The Flash Publishing Report

http://authopublisher.com

http://authopublisher.com

The Flash Publishing Report By

Ivin Viljoen a.k.a The Authopublisher

http://authopublisher.com

Copyright Copyright Š 2013 by 5 Butterflies Media for Authopublisher All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system.

Published by: 5 Butterflies Media for Authopublisher Featherdale Estates, Louis Botha Street, Bonaero Park, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Website: http://authopublisher.com E-Mail: Visit us on the web at admin@authopublisher.com This a FREE eBook! You may not charge for this eBook or add it to your bonuses, unless an agreement has been made with the publisher. You are, however, given permission to distribute this report freely to your readers, subscribers or friends and family as long as you keep the book intact and in it's original format. You are welcome to print one copy for yourself for personal reading but distribution is prohibited and confined to electronic distribution methods in which the links within this report remains intact and live for people to be able to access the resources within.

http://authopublisher.com

Index Introduction Part 1: How I Wrote and Published my First Book in a Flash Part 2: 6 Flash Writing Hacks Freshkey for Profitable Book Topics Writing a Book that's Publishable 5 Steps for Developing Staying Power as a Writer Compiling a Manuscript from a Blog Automating Your Writing through a Dragon Scrivener: A Successful Writers Secret Weapon.

7 Reasons Why You Cannot Finish Your Book (Free webinar) Part 3: About Self-Publishing Advantages & Disadvantages of Self-Publishing Top 5 Self-Publishing Stumbling Blocks 4 Considerations before Self Publishing Sections Found in a Book Part 4: Book Covers 4 Requirements for an Effective Book Cover Cover Images A Book Designers Approach to Book cover Design 10 Great Platforms for your Book Covers.

Part5: Publishing: Paperback & eBooks Section a: Paperback Hacks Getting in ISBN Getting a barcode done CreateSpace Solves Self-Publishing Stumbling blocks

http://authopublisher.com Section b: eBook Hacks eBook Publishing Secrets 10 Digital Publishing Tips Kindle Publishing Tutorial Publishing on the Nook Tutorial Publishing on Smashwords The Number One Book System Part 6: Book Marketing Book Trailers Build a Book Site Selling Your Book through Commenting Press Releases $ Submission Platforms Free eBook Promotion Sites Radio interview Tips & Interview Opportunities build a list of devoted book buyers eBook Review Sites DIY Besteller Part 7 : Social Marketing Hacks for Self-Publishers Social Media Marketing for Self-Publishers Social Sites for Authors Social Author Resources Bonuses: Creating an Audio eBook Kindle eBook Generator Software Service: Make an author blog Why you should Read My blog and Sign Up. Care to Review?

http://authopublisher.com

Introduction This report has been a long time in the making. I have, with the first couple posts on my blog, desired to release a 'Flash Publishing Report' that would chronicle my adventures into self-publishing. I became famous for this when I started blogging – having written my first book in 3 days and having a printed copy in my hands after 11 days.

So, one of my methods being compiling my book from blog posts, I compiled this report when I felt I had enough great content to offer my subscribers and for them to easily make a success by following the tips I provide. If the name and the tagline wasn't indication enough, I want to help aspiring authors (or experienced ones) write their books in a flash and publish it in the sane quick fashion.

Below you'll find the best content you can find on the internet, anywhere, in a free report, or a blog, except or perhaps a course or two, in which case I have the best courses I am promoting here, for which, if you decide to join and purchase them, I will make a buck or two.

I hope you find great value writing this report and remember that I wish you the best in your publishing endeavours and I will always be available to assist you with my support desk.

http://authopublisher.com

Part 1: How I wrote and published my first book in a flash

http://authopublisher.com With this report I want to inspire you to think of the possibility of publishing your book yourself. I’ll tell you how I did it, and then share some tutorials and resources with you within this report, so that you have great self-help options available for writing and publishing your first (or next) book.

Why self publish a book?

Well, this is the age-old question. I have heard of people self publishing out of frustration because they were either being sent from pillar to post, or they didn’t have time to accommodate the lengthy conventional process. Personally, my experience is a little of the same. I self-published for the following reasons: • I had time sensitive material I had to get into the hands of a certain group of people. I couldn’t wait the 18 months it was going to take to get the book published.

• The cost of even self-publishing (that’s when a company guides you through the whole process, charging you exorbitant amounts of money for their services) was simply too high for me at the time. I literally did it ALL myself.

• I had 100% control over my content and the process – allowing me to get educated on the entire process. It afforded me the opportunity to share my experiences and knowledge with my blog readers and email subscribers (that's you!)

The mistakes I made the first time Unfortunately my first attempt wasn't a great success and didn't come out roses. I made some mistakes, and even though times have changed since then, the mistakes are still applicable today.

• Because I was trying to save money, I didn’t push my book through a professional editing process. So, unfortunately, a few grammar and spelling mistakes slipped through the cracks. I am rewriting the book for a second publish, so I’ll fix the problems there. This was the reason I have not distributed my book too widely.

• I hadn’t let the index titles connect to the pages they actually appear on.

• I didn’t put a title on the spine with the details.

Minor mistakes really (except perhaps for the editing), but let’s have a look at the

http://authopublisher.com skinny on how I did this.

The skinny on how I wrote and published my first book in 2 weeks I’m going to make a couple points to cover the skinny on how I did this to just give you an idea of what is involved.

• I got inspired and wrote my first book in 3 days.

• Then I had it proofread.

• I did some mild editing.

• I published it by getting an ISBN from a local library.

• I had a cover designed.

• I asked the printer for the size formatting so they could bind the book.

• I formatted the book in MS Word.

• I set them in sequence like for a book.

• I took the pages and printed them out, so that when they are in sequence it follows like a book…

• I bought two boxes of A4 bond paper and copied all the pages in sequence.

• After copying all the pages on an office printer, I called a printer and got a quote from them regarding the best price and quantities (for binding – I already printed it)…

• I then had a 100 covers for my book printed.

• I then took it to the printer to be bound.

• I picked it up and voila!

I had a book! Well, it sounds simple, and in a way it was. I know it’s sort of cut and paste with Cellotape and Prestic, but that was how I did it with my first book. So, if no-one is behind you and you’re strapped for cash, you can still publish a book. In this report I am going to give you a lot of tried and tested, step-by-step tutorials and resources that will help you do it just as fast, if not faster, and tons easier.

http://authopublisher.com

Part 2: Flash Writing Hacks.

http://authopublisher.com

FreshKey for Profitable Book Topics FreshKey is a great software program made available by my buddy Ryan Deiss. What it does is take a keyword of your niche that your interested in writing an Amazon book in, and it returns to you a ton of keywords that people are already searching for within the Amazon platform. Imagine writing a book that already has customers!

This tool also works for Google Analytics results and even gives you the trends graph for the keyword to see how 'green' the keyword is. It's really an amazing tool Ryan spent hundreds of thousands in developing and you're able to steal it at a great price. I'm not really able to do it much justice, so you better watch the video below for the entire presentation.

http://authopublisher.com

Writing a Book that's Publishable.

Are you a writer who has only written web content or a writer who has only written as a hobby? If you are, you may still have the dream of writing your own book, a book that will get published. Despite the fact most individuals who consider publishing a book have previously written a book, you may have yet to pull off this important activity. The good news, anyhow, is that it may work in your favor.

If you have yet to write a book, there are a couple of important steps that you will first want to take. These steps, a couple of which are remarked below, could help to improve your chances of you writing a book that is publishable.

One of the first things that you will want to do, when seeking to write a book that is publishable, is to pick a genre (if you're writing fiction) or to pick a niche (if you're writing non-fiction). This involves picking who you wish to write for. Do you wish to write for children, young adults, or adults? Next, decide what you wish to write about. Do you wish to educate your readers or give them an irresistible story that they just can’t put down? As for the topic or storyline that you pick, make sure to choose something that interests you. A writer who is passionate about what they write is more probable to see success.

Once you have an idea of what form of book you wish to write, and also an idea on your theme, take the time to look into publishing companies. This is simple to do if ou go search on my blog, Authopublisher. At the releasing of this report, it has more than 560 posts on self-publishing. It clearly outlines what platforms to choose on which to publish your book. For example, some platforms are great for non-fiction and others may have a bigger audience for fiction. However it may be, you will find a lot of your questions answered within this report.

Writing a book with a theme that interest you, and also a theme that is in demand by publishers is one of the best ways to get your book published. That's why I shared with you the software called FreshKey first.

As for writing your book, it is vital to set out with a plot . If you are writing a nonfiction book, like a how-to guide, make sure to develop an outline for you to go after.

Fiction authors should first outline a plot. Unfortunately, numerous authors, mainly new writers, just set out writing. Obviously, it is vital to get your thoughts on paper or on your personal computer, but an apparent and solid plot is an essential component of writing a book that will get published. Books that are just a collection of words are probably to not get published.

http://authopublisher.com Once your book has been written, it is vital that you do the proper amount of proofreading and editing. Numerous professionals vary on the amount of times that a book should be proofread, but you should re-read yours no less than 3 times.

Likewise to doing your own editing, you may profit from the professional know-how and expertise of an editor. Numerous have reasonable charges.

