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

8 Simple Steps To Self-Publishing

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

Are you interested in self-publishing a book?

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

8 Simple Steps to Self Publishing Your Book:

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

That’s it!

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

I thought, "I can do this!"

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

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

The Nuts and Bolts of Publishing My First Book

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do I Make Money Selling Books?

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

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

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

You Can Do It!

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

Are You Ready to Get Started?

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

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

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

13 Reasons Why You Didn't Get Followed Back

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This article, by Lauren Dugan, originally appeared on Mediabistro on 1/4/11.

You created your Twitter account, followed some accounts in your niche, and started writing your first few tweets. But after a few days, you notice that your follower account hasn’t budged above 15, while you keep following piles of accounts yourself. Don’t get discouraged! Here are 13 reasons why you aren’t getting followed back, so you can revise your strategy and grow those followers.

 

  • No profile picture. Spam accounts are notorious for not uploading a profile picture. If you still have that little white egg as your pic, change it today and we bet those potential followers who were a little leery of your account will start following you back.
     
  • Profile picture too (unprofessional/revealing/risqué/etc.) Some people simply won’t follow you if your profile picture is offensive to their minds. Think about your target audience, and consider toning down your pic if it might be the reason people are turned off of your account.
     
  • No biography. Although you only have 160 characters to write it, the bio is one of the most important elements of your Twitter profile. Be sure to have one, and to target it to your audience, as many people will simply not follow accounts with blank bios.
     
  • No link to website. This usually isn’t a complete follower killer, but there are some who won’t follow you back unless you have a website somewhere.

Read the rest of the article, which includes 9 more Twitter tips, on Mediabistro.

The Author’s Platform ~ Community of Interest

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Every day, over 2,000 books are published.

There’s no way around it. Authors need a platform–a place to stand above the crowd and get peoples’ attention.

If you self-publish and don’t already have a congregation of admirers, there is no other way to sell books than to build a platform.

Well, I suppose, if you had the money and the time, you could have a boat-load of books printed, pack ‘em in a van, and drive all over the place meeting people and convincing them they need to buy your book. Technically, that’s still building a platform, even if it means erecting it in one place, preaching to the masses, packing it up, and moving it to another place 🙂

Even respected agents like Rachelle Gardner can make a case for traditionally published authors needing to build their own platform. Here’s a quote from her post, The Dreaded Author Platform :

“…I almost wanted to announce that I’d no longer accept queries from anyone who doesn’t already have a good solid head start on a platform. (I won’t draw such a clear line in the sand, but consider yourself informed.)”

The consensus opinion about when to start building a platform is well before the book is written.

Obviously, if you don’t have books already published, all you’ve got for building materials is yourself.

So, assume for a moment you have a great idea for a book, you think you can write it, and you want to build a platform.

The most rational opinion I’ve found for how to do it is to start a blog. Write about yourself. Write your opinions about writing, itself. Offer to interview published authors on the blog. Offer to interview authors who have yet to be published. You may want to guest post on others’ blogs and have them guest post on yours.

Study how to increase traffic to a blog.

After that, you may want to (many people say you must) begin linking to your blog on Facebook and Twitter. Many folks point out that being genuinely helpful in these social media spaces is critical–you can’t just go running around and constantly shouting about how great your book is. I agree, but it takes time to find the people who really matter to you.

Facebook and Twitter are, to me, two varieties of wild parties. You arrive and start talking to people. Most of them want to promote their own project. Sometimes you find people you can establish a mutually beneficial relationship with. Still, there a a ton of people and, again, it takes time to find the right ones.

There are other ways to build an author platform. Personally, I have no time for anything but what I’ve just indicated as a well-respected way to build a platform.

Well, no time except for my giving away as many copies of the manuscript of my book as I can. If this sounds completely ridiculous, check out the link to Cory Doctorow’s ideas in my last post…

If you’re a budding author and decide to blog a platform for yourself, I can’t recommend a better site for learning how to shape a blog for maximum effect than Copyblogger!

Show what’s with that phrase in the title of this post: Community of Interest?

Well, one of the principles I try to follow in my life is: to achieve anything of lasting value, a person needs to work with a community of like-minded people. Whether they’re called friends, followers, fans, or associates, they are the key to establishing a project on solid ground.

To me, building an author platform and building a community of interest are the same thing.

Earlier, I said I have no time for anything but blogging and giving away copies of my manuscript. Actually, I was ignoring the time I use from the “extra” hours I have each day, those hours called free-time, when I venture into the virtual world, Second, Life, and participate in my community of interest on Book Island…

I would love to hear your opinions/experiences/questions on this topic in our comments section 🙂
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Questions For Your Beta Readers

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This post, by Jodie Renner, originally appeared on the Crime Fiction Collective blog on 4/25/11.

Since I’m a freelance fiction editor, most of my posts here will be advice, tips and resources for aspiring novelists, with an emphasis on thrillers, romantic suspense and mysteries.

