Here’s what I sometimes feel like as a marketer: Deer in the headlights!
Well, I bought the book. I’ll report back on how much it helped me in my goal to begin taking marketing seriously. In the meantime, this article on how Amazon rankings and keywords differ in helping me sell my books provided some really useful distinctions.Can you add to this advice?
Here’s help negotiating Amazon’s review process! So much mystery!
Make no mistake. If you have heard me speak before almost anywhere or read anything I have to say about writing, I emphasize one thing above all else:
“You can be as artsy as you want to be while you are writing your book, but once it is finished, it is a product. A product you must distribute and market in order for it to sell.”
There’s another part to this reality of writing as a business: the number one distributor of ebooks remains Amazon, and for most authors about 80% of their sales would disappear, should the online giant refuse to sell their work. Discoverability on Amazon is the number one trick authors, publishers, and book marketers are trying to crack. Of course, if it works on Amazon, the same method will likely increase sales on iBooks and Nook as well, provided an author even offers their books for…
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Check out this article from Digital Book World about a new venture at Barnes and Noble to allow self-published writers to offer print versions in B&N venues, hopefully a step that will help keep them afloat. Chime in with your views on whether this new option is worth a look.
Here’s a post on POD printing options from Build Book Buzz featured on The Story Reading Ape. This post provides reasons why my decision to go with Ingram first rather than CreateSpace in publishing a print version of King of the Roses (and eventually Blood Lies) was a sound one. Follow my series on my “Crazy Journey” through the Ingram process: it doesn’t look all that crazy when seen through the eyes of book-marketing expert Amy Collins!
I have been asked one question more than any other: “Do I need IngramSpark if I have CreateSpace?”
I know it’s tempting to avoid the extra expense and hassle of taking on a second print on demand (POD) provider, but I want to take a moment and share some of the experiences we’ve had at New Shelves Books with our POD work. I hope these statements help you determine if you need one or both.
So . . . do you need both?
It looks as if it’s time to get serious about Google+. Let me know of your experiences with this platform. What do you find works best?
More than 625,000 People join Google+ EVERY DAY, according to Digital Buzz and Huffington Post statistics. Before I even joined Twitter, GooglePlus (Google+) was my first Social Media network of c…
Now that I have a print edition, I need tips like these! Let me know your strategies for “hand-selling.” I need help!
If you want to sell books at an event, you’ll have to master the art of the hand-sell. It all starts with a smile.
Source: The art of the hand-sell
I’ve heard varied reports on using Twitter to promote books. Is Anna’s process the best to follow? How do you use Twitter?
Swedish indie author Anna Belfrage reports on her trial to see whether Twitter can sell self-published books and queries whether the return justifies the
Source: Opinion: To Tweet or Not to Tweet? Does Twitter Worthwhile for Self-published Authors?
What about it, folks. Is this what it costs to self-publish? If you had to choose and were paying these prices, where would YOU allocate your funds?
I received an article with this information and wanted to share. Although I didn’t use Reedsy for editing and my book cover, I found I fell within most of the pricing ranges.
One thing I didn’t see on this infographic was the Q&A time with the editor. I certainly had questions as I moved through the process and the last thing I wanted was to be left hanging if my editor said, “this doesn’t work in the plot.” I’ve worked with previous editors who would make a comment and instead of being able to ask a few questions you had to make the changes, submit, and pay again. I’m not clear what Reedsy offers, but if you’re looking for an editor, it’s an important topic to ask about.
By Maryann Yin on May. 2, 2016 
Until Next Time…
Here’s a detailed post by Melinda Clayton from Indies Unlimited on stripping unwanted formatting from your Word document before submitting it to Kindle. Her directions apply to PC users. I use a Mac, and was able to format my books fairly easily following Mark Coker’s directions for Smashwords. In both cases, making sure you have a clean document is essential.
My InDesign experience is much more complicated. I’m close to submitting to Ingram and will see how it works. More on my crazy journey into InDesign for IngramSpark coming soon!
This piece from Just Publishing Advice
distills some important basic considerations to attend to for those of us trying to learn the book-publishing and marketing process. I get “requests” to submit manuscripts quite often and have usually wondered who it is that’s so desperate to see my work when traditional agents turn down hundreds of submissions each week. This article helps to put the situation in perspective.
Paddy and his mom!
Just Can't Help Writing 