Sell

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

If You Love A Writer

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This post, by Eileen Flanagan, originally appeared on her blog on 7/24/09, but is just as relevant today.

After ten years of writing around my children’s schedules, I have a book coming out soon, and friends have been asking what they can do to support me. I’ve been touched by their offers and yet reticent to ask too much, especially of busy people in a tough economy. At the same time, the online writers groups I belong to are a buzz day and night with authors trying to figure out how to publicize their work before the entire publishing industry goes bankrupt. So, as a community service, I’ve decided to write up ten suggestions for all the people who love a book author who’s been fighting the publicity odds (Fellow writers, feel free to forward this link or add your own suggestions in the comment section.):

1.   Buy your friend’s book. If you can afford it, buy it for everyone in your extended family. If you can’t afford it, ask your local librarian to order a copy. In fact, you can suggest it to your librarian whether you buy a copy yourself or not.
 
2.   Don’t wait until Christmas or Hanukkah to pick up a copy. How it does in its first weeks determines whether a book will stay on the bookstore shelves or be sent back to the warehouse to be shredded (along with your friend’s ego). Try to buy it as soon as it’s published, or better yet pre-order a copy, which makes your friend look good and gets your friend’s publisher excited about the book’s prospects. An excited publisher will invest more in publicity, while a bookstore that is getting advanced orders is more likely to stock the book on its shelves.

3.   Friends often ask where they should get the book, which is a tricky question. In the long-term, it is in every writer’s best interest to support independent booksellers (reader’s too, actually). If you don’t have a favorite one yourself, you can go to IndieBound to find one near you. When a book is newly released, however, it may help your writer friend more to buy it through a big chain, so they keep it stocked where the most people can find it. Likewise, a high sales rate on Amazon can get people’s attention, and if your friend’s website links directly to Amazon, she may be part of a program where she makes extra money when someone enters Amazon through the link on her website and then makes a purchase. I personally have links toseveral booksellers,  on the theory that it’s good to spread the love around.
 
4.   If you genuinely like your friend’s book, write a review on Amazon or Goodreads, mention it on Facebook and Twitter, and recommend it to your book group.

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes six more tips, on Eileen Flanagan’s blog.

What's In A Name? The Pink Floyd Effect

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The Pink Floyd Effect – The process of a name becoming perfect for its subject through familiarity with that subject and/or its actions.

Names. Very powerful things. Anyone with even a passing acquaintance with demonology or the occult will tell you what a powerful thing a name can be. If you know something’s true name, you have great power over it. Maybe that’s why Prince changed his name to a symbol, which is very hard to pronounce in spells – could he be a demon, hunted by occult adventurers? But I digress.

[Editor’s Note: strong language after the jump, and political opinions expressed in this piece are those of the author]

 

I’ve been thinking about this lately because we rescued a tiny stray kitten last week and he appears to live here now. He has a strangely large chin and I said, “He’s like Stan from American Dad.” Henceforth, the kitten’s name is Stanley. He’s very cute, really. Look:

stanley Whats in a name? The Pink Floyd Effect.

When I mentioned this on Facebook and Twitter, people were universally besotted with him, but the reaction to his name was interesting. A lot of people thought it was a great name and many people complimented me on giving him a “proper” name. I presume they meant as opposed to Tiddles or Mr Snookums. Other people were very confused and made comments like, “Stanley? Really!?” A couple of people even pointed out that he looks like a Stanley. Which he does, of course, because that’s his name. Chicken and egg.

The name and the named grow into each other and become inseperable. I guarantee that within a few weeks, our new kitten and the name Stanley will be completely normal, at least to us. It happens in every walk of life. For example, my favourite band of all time is Pink Floyd. Stop and have a look at that name. When you hear it, you think of the band and all the amazing work they’ve done. But really? Pink Floyd? The etymology is interesting. They started out called The Tea Set, then one day found themselves on a bill with another band called The Tea Set. So Syd Barrett suggested a name he’d been keen on for a while, based on his two favourite blues musicians, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. So they played as The Pink Floyd Sound. After a few gigs they dropped Sound, but remained known as The Pink Floyd. Usually known simply as Pink Floyd since the early seventies, the definite article is still used occasionally even now. But really, when you think about it, Pink Floyd is a bloody silly name. However, it’s also awesome as it contains and references everything about one of the most seminal bands of all time.