As earlier recommended, it is a smart idea to first see what the numerous selfpublishing platforms are built for. Additionally, as earlier stated, you can simply work through this report or read my blog. . If you remarked or recorded the information that you read, you may previously have a list of platforms you'd like to publish on.

Once your book has been proofread and edited, you are now prepared to send your book to self-publishing platforms.

http://authopublisher.com

5 Steps for Developing Staying Power as a Writer.

In this portion I'm going to assume that you have written, published and marketed a book before and you've downloaded this report because you hoped it was going to help you be more efficient with your time. Time you'd rather be doing what you love – writing.

Spending creative time on marketing is a very common problem (I know, it’s mine!)

And it can become quite scary: you always hear from savvy, professional writers that the best marketing tool is your next book, and that all you need do is write, write, write and forget about the rest.

Forget about marketing? After all you’ve put into it? It doesn’t seem either reasonable or possible.

You’ve pushed yourself to the limit: you’ve set up a website and a blog and you post at least 2 articles on it per day (you’ve heard the ideal is every day). You follow up on every comment. You follow other writers’ blogs and comment on them. You exchange blog rolls and links. You invite guest posts. You’re even thinking of a discussion forum to engage with your readers. Because dang it! You’re going to be the next Nathan Bransford !

And it doesn’t stop there. You do book trailers, you load videos on YouTube, you’re on Facebook, who isn’t ? You visit FB everyday and post fresh content (and you try not to get angry when friends latch onto your newsfeed page as if it were the village square, and post annoying pictures of their beloved kittens and horses). You’ve joined LinkedIn. And with the meteoric rise of Google+, a place you have to hang out at if Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg is on it.

You’re also on Twitter, and tweet until your eyeballs start bleeding. You remember that’s how Amanda Hocking made a fortune with her YA paranormal kindle books.

But you’re nowhere near a decent number yet. You’ve heard publishers won’t look at you unless you’ve got 500 or 600 followers. Sure, your numbers are rising, but your dream goal of 5,000 followers is still very far off…maybe in 2015? In 2020?

The main thing is: people are noticing you! People follow what you say! So when you tweet , FB, YouTube and blog, with everywhere an easy buy button, people will rush and click that button, right?

Wrong!

http://authopublisher.com Sorry about that. There’s no evidence that people respond to direct marketing. Since the times we watched soap ads on TV (and that was fifty years ago!), we’ve all grown immune to it. When anyone tells you “I’m the best, my book is a masterpiece”..., you close your ears and walk away, right?

First Step: Stop doing any direct marketing.

Okay, somebody might respond and buy your book, but so few people do. It just isn’t worth your while. So relax and forget about it. Feeling better? Actually, that’s a lot of stress out of the door, isn’t it? You don’t need to tweet or ask others to tweet for you. Good-bye Twitter! You’ve gained at least half an hour a day or more for yourself.

For your writing! Which doesn’t mean you should stop tweeting. If you do it for your own enjoyment, you’ll find it works much better, and, surprise! You’ll get a lot more followers!

Step n. 2: Review your blog’s effectiveness Blogging is the best tool to get ou exposure onilne as an author, right? Is it worth it?

Is it growing? Some writers are saying that ‘blogs are passé’, that they’re not worth doing'. If so, then you would free yet another big slice of your life. But are blogs really “passé”? Don’t believe anyone who tells you so. They’re not passé by a long shot! And most certainly not those that offer so-called useful content. Useful to whom? If you’re a writer, that means useful to your fellow writers.

Does your blog provide relevant, useful content to your readers, like Joe Konrath’s Newbie Guide to Publishing? If yes, then you better keep it up: you draw good, solid traffic to your site and people will see that “buy” button on your books. Mind you, it works for him because • He’s got a huge catalogue of books for sale (he was traditionally published once).

• He’s got a clear promotional strategy via low prices (more on that below) and, most importantly, he’s got 500,000 visitors a year.

Have you got 500,000 visitors a year? Take a hard look at your blog’s traffic flow: if it’s good and rising, keep going. If bad, dump it. No need to waste time on it. Write your next book instead but don’t disappear from Internet: make sure your website and Facebook page look good (consider adding LinkedIn, it takes a minimum of effort and time). Keep whatever sites you’re on updated as needed, and visit

http://authopublisher.com occasionally. Keep it going at a healthy minimum. The point here is not to kill yourself. Just let everybody know you’re not dead. But that will free a lot of time for you and your writing!

Step 3: Pick a no hassle promotional ploy.

A low price is the easiest, no-sweat way to ensure impulse buying. If it’s the first book in a series, pick 99 cents (or even offer it free), then raise the price on the next ones. As Konrath has demonstrated (he’s very generous at sharing his personal information), the price range that works has to be well below the “agency model” followed by traditional publishers. They’re at $10 to 12 and up, so you, as an indie, should be half that. That means $5 is the upper limit, $4 is better, $2.99 (where Amazon starts paying 70% royalty) is probably safest. It’s a price that does the marketing for you. Wow! What freedom!

Step n. 4: Focus on interviews and readers reviews, but don’t stress out !

Since direct marketing doesn’t work, indirect marketing will. Not easy, but it’s the only one that really works. Interviews and reviews, especially reviews by critics in respectable journals and newspapers – the New York Times is of course everyone’s dream! But don’t stress out.

If you’re a newbie, the best way is to concentrate on readers reviews on your Amazon book site (that’s the site that sells most, so efforts are best rewarded here).

And, if you can, get interviews on blogs. Friends can help you out at first, just to get the ball rolling. But watch out! You don’t want to give the impression that there’s a mafia manipulating readers. God forbid!

All interviews and reviews, especially any done by someone you know, have to be completely honest, warts and all. So if a friend rates your book 4 stars or less, don’t get angry. What’s fair is fair and you can’t expect everybody to like your book or think that you’re the next Dan Brown. But it’s a review nonetheless and it does what you need most: it ensures people talk about your book and will check it out!

Step 5: Take a day off every week!

This is really the most important step and the one I should have started with! Just because you’re a writer and committed to your trade, doesn’t mean you should work 7 days a week. Okay, you want to write? Write 7 days a week, but do your book marketing and Online activities 6 days a week! Take Sunday off! Actually, that’s the

http://authopublisher.com day with lowest traffic on Internet, you won’t be losing anything, if you just keep mum that day. Have a happy Sunday and a beer in your patio. Resist opening your Internet connections! Go ahead, don’t do it!

http://authopublisher.com

Compiling a manuscript from a blog.

Having a fair bit of success with your blog is wonderful. But as a writer, the pinnacle of success is to be published. Although posting a blog post is effectively publishing a piece of writing forever embedded in the web of cyberspace, you can blog a book by easily compiling or writing specific blog posts within a niche, topic or category.

How to compile a manuscript from your blog.

At the risk of being repetitive, I have been advocating publishing a book from your blog and blog posts for years, because it’s a great way to save time and serves as an automation method for compiling a manuscript. The list below serves as a ‘How-to’ for both fiction and non-fiction writers.

• Consistently build great content – I have experience in doing this twice. The first time I wrote articles around youth issues and wrote opinionated content as I was inspired to write them. I wrote these articles for a considerable amount of time and later saw the opportunity for these articles (which were very targeted) to become part of a manuscript for my first book.

The second time I had also set out to do interviews which I knew I would eventually sell. I got in touch with Haro and posted a request for interviews. I was overwhelmed with the response and it took me close to two years to interview every author that responded. After I thought I had done all the interviews, I hired a freelancer to get it all together and compile the manuscript, do the formatting and preparing it. All the content came from my blog, tons of interviews spanned over 2 years.

For more on how to conduct valuable interviews, visit my friend Kristy’s blog, Kikolani for my post on it.

• Compile your book (or chapters) from categories – Using WordPress as a blogging platform is great, because each post could be categorized and easily called up for reference. Let me show you an example: How to inspire a generation (transformation, inspiration, generation) How to reach young people (transformation, engaging, generation) Connecting and engaging with young people (inspiration, engaging, entertainment) Keeping young people entertained (entertainment, generation, inspiration) Seeing changed lives bear fruit (transformation, fruitfulness, generation) If you wanted to compile a section of your book (or manuscript) on the topic of inspiration, you’ll simply click on the word in your category and WordPress would return all your posts in that topic. You can then either use a WordPress

http://authopublisher.com plugin called Anthologize to choose your posts from that list, or copy/paste your text into an Open Office doc for formatting.

• Easily compile a manuscript – If you keep on creating great, valuable, sticky content on your blog on a specific topic, you’ll soon have a pretty comprehensive manuscript for your book you can work from. The writing is done already! The speed on which you have your book ready for compiling depends on how often you post a blog post on the topic.

• Easy archiving – I used to have a USB device with articles-to-go, as it were, but after around 250 – 300 posts on a topic, you may as well start a blog and see what the feedback is on your content as well as your writing. When they’re on a blog you can also get quick access to them and they have metrics to indicate their worth and effectiveness.

• Judge a book by readers response – What better way, before publishing a book with your content on it, to judge each piece on the amount of comments it got, the sentiment in it, the amount of likes, ReTweets and shares across social media networks etc. It may be a good idea to also share the writing your considering for your book with your email list and see what is the feedback like of your herd.

After the fact.

After going through the process explained above, I realized a couple things that changed the way I work today.

