We are living in a world of entertainment bites. When we are bored on the commute to work, waiting at the doctor’s surgery or stuck in rush hour we want something that passes the time and resolves itself quickly. We are addicted to fast pace storytelling and like a drug, once addicted we keep coming back for more in larger quantities. If you can tap into this addiction and become an entertainment bite ‘pimp’, you can quickly and easily build up a fan club for your work. Readers get a sense of your writing style, your characterisation, or your expertise from these little snippets of entertainment. Put in links to your full length e-book at the end and suddenly you are getting more downloads and readers. When I talk about entertainment bites I am of course talking about short stories.
If you have never thought of short stories as a marketing and connective tool think again. Publishing giant HarperCollins has already jumped in there with both feet, branching out into short stories as a way to tap a large part of the population who does not have the time or the interest to read a full length novel. Several short stories by authors such as Tobsha Learner, are already available through Amazon and Kobo retailing for a cheap but profitable $1.47. Self-published authors need to take part in this emerging trend where current technology such as iPhone’s play a significant part in our readers lives. In this arena we have the advantage; we do not have the overhead costs that HarperCollins has to cover. We can sell our short stories for anywhere from 20 to 50cents or give them away for free, and draw the readers into our world.
Short stories can be anywhere from 500-2500 words in length. They generally leave an unanswered question or a curiosity at the end. Within the piece you must be able to swiftly sketch the situation and come to the point. There are fewer complexities then in a novel and the story focuses on one situation or scene, or for non-fiction it focuses one section of theory or opinion. By having your short stories link to the world of your e-book, exploring extra bits of information that were not included in your novel, you can use these pieces as a promotion of your e-book by creating interest and anticipation around your larger work. It is also a great opportunity to explore characters who only feature in a minor way in your e-book. It gives the reader a little thrill of discovery, another piece of the puzzle.
If you only have one e-book and not a series, free short stories can be just as effective in boosting your sales as giving away the first book in a series for free. If you can entertain, move or engage your reader with a shorter, cheaper work, you will connect with your readership on a level that many writers do no manage. You reach a larger portion of the population and can hopefully convert them to join those of us who reader longer works for pleasure.
TOMORROW: The Media Machine: how participating in online forums and communities can increase the number of readers for your e-book tenfold.
SUCCESS?? Have you started to apply the tips in this blog yet? If you have had success, I would love to hear about it! Please feel free to tell us in the comments section below.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Friday, April 29, 2011
The Road To Free Traffic Is Paved With Articles
As a writer, writing should be our passion recounting everything from 5 inch goblins storming a giant’s castle, detailed to-do lists, to describing in exact, colourful language why your friend is such an arse in his latest Facebook photo. So I know you will just jump at the chance to write another several pieces of mastery in article form. No, don’t look at me like I’m a slave master with a whip. If you want free traffic, you’ve got to put in the effort, anyone who tells you they’re where they are today for free, must be fresh off the funny farm.
The main goal of the internet is to provide information and entertainment; this is what people search for. So to get free traffic you need to give away some of your knowledge or provide a little entertainment. The more you teach others what you know the more information they want from you. What you need is to give them good quality information, or a well written entertaining analysis so that the reader will visit your site. Don’t be lazy and just write one, flog this method for all it’s worth because very few writer’s know these avenues exist. Once you have written several articles complete with an about authors section - including your web address - you publish them on sites such as ezinearticles.com or goarticles.com. These websites allow people who want content for their newsletters or blogs (generally for their own gain) to use your article, but only if they use the entirety of the article, which includes you author information, e-book name and website address. These articles get sent out potentially to thousands of people.
You want each article to be at least 300-500 words. For fiction authors you can do reviews on other books in your genre, you can do articles on events, news or trends in your genre or even a how to write for genre xyz or audience xyz. For a non-fiction author commenting on themes in your book, or giving away tips and information are the best way to go. The article needs to be similar to how you have written the content for your website, it needs to be very clear on what the benefit is for the reader and make sure that it is based on their interest. For non-fiction it needs practical information that can be used straight away by the reader. It should NOT be a sales pitch for your e-book. No one will use your article if it is, only the insane give free advertising for nothing. It needs to stand on its own as a helpful bit of information or entertainment; it has to deliver if you want people to use it for their newsletters.
If your information or tips are from your e-book it can also be a great way to advertise without obvious promotion. In the about author section you can note that the article was taken from the new e-book XYZ and for more information they should visit your website (don’t forget to put your website address there!!!). You about author section should be concise, giving your name, the genre and second pitch for your e-book and an invitation to check out your website for more information, or more enticingly, to check out your website for free samples.
All you need is for several newsletter ‘publishers’ to include your article in their newsletters for people to start visiting your site. If you find you just can’t do several in one sitting, break it up into manageable chunks and write one a week and you will get all the traffic you need without paying a cent.
One extra avenue for your articles is to submit them to Digg, where people can rate articles based on their content and entertainment value.
So time to check out of the funny farm and get to work!
TOMORROW: The Media Machine: Consider short stories as a way to rapidly increase your fan club.
The main goal of the internet is to provide information and entertainment; this is what people search for. So to get free traffic you need to give away some of your knowledge or provide a little entertainment. The more you teach others what you know the more information they want from you. What you need is to give them good quality information, or a well written entertaining analysis so that the reader will visit your site. Don’t be lazy and just write one, flog this method for all it’s worth because very few writer’s know these avenues exist. Once you have written several articles complete with an about authors section - including your web address - you publish them on sites such as ezinearticles.com or goarticles.com. These websites allow people who want content for their newsletters or blogs (generally for their own gain) to use your article, but only if they use the entirety of the article, which includes you author information, e-book name and website address. These articles get sent out potentially to thousands of people.
You want each article to be at least 300-500 words. For fiction authors you can do reviews on other books in your genre, you can do articles on events, news or trends in your genre or even a how to write for genre xyz or audience xyz. For a non-fiction author commenting on themes in your book, or giving away tips and information are the best way to go. The article needs to be similar to how you have written the content for your website, it needs to be very clear on what the benefit is for the reader and make sure that it is based on their interest. For non-fiction it needs practical information that can be used straight away by the reader. It should NOT be a sales pitch for your e-book. No one will use your article if it is, only the insane give free advertising for nothing. It needs to stand on its own as a helpful bit of information or entertainment; it has to deliver if you want people to use it for their newsletters.
If your information or tips are from your e-book it can also be a great way to advertise without obvious promotion. In the about author section you can note that the article was taken from the new e-book XYZ and for more information they should visit your website (don’t forget to put your website address there!!!). You about author section should be concise, giving your name, the genre and second pitch for your e-book and an invitation to check out your website for more information, or more enticingly, to check out your website for free samples.
All you need is for several newsletter ‘publishers’ to include your article in their newsletters for people to start visiting your site. If you find you just can’t do several in one sitting, break it up into manageable chunks and write one a week and you will get all the traffic you need without paying a cent.
One extra avenue for your articles is to submit them to Digg, where people can rate articles based on their content and entertainment value.
So time to check out of the funny farm and get to work!
TOMORROW: The Media Machine: Consider short stories as a way to rapidly increase your fan club.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
You May Have The World’s Greatest Book But, If No One Reads It, Then You Have The World’s Greatest Paper Weight
What do you have more of, time or money? I suppose another more pertinent question is, how much of a cheap skate are you? Because this is going to impact how you try to get traffic to your e-book pages. Unfortunately traffic (aka the number of people visiting your e-book download pages) is not organic, it does not grow on trees, it does not magically manifest from a spaceship in the sky like Captain Kirk, and it most certainly does not occur in any significant quantity from you sleeping on the job. Traffic has to be worked for, like everything else.
There are three types of traffic; paid, borrowed or free. While I am going to spend a little more time on the ‘free’ option (yes I did just see how much your eyes lit up. See how well the word free works?) in another post, I will briefly explain the others here.
PAID: So you have the mullah but not the time. Understandable, we are all time poor in this day and age, too many distractions coming at us from all angles. You can do paid advertisement in many ways, through Google Adwords, Yahoo!, Windows Live Search, Project Wonderful, the list goes on. Basically you advertise on these sites and every time someone clicks on your ad you pay anywhere from cents to your first boarn depending on how far up the list of ads you wish to appear. The more money you pay per click the higher up your ad appears. When a searcher types the keywords you have selected for the ad into a search engine, your ad appears. This is where researching your keywords and knowing your competition comes in. If you can advertise for keywords that have lots of people looking for them, but not many people selling with those keywords then you will save a tone of money. And we are all, really, penny pinchers at heart.
There are a couple of effective tips you can use to make the most of your money and a greater number of readers. Google Adwords allows you to rotate through up to 9 different ads (different headlines) at no extra cost. This is a fantastic option, because Google will tell you which ad gets the most people clicking on it and you can eliminate any ad which isn’t drawing your readers in. I discussed in a previous post how to set up headlines for your website and novel to entice readers. You need to think of your ad as one big headline. You don’t need to sell your product in the ad; you just have to get the reader curious enough to click. You need to keep them short and sharp. Rambling is not effective. If you are a non-fiction author think about the 9 main benefits of your e-book and turn those into ads. Make a clear promise to your reader, what is in it for them? And you can, as always, make it irresistible if you offer something for free whether it is a sample or your whole book. Also try using your keywords in the ad. If your reader has typed in ‘Ninja Secrets’ they are more likely to click if they see those words in the first line of the ad.
For tools like Project Wonderful, where you just advertise on specific sites, you need to decide how long you want to show your ad for. If you advertise on one site for three months, constantly, the visitors will get use to the ad being there and they won’t see it. Once you go chameleon and blend into the background, it doesn’t matter what your ad contains. It could include a photo of naked women doing the CanCan on the back of a pink elephant and it wouldn’t make a difference. So it’s important to do it in a pattern where you advertise for several weeks, then remove the ad from the site for several weeks and repeat.
BORROW: Also known as joint ventures. Here is where you do your shady deal with the crazy man in the alley. Well, not quite. What you need is someone in your field - if you know the person it makes it easier – who has a large database of people they can contact. Then you do a deal with them to split the profits of your sales if they email their database about your e-book. This works better for non-fiction authors. On the other side of the coin you can look at this as writers helping writers. If you have a fellow indie author in the same genre whose novel you have read and would recommend, you can collaborate and borrow each other’s readers/traffic. Put their synopsis in the back of your novel and have them do the same for you. Then every reader who finishes your novel, full to the brim with praise for your prose, sees the ad to the book. Because they liked your book so much and it is in the same genre as yours, they take your recommendation to purchase the other novel. It is a win-win situation for both authors.
FREE: Three for free! The first two I shall mention briefly as I will be covering them in more detail in later blog posts. The first is social media, that topic you have all heard so much about. By connecting with people in your niche through such sites as Twitter and Facebook you can generate large amounts of traffic through promotional posts. It is always important to balance the promotion with sincere participation within your community, with promotion only taking up 30-40% of what you write. The more you engage with your followers, send them to funny links, and help inform them on your topic, the more impact your promotions will have. The second is writing articles on your topic. This is a great way to get promotion without having to do the leg work. My lips are sealed on the details for this is tomorrow’s blog post.
The third and final way to get free promotion and traffic is by creating a press release. Ever wonder how the footage of a budgerigar riding a surf board got on the 6 pm news? Or how every newspaper seemed to be present when Richard Branson was making one of his ‘surprise’ stunts? Most articles in a newspaper are there because someone sent a press release to an editor. If you can make your e-book news worthy (do not make your business the focus that will get you discarded faster than a publisher rejection) then you can get free publicity. There are three ways you can do this. A) Do something good for others (charity). B) Make announcements that affect a lot of people. Or make an announcement that will intrigue a lot of people. C) Have a strong and clear view on a news topic. If you have a strong opinion and can back it up, say it in a press release. Editors love opposing sides of a story so keep a close watch on internet sites related to your niche. A press release is similar to a synopsis, it must intrigue and excite, tell the story quickly and concisely and provides contact information if an editor would like more info on your release.
Pick at least one of these methods of traffic generation to start. Do not leave your book out in the cold unsupported!!! Because the fact of the matter is, you can have the world’s greatest book, but if no one reads it, it becomes the world’s greatest digital paper weight.
TOMORROW: The Media Machine: How writing short articles can draw massive traffic to your e-book download page.
There are three types of traffic; paid, borrowed or free. While I am going to spend a little more time on the ‘free’ option (yes I did just see how much your eyes lit up. See how well the word free works?) in another post, I will briefly explain the others here.
PAID: So you have the mullah but not the time. Understandable, we are all time poor in this day and age, too many distractions coming at us from all angles. You can do paid advertisement in many ways, through Google Adwords, Yahoo!, Windows Live Search, Project Wonderful, the list goes on. Basically you advertise on these sites and every time someone clicks on your ad you pay anywhere from cents to your first boarn depending on how far up the list of ads you wish to appear. The more money you pay per click the higher up your ad appears. When a searcher types the keywords you have selected for the ad into a search engine, your ad appears. This is where researching your keywords and knowing your competition comes in. If you can advertise for keywords that have lots of people looking for them, but not many people selling with those keywords then you will save a tone of money. And we are all, really, penny pinchers at heart.
There are a couple of effective tips you can use to make the most of your money and a greater number of readers. Google Adwords allows you to rotate through up to 9 different ads (different headlines) at no extra cost. This is a fantastic option, because Google will tell you which ad gets the most people clicking on it and you can eliminate any ad which isn’t drawing your readers in. I discussed in a previous post how to set up headlines for your website and novel to entice readers. You need to think of your ad as one big headline. You don’t need to sell your product in the ad; you just have to get the reader curious enough to click. You need to keep them short and sharp. Rambling is not effective. If you are a non-fiction author think about the 9 main benefits of your e-book and turn those into ads. Make a clear promise to your reader, what is in it for them? And you can, as always, make it irresistible if you offer something for free whether it is a sample or your whole book. Also try using your keywords in the ad. If your reader has typed in ‘Ninja Secrets’ they are more likely to click if they see those words in the first line of the ad.
For tools like Project Wonderful, where you just advertise on specific sites, you need to decide how long you want to show your ad for. If you advertise on one site for three months, constantly, the visitors will get use to the ad being there and they won’t see it. Once you go chameleon and blend into the background, it doesn’t matter what your ad contains. It could include a photo of naked women doing the CanCan on the back of a pink elephant and it wouldn’t make a difference. So it’s important to do it in a pattern where you advertise for several weeks, then remove the ad from the site for several weeks and repeat.
BORROW: Also known as joint ventures. Here is where you do your shady deal with the crazy man in the alley. Well, not quite. What you need is someone in your field - if you know the person it makes it easier – who has a large database of people they can contact. Then you do a deal with them to split the profits of your sales if they email their database about your e-book. This works better for non-fiction authors. On the other side of the coin you can look at this as writers helping writers. If you have a fellow indie author in the same genre whose novel you have read and would recommend, you can collaborate and borrow each other’s readers/traffic. Put their synopsis in the back of your novel and have them do the same for you. Then every reader who finishes your novel, full to the brim with praise for your prose, sees the ad to the book. Because they liked your book so much and it is in the same genre as yours, they take your recommendation to purchase the other novel. It is a win-win situation for both authors.
FREE: Three for free! The first two I shall mention briefly as I will be covering them in more detail in later blog posts. The first is social media, that topic you have all heard so much about. By connecting with people in your niche through such sites as Twitter and Facebook you can generate large amounts of traffic through promotional posts. It is always important to balance the promotion with sincere participation within your community, with promotion only taking up 30-40% of what you write. The more you engage with your followers, send them to funny links, and help inform them on your topic, the more impact your promotions will have. The second is writing articles on your topic. This is a great way to get promotion without having to do the leg work. My lips are sealed on the details for this is tomorrow’s blog post.
The third and final way to get free promotion and traffic is by creating a press release. Ever wonder how the footage of a budgerigar riding a surf board got on the 6 pm news? Or how every newspaper seemed to be present when Richard Branson was making one of his ‘surprise’ stunts? Most articles in a newspaper are there because someone sent a press release to an editor. If you can make your e-book news worthy (do not make your business the focus that will get you discarded faster than a publisher rejection) then you can get free publicity. There are three ways you can do this. A) Do something good for others (charity). B) Make announcements that affect a lot of people. Or make an announcement that will intrigue a lot of people. C) Have a strong and clear view on a news topic. If you have a strong opinion and can back it up, say it in a press release. Editors love opposing sides of a story so keep a close watch on internet sites related to your niche. A press release is similar to a synopsis, it must intrigue and excite, tell the story quickly and concisely and provides contact information if an editor would like more info on your release.
Pick at least one of these methods of traffic generation to start. Do not leave your book out in the cold unsupported!!! Because the fact of the matter is, you can have the world’s greatest book, but if no one reads it, it becomes the world’s greatest digital paper weight.
TOMORROW: The Media Machine: How writing short articles can draw massive traffic to your e-book download page.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Reviews: How Credible Is Your E-Book?
So you have your first 5 star reviews, or five, or ten.... You know depends on the number of family members you have. Unfortunately, unless your family member is a well known book critique, chances are people WILL doubt that all your 20 plus 5 star reviews are genuine and not just your ego going for a joy ride under a fake name.