So of course, I relate this name situation to fiction. Names become incredibly important when we’re writing. I agonise over names – it’s probably the thing that gives me the most grief when I write. I want to get names just right. I want them to fit. But the truth is, whatever name I give a character will fit if I tell the story well and write the character convincingly, because the character and the name will grow together and seem like it was always the perfect match. I call this ‘The Pink Floyd Effect‘.

Drizzt Whats in a name? The Pink Floyd Effect.I think the important thing is to not try too hard when coming up with names for your fiction, especially if you write fantasy. Remember, the apostrophied name is so overused now that it’s become something of a joke. Characters like Drizzt Do’Urden owned the concept back in the day, but now it’s seen as overly try-hard, or extreme wankery, to include crazy apostrophied names in your fantasy fiction.

In Brent Weeks’ Night Angel Trilogy, I was initially really annoyed at the name Durzo Blint. It annoyed me because it seemed uneccessarily “fantasy”, and it still does annoy me a bit. But the name also now conjures for me everything about that character, and he’s a character I really like.

Let’s look at it from another real world example. I’ll write a name, you be aware of your immediate reaction. Ready?

Rodney King.

That’s a pretty ordinary sounding name in and of itself, but I bet you had a pretty visceral reaction to it. The man, the name and the events for which he’s known have become ingrained in our culture and the name carries a lot of power because of it.

Let’s try another one:

Errol Flynn

Calm down, ladies. Take a deep breath. Errol Flynn is actually a pretty funny name, and you might feel a bit sorry for anyone with a name like that these days. Although I do quite like the name Errol myself. But there’s no denying that it has power.

Okay, one more:

Sarah Palin.

Did you feel yourself get a bit dumber just then? Just reading or hearing the name actively destroys brain cells and enhances right wing idiocy and religious insanity. And that’s a name that could become much more powerful if the American people don’t take a moment to get their shit together. But in itself, Sarah Palin is a pretty ordinary name.

So, my point is this: Don’t over-stress the names you use, be it for your pets or the characters in your fiction. The Pink Floyd Effect will kick in with time and the name and the named will become one and the same thing. And potentially attach themselves to events people are aware of around the world.

When you’re writing your fiction, spend some time to think about the names, make sure they have a good ring to them, are easily read off the page and stuff like that. Then put your effort into writing the characters and the story as well as you possibly can. By the time you’re finished, the names you’ve chosen will be perfect.

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Agree or disagree? Please feel free to share your thoughts and examples in the comments.

 

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

Kindle for the Web – How It Can Be Used by Authors?

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Kindle for the Web widget

In September last year Amazon introduced a new tool, Kindle for the Web, which allows users to read and share first chapters of books without leaving a web browser.

In addition to a good-looking preview interface, there are two useful features: sharing and embedding. The latter one is a very good, yet underestimated tool which can be used in many ways by authors who publish their books at Amazon.

Before I’ll list benefits and explain how to embed the preview in a blog, I’d like to point out to one very important fact. Despite the name, Kindle for the Web is not available on a page with a Kindle edition of a book. Just the opposite – you’ll see the green widget with a Read first chapter FREE button (picture 1) on a page with a print version of a book… and linking to Kindle edition.

This is misleading many people, who look for previews where they are not available. As a result they stop searching for books at all.

Why Amazon decided to profile the tool this way? A simple explanation is that by giving a chance to read a sample of a print book they want to convince people to try Kindle editions – and buy Kindles.

What’s related, and essential for authors, is that Kindle for the Web is available only for books with both print and Kindle editions.

Why it’s good to use it?

I was extremely interested in this tool since the very beginning as it opens a couple of new opportunities for authors. Let me list the most important ones.

1. It helps differentiate your social media activity

Instead of tweeting “buy my book” all the time, you can write “read first chapter of my book for free”. Remember, we never know what is the current mood of our followers on Twitter or friends on Facebook. Some of them are willing to buy, some – to test before buying (but don’t feel like downloading a free sample to their Kindle or tablet).

2. It makes your blog more attractive

If you embed a book in a blog post and stick this post to a home page, you’ve got a very inviting entry, what’s more: saying right at the beginning that this is a blog from a published author.