• Prepare admin – When I published my interview book, I couldn’t include a lot of the great interviews I did because I needed them to sign a release form. I could either not find the authors to ask them to release the interview for the book, or some authors were reluctant. Now, I add the release form with the interview template and 9/10 the authors fill it in. So when I plan my next edition or an update of the current one, I have less admin to do.

• Give it your all – You’ve written a lot of blog posts and waited a long time to compile a great resource, better make the best of it. Therefore, the first time I did the above promo plan, I gave it to a freelancer to do and didn’t work all the avenues. The next time I was more hands on, involved and put a lot more effort in. Needless to say my effort paid off better. I mean, if you’re giving something away, you might as well go all out.

I hope you can see that if you’ve been blogging for a while, and specialized on a specific topic, you may well have a great book on hand ready for formatting to be published.

http://authopublisher.com

Automating your Writing through a Dragon.

I’m very excited because I’m writing this portion in my report with software that makes my life a lot easier, my business more effective, and my entire office run way more efficiently that it has before.

This is correct, because as I’m speaking I’m watching the screen dictate the words that I’m speaking. Yes I’m using Dragon Naturally Speaking 11. I think it’s a great product, because it’s going to make everything so much easier for me. You can see that this is something that should have revolutionized our industry completely. I actually don’t understand how everybody is not using. What will I use this product for?

Writing books using Dragon Naturally Speaking.

By usingDragon Naturally Speaking 11, I can now write books at lightning speed, I can write teaching material, and as you can see at the bottom of this portion, I can provide you with the transcript of every single video I make.

Blog articles.

Yes, I am wrote this portion in this report, originally featured on my blog, using Dragon Naturally Speaking 11, and this became the way that I will write my blog articles and books from then on.

It saves a lot of time, effort, and as I think and talk the words are written on the page. Imagine your self writing a book,… or a blog post. What do you usaully do, how does the process work? You usually speak first and then type right? While now, you can simply speak and it is written.

Freelancing.

Yes, of course we are going to talk about making money from this product. No, I don’t have and affiliate deal with the guys from NSB 11. What it would do, is provide me with the ability to double-time all my efforts, at least. Now, I can also bid $1-$2 50 per article on freelancer.com. I can now also compete, my work will not be of any less quality, but I can do it fast.

What can Dragon Naturally Speaking 11 not do?

http://authopublisher.com As of this moment, having version 11,Dragon Naturally Speaking cannot help me type in Skype and I presume he cannot help me in forums or commenting on blogs. I probably have to do that the old-fashioned way. But, as you can see I have written a well executed portion of text of approximately 400 words (so far) in less than 10 min.

All I have to do now is give this article quick read through, edit it and typeset and post into this report. DNS11 streamlines my business and makes me more effective in the world of what ever I choose to write.

Get Dragon naturally speaking here.

http://authopublisher.com

Scrivener: A Successful Writers Secret Weapon.

I absolutely LOVE this software program. I usually dread writing new books because I have a hard time making sense of my structure and my thoughts get lost in a sea of words, chapters, and paragraphs. Scrivener sort this out for me.

Scrivener is a powerful content-generation tool for writers that allows you to concentrate on composing and structuring long and difficult documents. While it gives you complete control of the formatting, its focus is on helping you get to the end of that awkward first draft.

A complete writing studio.

Writing a novel, research paper, script or any long-form text involves more than hammering away at the keys until you’re done. Collecting research, ordering fragmented ideas, shuffling index cards in search of that elusive structure—most writing software is fired up only after much of the hard work is over. Enter Scrivener: a word processor and project management tool that stays with you from that first, unformed idea all the way through to the final draft. Outline and structure your ideas, take notes, view research alongside your writing and compose the constituent pieces of your text in isolation or in context. Scrivener won't tell you how to write—it just makes all the tools you have scattered around your desk available in one application.

http://authopublisher.com Write, Structure, Revise.

Scrivener puts everything you need for structuring, writing and editing long documents at your fingertips. On the left of the window, the “binder” allows you to navigate between the different parts of your manuscript, your notes, and research materials, with ease. Break your text into pieces as small or large as you want—so you can forget wrestling with one long document. Restructuring your draft is as simple as drag and drop. Select a single document to edit a section of your manuscript in isolation, or use “Scrivenings” mode to work on multiple sections as though they were one: Scrivener makes it easy to switch between focussing on the details and stepping back to get a wider view of your composition.

With access to a powerful underlying text engine, you can add tables, bullet points, images and mark up your text with comments and footnotes. Format as you go using the format bar at the top of the page, or use any font you want for the writing and let Scrivener reformat your manuscript after you're done—allowing you to concentrate on the words rather than their presentation.

http://authopublisher.com Create Order From Chaos.

Most word processors approach composing a long-form text the same as typing a letter or flyer—they expect you to start on page one and keep typing until you reach the end. Scrivener lets you work in any order you want and gives you tools for planning and restructuring your writing. In Scrivener, you can enter a synopsis for each document on a virtual index card and then stack and shuffle the cards in the corkboard until you find the most effective sequence.

Plan out your work in Scrivener’s outliner and use the synopses you create as prompts while you write. Or just get everything down into a first draft and break it apart later for rearrangement on the outliner or corkboard. Create collections of documents to read and edit related text without affecting its place in the overall draft; label and track connected documents or mark what still needs to be done.

Whether you like to plan everything in advance, write first and structure later—or do a bit of both—Scrivener supports the way you work.

http://authopublisher.com Research is always within reach.

No more switching between multiple applications to refer to research files: keep all of your background material—images, PDF files, movies, web pages, sound files— right inside Scrivener. And unlike other programs that only let you view one document at a time, in Scrivener you can split the editor to view research in one pane while composing your text right alongside it in another. Transcribe an interview or conversation, make notes on an image or article, or just refer back to another chapter, all without leaving the document you’re working on.

http://authopublisher.com Getting it out there.

Compile your draft into a single document for printing or exporting

Scrivener provides all the tools you need to prepare your manuscript for submission or self-publishing. Once you’re ready to go, control everything from how footnotes, headers and footers appear to fine-tuning the formatting of each level of your draft —or keep it simple by choosing from one of Scrivener’s convenient presets.

Print a novel using standard manuscript formatting. Export your finished document to a wide variety of file formats, including Microsoft Word, RTF, PDF and HTML— making it easy to share your work with others. Or self-publish by exporting to ePub or Kindle* formats to share your work via iBooks or Amazon, or for reading on any ereader. * Requires KindleGen.

http://authopublisher.com Who uses Scrivener then?

Scrivener is used by all sorts of professional and amateur writers, from best-selling and aspiring novelists to Hollywood scriptwriters, from students and academics to lawyers and journalists: anyone who works on long and difficult writing projects.

While many other writing project management tools impose their own workflows or limit themselves to fiction-writing, Scrivener recognises that all writers of long-form texts often face similar problems, and provides an array of flexible tools that allow you to do things your way, no matter what kind of writing you do. Those currently using Scrivener include: • Novelists

• Short-Story Writers • Screenwriters • Playwrights • Comedians • Lawyers • Journalists • Lecturers • Academics and Students • Biographers and Memoirists • Business and Technical Writers • Comics and Graphic Novel Writers • Translators • And more…

Are you convinced? Get Scrivener to make your life easier and write your book in a flash.

Get your copy of Scrivener here.

http://authopublisher.com

7 Reasons Why You Can't Finish Your Book.

Since this report is about 'Flash Publishing', I thought this to be a great resource to share with you. Click on the image way at the bottom to get access to this free webinar in which Garrett Pierson reveals an astonishingly simple 7-step secret that instantly slashes the time to writing your book... even if you're not a writer, don't know where to begin or don't think you have the time.

During this FREE online training webinar you'll discover: • How everyday people, just like you and I, have finished and published their book in record time...

• The ONE skill you need to master... and how to forget about all the confusing and painful details of getting started FAST...

• How to architect a proven time management system to creating enough time to write...

• How you can write your book in 2 weeks, 30 days, 90 days or as fast as you would like, with a 7-step system that simply works...

• 5 roadblocks that 97% of writers encounter and how to overcome them immediately...

• The BIGGEST MYTH of writing a book flattened and debunked instantly...

• A multi-channel market positioning technique that will take you from no one to famous in no time at all... And much more.

http://authopublisher.com

Part 3: About Self Publishing

http://authopublisher.com

Advantages and Disadvantages of Self-Publishing.

Self-publishing is an option authors may decide to take when they don’t have time to wait 36 months to get their work out. He may also decide to self-publish because he is tired of working through the red tape because he “is still new, haven’t a following or his book doesn’t fit into his immediate profile and direction”.

A self-publishers will oversee the entire process from its conception all the way to marketing the book when it is printed. They wear all the hats that publishing needs; writing, editor, proofreader, typesetter, printer, distributor, marketer, and promoter.

They don’t necessary have to do all of it themselves, so they may outsource the work to other individuals or companies. So, the self-publisher becomes a publisher in his own right of his own work.

It is a clear entrepreneurial enterprise because the self-publisher takes all of the risk but will reap all the rewards coming from it. He has therefore the freedom to make the decisions and market his book in conventional or unconventional ways, be it selling door-to-door, or going through a specialist distributor. In the end, they're responsible for their books' success or failure.

Let’s look at the advantages and disadvantages of self-publishing.

