Another Use for The Book Designer's Book Design Templates

I really value my time these days. I am more than willing to learn new technologies if they are helpful and of value to my business and writing efforts. But if they are going to be huge consumers of my time and may or may not be worth the effort to master on my part, I am no longer willing to go the extra mile.

I have been trying to motivate myself to learn how to use some of the writing software packages available such as Jutoh or Scrivener. I have come to the conclusion these are certainly good products and the people who like using them have valid reasons to do so.

It is just not a wise use of my time to learn to use these products. I have been using Joel Friedlander's Book Design Templates for the last few months. I successfully completed several short e-books/Kindle books as well as two large POD projects.

To teach myself how to use these templates, I decided to actually write a book using the template as a time saver. I would learn to use the templates at the same time I finished the project. What I learned was with a single Word document open for a variety of uses ranging from making notes to test writing passages, it was much easier for me to write the book directly into the template.

I was able to see the book as it would actually appear form before my eyes. Since I write non-fiction and my books involve graphics and photos, this made the writing process much easier for me. I am not certain if the same would be true for fiction authors, but these templates have been a wonderful tool for me, both in terms of producing a professional book interior in terms of appearance and a time saving writing tool.

Click Here for more details!

Amazon to Offer Smart Phone - For Free?

My two daughters think I am a technology relic and so does my wife. My son encourages me to hang in there. He is, like I am, very interested in history and the role old technologies played in history. My current phone is over five years old, paid for and works just fine. I can call people. My daughters and wife can send me texts. My son calls me. What more could you want?

Evidently I need to be prodded into action. My girls tell me not to get my phone out when I am with them in public. They claim it is embarrassing. Of course, they drop the subject when I tell them they could get me my own smart phone or I remind them who paid for theirs.

Still, if the story is true, I might bite. I mean, a smart phone for FREE, and I might be able to continue to use my same cell phone contract? That got my attention. I mean, a dad has to be cool right?

My guess is Jeff Bezos sees this as a way to sell more stuff. There has to be a catch. You get the smart phone for free but you have to shop at Amazon and put up with the advertising. I am OK with shopping at Amazon. I do that anyhow. I just avoid advertising like the plague.

I draw the line at reading books on a phone though. I am not, nor will I ever be, that cool as a dad.

To read a detailed account of Bezos' latest gambit with technology visit the link below.

http://jessicalessin.com/2013/09/06/exclusive-amazon-wants-to-offer-its-smartphone-for-free-who-will-follow/

Amazon Announces Kindle Matchbook!

 Amazon has announced a new program to help Kindle authors sell more books. In Amazon's own word:

We are excited to introduce Kindle MatchBook, an innovative new program which enables you to offer your Kindle book at a discount when readers purchase your print book, so you can sell more books. It's easy to enroll.

Here's how it works:

1. Select your Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) title on your KDP Bookshelf and check the Enroll box for Kindle MatchBook on the "Rights & Pricing" page.
2. Set the discount for your book by choosing a promotional list price of $2.99 or less.
3. Save your Kindle MatchBook preferences.

By enrolling your book, you will be among the first to be able to take advantage of this new program. The Kindle MatchBook discount you select will not appear on Amazon.com until the program is fully launched in the coming weeks. We will notify you by e-mail as soon as your Kindle MatchBook discount is live. Your readers will soon have an easy and affordable way to read your book in both print and digital formats.

Visit your KDP Bookshelf today to enroll your books in Kindle MatchBook.

Best regards,
The Kindle Direct Publishing Team

Amazon's Struggle With Collecting Taxes - Amazon Affiliates and Self-Publishing

Regardless of your political views or how you feel about Amazon, Wal-Mart, etc, you need to take the time to read this post.

Not sure if I agree with everything and will fact check a few things, but given the fact I sell things through Amazon and direct off my website, this is a topic that concerns me.

If things are not hard enough financially for too many small businesses, government officials seem to think we can do with less and government needs more and by golly, those entrepreneurs who sell things via the internet are going to be the next target for privately financed collecting of taxes for government regardless of the level.

Here is the link:

http://www.bainvestor.com/Marketplace-Fairness.html

Self-Publishing Blog Roundup

Some of the recent blog posting on self-publishing I have found helpful and interesting.

Tips for Editing Your Own Book

http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/08/how-to-edit-your-own-book/?utm_campaign=BB1333&utm_source=BBeNews&utm_medium=Email

Amazon's New Book Description Format

http://www.fonerbooks.com/selfpublishing/book-descriptions-front-and-center-on-amazon/

For Fiction Writers - Reasons Why Social Media is Not Working to Build Your Audience and What to Do About It

http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2013/08/social-media/

Writing Thrillers, Being a Prolific Author and Podcasting

http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2013/08/11/writing-thrillers-jeremy-robinson/

Understanding Book Layouts and Page Margins

http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2013/08/book-layouts-page-margins/

Lightning Source versus CreateSpace for POD (Print-on-Demand) Service Reviewed Yet Again

I have spent the last two days studying my print-on-demand sales figures for the last four years. While the numbers are not terrible, the last year has seen a decrease in total paperback copies of my books sold. 