So you’ve written your first draft? Congratulations! What’s next? A future post of mine will go over the revision process, but for now, let’s skip ahead to after you’ve revised your first draft once or twice. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot by sending it off to an agent too soon, or self-publishing it yet. That’s the biggest mistake of unsuccessful novelists – being in too much of a hurry to get their book out when it still needs significant revisions and final polishing. To start, get some input from volunteer readers familiar with your genre, then do some revisions based on the feedback, and finally, get a thorough copyedit, preferably by a professional freelance editor.

First, get some trusted colleagues or acquaintances to read your story through (or even the first few chapters) and tell you what they think of it so far. But don’t ask your parent, child, sibling, bff or significant other to do this “beta” reading, as they probably won’t want to tell you what they really think, for fear of jeopardizing your relationship. So how do you find your beta readers? Perhaps through a critique group, writing class, workshop, book club, or online networking such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.

Be sure to choose your pre-readers from people who already read and enjoy your genre. In the case of a YA novel or children’s book, look around for be age-appropriate relatives, neighborhood kids, or the children of your friends – or perhaps you know a teacher or librarian who would be willing to read some or all of it aloud and collect feedback.

To avoid generic (and generally useless) responses like “I liked it,” “It was good,” or “It was okay,” it’s best to guide your readers with specific questions. I recently polled some author clients and friends about this, and here are their lists of useful questions for your “beta” readers or critique group.

Read the rest of the post on the Crime Fiction Collective blog.

Strategic Tweeting For Authors

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This post, by Alan Rinzler, originally appeared on his The Book Deal on 3/20/11.

If you’re an author who isn’t active on Twitter, you’re making a huge mistake, say savvy book-marketing gurus.

You’re missing out on a megaphone that can help blast out your message and attract new readers.

Your readers are wondering: Where are you?

“There’s a conversation going on right now on Twitter about your book, about your topic, about your area of expertise. And if you’re not there, your readers are wondering why you’re not participating in the conversation.”

That’s the gospel according to Cindy Ratzlaff, a 20-year publishing veteran who designed the campaigns of more than 150 New York Times bestsellers and pioneered a strategy of treating authors and books as brands. I listened to Ratzlaff the other day on a webinar about Twitter for authors and publishers, sponsored by BookExpo.

Readers are brand evangelists

“Twitter has trained readers to expect instant access to their literary heroes,” Ratzlaff said. “They want to be your partners in promoting your book.” Authors who understand that communicate directly with their followers on Twitter, allowing them to experience a personal connection and behind-the-curtains look at the author’s life – and that creates brand evangelists, Ratzlaff said.

And speaking of brand evangelists, check out these numbers, which underscore why Twitter is now an essential venue for every author with a book to sell:

Read the rest of the post on Alan Rinzler‘s The Book Deal.

How Amazon Recommendation Algorithms Help Sell Your Book

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A few weeks ago my friend Joel Friedlander sent me an email …that he had been sent by Amazon which recommended my novel Pentecost next to John Connolly whose supernatural mysteries I really love to read myself.

I was absolutely overjoyed by the news! I put it on Twitter and also received the tweet below showing that Pentecost is being shown in the list of books that other people have bought. Subsequently I have seen it come up myself when I’ve gone in to look at other fiction books of a similar type.

This is evidence that the Amazon algorithms are kicking in and they are starting to market Pentecost themselves. These algorithms are top secret and no one knows for sure how to ensure this type of thing happens, but here’s what we can infer.

  • Rankings get you noticed. Pentecost has been in the Religious Fiction rankings since Feb 7th when it launched. It goes up and down but basically has been in the Top 40 or so for that bestseller category and around 2500 overall in the Kindle store. It has also been in the Top 100 of the same ranking in the UK but that site seems to run entirely separately from the US store.
  • Ratings and Reviews make a difference. Pentecost has 32 reviews as I am writing this with 4.5 star rating on Amazon.com. This is more than a whole lot of big name authors and clearly Amazon pays attention when readers are enthusiastic about a book. (THANK YOU so much if you have left a review – it makes such a difference! If you love a book, the author will be very grateful for a review!)

Why is this important?

Amazon have an amazing amount of information on readers. They target you with offers that you often find irresistable! They know the types of books you read and offer you similar ones. This is gold for authors as it means that Amazon can reach people with your book who would never have heard of it otherwise.

Why do Amazon do this?

Clearly it’s not for your benefit! They are a business and want to make more money so their algorithms look for the books that are selling in specific genres and they try to sell more of them. It’s an entirely business point of view but it benefits authors who are selling well – regardless of the publisher! That is a very key point because I can’t hope to get into a bookstore near you with my novel, but I can hope that you’ll get an email from Amazon recommending my book (if you currently buy books in this genre anyway).

As an author, have you seen evidence of this recommendation algorithm and do you have any ideas on how it works? As a reader, do you pay attention to Amazon’s recommendation emails?