Benefits of being a self-publisher Through self-publishing, you are able to get a book into the marketplace in a flash.

Depending on the speed in which you work, you can publish your book in 14 days.

Going though conventional publishing you may wait 12-18 months after your book proposal has been accepted.

•

Self-publishing allows the self-publisher to execute his creative ways to market his book to a focused niche market. He has the control and freedom to do as he seems fit.

• As a self-publisher, publishing your book yourself offers you great income potential. You can make upward from 35% depending on your cost opposite of the 5-8% royalties publishing companies offer you.

•

Depending on the success of your book you can expand your earning potential by selling international and digital rights to your book. You own the rights to your book, where going through a publisher will give them the rights until either the contract expires or your book doesn’t sell anymore. Owning the

http://authopublisher.com rights to your book you can reach many different markets and with 6 billion people in the world, there is unlimited potential for your book.

• The responsibility to keep the book on shelves is yours. You may do this through hiring a distributor. With so many possibilities offered through the Internet there is no reason your book cannot stay on the shelf more than 3 years.

• If you own the rights to your manuscript you retain creative control deciding on cover design, title, printing, marketing, and all other areas of production and distribution. This is of course not possible through conventional publishing where your rights are virtually nothing.

• Being a self-publisher you can go wild and sell in different locations, libraries, and websites, on speaking engagements, and retail and corporate outlets. The world is your oyster.

•

self-publishing offers you the opportunity to say what you want in whichever way you want, within professional confines of course. You may also decide to generate leads by promoting additional products or services.

• You also have the opportunity to pre-sell your books to take advantage of covering your full costs before the first sale, thus taking the pressure of yourself to ‘perform’. If you are free from financial strain you can be free to be creative and enjoy publishing.

• Every experience you have added to your expertise as you grow wiser and more experienced. These are things no-one can take away or steal from you.

Disadvantages of being a Self-Publisher • According to the quantity of your first print, you will have to incur all of the initial cost of printing, designing and distribution. The bright side of funding the project is that you receive all the financial gain. When it comes to digital, these costs are significantly less and later in the report I will show you how to evade this completely, even if you want a printed copy of your book available.

•

It may be difficult to do if you don’t have things like negotiation skills, the ability to communicate costing you money in the end. You may not have the necessary experience or expertise in the publishing process and therefore may

http://authopublisher.com need to hire professionals to do the work on your behalf.

• You take a great risk by self-publishing by financing the entire project with no guarantees or promise of reward. Therefore the ability to manage finances is crucial.

• There hasn't been a lot of respect for the self-publisher, as he is not deemed to be in the same league as conventional publishers. Their prestige stands like a mountain over the self-publishers effort and dedication. This is changing rapidly, though.

• It could eat a chunk of your time, especially if it is your first time and you’re still learning the ropes. Questions you will have to ask are if you will outsource or handle every aspect yourself depending on how much time you have.

• There are no guarantees that you will be able to distribute your book which will greatly influence sales and customer service. Along with this you will need warehousing and storage. Options are to store your product in your house or get someone to do it on your behalf. Once again, there is a solution I will share later in this book.

The main reason for you to self-publish your book as an authopublisher, is because the industry works like banks do. You have to share your market research in your book proposal and commit to buying at least 100 copies of your book as an ‘investment’ that will show you can take responsibility for your book.

http://authopublisher.com

Top 5 Self-Publishing Stumbling Blocks I have had this dream to write (forget publish) my first book since I was a young lad.

Starry eyed I used to scribble story arcs on paper and even stared at the computer screen trying to capture in word format what was going on in my head.

A couple years ago I eventually wrote my book and published it in a span of two weeks. It sounds pretty far fetched, but it was an amazing as I got some experience and even learned what not to do. However, the biggest obstacle between an aspirant writer and his/her book is what is called entry barriers. Here are five to look out for: You’re broke Don’t get fooled by flashy sales pages promising you the heavens what publishing your book is concerned. Any businessman will tell you that you need money to make money, end of story. If you just want to publish your book so you can stock it in your business or perhaps in your home, there are ways you can do it on a shoestring budget. Many affiliate marketers will tell you that you can make money overnight and well, I have found from personal experience, it is just not that easy. Stop putting pressure on yourself and get a job.

Am I the boss?

To have a self-publishing company for your own products, or to publish your friends' – any business' really, is a great responsibility and it is best to have shadowed another person in the fields you will try working before you go it commando.

Is my book worth it?

The biggest question any author almost always ask him/herself is ‘Will people want to read what I wrote?’ I say focus on writing, get your feet wet, write a book you love writing and publish 10 – 100 copies. Get your foot in the door and go from there. No need to spend years researching a market so that your book may sell. If that is your approach you are a businessperson creating products, not an author writing books.

Books should flow from the heart, not from flowcharts.

http://authopublisher.com Having no end vision with publishing I found it’s easier writing a book if you can see the end product, imagine your first fans reading your book and you doing your first book signing. If you can’t do that now, stop writing immediately. You have to be able to visualize the end product; otherwise you’ll be stuck on the first page for a long time.

Perfectionism I have this problem. I will mull over a piece of writing and write and rewrite until it’s ‘perfect’. Let me let you in on a little secret. (Whispering) ‘It’s never going to be perfect, and the other part is, it will never really be finished’. As soon as you can get over that, you will write and publish with ease.

Now, start writing and get that book published. Be eager to see your first masterpiece in your hands. Remember, everybody is a critic these days. If it is good enough for you (and your friends’ honest opinions positive), then it should be good enough.

http://authopublisher.com

Four Considerations Before Self Publishing The ease of self publishing these days mean that more and more authors and wouldbe authors are publishing their work every single day. Most people however, do not see the potential challenges and hurdles that are just ahead.

Self publishing may seem easy, but it is not as easy as it seems! Traditional publishing houses provide a whole host of services which are carried out by people who are professionals in their fields, meaning that the writer only has to focus on what he is good at, producing the words. In self-publishing, you have to take on multiple tasks and responsibilities to ensure that the most professional version of your book is out there for the public to read.

Whether you use print on demand or go straight to digital publishing, most customers will not necessarily be aware that you are self-published, unless they look for that information specifically. Your book will, in most cases, be toe-to-toe with traditionally published books. It is essential that you learn all that you can about selfpublishing before you jump in at the deep end.

The self-publishing world is a rapidly changing one, so things are bound to change after the publication of this article. Things will be updated on a regular basis via my blog to accommodate for such changes. In the mean time, assuming you think your book is ready for publishing, below are five things that you should consider before publishing your book yourself.

Publishing Platform This is the most obvious consideration and as soon as you start looking into selfpublishing, a quick Google search will throw this one up instantly. The platform you use to publish your book will depend to a large extent on what format you want your book to be published in. Do you want to have just digital downloads, or do you want your books in print? Assuming you want to go straight to digital publishing, think about what publishing platform you want to use. If you think you are going to sell a large number of books, I would avoid using eBook aggregators which take a cut of your profits, on top of what the publishing platform takes.

Some authors opt to spread their books over many platforms, however, the deals offered by some platforms such as Amazon offer incentives which restrict authors from doing this and require exclusivity. Below are some of the most high profile self publishing platforms which are worth considering.

http://authopublisher.com • Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).

• Smashwords • Kobo Writing Life- In beta at the time of writing.

• Lulu (Pint On Demand).

• Barnes and Noble Publt.

• Booktango • BookBaby Print on demand self publishing companies • Espresso Book Machine (EBM) • Createspace • Lulu • Lightning Source You are welcome to research all of them and see which one works best for you. In this report, however, I'm going to share the best platforms that will allow you to do it ion the quickest time.

You may want to publish across a spectrum of platforms in order to maximize your exposure. Be careful here though because Amazon’s KDP Select program restricts you from publishing to other platforms for a certain period of time. The process can seem daunting if you are new to self publishing, so it may be advisable to try publishing one eBook on one eBook platform initially, before progressing to other platforms and formats such as print on demand.

Marketing Just publishing your books will not get them sold! You need a comprehensive marketing strategy going forward. I am going to share a few marketing strategies with you in this report.

The first thing you need before anything else is a website. The website should be fully integrated with all of the current social media platforms to enable easy sharing.

I'm also going to share some resources with you regarding this later in this report.

http://authopublisher.com This is not a necessity, but it is not difficult to do and puts you at an advantage when it comes to sharing your website online. The website should be content rich, user friendly and easy on they eye. In addition, you will need a blog which is linked to your website and you need to blog regularly.

I would say, at least once a week, so that you can start to build an audience. A good social media presence is a must, especially if you have a limited marketing budget.

You'll also receive some social media training later in this report specifically targeted at self-publishers. Set up Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter accounts linking all of them back to your website and blog. In addition, your website and blog should be linked to all of your social media channels. This is called deep linking and helps with your website rankings. Every time you post to your blog, share the link via your social media channels.

You can automate the process to make it easier, so that every time you post, it is automatically broadcast over all of your channels. You build an audience by following people who are interested in your field of work and engaging with them on a regular basis. Over time, word spreads. Social media networks have become today’s recommendation machines! Assuming you have a good product, it is only a matter of time before you build up a loyal following who do your marketing for you by recommending your book to their friends.

