My Amazon Kindle Scout Campaign - A Brief Review

My Amazon Kindle Scout campaign has ended. Within the next fifteen days I will be notified by Amazon whether or not they will buy the ebook and audio rights to my novel The Predator and The Prey. Regardless of Amazon's decision, the campaign itself was worth doing.

It is often said, and printed, being a financially successful author is not a sprint, it is a marathon. Thirty days is not a long time. When running a promotional campaign it becomes a long time. The value of participating in the Amazon Kindle Scout program is the experience allows you to manage a promotional campaign for your book and collect valuable data.

Let me state upfront I have no idea what value Amazon places on any particular set of data when the Scout TEAM is deciding if a title is worth further consideration. Still, for me, the data is interesting and hopefully I can gather some insights into my efforts to promote and market my book.

When a reader clicks on a title's description page and then decides to nominate the book, the image below is what the reader sees.

I have no idea if any of this data will be provided to me by Amazon, but I would love to see how my book rated in each of these categories. If I could only have one set of data from the campaign, this is what I would find the most valuable. Four important marketing aspects are rated by real readers: cover, book description, title, one-line hook, narrative hook. The first 5,000 words of your novel are also provided for the readers, allowing them to get a feel for whether or not they would want to read the book as well as having a chance to judge the copy editing. Finally, readers may make comments about the book (I might pass on those - unless they are all good!).

By campaign end, I had generated 457 hours out of 720 total hours and over 1,000 page views (1,048) of my description. I have no idea how many nominations qualifies as being "good" nor do I have any idea of how many page views is good.

Without knowing how Amazon interprets the data collected, and being the farthest thing from an analytical statistician, I can only make what I think is a reasonable decision.

Without seeing the data from reader evaluations for the four key areas of attracting a potential buyer/reader, I believe I did a good job. The graph above shows nearly two thirds of my traffic came from readers who visit Amazon Kindle Scout on their own accord (If the books nominated by the reader are selected, they receive free copies. Amazon also has an informal competition of sorts. Stats are provided to readers showing their place, or score if you will, on how well they select books. The more books nominated by the reader that the Scout TEAM selects, the higher the reader ranks).

I have to believe I did a good job with the last three items of the four and my cover designer, Robin Ludwig of Robin Ludwig Design, did a great job with the first item, cover design. I say this, because traffic from external links, traffic generated by my own promotional efforts, only accounted for 35% of traffic.

It could also be that the vast majority of my nominations came from traffic generated by my own campaign, indicating, by my math, that only 15% of the nominations came from organic traffic from Amazon Kindle. My hope is a 15% rate is pretty good, meaning it will generate a lot of sales, if I can get buyers/readers to click through to the product page of my book.

The graph above shows me where I have plenty of room for improvement. I hardly ran a sustained campaign. My efforts peaked early and then floundered in terms of page views. The two peaks in the middle when my efforts lagged are from organic Amazon Kindle traffic. The campaign page traffic mix graph shown above came on the last day of the campaign. Each day the graph changes to reflect the data of the last 24 hours. This allowed me to recognize when the bulk of my visits were a result of days when I believe my campaign was generating traffic and visits on days when my efforts did little or nothing.

I managed to scramble and via hours of work, found and joined numerous Facebook groups founded for the purpose of allowing authors promote their work. If you look at the graph below, you will notice the solid run of 24 hour periods where The Predator and The Prey was in the desired Hot and Trending category. Better preparation on my part might have allowed for a campaign that consisted of almost nothing but days on the Hot and Trending list.

Examination of the data on external traffic sources is show below. If you will note, excluding direct traffic from clicking on a link directly to my books nomination page (traffic generated largely by my efforts in the first few days of the campaign), the overwhelming bulk of external traffic came from two sources, Facebook and a Kboards notice I posted asking authors to nominate my book.

I learned four valuable takeaways from the campaign, regardless of whether or not The Predator and The Prey is picked up by Amazon. The first is have a predetermined way to collect data. If Amazon did not provide the data, I would have had no means by which to evaluate my efforts. Get the data!

Second, my campaign was ill conceived. I started strong and finished strong but was awful in the middle. If my assumption that my cover, etc, did its job, is correct and explains the strong performance of the organic traffic from Amazon Kindle Scout, it makes me want to kick myself for not having strong external sources of traffic pushing readers to my books page the entire thirty day period. 