You need to remember that the best review is a balanced one. If you are deleting all your bad reviews and leaving only squeaky clean ones, a little switch is going to flip inside the prospective readers head flashing a red warning light. The readers aren’t stupid; they know when you’ve been rigging the results. It’s important to note that a 1 star review is not necessarily always negative. Indie author Brian Pratt, now making almost $20,000/month with his e-book sales, noted how one of his bad reviews led to generating one very happy fan. The review in questions was along the lines of, “This is horrible, it reads like a D&D (Dungeon and Dragons) videogame script.” Brian received an email from a fan - a large player of videogames - who sighted this review as the reason why he tried and then bought all seven books in that series. ‘Bad’ reviews should never be discounted because one reader’s dislike is another reader’s passion.
If your friends or family members do write a review make sure they include both the good points and the possible problems that people might have with the novel. They should also pick out quotes from the novel to prove their point if possible. Basically they have to say exactly why they enjoyed the book, what did it accomplish? Did the characters stand out? How did they stand out? Was it a thrilling spin on an age old theme? Then have them note what points might not appeal to some people. For example, “It’s great for fantasy and sci-fi lovers but if you aren’t too keen on romance this might not be the book for you.” One person may have trouble believing a dog can talk while another reader might say, “Bring on the dog humour.”
Reviews are supremely important to the credibility of your work. A good spread of reviews will let a reader know what they are in for. It is a recommendation from one reader to another, rather than a sales pitch from an author to a reader. However, not all reviews are made equal. A review from an influential and respected reviewer is needed to really make an impact. One of the problems for self-published indie e-book authors is that few reviewers accept a) e-books and b) self-published books. This is mainly due to the reputation of self-publishing in the industry. A few people were a little overzealous with their substandard novels and buggered it up for the rest of us. That’s life. It may be possible to set a new standard though. I am a large believer of the theory, unless you give it a go, you won’t know. So I would suggest to you, if you have a good quality book (Preferably if it has been through an editor) that has been well received in the e-book stores, then think about sending an enquiry letter (which I will discuss) to these reviewers. Let’s see if we can help shift them to a more open minded view of e-published works.
Reviewers generally read genre specific books and so, in a sense, finding reviewers is kind of like finding a publisher, you have to be precise. So to find a reviewer in your genre or niche all you have to do is type ‘book reviewer’ + your niche into Google. As you’re searching find out what they have reviewed. You don’t want to send a paranormal romance to someone who reviews paranormal thrillers. Are the books that they review ones that you know? Do they relate you your type of genre? How many people follow their recommendations? Do they review for publications? There are many people who will offer to review your book, but only a few will have the public presence that you are looking for.
Then you need to check out the reviewer’s submission guidelines. Some reviewers ask for you to send an enquiry first, others will tell you just to send the damn thing. Each reviewer will have slightly different rules of what they will and won’t accept. Very specialised non-fiction filled with jargon may need to be reviewed by peers with a good reputation rather than book reviewers due to its technical nature. Reviewers will not read unpublished manuscripts. Remember, as a self-published author your book has to be of exceptionally quality for major reviewers to consider reading your work. Reviewers do not mince words; they will not recommend your book to anybody if it does not read well. Generally they prefer that your book is currently available to the public (although some, contrarily want your book several months before you release it). Some e-book reviewers will read books published by indie authors (including small press authors) as well as traditionally published authors who are re-releasing backlist titles on their own, so that’s something to keep in mind for authors who are out of print.
But if you want to appear professional and stand out from the hundreds of books that reviewers get every week there are several things you must do. You should ALWAYS attach an enquiry or cover letter in the body of your email to the reviewer. This needs to be short and to the point. Give them your first and second pitches; tell them your author credentials, why these credentials qualify you to write that book. Mention at least one of the books that they have reviewed, and why their review led you to think they were the right person to send your book to. Finally you have to give them the unique selling point of your book. Why is it different, why is it life changing? This will come from the synopsis you have written and the content you have carefully placed on your website. For example, indie author D.N. Charles is giving his book away for free to any woman in the Australian sex industry in the hopes of finding the woman who inspired his novel. This creates interest and curiosity. Remember, you are pitching your novel to them. Reviewers only consider the work sent to them, it is your job to convince them to read yours as soon as possible. If you want to approach a reviewer who does not accept e-books or self-published works then send them the enquiry letter only, with the best headline you can manage in the subject line of the email.
Send them your most up-to-date, corrected and perfectly formatted copy! You do not go to a party half dressed, why would you send your novel to a reviewer half polished? Similarly your cover better be professional. If your cover is amateur you are giving the impression that your work is amateur. Again, you wouldn’t go to a party half dressed, and you certainly wouldn’t go to a party in a garbage bag. There are no do over’s. The copy you send first is the one they are going to read. So you better make sure that you send them the right one. Send it to them in the format they request whether it be Kindle format, pdf, whatever. If possible zip the file so that it does not clog up their inbox with its size. You want to make sure that you make it as easy as possible for them to access your novel. They are giving credibility to your work, expecting them to click on this link or that link and then download it using this or that coupon is a) not a good way to get into their good graces and b) disrespectful and treating them like your maid. The best strategy is to add the e-book as an attachment to your dazzling enquiry email.
So, it’s time to ditch that garbage bag for a cocktail dress (or suit) and start submitting to your chosen reviewers. Perhaps save the champagne for after you have read review...
TOMORROW: The Media Machine: Bringing traffic to your site whether it be paid, borrowed or free!
You need to remember that the best review is a balanced one. If you are deleting all your bad reviews and leaving only squeaky clean ones, a little switch is going to flip inside the prospective readers head flashing a red warning light. The readers aren’t stupid; they know when you’ve been rigging the results. It’s important to note that a 1 star review is not necessarily always negative. Indie author Brian Pratt, now making almost $20,000/month with his e-book sales, noted how one of his bad reviews led to generating one very happy fan. The review in questions was along the lines of, “This is horrible, it reads like a D&D (Dungeon and Dragons) videogame script.” Brian received an email from a fan - a large player of videogames - who sighted this review as the reason why he tried and then bought all seven books in that series. ‘Bad’ reviews should never be discounted because one reader’s dislike is another reader’s passion.
If your friends or family members do write a review make sure they include both the good points and the possible problems that people might have with the novel. They should also pick out quotes from the novel to prove their point if possible. Basically they have to say exactly why they enjoyed the book, what did it accomplish? Did the characters stand out? How did they stand out? Was it a thrilling spin on an age old theme? Then have them note what points might not appeal to some people. For example, “It’s great for fantasy and sci-fi lovers but if you aren’t too keen on romance this might not be the book for you.” One person may have trouble believing a dog can talk while another reader might say, “Bring on the dog humour.”
Reviews are supremely important to the credibility of your work. A good spread of reviews will let a reader know what they are in for. It is a recommendation from one reader to another, rather than a sales pitch from an author to a reader. However, not all reviews are made equal. A review from an influential and respected reviewer is needed to really make an impact. One of the problems for self-published indie e-book authors is that few reviewers accept a) e-books and b) self-published books. This is mainly due to the reputation of self-publishing in the industry. A few people were a little overzealous with their substandard novels and buggered it up for the rest of us. That’s life. It may be possible to set a new standard though. I am a large believer of the theory, unless you give it a go, you won’t know. So I would suggest to you, if you have a good quality book (Preferably if it has been through an editor) that has been well received in the e-book stores, then think about sending an enquiry letter (which I will discuss) to these reviewers. Let’s see if we can help shift them to a more open minded view of e-published works.
Reviewers generally read genre specific books and so, in a sense, finding reviewers is kind of like finding a publisher, you have to be precise. So to find a reviewer in your genre or niche all you have to do is type ‘book reviewer’ + your niche into Google. As you’re searching find out what they have reviewed. You don’t want to send a paranormal romance to someone who reviews paranormal thrillers. Are the books that they review ones that you know? Do they relate you your type of genre? How many people follow their recommendations? Do they review for publications? There are many people who will offer to review your book, but only a few will have the public presence that you are looking for.
Then you need to check out the reviewer’s submission guidelines. Some reviewers ask for you to send an enquiry first, others will tell you just to send the damn thing. Each reviewer will have slightly different rules of what they will and won’t accept. Very specialised non-fiction filled with jargon may need to be reviewed by peers with a good reputation rather than book reviewers due to its technical nature. Reviewers will not read unpublished manuscripts. Remember, as a self-published author your book has to be of exceptionally quality for major reviewers to consider reading your work. Reviewers do not mince words; they will not recommend your book to anybody if it does not read well. Generally they prefer that your book is currently available to the public (although some, contrarily want your book several months before you release it). Some e-book reviewers will read books published by indie authors (including small press authors) as well as traditionally published authors who are re-releasing backlist titles on their own, so that’s something to keep in mind for authors who are out of print.
But if you want to appear professional and stand out from the hundreds of books that reviewers get every week there are several things you must do. You should ALWAYS attach an enquiry or cover letter in the body of your email to the reviewer. This needs to be short and to the point. Give them your first and second pitches; tell them your author credentials, why these credentials qualify you to write that book. Mention at least one of the books that they have reviewed, and why their review led you to think they were the right person to send your book to. Finally you have to give them the unique selling point of your book. Why is it different, why is it life changing? This will come from the synopsis you have written and the content you have carefully placed on your website. For example, indie author D.N. Charles is giving his book away for free to any woman in the Australian sex industry in the hopes of finding the woman who inspired his novel. This creates interest and curiosity. Remember, you are pitching your novel to them. Reviewers only consider the work sent to them, it is your job to convince them to read yours as soon as possible. If you want to approach a reviewer who does not accept e-books or self-published works then send them the enquiry letter only, with the best headline you can manage in the subject line of the email.
Send them your most up-to-date, corrected and perfectly formatted copy! You do not go to a party half dressed, why would you send your novel to a reviewer half polished? Similarly your cover better be professional. If your cover is amateur you are giving the impression that your work is amateur. Again, you wouldn’t go to a party half dressed, and you certainly wouldn’t go to a party in a garbage bag. There are no do over’s. The copy you send first is the one they are going to read. So you better make sure that you send them the right one. Send it to them in the format they request whether it be Kindle format, pdf, whatever. If possible zip the file so that it does not clog up their inbox with its size. You want to make sure that you make it as easy as possible for them to access your novel. They are giving credibility to your work, expecting them to click on this link or that link and then download it using this or that coupon is a) not a good way to get into their good graces and b) disrespectful and treating them like your maid. The best strategy is to add the e-book as an attachment to your dazzling enquiry email.
So, it’s time to ditch that garbage bag for a cocktail dress (or suit) and start submitting to your chosen reviewers. Perhaps save the champagne for after you have read review...
TOMORROW: The Media Machine: Bringing traffic to your site whether it be paid, borrowed or free!
Turning Your Once Off Readers Into Return Readers
Many a successful marketer will tell you it takes anywhere from seven to fourteen connections between you and a prospective buyer before they will trust you enough to purchase what you have. Granted no internet marketer I have ever met was giving away their product for under 5 dollars, or free for that matter. So my instincts say we have the edge here and can probably downgrade that number to around two or three. But the current mind set in our industry is that you sell a copy of your book, and let the buyer go. And hopefully when you release the next one, the reader will find their way back to you using some sort of sixth sense and discover you have a new work. This seems like a roundabout way to make an income. This bookish sixth sense is not reliable by any means and seems to depend on how well you wooed your reader when you wined and dined them with your words.
What if there was a way that you could stay in touch and have the reader flocking to your next book when you contact them? “Em, you’re living in a fantasy land,” you say, “People don’t just give their email to random authors, that’s crazy talk.” The point that many an author seems to be missing is that, as a race, humans like to socialise! It’s part of human nature to join communities and be a part of something. You are cheating your readers by not giving them the chance to connect to the community you create, not give them the chance to be pulled back into your world when the pressures of life get too much and they’ve just forgotten how good it feels. Every reader needs a little nudge. You are wasting your time on all this marketing if you are not giving readers the opportunity to opt into your database so you can communicate with them later. Cutting a reader loose after they have delved into their pocket only once is a bad business plan in any industry. Remember, a reader’s attention span lasts all of 5 minutes. You need to keep cropping up in their lives to be remembered. Kind of like a spinster aunt who randomly shows up at birthdays and christenings to prove that she still exists and wouldn’t mind a helping hand here or there with the cats.
Readers go through so many books, so many authors, that we become forgettable. We merge together in one giant author lump so we look like an unappealing Picasso. What you, as an author, should be doing is making sure they know you are still here! You’re still alive, and look; you’ve trained your cats in the mean time to do some pretty cool shit. Why don’t they come and have a look? The question is, how do we get them to give their name and email? It’s easy really, I’m sure you would know the technique by now. Stop selling upfront! If you shove your novels at them like a mother shoves greens at a child, you are going to end up with one very mess floor and a really pissed off kid. You need to connect with readers first so they will trust you. And the best way to capture the attention of a reader and their email, is to give something for free. Whether it is information, audio interviews, a short article of handy tips, a weekly or monthly newsletter on topic X, or a signed caricature of you turning a Dragon into a mouse, it doesn’t matter as long as it grabs their attention and they see some value in it.
If you are a non-fiction author a fortnightly newsletter with handy tips and articles on your niche is a fantastic way to connect. Whether it be a self help book you’re selling, or a book on the world’s best nudie runs. The best part is you don’t have to create all of the content yourself. A great place to get free articles is ezinearticles.com, there are articles on just about every topic (I’m sure nudie runs are in there somewhere) and it is free as long as you keep the About Author section at the bottom of the article. You can disable any hyperlinks attached to the section if you are worried about it being too easy for your readers to access someone else’s product rather than yours. One of the great mantras you should constantly repeat back to yourself is, ‘People do not buy content, they buy convenience’. Though you may be giving away some of your tips for free in a newsletter, the reader will still buy your e-book because all the information is there, in one convenient, ordered location. Another great idea for non-fiction authors is to give away information for free, or part of their e-book for free and then offer their services as a consultant in that field. If you have enough knowledge to write about your niche, you have enough knowledge to advise others.
So give something away for free, and then follow up with other emails! “Ok Em, that’s all very well and good, but I don’t have time to email all my thousands of fans that decide to join me.” First, let’s deflate your ego a bit there; second, this is really a non issue. It is at this point in time that you turn to auto-responders. Auto-responders are your best friend. Anyone who opts in to your ‘list’ can be entered into an auto-responder (One such auto-responder is Get Response). Then, all you have to do is write one email, which you can customise with your readers first name and then send it to your entire ‘list’, all your readers, with the click of the button. So not only does it allow you to provide mass updates to your readers with very little grunt work, but it also allows you to be spam compliant. Do not spam your readers with constant promotions! Your email should be 70 percent content, 30 percent focus on your novels. You are trying to create a connection, don’t screw it up by pissing them off.
Having said this, you also need to know that readers are a little like dogs. You have to train them to be committed, as it were, to your community. At the end of each email you want to make sure you have a call to action. Whether it is to get them to click through to an interesting link, check out your latest blog post, or participate in a character naming competition. You need to get them to take some sort of action at the end of your email. Because once they are use to taking that action, once they connect your links and your call to action with things that amuse and entertain them, then when it really matters, like when you are launching another book, they will willingly take a look at the book and purchase it.
This is the best way to rocket up the best-seller charts, by sending an email to your readers asking them all to purchase your new book on the same day, let them know that by helping you sell more books, you will be able to take time away from marketing to write more books for them!
It is only by converting one time readers into return readers that you will start to see real e-book success. But nurture your connection carefully, because the readers can bite…
TOMORROW: The Media Machine: How to target influential reviewers and how to use your reader reviews to your advantage.
What if there was a way that you could stay in touch and have the reader flocking to your next book when you contact them? “Em, you’re living in a fantasy land,” you say, “People don’t just give their email to random authors, that’s crazy talk.” The point that many an author seems to be missing is that, as a race, humans like to socialise! It’s part of human nature to join communities and be a part of something. You are cheating your readers by not giving them the chance to connect to the community you create, not give them the chance to be pulled back into your world when the pressures of life get too much and they’ve just forgotten how good it feels. Every reader needs a little nudge. You are wasting your time on all this marketing if you are not giving readers the opportunity to opt into your database so you can communicate with them later. Cutting a reader loose after they have delved into their pocket only once is a bad business plan in any industry. Remember, a reader’s attention span lasts all of 5 minutes. You need to keep cropping up in their lives to be remembered. Kind of like a spinster aunt who randomly shows up at birthdays and christenings to prove that she still exists and wouldn’t mind a helping hand here or there with the cats.
Readers go through so many books, so many authors, that we become forgettable. We merge together in one giant author lump so we look like an unappealing Picasso. What you, as an author, should be doing is making sure they know you are still here! You’re still alive, and look; you’ve trained your cats in the mean time to do some pretty cool shit. Why don’t they come and have a look? The question is, how do we get them to give their name and email? It’s easy really, I’m sure you would know the technique by now. Stop selling upfront! If you shove your novels at them like a mother shoves greens at a child, you are going to end up with one very mess floor and a really pissed off kid. You need to connect with readers first so they will trust you. And the best way to capture the attention of a reader and their email, is to give something for free. Whether it is information, audio interviews, a short article of handy tips, a weekly or monthly newsletter on topic X, or a signed caricature of you turning a Dragon into a mouse, it doesn’t matter as long as it grabs their attention and they see some value in it.