3. It changes the reader’s attitude

Let’s say you want to share a first chapter of your published book. The difference is that when you make a regular blog post with it, it’s just a regular blog post. When you embed Kindle preview in a post, well, that’s a different story – you are showing a first chapter of the book.

4. It helps focus on reading

This is one of my favorite topics: reading in times of distraction. If you use Kindle preview in your blog, there are bigger chances that the reader will read it, as it removes all the distractions (like banners and sidebars) after a full screen option is clicked.

5. It helps you manage your author’s profile

Some authors, including me, published a book some time ago, started a blog to support it and drifted into areas where they can be more useful – sharing experience or writing tips and advice.

You were a mystery romance writer and now you are a writing expert. Sometimes it’s hard to fight with this strong new profile. Using Kindle for the Web will make your readers more willing to accept your other face.

6. It allows to earn more money

Finally, but most importantly, you can earn extra money, if you are an Amazon associate. When you are getting a code to embed, you can also provide your associate tag. Thanks to that any book sold via link from a Kindle preview on your blog will bring you money not only from a royalty (author) but also from a referral fee (associate).

If you haven’t joined Amazon affiliate system, it’s a good moment to try. There is nothing to be ashamed of. What’s really interesting is that Kindle for the Web with a pattern to switch to Kindle ecosystem can be also a natural opportunity to sell on your blog Kindle e-readers.

How to embed a preview in a blog?

The minimum size of the embedded window is 500(width) by 325(height) pixels. Therefore the places to consider are either a page or a post.

1. Go to a print version of your book, find the green widget entitled Kindle Edition and click on a Read first chapter FREE button. A Kindle for the Web window will pop up.

Kindle for the Web window

2. Find Embed button in the upper right corner and click on it. When you expand it with a Customize option, you’ll see a window like this.

Kindle for the Web - embed box

3. Type the size of a window. Ideally the width could be exactly the same as your blog’s page/post. In the Associate Tag field, type your tag.

4. Copy the code and paste it into your blog’s new page/post (in HTML preview). Done. Now you can share it with your readers.

* * *

Although adding Kindle for the Web to a blog is a relatively easy task, there are a couple of conditions when you may not be able to do it:

– your blogging platform does not support html scripts (WordPress.com or Posterous)
– you are not familiar with html and/or don’t want to bother with it
– your blog has a very narrow page/post area – if it’s less than 500 pixels you won’t be able to do it

You can always take advantage from a feature I added to Ebook Friendly, my site designed to make browsing for e-books a more friendly experience. There is a special section called Read Online, where Kindle for the Web previews are perfectly tailored to e-reading application design. What’s important, authors can provide their associate tags and earn money as they would do it on their blogs.

If you’re interested, read more details in this post.

* * *

Kindle for the Web is a great, easy to implement and very engaging tool. Until now I’ve seen it used mainly on book review sites. I think it’s not the reviewers, but authors, who should benefit the most.

All The Cool Kids Are Doing It

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Self-publishing, that is. Or at least, it can seem so. There are the breakthrough success stories at one end of the spectrum, bitter tales of sales disappointment at the other, and between the two, a generous smattering of testimonials from indie authors who aren’t earning enough to quit their day jobs yet but are covering the rent or groceries each month with proceeds from their book sales. Suddenly, if you’re not releasing a Kindle or Nook edition at the minimum, you feel like you’re missing out on a huge opportunity. The pressure to rush to market is great, but you must resist it until both you and your book are truly ready for prime time.

 

Is Your Platform In Place, Focused and Growing?
Releasing your book before you’ve made it easy for readers to connect with you online, whether via a blog, social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), or an author website, is a big mistake. Readers have come to expect authors to have an online presence of some sort, and not having one paints you and your book as a bit more fly by night.

I’m not saying prospective buyers will check for platform before making a purchase decision, but platform is what spreads the message about you and your work, pulling more and more readers into your fold and making those readers feel you care about their reaction to your work. Building a community around your work makes each subsequent book easier to promote, and creates a cheerleading section that will do a fair amount of promotion for you.