Amazon loves the long tail. Consistency is important to Amazon. My campaign started okay and ended strong, but lagged in the middle. Better planning in advance would have allowed me to spread my reach and generate more external traffic to my book's campaign page.

If this had been an actual sales campaign, how many sales did I cost myself as a result of a weak performance in the middle of the campaign?

My third takeaway is Facebook is where I will put almost all of my social media efforts in the future. If I run a Headtalker campaign again, I will focus on attracting those whose reach is based on Facebook and not other forms of social media such as Twitter.

Kboards.com was valuable and is the other area I will invest time and effort in future campaigns. I have not used any of the ebook promotional sites that send out blasts to readers so I cannot comment on how I would incorporate them into a campaign.

My last takeaway is the need for careful planning. I want to succeed as an author. Succeed financially! Promotional campaigns are just as important as writing a good book and having a great cover, etc, etc. 

I left too many things to chance and had to scramble to finish strong. I plan to write a prequel for my series, the first of which is the book I ran in this campaign, The Predator and The Prey. I will submit the prequel for an Amazon Kindle Scout campaign and compare the data from the second campaign to this one. Hopefully I will produce far superior results.

Review of Headtalker as a Promotional Tool

In an earlier post I described in a fair amount of detail how to use the Social Media aggregating site Headtalker as a promotional tool. I had used it to promote my campaign for my novel The Predator and The Prey in its Amazon Kindle Scout campaign.

My campaign on Headtalker had 51 supporters which provided an impressive Social Media reach of 1,087,260 social media accounts whose owners promised to mention my Kindle Scout campaign and provide a link to the novel's campaign page.

Kindle Scout provides analytics for where the nominations come from. Out of my 1,087,260 individuals, my Kindle Scout campaign received seven total nominations. 

Not a good return for the time I spent learning how to use the site and recruiting supporters.

I did learn something valuable from the experience which has not turned me off completely from ever using Headtalker again.

The overwhelming majority of the Social Media accounts my campaign received were Twitter accounts. Puzzled by the poor results, (.0000064 per Social Media account) seven visits out of the million plus reach, made me do a little research about the effectiveness of Social Media for promoting a specific item like a book or a promotional campaign.

What I learned fit the results of my Headtalker campaign. Facebook is the king of Social Media when it comes to selling or promoting an item, i.e. getting people to click on a link to visit something you want them to visit.

The absolute worse form of Social Media for producing the desired marketing behavior? Twitter. Tumbler and Linkedin aren't much better. Needless to say, the bulk of my million plus Social Media accounts for the program were Twitter accounts.

Checking the various Social Media accounts that did produce clicks and nominations, the head of the list was, sure enough, Facebook. The Facebook accounts that generated the traffic included my own Facebook author page, seven Facebook pages from the Headtalker campaign, Facebook groups for authors and those of Friends and Family who shared my link.

I won't rule out using Headtalker again in the future. But if I do, I will focus heavily on recruiting Supporters whose Social Media reach is based on Facebook.

Fiction, Keywords, Amazon Searches and KDP Rocket

The non-fiction books I authored are very niche in their nature and I had a specific target audience in mind when I wrote them. The keywords I provided to CreateSpace and KDP when I uploaded my files for publication where jargon specific to the targeted audience. Several of my books became Amazon Number One Bestsellers for specific categories and keywords. I was lucky in a way due to the nature of the niche audience and the fact I was well versed in the professional jargon.

Fiction is an entirely different animal.

I am a huge believer in proactive planning. You cannot control everything nor can you prevent every problem that might crop up from happening. But sound planning and proper execution of that plan can go a long way in creating success for your endeavor.

It has been written repeatedly that for a book to be successful the author must start marketing it before the book is completed. 

Taking that statement to heart, I began planning the marketing for my first work of fiction, The Predator and The Prey. I'm not as far along as I need to be despite the fact the book's cover is done, the manuscript is finished and the interior files uploaded. All that needs to happen is hit submit and publish and if a few days the book will be available for sale to the general public via Amazon.

Unfortunately, I still have a lot of work to do. Work that stops me from clicking on submit and publish.

