Savvy Writers & e-Books online

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http://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2011/08/21/the-truth-about-pod-publishing/

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Posted by ebooksinternational on May 22, 2013 in All things Legal, Author Royalties, Book Contracts, Writer Beware

Tags: CreateSpace, POD printers, printing costs, Royalties, Selfpublishing, Writer Beware

Top 6 Tips to Successful Self-Publishing

20 May

Opportunity

Beat the “Print-on-Demand” industry! You can do so much better on your own! Don’t be fooled by POD Services.

Are you ready to publish your first book? Get to know the pros and cons of Print-on-Demand and of real self-publishing. Follow these few tips, and you will find the road to success as an author-publisher so much smoother!
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Bookstores don’t buy POD books. Many novice self-publishers are opting for the heavily-advertised Print-On-Demand companies, which promise publication at low fees. For a niche book with an easily-found audience POD can be an option. But what the POD companies won’t tell you, is that neither bookstores nor libraries will generally buy a POD book. However, if you are savvy enough,and have written at least three books (or join with another author) you can find the right wholesale arrangement through Lightning Source / Ingram and Baker&Taylor as outlined in Aaron Shepard’s website and guide book http://www.newselfpublishing.com. But don’t expect to get the same retail discount from “brick and mortar stores” as from Amazon.
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You can judge a book by its cover. That’s what most people do. You never get a second chance for a great first impression! You can get a decent book cover for as little as $100 and a fantastic cover for around $ 500 or more. Just shop around and find out who makes great covers.
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Act like a professional publisher. Nothing is more embarrassing as finding reviews of your book on Amazon that complain about typing and grammar errors in your work. Make sure your book is complete, well-edited, and thoroughly proof-read. Use spell checks, let it copy-edit, content edit and proofread by professionals – not your family or friends. These services provide you with a manuscript that makes you look like the professional you are.
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Don’t use the print shop down the road. Search for a printer that specializes in printing books. You will not only have fewer problems with production, but the prices will be much less expensive. You should be able to print 300 copies of a 250-page soft cover book for approx. $ 2.90 per copy. Digital printers or espresso book machines are useful only for very small amounts of print books, such as for gifts or a book launch party – if you plan to sell mostly e-books.
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Get 100 ISBN’s if possible. ISBN is the International Standard Book Number, and every book sold in bookstores and at most online retailers must have an ISBN. They are the global standard for identifying titles and used world-wide as a unique identifier for books. They simplify distribution and purchase of books throughout the global supply chain. Without an ISBN, you will not be found in most book stores, nor online. In the U.S. ISBN’s are available only from Bowker.com, and you can buy them in blocks of ten, hundred, or even thousand. The fewer you buy the less it costs, but buying just a block of ten marks you as a one-book publisher. And everyone in the publishing industry can figure out how many ISBN’s you’ve purchased by looking at your ISBN number. Lucky if you are a writer from Canada: ISBN’s are free!
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Don’t wait to start marketing until your book is finished. Many first-time writers and self-publishers focus on the writing and the publishing process, and postpone thinking about the book marketing until they have books in hand (or hundreds in their garage). A book – no matter if it is an e-book or a traditional paper book – will succeed or fail on its marketing plan. Before starting your self-publishing project, find out who your audience is, and where and how you will find them. Get to know your competition, search the internet and in bookstores for similar books. Only move forward on your writing project after you have finished your research and your marketing plan. Even find book reviewers before you start writing the book, and blog at least for one year to build an audience for your work. I don’t know of any self-published writer who is successful, without having a blog. Once your book manuscript is finished, don’t forget to use the end of one book to promote another book you have written or you write on currently.
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Self-publishing can not only be lucrative, it can be a lot of fun too. But you need to be somewhat entrepreneurial and do lots of careful planning to really enjoy success with true self-publishing.

