Sell

When Google launched Google Plus (Google+) a few months ago in their latest attempt to gain a foothold in the social media world, a lot of people weren’t sure whether to applaud the move or bemoan the fact that we had another place to try to build a community.

After all, the world of social media isn’t exactly lacking in things to keep authors who want to market their books occupied. You can work on building a tribe on Facebook, promote and connect with people in your niche on Twitter, keep track of colleagues and discussions on LinkedIn, and maintain relations with readers on Goodreads. Isn’t that enough?

 

The New Kid Has Some New Tricks

And yet Google+ quickly grew to millions of members and is now the fastest-growing social media site in history. Faster than Facebook, faster than Twitter, faster than LinkedIn. Right now, by recent estimates, there are already more than 40 million people using the service.

There are really good reasons it’s become so popular so quickly. Some of these reasons make Google+ a great location for authors. Let’s take a look at three features that distinguish Google+ from the other networks we’ve come to know, and see where these features present opportunities for self-published authors.

Circling

Before talking about the features, take a moment to enjoy the look and feel of Google+. I don’t know about you, but I find the Facebook interface—at least the last time I looked—to be quite busy and distracting. Twitter, of course, isn’t encumbered with much of an interface, since it’s mostly a stream of short text messages.

Contrast that to Google+, which bears the mark of most Google designs. Simple, spare, blue and white, and lots of “negative” space make it seem clean and functional, focusing your attention on the content that’s being shared rather than the accoutrements of the interface.

On Google+ there are no “followers.” Instead you can “circle” people and they can circle you. But you don’t just add people to a circle; you can have many circles if you like, and each can have its own uses. For instance, you can sort people you circle into different areas, like high school friends, colleagues, friends you like to play music with, or bloggers who review books. People can be in more than one circle, too.

When it becomes time to share something, you decide which circles will receive it, or if it’s available to the public (that is, anyone at all on Google+).

This solves the ongoing problem I have with Facebook, and I suspect a lot of you have too: mixing personal and professional contacts. With Google+, the ability to segment your interests is built into the program, an intrinsic part of its functioning.

One thing that this makes immediately obvious is that you can craft messages, shares and announcements for specific groups. Authors can easily maintain lists of book reviewers, readers, media contacts, editors, designers, and other authors.Segmentation is the foundation of direct marketing, so this ability alone gives you the opportunity to market in new ways.

You can also follow the circles other people have put together, which is a quick way to gain access to the updates and information being published by leaders in your field.

Hangouts

One of the amazing features Google+ incorporated from the beginning is Hangouts, the ability to have quick video chats with other Google+ users.

If you’ve ever wrestled with videoconferencing software or services, this is an amazing feature. With no more effort than just clicking the “start a hangout” button and inviting others to join you, you can instantly have a real-time video conference right inside Google+.

Authors could use this capability for face-to-face meetings with their editors, to have a chat with a designer, or to bring in virtual assistants and marketing people for a strategy session on a book launch. The ideas for hangouts are pretty endless, and that’s even before you start using them to connect to readers.

Shares

Some people have tried to explain Google+ as being somewhere between Twitter’s rapid-fire text updates and Facebook’s robust photo- and video-sharing abilities.

But Google+ is really different from both other services, and one reason is the flexibility of sharing. On Twitter, of course, you’re limited to 140 text-only characters, although updates are often used for links to other content.

On Facebook, the status updates are limited to 420 characters, enough to write a very, very short story perhaps (see Lou Beech for examples). On Google+, I don’t think there’s much of a limit. You can post a one sentence update, and it makes sense. Or you can post an entire article if you like, with photos, videos or other content as part of it. Darren Rowse, for instance, the author and professional blogger, uses Google+ this way to communicate with his vast tribe.

This flexibility combines really well with the ability to segment your lists, since not all communications with all communities can be made to conform to the same restrictions. For instance,

• you might want to send a 300-word article to your community similar to an email update.
• short messages to marketing partners like affiliates or other authors in a blog network are just as easy.
• personal messages with a photo gallery from a trip or celebration can easily be shared with friends and family.

Altogether, Google+ has made a big impression on the social media community. Many users report spending a lot less time on Facebook, as the clean, uncluttered, and easy-to-use interface attracts them. Others say they enjoy the longer communications possible and don’t market quite as much on Twitter. There are communities of authors, readers, and lots of other kinds of people forming on Google+.

All of these developments will become more and more important to you as an author as the service continues to grow. Google has just recently added the ability to create pages for businesses, brands, products and companies.

The more Google+ grows, the more Google will combine it with its search, video, and advertising streams, and that combination is potentially explosive. I think you should be on Google+, and it looks like it’s going to be a great destination for some time to come.

If you have a Google account, you can just go fill out your profile and spend some time checking it out. I think you’ll like what you see.