I have been focused on learning as much as I can about two very specific topics. The first is obtaining those all important Amazon Customer Reviews. My goal is to obtain 100+ Reviews, preferably of a nice 4 or 5 star variety. One piece of research I stumbled across was fairly disheartening. For every 100 Amazon Reviews, the author needs to ask for 900 reviews. 300 hundred readers will agree to read the book (a free copy) and of those 300 only 100 will actually write a review. 

That's a lot of free copies of my book. It's also a lot of e-mails and thank you notes. Nor is it easy to control the timing and effort of people who are doing you a favor for the price of a free book. A book they may or may not have wanted to read if it were not for the fact you gave them the book.

On a more positive note, Amazon's use of keywords is something you, as the author, do have more control over. Selecting the right keywords is essential for the successful marketing of your book. Amazon after all, is essentially just a big search engine for books and other products that are for sale.

As I mentioned earlier, selecting the keywords for my non-fiction books was easy. The topics were very niche and had a specific jargon that buyers would use to search for books related to that niche.

Selecting keywords for a cross-genre fictional novel? That's a different matter. How do I get my book in front of the Amazon customers most likely to want to read my book?

After quite a few hours researching the topic with no success, I stumbled across a website run by a self-published, entrepreneurial author of both non-fiction and fiction by the name of Dave Chesson. The website is Kindleprenuer.com.

Dave had written an excellent post on his blog about the use of keywords as a selling strategy on Amazon.

Dave makes an excellent argument for his strategy and I decided it was worth trying. The problem is, it takes a lot of data to discover which keywords will produce the desired results and I had no way of generating and collecting that data.

Enter KDP Rocket.

Let me say right now I don't get any affiliate commissions if you decided to invest in this tool. It will cost you $67.

Having wasted a LOT OF MONEY trying to learn how to run my tiny self-publishing business, I have learned the hard way to always be skeptical. 

After several days of considering how to generate the best possible list of keywords and not being able to come up with a single strategy, I finally broke down, got out my plastic and made the purchase.

One very long night later (the software is very easy to learn how to use), I had seven pages of possible keywords, along with the number of competing titles, the average earnings in the sales of the top five selling titles and a score indicating how difficult it would be to compete for that keyword.

$67 and all those hours later, I was still not completely sold this KDP Rocket thing was worth the time and money I had invested.

Culling out the ten most promising keywords from the several hundred I had collected the data on, I pulled up my Amazon account and typed the first keyword in.

Instantly a scifi crime noir thriller appeared. Along with several pages of other books in the same cross-genre vein.

Another keyword and the same result.

Did I mention that eight of the top ten keywords I would NEVER have thought of on my own? In the process of testing the keywords you type in, other similar keywords come up and you start to generate keywords on your own you would never have thought of.

It gets better.

You can research the competition with a feature specifically designed for that!

So, how did I do selecting the keywords for my non-fiction books?

Actually, pretty good, but not as good as I thought for several of the titles. I'm happy to report since changing some keywords, a couple of those titles have sold a few more copies than normal this past month.

Check out KDP Rocket yourself and make your own decision.

While I'm pretty sold at the moment, the real test will come when my novel goes on sale. I'll report back then when I have enough data to determine if my investment was worthwhile.

There's a Novel In All of Us

When I published my first non-fiction book I never thought I would write, let alone see published, a novel. My wife was the first to put the idea in my head and encourage me to take the plunge. I think she mainly just wanted to keep me occupied and out from under foot around the house, but that's okay.

Now, some ten years later, I find myself working through my list of tasks each day in order to have everything ready for the book's launch sometime in early February. Today, I was asked a couple of questions about the book and after some reflection answered a few of them on my author's site.

If you are interested in learning a little more about how The Predator and The Prey came about, please feel free to read the few questions I responded to in writing. To read more...

Anyone who reads this blog who writes non-fiction, if you feel the itch to try your hand at a novel, go ahead. Scratch that itch! It was a fun challenge for me and if I can do it, you certainly can too.

Are Blog Tours Passe as a Means of Book Promotion?

For the past three years I have been doing my homework while I worked up the nerve to convince myself to venture into the world of indie fiction. One of the strategies often suggested is doing a blog tour to promote your new book.

On the surface it is certainly a sound idea. Since I have a limited, meaning none, budget for marketing and promotion, I liked the idea. It would cost me only my time and effort. So, I found the site BlogTour.org. It is easy to use and after an hour I had generated a list of thirty-five blogs to contact concerning guest posting or doing an interview.