Read more about author-publishing and POD’s:

http://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2012/03/03/why-pod-contracts-are-bad-for-authors/

http://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2011/12/11/comparison-of-major-print-on-demand-pod-services/

http://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/pros-and-cons-of-print-on-demand/

http://www.theauthorsredroom.com/top-10-self-publishing-tips/

http://www.sfwa.org/other-resources/for-authors/writer-beware/pod/

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@111publishing

http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+

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Posted by ebooksinternational on May 20, 2013 in Blogging, Marketing, Publishing, Self-Publishing, Social Media Book Marketing, Social Networks

Tags: how to self-publish, POD, POD publishing, pro & con of print on demand, self-publishing tips, successful self-publishing, the truth about POD publishing, who owns the ISBN, Writer Beware

No Secrets – Tips from Literary Agents

19 May

Going through a couple of literary agent’s blogs, they generally all write the same:

“The problem is that most publishers will not review unsolicited proposals or manuscripts. They receive thousands every year and simply don’t have the resources to review all of them. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

As an author, what can you do? In a nutshell, here are some agents advises:

Read blogs written by literary agents. You can get some incredibly helpful advice and straight-talk from people who pitch proposals for a living. Read their useful blogs: Terry Whalin, Rachelle Gardner, Meredith Barnes or Andy Ross.
Educate yourself. If you want to publish with a general market publisher, read 2012 Writer’s Market by Robert Lee Brewer for writer’s guidelines and submission procedures for publishing houses.
Write a killer book proposal. If you want to write (or have written) a book, get these e-books to find out what publishers want in a proposal:
- Writing a Winning Non-Fiction Book Proposal
- Writing a Winning Fiction Book Proposal.
Let someone professional review your proposal, such a friend who teaches English or is a professional editor, ask them to review your proposal.
Find a literary agent to represent you. This is usually the only way to get in the door with a publishing company – at least in the USA. Canada and Europe are different stories. Literary agents do the filtering. If you want a list of general market agents, get the 2013 Guide to Literary Agents, and study carefully their requirements.
Get a professional avatar, a good photo is only a tiny investment – and you need it for your book / website / social media presence etc. anyway.
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Must-Read Blog to learn more about agents and how to approach them
http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents

How Agents work and How to work with Agents
http://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2011/04/12/how-agents-work-how-to-work-with-agents/

What Literary Agents Want to Know From You
http://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2012/04/01/what-literary-agents-want-to-know-from-you/

100′s of Links to Publishers and Agents
http://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/100s-of-links-to-publishers-and-agents/

Which Literary Agent is Right for You?
http://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/which-literary-agent-is-right-for-you/

I am just wondering if all these time and money investments are paying off, as it can take years until your work is published – if at all. Judging a book is not always an objective process. Read more about this in my next post: 77 Reasons why your book was rejected…
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Investing in a good editor, hiring a professional book designer / e-book formatting company, spending time to market your work and selling it as an e-book or print POD might well be as profitable (if not better) than to go through all the hassle and time waste with commercial publishing houses.

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http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+

77 Reasons Why Your Book Was Rejected

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Posted by ebooksinternational on May 19, 2013 in Agents, Book Contracts, Marketing, Publishing Contracts

Tags: andy ross, commercial publisher, e-book formatting company, Literary Agents, professional e-book designer, Publishing contract, terry whalin, unsolicited proposals

77 Reasons Why Your Book Was Rejected

18 May

Written by Mike Nappa, available as e-book and print book at Amazon. The author’s experiences as acquisitions editor, marketing copywriter, and literary agent uniquely qualify him to write on this topic. He is also the author of more than 40 books and received more than 2,000 book rejections during his writing career!
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The book is divided into three sections: Editorial, Marketing and Sales Reasons for Rejection. Starting with: “It takes less than a minute to reject your book” (by big publishers that is) Mike Nappa goes on with all the legitimate and also the silliest reasons your manuscript or book idea might be rejected.

As an author you might be able to work on many, such as marketing and your platform and following, however some of the reasons have nothing to do with the quality of your writing.