Google+ Resources for Writers

Debbie Ohi’s master list of literary people on Google+
The Mashable.com Guide to Google+
Book reviewer Natalie Luhrs’ site on Google+
Jason Boog’s GalleyCat roundup of writers on Google+

This article was originally published as “Is Google+ Good for Writers?” on CreateSpace.com on November 17, 2011

 

 

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

This post, by Steve Piacente, originally appeared on his site on 12/10/11 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

Mainstream newspapers – even struggling, mid-sized papers – seem to look at Indie authors the way the hot girls in high school looked at the manager of the football team. You’re nice, but you really don’t expect me to date you, do you?

This situation was different, I thought, because I had been the mainstream newspaper’s Washington correspondent for a decade. I didn’t want special treatment, only a look, and figured my time at the Charleston, S.C. paper would get my self-published novel into the hands of the book editor.

The book did reach editor Bill Thompson, who politely informed me that the newspaper:

–       Will not consider paperbacks, eBooks, self-published, textbooks, or children’s books.

–       Only publishes 325 reviews a year, and there are 60,000 hardcovers from “legitimate” publishers released in the U.S. alone each year, plus 250,000 paperbacks.

NO OFFENSE, BUT …

The paper’s reviewers are unpaid volunteers who “insist” on “legit” hardcovers. Thompson said this was no reflection on any individual book, “but rather on the totality of the self-publishing field, which, as a rule, has tended to produce books of grossly inferior literary quality.”

Ouch.

He added, ”To be candid, and meaning no offense, no book review editor I know (and I am a member of three different professional associations), will have anything to do with them.”

Double ouch. But Indies should know what they’re facing.

The only time mainstream papers seem interested is when a success story rises up and forces them to pay attention. This is one of the latest, from The Wall Street Journal.

Thompson says he gets 25-30 new hardcover books each day. Worse, book coverage has gone from one-half of his job to about one-sixth. That’s because the Post and Courier’s features team has shrunk from 17 people to four, and the workload hasn’t let up. “I’m getting 100 emails a day just from New York publishers. This doesn’t count the 47 local arts groups and 60 area writers I’m trying to cover.”

OLD WAYS HAVE GOTTEN RUSTY

I pushed back, saying that technology has changed the world, and newspapers clearly haven’t kept pace. The situation in Charleston is not unique. Newspapers everywhere are in trouble, which is why it strikes me as odd that execs would cling so hard to old ways that clearly aren’t working.

As Thompson struggles to do more with less, he says he’s “bombarded by self-publishing houses and their authors … That some writers of worthy books cannot get them published through conventional means is unfair and regrettable. But the fact remains our reviewers do not want them. Nor does management, for that matter.”

Declaring every Indie author unworthy seems unjust, especially when this sentiment comes from folks who are supposed to help separate worthy from unworthy, whether it’s books, politicians or pro athletes. Aren’t feature writers journalists? The Code of Ethics calls for journalists to: seek truth and report it; minimize harm; act independently, and to be accountable.

So to whom are reviewers accountable to when they won’t even consider Indie authors?

Thompson says he doesn’t have the time to separate the wheat from the chaff. “As a book review editor of 31 years, I have a critic’s mentality, and a critic’s belief in the importance of sustaining standards of excellence,” he says. “With few exceptions, self-publishing is the antithesis of this ethic.”

WHO STILL USES INK?

I see it this way: Back in the dark ages (like about five years ago), if you wanted to be an author, you’d write a book, scour the city for an agent, and, if the stars aligned, get one and sign with a big-time publisher. That’s how it worked – there was one key to the literary castle. If you didn’t get the key, and all you got to write were letters home.

If you did land an agent, he or she would need enough gumption to snag a publisher. If not, story over.

Technology has changed the game by providing a direct path to prospective readers. Screw the middleman. Tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have enabled writers to find cover artists, illustrators, trailers, editors, web designers, and, most importantly, readers. Sure, we’d like a newspaper review, but that’s just one of many avenues.

The trick is figuring out how to distinguish your work from the glut competing for people’s attention. It’s true that the good news is the same as the bad news – anyone can publish pretty much anything. My hope is that, as with any other product coming to market, the cream will rise.

As a former journalist, I like this. It’s got a democratic feel to it. There used to be a saying about not arguing with folks who bought ink by the barrel, meaning reporters always got the last word. Perhaps that day has passed. Is anyone still using ink?

 

Amazon today announced a new service offering for authors and publishers who upload to their KDP platform: KDP Select. Writer beware.

At first glance, the program looks enticing. Amazon has created a $500,000 monthly pool of cash they’ll distribute to participating authors based on the number of times your book is borrowed from their new lending library.

As they note in their FAQ, if your book accounts for 1.5% of the downloads during the monthly lending period, you’ll earn 1.5% of the pot, or in this case $7,500.

But there’s a catch. Actually, multiple catches, which are outlined in their Terms and Conditions:
 

1. For the time your book is enrolled in the program, you cannot distribute or sell your book anywhere else. Not Apple, not Barnes & Noble, not Smashwords, not Kobo, not Sony, not even your own personal blog or web site. Your title must be 100% exclusive to Amazon.
2. If you violate their exclusivity terms at any point during the three-month enrollment period, or you unpublish your book to remove it from the program so you can distribute your book elsewhere, you risk forfeited earnings, delayed payments, a lien on future earnings, or you may get kicked out of the Kindle Direct Publishing program altogether.
3. Your enrollment, and thus your liability to Amazon, automatically renews every three months if you neglect to opt out.

