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Compulsively Writing Fiction: My experiences in Self-publishing in 2011
Taken from http://katepolicani.com
by Kate Policani
Published by Kate Policani at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Kate Policani
http://katepolicani.com
Discover other titles by Kate Policani at http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/katepolicani
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This book is dedicated to you. I wrote it for you. Publish your book, OK? You can do it!
INTRODUCTION
Why did I decide to self-publish? I guess the basic answer to that was that it was easiest at the place I am in my life. With three kids, I wasn’t prepared for lots of travel or meetings, which could result from publishing the traditional way. I could wait until my youngest went to school, or I could start now on my own.I couldn’t do it without my laptop and my tech and web savvy hubby. Don’t try this if the internet seems like a fathomless jungle to you. I have read in every blog and website on self-publishing I could find. Self-published authors need to promote themselves. Through this process I learned an enormous amount and had to try things I had never known existed online.I really wouldn’t have finished any books without my laptop. If I had to do it all with actual paper and a clunky typewriter, it never would have happened. My laptop makes everything easy and I can see, over the top of the monitor, what kind of trouble my kids are getting into. (This is vital).My hubby researched and so did I. I looked up Amanda Hocking’s blog. Hearing the self-publishing story from a new sensation in Amazon Kindle ebooks, I thought, “I can do that!”I have lots of links to share, but not all will exist if you read this months or years after I publish this collection. Things are constantly changing online and what I have gone through may be entirely different for you.
One of my reasons is illustrated in the chart below, posted on TMZimmerman’s article.
NOTE: Links that are represented by text have been changed to prevent ebook crashing.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
First Steps
Publicity
Make a Trailer
Write the book
My Think Tank
Edit
Your Book Cover
Contracts
Sign Up
Fine Tuning
Implement
Publish
Copyright
Promote
Publish Some More
How Writing a Book Changed Me
My Misconceptions
Links
1-FIRST STEPS
So once I decided to self-publish what did I do first? I researched a whole lot. There are countless blogs and websites all about self-publishing. There are even books published on self-publishing! Don’t worry, though. There are plenty of people out there who are more than willing to give you all that information (and opinion) for free. There is no way you can read them all, and often they carry information that is repeated. Just read until you feel comfortable with your personal plan of action, and then do it!
An important bit of advice that I really appreciated was to have any book EDITED before it is ever seen in public. That means publishers also. Some people recommended that you find your own editor, rather than relying on one from whatever company you decide to publish with.
Finding an editor was insanely easy! I posted on Facebook and on another large community website I am part of, and I found two editors within 24 hours. One of them was a friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in a while. I now have the opportunity to employ and promote a friend while promoting my own work! I went this route for my cover art also and I was very happy about what I ended up with. I did have to say “no” to an artist, which was hard. These are two things that I was willing to spend money on, even at the beginning (and totally unprofitable) stage of my writing.
Everybody wants to give you free tips on how to self-publish–even Wiki-How. I went the lowest-cost route with my first book. Even though I aimed strictly for the web-publishing market, there are fantastic tips in every article I have found. Don’t miss them by focusing only on the ones that fit your intended market.
My chores list for self-publishing my book
(This is where I established the Table of Contents):
1. Publicity, publicity, publicity. I originally had this after publishing on my list and that was a mistake. Promote while you are writing the book you’re planning to publish. Start as soon as you can because you’ll need that web presence for book sales later. Also, write the book.
2. Choose a pen name. You’ll want all your online activity to feature this name. Your name is your brand just as much as your books’ names. Also, write the book.
3. Establish an email address, a WordPress site, a Facebook profile, and Twitter account for my pen name and a Facebook profile for my book. Also, write the book.
4. Write the book
5. Get 6 or more friends to read the manuscript and give me feedback and work the book over
6. Find an editor and give her the manuscript–I posted a request on Facebook and a social website and found several within a few hours! Thanks Kathleen and Kathryn!
7. Find a cover artist–my social website was full of these guys and I found two great artists who are working as a team on my cover. Heidi and Erik were awesome!
8. Sign up on CreateSpace with my pen name and new email.
9. Work with my cover artists to fine-tune the cover.
10. Once my editor has finished, implement her changes to my manuscript. (This took a lot longer than I thought. I recommend establishing a deadline whether or not you need your book quickly.)
11. Finalize contracts with my editor and cover artists.
12. Publish my book on CreateSpace. CreateSpace provides an ISBN number for my book. (Complicated and easy at the same time!)