An editor is going to look at your proposal – and if it doesn’t meet certain editorial standards, it will go no farther. If it passes basic editorial scrutiny, an editor will then consider whether you have done your “marketing” homework — analyzed and defined your audience, established a platform, shown that you know how and why this book will sell. From there, the editor will need to convince the publisher that they can sell this book, and sell enough to merit the investment in its publication.
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Perhaps the clearest message that emerges from this book is that getting published is a lot of work. The job doesn’t end when you finish writing the last chapter. Publishers are in the business of selling a product, and it’s your job to convince them that your book will sell.
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Or maybe you will decide to author publish. After all you have to do your book marketing anyway, even if your book is accepted by a commercial publisher. “Success is the best revenge” .

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@111publishing

http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+

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Posted by ebooksinternational on May 18, 2013 in Agents, Author Platform / Brand, Book Contracts, e-publishing, Marketing, Publishing, Publishing Contracts, Social Media Book Marketing, Social Networks

Tags: 77 Reasons why your book was rejected, acquisitions editor, editor, getting published, Literary Agents, marketing copywriter, Publishers

Weakness of the 5 Big Publishers

17 May

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… and what you can do better as an author-publisher.

Large traditional publishers have relationships with book stores and book chains. They have publicists working for them to promote their books and editors to polish the final products. They have established relationships with their customers over many years or even decades. They submit books to all the major book awards. Imagine trying to research, compile, address, and pay for 200 give-away books and shipping just to put them in the hands of jurors. And I’m sure there are a lot more things that they do to get books to the readers.
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To learn where they miss the boat is to gain access to a market segment and marketing ideas that you might have overlooked.
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1. New York Publishers Don’t Think Outside the Mainstream
Publishers have particular criteria they look for in a successful book; the first is mainstream appeal, which is understandable since they have to appeal to a larger bookstore-driven market. If you have a book that is outside the mainstream, this is actually good news, unless you’re trying to find a major house to pick you up. The idea here is to understand that traditional publishing dominates the mainstream, but it’s the niches that tend to do very well. You’ll see these books in places like book clubs or the Writer’s Digest book collection and smaller, niche publishing houses.
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2. New York Publishers Don’t Do Consumer Research
Yes, often publishers do not do consumer research. How do publishers know what to publish? They tend to rely on bookstores to direct their attention, as well as trends. What does this mean for you? If you have access to consumer data, you are light years ahead of the big six. Sometimes just having a mailing list on your website or even having a website where you interact with your consumer is sufficient. If you have access to this data and you are publishing mainstream, you are a very valuable writer to any publisher out there. Having access to this data is crucial for most of us and seen as a bonus when a publisher is considering a manuscript.
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3. New York Publishers Don’t Publish to Niche Markets
Niche markets have no appeal to publishers and ironically, that’s where the trend of successful authors is headed: into the niches. Niches can be powerful but New York publishers stay away from them. Their entire model is set up to cater to mainstream product, so to slot some obscure, niche work in there would never work.
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4. New York Publishers Don’t Sell Direct to Consumers
Publishers don’t sell from their websites; many have tried and failed. Why? Because the publisher isn’t the brand, the author is. This is starting to change in some areas as publishers seek to bypass Amazon and gather their share of the consumer market. Most consumers don’t really identify with a publisher as much as they do an author or a trusted online shopping portal like Amazon or BN.com.
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5. New York Publishers Only Promote Their Authors to the Top 30 Media Markets
When publishers develop marketing plans for their books, they don’t look at markets that aren’t in the top 30. Knowing the landscape and marketplace will position you for success and you likely won’t get caught off guard by a stumbling block or situation that could have been avoided. Know your market – the more you do, the faster you will succeed!
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Excerpts, re-blogged from “The Book Marketing Expert newsletter,” a free eZine offering book promotion and publicity tips and techniques. http://www.amarketingexpert.com

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Please feel free to check out all previous posts of this blog (there are more than 750 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Chime.in, Facebook, Tumblr and StumpleUpon.