If you are a non-fiction author a fortnightly newsletter with handy tips and articles on your niche is a fantastic way to connect. Whether it be a self help book you’re selling, or a book on the world’s best nudie runs. The best part is you don’t have to create all of the content yourself. A great place to get free articles is ezinearticles.com, there are articles on just about every topic (I’m sure nudie runs are in there somewhere) and it is free as long as you keep the About Author section at the bottom of the article. You can disable any hyperlinks attached to the section if you are worried about it being too easy for your readers to access someone else’s product rather than yours. One of the great mantras you should constantly repeat back to yourself is, ‘People do not buy content, they buy convenience’. Though you may be giving away some of your tips for free in a newsletter, the reader will still buy your e-book because all the information is there, in one convenient, ordered location. Another great idea for non-fiction authors is to give away information for free, or part of their e-book for free and then offer their services as a consultant in that field. If you have enough knowledge to write about your niche, you have enough knowledge to advise others.
So give something away for free, and then follow up with other emails! “Ok Em, that’s all very well and good, but I don’t have time to email all my thousands of fans that decide to join me.” First, let’s deflate your ego a bit there; second, this is really a non issue. It is at this point in time that you turn to auto-responders. Auto-responders are your best friend. Anyone who opts in to your ‘list’ can be entered into an auto-responder (One such auto-responder is Get Response). Then, all you have to do is write one email, which you can customise with your readers first name and then send it to your entire ‘list’, all your readers, with the click of the button. So not only does it allow you to provide mass updates to your readers with very little grunt work, but it also allows you to be spam compliant. Do not spam your readers with constant promotions! Your email should be 70 percent content, 30 percent focus on your novels. You are trying to create a connection, don’t screw it up by pissing them off.
Having said this, you also need to know that readers are a little like dogs. You have to train them to be committed, as it were, to your community. At the end of each email you want to make sure you have a call to action. Whether it is to get them to click through to an interesting link, check out your latest blog post, or participate in a character naming competition. You need to get them to take some sort of action at the end of your email. Because once they are use to taking that action, once they connect your links and your call to action with things that amuse and entertain them, then when it really matters, like when you are launching another book, they will willingly take a look at the book and purchase it.
This is the best way to rocket up the best-seller charts, by sending an email to your readers asking them all to purchase your new book on the same day, let them know that by helping you sell more books, you will be able to take time away from marketing to write more books for them!
It is only by converting one time readers into return readers that you will start to see real e-book success. But nurture your connection carefully, because the readers can bite…
TOMORROW: The Media Machine: How to target influential reviewers and how to use your reader reviews to your advantage.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Websites: How To Entice Readers Into A Buying Extravaganza
One of your main missions as a successful writer is to be accessible to your readers and to create a community where they can interact with you and your work. So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to give yourself a permanent web presence. It’s time to delve into creating your own website. Here the term, ‘the simpler it is the better’, rings loud and true. At least until you have enough money to make it flashy! So today we are going to talk about not only how to physically set up a site, but what you MUST put on there to draw your readers in.
There are three main avenues to fashion your own website. You can create a professional one with a dot com web address yourself, or you can hire someone to do it for you, or you can use the free power of blogging. If you wish to create a simple website yourself, but you do not know how to work that Microsoft Front Page thingy, do not despair! There is hope. One simple tool available online is Big Pixie. Big Pixie will allow you to easily and simply put a website together and it will host your site for you. There are more tutorials then you can poke a stick at on how the program works, so there is no need to stare at the computer screen in a hopeless daze. Nor is there much chance of your head imploding from staring at html code for a minute longer then you should. If this is your chosen path young hero, you shall need to purchase a domain name (address) from a website like GoDaddy or NameCheap. You can purchase the rights for a name of your choosing for up to ten years (depending on how confident you are in your quest or how many gold pieces you have in your pouch). Big Pixie allows you to transfer the domain name to their hosting service so you can then design your portal (website). It costs $30/month for Big Pixie to host the site. Basically you are renting space on a server (known as a host) so that people can access your site. You must have a domain name and host before you can achieve your quest (for your website to work)!
Alternately, you can hire a trained assassin (professional) to build your portal (website). Elance is a fantastic place to outsource. You set up a description of what you want your website to do, how you want it to look, how many pages you would like and so on. Then website designers bid for the chance to work with you. So you can choose an assassin (website designer) based on their price, the experience they have, the interests they have, the websites they have done previously, and previous customer testimonials, so you get the best person for the kill, erhmm I mean job. In this instance you can use a site like hostgator to buy the domain name and host the site for as little as $4 a month.
Or you can take the free road (and the long website extension) of setting up your own blog. Blogs are great for two reasons, 1) they are free, 2) the more you post on them the more visible you become on Google. Google likes sites that continually add fresh content, and if you start getting traffic (people) to your website, Google likes you even more. Two major blogs are Blogger and Wordpress. From what I have heard (though you are welcome to argue) Blogger is easier to use, and as always all you have to do is search for Blogger tutorials on YouTube to figure out how to use the program if you are having trouble.
Right, so you have chosen the path you will take on your quest (whether it be self made website, professional website or blog). But the question remains, what needs to be present on this website to weave a spell around our potential readers and draw them carefully into our web? What we want to do is entice readers to buy. The best way to do this is to provoke an emotional reaction, because if someone feels emotionally connected to your work and can imagine how it relates to their own life and enjoyment, they will buy your novel above the masses. You just have to make that connection.
There are several great steps you can take to increase your connection to your visitors and in turn make more sales. Of course here is where you’re synopsis will come out again, that brilliant piece of writing chock full of all those keywords you have researched. But you want to add to that experience both visually and audibly. So when a person visits your site you want to greet them with a video or audio. A video you can record with the webcam on your computer or with your digital camera and upload the video onto YouTube. Then there are tutorials on YouTube that show you how to put your video onto your blog or website. Trust me when I say that barely anyone is doing this at the moment, but it is so powerful. People see you and hear your voice and they connect with you on a deeper level then they would through words on a page. In the audio/visual and digital age, this puts you a step ahead of the rest, and every step counts when you are self-published. If you believe you look like the troll under the Fairytale Bridge you can just record your voice and similarly find YouTube videos telling you how to upload your audio to your website.
The next thing readers should see is your headline. Not “This is Bob’s Blog” or “Welcome to the world of FrankenLou”. The headline needs to grab attention! It needs to offer a big promise to the reader. Technically what it needs to contain is a benefit to the reader for staying, and an element of curiosity. This is probably easier for non-fiction then fiction. For example, an appropriate title for my gap year travel novel would be, “Learn how easy it is to have the travel adventure of your dreams… with almost no money up front!” The adventure of my dreams is easy? And I need almost no money?? Please tell me what else! For fiction appeal to an emotion within the prospective reader, relate the story to their needs and interests and as with non-fiction, end with a curiosity. What we are aiming to do is excite the imagination. To use the reader’s imagination in relation to our book. They must see, hear and feel what it is they do or don’t want, and wonder about how their life will be changed (I hate to use a cliché but it needs to be strong) forever! For fiction this will be an extension of your synopsis, tapping into each of these senses. For a non-fiction author you can lists the benefits of your information, how it affects the reader and how it will change the reader’s life for the better after reading your novel. Basically, what that piece of information means for them.
You also want to hammer into the prospective reader what is unique about your novel. Because we place more value in things that are rare. “That rusty coin you see in the shop window? Might be dirty, but it’s the last of its kind. That will be $5000 thanks….” If you can make your novel unique then you are half way to making a sale and gaining a reader. If you can, try and make the offer irresistible. Offer several short stories for free based around the world you have created, or offer a free audio interview with an expert in your niche if they buy your non-fiction novel. Offer access to a reader’s only discussion board; make your novel an experience! Also, if you have any reviews or testimonials make sure you place them prominently. The best reviews provide some balance, remember reviews such as “this book is the best book ever” are hard to believe at the best of times…Your about the author section is another chance to show a reader the author credentials from your book proposal. Tell them exactly why you are the best person to write this book, what is your experience, how have events in your life lead you to the point where you have written this book for them. For your readers.
Because by far the most important part about your website? It is ALWAYS about the readers. It is in no way, shape or form about you. Ever. You can relate to your readers, and share similar experiences but your website is not an avenue for the Me Show. But then, when is it ever about the author?
TOMORROW: The Media Machine: How to give readers an opportunity to connect with you personally without having them take up your writing time!
There are three main avenues to fashion your own website. You can create a professional one with a dot com web address yourself, or you can hire someone to do it for you, or you can use the free power of blogging. If you wish to create a simple website yourself, but you do not know how to work that Microsoft Front Page thingy, do not despair! There is hope. One simple tool available online is Big Pixie. Big Pixie will allow you to easily and simply put a website together and it will host your site for you. There are more tutorials then you can poke a stick at on how the program works, so there is no need to stare at the computer screen in a hopeless daze. Nor is there much chance of your head imploding from staring at html code for a minute longer then you should. If this is your chosen path young hero, you shall need to purchase a domain name (address) from a website like GoDaddy or NameCheap. You can purchase the rights for a name of your choosing for up to ten years (depending on how confident you are in your quest or how many gold pieces you have in your pouch). Big Pixie allows you to transfer the domain name to their hosting service so you can then design your portal (website). It costs $30/month for Big Pixie to host the site. Basically you are renting space on a server (known as a host) so that people can access your site. You must have a domain name and host before you can achieve your quest (for your website to work)!
Alternately, you can hire a trained assassin (professional) to build your portal (website). Elance is a fantastic place to outsource. You set up a description of what you want your website to do, how you want it to look, how many pages you would like and so on. Then website designers bid for the chance to work with you. So you can choose an assassin (website designer) based on their price, the experience they have, the interests they have, the websites they have done previously, and previous customer testimonials, so you get the best person for the kill, erhmm I mean job. In this instance you can use a site like hostgator to buy the domain name and host the site for as little as $4 a month.
Or you can take the free road (and the long website extension) of setting up your own blog. Blogs are great for two reasons, 1) they are free, 2) the more you post on them the more visible you become on Google. Google likes sites that continually add fresh content, and if you start getting traffic (people) to your website, Google likes you even more. Two major blogs are Blogger and Wordpress. From what I have heard (though you are welcome to argue) Blogger is easier to use, and as always all you have to do is search for Blogger tutorials on YouTube to figure out how to use the program if you are having trouble.
Right, so you have chosen the path you will take on your quest (whether it be self made website, professional website or blog). But the question remains, what needs to be present on this website to weave a spell around our potential readers and draw them carefully into our web? What we want to do is entice readers to buy. The best way to do this is to provoke an emotional reaction, because if someone feels emotionally connected to your work and can imagine how it relates to their own life and enjoyment, they will buy your novel above the masses. You just have to make that connection.
There are several great steps you can take to increase your connection to your visitors and in turn make more sales. Of course here is where you’re synopsis will come out again, that brilliant piece of writing chock full of all those keywords you have researched. But you want to add to that experience both visually and audibly. So when a person visits your site you want to greet them with a video or audio. A video you can record with the webcam on your computer or with your digital camera and upload the video onto YouTube. Then there are tutorials on YouTube that show you how to put your video onto your blog or website. Trust me when I say that barely anyone is doing this at the moment, but it is so powerful. People see you and hear your voice and they connect with you on a deeper level then they would through words on a page. In the audio/visual and digital age, this puts you a step ahead of the rest, and every step counts when you are self-published. If you believe you look like the troll under the Fairytale Bridge you can just record your voice and similarly find YouTube videos telling you how to upload your audio to your website.
The next thing readers should see is your headline. Not “This is Bob’s Blog” or “Welcome to the world of FrankenLou”. The headline needs to grab attention! It needs to offer a big promise to the reader. Technically what it needs to contain is a benefit to the reader for staying, and an element of curiosity. This is probably easier for non-fiction then fiction. For example, an appropriate title for my gap year travel novel would be, “Learn how easy it is to have the travel adventure of your dreams… with almost no money up front!” The adventure of my dreams is easy? And I need almost no money?? Please tell me what else! For fiction appeal to an emotion within the prospective reader, relate the story to their needs and interests and as with non-fiction, end with a curiosity. What we are aiming to do is excite the imagination. To use the reader’s imagination in relation to our book. They must see, hear and feel what it is they do or don’t want, and wonder about how their life will be changed (I hate to use a cliché but it needs to be strong) forever! For fiction this will be an extension of your synopsis, tapping into each of these senses. For a non-fiction author you can lists the benefits of your information, how it affects the reader and how it will change the reader’s life for the better after reading your novel. Basically, what that piece of information means for them.
You also want to hammer into the prospective reader what is unique about your novel. Because we place more value in things that are rare. “That rusty coin you see in the shop window? Might be dirty, but it’s the last of its kind. That will be $5000 thanks….” If you can make your novel unique then you are half way to making a sale and gaining a reader. If you can, try and make the offer irresistible. Offer several short stories for free based around the world you have created, or offer a free audio interview with an expert in your niche if they buy your non-fiction novel. Offer access to a reader’s only discussion board; make your novel an experience! Also, if you have any reviews or testimonials make sure you place them prominently. The best reviews provide some balance, remember reviews such as “this book is the best book ever” are hard to believe at the best of times…Your about the author section is another chance to show a reader the author credentials from your book proposal. Tell them exactly why you are the best person to write this book, what is your experience, how have events in your life lead you to the point where you have written this book for them. For your readers.
Because by far the most important part about your website? It is ALWAYS about the readers. It is in no way, shape or form about you. Ever. You can relate to your readers, and share similar experiences but your website is not an avenue for the Me Show. But then, when is it ever about the author?
TOMORROW: The Media Machine: How to give readers an opportunity to connect with you personally without having them take up your writing time!
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Marketing Starts Yesterday
Yesterday I mentioned that horrible word, ‘free’ and ‘your novel’ in the same sentence. Yes, I am completely serious. No, I am not in a straight jacket. No, I do not feel the need to jump of a bridge. There is a difference between those who succeed with their e-books and those that don’t. Those that succeed as the ones who have learnt how to use free to their advantage, they are the Masters of Free and have made thousands.
Many interesting marketing skills and strategies (including viral marketing) can be applied to publishing very effectively, particularly in terms of niche markets. It is up to an author to market their books smartly. The author is competing for the reader’s attention. Don’t waste the opportunity, capitalise on the 2.5 million searches (per month) for free e-books on Google! By using techniques such as giving away the first book in a series, or allowing a 100 page free sample for a 300 page book, the freebie hooks the reader’s interest and reels them in to buying the rest of the book/series. Free, eliminates the risk for first time readers and builds a following. If they love it they will tell more people and help you to overcome obscurity. The lower the price of the novel, the more likely people are to buy it, increasing the number of readers and overall profit. This will not be the first time I say this, readers are an author’s sales force!
There goes that angry ‘teaspoon in a blender’ noise again. “If I’m giving away my work for free, how the hell will I make money? Free doesn’t pay the bills! Free does run my internet! Free doesn’t let me flip off my boss and shout, ‘I QUIT’!”
What you are after is a following, if you do not have a following then no-one will know who you are and they will not look for you or your books. You remain a nothing author. There are 2.5 million searches every month for free e-books; if half of those are just the same people typing the same keywords that is still 1.25 million people looking for a free e-book. By making your book available for free for a month or two, or adding free bonus's with your book such as free audio, you are getting people to sample your work for no risk. And hey, at least someone is reading the damn thing rather than it just sitting in your desk draw, or in an envelope in the middle of some publisher’s slush pile. You need people to talk about your work, to discuss it, to anticipate it. One great way to convince others to buy it is to give it away for free on the condition that they give you a review of your book. If even 10% of them remember, then you have testimonials to convince others to buy it. If you then sell your book cheaply or sell others in your series cheaply, the testimonials and its cheapness will get you more sales and gradually you can put the price up.
You can't do that with a hardcopy, it’s one price and if the person doesn't like it then they won't buy no matter how pretty the cover looks. Digitally or in print, you have to get a following and reviews to sell. It just happens that online this is easier to do because, let’s face it, you can't give a physical book away for free - it cost too much money to print, and unless you have bottomless coffers, your partner is probably going to confiscate your stash until you behave. However, you can give away a digital copy for free and you don't have to pay to mail it to the reader or print it. And the online bookstores 15% commission on $0 is still zero no matter how you look at it. If you have given away something for free, people are more inclined to respond in kind for a testimonial/review.
There are many authors who argue that pricing a book low gives the readers the impression your work is amateur. But I would argue that there are ways that you can minimise that idea of amateur quality by making sure that your cover is professional and eye catching, and that your synopsis is some of the best writing you have ever produced. You can use online writing and editing communities to hone your synopsis just as well as you can your novel samples. By making your work appear professional, you turn that idea of low quality into the reader feeling immense luck at finding such an appealing book at an affordable price.
The most successful e-book authors will tell you that the next step once you have written a good book is to write another great book, start building up a backlist as each new book offers an opportunity to sell the others you have written. In this way you can make the first free and be confident that at least 1 in 3 will buy the rest for $2.99/$3.99/$5.95 whatever you decide. As long as you make an impact with your first, readers will want to know what happens next.