Amazon has also modified the Kindle Direct Platform’s user interface with the effect of making it almost difficult not to enroll your books. Where they once placed their pull down menu for managing your book’s settings, they’ve now placed the enrollment link. The pull down settings menu is moved to the bottom of their dashboard.

Let’s examine the implications for this new program, not only for authors but for the nascent ebook industry as well.

When authors enroll a title in the program, they’re contractually obligated to remove their books from all other distribution channels.

Wow. Most indie authors appreciate their independence. This rule is quite restrictive.

Impact on authors:

• Forces the author to remove the book from sale from the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Smashwords and others, thereby causing the author to lose out on sales from competing retailers.
   
• By unpublishing a title from any retailer, the author destroys any accrued sales rank, making their book less visible and less discoverable when and if they reactivate distribution to competing retailers
   
• Makes the author more dependent upon Amazon for sales. Do you want to become a tenant farmer, 100% dependent upon a single retailer? As some of you history buffs may know, tenant farming, and the abuses of power by landlords, was a primary contributor behind the great Irish potato famine.

Impact on competing retailers:

• Harms other retailers by denying them access to your book.
   
• Many authors will permanently stop distributing to Amazon’s competitors once they become fully dependent upon Amazon for the lion’s share of their earnings
   
• Motivates more customers to purchase at Amazon since Amazon has this exclusive content.
   
• Discourages formation of new ebook retailers around the world

The new Amazon KDP Select program strikes me as a startling example of a predatory business practice Amazon has the opportunity to leverage their dominance as the world’s largest ebook retailer (and world’s largest payer to indie authors) to attain monopolistic advantage by effectively denying its competing retailers (Apple, B&N, Kobo, Sony, etc) access to the books from indie authors.

The move will also make it more difficult for new retailers operating outside the US to gain footholds in their respective markets if they lose fair access to the content readers want to read.

Amazon might argue that indie ebooks today only account for a fraction of overall book industry sales. True, but that fraction is growing quickly as indies scale all the best-seller charts. This trend will continue as more and more professional authors turn their back on traditional book publishers in favor of self-publishing. Amazon is smart. They understand indies are the future of book publishing.

European Commission and US Department of Justice Unwittingly Working to Create Amazon Monopoly

Amazon’s new service offering comes at a time when the European Commission and even the US Department of Justice

are scrutinizing the legality of agency ebook pricing. Agency ebook pricing, as you’ll recall (see my     blog post last year on our move to agency pricing) allows authors and publishers to set their own price and receive higher royalty rates. Amazon is a long time foe of agency, and as a result is probably enjoying a virtual wet dream as they savor the implications of potential restrictions against the agency model. 

If agency pricing is limited or overturned, it would allow Amazon to price ebooks at below cost and effectively eliminate the profitability of all its competing retailers. This would also discourage the formation of new competitors. It’s ironic that the EC and US DOJ are pursuing these ill-advised campaigns that could lead to less competition in the ebook market, not more.

What the EC and US DOJ fail to realize is that big publishers (the target of these investigations), which (I agree) price their books too high, are becoming less relevant to the future of book publishing as authors lose faith in the myth of big publishing. The problem of high prices from big publishers is not an agency issue, it’s big publishers pricing their books too high.

Agency Pricing Enables Indie Authors and Small Publishers to Lower Prices

Despite fears to the contrary, we see evidence at Smashwords that agency pricing might actually encourage lower book prices. Indies, which are enjoying great benefits from the agency model (Smashwords only distributes to agency retailers), are using agency to offer customers lower prices, not higher prices. The average ebook at Smashwords is priced under $5.00, and we have over 15,000 books priced at FREE. Why do indies price their books lower when they have the freedom to charge anything they want? The reason is that indies realize that consumers value fair prices, and as a result these lower prices give indies a competitive advantage over the large publishers. 

When an indie author can earn 60-70% of list with agency pricing, they can set a lower price yet still earn more per unit than if the book was sold under a wholesale pricing model (where the royalty would equal 43-50% of list). As an example, if an author wants to earn $2.00 from each book they sell, at a 70% agency rate they’d price the book at $2.85. Under the wholesale model (50% discount off list), they’d need to price the same book at $4.00. 

The agency model puts profits in the pockets of the author or publisher, where it belongs, while allowing the retailer to earn a fair profit. Agency pricing relieves retailers from the pressure of competing on price and instead forces them to compete on customer experience, such as developing discovery tools and recommendation systems that help match readers with the books they’d enjoy reading. 

How should indie authors respond? Horror might be a good start. Recognize that your long term interests are best served by enabling a vibrant and competitive global ebook retailing ecosystem to develop. Distribute your book to as many retailers as possible. A world of many ebook retailers, all working to attract readers to your books, is much preferable to a world where a single retailer dictates all the terms. 