13. Register my copyright at http://copyright.gov/ . This can be done online and there is a small fee. (Still have to mail in a copy.)
14. Submit my book to popular book blogs for them to review. (Also took longer than I thought)
15. Possibly publish my book on additional publishing sites.
15. Resarch appropriate websites and expand my web presence for publicity.
16. Here is a great checklist (simpler than mine) and a comprehensive website about self-publishing complete with extra services you can buy if any of this is too much for you:
Self-Publishing Coach
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2-PUBLICITY
Publicity is vital! I began just before I sent the book to the editor, and that was a mistake. Start things up while you are writing.
Places to begin:
Decide on a pen name: This can be your actual name, a variation of your actual name, or a made-up name. Just pick something that you think fits the image you want to convey. Your name is your brand and I’ve seen sites where the author’s name is absent. It didn’t work.
Set up an author email address: Using your pen name, sign up with Yahoo, Gmail, Live mail, (all free) or any other service you like, or all of them. You don’t want somebody impersonating you via email, after all. Make sure to use your email preferences to leave a signature including all your web addresses. Emails go all over and you want people to have your info at their fingertips.
Facebook: You can set up an author Facebook account using your pen name. Connect as little personal info as possible to this site so you can make it public and get lots of interaction with your fans. Also, you can make a fan page for your pen name and all your books, finished and pending. Post all your progress here. Wordpress (and probably other blogs) allow you to connect to Facebook to post a link every time you blog. It saves a lot of work.
Goodreads: They are a great resource for self-published authors. There are tons of resources and a whole new medium for self-promotion and marketing. They are fast too. They set up my author profile right away. www.goodreads.com You should to sign up even if you haven’t finished anything or never will and just love books.
BookBlogs: This site seems like a Facebook for readers and writers to share about books. There is a great format for requesting book reviews. You can post your book info and reviewers can comb through it themselves and contact you. It isn't as upscale as Goodreads but it seems to be less complicated. You also have to request membership and be accepted, rather than just sign up and go. My acceptance took 2 days to go through. http://bookblogs.ning.com
IMPORTANT! There are many sites like Goodreads and Bookblogs for reading and books. Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and many of the other online bookstores also have similar setups. If you get involved with too many at a time you’ll spread yourself too thin. Pick the ones that work best for you and do as many as proves comfortable for you.
Twitter: Twitter is not my thing, but for some people it is lifeblood. Wordpress (and probably other sites) allows you to set up Twitter to post links to your blog entries whenever you blog. That and Amazon Associates are about all I use Twitter for. If you can use a previously-established Twitter account, you should. No sense starting from scratch when you already have some people following you. Make sure your Twitter profile page shows your other addresses, especially your blog/webpage address. There is a special list on Smashwords of Twitter users with increased visibility, so be sure to add your Twitter account to Smashwords if you use them. When I looked, the list was pretty long, but it’s worth a shot!
Webpage/Blogging: Set up a blog someplace like Wordpress or Blogspot (both free) using your pen name. Discuss whatever you like there. You could also do a straight website, but a blog is recommended by most. Your webpage shows up in searches based on its links to other sites and other sites’ links to it, as well as how many people travel there. One big goal is to increase traffic and therefore increase visibility in an exponential way.
Wikipedia: You can make a biography of yourself on Wikipedia. Yeah, it’s intimidating and the guidelines for submission are ponderous. As of writing this guide, I haven’t done it yet.
Update all your existing profiles everywhere to include your sites and info: You need that information to be easily available. Really! Add your blog address everywhere. http://katepolicani.com
Some techie advice from my techie husband: You can't use the same information on all your submissions and profiles or you will be flagged online and disqualified from notice. You can re-use your stuff but don't make it exactly the same. Paraphrase, summarize, and link. Profile info should be a bit different for each profile unless they specifically ask that it be the same as your book. If you're blogging, refer to one blog in the other, but don't copy word-for-word.
Headshots: This one is not necessary but sure has been nice. I have a great-looking pictures of myself to put onto all my stuff. I worked out a deal with my photographer for my family photos we took this year to allow me to use some as headshots. All I have to do is credit her.
Special thanks to Megan Michaelis and her beautiful headshots of me! Working with her was a pleasure and she took some fantastic photos. She was extremely accomodating, allowing me to take my headshots along with my family photo session, and I really appreciate that.Thanks again, Megan!
http://www.meganmichaelisphotography.com/
http://www.facebook.com/#!/MeganMichaelisPhoto?sk=info
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3-MAKE A TRAILER
Technically this goes under publicity, but I thought it should have its own chapter.