If there is a strong response one can start looking into print on demand hardcopies. Cory Doctorow maximises his following and profit by simultaneously releasing a free digital version of his book and his POD at the same time. It is important to note that the attention span of a reader and searcher extends to a maximum of about 5 mins. We’re busy people, if you don’t have what we need right now, well too bad, we’ll just go back and buy that book about the flying pigs we saw. Once you know you have a popular book, by releasing POD at the same time you can consummate the sale quietly and efficiently before you’ve lost their attention and access to their buying impulse.
It is wise to have patience when first starting out. Most print book authors have taken years to get to where they are now, and the same is true of e-book authors. Writing is a long term investment, and e-books success is a slow build, you need to assemble a social network and create trust with your readers. And above all, marketing starts yesterday.
TOMORROW: The Media Machine: reviews and websites, how to entice readers into a buying extravaganza.
FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY! – Do you want to be ahead of the game? Join one of my introductory webinars (online seminar) on e-books! I will be speaking live and in detail about the 5 Fast, Simple secrets to E-Book Success and giving you some fantastic internet resources to help you on your way. Please join me to discover how you can create a massive following and increase the success of your e-book tenfold, allowing you to free up time to live, write and create whenever you want to.
Why Not Join My Weekly Introductory E-Book Webinar At 8:30pm?
Register NOW! In the blue box on the top right of the page
Many interesting marketing skills and strategies (including viral marketing) can be applied to publishing very effectively, particularly in terms of niche markets. It is up to an author to market their books smartly. The author is competing for the reader’s attention. Don’t waste the opportunity, capitalise on the 2.5 million searches (per month) for free e-books on Google! By using techniques such as giving away the first book in a series, or allowing a 100 page free sample for a 300 page book, the freebie hooks the reader’s interest and reels them in to buying the rest of the book/series. Free, eliminates the risk for first time readers and builds a following. If they love it they will tell more people and help you to overcome obscurity. The lower the price of the novel, the more likely people are to buy it, increasing the number of readers and overall profit. This will not be the first time I say this, readers are an author’s sales force!
There goes that angry ‘teaspoon in a blender’ noise again. “If I’m giving away my work for free, how the hell will I make money? Free doesn’t pay the bills! Free does run my internet! Free doesn’t let me flip off my boss and shout, ‘I QUIT’!”
What you are after is a following, if you do not have a following then no-one will know who you are and they will not look for you or your books. You remain a nothing author. There are 2.5 million searches every month for free e-books; if half of those are just the same people typing the same keywords that is still 1.25 million people looking for a free e-book. By making your book available for free for a month or two, or adding free bonus's with your book such as free audio, you are getting people to sample your work for no risk. And hey, at least someone is reading the damn thing rather than it just sitting in your desk draw, or in an envelope in the middle of some publisher’s slush pile. You need people to talk about your work, to discuss it, to anticipate it. One great way to convince others to buy it is to give it away for free on the condition that they give you a review of your book. If even 10% of them remember, then you have testimonials to convince others to buy it. If you then sell your book cheaply or sell others in your series cheaply, the testimonials and its cheapness will get you more sales and gradually you can put the price up.
You can't do that with a hardcopy, it’s one price and if the person doesn't like it then they won't buy no matter how pretty the cover looks. Digitally or in print, you have to get a following and reviews to sell. It just happens that online this is easier to do because, let’s face it, you can't give a physical book away for free - it cost too much money to print, and unless you have bottomless coffers, your partner is probably going to confiscate your stash until you behave. However, you can give away a digital copy for free and you don't have to pay to mail it to the reader or print it. And the online bookstores 15% commission on $0 is still zero no matter how you look at it. If you have given away something for free, people are more inclined to respond in kind for a testimonial/review.
There are many authors who argue that pricing a book low gives the readers the impression your work is amateur. But I would argue that there are ways that you can minimise that idea of amateur quality by making sure that your cover is professional and eye catching, and that your synopsis is some of the best writing you have ever produced. You can use online writing and editing communities to hone your synopsis just as well as you can your novel samples. By making your work appear professional, you turn that idea of low quality into the reader feeling immense luck at finding such an appealing book at an affordable price.
The most successful e-book authors will tell you that the next step once you have written a good book is to write another great book, start building up a backlist as each new book offers an opportunity to sell the others you have written. In this way you can make the first free and be confident that at least 1 in 3 will buy the rest for $2.99/$3.99/$5.95 whatever you decide. As long as you make an impact with your first, readers will want to know what happens next.
If there is a strong response one can start looking into print on demand hardcopies. Cory Doctorow maximises his following and profit by simultaneously releasing a free digital version of his book and his POD at the same time. It is important to note that the attention span of a reader and searcher extends to a maximum of about 5 mins. We’re busy people, if you don’t have what we need right now, well too bad, we’ll just go back and buy that book about the flying pigs we saw. Once you know you have a popular book, by releasing POD at the same time you can consummate the sale quietly and efficiently before you’ve lost their attention and access to their buying impulse.
It is wise to have patience when first starting out. Most print book authors have taken years to get to where they are now, and the same is true of e-book authors. Writing is a long term investment, and e-books success is a slow build, you need to assemble a social network and create trust with your readers. And above all, marketing starts yesterday.
TOMORROW: The Media Machine: reviews and websites, how to entice readers into a buying extravaganza.
FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY! – Do you want to be ahead of the game? Join one of my introductory webinars (online seminar) on e-books! I will be speaking live and in detail about the 5 Fast, Simple secrets to E-Book Success and giving you some fantastic internet resources to help you on your way. Please join me to discover how you can create a massive following and increase the success of your e-book tenfold, allowing you to free up time to live, write and create whenever you want to.
Why Not Join My Weekly Introductory E-Book Webinar At 8:30pm?
Register NOW! In the blue box on the top right of the page
Saturday, April 23, 2011
The Superbook
The word ‘test’ inspires horror in many people and may even cause some to break down in a quiet corner of the room. But the word ‘test’ is a marketer’s best friend and whether you like it or not, the time has come where you need to swap your creative brain for an analytical one. Because if you want to make money, if you want to do this for a living, you need to be looking for every inch you can get, every little detail must be honed to absolute perfection so that you have a well oiled, reader catching machine.
In some ways this requires you to be extra creative, because in this step I want you to do at least two of everything. That’s right, two; I want your creative mind to be so drunk it’s seeing double, triple, quadruple! The drunker it is the better. You want to make sure that the synopsis you have, the headlines you use to advertise, and the title of your book is going to entice the most number of readers. However, if you only have one synopsis, one headline, one price, one title, you will never know that if you had just changed the word ‘sultry’ to ‘seductive’ you would have sold an extra 10,000 copies. It is what is known in the marking world as split testing, and no, they are no practising gymnastics, it is how they make their money.
So how could split testing be applied to an e-book? Though I have not checked this with Smashwords founder Mark Coker, my first suggestion would be to come up with two different titles for your novel and upload one under your full name and the other under a shortened version of your name, for example a nick name. Now you have two titles that you can test. I would not recommend any more than two, because later when it comes time to pick the novel which converts the most readers (your ‘superbook’ as it were), you want it to be able to easily send people looking for your different test versions to your super book. It may be that Smashwords only ever lets you upload one version of your work (if anyone has thought of this and asked Mark about it, please let me know) then I suggest you do your title testing before hand. If you already have friends on social media, a blog or a writers group, come up with five or six headings and then find out which one appeals to your test dummies more. Then use this one for your novel upload. All these steps can be done with a single novel; it will just take a little longer to find your superbook combination.
One rule that you must follow before all else is to only ever change one thing at a time. Because if you change more than one you are going to have a hard time figuring out which one made your new readers download happy. It’s similar to only wearing one pair of underwear a day, if you change it 3 or 4 times you’re going to have a large laundry hamper to sort through. So, you have your two novels. Each should have the same synopsis, the same ads, the same keywords, the same pricing as the other. Now in your social media, your blog, while participating in forum boards etc alternate the URL you attach to each post, to each Tweet, to each status update. Do this for a month or two and see if one sells better.
Next determine whether giving your novel away gets you more readers than giving away a 100 page sample of your work. Do the same thing; test it for a couple of months to see what happens to each. Then test pricing, how many people buy it at 99 cents in comparison to $1.99? In comparison to $2.99. Remember only change the pricing of one book at a time. Are there less people buying the book at $2.99 but are you getting more money? There are some fantastic discussions on J.A. Konrath’s blog about pricing, have a look through those, and decide on a step by step testing process for your two novel versions.
Next have three or four different versions of your synopsis. After you have decided on an optimum price set both books at that price and then see which synopsis entices the reader more. Try two at once, then the one that performs the least you replace with another synopsis to test against the stronger one and so on. If you are advertising, look at changing the wording of your ads and see if one ad brings more traffic to your page then others. Always refine your keywords, see what words people are using in their forum posts, their Tweets, and keep adding to your keyword list, your ‘tags’ all the time.
The best way for this testing to succeed is to make sure that your novel is available on as many platforms as possible. The more places you are available, the more chance you have of being seen. As well as adding the word ‘test’ to your must list, you should also at the word ‘free’.
TOMORROW: To be free, or not to be free? That is the question. Oh, and a little something on POD.
FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY! – Do you want to be ahead of the game? Join one of my weekly introductory webinars (online seminar) on e-books! I will be speaking live and in detail about the 5 Fast, Simple secrets to E-Book Success and giving you some fantastic internet resources to help you on your way. Please join me to discover how you can create a massive following and increase the success of your e-book tenfold, allowing you to free up time to live, write and create whenever you want to.
Why Not Join My Weekly Introductory E-Book Webinar At 8:30pm?
Register NOW! In the blue box on the top right of the page
In some ways this requires you to be extra creative, because in this step I want you to do at least two of everything. That’s right, two; I want your creative mind to be so drunk it’s seeing double, triple, quadruple! The drunker it is the better. You want to make sure that the synopsis you have, the headlines you use to advertise, and the title of your book is going to entice the most number of readers. However, if you only have one synopsis, one headline, one price, one title, you will never know that if you had just changed the word ‘sultry’ to ‘seductive’ you would have sold an extra 10,000 copies. It is what is known in the marking world as split testing, and no, they are no practising gymnastics, it is how they make their money.
So how could split testing be applied to an e-book? Though I have not checked this with Smashwords founder Mark Coker, my first suggestion would be to come up with two different titles for your novel and upload one under your full name and the other under a shortened version of your name, for example a nick name. Now you have two titles that you can test. I would not recommend any more than two, because later when it comes time to pick the novel which converts the most readers (your ‘superbook’ as it were), you want it to be able to easily send people looking for your different test versions to your super book. It may be that Smashwords only ever lets you upload one version of your work (if anyone has thought of this and asked Mark about it, please let me know) then I suggest you do your title testing before hand. If you already have friends on social media, a blog or a writers group, come up with five or six headings and then find out which one appeals to your test dummies more. Then use this one for your novel upload. All these steps can be done with a single novel; it will just take a little longer to find your superbook combination.
One rule that you must follow before all else is to only ever change one thing at a time. Because if you change more than one you are going to have a hard time figuring out which one made your new readers download happy. It’s similar to only wearing one pair of underwear a day, if you change it 3 or 4 times you’re going to have a large laundry hamper to sort through. So, you have your two novels. Each should have the same synopsis, the same ads, the same keywords, the same pricing as the other. Now in your social media, your blog, while participating in forum boards etc alternate the URL you attach to each post, to each Tweet, to each status update. Do this for a month or two and see if one sells better.
Next determine whether giving your novel away gets you more readers than giving away a 100 page sample of your work. Do the same thing; test it for a couple of months to see what happens to each. Then test pricing, how many people buy it at 99 cents in comparison to $1.99? In comparison to $2.99. Remember only change the pricing of one book at a time. Are there less people buying the book at $2.99 but are you getting more money? There are some fantastic discussions on J.A. Konrath’s blog about pricing, have a look through those, and decide on a step by step testing process for your two novel versions.
Next have three or four different versions of your synopsis. After you have decided on an optimum price set both books at that price and then see which synopsis entices the reader more. Try two at once, then the one that performs the least you replace with another synopsis to test against the stronger one and so on. If you are advertising, look at changing the wording of your ads and see if one ad brings more traffic to your page then others. Always refine your keywords, see what words people are using in their forum posts, their Tweets, and keep adding to your keyword list, your ‘tags’ all the time.
The best way for this testing to succeed is to make sure that your novel is available on as many platforms as possible. The more places you are available, the more chance you have of being seen. As well as adding the word ‘test’ to your must list, you should also at the word ‘free’.
TOMORROW: To be free, or not to be free? That is the question. Oh, and a little something on POD.
FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY! – Do you want to be ahead of the game? Join one of my weekly introductory webinars (online seminar) on e-books! I will be speaking live and in detail about the 5 Fast, Simple secrets to E-Book Success and giving you some fantastic internet resources to help you on your way. Please join me to discover how you can create a massive following and increase the success of your e-book tenfold, allowing you to free up time to live, write and create whenever you want to.
Why Not Join My Weekly Introductory E-Book Webinar At 8:30pm?
Register NOW! In the blue box on the top right of the page
Formatting, Decrease The Number Of Grey Hairs
It may come as a surprise to you that e-books are not like print books. I’m not talking about being able to sniff, fondle, bend and lick one and not the other. Please, get your mind out of the gutter. No, I am talking about formatting. Unlike a normal book, where everything is in its final resting place, a conventional page just does not exist in an e-book. Readers can and will manipulate the text to suit them, to make it larger, smaller, to spread apart the lines, or adjust the font. What we as authors need to realise, is that an e-book needs to be a continuous flow of story and trying to make the formatting conform to that of a printed book is going to get your knickers in a twist quicker than you can throw a computer out a window.
The two main platforms for pushing our work out into the great unknown are Amazon and Smashwords (Who distribute to Barnes and Noble, Apple, Sony, Diesel etc etc). Each have a slightly different way you must format your book before it is uploaded into their system. Formatting is about making the reader experience more enjoyable, so by the time they have finished our masterpiece they are in such a state of ecstasy that they will be screaming for your next novel. To make your formatting the best it can be Smashwords has a Style Guide available free on its website and Amazon Kindle has a help section devoted entirely to formatting.
However, I am a firm believer in being prepared, so that when I get to the nitty gritty stuff I don’t have to spend what little free time I have shouting at the computer screen. Less police interventions that way. So having waded through the various publications I have pulled out some tips to keep in mind so your trip from creativity to saleability is that much faster. Remember, not following the tips below will usually result in your file not being accepted by the Smashwords or Kindle system.
EM CRAVEN’S TWENTY TIPS FOR LESS GREY HAIRS
1: You will make it ten millions times faster for yourself if you type up your creative prose in Microsoft (MS) word from the get go. Smashwords only accepts MS word docs (they must be saved as a .doc file –‘97-2003 word docs - NOT a .docx). Otherwise you must convert your novel into an MS word file before you begin. Smashwords (SW) do take one or two other types but they say Microsoft is the way. So stop making things hard for yourself and just do it!
2: Make a copy of your document first!! Do not make changes to your original document; if something goes pear shaped you want to have your original on hand.
3: DO NOT use the space bar or tabs for indenting the beginning of your paragraphs. Use the indent function in MS (See SW style guide).
4: Don’t hit the enter (or return) key more than 4 times. This creates blank pages in the e-book and will cause an error in the conversion system when you attempt to upload your work. We want to fill our books with words, not air!
5: Choose to either indent the start of your paragraphs or use block paragraphs. It’s one or the other, not both. If you choose to neither indent or use block paragraphs, all of your paragraphs will run together. A reader only needs to take one look at that and they will be running for the hills. Kindle also specifies one or the other. Within Kindle compatible products, the paragraphs indent automatically. However, if you want to specify how far they indent you can apply the formatting language as shown on the help board.
6: Don’t use fancy, non-standard fonts (for best results use Times New Roman or Arial) and keep font sizing at no more than 16pt in size. The basic rule here is keep it simple! Keep bold and italics to a minimum in the text. Otherwise you may find you do a bit more fiddling then you bargained for.
7: Columns and tables are not supported. If you really need tables put them in as an image.
8: Wrapping text around your images is a big no-no for both Smashwords and Amazon. Have the images on their own line and centred in the middle of the pages. It is very hard to attach words to a specific image, either make the words part of the image or get ready for some serious, frustrated hair pulling…
9: Smashwords only allows you to upload a file 5 MB in size. So if you have several images it would be wise to use the compression feature in MS word to shrink the size of the document. Don’t worry; it won’t affect the quality of your images significantly.
10: If you only have a print book copy of your novel there is hope! You can get the novel scanned by various companies and be sent back to you as an MS word document. They are generally very accurate but you should still carefully proof read the document before you begin to format.
11: In Smashwords if you want a front cover to appear in all formats, you need to have it as an image on the first page of your MS document. Only certain types of formats produced by Smashwords allow you to add the cover separately.
12: For all those budding poets, you need your poetry to either be left justified or centred, otherwise who knows what order your words will be.
13: Amazon asks that you use page breaks to separate your chapters. These can be inserted in MS Word. However in most formats in Smashwords these page breaks will not be converted, so it’s best to put one or two enters (returns) above and below the page breaks if you decide to insert them.
14: When noting your copyright use the word rather than the copyright symbol, it doesn’t convert well.