Obviously, I have a horse in this game. Smashwords is probably the world’s largest distributor of indie ebooks. We publish and distribute over 90,000 ebooks from 33,000 indie authors and small presses around the world. We exist to serve our authors and publishers. We supply Amazon’s competitors. We’d love to supply Amazon as well, but they’re unwilling to provide us agency terms.

 

This is a reprint from Mark Coker‘s Smashwords blog. Also see Amazon Backlash Continues to Build, regarding Amazon’s price comparison app, on Publishers Weekly.

When I got up this morning I was checking through the social networks over breakfast and saw from Trent Zelazny’s Facebook page that Anne McCaffrey had died of a stroke yesterday. It hit me like a speeding a truck and a small part of my childhood died too. To say that Anne McCaffrey was instrumental in the person and writer I have grown up to be would be an understatement. I immediately put my condolences out through Twitter only to realise that the news hadn’t spread yet. I’m usually a bit behind on this stuff, but suddenly I found myself being the first person people had heard the news from. It was an unusual experience for me, but a profoundly touching one as I saw the massive heartache that Anne’s passing caused, saw so many other people as deeply affected as I was.

I discovered McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern books when I was a child, maybe ten or eleven years old. Already a voracious reader, I was always on the lookout for the next great story. McCaffrey’s books transported me. When I realised there were several of them, I couldn’t believe my luck. I felt like a prospector striking gold. Always a fan of dragons, here were books that made dragons into something nobler and more beautiful than I could have imagined. Here was a world so rich in detail and populated with such wonderful characters that I truly wished I could slip between and go there. If someone had offered me a one way ticket to Pern, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.

At about 12 years of age, I wrote my first ever fan letter to an author. I needed to tell this lady how much her books meant to me, how wonderful they were. In the back of one book I saw a note, with an address for any correspondence. I found it hard to believe that such a thing was possible, but I sat down and wrote my letter and asked my mum to post it off. Weeks passed. Weeks are a long time for a twelve-year-old and I thought, Oh well, it was worth a try. It was no surprise that someone as magical as Anne McCaffrey wouldn’t have time to write to some precocious kid in England.

Then a postcard arrived. It had dragons on the front. On the back was a handwritten response from Anne McCaffrey, telling me how pleased she was that I’d enjoyed her books, and how much she appreciated my letter. I was stunned. In my letter I’d told her how I wanted to be a writer one day too, and that I hoped I could maybe write books as good as hers. In her reply she said, “Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t.” That still resonates with me to this day. I do write books now, and maybe one day they’ll be as good as Anne McCaffrey’s.

I wish I could find that postcard. I kept it safe, but it was close to thirty years ago and I’ve moved many times since then, to the other side of the planet. If I ever find it, I’ll scan it and post it here. Regardless, it lives on in my memory as one of the most important things I’ve ever owned. It shaped me as much as her stories did.

Anne McCaffrey was a class act. An absolute legend who touched the lives of millions. It’s a world worse off without her in it, but we’ll have her stories forever. When I read the news over breakfast this morning, it was raining heavily. I sat at the table, staring out the window at the lancing rain and thought about the thread. I imagined riding a dragon out to burn the thread before it could harm the people below. I remembered just how magical those stories of dragons and guilds were. And all her other stories too, the Crystal universe and Ireta, Talents and Freedom, and so many more. Vale, Anne McCaffrey. If you listen really hard, you can hear the dragons keening.

 

 

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

I’ve blogged about using a training budget before, but sometimes you may find your budget is hovering around $0. What do you do then? Spend time trolling through other author’s blogs, especially those who offer eBooks (and other types of media) covering topics you’re interested in, and prowling over social media networks. There are three things to be gained from this.

 

1. Free information from the blog itself– Most blogs are free to read and easy to subscribe to by RSS or email. If you’re a savvy reader, you can pick up how-to info from author blogs whether the author is trying to teach their readers or not. Sometimes it’s obvious, like from http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/”>Kristen Lamb’s blog in which she teaches on how to build a killer author platform using social media. Other times it’s a matter of noticing what the blogger is not saying. Same goes for other social media like Twitter and Facebook. Find authors you want to learn from and follow them. Read enough blogs, tweets, status updates, etc. and you’ll learn an astounding amount about whatever it is you’re interested in.

 

2. Discounts are there to be had — I’m one of those people who rarely buys anything as soon as I see it. I hate buyer’s remorse. That means I’ll wait around until the book or service I want goes on sale. For instance, I really wanted to by http://www.problogger.net/”>Darren Rowse’s http://www.problogger.net/31dbbb-workbook/”>31 Days to Build a Better Blog as soon as I saw it on his site. However, there were no excerpts to read to know exactly what was in the book and I wasn’t sure my budget would handle yet another bad buy. (FYI this eBook is one of the better training buys I’ve purchased in several months.)I waited to buy the eBook until I read a tweet that said a group called http://www.thesitsgirls.com/”>the SITS Girls were signing up women bloggers to take the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge and Darren was discounting the price of the eBook for all those who signed up. Jackpot! Not only could I get the eBook at a discounted price, but I would have a large group of women to work with. Waiting can be hard, but it’s worth it when you get what you want at a price you can afford.