I was surprised by the response.

Every blogger and author who replied was very polite. They all, so far, have declined my request. Each e-mail politely explained the blogger no longer did guest posts or interviews. They simply did not generate any traffic or interest for the blogger's site. 

Most offered to mention my new book, The Predator and The Prey, on their social media. 

I certainly plan to take each up each blogger who offered this option to me on their offer. It is a generous one and will take me much less time than writing a guest post would. I simply need to send a jpg of my cover, a link and a few details about the book.

I still like the idea of guest blogging.

It simply might not be practical for works of fiction. I do think guest posting in the realm of non-fiction will work. It should draw readers to the blog hosting the guest post and generate traffic. If you need information and your search turns up the guest post, you'll go to that blog.

I have an idea for a non-fiction book that I plan to start work on late this spring. I have included on my list of pre-publishing activities to be done set up a blog tour.

In May or June I should be able to answer my question concerning whether blog tours are better suited for non-fiction.

Could Paper Books Make a Comeback? Two Reasons They Might

From a business perspective it makes sense to have your book available in as many formats as possible and distributed as widely as possible. While ebooks, especially Amazon's Kindle, have been a huge boon to self-published authors, it makes sense for several reasons to offer books in POD print editions as well.

First, it would seem the so-called "digital natives" prefer to read books in print over digital ebooks by a considerable margin, especially when reading for pleasure. Of course surveys that conclude this type of results are controversial, particularly among the serious adopters of technology. Reading the comments are sometimes as informative as the actual story.

Then there is the issue of whether or not we should be creating "digital natives" before their brains have matured physically. As a high school teacher for the past 30+ years, I can assure you the reading ability of the average student has made a serious decline.

Others simply argued any evidence I had was anecdotal and could not be validated. That is until brain researchers discovered all the digital usage by today's youth has in fact changed how their brains develop and not always for the better. One of those negative effects has been a serious deterioration in the brain's ability to process written language.

Given the fact school administrators have moved towards digital textbooks, and with good reason when you see the amount of money spent on textbooks, this is bound to be a controversial topic in the coming years.

As a school teacher and grandparent, this topic is of great interest to me. To read more, click here.

Association of Independent Authors

It doesn't matter if you are published traditionally or you choose to go the indie route and self-publish.  It can be lonely and frustrating as an author. Like any human endeavor, author's need encouragement and a source of help and information.

Joining local writing groups can certainly serve as one source of encouragement and information. Joining a larger regional or national group can serve the same purpose and often provides additional sources of aid and information.

One such group is the Association of Independent Authors. You can become an Affiliate Member for FREE or become a full member for a $69 membership fee.

The AIA offers a range of services and sources of support for authors, most of which will cost you some money. Like any other choice you have to make as an indie author that involves money, buyer beware and do your homework.

Still, an Affiliate membership is FREE and you can tool around the AIA's website and learn a few things. This is not an endorsement of the AIA, I'm simply pointing out the organization's existence.

Review of How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically by Carolyn Howard-Johnson

If you're like me, you have to run your self-publishing business on a shoestring budget. With daughter Number One just out of college and daughter Number Two a freshman this year, every dime has to be accounted for and spent wisely. What could be reinvested often has to go to pay bills or for college.

All the more reason to invest what money you have budgeted for research and educational purposes in the "Frugal" series of books by writer and author Carolyn Howard-Johnson. These books are well worth the money you will spend and the time you will need to invest to read, take notes and digest all the information presented in the books.

The series includes:

• The Frugal Editor: Do It Yourself Editing Secrets
• The Frugal Book Promoter (in its second edition now)
• How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically 

I'm planning my book launch for my first work of fiction, The Predator and The Prey, and I wish I had started reading CHJ's (Ms. Howard-Johnson refers to herself in the text of her book this way) treatise on obtaining reviews two months ago. Even when self-publishing, you need 12-16 weeks lead time for many reviewers. You also need a physical copy of the book to send to be reviewed!

 

The time saved in research in a single area of book promotion/reviews alone is worth the price of the book. For example, I was aware of only two bloggers who write in the genre my book is in. In less than two hours, using the information in the book, I now have a book blog tour mapped out for the entire month of March.