15: You need an ISBN number to distribute to Apple and Sony.
16: You need to include front matter in your book. Meaning a centred title page including your carefully thought out and intriguing title and your name (or nom de plume if you prefer). It is also recommended that you put a copyright statement in. Make sure this page is your most professional! It is the reader’s first impression and unless you are a html guru, skip the fancy stuff. It’s also recommended by Smashwords (who publishes DRM – digital rights management – free files) that you give a gentle reminder to customers to refrain from piracy. There are examples of this statement in the Style Guide.
17: If you’re keen on adding a little colour to your novel, you can add a simple glyph between paragraphs to indicate a change in scene.
18: For the non-fiction authors, you can also add a linked table of contents that allows a reader to jump straight to the chapter they wish to read.
19: To upload to Kindle you need to save your file as a filtered html file in Word as per the Kindle board instructions. You then upload this into MobiPocket Creator where you will add your front cover and convert your e-book to Kindle format.
20: Once your file has been accepted and converted check your work!!! Make sure it translates well in each format and doesn’t cause the reader to cross their eyes and fall sideways off their chair.
Have fun!
TOMORROW: Test, test, test! How to optimise your synopsis, headline, title and pricing to maximise your sales and explode the size of your readership!
FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY! – Do you want to be ahead of the game? Join one of my weekly introductory webinars (online seminar) on e-books! I will be speaking live and in detail about the 5 Fast, Simple secrets to E-Book Success and giving you some fantastic internet resources to help you on your way. Please join me to discover how you can create a massive following and increase the success of your e-book tenfold, allowing you to free up time to live, write and create whenever you want to.
Why Not Join My Weekly Introductory E-Book Webinar At 8:30pm?
Register NOW! In the blue box on the top right of the page
The two main platforms for pushing our work out into the great unknown are Amazon and Smashwords (Who distribute to Barnes and Noble, Apple, Sony, Diesel etc etc). Each have a slightly different way you must format your book before it is uploaded into their system. Formatting is about making the reader experience more enjoyable, so by the time they have finished our masterpiece they are in such a state of ecstasy that they will be screaming for your next novel. To make your formatting the best it can be Smashwords has a Style Guide available free on its website and Amazon Kindle has a help section devoted entirely to formatting.
However, I am a firm believer in being prepared, so that when I get to the nitty gritty stuff I don’t have to spend what little free time I have shouting at the computer screen. Less police interventions that way. So having waded through the various publications I have pulled out some tips to keep in mind so your trip from creativity to saleability is that much faster. Remember, not following the tips below will usually result in your file not being accepted by the Smashwords or Kindle system.
EM CRAVEN’S TWENTY TIPS FOR LESS GREY HAIRS
1: You will make it ten millions times faster for yourself if you type up your creative prose in Microsoft (MS) word from the get go. Smashwords only accepts MS word docs (they must be saved as a .doc file –‘97-2003 word docs - NOT a .docx). Otherwise you must convert your novel into an MS word file before you begin. Smashwords (SW) do take one or two other types but they say Microsoft is the way. So stop making things hard for yourself and just do it!
2: Make a copy of your document first!! Do not make changes to your original document; if something goes pear shaped you want to have your original on hand.
3: DO NOT use the space bar or tabs for indenting the beginning of your paragraphs. Use the indent function in MS (See SW style guide).
4: Don’t hit the enter (or return) key more than 4 times. This creates blank pages in the e-book and will cause an error in the conversion system when you attempt to upload your work. We want to fill our books with words, not air!
5: Choose to either indent the start of your paragraphs or use block paragraphs. It’s one or the other, not both. If you choose to neither indent or use block paragraphs, all of your paragraphs will run together. A reader only needs to take one look at that and they will be running for the hills. Kindle also specifies one or the other. Within Kindle compatible products, the paragraphs indent automatically. However, if you want to specify how far they indent you can apply the formatting language as shown on the help board.
6: Don’t use fancy, non-standard fonts (for best results use Times New Roman or Arial) and keep font sizing at no more than 16pt in size. The basic rule here is keep it simple! Keep bold and italics to a minimum in the text. Otherwise you may find you do a bit more fiddling then you bargained for.
7: Columns and tables are not supported. If you really need tables put them in as an image.
8: Wrapping text around your images is a big no-no for both Smashwords and Amazon. Have the images on their own line and centred in the middle of the pages. It is very hard to attach words to a specific image, either make the words part of the image or get ready for some serious, frustrated hair pulling…
9: Smashwords only allows you to upload a file 5 MB in size. So if you have several images it would be wise to use the compression feature in MS word to shrink the size of the document. Don’t worry; it won’t affect the quality of your images significantly.
10: If you only have a print book copy of your novel there is hope! You can get the novel scanned by various companies and be sent back to you as an MS word document. They are generally very accurate but you should still carefully proof read the document before you begin to format.
11: In Smashwords if you want a front cover to appear in all formats, you need to have it as an image on the first page of your MS document. Only certain types of formats produced by Smashwords allow you to add the cover separately.
12: For all those budding poets, you need your poetry to either be left justified or centred, otherwise who knows what order your words will be.
13: Amazon asks that you use page breaks to separate your chapters. These can be inserted in MS Word. However in most formats in Smashwords these page breaks will not be converted, so it’s best to put one or two enters (returns) above and below the page breaks if you decide to insert them.
14: When noting your copyright use the word rather than the copyright symbol, it doesn’t convert well.
15: You need an ISBN number to distribute to Apple and Sony.
16: You need to include front matter in your book. Meaning a centred title page including your carefully thought out and intriguing title and your name (or nom de plume if you prefer). It is also recommended that you put a copyright statement in. Make sure this page is your most professional! It is the reader’s first impression and unless you are a html guru, skip the fancy stuff. It’s also recommended by Smashwords (who publishes DRM – digital rights management – free files) that you give a gentle reminder to customers to refrain from piracy. There are examples of this statement in the Style Guide.
17: If you’re keen on adding a little colour to your novel, you can add a simple glyph between paragraphs to indicate a change in scene.
18: For the non-fiction authors, you can also add a linked table of contents that allows a reader to jump straight to the chapter they wish to read.
19: To upload to Kindle you need to save your file as a filtered html file in Word as per the Kindle board instructions. You then upload this into MobiPocket Creator where you will add your front cover and convert your e-book to Kindle format.
20: Once your file has been accepted and converted check your work!!! Make sure it translates well in each format and doesn’t cause the reader to cross their eyes and fall sideways off their chair.
Have fun!
TOMORROW: Test, test, test! How to optimise your synopsis, headline, title and pricing to maximise your sales and explode the size of your readership!
FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY! – Do you want to be ahead of the game? Join one of my weekly introductory webinars (online seminar) on e-books! I will be speaking live and in detail about the 5 Fast, Simple secrets to E-Book Success and giving you some fantastic internet resources to help you on your way. Please join me to discover how you can create a massive following and increase the success of your e-book tenfold, allowing you to free up time to live, write and create whenever you want to.
Why Not Join My Weekly Introductory E-Book Webinar At 8:30pm?
Register NOW! In the blue box on the top right of the page
Friday, April 22, 2011
Got It Covered?
Podcasts are a newly discovered passion. They are fantastic for making the work day full of spreadsheets, models and tiresome co-workers go just that little bit faster. It was only a couple of days ago I came across the podcast of two book reviewers. They were discussing how the majority of e-books sitting in their email inbox had covers that looked like they were drawn by a child. And that child had probably been shotting tequila.
That age old saying ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’, has been overused so much in society it has almost lost its meaning. But as a self-published author you shouldn’t be so flippant. Whether you’re trying to impress a reviewer, the media or your audience, you’re cover is your best sales agent. It has to be all cheesy grins, slick-backed hair, flashy suits and a sultry voice. Because if you don’t compel your audience, whatever their literary status, with your ‘good looks’ you get shuffled to the bottom of the pile and the next week your eating stew out of a boot with a stiff shoe lace. Sometimes a front cover is your only chance to impress, and if it’s no eye catching, if it’s not intriguing, if it’s not bright and jumping out of the page, a reader won’t even go far enough to read those golden paragraphs you crafted for your synopsis. They’re roving eye will pass you over as just another graphic. If you want to make money, you don’t want to blend in with the digital slush pile.
For this, you need a professional. Any successful self-published author from the very famous examples like Matthew Reilly through to Amanda Hocking or Brian Pratt, will tell you exactly that. Image is everything. If you look like a bogan (red neck/hill billy/hick), talk like a bogan, drink like a bogan, pee on the side of a building like a bogan, you must be a bogan. Similarly, if you look like an amateur then your work is seen as amateur, inferior, not even worth a free download. Matthew Reilly, an action writer, self published his first novel at 19. He knew that though the editing was his own, the production was his own, the distribution was his own, if he got a friend or himself to design the front cover he was royally screwed.
There are many places that you can go to get a professional front cover. Smashwords has many freelance designers for hire. There are online creative websites like elance.com where artists try to out bid each other to do your work. There you can hire anything from a designer, to a ghost writer, to a levitating website guru (well, maybe not that far).
Remember, in the digital world you only have a front cover, you don’t have a spine, you don’t have a back cover; the front cover is your only visual selling point. Make sure it is eye catching, unique, bright or has a good contrast in colours or shades. Any rule of photographic composition can and should apply to its design. The book also needs to convey the themes of the novel. It needs to convey drama, romance, stupidity, humour (depending on your content). See if the font used for the title can add to the theme and demeanour of the novel. The more information you supply to your designer the better. Give them your synopsis, your pitches, your keywords, any strong images you have of different tense scenes, landscapes. You also need to be strong about your vision; if what the designer has produced does not sit right you need to discuss it with them. Why did they put that element there? Could they make this darker? Print out some other covers in your genre, line them up next to your book cover and see if yours stands out.
So it’s time to decide: are you going to have the cover designed by an inebriated child, or are you going to have a cover that flashes a million dollar smile and gives you a brand new car.
TOMORROW: Formatting and submitting your novel for e-publication, what you need.
FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY! – Do you want to be ahead of the game? Join one of my weekly introductory webinars (online seminar) on e-books! I will be speaking live and in detail about the 5 Fast, Simple secrets to E-Book Success and giving you some fantastic internet resources to help you on your way. Please join me to discover how you can create a massive following and increase the success of your e-book tenfold, allowing you to free up time to live, write and create whenever you want to.
Why Not Join My Weekly Introductory E-Book Webinar At 8:30pm?
Register NOW! In the blue box on the top right of the page.
That age old saying ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’, has been overused so much in society it has almost lost its meaning. But as a self-published author you shouldn’t be so flippant. Whether you’re trying to impress a reviewer, the media or your audience, you’re cover is your best sales agent. It has to be all cheesy grins, slick-backed hair, flashy suits and a sultry voice. Because if you don’t compel your audience, whatever their literary status, with your ‘good looks’ you get shuffled to the bottom of the pile and the next week your eating stew out of a boot with a stiff shoe lace. Sometimes a front cover is your only chance to impress, and if it’s no eye catching, if it’s not intriguing, if it’s not bright and jumping out of the page, a reader won’t even go far enough to read those golden paragraphs you crafted for your synopsis. They’re roving eye will pass you over as just another graphic. If you want to make money, you don’t want to blend in with the digital slush pile.
For this, you need a professional. Any successful self-published author from the very famous examples like Matthew Reilly through to Amanda Hocking or Brian Pratt, will tell you exactly that. Image is everything. If you look like a bogan (red neck/hill billy/hick), talk like a bogan, drink like a bogan, pee on the side of a building like a bogan, you must be a bogan. Similarly, if you look like an amateur then your work is seen as amateur, inferior, not even worth a free download. Matthew Reilly, an action writer, self published his first novel at 19. He knew that though the editing was his own, the production was his own, the distribution was his own, if he got a friend or himself to design the front cover he was royally screwed.
There are many places that you can go to get a professional front cover. Smashwords has many freelance designers for hire. There are online creative websites like elance.com where artists try to out bid each other to do your work. There you can hire anything from a designer, to a ghost writer, to a levitating website guru (well, maybe not that far).
Remember, in the digital world you only have a front cover, you don’t have a spine, you don’t have a back cover; the front cover is your only visual selling point. Make sure it is eye catching, unique, bright or has a good contrast in colours or shades. Any rule of photographic composition can and should apply to its design. The book also needs to convey the themes of the novel. It needs to convey drama, romance, stupidity, humour (depending on your content). See if the font used for the title can add to the theme and demeanour of the novel. The more information you supply to your designer the better. Give them your synopsis, your pitches, your keywords, any strong images you have of different tense scenes, landscapes. You also need to be strong about your vision; if what the designer has produced does not sit right you need to discuss it with them. Why did they put that element there? Could they make this darker? Print out some other covers in your genre, line them up next to your book cover and see if yours stands out.
So it’s time to decide: are you going to have the cover designed by an inebriated child, or are you going to have a cover that flashes a million dollar smile and gives you a brand new car.
TOMORROW: Formatting and submitting your novel for e-publication, what you need.
FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY! – Do you want to be ahead of the game? Join one of my weekly introductory webinars (online seminar) on e-books! I will be speaking live and in detail about the 5 Fast, Simple secrets to E-Book Success and giving you some fantastic internet resources to help you on your way. Please join me to discover how you can create a massive following and increase the success of your e-book tenfold, allowing you to free up time to live, write and create whenever you want to.
Why Not Join My Weekly Introductory E-Book Webinar At 8:30pm?
Register NOW! In the blue box on the top right of the page.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
It Started With ‘The’
There is an awkwardness as you stand in front of the bookstore information clerk trying to describe a book you can’t remember the name of. You think it started with ‘The’. And the author’s name was possibly Hobbs, but you’re not quite sure. All you know is your friend described exactly what the book was about, in wonderfully vivid, exciting detail (using the author’s carefully worded pitch....). It is a historical novel, based in Elizabethan times, it’s a thriller because someone is murdered and it has an unlikely sci-fi twist that includes a UFO sighting. Or it’s a book on fashion design specifically for making dog clothes. Or a book on how to make landscaping Feng Shui compliant. After searching through the computer the clerk finally shrugs and with a very pointed look, stares over your shoulder at the next customer. As you shuffle out of the store, muttering insincere thanks, you decide, ‘Bugger it, I can’t be bothered.’
The same goes for searching, without help, through the online search engines. All except this method generally involves less awkwardness and more frustration. To the point where the searcher will not only decide to give that book a miss, they will actively hate it for wasting so much of their time. Making your novel easily found on the internet is more crucial then media attention, it is even more crucial then distribution. Because if you don’t target your keywords to the market that will buy your book, you will be shooting blindly at people who don’t give a brass wazoo about what you write. Get your keywords right and you get people like me, with the memory of a grandma with Alzheimer’s, finding your book in the first search. You get it right and all those people looking for mountain biking, fantasy thrillers, sci-fi crime or a light hearted pick-me-up will be so excited they didn’t have to waste time looking for what they want that they will snap your book up without a thought.
So before you even go a step further, before you even let your tummy expand an inch forward, take your proposal and your market research and jot down as many keywords as you can find. These are JUST WORDS. Perhaps three word phrases max. They should cover themes, genre, content, passions of your target audience. Basically what your novel is at its essence, what will bring people to it. Those free keyword tools will give you a fairly good idea of the terms that people search for so you get the right words to describe your work. If you have at least 30,000 people per month searching for what you have, then you will more likely than not do very well, if the number of searches is less you will need to be very specific about what words you use and where your groups interact online.
People search in keywords and they expect you to have categorised your work accordingly. People don’t look for the words ‘peril’ or ‘danger’ or ‘fantastic’. They look for topics and content and similarities. You can have the best synopsis in the word but it doesn’t matter one bit if you’re keyword isn’t typed into the search by a prospective reader. This is how you target your market and wave your red flag. This is how people in forums discuss your work.
This is how the search engines like Amazon, the iPad store, Google and Yahoo! spit out their results. They don’t wave a magic wand, they don’t partake in a bit of voodoo; they search methodically, like the machines they are. And for you to rank highly you need your major keywords everywhere! They need to be in the synopsis, in the title, in your advertising, in the tags on the e-book stores, in your website address, your blog name, your blog’s website address, your Facebook page, your Twitter bio, your pitch, your forum posts, tattooed to your forehead, EVERYWHERE!
The more prominent they are the better chance you have of being found. Of course you have to balance being enticing and creative with the keywords. But if you make it too hard to be found, then that person who was looking for your Feng Shui garden advice is going to look somewhere else. Because frankly, they don’t feel like looking the idiot in front of a pimpled, arrogant, teenage sales assistant.
TOMORROW: The importance of a good front cover.
FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY! – Do you want to be ahead of the game? Join one of my weekly introductory webinars (online seminar) on e-books! I will be speaking live and in detail about the 5 Fast, Simple secrets to E-Book Success and giving you some fantastic internet resources to help you on your way. Please join me to discover how you can create a massive following and increase the success of your e-book tenfold, allowing you to free up time to live, write and create whenever you want to.
Why Not Join My Weekly Introductory E-Book Webinar At 8:30pm?
Register NOW! In the blue box on the top right of the page.