 

3. Sometimes a freebie is just a click away — Another author I truly admire is http://www.jakonrath.com/”>J.A. Konrath. He has found a way to make very good money on his eBooks through Amazon’s Kindle store, so, naturally, I follow http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/”>his blog closely. He also has an eBook called http://www.amazon.com/Newbies-Publishing-Everything-Writer-ebook/dp/B003I6496Y“>The Newbie’s Guide to Publishing, which, like 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, I really wanted. The price wasn’t bad, but, again, no excerpts. Then I discovered that Joe has made the eBook available for free on his website. (Thanks, Joe!) Voila! A little research and I had my eBook for free in a version I can read on any laptop, computer or eReader. That won’t be the case for every book or training series you might want, but it’s worth a little “foot work” to see if it’s out there (and not a pirated version!).

 

Finding what you need can take some time, but it’s worth it for good training.

Where have you discovered a great deal?

Important upcoming giveaway…

I believe prayer is an important part of life, especially during Advent and Lent. I also know that sometimes we get stuck in the details and make having a conversation with our loving Creator more difficult than it needs to be. That’s why I wrote Simply Prayer, to give you some tools to break through what’s holding you back.

With that in mind, I’m giving away a free copy of the Simply Prayer ebook during Advent (Nov. 27-Dec. 26) and during Lent (Feb. 22-Apr. 9).

Watch here for more details or follow me on twitter (@virginiaripple)

 

This is a reprint from Virginia Ripple‘s The Edge of Eternity blog.

In the last week there have been two great audio interviews on the future of books. I would say it’s not the future but more current, emerging and becoming more mainstream every day. I recommend you listen to them both! They will educate and inspire you and that’s what this blog is all about

 

The Future of Books and Publishing at Six Pixels of Separation

There’s one podcast I listen to avidly and that is Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation. It’s primarily a marketing blog and podcast but also talks a lot about new media, publishing and Mitch interviews a lot of authors of business books. It’s not usually aimed at writers but this episode is a definite must-listen podcast for those of you who enjoy audio.

Click here for The Future of Books and Publishing with Mitch Joel and Hugh McGuire

Here are some key points I found interesting:

• Hugh’s new software PressBooks (currently in beta) is a simple online book production tool. It’s based on WordPress software and produces a print book as well as an ebook but it’s also all online so it can be given away for free as well. This enables all the analytics to be tracked as people join in and share online.
• How Amazon is a tech company with an amazing amount of analytics on their customers which enables them to compete aggressively. (For us as authors, this is a great thing as it fuels the Amazon algorithms that help sell our books.)

• The key thing is the connection between readers and authors. You have to control that connection to the customer and Amazon has this. (This is also why we are building online platforms, so we can connect directly to readers)
• “You have talent on one side and customers on the other and the middle is the engine of marketing.” Mitch Joel. Connecting the two is the key and Amazon has this.
• Amazon as a publisher has signed Deepak Chopra now, as well as a lot of other authors including Tim Ferriss.

• The first book on the PressBook platforms is “Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto. A collection of essays from the bleeding edge of publishing” published by O’Reilly media. You can read some of it online here.

• A discussion on the value of print books and books in general. The way of reading on the Kindle with sampling and having no time for books that don’t immediately grab you.
• “It’s the context, not the container.” This underlies everything. What can you do as a writer/publisher to make things better for your reader? This is the important thing.

You can find Mitch Joel at Six Pixels of Separation and on twitter @mitchjoel

You can find Hugh McGuire at HughMcGuire.net and on twitter @hughmcguire

On the future of books: A discussion with Seth Godin

In an interview with Leo Babauta on Zen Habits, thought leader and marketing guru Seth Godin talks about:

• How the current changes in publishing are scary for those people who want someone to pick them and just write but fantastically exciting for those writers who can embrace the change and pick themselves

• There is an abundance of shelf-space online. It’s not about shelf space, it’s about finding a tribe and developing relationships and selling to those people. Your job is to connect and create your own community around your work. Then you have the power to market to them. It’s not about the table by the cash register at Borders, it’s your ability to attract a passionate tribe and then fulfil the needs of those people.

• Really think about what needs to go into a physical book form and whether your ideas could be disseminated in other ways. Seth mentions how books will become 99c or $1.99 ebooks that people devour like popcorn (the John Locke model) and then a few very specific books that will be hardback or collector’s items and many more that will need to be sold to the tribe e.g. idea type books like his own.

There’s much more in this interview and one of my takeaways is that I feel I’m in the right place for the publishing shift. When I started this blog, there was a huge stigma against self-publishing but that lessens everyday and these two interviews on such high profile blogs prove that this model is not going away.

Click here to download the interview with Seth Godin on the future of books

Read the blog on The Domino Project, Seth’s (very successful) experiment in publishing here

Leo’s blog Zen Habits is also brilliant and focuses on minimalism if that’s something you’re interested in.

What do you think? Are you excited about what’s happening in the publishing industry?

