, money or effort on courting them.
 
There’s one important caveat here. When you publish through CS, an Amazon listing is automatically included as part of the publishing process for free, though you can choose to opt out of the listing. Listings on Amazon’s international sites are not included. In order to get your book listed on any of those sites you must register your book with the Nielsen’s catalog (it’s free), and in order to register with Nielsen’s, you must be the registered owner of your book’s ISBN. 
 
3) ISBNs Are Important In Court
 
Being the registered owner of the ISBNs affords you certain legal protections as a publisher, and helps to establish copyright in the U.S. in cases where copyright hasn’t been registered separately. That’s why the one case where even I think it’s definitely worthwhile to buy your own ISBN/bar code blocks direct from Bowker is if you’re running, or forming, your own small imprint. 
 
Does CS Recycle ISBNs?
 
With respect to the hysteria surrounding CS’s recycling of its ISBNs, that’s all it is: hysteria. So long as your book remains with CS, the assigned ISBN remains with your book. It’s true that when an author withdraws his book from CS after the ISBN has been assigned, CS may re-assign the ISBN to a new book. However, this isn’t the nefarious practice so many naysayers make it out to be.
 
5/4/09 Correction: According to Amanda Wilson, CreateSpace’s Public Relations Manager, CreateSpace does not, and never has, re-assigned its ISBNs. If an author accepts the free ISBN and subsequently removes her book from CreateSpace, the ISBN assigned to her book will go out of circulation.
 
ISBN re-use would definitely be a problem for books listed in any of the mainstream catalogs, because anyone looking up a book by ISBN might get the book to which the ISBN was originally assigned, or the book to which the ISBN was re-assigned. In fact, re-use of ISBNs is strictly prohibited in those listings. I also previously discussed the issue of ISBN confusion on out-of-print books.  
 
Even so, this is not an issue for authors who accept the free CS ISBN because only the registered owner of the ISBN can list the associated book with any catalog services, and CS chooses not to do so. Remember, if those listings are important to an author he can purchase his own ISBN and barcode block direct from Bowker. 
 
Mainstream Concerns Aren’t Always Shared By Indies
 
Most of the worries about CS’s ISBN practices are based on mainstream publishing and book distribution models, which are largely inapplicable to individual indie authors.
 
Since I only publish my own books and wish to remain "out and proud" about my indie status, I elected not to form my own imprint, and I also elected to leave CS listed as the publisher for my books. I have no plans to withdraw my books from CS, and can’t really think of any reason why I might want to do so in the future. I don’t care about getting my books listed in the mainstream catalogs, since I find it’s much easier (and less expensive) to drive buyers to my Amazon listings than it would be to drive them into brick-and-mortar stores.
 
7/27/10 Update: After I published my books with them, Createspace instituted a strict policy whereby Createspace is not to be listed as the publisher anywhere in or on Createspace-produced books; either the author or company/imprint name (if applicable) is to be listed as the publisher of record.
 
True, my books aren’t visible to book buyers outside the U.S., but since I never planned any big international marketing push, nor to release my books in foreign language translations, international listings haven’t been a priority for me to date. Mainstream booksellers will often hold back on international releases of first editions from all but their most popular and bestselling authors as well, so I’m not alone in taking the conservative approach.  I may elect to purchase my own ISBN/bar code blocks when publishing future editions, but on my first editions there was no reason for me to refuse CS’s free ISBNs and I suspect the same is true of most indie authors. 
 
An Opposing Viewpoint
 
In the interests of fair play and full disclosure, I’m providing a link to Walt Shiel’s discussion of ISBNs on his View From The Publishing Trenches blog. Mr. Shiel is adamant in his belief that ISBNs should only be registered to the author or an imprint, and that ISBNs should never be re-used.
 
Note that Mr. Shiel comes from a background in mainstream publishing however. In my estimation, all the arguments he offers are either based on assumptions or realities that are only applicable to the mainstream publishing/bookseller world, or warn against potential problems that are no more likely to crop up for an indie book with the free CS ISBN than for a mainstream-published book with an ISBN registered to the publisher. For example, Mr. Shiel talks about how the author must return to whomever is the registered ISBN owner for subsequent print runs of his book—but the concept of print runs isn’t applicable to POD books, ebooks or digital audiobooks.
 

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April L. Hamilton is an author and the founder of Publetariat. 

 

Top Posts of 2011: How To Lose Fans And Alienate Visitors

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This post originally appeared on Publetariat on 9/6/09. It’s received 2179 unique pageviews since it first appeared, and was one of the most popular posts this year.