Is Your Book Still In Beta Test, Or Should It Be?
If you just completed your draft a week ago, I don’t care who you are or how fantastic a writer you are, it’s not ready to be published. Don’t scrimp on the workshopping and rounds of critique, and don’t let your sense of urgency about publication color your rewrite decisions.

Let’s say the majority of your workshop/critique readers agree the second act needs a major overhaul, and a certain character needs to either be significantly expanded or cut entirely. Your heart sinks as you realize you’re staring down the barrel of six weeks or more of rewrites, followed by another round of review, which pushes your publication date back by three months or more. It can be very easy to become so focused on your target publication date that you give short shrift to any feedback that could possibly interfere with that date.

Just keep reminding yourself: releasing a book that’s not ready will lose sales and fans. And if it’s your first book, readers aren’t likely to give you a second chance. There’s just too much else out there for them to choose from, and at bargain prices.

Have You Succumbed To The "Good Enoughs"?
Your manuscript is all formatted for print or ebook publication, and for the most part, it looks great. There are some inconsistencies in your formatting, like maybe most passages written in the voice of your protagonist’s deceased son are italicized as you’ve intended, but a few have been left in standard type. Maybe most of your paragraphs begin with a .25" indent but non-indented paragraphs are scattered here and there. Maybe most of your line spacing is 1.15, but here and there you’ve lapsed into 1.5, and it’s barely noticeable. Readers don’t care about these things, right? Most of the book’s formatting is correct and consistent, and that’s good enough, right? Wrong.

You know a quality cover will elevate your book above the crowd, but you have no art or typography skills to speak of, don’t have the money to pay top dollar for a professional design and don’t have the time to search out a freelance artist you can afford. So you get your artsy sister to create a cover image for you, and it may not look like a slick mainstream cover but it’s not bad. It doesn’t scream "my sister designed this for me," and that’s good enough, right? Wrong.

Again, don’t let your sense of urgency about publication set an unprofessional tone.

Are You Prepared To Promote?
The book’s been workshopped, polished to a high gloss, has a fantastic cover and attractive, consistent formatting, and you’ve got an author blog, Twitter account and Facebook page set up. Time to publish? Maybe, maybe not.

Are you prepared to invest the necessary time and effort to post to your blog regularly and acknowledge comments left there, to tweet quality messages and links, and respond to Facebook messages and wall posts? A neglected platform can actually be worse than no platform at all if it makes your readers feel snubbed.

Will you be able to do some guest blogging or write some articles to help get the word out about your book? Can you find the time to reach out to book bloggers and other reviewers, and are you prepared to send out free review copies of your book?

Platform maintenance doesn’t have to be a fulltime job, and you can calibrate your platform activities to match your available levels of time and energy (e.g., maybe you can do Twitter or Facebook, but not both; maybe a static author web page is best for you because you don’t have the time to blog, etc.).

What’s important is that you’re not going into publication with an expectation that once the book is out there, your job is done and all you need do is wait for the glowing reviews and royalties to start rolling in. Raising and building awareness doesn’t happen by accident.

Are You Going To Make The Rest Of Us Look Bad?
Whether for any of the above reasons or something else, if you’re not prepared to do a professional job of preparing your book for release and promoting it afterward, don’t publish. While indie books and authors are gaining widespread acceptance, every amateurish indie book has the power to create or reinforce an anti-indie bias, and that hurts all of us.
 

This is a reprint from April L. Hamilton‘s Indie Author Blog.

Book Marketing Toolbox: WorldCat

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It can be difficult to know if libraries are buying your books, because they usually purchase books through wholesalers. One easy way to estimate how many libraries have your book on the shelf is to do a search at WorldCat, an online database of library holdings.

First, enter the title of your book in the search box and click on your book title when it comes up in the search results. To find out which libraries have your book, scroll down to the section on your book’s page called "Find a Copy in the Library" and enter your ZIP code or location in the search box.

The results screen lists the names of libraries that have reported holding your book in their collection. Not all of your library sales will show up in WorldCat because not all libraries upload their catalogs to the site. Roughly 70% of U.S. public libraries participate in WorldCat, although the percentage is higher in some states.

If you’re doing a promotion to libraries, copy the list of libraries that have your book first. If you’re contacting libraries directly, you can skip the libraries that already have the book. A few months after your library promotion, check WorldCat again, to see how the list of libraries holding your book has changed.