 

 

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

If you’re looking for just the right image to use on your website or books, you can find photos and illustrations online at reasonable prices.

Here are just a few of the ways you can use stock photos and illustrations:

 

• Illustrate blog posts to reinforce the message and break up large blogs of text.
• Use images on covers for books and ebooks.
• Find arrows, buttons, guarantee seals, and other graphics for web pages.

The toolbox photo on this post came from my favorite stock image site, iStockPhoto.
Bigstock is another good source. Right now, Bigstock is offering a 50% discount on the first image purchased by new customers. I’m not sure if the offer has an expiration date.

Other good sources for photos and illustrations include Dreamstime and Crestock. On Stock.Xchng you’ll find free photos mixed in with links to paid images on iStockPhoto.

All of these sites offer royalty-free images that can be used for marketing purposes, but check the license agreement if you have any questions about the specific uses that are allowed. The cost is usually about $2 to $3 for small photos suitable for online use. Prices are a little higher for larger, high-resolution photos and for illustrations, but still reasonable.

For free photos to use in blog posts, check out the Creative Commons section of Flickr. Use the search box on this page to look for an appropriate image. When you find a photo you like, check the License section in the right column to find out how you may use the photo and what attribution is required.

For more tips on buying and using images, see this article.

Now, go forth and illustrate! 

 

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

This post, by Marika Flatt, originally appeared as a guest post on Dana Lynn Smith‘s The Savvy Book Marketer site on 11/1/11.

In today’s guest post Marika Flatt, founder of PR by the Book, shares her wisdom about choosing your pub date and planning ahead for publicity.

This blog post is for all you authors out there who are self-publishing, now or in the future! Let’s start with the big picture. There is a reason why it takes so long for the publishing process to roll out with publishing houses. It’s not unusual for there to be an 18-month window (or longer) between a publisher accepting a manuscript and the publication date. There are a myriad of reasons why this is. So much has to be done: editing, cover design, more editing, seeding the distribution pipeline, sales meetings, more editing, printing galleys (also called ARCs/ advanced review copies), etc.

The publicity department starts working on a title approximately six months prior to the pub date. The reason for this is because they want to send galleys to publications that are book review publications, industry publications (for that topic, such as education magazines) and national media outlets (such as national TV programs). This process takes time. And, for six months leading up to pub date, the publicists are pitching, pitching, pitching (and lunching with producers for national TV shows).

 

So, self-published authors . . . what’s the big hurry? I talk to one or two authors per week who tell me that their pub (publication) date is this month or next month and what can we do?? First of all, you don’t want your pub date to ever be in November or December (unless it’s a holiday book).  Don’t get me wrong. Publicists stay busy during November and December, but not on books that are releasing those months. So, why?

The publishing industry has two big time frames for releasing books: the Fall (primarily September and October) and the Spring (primarily March and April). There are a few other months that are popular for releasing books, depending on genres/ topics: January for New Year’s resolution-oriented titles: February for relationship books and books from African-American authors since it’s Black History Month; May and June for beach reads, etc.

 

Read the rest of the post on The Savvy Book Marketer.

This post, by Publetariat founder and Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton, originally appeared as a guest post on the BookBuzzr Blog on 10/21/11.

Amazon has been instrumental in the rise of the indie author. Amazon provides do it yourself publishing platforms both for ebooks (Kindle Digital Publishing platform) and print (Createspace), as well as its own imprint for a print and ebook publishing model. But that’s just the beginning. Amazon takes things a step further by treating indie authors the same as mainstream-published authors when it comes to marketing and promotional opportunities on the site. One example of this is Amazon Author Central, through which anyone who has authored content offered for sale on Amazon can have his or her own, dedicated Amazon Author page.

 

An Amazon Author page can be a surprisingly robust plank in your author platform, especially considering that they’re offered totally free of charge. Your Amazon Author page can include all of the following:

• Author Photo
• Author Brief Biography
• Author Bibliography (of books/content for sale on Amazon)
• Author Blog Posts
• Dedicated Discussion Board
• Integration With Facebook, Twitter, and Email

Here’s my Amazon Author page:

Setting up your Amazon Author page is very, very easy, and it’s an opportunity that’s open to all authors, mainstream-published and indie alike.

First, you need to have an Amazon account. It doesn’t matter whether you have one set up as a consumer or self-publisher, either type of account is fine to use for Author Central sign-up. Just go to the Amazon Author Central page, login, and fill in the provided form to have an Amazon Author Page created for you. On the U.S. site its URL is http://authorcentral.amazon.com, and on the U.K. site the URL is http://authorcentral.amazon.co.uk . This page shows the options and tabs available to you once you’re logged in:

 

Read the rest of the post on the BookBuzzr Blog.

Everyone says you must social network as part of your author platform.

Publishers, agents, self-publishing marketing people, other authors. It now seems part of the non-negotiable author platform for indie authors and those wanting a traditional deal.

But there’s more to social networking than just marketing.

