Guest Blogger ~ Scott Bury on Self-publishing

The Shallow Learning Curve

Written by Scott Bury

E-book publishing? Making the work available and placing it where readers can buy it is easy. Selling it is not.

My experience with e-publishing -- that is, the process of creating electronic books that can be downloaded from the Internet and read on e-book readers, has been very positive. It’s easy to create a book-format. Creating the content is not easy, and then selling it to readers? Well, those stories are books in themselves.

I decided to self-publish my stories and novels, frankly, because I could not get a traditional commercial publisher to even look at the manuscript. I put a lot of work over several years into it, and others who have read parts of it praise the work. But publishers would not read even a sample of it, saying they just weren’t looking for new authors. There’s been a lot written and published about the challenges traditional publishers are facing now, so I won’t go into that.

If you are considering self-publishing as an option, here are three platforms available to help you in your quest:

Calibre

To create the e-book version of my novel, I downloaded a shareware program called Calibre. The shareware if free, but if you like it, you should send the developer 10 bucks or so (whatever you think is fair).

Calibre works well at converting your files into the many different formats used in e-book readers. The software also organizes your e-book library and comes with a basic e-book reader application for your computer.

The downside, the interface is a little quirky and counter-intuitive, there is no manual, and the help files available through the Web are not very helpful.

That being said, once I figured out that you have to start with a PDF file and I followed the rules, Calibre worked nicely.

Smashwords

After making sure my character Sam, the Strawb Part,looked good, or at least readable, on an e-reader, the next step was to publish it.

 

I went to Smashwords, an e-publisher and e-bookstore that will publish your work in several formats, and sell them, too, for a 15% royalty, which is better than Amazon (30%) and far better than any traditional commercial publisher, who generally gives YOU only 5% of the selling price of YOUR book!

Smashwords uses a program they call the “meat grinder,” which transforms your text file, adds a JPEG as a cover and produces a book in EPUB format. They sell it through their own e-bookstore, and also through Apple’s iBookstore, Barnes & Noble’s e-bookstore in Nook format, Diesel, Sony, Kobo—just about every e-bookstore except the biggest, Amazon.

Smashwords demands that you follow some guidelines. If you want your book to get their “premium” service, which includes sending it to all those other sellers, you need to follow them. So first, download their free manual and READ IT COMPLETELY.

Smashwords demands that every book have ISBN. Smashwords will provide one for you (at a cost), but, as a Canadian citizen, I can self-publish and get ISBNs at no cost through Library and Archives Canada. Canadian readers, check that out.

Note:  every different version of your book should have its own ISBN: the paper version, the version you publish through Smashwords and the one you publish through Amazon should all have their own numbers. If you revise the book later, even just change the cover, you should get another ISBN.

Be prepared to add some “front matter” and “back matter” to your book. “Front matter” includes the cover and title page, but also the publishing information, which includes information about the book, the name of the author and the publisher, copyright information and the ISBN number. Smashwords insists that the edition you send to them includes the phrase “Smashwords edition” in that copyright information somewhere, as well as “published by (your name or your publisher’s name) through Smashwords.” “Back matter” can include your picture and a brief bio, as in “About the author.”

Once you are ready, log into your Smashwords account and upload first the text as one text file, and then the cover image as a JPEG. Smashwords will respond to tell you how long it will take for the “grinder” to process your book. This will range from a few hours or longer depending on how many books are in the queue ahead of you but it is well worth the wait! I was thrilled when I looked at the Smashwords store and “Sam, the Strawb Part, by Scott Bury,” was available for purchase!!

Within a few weeks, (yes, weeks), I could see my story on Apple’s iBookstore and Barnes & Noble’s electronic bookstore, as well.

Next, I saved my document with a slightly different file, got a new ISBN and changed the copyright information and published through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing system.

The Mighty Amazon

Publishing with Amazon’s KDP system is even easier than publishing through Smashwords. Like Smashwords, KDP takes your text as a Word file, but KDP allows you to use HTML for more control over the format, if you’re familiar with it.  Again, read the manual before converting or uploading.

Amazon is also quicker about publishing your book onto its site than Smashwords is. However, since I used Amazon.com’s KDP site, Sam, the Strawb Part is not available on Amazon.ca. I will have to look into that.

All in all, the self-publishing process is not difficult at all. It isn’t even that time-consuming. What is time-consuming, and should be, is the creation of a book or story worth reading!