The same goes for searching, without help, through the online search engines. All except this method generally involves less awkwardness and more frustration. To the point where the searcher will not only decide to give that book a miss, they will actively hate it for wasting so much of their time. Making your novel easily found on the internet is more crucial then media attention, it is even more crucial then distribution. Because if you don’t target your keywords to the market that will buy your book, you will be shooting blindly at people who don’t give a brass wazoo about what you write. Get your keywords right and you get people like me, with the memory of a grandma with Alzheimer’s, finding your book in the first search. You get it right and all those people looking for mountain biking, fantasy thrillers, sci-fi crime or a light hearted pick-me-up will be so excited they didn’t have to waste time looking for what they want that they will snap your book up without a thought.
So before you even go a step further, before you even let your tummy expand an inch forward, take your proposal and your market research and jot down as many keywords as you can find. These are JUST WORDS. Perhaps three word phrases max. They should cover themes, genre, content, passions of your target audience. Basically what your novel is at its essence, what will bring people to it. Those free keyword tools will give you a fairly good idea of the terms that people search for so you get the right words to describe your work. If you have at least 30,000 people per month searching for what you have, then you will more likely than not do very well, if the number of searches is less you will need to be very specific about what words you use and where your groups interact online.
People search in keywords and they expect you to have categorised your work accordingly. People don’t look for the words ‘peril’ or ‘danger’ or ‘fantastic’. They look for topics and content and similarities. You can have the best synopsis in the word but it doesn’t matter one bit if you’re keyword isn’t typed into the search by a prospective reader. This is how you target your market and wave your red flag. This is how people in forums discuss your work.
This is how the search engines like Amazon, the iPad store, Google and Yahoo! spit out their results. They don’t wave a magic wand, they don’t partake in a bit of voodoo; they search methodically, like the machines they are. And for you to rank highly you need your major keywords everywhere! They need to be in the synopsis, in the title, in your advertising, in the tags on the e-book stores, in your website address, your blog name, your blog’s website address, your Facebook page, your Twitter bio, your pitch, your forum posts, tattooed to your forehead, EVERYWHERE!
The more prominent they are the better chance you have of being found. Of course you have to balance being enticing and creative with the keywords. But if you make it too hard to be found, then that person who was looking for your Feng Shui garden advice is going to look somewhere else. Because frankly, they don’t feel like looking the idiot in front of a pimpled, arrogant, teenage sales assistant.
TOMORROW: The importance of a good front cover.
FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY! – Do you want to be ahead of the game? Join one of my weekly introductory webinars (online seminar) on e-books! I will be speaking live and in detail about the 5 Fast, Simple secrets to E-Book Success and giving you some fantastic internet resources to help you on your way. Please join me to discover how you can create a massive following and increase the success of your e-book tenfold, allowing you to free up time to live, write and create whenever you want to.
Why Not Join My Weekly Introductory E-Book Webinar At 8:30pm?
Register NOW! In the blue box on the top right of the page.
The Foundation For Published Success
There is an excellent chance that every time you declare publically you are writing a book, the first thing out of a person's mouth is, “What’s it about?” If you are serious about being a successful author, an impression of an open mouthed fish and a scratch on the head is not the best way to face that question. You need a pocket sized pitch ready to go. When you approach an agent, you have exactly 15 seconds, not to impress them with a string of um’s and ah’s, but your pitch. When your agent approaches an editor they will pitch your book to them, then that editor pitches your book to all the departments of the publishing house. The publishing sales team will approach the booksellers and media with your pitch. These people do it for a living, they have the connections and the practice. If you, on the other hand, self-publish, your pitch has to be so good it will floor the readers, the media, and everyone else you have to deal with. If you’re lucky, your pitch will last long after you’re six feet under and providing nutrition for flowers. A hundred years from now, when a fan is reading your novel off the inside of their sunglasses while floating on a personal hover-board and the person next to them says, “What’s that about?” . . . you better hope that reader can give a sucker punch of a pitch!
It is essential to create three pitches so you have something hypnotic for every occasion. I’m talking seriously hypnotic, like getting an entire crowd to do the chicken dance hypnotic. That is how much consideration you need to put into your proposal and pitch. If you cannot capture people in several seconds with few words, you’re going to have about as much success as a marathon runner with two broken legs. These bite sized pieces of your work make a promise to the readers: to educate, entertain, humor, inspire or scare the living daylights out of them. When you are writing a pitch and book proposal you should avoid weak pronouns, adjective, adverbs, jargon and clichés, and write in the third person, no matter if your novel is written in first person, second person or iambic pentameter. The more professional you seem (it’s all about the illusion here), the great your chance of being read rather than being folded into a paper aeroplane.
The first pitch should describe your book concept in 7 words or less. Basically, what type of book are you proposing? A biographical account of a turnip? A guide to making cheese omelets? Adventures of a Ninja bowling league? Memoirs of a person who kind of smells? The pitch I have for my gap year travel book is, 'The ultimate guide to overseas gap years' or 'Your international gap year made easy'. Simple and concise. The second pitch describes your book concept in 25 words or less. This answers the question, what is your book about? This needs to be simple, tight and catchy. It needs to highlight the benefit for the reader, the most interesting thing they are going to get out of the experience. The best ones are those that play on the emotions and imaginings of an audience, with phrases such as 'for everyone who has dreamt of …'. For example, my pitch for my gap year guide went like this, 'An info packed adventure guide to gap years for anyone who has dreamt of breaking free and seeing the world between school and university.'
The third and final pitch is an expansion of your second pitch. It should be between 70-150 words. This pitch is your last chance at enticing your reader to buy; waffle at your peril! This should summarise storylines and themes and keep the reader’s attention until the last full stop. Here you need to make a big promise to your reader, what benefits will the reader get for investing their time in your words? Use their imagination in relation to your book. What will their life be like after they have read it? What will they see, hear, feel? If the information you provide in your book is rare, tell them why. Frankly, there is only so much a potential reader can glean from that purple poodle on your front cover, so lead them gently by the hand to the important parts.
These pitches will make the basis of your book proposal. If you believe that this is a little too hard for your tastes, you should first consider that not making any money because you didn’t try this is going to feel like a taser to the private parts. If you want to sell an e-book or be offered a publishing contract, then this is something you must care about. You have already spent years writing your novel, two weeks of inventive pitching is a little drop in the large ocean of creative chaos that is the life of a professional writer.
A book proposal should consist of a cover letter, author credentials, synopsis, market potential, chapter plan and sample chapters. A COVER LETTER is more useful to those who plan to submit to a publisher or agent. Basically it includes a greeting, your second pitch to excite the publisher, a brief overview of why you are the best person to write this book, and a quick overview of what is included in your book proposal. However, it is possible for a self-published e-book author to use a letter as a way to address their readers on the home page of their website. A little ‘Dear friend’ letter so to speak.
Listing AUTHOR CREDENTIALS, or you could say experience, is just another way to convince the reader or publisher that you have done a good job of the book they are investing in. This is particularly relevant for non-fiction writers who generally have a body of experience that has prompted them to pen their novel. Do you have certain qualification? Or have you just been to a few too many mardi gras? Whether it’s experience, special insight, a similarity to your readers, a life time interest, or writing awards you’ve won, this is just another way to convince them to trust you and your ability. If you are penning under a nom de plume (a pen name) perhaps use that mystery to boost both interest and credibility. Why are you anonymous?
A SYNOPSIS is not just a laundry list of events that occur in your book. I don’t want to see, “And then Benny went to war and shit happened,” from any of you! Here you have to communicate who your characters are, their emotions and decisions they face. Here is where you make your genre clear, use your third pitch to excite the readers imagination. If you write non-fiction also include another short, bullet point section with specifics on what will be covered and more importantly what is the benefit to the reader in each of these sections. It should be no more than 200 words.
MARKET POTENTIAL is so important for e-book authors and print book authors. For an e-book author, a finely tuned idea of your market will make targeting readers and groups online faster, easier and ten times more effective. This will tell you what forums to join, what angle to write your synopsis from and what the most effective keywords will be so readers can find you easily. After researching the competition you will be able to accurately tell your reader exactly why your book is unique and worth reading. For an author approaching a publisher, it shows not only that you have thought about it, but that there is enough of a readership for them to make money. Publishers, as mentioned previously, do not know every fan base or craze, but if you can show enough evidence of the readership size and accessibility you will have a much greater chance of success. It is all about who, what, where and why in this section.
CHAPTER PLANS and SAMPLE CHAPTERS give you an opportunity to show a publisher that you have done the research , organised it logically and creatively and have written an engaging and marketable book. A publisher will then have guidelines on their website specifying exactly how long they wish your sample to be. If they ask for three chapters, send them three reasonable chapters (Amalgamating three chapters together so they look like one is not a good idea…). Don’t send them a paper weight, the bigger an unsolicited manuscript is, the less inclined they are to read it. For an e-book author, a chapter plan helps you to decide what sections of your book are the most engaging and can be used as samples to draw the reader in. It’s up to you how big these sample chapters are, I will discuss this in more detail in later posts. Each chapter should have a compelling title (Remember abstract titles like “Bearded Mongoose” are not always the best descriptors) and have several self contained sentences that sum up the chapter.
If you want e-book or publishing success these are the foundations for that success! Take the time to get it right, and you will be rewarded.
NOTE: This is just the tip of the iceberg, a summary of tips shared with ebook revolution readers by expert Sheila Hollingworth. If you would like a detailed step by step guide to book proposals and examples of fiction and non-fiction proposals, then invest in A Decent Proposal by Sheila Hollingworth and Rhonda Whitton. If you aim to make money, then this book is essential! Click here to invest in A Decent Proposal.
TOMORROW: Keywords, and why they will make or break your e-book success.
FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY! – Do you want to be ahead of the game? Join one of my weekly introductory webinars (online seminar) on e-books! I will be speaking live and in detail about the 5 Fast, Simple secrets to E-Book Success and giving you some fantastic internet resources to help you on your way. Please join me to discover how you can create a massive following and increase the success of your e-book tenfold, allowing you to free up time to live, write and create whenever you want to.
Why Not Join My Weekly Introductory E-Book Webinar At 8:30pm?
Register NOW! In the blue box on the top right of the page.
It is essential to create three pitches so you have something hypnotic for every occasion. I’m talking seriously hypnotic, like getting an entire crowd to do the chicken dance hypnotic. That is how much consideration you need to put into your proposal and pitch. If you cannot capture people in several seconds with few words, you’re going to have about as much success as a marathon runner with two broken legs. These bite sized pieces of your work make a promise to the readers: to educate, entertain, humor, inspire or scare the living daylights out of them. When you are writing a pitch and book proposal you should avoid weak pronouns, adjective, adverbs, jargon and clichés, and write in the third person, no matter if your novel is written in first person, second person or iambic pentameter. The more professional you seem (it’s all about the illusion here), the great your chance of being read rather than being folded into a paper aeroplane.
The first pitch should describe your book concept in 7 words or less. Basically, what type of book are you proposing? A biographical account of a turnip? A guide to making cheese omelets? Adventures of a Ninja bowling league? Memoirs of a person who kind of smells? The pitch I have for my gap year travel book is, 'The ultimate guide to overseas gap years' or 'Your international gap year made easy'. Simple and concise. The second pitch describes your book concept in 25 words or less. This answers the question, what is your book about? This needs to be simple, tight and catchy. It needs to highlight the benefit for the reader, the most interesting thing they are going to get out of the experience. The best ones are those that play on the emotions and imaginings of an audience, with phrases such as 'for everyone who has dreamt of …'. For example, my pitch for my gap year guide went like this, 'An info packed adventure guide to gap years for anyone who has dreamt of breaking free and seeing the world between school and university.'
The third and final pitch is an expansion of your second pitch. It should be between 70-150 words. This pitch is your last chance at enticing your reader to buy; waffle at your peril! This should summarise storylines and themes and keep the reader’s attention until the last full stop. Here you need to make a big promise to your reader, what benefits will the reader get for investing their time in your words? Use their imagination in relation to your book. What will their life be like after they have read it? What will they see, hear, feel? If the information you provide in your book is rare, tell them why. Frankly, there is only so much a potential reader can glean from that purple poodle on your front cover, so lead them gently by the hand to the important parts.
These pitches will make the basis of your book proposal. If you believe that this is a little too hard for your tastes, you should first consider that not making any money because you didn’t try this is going to feel like a taser to the private parts. If you want to sell an e-book or be offered a publishing contract, then this is something you must care about. You have already spent years writing your novel, two weeks of inventive pitching is a little drop in the large ocean of creative chaos that is the life of a professional writer.
A book proposal should consist of a cover letter, author credentials, synopsis, market potential, chapter plan and sample chapters. A COVER LETTER is more useful to those who plan to submit to a publisher or agent. Basically it includes a greeting, your second pitch to excite the publisher, a brief overview of why you are the best person to write this book, and a quick overview of what is included in your book proposal. However, it is possible for a self-published e-book author to use a letter as a way to address their readers on the home page of their website. A little ‘Dear friend’ letter so to speak.
Listing AUTHOR CREDENTIALS, or you could say experience, is just another way to convince the reader or publisher that you have done a good job of the book they are investing in. This is particularly relevant for non-fiction writers who generally have a body of experience that has prompted them to pen their novel. Do you have certain qualification? Or have you just been to a few too many mardi gras? Whether it’s experience, special insight, a similarity to your readers, a life time interest, or writing awards you’ve won, this is just another way to convince them to trust you and your ability. If you are penning under a nom de plume (a pen name) perhaps use that mystery to boost both interest and credibility. Why are you anonymous?
A SYNOPSIS is not just a laundry list of events that occur in your book. I don’t want to see, “And then Benny went to war and shit happened,” from any of you! Here you have to communicate who your characters are, their emotions and decisions they face. Here is where you make your genre clear, use your third pitch to excite the readers imagination. If you write non-fiction also include another short, bullet point section with specifics on what will be covered and more importantly what is the benefit to the reader in each of these sections. It should be no more than 200 words.
MARKET POTENTIAL is so important for e-book authors and print book authors. For an e-book author, a finely tuned idea of your market will make targeting readers and groups online faster, easier and ten times more effective. This will tell you what forums to join, what angle to write your synopsis from and what the most effective keywords will be so readers can find you easily. After researching the competition you will be able to accurately tell your reader exactly why your book is unique and worth reading. For an author approaching a publisher, it shows not only that you have thought about it, but that there is enough of a readership for them to make money. Publishers, as mentioned previously, do not know every fan base or craze, but if you can show enough evidence of the readership size and accessibility you will have a much greater chance of success. It is all about who, what, where and why in this section.
CHAPTER PLANS and SAMPLE CHAPTERS give you an opportunity to show a publisher that you have done the research , organised it logically and creatively and have written an engaging and marketable book. A publisher will then have guidelines on their website specifying exactly how long they wish your sample to be. If they ask for three chapters, send them three reasonable chapters (Amalgamating three chapters together so they look like one is not a good idea…). Don’t send them a paper weight, the bigger an unsolicited manuscript is, the less inclined they are to read it. For an e-book author, a chapter plan helps you to decide what sections of your book are the most engaging and can be used as samples to draw the reader in. It’s up to you how big these sample chapters are, I will discuss this in more detail in later posts. Each chapter should have a compelling title (Remember abstract titles like “Bearded Mongoose” are not always the best descriptors) and have several self contained sentences that sum up the chapter.
If you want e-book or publishing success these are the foundations for that success! Take the time to get it right, and you will be rewarded.
NOTE: This is just the tip of the iceberg, a summary of tips shared with ebook revolution readers by expert Sheila Hollingworth. If you would like a detailed step by step guide to book proposals and examples of fiction and non-fiction proposals, then invest in A Decent Proposal by Sheila Hollingworth and Rhonda Whitton. If you aim to make money, then this book is essential! Click here to invest in A Decent Proposal.
TOMORROW: Keywords, and why they will make or break your e-book success.
FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY! – Do you want to be ahead of the game? Join one of my weekly introductory webinars (online seminar) on e-books! I will be speaking live and in detail about the 5 Fast, Simple secrets to E-Book Success and giving you some fantastic internet resources to help you on your way. Please join me to discover how you can create a massive following and increase the success of your e-book tenfold, allowing you to free up time to live, write and create whenever you want to.
Why Not Join My Weekly Introductory E-Book Webinar At 8:30pm?
Register NOW! In the blue box on the top right of the page.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Are You Living In A Little Pink, Cocktail Umbrella Heaven? Doing Market Research
Have you ever entertained the fantasy of sitting on the beach, your laptop on your knees, a cocktail in your hand with a little pink umbrella and a crowd of excited fans around you requesting you sign their dog eared copy of your novel? Have you even entertained the idea of living in a cardboard box under a bridge? We may as well be realistic here; the later is probably a more realistic if less compelling image of most of our literary prospects.
I know many of us picture the future of our writing career as a little pink, cocktail umbrella heaven (myself included; fantasy writer = vivid imagination), but the cold, hard, mouldy cardboard smelling truth is not everyone is going to like what you write. Leaving your market research at, “Oh, everyone is going to love my book,” is just plain suicidal, with your self-indulgence and arrogance being the knife that makes the cut. We all need to find our selling point; another generic synopsis of a vampire novel just isn’t going to cut it anymore. Now if it’s a space opera vampire novel you may stand a chance.... Let me explain.