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http://google.about.com/od/searchengineoptimization/a/pagerankexplain.htm

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Posted by ebooksinternational on May 17, 2013 in Book Contracts, e-publishing, Marketing, Publishing

Tags: Author-Publisher, Big 5 Publishers, Book Marketing Expert, Consumer Research, free eZine, New York Publishers, quality-looking book, self-publishing, top 30 Media Markets

How to Get Lots of Visitors to Your Author Website?

16 May

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44 Tips to Get Relevant Web Links

Building an author website is one step, getting lots of traffic (website visitors) is another task. An important step is to add links, inbound and outbound links, in order to get lots of visitors. Currently, the major engines typically interpret importance as popularity – the more popular a web site, page or document, the more valuable the information contained therein must be. Links are still the most important tool in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on the Web. But how can you build relevant links?
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Content is king

1. Build a “101 list”. These often become “authority documents”. People can’t resist linking to these .

2. Create 10 easy tips to help you with … articles.

3. Create extensive resource lists for a specific topic.

4. Create a list of the top 10 myths for a specific category.

5. Create a list of experts. If you impress the people listed well enough, or find a way to make your project look somewhat official, the experts may end up linking to your site or saying thanks.
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Developing Authority & Being Easy to Link At

6. Make your content easy to understand so many people can relay to and spread your message.

7. Put some effort in to minimize grammatical or spelling errors, especially if you need authoritative people like librarians to link to your site.

8. Have an easily accessible privacy policy and about section so your site seems more trustworthy. Including a picture of yourself may also help build your authority.

9. Buy relevant traffic with a pay per click campaign. Relevant traffic will get your site more visitors and brand exposure. When people come to your site there is a possibility that they will link to you.
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News & Syndication

10. Write Ezine articles. Their article pages actually rank highly and send highly qualified traffic.

11. Submit an article to industry news site.

12. Send out a press release. Take the time to make a compelling and newsworthy one. Email it to some handpicked journalists and bloggers. Personalize the email message.

13. Track who picks up your articles or press releases. Offer them exclusive news or content.

14. Trade articles with other webmasters.

15. Email a few friends when you have important relevant news asking them for their feedback and link.

16. Write about, and link to, companies with “in the news” pages. They link back to stories and blog posts which cover their developments. Do a Google search (your industry + “in the news”).

17. Perform surveys and studies that make people feel important. If you can make other people feel important they will help do your marketing for you for free.
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Directories & Social Bookmarking

18. Submit your site to DMOZ and other directories that allow free submissions.

19. Submit your site to paid directories. Another oldie. Just remember that quality matters.

20. Create your own topical directory about your field of interest. Obviously link to your own site, deeplinking to important content where possible.

21. Tag related sites on sites like Del.icio.us. If people find the sites you tag to be interesting, emotionally engaging, or timely they may follow the trail back to your site.

22. If you create something that is of great quality make sure you ask a few friends to tag it for you, hundreds more bloggers will see your site and potentially link to it.

23. If you write about popular spreading ideas with plenty of original content (and link to some of the original resources), your site may get listed as a source.
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Local & Business Links

24. Join the Better Business Bureau.

25. Get a link from your local chamber of commerce.

26. Submit your link to relevant city and state governmental resources.

27. Get a link from every supplier you deal with and make it a prerequisite of attending a trade show or convention to get a link from them.

28. See if manufacturers or retailers or other business partners might be willing to link to your site.

29. Develop business relationships with non-competing businesses in the same field. Leverage these relationships online, by recommending each other via links

30. Launch an affiliate program. Most of the links you pick up will not have SEO value, but the added exposure will almost always lead to additional “normal” links.
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Easy Free Links

31. Depending on your category and offer, you will find Craigslist or Kijiji to be a cheap or free classified service, include a link to your website for pennies per month.