 

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

Produce High Quality Articles And Make Them Easy To Read

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This is the second part in my series: Top 5 Ways to Get Your Articles Found and Read Online.

To get maximum readership, it’s important to provide high quality information or entertainment and to make your articles visually appealing. When writing articles and blog posts, first write a strong headline and lead paragraph that conveys the purpose of the article and draws readers in.

Long, dense blocks of copy are hard to read, especially online. When people glance at the article, you want it to look inviting and easy to read.

Tips for Making Your Articles More Appealing

• Don’t get too long-winded. If a blog post is more than 500 words, consider breaking it apart into a series. For other online articles, 600 to 800 words is a good range.

• Use short paragraphs and insert subheads to organize the information and make it easy to scan.

• Bullet points and numbered lists create both visual appeal and interest from readers.

• Use examples and stories to illustrate your points, when possible.

• Add photos or images to draw attention to your articles. You can find free photos and illustrations online or purchase images for about a dollar at sites such as iStockphoto [and] Wordle.

Finally, be sure to spell check and proofread your article. I do that first in Word, then proofread the draft of the article online before I click the Post button. It’s amazing how many times I find another error on my second review.

Read the rest of this series here:

Part 1: Top 5 Ways to Get Your Articles Found and Read Online
 

 

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

The Website Platform Advantage

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While writing my Platform Evolution post I gave some thought to commenting on an excellent Infographic about content farms. No sooner did I decide against it than I ran across this excellent post on Publishing Trends about content farms. Then, a day later, a good friend sent me an unbidden and timely link to a post on Making Light, which, among other things, talks about — wait for it! — content farms.

If you’re not familiar with content farms you can get a quick overview here. As a writer, what concerns me most about content farms is that they are to writing and publishing what Ebola is to the human body. If I was an astrophysicist I would also add that content farms are to information and knowledge what solar storms are to communications. And if I was a logician I would say that content farms are to accuracy and reliability what tsunamis are to fishing villages.

Which is to say that everything about content farms is bad, but not equally bad. The worst aspect of content farms is not that they’re the new frontier for spammers and swindlers, it’s that producing so much crap at such an incredible rate renders every single aggregating and filtering mechanism useless.

Google as a search engine for retail products and reviews has been beyond broken for years. (Try searching for “best _____”, where the blank is any product you’re interested in.) Amazon is currently the default search for products, but it’s starting to fall apart as well. (Am I looking at the latest version of the CD/DVD/book I want to order? Is it new or used? Does it ship free or for a fee? Is it shipping from Amazon or some fly-by-night third-party reseller?) And of course the idea that all that ballyhooed user-generated social-media content is pretty much crap is also nothing new.

What content farms do that’s new is automate the production of internet crap by exploiting free labor and making liberal use of other people’s content in a plausibly deniable way. For independent writers trying to attract attention, fighting through the noise pollution generated by content farms may seem impossible, and all the more so as content farms begin to pollute e-book retailers like Amazon. The antidote to this virulent hemorrhage of obfuscating web text may seem to be a gated social networking community, but I think the opposite is true.  

The Best Offense
When you own your own website you establish a perimeter you can actively defend. Whatever else might be happening on the wild and wooly web — whatever newfangled social-networking site or app might be setting the masses atwitter, and whatever predatory forces are conspiring to mute your voice — you can control the integrity of your brand and web presence from behind your server firewall.

As the web disintegrates and segregates more and more, and as sites like Facebook and Amazon fight to lock you in to their communities, denying portability to the relationships you establish on those sites, your isolated, solitary website will remain unsullied. As such it will help you accomplish what fewer and fewer netizens are able to do these day: authenticate yourself. Nobody will be confused about who you are because on your own site you control the message and the medium.

Rather than having to fight through other sites or networks, an independent website also allows readers to find you using almost any basic search engine. Yes, people will need to know something about you — your name, the title of your book(s), etc. — but that will be true no matter how you attempt to integrate your platform into the web.

Content farms, by their very nature, and designed to obscure and deceive through sheer volume. Should content farms progress to the level of writing useless articles about every name in the phone book, then yes, that could pose problems for independent authors. But those problems will still be significantly less if you have your own dedicated site.

Why? Because most search engines take the quality of posts into account. In less than a year and a half I’ve managed to turn the keywords ‘mark, barrett, writer‘ into multiple first-page search hits that allow people to find me. If readers learn or remember the word Ditchwalk they can find me even more quickly, either by typing in that word as a URL or searching for it.

In an age when more and more individuals and businesses are determined to exploit and corrupt information, the ability to validate and authenticate your own presence on the web carries a premium. As an independent author you are and must be your own brand, and I believe it’s less important in a platform context to distribute that brand than it is to make yourself easily identifiable and accessible. (You don’t have to join Facebook or Twitter or anything else in order to find and access Ditchwalk.)