Hi, Joe or Jane Author. My name is…well, it doesn’t really matter what my name is, all that matters is I’ve just signed up for your newsletter, or started visiting your site or blog, or registered for membership on your site, or started following you on Twitter, or friended you on Facebook or MySpace or FriendFeed or Goodreads or LibraryThing or something similar. This should be the start of a wonderful relationship, in which you share useful and amusing information with me and I sing your praises to everyone I know, buy your books, register for your webinars and show up to your speaking engagements. So far, so good.

Now here’s how to f**k it up.

 

Bombard me with emails. When I signed up for your newsletter, Helpful Tips or the like, unless you specified otherwise at the time I signed up, I’m expecting to hear from you no more frequently than once a week. And in all honesty, if your messages take longer than about five minutes to read, I won’t. Between my job, my family commitments, my social commitments, my own reading and writing, and the fall TV schedule ramping up again, I don’t have time to wade through your too-frequent or too-lengthy missives.

Bait and switch me. It might surprise you to learn that when I signed up for your newsletter or Helpful Tips I was expecting to receive…wait for it…news or Helpful Tips, NOT advertising messages. It’s fine to have a one- or two-line sales pitch at the end of your email, or to send out the occasional message about your upcoming book or speaking engagement, but the rest of your content better be worth my time and attention. Look at it this way: would you read a magazine that had nothing but full-page ads in it? If your favorite TV show suddenly started consisting of 80% ads and 20% show, would you keep watching it?

Son of bait and switch me. If you’ve promoted your free webinar, ebook, members-only site, newsletter or whatever else you’ve got as Twenty Surefire Strategies to accomplish some goal, and I sign up, I’m expecting to receive…you guessed it: Twenty Surefire Strategies. When you give me a series of sales pitches for twenty fee-based products or services from you and your affiliates instead, I tend to conclude you’re a lying liar.

Return of the son of bait and switch me. Goodreads, LibraryThing, Shelfari and other reader community sites are places where people share their reactions to books they’ve read and engage in discussions about all things book-related, generally from a reader’s perspective. If the only books on your virtual shelf are those you’ve written yourself, or if you’ve got a variety of books on display but reserve your gushiest reviews for your own work, it’s obvious you’re using the site as a marketing outlet. Way to give new authors everywhere a bad name.

Bait and switch me, the revenge. It’s great that you’re branching out into new areas, or already operating in multiple areas, but don’t assume I want to branch out with you. I signed up for your Sci Fi Wonks site because I enjoy science fiction in general, and yours in particular. Imagine my surprise (and annoyance) when I also started receiving emails from your Gory Horrors site. And your Renaissance Romance N’ Ribaldry site. And your [insert religious affiliation here] Inspiration Of The Day site. And your eBay store. Bonus question: how angry do you think I was to find there were no “unsubscribe” links in any of the unwanted emails?

Bait and switch me, the final chapter. I understand I may need to provide my email address when posting a comment on your blog or site, because it protects you from spammers and hackers. And of course, if I’ve used the Contact form to send you a remark or question off-site, you need my email address to respond to me. But neither of these actions gives you the right to add me to your mailing list. Even if you’ve added some verbiage to your site pages to indicate that’s what you’ll do anytime someone enters his or her email address anywhere on your site, since that’s not how upstanding and honest most sites operate, if you want to avoid any appearance of bait-and-switchery you need to have a separate page just for mailing list signups.

Bait and switch me, the remake. Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, MySpace and other social networking sites are intended for…seriously, do I have to say it? Social networking. Not marketing or sales pitches. If most (or worse, all!) of your tweets, status updates or blog entries are only there to promote yourself or your work, you’re wasting my time. Just like I said about signing up for your newsletter or Helpful Tips, I wasn’t expecting to get a steady stream of advertising.

Are you beginning to sense a common thread? When I’m getting a lot of quality content from you, I don’t mind getting a modicum of advertising and promotion too. Sometimes I’m truly glad to hear about your new book, service or product, especially if I’m getting a special discount, premium edition or access to material or events not made available to the general public. But the moment the balance between content and advertising tips in the direction of advertising, I’m out. The moment I start thinking you’ve abused my trust, I’m out AND spreading the word. So please, don’t make me tweet angry.

 

April L. Hamilton is the founder and Editor in Chief of Publetariat. This is a cross-posting from her Indie Author blog.

 

Top Posts of 2011: Where to Submit Your Book for Review

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This post originally appeared on Publetariat on 2/24/09, has received 6547 unique pageviews since it first appeared, and is one of the most popular posts of this year.