Guest Blogger ~ R.S. Guthrie on Social Media Marketing

Come On In, the Water’s Fine

Written by R.S. Guthrie

 

First I’d like to thank the lovely and talented writer, Becky Illson-Skinner for not only having me here to guest blog, but also for her outstanding interview earlier in the week!

For anyone who throws a serious hat into the publishing ring—for we writers—an ugly truth is soon discovered:

We need to be marketing experts!

Now, granted, if you majored in Marketing, or have been doing it the past few decades, you are probably okay with this realization. But for those of us who skipped Marketing 101, the understanding arrives more like portents of DOOM.

Marketing? Isn’t there a department for that?

Sadly, writers, the answer is an unequivocal ‘no’. We’re pretty much on our own, particularly if we are independent (although most authors signed to publishing houses are also nearly one hundred percent responsible for their own marketing). Enter, social media networking. (I think I just heard someone hack up a nervous hair ball.)

Seriously, though, in this revolutionary world of digital wonder, you better get savvy on everything from Internet slang to the latest browser plugins, social media software, and reliable network connections. Why, you ask?

BECAUSE YOUR SUCCESS OR

FAILURE DEPEND ON IT!

 If you’ve yet to jump into the pool feet first, you aren’t alone. There are still a lot of writers who are standing around dipping their virtual toes, feeling like the water is too darned cold and confusing.

And when you look out over the water, you see all these beach balls being tossed back and forth with printed names like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

So you are tempted to think: “Maybe I’ve got this handled! I’ve got accounts in all those places. Things aren’t as bad as they seem.”

Then, without warning, all these big, ugly, tattooed kids jump into the water and start stealing all the pool toys. The tattoos say things like: Hootsuite, TweetDeck, Social Oomph, Tweet Adder, and even a bicep tattoo that reads Twit Cleaner.

Things are starting to look bleak.

Don’t worry too much. Again, you aren’t alone. And the great news is that most of the products in today’s social networking universe are designed so that a child can use them.

Okay, scratch that. Your kids are probably a lot more technical than you. They are designed so that YOU can use them. And the best part is that most of the tools are all about automation. They exist to make your marketing job easier.

Take Twitter, for example. First of all, you need to be on Twitter. Second of all: You. Need. To. Be. On. Twitter. There are debates about the quality ratio of Facebook friends to Twitter followers. Don’t worry about that now. Get. On. Twitter.

Then use a product like Tweet Adder to help automate the process of finding followers. I’ve been on Twitter for just over two months. (I know. I should follow my own advice.) In that short time, I am past 3000 followers. I owe Tweet Adder a few rounds of drinks for that. This application allows you to search tweeps on several different criteria, from who they follow to who follows them to what food they most often tweet about. (And, yes, “tweeps” is a highly technical term, but you’ll eventually figure that one out.)

Just remember this: Tweet Adder follows people for you. While you sleep, while you water ski. Tweet Adder doesn’t care. It works so you don’t have to.

So what do you do once all these tweeps are following you? They’re all really cool people, right? Hmm, have you forgotten the hooligans at the pool? The last thing you need are deadbeats filling up your Twitterverse. A free tool called Twit Cleaner  will help you with that problem. Twit Cleaner is basically a free Private Investigator who camps outside each of your follower’s virtual homes, records their bad habits, and reports them back to you (normally in a few minutes, depending on the size of your following).

Twit Cleaner identifies followers who haven’t been on Twitter since Paul Revere tweeted “One if by land, two if by sea”. It shows you people who talk only about themselves, who post nothing but links, and who are “relatively unpopular”. (I know, that last one sounds too much like high school.)

Now that you’ve got all your followers, the group is pretty devoid of deadbeats. What now? Well, you want to consider a platform that organizes your social networks and helps you keep track of your prowess (and also does some cool things like scheduling tweets).

I use Hootsuite. A lot of people use TweetDeck. Each of these products is free and helps you build feeds (filtered lists of tweets categorized by elements that work best for you). These are basically applications that organize all your networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) in one easy-to-read display. The nice thing about Hootsuite is that it’s web-based (i.e. you don’t need to install any software and can access it from any computer connected to the Internet). One of the features I like about TweetDeck is that it allows you to go over 140 characters in your tweets and automatically posts them with a link to read “the rest of the story”. (Posthumous apologies to Paul Harvey for that one.)

But you can’t possibly spend your whole day tweeting and posting to Facebook, right? Au contraire.  