Here is my recipe for creating a trailer:
First, I downloaded Microsoft live Movie Maker for FREE. It's part of Windows Live Essentials: http://explore.live.com/windows-live-essentials?lc=1033 It was disgustingly easy to use and dummy-friendly. It was fun, and you just plunk everything in there with the "Insert photo" button. You can add effects and text and everything right there and export it in multiple formats.
Then I spent hours and hours finding photos for my trailer. Literally. Hours and hours. These are the kind of hours and hours where you say, "Hey! How can it be 7:30 already?!!?" It is VERY important that you find royalty-free photos, unless you want to get sued or pay royalties.
I came up with three sites where I got my photos: http://www.sxc.hu/ Has a selection of free and paid photos. For the free photos you must check and see below the pic whether the photographer wants credit or permission to use their photos. I just picked ones that wanted neither. The paid photos on SXC redirect you to istockphoto (below).
http://www.dreamstime.com/ These are also paid and free photos, but the free ones are really free and don't require that you check the photographer's permissions. The paid photos are about the same price as istockphoto's paid photos. Both sites require you to purchase points or a subscription to buy their photos. DON'T BE FOOLED. Each photo does NOT cost only one point.
and http://www.istockphoto.com/ This is only paid photos. Their subscription is (at the time I wrote this) $18.99 for 12 points, which bought me 2 medium-sized photos and one large. The pics do NOT cost one point each, and two that I did not buy cost 30 points!!! If you can find them free, use those. Totally.
I encountered a problem finding a picture of people fighting. All the stock photo of people fighting is cheesy ham shots of men in business suits punching at each other or boxers. I needed a brawl. http://ectopicleiron.blogspot.com/2011/01/fist-fight.html was where I found one, and after extensive searching with no clue as to where the pic came from, I decided to go for it. There were no other choices, really. If this is your blog and I've stolen your photo, please contact me for an apology and to let me know if I can use your photo for my trailer. When I tried to comment on the post and ask you that way, it said I wasn't allowed.
For music, I just emailed my dad, the composer with a Masters in music. (You should do that too. It's really easy and cheap.) But if your dad isn't a composer, you can contact mine: [email protected] . It won't necessarily be so cheap for you, I'm afraid. Sorry!
If you need free music immediately, you impatient thing, go to this beautiful site: http://www.seabreezecomputers.com/tips/freemusic.htm. I particularly liked their link, http://www.soundclick.com/business/license_list.cfm and found a song there in case Dad didn't have anything. (But he did. Neener.) WARNING: there is a lot of kooky stuff on musopen. Don't worry, though, your music isn't one of the kooky ones, user of musopen who is reading this post. It's all those other people's music that is kooky.
And, really all the rest was tweaking the text and pictures and music and stuff (incredibly easy but time-consuming) with Movie Maker.
I made a video trailer based on all the advice that people want to see videos online. I prefer to read information because it’s faster, but I’m strange.
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4- WRITE THE BOOK
You have to do this your own way. Really, you do. There are a million writers out their telling you their writing technique but it is all useless unless it works for you. Write what you like. Write when you want. Write everything that occurs to you to write whether it is great or awful or somewhere in between. Somewhere in every idea and scene is a part of a great book.
While you are writing, you should also be reading! Don’t starve your brain of outside input and expect it to produce. Also, if you plan on exclusively watching episodes of South Park, your writing will have a certain…flavor. Read things similar to what you write. Write reviews, big or small, of what you read to help you work out what you learned. http://cochisewriters.wordpress.com/category/ross/ Ross Lampert gives us a detailed and intelligent process for how he reviews a book. It gets to the heart of why we read. As I’ve pointed out before, reading is necessary for writing, and if you can better analyze your reading then you can better craft your writing!
The instructions are written in series, so I’ve linked to Ross’ page in the blog (multiple authors).
If you are stuck, you can try out this author’s formula for creating a scene out of nothing. It’s magic! DL Morrese’s articleDL Morrese has laid out a simple but beautiful method for creating a scene.
Microsoft One Note: I don’t know if any of you writers out there have a “crazy train” of thought like I do, but Microsoft OneNote is something wonderful, I’m telling you! I am. Right here. (If you’ve been reading my blog, you understand about the “crazy train”.) I swear I was not paid to write this.