Potential Expenses It is entirely possible to publish your book without spending any money. However, the only way that this can be done is if you do EVERYTHING by yourself. This includes editing, proof reading and cover design. While you may be an excellent writer, even the most successful authors have their books edited by an external person who is experienced in doing so.

It is strongly recommended that you hire an editor and potentially someone to design your cover. There is nothing worse than a book cover which looks like it was created using clip art! Decide what you are comfortable doing by yourself, then research potential costs like editing, proof reading and cover design so that you have an idea of what costs you are looking at going forward.

http://authopublisher.com

Sections Found in a Book Following is a list of sections into which your book needs to be organized to make ideas flow structurally and provide information to your reader in a way that makes sense. When I did a rewrite for the second edition of my first book, I had to go through TONS of books to find the right sections which will help my book look and flow better. Here is a comprehensive list.

Title Page.

I think this page is unnecessary as it was in earlier years. I mean, the readers already know the title of your book, even the browser picked up the book because of the title right? Well, in recent years it became imperative that you include this information, besides the title and author, your website URL. Having a website is absolutely imperative if you want to promote your book Online. About that in a later post.

Review/Testimonial Page.

Whatever you do, don’t make these up. If you don’t have any yet, give a couple copies of your book to friends, colleagues and peers and ask them to give you a review when they’re done. A page or two would be great to include. This helps the readers get excited about the content and salivating for more.

Copyright Page.

Here, a reader would usually find licensing rights, the Library of Congress information and other info that may be appropriate for the reader to know.

Acknowledgments Page.

On this page, the author generally acknowledges people that assisted in the production of the book. These individuals may include the authors’ editor, proof reader, publisher, personal assistant and more.

Dedications Page.

Here the author may choose to dedicate his book to someone, perhaps a loved one, a spouse, children etc.

http://authopublisher.com Table of contents Page.

Being quite self explanatory, this section needs to be accurate and you don’t want to direct your reader to the wrong page. A lot of word processors create these automatically from the headings that it finds in your book.

Introductions Page.

This serves as a section to tell people what to expect of the book. It should establish your expertise and provide the reader with a little bit of your background to strengthen your authority in their eyes.

Forewords Page.

This is usually a page/section written by someone else other than the author giving a testimony to your expertise and character. Usually, it serves well to have another thought leader in your field/niche that is respected in the community write this.

Preface Page.

A preface serves to set the scene for the rest of the book.

Main Chapters and Content Pages.

Being the meat of your book and content, this is best served as chapters that follow each other logically. This needs to obviously be of good quality.

Epilogue.

This is also sometimes called the conclusion, summary, endnote, next steps‌ whatever you want. Here you may summarize the content of your book and tell people where they can go next. Depending on the kind of content you have, you may want to present people with an action plan to work through.

Afterwords Page.

Here you could include some additional advice or information to the reader.

http://authopublisher.com Appendixes.

Generally, the Appendix will include additional information that was too lengthy or not relevant enough to be included in the main content.

Index.

Most word processors will also do this for you automatically. This section could be handy in non-fiction books or fantasy novels where they could quickly find relevant information.

‘About the Author’ Page.

This is highly recommended as this is where there’ll be a picture of you and some background information for your readers. Here you can probably feature your website URL again so you may funnel readers to your website.

Please note that a lot of these sections are optional for your book. Read their descriptions to see what they’re uses are. You don’t have to put all of them in and each section need only be included if necessary for it to be there. This section list is useful for print and electronic copies of your book and will serve you well to make your book look more professional.

http://authopublisher.com

Part 4: Book covers

http://authopublisher.com

4 Requirements for an Effective Book Cover For many self-publishers, preparing a book for sale means stepping into unfamiliar territory. Once the comfortable tasks of writing and editing are complete, the next step is usually book cover design.

It’s always a good idea to ask for help and direction whenever we’re learning, but when it comes to book cover design, it’s important to ask for help from the right people, so that the advice you receive won’t interfere with book sales down the road.

Book cover design is considered “simple” by many, but there is “art” and “science” in every cover design. If you want your book cover to be an effective sales tool for your book (and who doesn’t?) it’s important to balance the two.

Most experienced designers adhere to standard book cover design principles while creating concepts. Chances are good that when you show these concepts around to your circle of acquaintances, they will suggest changes – partly because they want to help, and partly because it’s just plain fun to participate. The problem is, their opinions are usually subjective and not informed by book marketing experience.

Elements a Book Cover Requires To ensure that your book cover design is not destroyed in this process, here are a few objective elements that every book cover must have.

1. The title should generally be large and easily readable (with some exceptions for literary titles).

2. There should be good contrast between the title and the background. Simply put, this means a light title against a dark background, or a dark or colourful title against a light background.

3. The simpler the design, the better. Covers that are too busy or that contain overly ornate fonts or too many elements will confuse the buyer. The cover must tell the story in one quick glance. As Steve Jobs said, “Design isn’t about decoration, it’s about communication.”

4. The title should be readable when the cover is shown in very small sizes or in black and white, as it may appear online or in catalogs. Print the cover about an inch tall in both color and black and white to test this.

The Book Cover Designer Your book cover designer balances a host of considerations when creating a successful cover, including colour, proportion, style appropriate to the genre, and much more. The four rules above form the basis upon which a solid cover design is

http://authopublisher.com built. Keeping them in mind when you receive feedback from friends and family will ensure that your cover design doesn’t veer off track.

An effective book cover is a critically important part of your book marketing effort.

For this reason I also recommend soliciting opinions from professionals in the publishing industry. Unlike comments from friends and family, feedback from industry professionals tends to be more objective and based on real-world book sales experience.

http://authopublisher.com

Cover images.

It may be a bit of a cliché to start of a post with, but truth be told people do judge a book by its cover and so do you. To make matters even worse, Amazon images are as tiny as postage stamps, so your images have to be of really good quality and grab the attention of prospective book buyers.

Cover Image “rules” In the list below we look at some of the “rules” that you have to follow in order to have the best book cover that will sell in online bookstores, and probably also in traditional book stores, provided you choose to print your book.

Book cover words and pictures In non-fiction books, it has always been important to have big and boldly written titles with a clear font on the cover; as you want your readers to be able to read your title easily. The reason is that you want your readers to be able to tell the difference between your subtitle and your title. Secondly, the idea is to have your title stand out on the cover page.

In fiction books, the background image should to tell the story, more than any of the other elements found on the cover. To make a great impact and steer away from copyright issues, your cover image has to be unique and cannot just be any picture downloaded from the internet. It’s generally best to take the pictures yourself or to purchase them from good and recognized photographers. This will cost you, but the best images are worth every cent. You may also want to use stock image sites.

Book Colour Since you are not trying to blend in with other books, you have to use bold colors.

Bold does not mean hazardous warning colors like red, unless the topic of your book is of that nature. Plain and beautiful oranges or greens (that being colors, not foods), have always worked for many bestselling titles that just have text in the cover page.

If you are a designer or you are going to use a designer for your book cover, then you can use as many colors as you’d like. However, if you are NOT a designer and do not intend on using one, then you will be restricted to no more than three colors. This restriction is for your own good because too much of anything can turn off the attention and attraction of your readers to your book, even if the content is great.

Cover Contrast You wouldn’t buy a book whose title does not go with its background would you?

http://authopublisher.com Then, why would you expect your readers to? Contrast doesn’t mean that your cover image has to blend in with your title, but everything has to be incorporated in such a way that your cover stands out as a whole and all the elements work together.

Changing Covers The good thing about books, especially eBooks, is that they can be updated and the covers changed so there is really no need to beat yourself up about having high-end covers, because there is a lot of class and sophistication in simplicity.

Your Book Market Looking at the kind of covers that top sellers have in your industry could lead you in the right direction. Also there are certain book image elements that readers are attracted to, these include kittens, cleavage, puppies, six packs etc. You just have to know your target market really well to know what will entice them to buy your book.

If you are not prepared to take the risk with images like these, then you are better off with the simplicity we spoke about earlier on.

Lastly, unlike with traditional print media, when you publish your book with Amazon, you can change your book cover almost every day. So do a survey on your book for online and offline opinions. When it comes to book designers you can even use applications like Fiverr.com to help you out if your cash is tied down, although I would not personally recommend it.

http://authopublisher.com

A Book Designers Approach to Book Cover Design.

So after a few months of hunkering down and writing, I’ve come up for air, and decided to give back a little of my time to the NOBC members who have helped me so much.After publishing my first 3 books, I’m ready for a break!

I have seen so many people asking about cover design. What size should it be? What font should I use? What resolution or dpi do I save it in… It can be overwhelming!

And when all you want to do is get your book out there, it can be easy to skimp on the cover and put out something that you are less than happy with.

So here are a few pointers I’ve picked up over the many years I’ve worked as graphic designer for both print and digital media.

Don’t Judge a book by it’s cover?

How many times have we heard that… But as smart little people who have followed Ryan's fantastic course, we all know that when you have a postage stamp’s worth of space on Amazon, in which to ‘get the click’ – the cover is the single most important thing.

Particularly when people are scanning a list of literally thousands of books… It’s the truly punchy covers that grab your attention!

A huge part of this can be done with a great cover image.

What’s that title say?

I had a look over a few pages of Amazon, and I’d invite you to do the same before you start working on your next cover. Scan through the covers and stop at the ones that grab your attention. Chances are they have one of two things – A great cover image, or a punchy title that is clear and easy to read.