The Best Defense
The biggest fear most writers have about not being on Facebook or Twitter — apart from missing out on the markets themselves — is that somebody will poach their name or brand. The fear of brandjacking is actually stoked by social networking site because it drives a considerable amount of registrations: sign up now or someone will steal your identity! (Some websites make this threat part of their business plan, driving registrations by implicit extortion.)

Back in the day it was possible for a sole-proprietor to maintain a presence on one or two social networking sites to make sure nobody was poaching. Anyone visiting those pages could be redirected in some fashion to the brand’s home page. Today that’s not only not realistic, but social networking sites have gotten better at making it hard for people to leave the compound. Trying to integrate with every site that has a market/community — let alone maximize those relationships — could easily leave the independent author with no time to work.

From your perspective as an author, establishing the prominence of your own name probably seems critical, but it’s not. There are a lot of Mark Barretts in the world, but because of my investment in Ditchwalk I don’t have to compete with any of them. Merely by writing a few blog posts using words central to my work I’ve been able to differentiate myself from others who are fortunate enough to have the same great name.

In the same way that I’m not going to play defense in order to protect myself against brandjacking, I’m not going to play defense against namejacking. Even if I thought parents were naming their kids “Mark Barrett” in order to dilute my brand, I wouldn’t bow to that kind of extortion because it’s too easy to get around the problem. (I might consider suing them for trademark infringement however. Or blasphemy. Or something.)

There’s a bit of equity in all this, too. If you’ve got a really common name it’s going to be a little harder to differentiate yourself from everyone else, but you’ll benefit because most people will be able to guess the spelling. If your name is less common it may be harder to spell, but it will be much easier for you to differentiate yourself.

It’s possible that someone somewhere may at some point put up a fan page using your name. It’s also possible some weasel might try to steal your identity by brandjacking. It’s useful to do web searches from time to time to see when and where your name appears, and in what context, but I don’t think there’s any reason to be paranoid. If you do find somebody ripping you off you can probably get the offending account or web page taken down by contacting the relevant admins.

The Signal-to-Noise Test
If you’ve been using the web for a decade or more you’ve experienced the decay. Searching for even simple things has become a chore, in part because of the nefarious practices of a dedicated and growing subculture of spammers and exploiters, but also in part because of a social-networking mindset that says the open web is a threat.

When you’re building your own platform and considering how different applications or sites might benefit you, consider the signal-to-noise ratio. I stopped using Twitter because the ratio of signal to noise kept getting worse no matter what I did. I stopped using Facebook because Facebook constantly abused and confused its own users, while at the same time encouraging a nearly endless stream of meaningless updates and postings.

When you base your platform on your own website, the signal to noise ratio is under your control. Nothing and nobody can get in the way of your message because there is no noise unless you allow it. As a result, the clarity of your site stands apart from the muck spewed forth by content farms and networking sites. And there will only be more muck.

 

This is a reprint from Mark Barrett‘s Ditchwalk.

Publetariat Founder And Editor In Chief April L. Hamilton Offers 'Avoid The Perils Of Self-Publishing' Webinar Through Writer's Digest

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WILL YOU BE A SAVVY, OR SHORTSIGHTED SELF-PUBLISHER?

More and more authors, aspiring and mainstream-published alike, are embracing the benefits they can enjoy through self-publishing. Retaining full creative control, earning significantly higher profits, being able to bring a complete, polished manuscript to market in a matter of weeks instead of months or years, releasing one’s work in as many (or as few) formats as desired, and controlling one’s own intellectual property rights are just a few of the considerable advantages indie authorship and publishing have to offer. However, there’s no single, one-size-fits-all success plan for self-publishers, and there are plenty of costly mistakes to be made along the way. This webinar is about the questions and issues every self-publisher must address if he hopes to avoid these pitfalls, and reach his goals in authorship and publishing as painlessly and efficiently as possible.

 
 
Date and time: 4/28/11, 1pm EST (11am PST) 
Length and price: 90 minutes, US$79

(Each registration comes with access to the archived version of the program and the materials for 1 year.)

 

 
What you’ll learn:
 
·           How to identify your goals as both an author and publisher, and why this is such a crucial first step
·           The 8 most common causes of self-publishing failure, and how to avoid them
·           The 8 traits most successful self-publishers have in common, and how to cultivate them
·           The 5 crucial author platform skills every self-publisher should strive to master
·           Types of books and authors for which the indie path is particularly well-suited, and conversely, types of authors and books for which mainstream publication is still the smarter path
·           Where to go to get more help and information

Who should attend?
 