32. It is pretty easy to ask or answer questions on Yahoo! Answers and provide links to relevant resources.

33. It is pretty easy to ask or answer questions on Google Groups and provide links to relevant resources.

34. If you run a reputable company, create a page about it in the Wikipedia or in topic specific wikis.

35. It takes not much time to set up a topical Squidoo page, which you can use to look like an industry expert. Link to expert documents and popular useful tools in your fields, and also create a link back to your site.

36. Submit a story to several eZines that links to an article on your site. You can also submit other content and have some of its link authority flow back to your profile page.

37. If you publish an RSS feed and your content is useful and regularly updated, some people will syndicate your RSS content.

38. Most forums allow members to leave signature links or personal profile links. If you make quality contributions some people will follow these links.
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Have a Big Heart for Reviews

39. Most brands are not well established online, so if your site has much authority, your review related content often ranks well.

40. Review relevant products on Amazon.com. We have seen this draw in direct customer enquiries and secondary links.

41. Create product lists on Amazon.com that review top products and also mention your link.

42. Review related sites on Alexa to draw in related traffic streams.

43. Review products and services on shopping search engines like ePinions to help build your authority.

44. If you buy a product or service you really like and are good at leaving testimonials, many of those turn into links.
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LinksManagement.com gives the following tips:

Links should come from websites, hosted in the same country
Links should come from relevant webpages
Links should come from webpages with Google PageRank1 and higher
Links should be placed manually, and not automatically using some script
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More tips on how to attract more visitors to your website / blog can be found here:
http://thinktraffic.net/timeless-ideas-for-more-visitors

http://google.about.com/od/searchengineoptimization/qt/improverank.htm

http://99u.com/articles/7070/4-creative-ways-to-attract-more-visitors-to-your-website

http://sdas86.hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Get-more-than-1000-Visitors-for-Free-and-Make-a-lot-of-Money-Online

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@111publishing

http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+

Tags: build relevant links, how to get lots of visitors to your website, inbound links, outbound links, Search Engine Optimization for writers, SEO for your website / blog, Tips to Get Relevant Web Links

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Posted by ebooksinternational on May 16, 2013 in Blogging, Marketing, Website & SEO

Why Ask Yourself Some Hard Questions

15 May

Key to Success

Writing is an art, publishing a book is a business!
Before you even attempting to write, develop and market an e-book, or paper book for that matter, create yourself a road map. Research first and build a solid foundation. The problem is that too many people are in a hurry to start writing and don’t lay a foundation for book marketing. They spend all this time writing, and then they have no buyers. Do the research and find out if your idea is going to make money. If yes, great! Go for it. If not, find another idea, such as freelance writing for magazines or newspapers where you can earn money much faster and without spending money for layout, editing or cover art.
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Ask yourself some hard questions:

• Who will be your e-book readers?

• Is there a demand for your eBook product?

• Is your e-book a “must have” purchase?

• How much will people pay for your product?

• Does the purchase of your eBook lead to additional e-book sales?

• How much money will you need to fund your project?

• How likely are you to excel among the competition?

• How do you contact and “pitch” your product to your potential buyers?

• How to you get the important book reviews?

• Do you have already lots of followers in your social networks?
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Writing your book is only 20% of the work, 80% is marketing! Having a plan on how you intend to market, publicize and sell your book before starting to write it, is crucial for your works success.

• Choose your book content
• Start marketing your book, even before writing it
• Design and format it into a perfect downloadable file
• Create a professional cover for your e-book
• Select the e-book retailers to upload your book (Amazon, Kobo, Apple, B&N, Sony…)
• Continue marketing your book

You are responsible for providing your own ongoing marketing for e-published work – the same as for paper books that are often not very well marketed. A book might be great, but if nobody knows about it, it won’t sell. Authors can’t count on the public seeing their books on shelves or in store windows – they have to find it on the internet.

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http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+