First and foremost you have to determine, what is your aim? In writing and in publishing this novel what do you hope to achieve? Do you feel compelled, feel you’re talented, have an imagination that wants out, want to share your experiences, your opinions? If those are your reasons for writing you may find you audience more of a Shih Tzu size than a Great Dane size. My favourite reason is always writing for fame and fortune. Do me a favour and on a piece of paper write the name of every author you like to read. Now search online for a list of author names at say a major writers festival. Compare the number of people on the festival’s program to the number of people you actually know the names of, and the people on your list. The number of authors you don’t know far outweighs the number you do. Have all of them been published? Yes, several times generally. Are all of them famous? They’d like to think so.
If you are writing to make money, then you better make sure that you are writing in a genre or on a topic that people want to buy, need to buy. Just because you have a great idea, does not mean that people are looking for it, or feel that they want it or need it in any way when they see it. I am an advocate of writing what you love and what you are passionate about. But if you are writing to make money, you need to go about it differently. A great place to discover the things people are talking about is newspapers. Another fantastic site that shows you the current trends is trendwatch.com, if you feel that way inclined.
For the rest of you, who have written what you love, and have the philosophy that while you can maximise your sales, you may not be the next J.K. Rowling let’s talk about market research. This is going to involve you asking a lot of questions.
Who will read your book? What age group? What gender? What interests? What side interests? What demographic (religion, single mothers, gay etc)? You need to think about where would your novel be advertised/publicised and how you might reach that group. For example if you write comic fantasy your target readership may be young adults between 14 and 18, who like reading Terry Pratchett, school libraries and readers of certain kids magazines, comics or video games. Then you need to find out how many of these readers/magazines there are. Look online, type in key words (eg Terry Pratchett, fantasy, comedy etc) and find out where these people congregate. Are there Facebook pages on how to still each chocolate and not gain weight? How many people like these pages? Are there online forums on mountain bike riding down ski slopes? How many people have visited the site (see the visitor counter at the bottom)? What is the readership of the magazine Soaps Not Gropes? Also look at your local government statistics websites. How many people attend university? School? Declare Jedi as their official religion? Find out how many searches are being done per month on your topic, on a book similar to yours, in Google. To do this you can just type in ‘free keyword tool’ or ‘free keyword search’ into Google. This will give you an indication of how many people are looking for what you are selling. Better still, it is going to give you an indication on the potential size of your readership so you are under no illusions as you set forth.
Now that you have found these odd (yet wonderful) people, why would they want to buy your book? Is your book as good as, superior to, similar to other books on the market? What can you do that is different or better? What are they NOT offering? Research similar books on Amazon, research their content, reviews on them, what are their weaknesses (this is particularly relevant for non-fiction). How does your book provide what theirs does not? Is it easier to understand? Is it the first of its kind? Is there a unique theme? For example your vampire novel takes place in a space opera setting. Or you have a unique narrative voice, a different angle, cover something in more depth. There are millions of cook books out there but, how many are specifically designed to use foods that help people with Alzheimer’s? Find an angle that makes it unique. Please, whatever you do, do not promise your book is unique and not deliver. It’s like taking a toy away from a sumo wrestler at Christmas, it’s not advised.... or beneficial to your health (human pancake anyone?).
During your researching adventures you may come across a topic that is very similar to the one you are writing about, however, it has thousands more enthusiasts than the market you are aiming at. One thing you may what to consider is, can you tailor what you are writing, to what people want? Can you include an extra chapter in your novel, or an extra character or concept that works well with your current work? If so, you may find that you can also capture readers from this similar yet more popular branch of your genre.
For an author who wishes to approach a publisher, you also need to consider the question, why publish my book? What will convince them to spend thousands of dollars on it? There needs to be enough of a market to see them a monetary return. Are there no similar books in the market? Does it deal with a current trend? Is there a similar book that has been favourably reviewed recently? Whatever you angle is you need to make it clear and concise.
One final thing is to research where your competition is aiming their campaigns. What websites are they advertising on? How much are they paying for their ads, what is their unique selling point? This is one of the most powerful parts of this research. Competition is fantastic; they have already set the stage for you. Then it’s up to you to use your unique selling point to make their readers, your readers.
Now that you know who your readers are, where they congregate and what they like, maybe, just maybe, you can allow yourself one cocktail, with a strawberry on the rim, at your local bar. You can work your way up to the umbrella.
TOMORROW: How to create a proposal for a publisher, agent, or online reader.
FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY! – Do you want to be ahead of the game? Join one of my weekly introductory webinars (online seminar) on e-books! I will be speaking live and in detail about the 5 Fast, Simple secrets to E-Book Success and giving you some fantastic internet resources to help you on your way. Please join me to discover how you can create a massive following and increase the success of your e-book tenfold, allowing you to free up time to live, write and create whenever you want to.
Why Not Join My Weekly Introductory E-Book Webinar At 8:30pm?
Register NOW! In the blue box on the top right of the page.
I know many of us picture the future of our writing career as a little pink, cocktail umbrella heaven (myself included; fantasy writer = vivid imagination), but the cold, hard, mouldy cardboard smelling truth is not everyone is going to like what you write. Leaving your market research at, “Oh, everyone is going to love my book,” is just plain suicidal, with your self-indulgence and arrogance being the knife that makes the cut. We all need to find our selling point; another generic synopsis of a vampire novel just isn’t going to cut it anymore. Now if it’s a space opera vampire novel you may stand a chance.... Let me explain.
First and foremost you have to determine, what is your aim? In writing and in publishing this novel what do you hope to achieve? Do you feel compelled, feel you’re talented, have an imagination that wants out, want to share your experiences, your opinions? If those are your reasons for writing you may find you audience more of a Shih Tzu size than a Great Dane size. My favourite reason is always writing for fame and fortune. Do me a favour and on a piece of paper write the name of every author you like to read. Now search online for a list of author names at say a major writers festival. Compare the number of people on the festival’s program to the number of people you actually know the names of, and the people on your list. The number of authors you don’t know far outweighs the number you do. Have all of them been published? Yes, several times generally. Are all of them famous? They’d like to think so.
If you are writing to make money, then you better make sure that you are writing in a genre or on a topic that people want to buy, need to buy. Just because you have a great idea, does not mean that people are looking for it, or feel that they want it or need it in any way when they see it. I am an advocate of writing what you love and what you are passionate about. But if you are writing to make money, you need to go about it differently. A great place to discover the things people are talking about is newspapers. Another fantastic site that shows you the current trends is trendwatch.com, if you feel that way inclined.
For the rest of you, who have written what you love, and have the philosophy that while you can maximise your sales, you may not be the next J.K. Rowling let’s talk about market research. This is going to involve you asking a lot of questions.
Who will read your book? What age group? What gender? What interests? What side interests? What demographic (religion, single mothers, gay etc)? You need to think about where would your novel be advertised/publicised and how you might reach that group. For example if you write comic fantasy your target readership may be young adults between 14 and 18, who like reading Terry Pratchett, school libraries and readers of certain kids magazines, comics or video games. Then you need to find out how many of these readers/magazines there are. Look online, type in key words (eg Terry Pratchett, fantasy, comedy etc) and find out where these people congregate. Are there Facebook pages on how to still each chocolate and not gain weight? How many people like these pages? Are there online forums on mountain bike riding down ski slopes? How many people have visited the site (see the visitor counter at the bottom)? What is the readership of the magazine Soaps Not Gropes? Also look at your local government statistics websites. How many people attend university? School? Declare Jedi as their official religion? Find out how many searches are being done per month on your topic, on a book similar to yours, in Google. To do this you can just type in ‘free keyword tool’ or ‘free keyword search’ into Google. This will give you an indication of how many people are looking for what you are selling. Better still, it is going to give you an indication on the potential size of your readership so you are under no illusions as you set forth.
Now that you have found these odd (yet wonderful) people, why would they want to buy your book? Is your book as good as, superior to, similar to other books on the market? What can you do that is different or better? What are they NOT offering? Research similar books on Amazon, research their content, reviews on them, what are their weaknesses (this is particularly relevant for non-fiction). How does your book provide what theirs does not? Is it easier to understand? Is it the first of its kind? Is there a unique theme? For example your vampire novel takes place in a space opera setting. Or you have a unique narrative voice, a different angle, cover something in more depth. There are millions of cook books out there but, how many are specifically designed to use foods that help people with Alzheimer’s? Find an angle that makes it unique. Please, whatever you do, do not promise your book is unique and not deliver. It’s like taking a toy away from a sumo wrestler at Christmas, it’s not advised.... or beneficial to your health (human pancake anyone?).
During your researching adventures you may come across a topic that is very similar to the one you are writing about, however, it has thousands more enthusiasts than the market you are aiming at. One thing you may what to consider is, can you tailor what you are writing, to what people want? Can you include an extra chapter in your novel, or an extra character or concept that works well with your current work? If so, you may find that you can also capture readers from this similar yet more popular branch of your genre.
For an author who wishes to approach a publisher, you also need to consider the question, why publish my book? What will convince them to spend thousands of dollars on it? There needs to be enough of a market to see them a monetary return. Are there no similar books in the market? Does it deal with a current trend? Is there a similar book that has been favourably reviewed recently? Whatever you angle is you need to make it clear and concise.
One final thing is to research where your competition is aiming their campaigns. What websites are they advertising on? How much are they paying for their ads, what is their unique selling point? This is one of the most powerful parts of this research. Competition is fantastic; they have already set the stage for you. Then it’s up to you to use your unique selling point to make their readers, your readers.
Now that you know who your readers are, where they congregate and what they like, maybe, just maybe, you can allow yourself one cocktail, with a strawberry on the rim, at your local bar. You can work your way up to the umbrella.
TOMORROW: How to create a proposal for a publisher, agent, or online reader.
FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY! – Do you want to be ahead of the game? Join one of my weekly introductory webinars (online seminar) on e-books! I will be speaking live and in detail about the 5 Fast, Simple secrets to E-Book Success and giving you some fantastic internet resources to help you on your way. Please join me to discover how you can create a massive following and increase the success of your e-book tenfold, allowing you to free up time to live, write and create whenever you want to.
Why Not Join My Weekly Introductory E-Book Webinar At 8:30pm?
Register NOW! In the blue box on the top right of the page.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
There, Their or They’re?
So you are done. You’re over the moon, you’re doing back flips off the wall, cartwheels through the living room, and you’re bouncing about like you’ve had ten cups of coffee and one giant wake up pill. The manuscript is done, the characters have had their last dance, ninja kicked their last bad guy, breathed their last breath and you can relax. Right? I think you know the answer to that one.
The number of people who have told me that revision is key are too numerous to count, but one thing’s for certain. They are right… the bastards. Because good writing is re-writing. However there is a slow, chaotic way of doing it, kind of resembling a 3D Picasso jigsaw, and a methodical way of doing it aka, keeping your sanity firmly rooted to planet Earth. The first step is to see revision as the fun part. It’s easier than creating something from scratch, no accusing cursor demanding why you haven’t burnt the suspicious pair of underwear in the cookie jar yet. Now that you know the whole story yourself you can go back and make sure that all the hints you thought you included, are actually not just figments of your imagination.
Self-editing is daunting, where do you start? What are you looking for? What if you can’t figure out what you’re doing wrong? Don’t panic! As I said there is a simple way and that involves cutting editing into small manageable chunks, searching for a different thing in each read through. To help calm yourself you should set aside your writing for a period of time. The longer you leave it the better. For those of you who are so addicted you can barely bring yourself to switch off the computer, try to hold off for a week minimum. Then let the fun begin.
Reading 1
Do a non-stop read through of the entire thing on a day when there are no distractions. No kids with colds insisting you try the muffins they’ve made, no topless partners walking through your work space, nothing. Read aloud if you can. Have a pen or highlighter in your hand and every time there is a stumble, discomfort or something just bothers you, make a mark on the page. But keep reading!!!! Then come back later and decide what troubled you. Did you put a comma in the wrong place? Slip from the point of view of the granny to the wolf? Or have a nun say something that would come out of the mouth of a stripper? As a first stab in the dark, do what you can to sort out the marks on these pages.
Reading 2
Here you need to check structure, particularly whether the order of the story, tension and pacing makes sense. Should you really be building up the tension of your character buying the sandwich and only spend one line on them getting robbed in the alleyway by a midget? Here there are several things you should look for:
How is your beginning? You only have one first line, one first paragraph. It is at this point, where someone is going to decide whether you are worth investing time in. Does it set the demeanour for the rest of the novel? If you are not happy with your beginning try to start from the first interesting moment in your story, start in the action.
Identify the themes in your story. Good winning over bad, stand up against bullying, trees are people too. Try to make sure these themes come out strongly in the novel and that every character and event is contributing to them in some way. If you want to add a chapter of silliness, you can do so as long as it is moving the book forward.
In the middle section do you have the events you need to introduce the climax at the end? Have you connected your characters enough so their significance to the story is known (or is an intentional surprise)? List all possible endings. Which one is the more satisfying conclusion to your novel? The same goes for non-fiction, build up the knowledge and bring all the sections together at the end for the final close.
Reading 3
Time to get picky. Go through your manuscript with a highlighter and mark every adverb, every adjective, every needless word (actually, in fact, very, really, up (as in stand up)). Look at each sentence, particularly the end. Is the strongest word at the end? Or have you ended every sentence with the word ‘it’? Try to minimise the adverbs and look for more interesting words to replace them. Get rid of the repetitions (words or phrases). Have you used the words like, likely, likelihood all in the same paragraph? Change at least two of them. If you can identify the words you use all the time (I myself like the words ‘tangle’ and ‘appeared’ a little too much), search them out and destroy them!
Look for more precise words then the ones you initially used, is there another way to phrase what you are saying? Take out a thesaurus and make a list of every single word that relates to your themes. Are you writing about loneliness, happiness, innocence, evil, the colour red? Look for places to insert them into the text so that your language contributes to the themes as much as the characters.
Reading 4
Check for punctuation and only punctuation. Because, of course, by now you have the very best sentences in the very best order and can ignore those pesky words. Find the best place to put those colons and semi colons we like to use to make smiley faces in emails :) ;) And for goodness sake, run spell checker!!!!!
Final Pieces of Advice
Show don’t tell: If you have a paragraph describing what people are doing, ask yourself if it can’t be done better through dialogue. Rather than that saying a character said something angrily, show it by having them stomp their foot, or throw an object at the cat rather than telling the reader.
The hook: Make sure that there is a hook, a moment of interest or suspense at the start and end of every chapter. This will make your book the page turner it is meant to be.
You may also want to check you have the right 'there' (there, their, they're), 'where' (where, were, we're) and your (your, you're)!
TOMORROW: Creating a book proposal (for submission to agents, publishers or for online marketing) – What is your market? How are you better?
FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY! – Do you want to be ahead of the game? Join one of my weekly introductory webinars (online seminar) on e-books! I will be speaking live and in detail about the 5 Fast, Simple secrets to E-Book Success and giving you some fantastic internet resources to help you on your way. Please join me to discover how you can create a massive following and increase the success of your e-book tenfold, allowing you to free up time to live, write and create whenever you want to.
Why Not Join My Weekly Introductory E-Book Webinar At 8:30pm?
Register NOW! In the blue box on the top right of the page.
The number of people who have told me that revision is key are too numerous to count, but one thing’s for certain. They are right… the bastards. Because good writing is re-writing. However there is a slow, chaotic way of doing it, kind of resembling a 3D Picasso jigsaw, and a methodical way of doing it aka, keeping your sanity firmly rooted to planet Earth. The first step is to see revision as the fun part. It’s easier than creating something from scratch, no accusing cursor demanding why you haven’t burnt the suspicious pair of underwear in the cookie jar yet. Now that you know the whole story yourself you can go back and make sure that all the hints you thought you included, are actually not just figments of your imagination.
Self-editing is daunting, where do you start? What are you looking for? What if you can’t figure out what you’re doing wrong? Don’t panic! As I said there is a simple way and that involves cutting editing into small manageable chunks, searching for a different thing in each read through. To help calm yourself you should set aside your writing for a period of time. The longer you leave it the better. For those of you who are so addicted you can barely bring yourself to switch off the computer, try to hold off for a week minimum. Then let the fun begin.
Reading 1
Do a non-stop read through of the entire thing on a day when there are no distractions. No kids with colds insisting you try the muffins they’ve made, no topless partners walking through your work space, nothing. Read aloud if you can. Have a pen or highlighter in your hand and every time there is a stumble, discomfort or something just bothers you, make a mark on the page. But keep reading!!!! Then come back later and decide what troubled you. Did you put a comma in the wrong place? Slip from the point of view of the granny to the wolf? Or have a nun say something that would come out of the mouth of a stripper? As a first stab in the dark, do what you can to sort out the marks on these pages.
Reading 2
Here you need to check structure, particularly whether the order of the story, tension and pacing makes sense. Should you really be building up the tension of your character buying the sandwich and only spend one line on them getting robbed in the alleyway by a midget? Here there are several things you should look for:
How is your beginning? You only have one first line, one first paragraph. It is at this point, where someone is going to decide whether you are worth investing time in. Does it set the demeanour for the rest of the novel? If you are not happy with your beginning try to start from the first interesting moment in your story, start in the action.
Identify the themes in your story. Good winning over bad, stand up against bullying, trees are people too. Try to make sure these themes come out strongly in the novel and that every character and event is contributing to them in some way. If you want to add a chapter of silliness, you can do so as long as it is moving the book forward.