The good news is the same titles total sales have increased dramatically due to Kindle sales with some sales from the BN Nook thrown in.

The problem, or challenge, is the net profit PER sale for a Kindle book is lower than the net profit PER sale for the same book in POD paperback. How can I address this financial issue?

I am hardly about to stop releasing new titles in paperback but every new title will now come out in Kindle no matter what. I also released a total of nine short non-fiction books, samples really of longer established books, in Kindle format only.

It makes financial sense to consider ways to improve, or at least halt the decline, of my POD paperback sales. After some thought about the matter I came up with several possible solutions:

• Change covers - costs money and for some of the books the POD sales are just not worth it - yet the same book with the same cover sells OK as a Kindle book.
• Figure out how to improve my marketing efforts -always an ongoing struggle.
• Revisit using Lightning Source (LSI) for more of my titles and not rely almost completely on CreateSpace (CS) for my POD printing.

For those of you who have been using POD for several years, I am fairly certain you followed, and felt financially, the issue two years ago when Amazon changed how it listed POD paperbacks available only from LSI. The sudden plummet in sales was disheartening and it took nearly a year for my best selling paperback to recover.

POD expert Aaron Shepard advocated what he came to call Plan B, a solution and for many authors who self-publish via POD, a workable plan to recover lost sales.

For many authors, it made the decision to use CreateSpace instead of LSI easier, despite the lack of control over the wholesale discount required. LSI allows the author to set the discount within a given range, a high of 55% and a low of 20%. CS requires 40% discount for books sold on Amazon and even higher, approximately 65% for books sold via its expanded distribution program to competitors such as BN. In fact, Plan B required the use of both POD companies.

It would appear the industry, or perhaps Amazon, has changed again. Briefly, the Plan B approach required using CS for books sold on Amazon and LSI for all other sales. The author had to set a list price at CS that would be lowered to the actual desired price when Amazon matched the discount of the same book on BN. The book listed on BN was printed by LSI. The entire approach would require some experimentation to get the discounts by the two online retailers matched and the prices down the target list price after discount.

Confused yet?

Today I made a quick visit to Mr. Shepard's site and discovered there is now a Plan C! It would appear trouble has once again reared its ugly head in paradise and Plan B is no longer really viable. Mr. Shepard tracks carefully a wide range of information about Amazon's discount matching and pricing. I will take his word for it, I have enough trouble keeping up with my own books.

Amazon it would appear no longer matches exactly the discount given by BN, who has stopped discounting as deeply for many books as it once did.

Also, the real issue for many POD paperback titles is not Amazon's dealings with LSI, but rather the ever increasing popularity of ebooks, particularly Kindle books. 

Still, the possibility of releasing new books in both POD and ebook formats using LSI instead of CS, an approach that would allow me to once again use the short discount model of 20% made me sit down with paper and pencil and once again compare and contrast the two companies.

With my copy of Shepard's essential book, POD for Profit, in hand to help me work my way through the maze that is signing up a new book with LSI, I once again came to the same conclusion I had before.

The advantage of controlling the setting of the discount is just not worth what I will have to go through to use LSI instead of CS.  While every author can have areas that are problematic using LSI (please note, I do have titles with LSI and have nothing but positives to say about their customer service, print quality, etc.) mine are all centered around two issues:

• The difficulty of setting up the book files. LSI is so much more difficult to use in this regard than CS.
• The other issue is making changes of any kind to the book or the book's metadata. Sales of the book have to come to a halt in order to make the changes.

And so it is that I will once again re-examine my marketing efforts and continue to try to learn more about marketing my books more effectively and all future books will also be released in Kindle and POD paperback.

Do It Yourself Kindle Conversions - Word to Kindle Books

With more and more content becoming published in digital format, if you want to self-publish you need to make your books and content available in ebook form. The King of the eBook Market right now is clearly Amazon's Kindle.

For many of us who self-publish, cost is a major consideration. Learning to create our own Kindle books that look as good and function properly like Kindle books designed and produced by professionals is a valuable skill to acquire.

Aaron Shepard, one of the industry leaders in the field of self-publishing, has released the third book in his series on Kindle Publishing using Word to create Kindle books. 

The third, and probably final, book in the series is HTML Fixes for Kindle. Here is the book description in Aaron's own words:

According to Amazon, the simplest way to publish your Kindle book is to upload an HTML file you've saved from Microsoft Word or another word processor. By itself, that method can bring you maybe 80% of the way to a well-formatted ebook. But what about the other 20%?

In this follow-up to his bestselling From Word to Kindle, Aaron Shepard takes your exported HTML as a starting point and tells how to quickly tweak and tune it to avoid common problems. Assuming no knowledge of HTML, he introduces the basics of the language, then reveals how to use find-and-replace and macros to touch up an entire book in seconds!

If you’re serious about Kindle publishing and you’re technically inclined—but not a full-fledged geek—Aaron provides the tips you need to bring your Kindle book to the next level, making it something truly to be proud of. 

The second book in the series is Pictures on Kindle.