·               Authors and aspiring authors who are considering self-publishing, but want to learn more about it first
·               Authors and aspiring authors who have decided to self-publish and want to avoid the "gotchas"
·               Authors who’ve already self-published without much success, but want to try again, armed with the information needed to do better the next time 

Speaker
April L. Hamilton is an author, author services provider, blogger, Technorati BlogCritic, leading advocate and speaker for the indie author movement, and founder and Editor in Chief of Publetariat, the premier online news hub and community for indie authors and small imprints. April is also on the Board of Directors for the Association of Independent Authors. She’s been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, MSN Money and The Washington Times, and profiled by ABNA Books and The Writing Cast podcast. Her originally self-published book, The IndieAuthor Guide, has received favorable mention on CNET and recommendations from The Huffington Post and New York Times Magazine; the revised and updated edition, released by Writer’s Digest Books, is currently available from booksellers everywhere in both print and ebook formats. April is also the author of novels available in both ebook and POD form.

Register here.

Adopting a Device-Neutral Approach to Electronic Publishing: A Q&A With Springer's Timothy Griswold

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This article, by Janet Spavlik, originally appeared on Book Business on 4/14/11 and is reprinted here in its entirety with the site’s permission.

Digital publishing was, of course, top of mind for many of the attendees at last week’s Publishing Business Conference & Expo, as the event kicked off with a panel of book industry leaders in print-digital integration. Moderated by THA Consulting President Ted Hill , the session, entitled "The Cross-Platform Book Publisher: Reinvent Your Company," featured panelists Timothy Griswold , vice president, sales, trade and special licensing, Springer; Adam Lerner , president/publisher, Lerner Publishing Group; Deborah Forte , president, Scholastic Media; and Mike Rosiak , lead content architect, Wolters Kluwer Health—all of whom shared their experiences and insights into successfully bringing products to market in multiple formats.

Book Business Extra spoke with Griswold after the conference to expand on some of the themes discussed amongst the panel. Here, he advises book publishers on publishing electronically across multiple devices and discusses the next big opportunity Springer is exploring.

Book Business Extra: During the panel, you stressed Springer’s device-neutral approach in regard to publishing content electronically—the company publishes across as many devices as possible. How has Springer adapted to so many different devices and formats, and what advice would you give to other publishers that want to adopt a device-neutral approach?

Timothy Griswold: … There is a learning curve involved. You take a risk, and some of them are good and some of them may not be so good. … When you’re any publisher, whether small, medium or large, during the negotiation with [online retailers, such as] the Apple iBookstore, Amazon Kindle, Blio, etc., you need to really do that trial run-through at the beginning during the contract negotiation [before the contract is signed]. … What we found is that, in some cases, the content and the format [in which] we delivered the content … the actual appearance on the e-reader, the quality was not good. And so, because of that, with the contract already signed, there were conversion costs, and, in some cases, considerable conversion costs that had to be incurred.

There was a discussion back and forth as far as who was responsible for those conversion costs, so that’s probably the most important thing. … I learned that I need to have the people in production that I can rely on and who are knowledgeable regarding the different formats of e-files and delivery and what has to be done, and I need that knowledge while I’m out there negotiating with Blio or whoever it happens to be in order to deliver the content and make it that seamless transition.

Publetariat Editor’s Note: also see this Storify page, on which Heather Fletcher shares tweets from the conference, many of which include links to blog posts in which attendees have recapped various sessions and commented on them.

 

Author Interview: Naderia by Julian Gallo

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 Author Interview – Julian Gallo’s Latest Novel, "Naderia"

written and conducted by Garry Crystal.  

Arab Spring Update: Are Social Media Being Given Too Much Credit For Recent Changes In The Middle East?

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In this podcast and transcript, from the Copyright Clearance Center’s Beyond the Book site, the CCC’s Chris Kenneally interviews Egyptian-born journalist Mona Eltahawy about recent events in the Middle East and the role social media have (or have not) played in those events. The podcast and transcript are provided here in their entirety with the CCC’s Beyond the Book site’s permission.

As popular uprisings have spread across the Middle East and North Africa, media pundits have credited Twitter and Facebook. But one Egyptian-born journalist based in New York says the acclaim for social media is misplaced, even though she admits to a Twitter addiction herself.

“It was a revolution of courage, rather than a revolution of Twitter or Facebook,” says Mona Eltahawy. “Social media connected real-life activists with online activists, and with ordinary Egyptians whose only exposure to politics came through Facebook and through tweets that they read. And through that connection, [Twitter] brought people out on the ground. But it was a tool. It was a weapon.”

An acclaimed freelance journalist, Mona Eltahawy is also a lecturer and researcher on the growing importance of social media in the Arab world. She spoke with CCC’s Chris Kenneally at the We Media NYC conference about her work and her insights on the Arab Spring.

 Arab Spring Update [12:15m]: Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download

 

Author Blogs – Use Categories To Organize Your Posts

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Many blog platforms have a default setting that places certain items (often called widgets) in the sidebar (the narrow column on the side). Two common default widgets are Archives and Categories. 

The Archives widget displays a list the months of the year, with the most recent month listed first. Usually there’s a number next to each month indicating how many blog posts were made that month. Clicking on the month brings up the blog posts made during that month. I recommend deleting the Archive widget from your blog. It doesn’t serve a useful purpose, it takes up valuable space in the sidebar, and if you don’t post very often, the small number of posts listed for each month looks bad.