I started blogging, tweeting and Facebooking over two and a half years ago and consider it a life-changing experience. I have made some fantastic online friends, connected with peers in the industry, gained an online platform that now reaches thousands of people and my novel, Pentecost, is still in the Amazon bestseller rankings after six months, based on a launch fueled by social media. Twitter in particular is an important part of my social life as well as my work and I am a passionate evangelist for the platform.

It doesn’t matter what social network you want to jump into, there are principles that apply to all and some basic mistakes that you can avoid which will make it a much more effective place for you to be.

Here are the top 7 mistakes authors and writers make in social networking.

(1) Not being useful/interesting/entertaining.

If you want to stand out in a crowded market online you have to offer something to people. Remember the phrase ‘what’s in it for me?’ Everyone wants to know things that will help them, or interest them or make them laugh. If you’re not offering that, then you won’t get attention. If you don’t have attention, it won’t lead to interest in you or action in terms of buying your book. So focus on being one of these things as the main pillar of your social networking. For example, I tweet useful links to blog posts on writing, publishing and marketing @thecreativepenn .

(2) Not understanding generosity and social karma.

There is an understanding online that we are not competitors, that this isn’t a zero sum game, that the pie just gets bigger. In fact, those of us in the same niche post on each others blogs, share posts that aren’t our own and promote other people’s products, even if they overlap with ours. The blogging and social media world is all about being generous with links, with information, with help. It makes the community a very positive place to be and we all benefit. It’s important to do this for it’s own sake but it also generates social karma, as in you will receive back in the measure you give. I don’t mean this in any spiritual manner, just that ‘what goes around, comes around’ as in any community.

(3) Not being personal enough.

Yes, you have to be useful but you also have to be a real person. Don’t just tweet information all the time. Intersperse some updates about your life, your writing, maybe your pets or interests, some photos. People connect with people, not info-streams. Use pictures and also link to multi-media that you create or participate in. Remember that people buy from those they know, like and trust so you have to earn that. I also recommend using a picture of your face throughout your networking. It’s much more personal to connect with someone specific rather than an avatar or random picture. Using the same picture all over the web is a good idea and will help people recognize you across the networks.

(4) Being too personal or too marketing focused.

Of course, personal does need balance. You can’t just have personal updates as no one is interested in that. Also, do not just tweet about your new book. The fastest way to get blocked by people is if you are just interested in selling your stuff. There’s a time for that but it’s AFTER you’ve built up some social karma and goodwill with the online audience. Also, if you want to get retweeted, or Liked so your post is shared across other people’s networks, it needs to resonate. That generally means it should have a good headline. I frequently rewrite headlines from blogs in order to get more Retweets. Basic copywriting skills will serve you well here. I recommend Copyblogger as the best place to learn about this and much more on internet marketing.

(5) Expecting short term gain.

Social networking is basically hand-selling to people around the world. You have to connect with people over a longer period of time, before you try to sell them your book. Many authors dive into social networking just before their book launch and then try to sell immediately, or try desperately to grow their following at the last minute. But it doesn’t work like that. You need to work on it consistently, putting in the effort to create relationships over time. This is a long game. Luckily, authors are used to long term projects!

(6) Not being consistent with niche and timing.

People tend to clump together around their interests online, so people will follow your twitter stream for several reasons. They like what’s in your profile (writer/author/loves books!) or they like your tweets/updates, or both. It follows that you need to be consistent with the topics you share because those people will be turned off if you start in a completely new direction. So I tweet about writing, publishing and book marketing @thecreativepenn. I can be tangential e.g. creativity, books I’m reading, things that relate but I won’t be sharing on things really outside the niche e.g. weight loss/ TV programs etc. If you stick to your niche, you will develop a nice, tight community who share your interests. Consistency is also important in terms of timing. If you don’t tweet/update/post for months, people won’t follow you. Simple as that.

(7) Not being global enough with tweet timing and book availability.

Online social networking opens up the world to your books. That is truly exciting…but only if you take advantage of the opportunity.  I’m based in London but 70% of my traffic comes from the US and 15% of my podcast audience is in China, and there are many others represented in my twitter stream and blog traffic stats. The only way to reach people everywhere on social media is to use a scheduler for your tweets. I use Su.pr but you can also use SocialOomph or Hootsuite. Scheduling in multiple time zones means you can appear in streams at different times of day. It’s what I used to specifically try to network with Americans (and it works! Hello American friends!) However, you should also remember that there is only a point in connecting internationally if your book is also available everywhere i.e. on Amazon.com and also in ebook format.

So, those are the top mistakes I see people making on the social networks. If you have any more lessons to share, please add them in the comments below.

 Do you need some more in-depth help with social networking?

Many people want to be successful at social networking but they are afraid of wasting time and not being effective, as well as the concerns of privacy and just not knowing where to start. So I have launched a multi-media mini-course that will help with this.

It has a 59 page ebook, plus audios and 4 behind the scenes videos on all the major social networks. I share all my top tips and strategies for building your social network and using your time most effectively. I help you through the process saving you time and effort in jump-starting your social networking platform.

It’s just US$39.99. Click here to learn more about it .

 

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

I spent this weekend in Brisbane at the Emerging Writers’ Festival Digital Writing Conference and it was a top weekend of excellent information and quality company.