In the middle section do you have the events you need to introduce the climax at the end? Have you connected your characters enough so their significance to the story is known (or is an intentional surprise)? List all possible endings. Which one is the more satisfying conclusion to your novel? The same goes for non-fiction, build up the knowledge and bring all the sections together at the end for the final close.
Reading 3
Time to get picky. Go through your manuscript with a highlighter and mark every adverb, every adjective, every needless word (actually, in fact, very, really, up (as in stand up)). Look at each sentence, particularly the end. Is the strongest word at the end? Or have you ended every sentence with the word ‘it’? Try to minimise the adverbs and look for more interesting words to replace them. Get rid of the repetitions (words or phrases). Have you used the words like, likely, likelihood all in the same paragraph? Change at least two of them. If you can identify the words you use all the time (I myself like the words ‘tangle’ and ‘appeared’ a little too much), search them out and destroy them!
Look for more precise words then the ones you initially used, is there another way to phrase what you are saying? Take out a thesaurus and make a list of every single word that relates to your themes. Are you writing about loneliness, happiness, innocence, evil, the colour red? Look for places to insert them into the text so that your language contributes to the themes as much as the characters.
Reading 4
Check for punctuation and only punctuation. Because, of course, by now you have the very best sentences in the very best order and can ignore those pesky words. Find the best place to put those colons and semi colons we like to use to make smiley faces in emails :) ;) And for goodness sake, run spell checker!!!!!
Final Pieces of Advice
Show don’t tell: If you have a paragraph describing what people are doing, ask yourself if it can’t be done better through dialogue. Rather than that saying a character said something angrily, show it by having them stomp their foot, or throw an object at the cat rather than telling the reader.
The hook: Make sure that there is a hook, a moment of interest or suspense at the start and end of every chapter. This will make your book the page turner it is meant to be.
You may also want to check you have the right 'there' (there, their, they're), 'where' (where, were, we're) and your (your, you're)!
TOMORROW: Creating a book proposal (for submission to agents, publishers or for online marketing) – What is your market? How are you better?
FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY! – Do you want to be ahead of the game? Join one of my weekly introductory webinars (online seminar) on e-books! I will be speaking live and in detail about the 5 Fast, Simple secrets to E-Book Success and giving you some fantastic internet resources to help you on your way. Please join me to discover how you can create a massive following and increase the success of your e-book tenfold, allowing you to free up time to live, write and create whenever you want to.
Why Not Join My Weekly Introductory E-Book Webinar At 8:30pm?
Register NOW! In the blue box on the top right of the page.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
First Steps to Success: Preparation
So what are the steps to success when, having weighed the pros and cons, you decide to digitally self-publish your book? Have a drink? Granted big leaps of faith require a drink or two, but no. Brag on Facebook? Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. Start scheduling a string of very important black tie speaking gigs? Hardly, you are not the fricken Michelangelo of the written word just yet.
Most important, please never, ever forget this, is to write a shit hot (aka good) book. Then revise, edit, revise, repeat, get 5 different friends to edit, hire a professional, revise, repeat, stand upside down on your head, read backwards, forwards, out loud, revise, repeat. One of the major pit falls for self published authors is not having the manuscript thoroughly pulled through the bull pit in terms of accurate grammar, and thrilling plot or character development, or even just a good old fashion rearranging.
Any writer who is truly serious about putting out good content (If you want your readers to give a damn about you, you have to give a damn about them!) should hire an editor. If you cannot afford for them to do your whole manuscript I would recommend that you get enough money together so that they can look at the first 30 pages of your work. Any editor worth a grain of sand will be able to tell you most of your repetitive writing boo boos from the first 30 pages. They will be able to tell you if you have fondness for a certain word, long sentences, cliché characters, superhero dialogue or always writing there/their/they’re as ‘there’ regardless of the correct form. The editor needs to explain to you exactly why they are making these changes; if you don’t learn from the experience then you have wasted your money. From an editor looking at the first three chapters of my work I have improved my entire manuscript by at least 200%, that is how powerful this is. Writers’ centres also offer appraisal or editorial services for a very cheap cost to members.
Not only should you be making this your number one priority but you should also take at least one course on editing or barter with fellow writers for a read through. Your friends and family do not count. They are completely biased and entirely too nice to give you the real honest to god truth and in most cases, do not have a clue about what they should be looking for anyway. Underestimate the power of a good solid writers group at your own peril. Having people with different tastes, who read different genres and each with a different editing focus, will see your manuscript jump leaps and bounds without an editor.
Now don’t start giving me these predictable, “What if someone steals my idea?” excuses. If you think this way then your manuscript will in all likelihood only reach a hundredth of its potential and more often than not, will never see the light of day. You can have the world’s most fantastic idea, but if you don’t share it, it’s not going to mean a damn thing. If you do not gauge the reaction to your piece before it goes out into the big wide world of critical readers, you will be in for a rude awakening. More of a ripping your heart out awakening as opposed to a pleasant splash of a bucket of water over your head. I know many of you don’t want a single cell of bacteria, let alone a human being look at your work without it being perfect. However, if you wait for perfection you will wait forever. Writers groups are aware that every piece of writing you give them is a work in progress, it is expected, and the sooner you beat your bad writing habits out of you, the better.
Online writer and editor communities are also a fantastic place to learn the art of editing your work. While you have to weigh every comment for its relevance, you need to also consider there is always a reason behind every comment or suggestion that people make. If more than one person makes the same comment, you know it’s an area that needs looking at. At all times keeping an open mind is key.
Self-editing is the most crucial skill a writer can learn, it applies to any writing form, short stories, articles, poetry, haikus! Every piece should be taken through the ringer by yourself, and other people before you even consider publishing it. Tomorrow, I’m going to take you through the basics myself.
TOMORROW: I am going to discuss a step by step plan on how to begin self-editing your own work.
Most important, please never, ever forget this, is to write a shit hot (aka good) book. Then revise, edit, revise, repeat, get 5 different friends to edit, hire a professional, revise, repeat, stand upside down on your head, read backwards, forwards, out loud, revise, repeat. One of the major pit falls for self published authors is not having the manuscript thoroughly pulled through the bull pit in terms of accurate grammar, and thrilling plot or character development, or even just a good old fashion rearranging.
Any writer who is truly serious about putting out good content (If you want your readers to give a damn about you, you have to give a damn about them!) should hire an editor. If you cannot afford for them to do your whole manuscript I would recommend that you get enough money together so that they can look at the first 30 pages of your work. Any editor worth a grain of sand will be able to tell you most of your repetitive writing boo boos from the first 30 pages. They will be able to tell you if you have fondness for a certain word, long sentences, cliché characters, superhero dialogue or always writing there/their/they’re as ‘there’ regardless of the correct form. The editor needs to explain to you exactly why they are making these changes; if you don’t learn from the experience then you have wasted your money. From an editor looking at the first three chapters of my work I have improved my entire manuscript by at least 200%, that is how powerful this is. Writers’ centres also offer appraisal or editorial services for a very cheap cost to members.
Not only should you be making this your number one priority but you should also take at least one course on editing or barter with fellow writers for a read through. Your friends and family do not count. They are completely biased and entirely too nice to give you the real honest to god truth and in most cases, do not have a clue about what they should be looking for anyway. Underestimate the power of a good solid writers group at your own peril. Having people with different tastes, who read different genres and each with a different editing focus, will see your manuscript jump leaps and bounds without an editor.
Now don’t start giving me these predictable, “What if someone steals my idea?” excuses. If you think this way then your manuscript will in all likelihood only reach a hundredth of its potential and more often than not, will never see the light of day. You can have the world’s most fantastic idea, but if you don’t share it, it’s not going to mean a damn thing. If you do not gauge the reaction to your piece before it goes out into the big wide world of critical readers, you will be in for a rude awakening. More of a ripping your heart out awakening as opposed to a pleasant splash of a bucket of water over your head. I know many of you don’t want a single cell of bacteria, let alone a human being look at your work without it being perfect. However, if you wait for perfection you will wait forever. Writers groups are aware that every piece of writing you give them is a work in progress, it is expected, and the sooner you beat your bad writing habits out of you, the better.
Online writer and editor communities are also a fantastic place to learn the art of editing your work. While you have to weigh every comment for its relevance, you need to also consider there is always a reason behind every comment or suggestion that people make. If more than one person makes the same comment, you know it’s an area that needs looking at. At all times keeping an open mind is key.
Self-editing is the most crucial skill a writer can learn, it applies to any writing form, short stories, articles, poetry, haikus! Every piece should be taken through the ringer by yourself, and other people before you even consider publishing it. Tomorrow, I’m going to take you through the basics myself.
TOMORROW: I am going to discuss a step by step plan on how to begin self-editing your own work.
Friday, April 15, 2011
We Are Concerned…
Unfortunately with any new and lucrative opportunities come great concerns. Very few people can say that they haven’t shared or ‘pirated’ movies or music in their lifetime. If we were to express our piracy in costume, almost 99% of us would be wearing eye patches and calling everyone ‘Matey’. Arrr, it’s the truth. Over several years we have been bombarded with stories of the music and film industries apparently declining sales and battles over copyright.
The chief concern among authors is losing money due to sharing of their e-book files as opposed to the purchase of them. One solution to this concern is the implementation of digital rights management (DRM) codes placed on e-books to ‘prevent’ sharing. Yet in the long run these sorts of prevention methods are counterproductive, treating lawful customers like criminals. What we all need to ask ourselves is, is it worth it penalising a fan for promoting our work? Many consumers resent DRM as it limits their ability to fully own and enjoy their e-book.
There is a growing body of evidence that authors and publishers who have abandoned DRM are actually enjoying greater sales of their works. As noted by Cory Doctorow, it is practically impossible to prevent copying in this technological age. As such, the way he markets his books is to just give away the e-book version (under a commons licence that allows non-commercial sharing) to attract readers to buy hard copies of his works. Essentially, by enlisting his readers to promote his novels, he increases his sales by simultaneously releasing the e-book and published copies. It is worth noting that Cory has had his novels on the New York Times bestseller list over the past couple of years. Now, I’m not suggesting you just suck it up because you’re not going to earn any money. Nor am I suggesting you close your eyes and give your baby away for adoption to the nearest pirate clad stranger. However, with the correct marketing and pricing, people are willing to buy rather than steal.
As a way to visualise this copyright issue, think of digital sharing as a person lending their friend a physical book. That friend does not want to buy the novel of an author they don’t know, but by their friend lending the book to them, they are giving a recommendation on the quality of that work. As a result the friend may become hooked on that author’s work and now, the author has a new fan and customer who will recommend the book to others. Currently in bookstores we are seeing a decrease in the number of books sold due to price, however, a digital e-book is cheaper and more people are inclined to buy this non-expensive entertainment as opposed to pirating it.
Word of mouth and sharing are some of the most powerful ways to create a fan base and hence income. Cory has almost 111,000 twitter followers; it’s ridiculous to think with 111,000 fans you would make no money. How did he get that many followers? Because he got his work out there, in fact he is giving it away, and now he is reaping the rewards.
Should an author be worried about the sharing of their works, or should they be more concerned about their work of art never, ever, seeing the light of day as it is rejected year after year? Personally I would prefer not to waste years in which no-one reads a word of what I have written, in which no-one follows my writing and no-one knows who I am. It is more important to reach an audience initially than it is to make money. Hell it’s like a comedian refining their jokes until their big moment at the comedy gala, and never getting there because they didn’t do any damn practise shows! No one knows they’re funny, and unless they shove their material in front of people they will never get the attention they need to make it to that gala.
Neil Gaiman, author of Stardust and Coraline and one of the world’s most beloved writer’s has also spoken about how piracy may even be beneficial to an author, as seen in the video below.
In some cases showing you can reach an audience is beneficial. This relates to the concern that first publishing rights for a novel will become less valuable to a publisher if it is already digitally published. This is possible but not inevitable. One has to consider a publishers view on the commercial marketability of their work. If you, as an author, can prove that you can sell books and that a market exists for your writing, then you increase the value of your body of work. You will also have a fan base the publisher can market to. Scott Sigler, another New York Times bestselling author, created a large online following by giving away his self-recorded audio books for free as serialised podcasts, similar to an old school radio drama. This was all before he was offered a traditional publishing contract. By using the internet to his advantage, and leveraging his books and the art of viral marketing to his fans, he was able to prove the quality of his work to publishers. It’s an alternative for people who can’t bear to have their book in a possibly-pirated-digital-form, but want their work to be known and appreciated.
Another common question is how is quality maintained? Aren’t e-books a medium where anyone can publish the drivel they have written? I think we can all agree we have read books by highly regarded publishing houses that have turned out to be utter crap. I mean, you are damn near ready to burn that book and recommend it to your worst enemy because of the time it wasted. I continuously ask myself how some books even made it through. In the digital world, like the physical world, one thing can be certain; it is up to the readers to decide what is worth reading. The great authors bubble to the top through word of mouth, and the lesser authors will drop out of sight. There are ways to make sure that your MS is up to a high enough standard so that you’re writing does not fall by the wayside due to easily fixable issues.
TOMORROW: We’re going to whip your manuscript's wobbily behind into shape!
The chief concern among authors is losing money due to sharing of their e-book files as opposed to the purchase of them. One solution to this concern is the implementation of digital rights management (DRM) codes placed on e-books to ‘prevent’ sharing. Yet in the long run these sorts of prevention methods are counterproductive, treating lawful customers like criminals. What we all need to ask ourselves is, is it worth it penalising a fan for promoting our work? Many consumers resent DRM as it limits their ability to fully own and enjoy their e-book.
There is a growing body of evidence that authors and publishers who have abandoned DRM are actually enjoying greater sales of their works. As noted by Cory Doctorow, it is practically impossible to prevent copying in this technological age. As such, the way he markets his books is to just give away the e-book version (under a commons licence that allows non-commercial sharing) to attract readers to buy hard copies of his works. Essentially, by enlisting his readers to promote his novels, he increases his sales by simultaneously releasing the e-book and published copies. It is worth noting that Cory has had his novels on the New York Times bestseller list over the past couple of years. Now, I’m not suggesting you just suck it up because you’re not going to earn any money. Nor am I suggesting you close your eyes and give your baby away for adoption to the nearest pirate clad stranger. However, with the correct marketing and pricing, people are willing to buy rather than steal.
As a way to visualise this copyright issue, think of digital sharing as a person lending their friend a physical book. That friend does not want to buy the novel of an author they don’t know, but by their friend lending the book to them, they are giving a recommendation on the quality of that work. As a result the friend may become hooked on that author’s work and now, the author has a new fan and customer who will recommend the book to others. Currently in bookstores we are seeing a decrease in the number of books sold due to price, however, a digital e-book is cheaper and more people are inclined to buy this non-expensive entertainment as opposed to pirating it.
Word of mouth and sharing are some of the most powerful ways to create a fan base and hence income. Cory has almost 111,000 twitter followers; it’s ridiculous to think with 111,000 fans you would make no money. How did he get that many followers? Because he got his work out there, in fact he is giving it away, and now he is reaping the rewards.
Should an author be worried about the sharing of their works, or should they be more concerned about their work of art never, ever, seeing the light of day as it is rejected year after year? Personally I would prefer not to waste years in which no-one reads a word of what I have written, in which no-one follows my writing and no-one knows who I am. It is more important to reach an audience initially than it is to make money. Hell it’s like a comedian refining their jokes until their big moment at the comedy gala, and never getting there because they didn’t do any damn practise shows! No one knows they’re funny, and unless they shove their material in front of people they will never get the attention they need to make it to that gala.
Neil Gaiman, author of Stardust and Coraline and one of the world’s most beloved writer’s has also spoken about how piracy may even be beneficial to an author, as seen in the video below.
In some cases showing you can reach an audience is beneficial. This relates to the concern that first publishing rights for a novel will become less valuable to a publisher if it is already digitally published. This is possible but not inevitable. One has to consider a publishers view on the commercial marketability of their work. If you, as an author, can prove that you can sell books and that a market exists for your writing, then you increase the value of your body of work. You will also have a fan base the publisher can market to. Scott Sigler, another New York Times bestselling author, created a large online following by giving away his self-recorded audio books for free as serialised podcasts, similar to an old school radio drama. This was all before he was offered a traditional publishing contract. By using the internet to his advantage, and leveraging his books and the art of viral marketing to his fans, he was able to prove the quality of his work to publishers. It’s an alternative for people who can’t bear to have their book in a possibly-pirated-digital-form, but want their work to be known and appreciated.
Another common question is how is quality maintained? Aren’t e-books a medium where anyone can publish the drivel they have written? I think we can all agree we have read books by highly regarded publishing houses that have turned out to be utter crap. I mean, you are damn near ready to burn that book and recommend it to your worst enemy because of the time it wasted. I continuously ask myself how some books even made it through. In the digital world, like the physical world, one thing can be certain; it is up to the readers to decide what is worth reading. The great authors bubble to the top through word of mouth, and the lesser authors will drop out of sight. There are ways to make sure that your MS is up to a high enough standard so that you’re writing does not fall by the wayside due to easily fixable issues.
TOMORROW: We’re going to whip your manuscript's wobbily behind into shape!
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