Having a list of blog post Categories in the sidebar is much more useful to visitors, especially for nonfiction author blogs. If someone has an interest in a particular topic, they can quickly and easily find more articles on that topic using the Categories list.

Each time you publish a blog post, you have the option of assigning a category to that post. The Categories widget displays a list of the categories you have used. Clicking on a category name takes the blog visitor to a page containing the articles in that category.

You may have the option of presenting your categories in cloud format. The cloud displays the category names in a cluster, rather than an alphabetical list, and the names of the most frequently used categories are shown in larger type. The cloud may be harder to read if you have very many categories, but it is more eye-catching than a list.

Another option is include category names in a navigation menu across the top of your blog. This works best if you have a small number of categories. You can use the menu in addition to or instead of the Categories widget in the sidebar.

On my own blog, I deleted the Categories widget and created a custom widget called “Book Marketing Resources,” which you can see it in the lower right column of this page. Most of these category links go to a page listing all the blog posts in that category, but several of them go to special resource pages that also list additional resources related to the category. For a sample resource page, see the Library & Educational Sales page. 

Another way to use the categories feature is to link to a category page at the end of some of your blog posts.  For example:  See more articles about Blogs & Websites.

See this post to learn how to avoid common mistakes in using categories on author blogs.

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

Platform Evolution

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Here’s a graph from my Twitter Quitter post:

A basic premise of independent authorship is that authors should establish their own platform in order to reach out to readers and potential customers. I believe in that premise. What constitutes a platform, however, remains undefined.

Implicit in the idea of an author’s platform is the creation of an online presence. Because the internet has become commonplace it’s easy to forget that an independent platform for individual artists would be impossible without it. (Prior to the internet an artist’s platform was limited by geography. Bands were limited not by their music but by their touring range.) While the advantages and opportunities provided by the internet are astounding relative to the pre-internet age, the internet is still a communications medium devised by human beings, with inherent strengths and weaknesses.

Understanding how the internet works in a business context is an ongoing process. Two days ago the New York Times put up a paywall, attempting for the second time to derive revenue from its own online platform. (The first attempt failed.) That one of the most prominent newspapers in the world is still struggling to monetize content despite almost unparalleled visibility and economic muscle is a reminder to everyone that the platform question has not been answered.

Depending on your perspective, the tendency of the human mind to cherry pick information can be seen as either a bug or a feature. In the context of online platforms, it’s easy to see successes like iTunes as indicative of potential and promise when it’s actually the result of a unique set of circumstances. Finding gold in a stream may spark a gold rush, but only a few people will stake claims that literally pan out. The internet is no different. As I noted in a post about the future of publishing:

In return for making distribution almost effortless and almost free, the internet promises nothing. No revenue. No readers. Nothing.

Possibilities are not promises. Possibilities are chances, which is why I always say that writing for profit is gambling — and gambling against terrible odds. Determining what your online platform should be, and how much time you should devote to that platform, is an important part of nudging the odds in your favor.  

Lowering the Bar
Platform-services consultants, like marketing consultants, will always tell you that you can never do enough. Because the time you can devote to your platform is limited, but the time you should devote is infinite, these people will offer to bridge that gap on your behalf, for a fee. Because the internet is driven by technology, and because anything less than a cutting-edge platform means you’re falling short, platform consultants will also offer to sell you myriad apps and solutions, all of which they will teach you about, maintain and upgrade for a fee. (The New York Times was convinced by these same people to spend $40 million dollars on a paywall that can be easily circumvented.)

Approaching your platform as a vehicle of infinite possibility constrained only by your own feeble lack of determination is a recipe for failure. You do not have an infinite amount of time and resources to devote to your platform. Even if you did, there’s no guarantee that such a commitment would equal success. From part IV of my marketing and sales series:

In the real world, if you really did grab a pick and shovel and head out into your backyard to strike it rich, your friends and family would rightly think you a loon, no matter how deeply felt your convictions were. Why? Because it’s common knowledge that gold isn’t plentiful everywhere. Rather, it’s concentrated in veins of rock or in waterways that hold gold from eroded veins of rock.

If you try to dig in the wrong place it doesn’t matter how much time or money you spend, or how cutting-edge your tools are. You’re not going to get any gold even if you have infinite resources. Because the internet obviates geographical limits it seem to negate all limits, but as the NYT’s second attempt at a paywall makes clear that’s not the case. The internet is not an infinite vein of gold waiting to be exploited if only you’re smart enough to pick the right mix of apps, site functionality and marketing techniques.

(This false premise echoes the happiness industry’s determination to blame everyone for their own failings. If you’re not a happy person it’s your own fault: stop whining and try harder. If your platform isn’t racking up clicks and sales it’s your own fault: stop whining and try harder.)