The event started on the Friday evening, with a meet and greet of attending writers, editors, artists and organisers at Greystones Bar. It was great to put 3D fleshforms to Twitter personas, some of whom I’ve known online for a long time, as well as making new friends right off the bat.

The Conference itself started the following day at the Queensland State Library. Lisa Dempster (@lisadempster) opened proceedings and we were then supposed to cut to a video presentation from Christy Dena (@christydena). However, library technofail meant there were problems with the wifi. For me, a certain degree of technofail at a digital writing conference seemed somehow fitting. So we had a presentation from Morgan Jaffit (@morganjaffit) on writing for videogames.

This presentation was excellent, especially as I’m involved with some game writing now. One of the simple yet very important things Morgan said in reference to game writing was that, whereas with prose writing we’re told to “Show, not tell”, with games it’s “Do, don’t show”. In other words, let players actively participate in the story rather than showing them all the story in elegant cutscenes. Gamers remember the stuff they do in a game more than the stuff they watch. This is a Very True Thing.

 

Then we kicked into the first panel.

Sophie Black (@sophblack), Andrew McMillen (@niteshok), Jason Nelson and Sarah Werkmeister (@fourThousand) discussed the nature of writing online, hosted by the wonderful Alex Adsett (@alexadsett). It was interesting and varied stuff. Andrew McMillen told a tale of caution when it comes to the organic nature of online journalism and how important it is to fact-check and maintain your integrity and ethics as a writer. Jason Nelson blew us away with a variety of interactive online poetry and games that has to be seen to be believed. He’s also on the board offering grants to digital writers, and it’s worth your time investigating that as it seems very few people are applying and there’s money to be had. Real spending cash. A rare treat for any kind of writer. Sophie Black, editor of Crikey, talked about how online journalism is different to the print journalism of old, and how they source material from all over the world. Sarah Werkmeister drew interesting comparisons as well. And this is, of course, only a fraction of the stuff covered.

Following that panel was another moment of technofail (which, I should point out, was again the fault of the venue, not the conference or organisers!) and so we had an early break. Then we came back to the next panel, which included myself, Simon Groth (@simongroth), Charlotte Harper (@ebookish), and Festival director, Lisa Dempster. It was hosted by the inimitable Karen Pickering (@jevoislafemme). We were talking about using the online environment to promote your work, to get work and to work for you. I used my own website as an example of how to manage a central online hub, where people can find you and your work and contact you if they want to. Of course, it was also a moment of shameless self-promotion, with my site projected behemoth-like behind me. Here’s a photo from Amanda Greenslade (@greensladecreat):

From L to R – Karen Pickering, Lisa Dempster, Simon Groth, Charlotte Haper, and me at the lectern

The other panelists presented very interesting stuff, important to all writers – concepts like “Know your niche”, “be an expert”, “define your audience”, “don’t be a dick”, “don’t spam people”, “engage with people online, don’t preach to them” and so on. The panel and subsequent Q&A wandered all over the place and covered a lot of ground, which I won’t try to replicate here.

Suffice to say that these two 75 minute panels were jam-packed with juicy tidbits of writerly wisdom and, judging by the feedback when I was chatting with people afterwards, most attendees got a lot out of it. I certainly learned some new stuff and had some old stuff reaffirmed. The truth is, no matter how emerging or emerged you may be as a writer, these things are invaluable.

After that panel we recovered somewhat from earlier technofail and had Christy Dena’s video speech – “7 things I wish I had known at the beginning of my digital writing career”. I’ve embedded that video here as it’s fucking brilliant. Absolutely solid advice, well worth your 15 mintes:

See, how good was that?

Then we mingled and drank, often the best part of any writers’ event as people are the engine of this industry and socialising with them is invariably fascinating and entertaining.

The following day there was a talk at Avid Reader bookshop (@avidreader4101), where Karen Pickering and Chris Currie (@furioushorses) talked to writers about writing about writing. Yes, all very meta. Here they are, in the sunny courtyard out the back of the bookshop/cafe. There were periodic pigeon attacks to keep them on their toes:

It was a fascinating chat, but sadly I had to leave early to catch my flight. However, due to the frenzied tweeting throughout the entire conference, I was still able to keep a bit of an ear to what was happening. And I got to follow the excitement of the spelling bee that evening, which rounded out the Festival.

A truly spectacular event that I was proud to be a part of. Given that most of my conference activity is quite genre-focused, I always enjoy these wide open writers’ events, with everyone from journalists to fiction writers and beyond all mixing together, all styles, all media, all slightly crazy. It’s inspiring and motivating in so many ways, I can’t recommend it highly enough. If you want to be a writer or you already are one, get out there and mix with these overlapping tribes. We’ve all got our love of writing and reading in common, after all.

You’ve hopefully noticed that throughout this post I’ve been linking Twitter handles. Go and follow them all – they’re very interesting people.

If I got one over-riding thing from this conference it was that right now is an exciting and invigorating time to be a writer. I couldn’t agree more with that perception. Vive le Worditude!

 

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