Now image you are a little older, your eyesight is starting to give out a little… so squint your eyes just a touch and try reading them now! Funnily enough, at least two of these books are put out by a major publishing company… Makes you wonder…

When choosing a font for your title, it must read easily. Not every sub-title or author link will be readable, but if your main title isn’t readable… about 85% of people will just skip it — I mean they have thousands to choose from right?

What on earth is a .JPG and how do I get one?

So you have an image you like, you have a good font – now what? What program do I use to create it? How do I re-size everything, how do I make a .jpg file? What resolution do I save it as?

http://authopublisher.com I have found in all my years on this earth… wait, that makes me sound a lot older than I am — scratch that…

I have found out bycareful research that it’s one thing to know what you need to do… It’s quite another thing to have the skills to pull it off!

So here you have a few choices: • Learn how to use a program like Illustrator, Fireworks or the like.

• Pay someone 5 bucks on Fiverr to spend 3 minutes preparing you a generic cover.

• Spend a few hundred bucks for a professional designer to spend a few weeks doing you a cover.

I guess this is the part where I step in…

As someone who has worked in the graphic design field for many years, I know how frustrating it can be when you have a great idea, but don’t have the tools to pull it all together. I also know how easy it can be to get so blinded by your own efforts that you don’t even see the mis-spelled word in your title, or how it will be completely unreadable in greyscale (like most kindles).

So here’s the deal. If you need some help with your cover design, or just some simply feedback, please let me know through the support link below!

I have really benefited from everyone’s help with my own books, and hope to be able to return the favour to others in some small way!

I look forward to helping you create your next ‘Best Selling’ cover…

Promotion.

If you want me to design your book cover from scratch, I look at your area of Amazon to study what books of your competitors are selling, and what is not. I use this info to create you a standout design, with the main goal of ‘getting the click’ so that your description/reviews can take them further. I will purchase any stock images needed, and again put it all together for you. This normally takes just a few days, and of course I encourage your feedback throughout the design draft process.

http://authopublisher.com

10 Great Platforms for your Book Covers.

I am really fortunate to be part of a mastermind or support club where we discuss various different aspects of self publishing, especially around ebooks, Amazon and Kindle. What’s happening in this group is that we’re meeting various authors over a spectrum of professional fields. This varying in genres, niches and targeted fields.

This make it great not just as a support group fro authors, but getting exposed to so many different professionals.

What I’m trying to say is that I cannot really take credit for this post. What happened is that we were discussing Book covers, and one lady even told us how she had to fork out $2500 for a professional book cover design. Well, the wise word is that you don’t have to pay that much for a professional book cover. Sure, there are professional book cover designers that make a science of it, and that is probably where you’re going to fork out a pretty penny. But if you simply want a recognizable and marketable cover fro your Amazon ebook, here are seem tips on some platforms you may want to utilize in your next publishing endeavor.

Fiverr I am not too familiar with Fiverr, except that I posted some jobs on Fiverr for work on social media accounts. The results are great but have no real value. So, I’m wondering what quality you’ll get on Fiverr what book covers are concerned. Well, Fiverr was one of the first platforms I started freelancing, so I can’t badmouth the platform, and I can say that m,any internet marketers swear by it as a great and affordable platform to outsource your micro-tasks to.

http://authopublisher.com Go to Fiverr.

Freelancer I am both an employer and a job seeker on Freelancer. I have been fortunate to have gotten 5 star reviews as an employer and my freelancer records is also good. So, I have a fair bit of experience on Freelancer and it’s inner workings. On Freelancer you have to be clear about every single detail of the project, so you only get the correct bidders. If you’re pressed for time, the more information you give, the better your candidates will know what’s expected of them. Make sure you take the time to look at each freelancers reviews, complete records and exams they have completed. Then you’ll be fine. I would give the job to 3 different freelancers, pay the fees to make sure I get the best cover.

Freelancer has a facility called ‘Contests’. Here you can launch a contest, putting up the appropriate prize money and freelancers will all work on the project and you can choose the best design. The cost here is way more than what you would pay otherwise. In principle, it makes sense and it’s a great idea. I have tried this method before, and I have found that by putting up so much money, I hardly got any entries.

I must admit, mine was a video contest, so not sure how many of those professional hang out on GAF, but I was disappointed by the outcome and having my money stuck in their system was an inconvenience for me.

The interface is a bit different in this video than it is today, but the format is still the same.

Go to Freelancer.

http://authopublisher.com Odesk I have heard a lot of people recommend this platform and is apparently great for internet marketers. I can’t say that I have any experience of this platform at all, so I can’t give you a lot of educated advice based on my own experiences. Only thing I can say is that it comes recommended both by Im’ers and self-publishers.

Go to Odesk Elance As the world’s leading platform for online employment, Elance helps businesses hire and manage in the cloud. For businesses looking to staff-up a team on an hourly or project basis, Elance offers instant access to qualified professionals who work online and provides the tools to hire, view work as it progresses and pay for results.

http://authopublisher.com Go to Elance.

Powerpoint Powerpoint is a software platform created by Microsoft and should have been part and parcel of your Office package for you PC. If you have experience with making presentations on Powerpoint, you won’t really have any problems designing your book covers with this. Just make sure you export the image as the right format or take a screenshot of your creation to save.

Get Ms Home Office 2013 here Photoshop Photoshop is a great platform and anybody who is anybody in the I(m world uses this as a standard platform for designing anything: web banners, graphics, and… book covers. Now, if you don’t know this platform, I suggest you use one of the freelancing platforms above and hire a professional.That’s what I’m doing – even though I’m proficient with designing graphics, my time is more valuable to me. If you have soem time on your hands, want executive control over your book cover design, then I suggest the following: • Get Photoshop CS6 – I presume this is the latest version and should have all

the bells and whistles in it. With it there is very little you won’t be able to do.

So, this being step 1, I suggest you get your copy here.

http://authopublisher.com • Then get yourself the Adobe Photoshop CS6 Software Training Tutorials

Bannermaker pro Banner Maker Pro is software that quickly (and easily!) allows you to create webbased banner ads, Facebook banners, web buttons, web headers, animated gifs, logos, image ads and other web graphics.It’s not just for banners. It’s an animated banner ad maker, button maker, and logo maker all in on.

By using a wizard-like interface, Banner Maker Pro allows you to easily create professional looking banners, buttons, and graphics for web pages in just minutes.

Simply follow the tabs at the top of the program to go step-by-step in the image making process. When you have completed the image, just save it as a GIF, JPEG, or PNG and add it to your website. Create an animated banner or button in under 5 minutes! No graphics expertise needed.

Design your book cover with Banner Maker Pro here.

99designs 99designs claims to be the #1 marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design. They connect passionate designers from around the globe with customers seeking quality, affordable design services.

Go to 99Designs.

Special, limited Authopublisher, flash publishing report offer.

We’re in the business, so we have to tell you about it. We have experienced designers on staff that have designed numerous book covers for our various media projects. We take the hassle out of the design for you and we do revisions until you are satisfied. Our standard book cover design price is $49.00.

http://authopublisher.com

Part 5: Publishing: Paperback and eBooks.

http://authopublisher.com

Section a: Paperback Hacks

http://authopublisher.com

Getting an ISBN When HTML, CSS and javascript form part of code essential for anything online and web development, an ISBN code is an essential code to any self-publisher. Let’s look at the ISBN closely.

What is an ISBN code?

The ISBN is short for International Standard Book Number. It’s a thirteen digit number uniquely identifying books or book like products published internationally. It is often shortened to ten digits in the United States Because it is possible for a book to have the same title as another book, or the same author, this number makes it possible to order the book you want without confusion.

It allows efficient marketing of products by booksellers, wholesalers, libraries, universities and distributors. In the ISBN code, the first three digits are typically 978, indicating a book. After that, there is a group code, which indicates the language of the book. If a given group code has used up all its numbers, another one will be assigned to that language. For example, English language books have a group code of 0 or 1.

After the group code is the publisher code. Publishers are given blocks of codes with a certain publisher code. When that block is used up, they get new blocks with another publisher code. An active publisher may have used up thousands of blocks with as many publisher codes.

After the publisher code, the title code appears. This specifies the exact title being marked. Finally, there is a check digit at the end. Other than the first three digits, the number of digits in each part may vary. That can make it hard to decipher where one part begins and another ends.

Do you need to own the ISBN code?

Yes you do. The ISBN code identifies you as the publisher. Yes, you are a publisher, even if it’s an independent one. The only difference between you and Random House Publishers is the quantity of titles. When it’s assigned to your book, it stays with that edition for life, even if you change printers, distributors, wholesalers or retailers. So, orders coming through ten years from now will go directly to you.

Where can you get an ISBN? You can get an ISBN code by buying it directly from R.R. Bowker who is the licensed agency to sell them in America. When outside the US, you may consult the International ISBN code website to find the agency assigned to your country. We

http://authopublisher.com here in South Africa are privileged as we can simply get in touch with the National Library and request one.

An ISBN code is available single or in blocks of ten. It is better to buy the bulk as every edition (second, third and fourth) will need a new ISBN code. You will also, as you become more successful, publish more and more books until you hit that Midas bestseller. When you gained some experience and you venture out to help a friend or colleague publish their book, you have some ISBN number ling around to assign to your new joint venture.