On your book’s WorldCat page you can also enter book reviews and keyword tags.

Want to learn more about selling to libraries? Check out The Savvy Book Marketer’s Guide to Selling Your Book to Libraries.
 

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

ThrillerCast Episode 18 – Getting Noticed As A Writer

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Episode18 of the podcast I host with David Wood is now up. In this episode we talk about what it takes to get noticed as a writer. We discuss short fiction as a means of promotion as well as a means of creativity in itself.

 

ThrillerCast Podcast

 

We talk about the difference between having a large body of work and a large online presence. Whether one or the other is better and so on. Go and have a listen, share it with your friends and anyone else you think might like it and feel free to comment or email.

All the details here.

 

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

On "Being Indie": Lorena Bathey

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This post, by Lorena Bathey, originally appeared on TNBBC’s The Next Best Book Blog on 4/13/11.

On "Being Indie" is a new monthly feature that will be hosted …on TNBBC. We will meet a wide variety of independent authors, publishers, and booksellers as they discuss what being indie means to them.

 
 

Meet Lorena Bathey. In 2005, she self-published her first book Happy Beginnings: How I Became My Own Fairy Godmother. Unwilling to buckle under the pressures agented/published authors were having, she went on to develop her own publishing company and calls it Lorena B Books. In celebration of her new novel Beatrice Munson, Lorena shares what being indie means to her.

 
 
 
 
 
 
What is an Indie Author?

 

I = Independent: Is a nice way to say self published or balking the conventional publisher/agent route to do everything yourself. I like the moniker Indie author because it fits the definition more than simply self-published. As an Indie author you must be writer, editor, printer, sales, marketing, publicity, and promoter all rolled into one. A tough but satisfying job.

N= Nervous: Being an Indie author can be nerve wracking. Success is happening for Indie authors, especially with eReaders, but it’s still a gamble. Being an Indie gives you control over the things that make you nervous like publicity and promotion. You then can get more involved with wonder.

D = Dedication: To win in the Indie genre you have to be dedicated. You must know your work, the promotion, and the Indie publishing industry. But mostly you must dedicate yourself to writing. Wearing all the hats means dedicating time for all aspects that aid your success as an Indie author. Stay the course; don’t give up if you don’t make a million dollars with your first book. You need to build a platform of fans.

 

Read the rest of the post on TNBBC’s The Next Best Book Blog.

A New Freedom of the Press: How Does Publishing Underwrite Revolutions?

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This is a guest post from Thomas Doane.

The Arab Spring continues, and this month we celebrate the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible’s publication. 

The question I’d like to briefly reflect on here is: What do the Reformation and the Arab Spring have in common?
The answer that I’d like to advance is that—among other things— what these two historical epiphenomena have in common is that they were both catalyzed by evolutionary leaps between publishing platforms. 