Platform Motivation
I think the right question to ask is how each independent author’s platform can most effectively dovetail with that author’s individual goals. If you’re the kind of writer who wants to write a lot of books, slaving yourself to a complex or time-consuming platform is going to keep you from reaching that goal. (I’ll elaborate on that in a moment.) If your writing goals are more modest or limited — and if the work you’re producing is itself part of a larger goal — then creating a more complex platform might make sense. For example, if you’re a public speaker or have a primary profession, authoring a book might help you further those pursuits even if the work itself never becomes a bestseller.

I think it’s also important to be conscious of the motivations behind the voices championing the idea of a platform. As a writer I think you should have a platform in order to make yourself visible. Making yourself available online allows people to find you and your work, and it allows you to have information or products waiting for them whenever they choose to arrive. Without a presence on the web you are invisible and mute, no matter how many pages you crank out.

Publishers, agents and editors want you to have a platform, but for slightly different reasons. To them your platform provides a metric by which they can measure your popularity in an uncertain marketplace crowded with aspiring writers. The measure of dedication you show to your platform also indicates how interested you might be in doing the things those people would want you to do in order to maximize sales. Given that they only make money if you make money it’s understandable that they would have these interests, but those interests do not put writing first.

In my case, for example, the decision to quit Facebook and Twitter was made after considerable deliberation about what was best for me as a writer, including assessment of the workloads involved. I’m fairly confident most publishers, agents and editors would see my choices as a mistake, if only because I’ve made it harder for them to assess my platform relative to other authors. Staying active on those sites would please them, but it would make my writing life more difficult without any demonstrable payoff. (If I write a runaway hit I can always join those sites again in order to capitalize on that success.)

Platform Criteria
So: how to juggle all of the available platform options? Well, after testing some of the options I’ve changed my own platform weighting as follows:

  • Creating and publishing new work is more important than any platform activity by at least an order of magnitude. If there’s a choice between writing and working on my platform, I’m going to write. Doing so emphasizes the proper ratio of time I should spend on my platform.

    As I said above, writers who crank out books probably need less of a platform relative to other writers. Why? Because after you establish even on an online toehold, your growing body of work becomes the greatest expression of, and attraction to, your platform.

  • Becoming a better writer is more important than bettering my platform by at least an order of magnitude. Because I’m never going to be able to drive sales with my celebrity I need to make sure I can compete with my content. Here’s how I put it in the conclusion to my series on marketing and sales:

    Writing is a qualitative act. It matters whether you suck or not. As such I believe mastery of craft is the most reliable predictor of critical or commercial success for the great majority of writers. There will always be people who succeed despite a lack of authorial gifts and there will always be good writers who are overlooked in the marketplace. But if you’re determined to play the percentages and protect your own authorial vision, nothing pays off like focusing on being the best writer you can be.

  • Both Twitter and Facebook demonstrate the same inescapable truth: if you have celebrity you’ll have more success at exploiting those sites; if you don’t, the road to cultural currency (to say nothing of sales) becomes much, much more difficult. The written word is the root of any storyteller’s celebrity. It is the engine of an author’s success in every way, including platform success. I agree that authors should launch their platforms before they launch their books, but the success of that platform will be defined largely by the success of those books, not the other way around.

  • All platforms are not the same. Some authors focus on issues, some authors focus on readers, some focus on both. (Zoe Winters wrestles with these choices here and here.) I’m at the point where I want to write and self-publish more fiction, and engage more readers. Again, however, my success at doing so will come from spending more time writing things for people to read, not more time working on my platform.

  • After a year and a half I can say with conviction that an author can have no better platform than their own website and blog. If you want to extend that locus through other sites like Facebook and Twitter, that’s fine. But you should have your own home base and you should own it. It doesn’t have to be a complex site, and probably shouldn’t be if you want to protect your writing time. And you should always protect your writing time.

Everything I’ve learned over the past year or two says that an author’s platform should be smaller rather than larger. Everything I’ve learned also says that authors should concentrate on writing rather than augmenting their platform. You do need to have a presence. You don’t need to obsess over it.

The Platform in Context
Launching an online platform is like staking a claim. You hope you pick a good spot but you also know you have to compete with everybody else working the same territory. However much time and money you decide to devote to your platform, some of your competitors will have more money, some will work harder, and some will have trained professionals helping them.

Treating your platform like a competition with others is tempting but it’s a big mistake. I’m convinced that the people who visit my site and read my words are less concerned with how my platforms stacks up against other sites than they are with how well I deliver on my promises to them. I certainly don’t want my site to look amateurish, but beyond that low bar my focus needs to be wholly on my readers.

Because the internet potentially allows an author to connect with everyone on the planet it’s tempting to try to drive readers to your platform. I’ve come to believe that doing so is a waste of time. You should approach your platform and presence as something long-term and make it easy for readers to find you when they’re interested. The best of all possible worlds is one where readers promote you and your work by word of mouth, and apart from celebrity-driven successes I can’t find any examples to the contrary. Bottom line: it takes time, so plan accordingly, including emotionally.