 

Book reviews are a scary topic for authors. I know I hate trying to solicit them. It some how feels like I've become a politician or a used care salesman. Ms. Howard-Johnson addresses all the reasons why authors need to get over this and do the work necessary to solicit reviews in the first section of the book.

 

The second section of the book deals with planning how to obtain reviews. Of particular emphasis is the need to start early and do your homework. Thus my wish I had started reading this book two months ago.

 

Section three deals with a wide range of ethical, and low cost methods of obtaining reviews. Many of these ideas would never occur to the average writer. Ms. Howard-Johnson's years of experience as an author and wide range of contacts in the industry have provided her with a wealth of information she thankfully is willing to share with other authors. Of particular help is the chapter dealing with the all important Amazon.

Section four deals with putting all those great reviews to work for you, helping as many readers as possible find out about your work. Section five covers the practice of writing reviews to broaden your author's platform and create credibility as an author.

Section six covers putting together a media kit and planning for the future of your book. The successful future of your book. It also covers using reviews for when the sales of your book began to slide.

I purchased the Kindle version of this book. I would like to point out Ms. Howard-Johnson went to the trouble to create a functioning index for the book, making it as easy to use as a traditional paperback version. This is no small feat. 

Also included in the book are examples which can be found in the appendices of the book.

If you're frugal, out of necessity or by nature, this book is well worth the price of purchase.

 

                 

  

Indie Arthor Skills - Using Book Design Templates Part II

The good folks at TheBookDesigner.com are the creators of a product called Book Design Templates. In my last post I encouraged authors to consider learning how to create their own interiors for their books. Specifically to use this product created by Joel Friedlander and his partners.

As mentioned in my previous post, this product is Word based. If you can use Word, you can master creating your own book interiors. Tracy Atkins, the software genius behind these templates, can easily do the interior of a book in an hour.

I will confess, it took me longer than an hour to do the POD interior of my first work of fiction, The Predator and The Prey.

Here is what I can say about using the template I purchased. It was the easiest book interior I have ever done. It took me just over two hours, the fault of which must be placed on me. I got smart and formatted my original Word document in an effort to speed up the process of loading it into the template. All I did was create a good 45 minutes of work for myself. The template would have handled the features I was trying to create.

My absolute favorite feature, the template set up the page numbers and headings on the pages automatically! Talk about a tedious task made easy.

Even better, my ebook version was created by using the Save As feature on Word. A few changes and the creation of a functional table of contents and the file will be ready to upload to my Kindle Direct Publishing account. Since I hate dealing with ebook table of contents, I am going to happily pay the $47 to have The Book Designer folks create my TOC for me.

I purchased a multi-use license, enabling me to ensure every book in my Inspector Thomas Sullivan Thriller series will have identical interiors, both the print and ebook versions.

For authors who need to save money producing their own books, this is a way to save money, produce a quality interior, and you won't have to learn how to write code or study design in the process.

Consider Developing These Skills as an Indie Author - Part I: Simple Interior Design

Being an indie, or self-published, author has meant learning skills I never thought were a necessary component of an author's skill set. Like the vast majority of self-publishing authors, my budget to produce my books is very limited. In fact, once my books began to gain traction on Amazon and sell, I needed the money to pay bills for the family. 

Lesson learned. This is not a hobby, at least for me. There are skills authors today need that extend beyond craft. Without a doubt, the most important element of any book's success is a well written manuscript. Without a topnotch manuscript, no book will succeed despite all the other bells and whistles being topnotch.

Traditional publishing provides skills most authors don't have. Skills such as editing, interior design, cover design and for some lucky authors, marketing. Editing your manuscript yourself is not wise, thought it can be done.

Designing your interior is another skill that is best left to creative professionals. Having said that, there is an easy way to go about producing the files necessary to have your finished manuscript published in paperback and ebook formats. You don't have to learn the first thing about coding for ebooks or actual design elements for paper and ebook interiors.

Joel Friedlander, The Book Designer, and his partners at Book Design Templates have done the hard work for you. You simply have to select, and yes, pay for the template that features the interior design you believe best fits your manuscript. 

I have used these for multiple editions of my non-fiction books and successfully saved hundreds of dollars while producing quality book interiors! Yes, there is a learning curve. But, the good folks at Book Design Templates have provided the means to teach yourself how to use these Microsoft Word based templates.