The fortunes of the parties involved in the conflict in the Arab world sway this way and that. Plucking more or less randomly from meta descriptions below the Google News results this morning we read that “NATO is considering intensifying bombings in Libya… Israel is very nervous about how Palestinians are spinning the Arab Spring…The ICC seeks to prosecute Gaddafi…  Syria denies mass grave allegations…” Etc. etc.  Another headline from the Gulf News this morning, May 18th, 2011: “Social Media played a role in facilitating the Arab Spring.” The first line of this article reads: Whether social media led to the Arab Spring or facilitated it, it played a major role in mobilizing Arab streets as they rose against their ruling regimes, said panelists at an Arab Media Forum session on the role of social media.
This has been a mantra since January, when—after Mohamed Bouazizi immolated himself on the streets of Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia in December—a cascading domino effect of uprisings started to roll across North Africa and into the Middle East. In a now classic article in the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell wrote, “The world, we are told, is in the midst of a revolution. The new tools of social media have reinvented social activism. With Facebook and Twitter, and the like, the traditional relationship between political authority and popular will has been upended, making it easier for the powerless to collaborate, coordinate, and give voice to their concerns.” Obviously, there is a difference between correlation and causation, and much digital ink has been spilled to assign social media’s role in the Arab Spring to one category or another.
Meanwhile, this month Harper’s cover story is the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. While nothing about the KJV seems subversive to most of us today (quite the opposite for most of us), historically it can be seen as one of the literary climaxes of a sequence of revolutions that rocked the geopolitical make-up of the Western world in the 16th and 17th centuries—namely, ‘The Reformation.’ 
About 90 years before the KJV first ‘hit the stands in bookstalls’ all over England, becoming ‘the bestseller of all time’ over the next 400 years, a man named Martin Luther sat down and translated the Bible out of Latin and into German. While this sounds rather innocuous from our 21st century point of view, it could be argued that this act—amplified and disseminated across Europe by means of the recently invented printing press—ignited the 16th century’s version of a World War, completely and permanently transforming the global geopolitical landscape for all succeeding centuries.
What changed is that the ‘information’ contained in scripture—the actual words written in the Bible—became widely accessible to the public for the first time ever. There was a massive explosion of literacy. But a streamlining of the publication and dissemination of the printing press was a pre-condition for creating this kind of change. As the European masses (rather than just the priesthood) got hold of this information for the first time, they developed counter-narratives that diverged from the Church’s reading. The King James evolved out of one of these counter-narratives. 
Arguably, the epic shift from print to digital, and from AP journalism to crowd sourced social media communication is the biggest evolutionary leap between publishing platforms that we’ve seen since the invention of the printing press. And while the Arab Spring may not have been caused by social media, I think most people would argue that the social media revolution was a necessary pre-condition to launching the revolutions in North Africa and the Middle-East at the level of well-documented, contagious efficiency that we’ve seen this spring. And it was almost certainly a pre-condition to keeping the body count as low as it has been. 
So I propose a toast to two strange bedfellows: Johannes Gutenberg & Mark Zuckerberg.
Hail old fellows, well met!

And to each, thanks for the merry old  messaging platform they did invent!

Books For Charity: Helping A Family In Joplin

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As I watched families pick through the rubble of their homes, looking for shoes for their kids, I felt sickened and helpless. As helpless as they must have felt to see the tornado coming and not be able to do anything but hide and hope for the best. I tried to imagine what it would feel to have lost everything and not have enough money to rent a motel room for the week.

So rather than feel helpless, I decided to do what I could. Together with my blogger partners, we’re raising money to help a family in Joplin, Missouri. Drew and I have pledged 100% our Amazon book royalties (print and digital) for the next four days to this charitable cause, and Judith has pledged 25% of her e-book royalties through Memorial day.

The amount of money we raise will be up to readers. We hope you’ll take advantage of this opportunity to buy some great books and donate to a good cause at the same time. Here’s a list of the participating novels with links to Amazon.

Drew’s bestselling title: While the Savage Sleeps

L.J.’s bestselling Detective Jackson mysteries:
The Sex Club
Secrets to Die For
Thrilled to Death
Passions of the Dead
Dying for Justice
And standalone thrillers:
The Baby Thief
The Suicide Effect

Judith’s guilty pleasure Skeeter Hughes mysteries:
Where’s Billy?
Whose Hand?

Another way to help out is to spread the word. Use Facebook, Twitter, or any of your online accounts to let other readers know about this charitable cause.

 

This is a cross-post from The Crime Fiction Collective.

Smartphone e-Reader App Reviews: Stanza by Lexcycle

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As e-books become more popular, they are inevitably merging with the largest platform for e-book readers, the smartphone. Google’s Android operating system is now powering more phones than Apple’s iOs, but both continue to surge ahead in terms of market penetration and new users.

All told, the top 5 smartphone manufacturers sold 140 million phones in 2010. That’s a lot more than all the iPads, Kindles, Nooks, Sony Readers and Kobo tablets put together.

It makes sense to think about whether your book are suitable for the smallest screen. Will the story still make sense on those little pages? Will the formatting of your nonfiction book survive the reader’s desire to see the type at the largest available size?

Time to find out.

I decided to take the top e-Book reader apps for smartphones out for a virtual test drive. Although I don’t claim to be encyclopedic in these reviews, I’m looking at them both from the point of view of someone who doesn’t mind reading on the phone, as well as a publisher looking to find readers where they want to be reading. If that’s for a few minutes while standing waiting for the bus, so be it. That’s up to the reader.