First of all, OneNote is very flexible and I can put everything in one place or I can make a new notebook or a new page or a new un-filed note for whatever I want. I have a notebook for my personal book reviews with a page for Wins and a page for Fails, a page for Manga reviews, a page to list the ones I have moved to an excel spreadsheet, and another of the books I have downloaded on Overdrive (from the library in case there is one I read but didn’t review).
Reviews, by the way, have been an excellent tool for me to use my reading addiction to fuel my writing compulsion. I can remind myself with each review what was good or bad about the book and then remember to do or not to do that!
I also have a notebook for each of my books, and it is extremely useful when I need to organize my thoughts outside of Word while I am working. I am easily distracted and frequently find myself finally getting to a place in my book to change something but forgetting what that was. But! If I switch over to OneNote, where I have been ”showing my work”, I can see exactly what I need to do. I can even write it there before wedging it into my manuscript.
My The Disenchanted Pet notebook will be my example:
The first page is all about the themes I want in the book and the other deeper workings of the book.
The second page is an outline page. My outline is vital, but changes constantly and OneNote is flexible enough to take it.
The third page is random cut-and-paste content for when I take something out I want to keep, or need to organize something for the writing.
The fourth page is just for comments and ideas from my Think Tank, so I can keep track of comments and ideas they have made.
The fifth page is just for listing stuff I want to change or “tune up”
The sixth page is Bios of my characters, so I can be sure everybody is consistent.
The seventh page is actually on this blog, my list of “Things to do” for my book.
My author profile has the next slot, where I can put all permutations of my Author Profile blurb.
The eighth page is my acknowledgements, to put into the book when I publish.
The Ninth is my copyright page.
The tenth is my dedication page.
The eleventh is all my editing notes from my recent edit, and my responses to her comments by number.
I subsequently added pages for passages to add, synopsis of the book, excerpt from the book, a timeline of events in the book, about the author page, promotion page, and a page for ideas about the video trailer.
It is so easy to add in things I want and take out things I don’t like. I love never having to worry about saving because it somehow keeps every change without losing them. Only once did I get a “corrupt file” and lost the book reviews I had transcribed from my email to OneNote. That was the last thing I had done before the problem, but everything else was there.
A phone-dedicated email address: I set one up for myself just for my personal and writing notes, and I can email from my cellphone. Wherever I am, as long as I don’t forget to bring my phone, I can email my sacred email account and all my thoughts go right to my email inbox, on my
laptop, where they are the most useful. TaDa! I highly recommend it even if you aren’t a writer. It works for shopping, calendar planning, bad memory, and to-do lists, among other things.
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5-MY THINK TANK
I found a great suggestion from this site: Jaynie2000
Get 6 or so bookish friends and/or family to look over your book before you turn it loose on the public. I have a bunch of people that I bug all the time and forward endless revisions of my book. I call them my “Think Tank” because I love stupid labels. One of my Think Tank has even been inspired to start her own book!
To get this rolling, I simply emailed and Facebooked some friends and family off of whom I mercilessly bounced my ideas. Some bounced back, some did not, and some bounced back a whole lot. I have the scars to prove it! (Just kidding…) They were invaluable in pointing out problems and asking me questions about all the nonsense I wrote. For The Disenchanted Pet, I emailed the poor wretches every chapter as I finished it. In hindsight, that was probably super annoying. For The Lustre and How To Win Friends and Influence Magicians, I emailed the whole chunk once it was done and then asked them to comment.
Either way, they helped me hammer out the gross, slimy lumps in my story, and I got the idea to do it from a useful article online. The article suggested 4 to 6 trusted people who like writing and reading and who enjoy reading things in the genre you are writing. (This last one is important if you want them to finish reading it.) There aren’t a ton of people out there who are interested in reading books in a genre they don’t really like.
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6- EDIT
I won’t post any links here because everybody says it. You HAVE to edit. Not yourself, either. You are awesome, but you are in your own train of thought and you can’t see it from the outside. Really. If you can find someone who will edit your work for free, awesome! Just remember that if you have your BFF who has no training in editing do your editing for you, you may not get the results you want.
Once again, I used my social networks and found a friend who went through University of Washington’s editor certification course. I may even do the course myself one day. But even still, I would get someone else to edit for me.