Book reviews can be a powerful marketing tool for books of all types. Potential customers learn about books by reading reviews in newspapers, consumer magazines, professional journals, newsletters, ezines, book review websites, and other websites and blogs. In addition to bringing books to their attention, well-crafted reviews also help the reader determine if a book is a good fit for them.

Submitting books for review can be time consuming and the costs can add up quickly, but the selling power of reviews is well worth the effort. You can save time and money by planning in advance and being selective about where you send review copies.

When submitting review copies to publications, make sure your book’s subject matches the audience and the book meets the publication’s review guidelines. Some publications only review certain types of books and some only review prior to or within a certain time after publication. For example, The New York Times only reviews books available in retail bookstores.

Book reviews in newspapers are getting harder to come by, but many special interest magazines and newsletters do book reviews or mention books in articles related to the book’s topic. Publishing expert Dan Poynter sells lists off special interest publications in dozens of subject areas for a modest fee.

Bookstore buyers and librarians base many of their ordering decisions on reviews in the major book review journals. Eligibility and submission instructions vary by publication, so be sure to read the requirements carefully.

Online reviews can also be a great book marketing tool. Having lots of good reviews on Amazon.com can boost sales, especially for nonfiction books where customers are comparing several different books on a particular topic. There are numerous other websites that feature book reviews.

For a list of online book review sites, along with tips on getting reviews on Amazon.com and other websites, read Annette Fix’s article about online book reviews at the WOW! Women on Writing website. Yvonne Perry at Writers in the Sky has also compiled a list of people and organizations that do book reviews.

Use caution when sending review copies to individuals who request them. Some people have good intentions, but simply won’t find the time to write a review, while others offer to write reviews mainly as a way to get free books. If you don’t know much about the reviewer, it might be a good idea to politely inquire what other book reviews they have done and where they were published.

"I sent copies of my book to book bloggers who responded to my email that they indeed wanted to review the book, but who never reviewed it. I later realized that I wasn’t anyone to them, so my book got buried in the avalanche of books they receive," says Phyllis Zimbler Miller of MillerMosaic.com. "I found that bloggers on my virtual book tour and book reviewers whom I connected with through social media were much more committed to actually reviewing my book." For more tips from Phyllis, see this book review article.

Several services, including Kirkus Discoveries and Clarion, offer paid review services. The practice of paying for book reviews is controversial. Some people think that paid reviews are biased since they are done for a fee and that it’s a waste of money. Others maintain that paid reviews are just as fair as other reviews and that reviewers need to be compensated for their time.

Librarians and booksellers know which publications do paid reviews, so reviews from those sources won’t carry much weight with them. Paid reviews could generate good quotes for consumer marketing purposes, but there are so many places to get free book reviews that it’s generally not necessary to pay for reviews.
 
Wherever you choose to send your galleys and review copies, plan ahead and get them out as quickly as possible. And, whenever customers give you good feedback on your book, be sure to ask for permission to add their quote to your testimonial list and ask if they would be willing to post their comments on Amazon.com.

Book marketing coach Dana Lynn Smith is the author of the Savvy Book Marketer Guides, a series of book marketing ebooks that are available at http://www.SavvyBookMarketer.com. For free book marketing tips, visit http://www.BookMarketingMaven.com.

Self-Publishing And Ebook Predictions For 2012 With Steven Lewis From Taleist

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It seems that every week brings a new development in the world of digital publishing and indie authors have varied opinions on what’s happening. In this interview I discuss some of the latest events and also debate what 2012 holds.

 

Steven Lewis is an author, podcaster and at Taleist he helps writers become published authors. He has just posted Self Publishing and Ebook Predictions 2012 on his blog which we discuss today. [Video and podcast at the bottom of the text]