StanzaI decided to start with Stanza, a free e-reader originally developed by Lexcycle, a company that was later acquired by Amazon. It’s unclear at this point whether Amazon intends to keep the program alive or not, since the website seems to have gone dormant some months ago.

However, Stanza, which was the most popular e-Reader at one time, and one of the top free apps in Apple’s app store, is such an unusual e-book reader, it’s well worth a look.

For Readers, You Need Books

One of the things that distinguishes Stanza is the sources for its e-books. Unlike Kindle, iBooks, Google and Nook, the app is not linked to one store for its purchases. Instead, Stanza has access to a lot of diverse libraries of e-books. This is both a strength and a weakness, since you may not find the same coverage or quantity in the different collections as you might with the Kindle app, for example.

But Stanza has other tricks up its sleeve. Let’s look at the main components. Compared to most e-book readers, Stanza has a vast control system that allows you to customize your reading experience in ways no other e-reader can match.

Here are the main elements of the app, with some notes.

  • Reading screen—Stanza gives you unparalleled control over the display, far surpassing what other e-book readers allow. Here the reading screen is shown in Georgia with a beige background, and with the type fully justified and hyphenated, something that’s simply impossible on other e-readers.
    Stanza reading screen

    Click to enlarge

Control screen—This is the screen you get when you tap once, and it gives you access to a huge variety of tools to control the app. From here you can navigate using the buttons along the bottom of the screen, to:

 

 

Stanza control screen

Click to enlarge

Stanza settings

Click to enlarge

Note that in the settings screen there’s a sample at the top showing you instantly the effect of the changes you’re making.

 

 

  • Table of Contents, bookmarks and annotations
  • Settings screens with controls for general items, layout, appearance, and app control.
  • Layout tools like Justify, Left, right or center,
  • Hyphenation with dictionaries in many languages
  • Margins, Line spacing, Paragraph spacing and Paragraph indent. These controls use adjustment sliders.
  • Appearance tools like switching to the Night Theme
  • Choice of 42 fonts, and font size selection with sliders
  • Background and text colors
  • Background image and opacity
  • Even more software controls like lock rotation, use page turn effects and more.
     
  • Library screen—Here is where you store your books, and you can sort on Books, Authors, or Groups.
  • Bookstore screen—You can see right away the difference between Stanza and the proprietary apps that only allow you to shop in one store. The app includes access to these retailers:

     

    And these free and sample e-book sources:

    Stanza bookstores

    Click to enlarge

    You’ll notice even more control icons at the bottom of the screen, including an invert button to switch between black on white or white on black, a search tool and access to yet another screen of controls, this one called Actions, which includes

    • Books on Board eBook Shop
    • O’Reilly Ebooks
    • All Romance eBooks
    • SmashWords
    • Fictionwise
    • Feedbooks
    • Project Gutenberg
    • Random House Free Library
    • Try Harlequin
    • Books from Munseys
    • Books from BookGlutton
    • Pan Macmillan Tasters
    • the command to delete a book
    • a dictionary
    • access to your downloads
    • another set of font size controls
    • and a sharing menu for Facebook, Twitter or via email

Just for fun, I changed a lot of the display parameters and loaded a more heavily formatted nonfiction book. Here it is with a white background, no hyphenation or justification, and typeset in American Typewriter:

Stanza

Click to enlarge

Overall, Stanza is easy to use and gives you terrific control of the reading experience in far more detail than any other e-reader. Although the choice of new trade books may not be as wide as other, proprietary apps, the ability of Stanza to also handle PDFs and other formats is even more reason to add this app to your smartphone.

Next up: Apple’s iBooks app.

Stanza in the iTunes App Store
Also available as an app for Macintosh, for iPad and for Windows.

 

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

100 Stories For Queensland: Please Buy It [To Aid The Relief Effort]

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When something drops out of the news cycle it’s easy to forget about it. But just because the purveyors of sensationalised pictures have got bored with an event, it doesn’t mean people aren’t still suffering. The devastating floods in Queensland might seem like a long time ago to most of us, but they’re still very real to lots of people. People that have lost everything and are suffering. eMergent Publishing put the call out to collect 100 stories, donated from writers around the world, and publish them in an anthology to raise money to directly help those people. Jodi Cleghorn, editor and owner of eMergent, has done an incredible job with her team getting this book together and I’m really proud to be one of the 100 authors included. Now it’s time to buy the book.