Here is an example: I wrote a line in The Disenchanted Pet that said, “rows of cozy blue chairs broken by some wooden end-tables”. It seemed right to me when I wrote it, but chairs cannot break tables (without help). What I meant was not “broken” but “interrupted”. I wouldn’t have noticed that myself.
Just edit the book, OK?
(So…guilty of not taking my own advice, here. I didn’t edit this book. It is free and can be found scattered on my blog with all of the mistakes I made and more. You get what you pay for, and I’m not paying for editing on a free ebook designed 100% to help you. You can endure the mistakes for the price.)
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7- YOUR BOOK COVER
All the experts say that your book cover is one of the most important ways of selling your book. You can make your own if you are creative and have time. You can hire someone to do it if you have the money. I wanted to cover my art with art, so I found some artists to picture my vision for me. They were great and I was able to help them along with my promotions without much extra effort. My church is a community with lots and lots of artists, so it wasn’t hard to find them. I used their art and CreateSpace’s cover design program to make my cover.
I will give you a link or two about book cover design. I supplied these to my wonderful cover artists, Heidi and Erik Barnett, and they did an amazing job on my cover art!
The links are for AuthorHouse’s Resources on Book Marketing, specifically Book Covers:
Authorhouse Design resources link!
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8- CONTRACTS
I know that they are necessary and good, but contracts scare me. There is so much in them and so much that could be hidden in there or left out when it is needed. Also the language could be less specific than it needs to be. Anyway I still do them because even though everybody is nice and reasonable, misunderstandings occur and contracts protect everybody. If you are smart, you’ll have some sort of written contract that is signed or accepted in a format that is traceable, such as emails. Always keep all emails related to contracts too.
When I wanted one for my cover artists so that we all could keep things clear, it was hard to find. I could find plenty of lawyer-ish blogs about how to write one, but I don’t know how to do that! I just wanted a sample form letter-type contract that I could adjust and print. I ended up finding one on another author’s site and re-writing it for my own purposes. http://www.vajraenterprises.com/artcontract1.htm Brian King, thank you for posting this for us, the unprepared and inexperienced. I took this (Copy, Paste) and pared it down, taking out his name and company name, removing the conditions that didn’t apply to me and my artists, and then putting in my own.
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9-SIGN UP!
CreateSpace and Kindle Direct was where I first published my book. I am really happy with their services. CreateSpace is Amazon’s self-publishing site, and all books published through them go to Amazon unless you specify that they stay only on CreateSpace. Kindle does not publish through the CreateSpace site, but has a different site that is wholly separate. A lot of authors complain about this. The separation may occur because formatting for ebooks and print books is so different.
I signed up with their services before my book was finished editing, so that would be all ready when I got the manuscript back. It helped to smooth the way because the formatting is a job. Unless your editor does that for you, it will take some time to get everything right.
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10-FINE TUNING
There will be a period of back and forth with your editor where you will change lots and lots of your book. We cut out whole sections of mine. If you can look at this not as dissecting your baby, but as surgical rescue for a dying baby and then plastic surgery, you’ll feel better. Editing is not a criticism of you personally, but of the mechanics of what you wrote. Again, your train of thought excludes important information that others will see. If you can’t stand criticism of your work, maybe you’re not ready to publish, because if you can’t take suggestions from a professional, you won’t be able to take it from the public, who are less qualified and often not as polite.
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11-IMPLEMENT
This is the step where you take your edited manuscript and scrub it up with the edits and format the heck out of it. The formatting is a job. Unless your editor does that for you, it will take a day or so to get everything right. (Yes, I said this before.) Even if your editor does do this, you should read through it and know the formatting guidelines to be sure it is right. It is you who have to make sure it passes all the websites’ standards
Ebooks and print books are fundamentally different. The print page is more forgiving of format quirks than the ebook. However if you mess up the print book, you can’t just update it and make that available to everyone. The printed ones are printed. With POD (Print on Demand) books you have more lee-way to change later. CreateSpace is a POD publisher.
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12-PUBLISH
Here is where I will tell you what I thought of the different places I published.
CreateSpace: http://www.createspace.com
This site is kinda fun! It’s done in a fun and easy way, with everything laid out very clearly. The acceptance process takes less than 24 hours after submission as long as everything is error-free. Don’t worry. They tell you what errors are there that need fixing. They have lots and lots of information on their community pages, and they link you to them throughout the process pretty thoroughly.