You select the type of license you want to purchase, single or multi-edition. A commercial option is available as well. When finished, hit save and make a duplicate copy. I have found there are a few things I want to change for the two versions, one for paper and one for ebook. When finished, you are ready to upload your interiors for publication.

Once you master the process, you can format a 60,000 word book in a couple of hours. Books with images, graphs, etc, take longer.

If you hit a snag, for a reasonable fee, you can pay for help to either tutor you in the process or actually fix the problem for you. In one of my first efforts, I managed to mess things up so badly it took them awhile to repair the damage I had done. They did it with a smile and sent me my finished file ready to upload.

Please note! If you use these templates correctly, there is NO NEED to have your interior file converted to upload to Amazon's KDP or Nook's ePub. Your book, minus the cover, is ready to go! I have successfully used my files for Kindle, Nook and Draft2Digital who distributed my ebooks to iBook, Kobo and other ebook retailers.

Yes, this approach does cost some money and you have to invest the time to learn to use the templates. The positive is your book file is ready much quicker than if you paid someone else to do the work. Purchasing a multi-use license is still cheaper than paying to have a professional to design and produce your interior file and it is a one time fixed cost. You also do not have to pay for having the files converted for either POD or ebook editions.

I'm sold on this product/service produced and sold by Joel Friedlander and his partners. It is a skill indie/self-publishing authors should consider mastering.

For More Information

Pondering the Decision to Self-Publish or Publish Traditionally? Data to Help You Make Your Decision

The battle rages in the publishing world. Without a doubt, there are many in traditional publishing who feel threatened by what is happening in the indie, or self-publishing, world. There are many who wish to be published but do not want the "stigma" of being self-published.

In the past the stigma of being self-published might very well have been justified. Vanity Publishing carries with it the stigma of its very name, vanity.

If you want to make a living from your writing, or at the very least, pay some bills on a regular basis, you need to stop and seriously consider self-publishing your work. I got my start in self-publishing through POD paperbacks. Now the majority of my sales are ebooks.

I still make a lot more per sale with my POD titles, but make up for the lower revenue per unit from my ebooks with the sheer volume of sales. If I could figure out how to make the same total number of sales, but all POD, I would be deliriously happy! I digress.

To make a significant choice between self-publishing your work or pursuing a traditional publishing contract, it is important to try to set aside the propaganda from both camps. Make a decision based on sales data.

While this seems much easier said than done, there is a source of sales data that allows an individual author to make the correct, for that author, decision about how to publish their work.

One data set worth examining, and a telling one at that, is the Print vs. Digital Report for May of 2014.

Another interesting data set is the 2014 Barnes & Noble ebook report.

Finally, I would like to suggest taking a look at October 2014 Amazon ebook (estimated) sales data. 

All of these reports I have linked to are from the Author Earnings site.

Catching Up

It's been awhile since I last posted and quite a bit has gone on in the world of self-publishing. Amazon's very public, or so it seemed, dispute with Hachette is over and time will tell who won that battle. If you want to read up on that entire debacle, visit J.A. Konrath's blog and you can read more than may want to about the entire negotiation and the various mudslinging battles that transpired. It's interesting reading, particularly if you are torn between self-publishing and attempting to obtain a traditional publishing contract. Simply start with one and work your way back, either one at a time or through links in the various posts.

Morris Rosenthal has returned to blogging and providing data about the world of self-publishing, particularly as it relates to Amazon and self-publishing. The latest incarnation of his blog is titled Publishing 3.0: Books in the Age of Amazon.

My current projects have included non-fiction in a brand new area for me in a topic I am passionate about, Italian Greyhounds! This project probably will be a success if it simply breaks even, but I feel like I need to diversify the types of books I write and self-publish in hopes to continue to earn a decent extra-income.

Finally, in what is probably a misguided effort on my part, is my attempt to sell paperback books directly from my own website using a Shopify store. It was easy to set up, but so far I have had very limited success in selling any books.

I hope everyone who visits my site has a GREAT Christmas this year!

Making a Living as an Indie/Self-Published Author

At best, it was always a guessing game about how many books self-published or indie authors sold and how much money has been earned. For authors who would like to make a living as writers and are considering self-publishing, this is a huge issue.