The Cadillac of social media marketing software is a product like Social Oomph. This application is like a universal remote control with a mind of its own. You can build tweets, responses to retweets and follows—it can even do a Tweet Adder-like following for you. You can schedule your tweets: send some every hour, some every couple of days—you could even build your Christmas card tweet list and send them out while you are sunning yourself in Mazatlan. Pretty cool, huh?

More scared than ever? Well, that’s okay. We all were at first. And this is just a sampling of what’s out there. The most important thing for your social marketing campaign is to BEGIN.

The rest you can leave in the capable hands of software, hardware, middleware, and a growing sense that you are not nearly as technically necessary as you once thought you were. 

Guest Blogger ~ Mark Stone on Amazon Rules Re: $0 Kindle Pricing

Amazon Takes $0 Kindle Pricing out of the Hands of the Author

By Mark Stone

There is no doubt that with the advent of the digital age, the publishing industry faces its greatest dilemma yet. And, thanks to the Kindle from Amazon and to the late, great Steve Jobs, they are scrambling like madmen to repair the shrinking book market. I mean, who wants to lug around 1500 books when moving when all you need to do is pack your digital reader or tablet?

The literary world is in the middle of its greatest paradigm change since Gutenburg used the very first printing press, putting thousands of scriveners out of business. This is not a bad thing, change is inevitable, even necessary to promote growth and enhance our lives. One of the biggest changes, and seemingly far outpacing all the new digital gadgets that hit the market every few days, is the world of self-publishing.

Amazon has provided a platform for John and Jane Q. Public to write, edit, publish and market their own creativity and achieve the literary recognition. Okay, maybe recognition is a bit much, but now anyone can publish an e-book and actually have a chance to reap some greenbacks for the effort.

Which brings me to the point of this article…marketing of self-published books. Yes, there are some very good self-published works out there, and a whole heap of crap that stink up the site. So, with literally millions of e-books to choose from, what’s an author to do?

Price it right. There are a TON of $.99 books on Amazon. Enough that you’d have reading material for the next decade! Then some bright penny out there decided to price a book at $0 in an effort to become noticed. Hey, if a person enjoyed their book at $0, maybe they would be willing to shell out $3-4 for a second from the same author, right?

Right. Overall, it is an effective campaign strategy that has worked well…for the author. But what about Amazon.com?

I know, I know…you’re saying "Amazon is HUGE, it makes a metric ton of money, why should they make more? They should be helping the writers out."

Understood, however Amazon is a business, and like most businesses, is out to make money. They provide the publication service (via CreateSpace) and virtual bookshelves. If we as authors use their sites, it is not unreasonable for the provider of said bookshelves to ask for their cut, even if it is only pennies on the dollar.  They didn’t have to be a vendor of e-books, but they are and as a vendor they are allowed to asked for a fair cut of the profits.

In other words, try toddling off to the local Barnes & Noble with a boxful of your books and ask them to stock their shelves with your product, but take no profit from doing so because you want to give them away. How fast will you be laughed out of the store? I think it would break the sound barrier.

Does that mean Amazon should never have free books. I don’t think so. A case-by-case basis should be made for multi-published authors to dole out one free book as a lure to purchase their others. Since customers are always looking for the deal (as am I. There are quire a few free books on my Kindle), the multi-published author can get his/her name out there, perhaps garner a fan base. It not only makes sense, it is a good business model.

Now, for those authors who have not self-published more than one book, sorry, it is my opinion and it is Amazon’s call. If you think they are taking unfair advantage, you could always stay with Smashwords and other e-vendors who would be willing to give your work away for free.

Guest Blogger ~ James P. Wilcox

I'm very excited to have my first guest blogger on Mystery Writers Unite...many thanks to James for taking time out of his busy schedule to share his experience and knowledge with us!!

"Breaking Into the Writing Business"

Congratulations!  You have crossed the final “t” and dotted the final “i” and your literary masterpiece is finished.  All the hours spent hunched over the keyboard have been rewarded with a book you are proud of.  Now that the writing is complete, you may be asking yourself, “What now?”  Well, I am here to give you a few pointers on breaking into the writing business.

Now I know your first inclination is to run out and tell everyone you know (and even some that you don’t) that your book is finished.  After that, you are going to want to start selling your books and pulling in the rave reviews.  Before you start trying to fulfill this dream there are a couple of things you still need to do. 