You can also use their community pages for interaction-style promotion through discussions about writing and others’ books. As with all sites, do not bomb everyone with constant advertisement. Promote in the appropriate places. If people like you and your opinions, they will look you up and see your book.
CreateSpace offers customized templates for your content and your cover. I liked their cover designer program and used one of their templates, saved it as a .pdf file, pulled it up in Microsoft Publisher and rearranged it, and then uploaded it again to the cover designer in a “blank” template. That gave me all the assurance that my cover was the right dimensions but with just the look I wanted.
Kindle Direct: https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin
Again, ebooks through Amazon go through this site and you will not have an ebook option on CreateSpace. Ebooks are radically different from print books in format, with little to no bells and whistles being preferred. I found that the Smashwords guide to ebook formatting was ideal for my Kindle submission, and once I achieved Smashwords Premium Distribution, I submitted that same file also to Kindle.
Kindle Direct gives you very little instruction on what they expect from an ebook and though Publishing on Kindle was amazingly easy and quick, that was because I was doing it wrong. I didn’t feel like I could easily get answers to my specific questions, and the site does not make their help files obvious. I had better results “Googling” my question. Was it better to create a “new” book labeled as a second edition or to upload a new file? I had no idea and Kindle Direct website did not have the answer in an obvious place. The forums are poorly labeled and not easy to analyze for the answer I want. But I’m a “wing-it” kind of gal anyway. In retrospect, adding a second copy did not show as a double on Amazon, and it prevented my Kindle book from becoming unavailable during the wait for the file to be accepted again.
It was extremely helpful to get feedback from my friend with a Kindle on how the book looked. I made an update almost immediately upon hearing from her. The lighter colored italics provided in Word’s Quote paragraph style did not show up on her kindle.
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13-COPYRIGHT
As soon as you publish, you can copyright your book. http://www.copyright.gov/ Now, this is the government, here, and you know how with-the-times they are. You can’t copyright your book online unless you plan to only intend to distribute it online. If you want it to be print, you have to send them a print copy. In the mail. Snail mail. Yeah. It’s lame. You should still do it.
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14-PROMOTE
There are lots of promotions you absolutely cannot do until after your book is published. Yes, there is more, and for self-published authors, the promotion is daily. At least you can do it in front of your computer in your underwear if you want to. Try pulling that with a publisher!
Author Pages: If you have the opportunity to fill out an author page on any publishing site, do it. It is free and directly connected to your book for sale. Someone wanting to see other books you have published will look there. Again, try to shake up your details a bit so that every profile isn’t the same.
Amazon Author Central: Once you have a book for sale on Amazon, you need to use Amazon AuthorCentral to advertise yourself as an author! Amazon’s author site is compiled here and you can’t make one on the main site. Link
Amazon Associates: This program is another must for Amazon authors. You can use the Amazon Associates Program to make money while you promote your own book on your own website! (Plus other things) Link
Advertize on Craigslist: Craigslist is free, and you’ll probably want to repeat your ad every few months. Here’s one of mine. http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/bks/2644389960.html
Blog Tours: A blog tour is where you promote your work by soliciting blogs to post about your book each day for your “tour”. I signed up for Novel Publishing Group’s Blog Tour hosting program. http://www.novelpublicity.com/tour/apply/ I met one of their authors, Emlyn Chand, who also does book PR on BookBlogs and thought it would be a good idea to jump into this. Holding blog tours and hosting them can increase traffic to your site, therefore visibility for your own work.
Write a press release: (Scary!) You can write a press release about your book debut. Instructions on making a press release, where to go to make a press release, and how to word it can be found on Smashwords Book Marketing Guide
Participate in HARO: (Help a Reporter Online) with your particular expertise. Mine is alien society in an imaginary future, among other imaginary topics. I think this one is more for nonfiction writers. www.haro.com
Coupon Promotions: Hold a limited coupon promotion on one or more sites: on the sites where you publish that allow coupons (Smashwords does), on your blog/website, on http://kindleboards.com, or other promotion sites such as: www.freeonlinenovels.com ,
http://online-novels.blogspot.com , www.getfreebooks.com , http://blog.booksontheknob.org , http://ereader.freebies.blogspot.com , www.bookbarista.com
Amazon Categories: If you have a book in a category that isn’t too broad, you can use it to your advantage. Hunt for your book using the top search bar, using your book’s category every day, two or three times, and select it when you find it. The more times it is chosen from that list, the higher it will appear. LINK to articleThank you Traci Hilton (tracihilton)!