Below are a pair of links that you need to visit if this topic is important to you. Both are essential reading. Rather than talk about what each has to say, I encourage you to leave this site and visit the two sites linked to.  Here they are:

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2014/02/me-hugh-howey-and-legacy-john-on.html

 

http://authorearnings.com/

I promise you, this will be time well spent.

Current Topics of Interest in Self-Publishing

Here are a few recent blog posts I have found of interest as related to the business of self-publishing. Hope they are of interest to the readers of this blog.

Great post on J.A. Konrath's A Newbie's Guide to Publishing

Questions from Steve Zacharius, CEO and President of Kensington Publishing

From Morris Rosenthal - data on Kindle sales and Kindle borrows - Self Publishing 2.0

Prime Holiday Usage Data

Kindle Sales Comparison for Fiction and Non-Fiction sales

From Joel Friedlander's The Book Designer

Forming a self-publishing cooperative

Update on the Ingram Spark Program for Indie Authors

More on IngramSpark from Aaron Shepard

The 40% Error 

Marketing tactics and strategies from The Creative Penn by Joanna Penn

Info. on the task of marketing for authors

Promoting Your Books in Apple's iBookstore (iBooks)

With Apple slowly becoming a player in the ebook retail business, self-published/indie authors need to take advantage of Apple's growing share of the ebook market.

While Amazon's Kindle will certainly continue to have the largest share of the book market, Apple has a legion of loyal device users and in time should command a bigger share of the market.

Amazon provides a significant number of tools to help authors sell their books. It can be confusing at times and you have to pay attention to the ever changing landscape of Amazon, but Amazon does want authors to be able to play a role in selling their own books.

Apple is now providing some simple tools to help authors promote their books from their own blogs and websites.

The first tool I tried was Amazon's "build a widget" tool. Once you on the page, you will see the image shown below:

Once you click on the Add/Edit Book List the pop-up shown below will appear. Simply type in the name of the book or the author and the book will appear. Click on add the title and it will move to the box at the bottom. The order the books are listed in can be changed by simply dragging and dropping.

The final widget looks like the one I created below. The image was taken from the blog on my authority site.

 

 The other tool Apple has made available is called iTunes Link Maker. As soon as you arrive on the page, simply fill in the title of your book and the appropriate drop boxes and hit search.

 

Click on the blue Book Link and the pop-up box shown below will appear. I removed the HTML code for my book before taking the screen shot you see. 

You have the option of obtaining text only, a small button or a large button.

I plan to make good use of all of these tools in my efforts to let the readers of my authority site who prefer to use iBooks that my books are slowly becoming available in the iBookstore!

Recent, or Not So Recent, Changes and CreateSpace

CreateSpace has made two changes in recent months. The first is matte covers are now offered.  To add a matte finish to an existing title, or a new one, simply visit your Member Dashboard and go to the Distribute section of your Dashboard.

Once there, simply click on Cover Finish and you will be provided with a choice of Glossy or Matte Finish. I am tempted to order a single copy of one of my books just to see how it turns out.

The other change in recent times is Expanded Distribution is now FREE for all titles. You will have to grant the mandatory higher discount but it allows all of your book to be sold by other online retailers such as Barnes and Noble.

CreateSpace is always updating its offerings and it pays to be alert to what is new.

Self-Publishing Blog Summary

It has been awhile sense I posted a summary of blog posts I have read and found helpful. To save you some time, here are the latest posts I have found interesting or helpful that relate to self-publishing.

From The Book Designer

Why Writers Must Self-Publish Their Books

From Your Writer Platform

Powerful Pictures Perform: How to Create Images That Grab Attention

To Blog or Not to Blog: Is It Really Necessary?

From Self-Publishing 2.0

Will Amazon Deliver Coal in the Stocking for Kindle Publishers?
Morris Rosenthal's monthly examination of KDP KOLL payouts.

From The Creative Penn

Writing Fast, Funnels And Calls To Action. My Lessons Learned From Write, Publish, Repeat.

Getting Maximum “Bang” for Your Book Description Buck: an SEO/ Author’s Perspective

The Newbie's Guide to Self-Publishing 

Death and the Self-Pubbed Writer

 

 

Participate in Read Tuesday!

This is a great promotion for authors and small publishers! It takes place on December 10th and is a great holiday promotion for those of us who self-publish.

Rather than try to explain all the details, it would be simpler to send you to the website! I will be participating with two books this year and see how it goes!