First, you need to find a good editor.  I know you think your manuscript is perfect, but trust me, it isn’t.  I poured over each of my manuscripts numerous times and they are still riddled with errors.  The problem with trying to edit your own work is the fact that you know what it is supposed to say.  When you are reading, you are already anticipating what comes next and you miss what is actually on the page.  You know what it is supposed to say, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that is what it says.  This is why you need a good editor and I don’t mean your husband/wife, your mother or father, or even your old high school English teacher.  You need to find someone who is a professional, someone who edits for a living.  They are trained to catch the errors we overlook and they aren’t afraid to hurt our feelings.  As a new author, this may sound intimidating and expensive, but there are reasonably priced editor out there (check with writing club, Google it, or contact other writers for recommendations) and we are talking about your reputation as a writer here.  It is worth every penny you spend.

After your manuscript has been edited and you have made all the necessary changes, you have an important decision to make.  Are you going to try for traditional publishing or are you going to self-publish.  There are advantages to both routes and I am not going to try to sway your decision one way or another, but this is a decision you are going to have to make. 

If you are going to try to go the traditional route, the first thing you need to do is write a quality query letter (again, contact your local writing club or other writers for tips on writing this letter).  Once your letter is complete, start sending them out to literary agents (you can find these in the Literary Market Guide or online).  Make sure you are sending your query to agents who represent your genre and who are accepting new clients.  This can be a daunting task and your may get rejection letters from hundreds of agents before you find the one willing to take you on (or you may never find one).  Once you sign with an agent, it is their job to market your book to potential publishers.  This is where you sit around and wait for good news.  Again, you might get dozens of rejections before finding a publisher, or you may never find one at all.  If you are lucky enough to find a publisher, it could take a year from the time you sign the contract until your book is actually printed (which can be a long time to wait).

If you choose the self-publishing route, you have to decide on a company to work with.  There are a lot of self-publishing and print-on-demand companies out their and you need to do your research to find the one right for you (I recommend Createspace, which is owned by Amazon).  The self-publishing route can be fairly simple and you can get your books into customers’ hands quicker, but who is even going to know your book exists?  This is the challenge with self-publishing.

Whether you go the traditional publishing route or self-publish, the one thing you are going to have to do yourself is market the book.  The days of publishing houses running multi-million dollar marketing campaigns are long gone and the bulk of marketing, especially with new authors, falls to the writer.  Yes, that means you.  If you aren’t willing to market your book yourself, for at least three years, then you probably shouldn’t even publish the book.  

How does a new author market their book?  Social media is a great way to start.  When I published my first book, I immediately set up a book page on Facebook and started inviting my friends and family to join the page.  I then ran a give away (an Amazon gift certificate) to the person who got the most people to join my page.  I then emailed everyone I knew about my book.  After that I hit Twitter (I now have over 1000 followers).  I promo my books on Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, and I send out a steady stream of emails to my followers.  Most authors set up a webpage with a blog to help attract readers.  As you develop your marketing campaign, don’t forget to get in contact with the traditional media (radio, newspaper, and television) to try and create a buzz about your book.  Contact local bookstores and offer to do signings.  Print up bookmarks and business cards that you can hand out to everyone you meet.  Remember, this is a long process and success won’t happen over night.  If you do at least one thing to market your books everyday, whether it is to send out a tweet or sign copies at your local grocery store, you will go a long way in attracting readers, which is the goal.  Remember though, all the marketing in the world won’t cover for a bad book.  Even if you have the greatest novel ever written, there is no guarantee people will read it.  It takes a lot of hard work, persistence, patience, and luck.

James is the author of The M-16 Agenda and Sex, Lies, and the Classroom; two books with grit and flavor! You can read the a the full interview on Mystery Writers Unite on Tuesday, October 18, 2011.

Calling Guest Bloggers!!

Hi everyone and Happy Wednesday :-)

I've noticed on many of the blogs that I've been reading that the "blog owner" will often offer someone a guest spot on their blog and this individual will make a special post. I would like to do this with my blog but don't know how to go about doing so since I'm so new to the world of blogging.

Do you approach someone through an authors blog? Do you ask someone you have been conversing with on Twitter or Facebook? Do they blog about whatever they want or should you have a certain topic in mind that you would like them to blog about or do they get to decide what they want to chat about?

If you would like to have a one-time guest spot on my blog or you would like to have a monthly, bi-weekly or weekly guest spot, please let me know as I would be more than open to this.

Other more experienced bloggers - if you see this and you can give me some tips please do :-)

Have a great day!

Becky