Can’t you just get a single ISBN? Of course you can, they are available from R.R Bowker or a handful others. You can get a list of the many authorized agents on the R.R Bowker website. Buy from these vendors and preferably not from a vanity press. They make you believe that your ISBN code is registered in your name and you retain the rights. What happens is that you actually use one of their numbers but you don’t own it. So, when orders come through the owner of the ISBN get it. Then, it’s a shlep when you want to change publishers and all your marketing has been for nothing.

What is an ISBN code for?

If you started a publishing company and published your first book, assigned your first ISBN code to it, do back to R.R Bowker or the agency that assigned it to you and list your book in their books in print. This directory is very important as it’s used by many bookstores. Therefore, it is advisable to put your ISBN on all promotional literature.

Where does the ISBN code go?

Your ISBN goes on the copyright page of a hard/softback of your book, also on the lower portion of the back cover of the softbackbook above the bar code. It’s translated into a globally compatible bar code called a Bookland EAN (European Article Number. All bookstore chains and smaller bookshops use this bar code to scan book products at the checkout counter. Placing the number on your book is the book designers task by using a software program. This doesn’t mean retailers have to charge the full price, Using Bookland they can tie any price to it they seem fit as that will show on the book when it is scanned.

ISBN codes on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing Ebooks also need ISBN codes. All the same rules apply, with one exception. If you publish using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, and you do not have an ISBN code,

http://authopublisher.com they will assign an ASIN. This is their proprietary control number and most other retailers will not sell a book using that number.

I used an ISBN I got from the print on demand company I use, Lulu.com, which lists them as publisher. For the ebook, I distribute it through Smashwords.com and have a separate ISBN for it. I did also list it with Amazon Kindle Direct, since Smashwords.com was having some trouble formatting things for Kindle at that point.

I get royalties from all three places, although I have not made my fortune yet.

However, my book and ebook are available through all the major retailers.

The ISBN codes goes on the back cover and on the copyright page of the book. Be sure to list it both places.

Buying an ISBN Code The significance of the ISBN code is that most bookstores will not carry a book without one. Buying an ISBN code listing yourself as publisher costs $125. These list those publishers as the publisher.

We have ISBN numbers available at a discounted price. When you get one from us, the author owns the copyright and to the book. We simply supply the the ISBN code and will be listed as the publishing company, but won't make claims on any rights to your book.

http://authopublisher.com

Getting a Barcode Done.

A barcode is a graphical representation of your book's ISBN number and price. It is included on the back of a hard copy book to allow automated scanning and point-ofsale transactions. Most of the largest book retailers and wholesalers require books to display the Bookland EAN bar code, which is the only barcode that encodes the ISBN as well as the book's retail price. You can easily purchase, customize and create your own bar codes, and also store them for future access in your dashboard when you need them. To purchase or customize bar codes, you will need: • An ISBN Number • Retail or List Price Information By obtaining your bar codes from Bowker, the ISBN Agency in the US, you can be certain they meet the latest industry requirements.

Why Do I Need A barcode?

Booksellers prefer to use a machine readable or scannable version of the ISBN number in their systems processing. The Bookland EAN symbol is the most widely used barcode format in the publishing industry as it encodes the ISBN number and can also include the price.

The largest book retailers, as well as many book wholesalers, require books to display the Bookland EAN barcode graphic symbol which carries the ISBN. At the point of sale in a bookstore, the ISBN is scanned and all related information about the title is accessed in their sales system -- identifying the price correctly and subtracting a copy from their inventory etc. The Bookland EAN Barcode is an essential component of booksellers handling of the book.

What are Bookland EAN Barcodes?

While most retail products in the US are marked with a UPC symbol, virtually every other country uses the European Article Number (EAN). To provide world wide standardization in the sale and handling of books and because the book industry produces so many products annually, a special "country" with its own EAN prefix just for books has been designated in the EAN system -- 978 for "Bookland" -- which is used in the universal barcode system.

Any EAN which begins with the 978 prefix is called a Bookland EAN barcode and is used on books and book related products internationally. This 978 prefix precedes the first 9 digits of the ISBN and then a check digit is calculated in order to form a 13digit number which is then encoded to create the barcode symbol used on books. As part of the barcode service, our software assigns the 978 prefix and the check digit to create the new 13-digit number. Given the rapid rate at which ISBNs have been assigned, a new prefix, 979, is also being used for books in some cases.

http://authopublisher.com Is the ISBN always printed above the barcode symbol?

Yes. Positioning it somewhere separately from the symbol requires a scanner operator to search for the ISBN in those situations where key-entry is necessary and valuable seconds are lost in the transaction. The file we prepare from our software will include the ISBN. What is the price-add on?

The Bookland EAN barcode displays a set of two barcodes side by side. The first barcode on the left is the EAN derived from the ISBN. The barcode of the right, which is smaller, is a 5-digit add-on which often encodes the retail price of the publication. This is referred to as an EAN-5.

You must provide a retail price for your barcode.

In the US, the first digit of the add-on data indicates which currency the price is expressed in -- so for US dollars, the designated digit is a 5. So an add-on of 51995 indicates a price of US$ 19.95. The largest US retailers such as Barnes and Noble now require the use of EAN-5 barcode on books they handle. Scanners in American bookstores cannot read the Bookland EAN code without the corresponding 5-digit add-on. Publishers who don't comply with this requirement may be penalized.

What happens if I change the book's price after the barcode is made?

You must purchase a new barcode. Once a barcode is made, the price on it cannot be changed. You would use the same ISBN on the new barcode because the book itself hasn't changed. You can purchase new barcodes here whenever you assign a new price to your book.

Does the barcode have to appear on the back cover?

Yes. The standard location is the bottom right-hand corner. A major motivation for the development of barcodes for books was the need to speed up transactions. A standard location is therefore necessary to save the operator's time in searching the product for the code.

What is meant by Size Requirement?

The magnification can range from 80% to 200% for a Bookland EAN code. The largest size used is typically a 100% code, although 92% is standard. The standard 92% symbol needs a total area of 2.00" x 1.25". The smaller ISBN Bookland EAN symbol is an 80%, which needs a total area of 1.75" x 1.0".

How do I apply barcodes to cloth cover books that don't have jackets?

A barcode label must be applied to the back board in the specified location. These can be produced by specialist barcode label printers, by litho from artwork, from a barcode label software package with laser, or thermal transfer output.

http://authopublisher.com Can I trim the barcode symbol on the right to save space on the cover?

No. The purpose of the mark is to ensure that space is not used by any image in a color which could interfere with the barcode scanning process. A space to the right of the symbol is required to tell the scanner that the symbol is complete. The clear area to the left is already protected by the protruding '9' prefix to the EAN. What colors can I use for the barcode symbol?

Reds, yellows, and white are suitable background colors if there are no black, blue or green constituents. Blues and greens, provided they are not too pale, and black are good colors for the image. Browns and purples, etc, need special attention however as those with a reddish hue will probably not be successful. If in doubt, seek specialist advice or run a print test. Avoid metallic inks.

How do I apply barcodes to cloth cover books that don't have jackets?

A barcode label must be applied to the back board in the specified location. These can be produced by specialist barcode label printers, or by litho from artwork, or from a barcode label software package with laser or thermal transfer output.

How is a barcode file opened?

Please do not try to open a barcode file. Barcode files are inserted, not opened. Do NOT doubleclick on the barcode to begin working with it. Open the book cover file and insert the barcode file from the tool bar as you would a picture file. The barcode file will automatically open at the correct size. Do not try to open the barcode file first and then attempt to move into the graphic design application you are using.

What are some common commands?

Adobe Illustrator: File, Place. Locate the barcode file and select Place Adobe PageMaker: File, Place.

Adobe Photoshop: File, Import Microsoft Publisher: Insert, Picture, From File.

Microsoft Word: Insert, Picture, From File.

Quark Express: Create a Picture Box, go to File, and select Get Picture.

In Design: Click File menu and select Place. Locate the barcode file and click Open.

• Freehand: Click the File menu and select Import. Locate the barcode file and click Open.

• • • • • • •

Why does the barcode look bad?

There can be several reasons for this. If the barcode looks fuzzy on screen, please remember that most computer screens have a resolution of either 72 or 96 DPI. What matters is how the barcode will print out. DPI is a property of the printer and the printer's software and not the graphic design program you are using.

http://authopublisher.com Not knowing how to work your graphics application properly is the biggest reason why designers and self-publishers struggle with their barcode files, and frequently have problems with barcodes looking blurry or having lines crossing through them.

Unfortunately, there's not just one reason for this.

In some software applications, when a barcode file is imported, the dpi is automatically changed to the screen dpi (72 dpi) instead of maintaining the original dpi of the file (ex., 300 dpi or higher). You will need to reset the dpi of the barcode file.

When you import an eps file into Photoshop, the file is changed, the dpi is lost, the size is lost, and the image opens on a transparent background (you need to place it on a white background), among other problems.