In order to raise awareness about the book’s existence, therefore sell more copies and therefore get more money to the people in need, the paperback edition is being promoted with a Chart Rush. What is a chart rush? Readers are invited to purchase a book on Amazon, in a nominated 24-hour period, with the intent to capitalise on the volume of sales to move the book up the Amazon best seller list. The higher up the chart it is (we’re aiming for a spot in the top 100) the more visible it becomes to other readers who may go on to purchase it. It’s all about exposure and the more people who come across 100 Stories for Queensland, the more books we sell and the more money we raise. If you can’t buy on the day, you can add it to your wishlist. Every little bit counts.

100 Stories for Queensland is listed at Amazon and Amazon UK.

You can join the Amazon Chart Rush Facebook event or official fan page for updates on our progress up the charts. Also tweets at @100stories4qld and 100 Stories for Queensland is listed at Goodreads.

This is a fantastic book, full of stories from some great authors, that will directly help the survivors of the floods, with all proceeds going to the Queensland Premier’s Flood Appeal. Please buy the book tomorrow, Tuesday 17th May (but late if you’re in Australia to stay tight to the 24 hour window), and do your bit to help. You’ll get a sweet book out of it.

 

This is a cross-posting from Alan Baxter‘s The Word.

The Secret Ingredient To A Strong Author Platform

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This post, by Justine Musk, originally appeared on her Tribal Writer site on 12/9/10.

I have come to believe that an author platform is its own cool thing. It isn’t something you can just slap on top of your novel – a coat of promotion, a sprinkle of marketing – but a living, growing entity in its own right.

It needs to reach into many different places. You can’t just sit on your blog like a spider in its web and wait for the pretty flies to come. You need to find your readers across the different platforms – and you need to re-imagine and re-purpose your content to fit those platforms.

This requires work and time. An editor at a webinar advised her listeners to take half of your writing time and dedicate it to platform. Gone are the days when marketing your novel was something that happened after the fact. Now it has to be baked into the process.

Now it requires big meaning.

And by this I mean a big idea, a theme, an obsession, a vision, a mission statement, a full-fledged manifesto/a. Call it what you will. I like the phrase ‘big meaning’ because meaning is what we seek and make out of our lives, fleshed out through our creative work.

A sense of meaning is intrinsic to happiness. We need to love and work in meaningful ways. When we’re depressed, we say our lives have no meaning.

If an author platform is to be truly powerful, it has to mean something to you and to others.

Read the rest of the post on Justine Musk‘s Tribal Writer.

Self-Publishing Resource Roundup

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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!

 

Grandma publisher

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All right, I’ll admit it, I’m really a grandmother who is trying to publish some books for my son.  Long story short, he’s in prison for a crime he did not commit (really long story about a vindictive ex-wife who made false accusations in order to gain custody of their children).  In order to keep his sanity while going through the extremely long process of appeals, he has turned to writing, and along the way has discovered he has some talent and enjoys what he’s doing.  He’s written several books, but I’ve only gotten one ready for publication (check out the website at jcallenbooks.weebly.com).  I have to confess that I’m really out of my element when it comes to web design and promotion.  So far I’ve used my social network to get the word out, but that doesn’t seem to be working very well.  And with a grand total of nine books sold so far, there’s not really any money to spend for professional help.  Any practical suggestions?

Getting recognition

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All right, I’ll admit it, I’m really a grandmother who is trying to publish some books for my son.  Long story short, he’s in prison for a crime he did not commit (really long story about a vindictive ex-wife who made false accusations in order to gain custody of their children).  In order to keep his sanity while going through the extremely long process of appeals, he has turned to writing, and along the way has discovered he has some talent and enjoys what he’s doing.  He’s written several books, but I’ve only gotten one ready for publication (check out the website at jcallenbooks.weebly.com).  I have to confess that I’m really out of my element when it comes to web design and promotion.  So far I’ve used my social network to get the word out, but that doesn’t seem to be working very well.  And with a grand total of nine books sold so far, there’s not really any money to spend for professional help.  Any practical suggestions?