One of the most oft-quoted remarks about the obstacles facing independent artists comes from Tim O’Reilly:

Lesson 1: Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.

This idea has also been heavily promoted by anti-DRM advocate Cory Doctorow:

That’s because my biggest threat as an author isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity. The majority of ideal readers who fail to buy my book will do so because they never heard of it, not because someone gave them a free electronic copy.

The problem with this claim isn’t that it’s false, it’s that it’s meaningless. Obscurity is also a far greater threat to authors than smallpox, grapefruit and linoleum. If nobody knows who you are, yes, that’s a big problem. But ignoring the costs of piracy doesn’t solve any author’s obscurity problem. In fact, based on my Twitter experience, I don’t think anything can solve the obscurity problem because it’s baked into the online cake.

The internet made information available 24/7. It also made it possible for anyone to distribute digital content. Now, with the advent of Facebook and Twitter, it’s effortlessly easy for people to express every stray thought in their heads. As a result, the wall of noise that any content provider must compete against has grown exponentially. We’re at a point where every single person on the face of the earth is a direct competitor. There is no longer any distinction between the people who make content and the people who consume it.

The fact that everyone seems so deeply invested in expressing their own thoughts means fewer and fewer people are listening. Attention has become a commodity as critical to the lifeblood of a writer as obscurity is daunting:

Many of the filters earlier generations took for granted, the ones imposed by the absence of real-time communications and efficient transmission and storage, have now been eradicated by the advent of internet and digital media.

The only possible solution to the obscurity/attention quandary is not to play. No matter how great your celebrity or big your platform, there are limits. Just ask Roger Ebert. (There are also good reasons to believe that Facebook and Twitter are overvalued financially and culturally. Just ask Warren Buffett and Vincent Eaton.)

Picturing Your Platform
When I first thought about my own platform I imagined it as a kind of soap box. It was my spot in the public square of ideas. Later, I also came to think of my platform as a retail space. It was my shop and display.

Now, however, I’ve come to see my platform as a launching pad. It’s how I try to put stories and ideas and conversations into virtual orbit. Some of the things I launch may blow up on the pad, some may go to the moon, and the fate of some launches may be unknown for a long time. And nothing I do to my platform will change that.

 

This is a reprint from Mark Barrett‘s Ditchwalk.

Write Lots Of Books Or Build An Author Platform. Which Is More Effective?

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It seems there are two opposing camps in terms of author marketing.

On the one hand, there are  people who say “Just write a lot of books” and the books themselves will sell the other books and you don’t need to do any other marketing. The evidence for this can be seen in Amanda Hocking’s ebook sales numbers and other writers on JA Konrath’s (brilliant) blog who basically write and distribute ebooks but do little hardcore marketing. It looks like they all do something but don’t focus on it.

On the other hand, there is the “build your author platform” camp advocating blogging, social networking, speaking, podcasting, videos and more. Obviously all this marketing takes away from writing, so which should you focus on?

I try to be very careful on the blog to only talk about things I’ve done myself. I don’t have a huge back-list of novels ready to load up into the Kindle store, I’m not making thousands per month on ebook sales. I have built a reasonable author platform and I have enjoyed every minute of it, so clearly I sit in the second camp at the moment.

BUT/ Amanda Hocking’s sales numbers gave me pause so I thought we’d better discuss it here. Justine Musk also wrote a brilliant post over at Tribal Writer on the same topic.

Here’s my thinking on the matter but please leave a comment as to what you think at the bottom as this is a critical discussion point as we all have limited time.

What are your overall goals for your career as a writer?

I want to be able to define myself as an author, speaker and blogger and I want to help people. I’m also an entrepreneur and sell my speaking services as well as online products. I make the least amount of money from fiction ebooks and the most from other products and services (at the moment anyway). Therefore my author platform gives me more than just a sales platform for fiction.

I speak at least once a month and last year spoke at a writer’s retreat in Bali, all from my online presence. I couldn’t do those things if I just had books. So my overall goals involve having a platform to run my online business from. I’m also passionate about sharing what I have learned in order to save you time, money and heartache so I have an inner drive to get the message out there.
 

What do you enjoy spending time doing?

Writing and being a blogger can be a solitary profession and as much as I love being alone, I also enjoy the community we have online as bloggers and also on Twitter and Facebook. I enjoy connecting on Skype and making my podcast and videos. I love being part of a group and improving my blogging/online marketing skills as well as my writing. So my author platform also serves a personal development and social purpose that goes beyond selling books. Blogging has given me so much joy in the last few years that I would continue doing it if I won the lottery! Writing a novel is a totally different feeling altogether.

What do you think is more effective for author marketing? Writing lots of books or spending time building an author platform? Why do you do what you do?

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