Ingram Spark and Barnes and Noble - A Different Perspective

As the self-publishing industry has evolved, print-on-demand, POD, what was once largely the domain of Lightning Source, LSI. Amazon moved into the POD business with its purchase of Booksurge which became CreateSpace, CS.  LSI's parent company, Ingram, is hoping to reshape the POD market to some degree with the creation of Ingram Spark (Spark).

LSI is a more difficult platform for self-publishing authors to use while CreateSpace was designed to be highly user-friendly for authors. LSI's platform was intended for publishers who desired to keep slow selling backlists in print and as a venue for small publishers to gain distribution.

CreateSpace's advantage for authors, and some small publishers, is its direct access to Amazon. Since most self-published authors realize there is little to no market for their books in traditional brick and mortar bookstores, the ability to distribute directly to Amazon was not only essential, it was a game changer as it allows authors to have access to both customers and Amazon's amazing marketing software.

So why did authors want to self-publish with LSI? Simple, the ability to control the discount of the list price. Distribution to bookstores requires a 55% discount. LSI allowed authors to decline returns and set a discount as low as 20%, increasing the profit margin for authors.

CreateSpace does not allow authors this luxury. The discount to Amazon is a pre-set 40% and the discount for expanded distribution is 60%.

While initial views of Ingram Spark by such traditional POD gurus as Aaron Shepard have not been particularly positive, largely because Ingram Spark requires the 55% discount, there is another reason to consider Spark.

If you really think your book has a chance to sell in traditional bookstores, Spark will provide that access. Additionally, if the 5% difference in discount for sales via Barnes and Noble is worth it to you, then Spark might be worth looking into, particularly if your titles sell as well, or better, than on Amazon.

Where Spark seems to miss the boat is the mandatory 40% discount required on ebooks. I am willing to experiment with my next paperback, due to come out in July or August of 2014, by using Spark instead of CS. I am not going to bother with Spark for ebook distribution when I can load my ebook versions directly to Amazon's KDP and Barnes and Nobles Nook Press directly for 70% and 65% royalties respectively.

If Ingram Books wants Spark to grow and compete with CS and even Lulu, it will have to adjust some of its policies and make certain the user interface provided for authors and small publishers is every bit as easy to use as that of its prime competitor, CS.

For authors interested in learning more about Spark, check out Spark's site, and the initial review of Spark by Aaron Shepard and Joel Friedlander, The Book Maker.

Print-on-Demand for Self-Publishers: Is CreateSpace the Only Viable Option Now Available?

Lightning Source Inc, LSI, was the first print-on-demand printer that allowed self-published authors access to book distribution and Amazon. Before the advent of ebooks (Kindle and Nook) it was the way to go for authors who wanted to self-publish.

One of the founding fathers of today's self-publishing industry, Aaron Shepard, wrote two books that were essential reading if you planned to make a go self-publishing as a business, Aiming at Amazon and POD for Profit. Morris Rosenthal, another of the self-publishing industries early leaders in using POD to self-publish wrote another essential book explaining the business model of using POD, Print-on-Demand Book Publishing.

CreateSpace, CS, appeared on the scene and after some bumps upon starting, soon became a viable alternative to LSI. I have written about choosing between the two companies on numerous times on this blog. The decision to use CS for all of my books since my first efforts centered around the ease of simply creating an account with CS, ease of just about anything with CS versus LSI, and my last blog post on the subject took one final look at the two companies.

For many, myself included, the quandary over which company to choose was ease of use versus the ability set the discount offered to retailers. For me ease of use won out every time, meaning I published with CS instead of LSI.

That may all be a moot point now. Ingram, who owns LSI, has started a new division called IngramSpark and is now insisting authors who wish to self-publish must deal with IngramSpark, who will control the discounts set and is, from what I understand, not overly user-friendly in setting up a new title.

The biggest supporter of LSI for self-publishing, Aaron Shepard, now directs new authors to CreateSpace, due in large part to the behavior of IngramSpark.

This combined with changes in Amazon's stocking of some LSI titles, which led to the now defunct Plan B approach,  largely limits the choice of a viable POD service for authors who desire to self-publish to just CreateSpace.

In the grand scheme of things, perhaps authors should still be thankful there is access to Amazon and other retailers using a POD business model via CreateSpace.