Tagging on Amazon: Here is the link about that and how to do it. Link Writers will want all their friends to tag their books.
Midwest Book Review: http://www.midwestbookreview.com/ “The Midwest Book Review is an organization of volunteers committed to promoting literacy, library usage, and small press publishing.” You can have them review your work and also ask them to add your website to their site network.
Networked Blogs: (http://w.networkedblogs.com/user/1460583479 is my profile) At Networked Blogs, you set up a profile and prove that you are the owner of your blog. That didn’t work great for me, but it’s free.
Technocrati: (http://technorati.com/). At Technocrati, you just fill out the “join” information and input your blog and you are part of the network. You can even sign up to write for them.
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15–PUBLISHING SOME MORE
So far I have published on CreateSpace, Kindle, and Smashwords. I’ve already described CreateSpace and Kindle, so now I’ll talk about the Smashwords.
Smashwords: Smashwords was easy and fast to load and my book was available right away. It was trickier to get accepted into their “premium distribution” and I haven’t seen amazing results with it as yet.
Smashwords has a fabulous style guide I love! http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52 Even if you aren't planning on publishing through them, I'd recommend going through this guide if you plan on publishing ebooks. (Once I'm sure I have it right through Smashwords, I'm going to update my Kindle book with my Smashwords submission.) The guide is full of great tips about what makes a good ebook and why, so you don't feel like you're beating up your manuscript for nothing. It looks so professional and cool when you're done! It's like a detailing job for your ebook. Good stuff!
I may also publish on LightningSource and Lulu. I will add their info if I do.
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16-HOW WRITING A BOOK CHANGED ME
It did. It changed me, not in an enormous way, but I feel different now that it is out there. I have an accomplishment that is tangible and will endure beyond me. It may reside in a used book store or a storage unit, but it’s there. I have the knowledge that I wrote a book and the confidence that I can do it again. That is enormous for me.
Before the book, I was just Kate, a mommy and a homemaker, doing what all mommies and homemakers have done since the beginning of time. Truthfully, I felt lowly and unimportant to others as a mom. My job (and I consider it to be that) is un-glamorous and possible for anyone who can produce or acquire a baby to parent. Don’t get me wrong. I also think it is the most important job in the world, to raise the next generation, and that is why it is my job, and not my hobby or my side-job. It’s just that it is a really easy field to break into.
Writing a book, however, is not something everyone can do. It makes others see me as unique and worthy. Only a week after my publishing date, I feel the rise in respect from other moms who I chat with in passing at my kids’ school. Friends I haven’t heard from in 16 years are excited about my books! My books are getting people excited! They are enthused about the one that is out and eager for the ones to come.
The publishing thing is interesting too. Even though I self-published and had control over when the book came out (har har), that confirmation of publication was a rite of passage that made me a “Real Writer”. Without the evidence they could hold in their hand (or in their Kindle) it was just a cool hobby. I have the paperback. It says my name on it.
The paperback’s arrival was especially important to my kids. To them, books are still objects. Seeing my book in physical form, not just words on a computer or an ereader, made it real to them. The interest expressed by others is what makes the book important in their eyes and not just some thing mom does on her laptop. They aren’t allowed to touch my laptop, and so it is my space. But when others notice and talk to them about it, it becomes important.
I do feel kind of like a cheater here because my writing is not something I planned to do and sat down with sheer determination to accomplish. It did take discipline and work, but that was to make it presentable. When an idea is whirling around in my head and I am looking at it from all angles and poking it to see if it will twitch, it has to eventually come out onto paper, or the screen of my laptop. The night before last, in order to stop thinking about my next day’s schedule, I made up a story about people transformed into strange beasts with a gene-altering parasite. Last night I expanded on that idea and then fell asleep had a dream about a dramatic confrontation that also could be a story, if arranged properly. There are two potential pieces of books right there that oozed out of me without effort.
This writing isn’t an accomplishment of will for me. It’s the manifestation of my thought processes. And it makes me look cool. “Hi, my name is Kate. I’m an author. Here’s where you can buy my book.” That is so cool! Truthfully, you probably can’t sneeze and not infect at least two authors. But I’m an author, and I can prove it, and it has changed me.