  • One of the comments in the article is ” 2012 is the year things get bad for traditional publishing industry”. My thoughts are more that there’s a split between publishers going digital and those that are not. Steven comments that for publishers going digital the problem is pricing and customers think the price has to be low. 99c – $4.99 which in some cases still doesn’t cover the costs of all the editing, design etc. People won’t pay print prices, that’s a given but where is the limit. Publishers will find it tough to run the publishing machine with less income.
  • Publishers will be trying new things in 2012. Penguin opening up to ‘self-publishing’ is actually more like vanity publishing. None of us want to see the end of publishers and bookstores but things will continue to shift.
  • Steve thinks Amazon has to start doing something about the crap that is being published in 2012. The spam, the hardcore pornography and the things that come up in searches. They have to clean it up but there have been problems with Amazon trying to get rid of what some people think is wrong e.g. gay/lesbian writers. We have to balance free speech with what is genuinely awful. I prefer to think of the customer as the gatekeeper as I am browsing by categories, ranking etc. The new stigma will be ‘not selling’ as opposed to self-publishing.
  • What else will Amazon do in 2012? We discuss Kindle Select. It’s basically a way for self-publishers to put their book into the Kindle Prime lending program where members can borrow books. Amazon has put $500,000 in a pot and that is shared pro-rata depending on how many books & how many borrowed. You have to commit to 90 days exclusivity, so you can’t publish it elsewhere. It’s not an income strategy really. But what is interesting is that you can put your book for free for 5 days so you can control your timing on using free as a marketing tactic. Steven isn’t happy about this as he says we’re training readers that books should be free. I disagree and point to CJ Lyons’ article here as she uses free as a teaser to boost the sales of her other books. Steven has a full article here on KDP Select  if you want to read the long version. Amazon’s job is to make an offer and it’s up to the author to decide what’s best for their book. We’ll also re-examine this after at least a month’s worth of data.
     
  • Check out David Gaughran’s article on KDP Select: How much do you want to be paid tomorrow?
  • Steven gets upset at my comparison of KDP Select to a library. My point is that it’s more about marketing and getting your books in front of more people. Personally, I will probably put one book into KDP Select but keep most of them out.
  • Will there be better tools for authors in 2012? Steven says it’s unlikely we will get much further than the basic formatting for mainstream books. I mention the FutureBook conference where I met publishers doing some really interesting work with transmedia and apps. This is something that we as self-publishers can’t do ourselves so if you have these ideas for cross-media ideas it would be better to work with a publisher. Authors also underestimate the amount of time to do all the things you can do and focusing on what will work for you. It’s a triathlon – you write, publish and promote but promotion also goes on forever. The cost is often in the time.
  • If we’re basically seeing an expansion of mainstream print books, we have to get better at marketing. Reading works as it is, there doesn’t have to be a change. You really still only have to write books. You don’t have to do apps and all that multi-media. I’m interested in doing audiobooks. Steven has some experience of this and doesn’t find it a huge market but it’s definitely something that we are keen on taking further. It’s not about the money, more about the marketing.
  • Amazon moving into international markets. I specifically want India to come online as a huge English speaking market. We note how Amazon keeps surprising us. There are no rumours, they just do it. They can move into these countries very easily and will do as soon as they are ready. Steven & I get annoyed about all the differences in pricing and sales tax.
  • Advertising in ebooks. Authors will do it and Amazon is also putting ads on the Kindle. Steven even likes the advertising on his Kindle as it offers things the reader wants. Seth Godin with the Domino Project did get companies to sponsor the book and give it away for free. It’s not radically different to what we are used to now. Authors will also be able to advertise in each others books. Bloggers can join in an advertising network, so why not authors? Join in an advertising campaign and see what happens with it. You definitely need to use your Kindle book to advertise your own books. Make sure you hyperlink to Buy Now for each of the books you have available. Think about linking up with other authors and advertise each others but be careful.
  • We talk about Scrivener and exporting to Kindle formats. The pros and cons. Check out David Hewson’s book “Writing a book on Scrivener“
  • Amazon continues to dominate but we discuss Kobo which has great statistics, like when people stop reading your book & people can interact socially about it. Nook Color vs Kindle Fire. What’s happening with the other players in the market? It’s very hard to challenge Amazon’s place in the market now, they are so entrenched. They are also selling their devices at less than cost. It would be great to see some decent challenge to Amazon as with great power comes great responsibility and with all our eggs in one basket, they could turn around and change royalty rates later.
  • As indies getting on everything other than Amazon KDP, our options are Smashwords and BookBaby, that’s about it. Will there be other options for us? or will Smashwords expand their offering. We love Smashwords but recognise the immense amount of work it is for Mark Coker to manage the company now it’s really taken off.
  • Steven reckons Amazon will play hardball with the other players in 2012, e.g. asking for exclusivity. They also might move to a verification method for self-publishing e.g. paying $50 instead of free. It’s Amazon’s reputation at risk with the crap that is flooding the store. Serialization may also become available as a new model. Exciting times overall!

You can find Steven at Taleist.com and also on Twitter @Rule17

What do you think will happen in publishing in 2012?

 

Podcast: Download (Duration: 43:16 — 25.5MB)

This is a cross-posting from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.