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17-MY MISCONCEPTIONS
This self-publishing thing hasn’t gone exactly the way I thought it would, posting my books on CreateSpace and Smashwords. I tend to think more positively than reality affords, and I’m aware of it, so I’m not surprised very often when I am wrong. Things I was mistaken about:
1. Visibility for my book is low. For some reason I thought people would see my books. My sales numbers have been waywayway lower than I thought they’d be. I’ve been writing so much about self-promotion because I’ve been trying to fix this. You can’t just put them up and see them sold, though. You have to work to draw people toward your books even if they only cost 99 cents as an ebook.
2. Most of my Facebook friends are not interested in my book. They don’t want to read it, or comment about it, or tag it. I have a few wonderful friends who are the ultimate fans, but overall (unless I am also completely invisible on Facebook) people aren’t interested. I had thought that I could get at least 50 sales from Facebook. Oh well.
3. Promotion is endless and can take up all your time. I couldn’t just put up my website and go. To promote, I have to constantly post (see these words in front of your eyes), converse in various places about my book and others, read others’ posts, and squeeze each contact out of the internet like the last of the toothpaste. I have recently said ENOUGH and I’m not looking for more promotion ideas, or joining any other communities to promote. There are too many and I do want to write and pay attention to my family occasionally.
4. I may not “pay off” my book with profits before the end of the year. I made deals with my editor and artists, as a concession to my first book status, to accept payment when I made money on the book. I can’t exactly send them checks for percentages of an $8 month’s profits. If things don’t pick up, I’ll have to dip into my household budget to pay them off at the end of the year. I also was (heh) hoping to make enough to pay up front for editing and art for the next book. Yeah, I know. Now I am wondering but not brave enough to ask my husband if we can just suck it up and pay it to get another book out. I really want to keep going, you know?
5. There is more money to be made in promoting someone’s book than in writing and selling a book. If you really want to just write and have somebody else worry about it, you can. I would love to do that, but it will cost money I can’t spare. If I could get paid to do for others what I have done for myself, that would be awesome. But again there is my whopping $8 monthly payout, which wouldn’t cut it with another author paying me to promote them. Grrrr…
6. I thought when I emailed/filled out forms to get reviews from book review blogs that I would get responses in a week or so. Nope. It’s at least 4 weeks I guess for the bigger blogs if that. The best review blogs are backed up the wazoo with requests for reviews. That’s the way it is.
I’m not feeling bad about my publishing choices. Don’t get me wrong. It is important to know what is not true because the information is not all out there.
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18-LINKS
All of these were good resources for me as a self-publisher. Marketing is so scary and this thing is so complicated that any filter you can get, such as a kind bloggers site with links, is wonderful. And it should all be free because we authors almost always start with nothing.
Self-publishing, General:
Authorhouse Resources
Amazon Kindle Numbers
http://reviews.cnet.com/self-publishing/
http://selfpublishingresources.com/
http://www.self-pub.net/
Self-Publishing Coach
How To Self-Publish Well
http://www.wikihow.com/Self-Publish-a-Book
Jaynie’s Tips
Marketing/Promotion/Advertising:
These are good lists of things to do for marketing a self-published book. Truthfully, some of these sound less pleasent than going to the dentist, but an author’s gotta do what an author’s gotta do.
AskVille’s How-to
Createspace’s Marketing guide
Holly Stacey’s How to Promote
Penguin Publishing’s Author’s guide to online marketing: Penguin’s Author Guide to Marketing
WikiHow’s article on self-publishing: http://www.wikihow.com/Self-Publish-a-Book (I especially like the “Tips” at the bottom!)
Createspace’s Marketing Guide
Self-pub.net’s list, (making this a list within a list): http://www.self-pub.net/
Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords and owner of Dovetail Public Relations has a free ebook on marketing for self-published authors. Surprisingly, it is called Smashwords Book Marketing Guide. Go figure! This is an excellent read full of meaty, juice information for po’ little authors like me. Smashwords Style Guide Thank you, Mark for your fabulous advice, since I can’t use your promotion services! I’m passing it on because marketing tips to authors (poor) should be free!
Marketing on Amazon by Brian Kittrell: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/37429
Tools for writing and publishing:
If you are smart and share your writing with some trusted friends before unleashing it on an unsuspecting population, you find yourself in occasional need of a different format from what your Word program will produce. Well here is a lovely website to convert all your stuff! Upload what you have and download what you want! And it is FREE (every self-published author’s favorite word)! http://www.2epub.com/ Voila! Now it says “epub converter” but it can also convert to epub, fb2, lit, lrf, and mobi!
Authorhouse’s Design Guide
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote/
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