Other potential problems include "anti-aliasing" during the conversion of the encapsulated postscript to an image and the "jpeg" compression that will generally occur in PDF creation. These can damage your barcode and make it scan with errors when printed. Jagged steps on the numbers of the barcode are due to the lack of "anti-aliasing," a technique for using shades of gray on slants and curves to make the edges seem more smooth to the eye. Do not use grayscale. Import as black and white. Importing as black and white might in fact be better for some applications.

Many applications do not provide an accurate preview of barcode graphics. Instead determine the quality of the image ONLY by the actual printout of your barcode.

Never judge your barcode from the onscreen preview.

http://authopublisher.com

CreateSpace Solves Your Self Publishing Stumbling Blocks I myself am constantly researching and trying new things in the industry to find out great and easy ways to publish, market and distribute books. Since I am on this mission, I thought it good to review the services I think could help different author/writers publish their books as different individuals mean they have different needs.

Most writers/authors just starting out experiences some self publishing stumbling blocks when they enter this grand new world. And leaning up to those stumbling blocks are factors out of their control, until now. They include: • Having to buy hundred or even thousand copies of your own book that gets stuck in your garages until you decide to do some promotion. Because there is no support structure you end up giving most of your stock away. For those not quite understanding business, it means you make NO PROFIT. •

There’s storage problems. Where are the thousands of books you had to buy going. You can’t store them anywhere because that will hike the cost of the book even more. You’ll have to pay to sell the book.

• They may have only bought a couple hundred of their books, magically sold most of them and feel okay being stuck with ten or fifteen. Then a big order of a 1500 copies come in and you just pushed your profits into a new project you’re launching. How are you going to get the sale?

• You’re no designer or artist, therefore don’t quite know how you’re going to get the book looking presentable enough that people will want to buy it.

• E-books are all the3 rage these days, but you would like an authentic paperback you can hold in your hand when you speak at conferences. Besides, how do you sign an eBook?

• When you self publish there is no one helping you and giving you assistance.

All the so-called ‘self publishing‘ companies depend on your vanity so they can sell you overprices printing, book designing and editing.

• An ISBN can cost quite a lot. Working in the $99 some companies ask you for them this brings the cost of your book way up if you’re printing in the smaller numbers.

•

You are the only soldier on the battlefield selling your book. No one else feels your pain or experiences the rejection you have to endure on every phone

http://authopublisher.com call. This is the makings of situations that will have you quit.

Now that we’ve dealt with a lot of the negatives of self publishing (trust me, there are many, many more) we can focus on a solution courtesy of Amazon. Let’s look at the solutions their CreateSpace program offers us.

CreateSpace, A self publishing solution for dummies.

• You are free from keeping an inventory. You can write as many books as you can possibly churn out, you never have to worry about storage space or damage to stock. CreateSpace is a Print-On-Demand solution, which in layman’s terms mean that Amazon only prints your book when it is ordered /sold.

• They offer a lot of Do-It-Yourself tools like for instance their ‘Cover Creator’ which is pretty much an Online creation tool to help you evade the cost of hiring a designer.

• They offer affordable services to assist with for instance your editing, all the designing needing done and of course marketing of your book.

• They are always also standing by to offer you support, after all, you are using their platform. So no more daunting professional costs that demotivates you to even get started on your book project.

CreateSpace is a program where you come out the winner • The CreateSpace Program offers some of the best royalty percentages you can get in the industry. Royalties that are competitive and rewarding your efforts.

• They have very affordable prices for you, the author, if you wanted some for your book table or promoting yourself offline in book shops. This offer stands, no matter how many copies you are interested in getting.

• The Do-It- Yourself option removes the hurdles and stumbling block I spoke about so you can focus on the important things, like publishing and distribution.

• You can also be proud of this book, especially at industry talks and trade shows where Amazon prints library quality, professional trade paperback books.

•

ISBN’s can be expensive, so Amazon CreateSpace offers you a free option where you can have them custom-assigned or Amazon gives one specially for

http://authopublisher.com use on Amazon CreateSpace.

Spread your wings with CreateSpace • You can sell from your own or partner websites through a special CreateSpace estore link.

• Make your book available trough millions of Amazon customers and affiliates.

• This great program also allows you to broaden your distribution to bookstores, online retailers, libraries and academic institutions.

Some bonuses to using Amazon is that they also have an affiliate program. So you can do a lot more sales using the power of affiliates to sell more of your books when you target niche affiliate bloggers and other people interested in making some money.

Self Publishing Revealed is the top course of Createspace and has 11 videos to guide you through the process.

http://authopublisher.com

Section b: eBook Hacks

http://authopublisher.com

eBook Publishing Secrets The term E-book can mean a variety of different things in varied context; however the most basic reference would be that it is a source of information done in a digital file. This book gives you the tools to publish yourself.

The Basics Initially these E-books were designed to only address a limited audience which consists mostly of technical information for those related to the world of computers.

However today E-books can be written on every topic imaginable as it is accessed by an equally wide array of people with much diversified interests.

Even the very special place of books known as libraries has started providing the facilities to allow a visitor to indulge in this style of sourcing for information.

E-books are the rave now as most people have access to the electronic gadgets that facilitate the experience. Everyday numerous amounts e-books are written and sent to various publishers in the hope of getting their material recognized and published.

Sadly this is proving to be more and more difficult because of the sheer numbers of available material. Also being the wide medium that it is, the internet is better able to reach the target audience when compared to the more conventional printed books in the market.

Also another compelling reason for the switch to E-books is that it is not as pricy as the more conventional books.

E-books are also comparatively easier to access as compared to having to lug around a variety of conventional books to gather the same amount of information. Because the topic found on the many e-books available it is also a better choice when doing research and presentations.

The Purpose E-books are an excellent and cost effective way of promoting anything. As the target audience is varied and wide, using this form of promotion to reach people is very beneficial indeed.

This unique collection of information is always available and accessible for all at any time and place where there is internet or other electronic gadgets accessibility.

The E-book style of information feeds the general need for information and is a tremendously growing platform of delivering information. Basically E-books can be used to promote regular businesses particularly an online business.

http://authopublisher.com The reason this is such a popular avenue is because most surfers browse information randomly and with specific intentions. An informative E-book will create the excitement necessary to direct the interested party to the intended site in order to garner revenue.

These E-books can comfortably take the place of sales promoters without actually having to cost much. The cycle of duplication and passed information is virtually endless and thus giving the well needed promotional elements vital to any endeavor.

When it comes to the profit making aspect of designing and churning E-books there is also a lot to be said. Revenue can be earned for well designed and informative Ebooks. Also the general outlay is virtually nonexistent as everything can be done via the internet. Time and money is also minimal when it comes to creating E-books.

Being a very large industry, these publishing entities are able to reach a wider audience perpetually.

Choose Although the end user of an E-book generally just wants to read the material content, there may be other more technical aspects that contribute to the choice made. Below are some of the technical aspects of the different formats available: • Amazon Kindle – basically created with the proprietary format, AZW, it is designed to follow different serial number notations and has its own DRM formatting, which is conveniently delivered through the wireless systems.

• Archos Diffusion – this format is very versatile and supports a variety of input formats in text, audio and video. Using PDF, WMA, MP3, WMV it consist of interactive functions like bookmarking, advanced plain-text searching, dynamic text highlighting and many more.

• Broadband E-book – is done in a proprietary format and those who use reader software for general purpose computers can easily read the material.

• Comic Book Archive file – is as the name depicts, is used for sequential image files for fluent viewing. Stored as a single archive file it is very useful for comic book type designs as it is not a distinct file format. There are also applications that support additional tag information. Compiled HM – This is a proprietary format style based on HTML. Here there is the advantage of multiple pages and embedded graphics compressed in a single file.

• Desktop Author – having the electronic publishing suite that allows the virtual turning of pages, this style is useful for publications such as brochures, ebooks, digital photo albums, e-cards, digital diaries, quizzes and many more.

These can be viewed inside web browsers or as standalone features.

http://authopublisher.com Get Selling Generally understood as a more personalized venture, those involved basically decide on almost every aspect of the material to be published and the process it goes through.

These may include the control of the designing of the cover and contents, formats to be used, pricing, distribution avenues, marketing strategies and perhaps even PR works.

These can be done personally or with the help of some more specifically experienced experts, depending on the assistance needed. This style is very attractive to the individual as it definitely denotes more autonomy of the entire process, which in most cases is very important to the writer.

The developments in the technological world have since expanded so much that it is not impossible to produce a piece of work that is equal to or even better than the more conventional and perhaps challenging old style.

The stigma previously attached to the self publishing entity no longer exists as its popularity is now well accepted as a norm. Perhaps one of the most desirable factors that self publishing has to offer is the time frame needed to actually get the material to the intended target audience.

Where the more traditional method may take a number of years the self publishing style can be done within a fraction of the time.

Aligning one’s self with the right complimenting assistance also helps to lessen the burden of having to address every aspect yet this style still allows the individual to have relatively total control within the entire process. This also comes with the advantage of retaining all rights and royalties.

Ways To Pay The pricing and billing policies should be clearly outlined within the sales page. Then there should also be some information on the refund policy if any. It would be a good idea to have some form of refund policy in place as this also shows the confidence in the product or service being offered. Strong guarantees go a long way.

There should also be a well thought of order of buttons that are hyperlinked to the payment avenue picked. When all this is clearly outlined the next step that is equally important is the thank you page.

This should be made accessible when the payment part of the transaction has been made. The information to be included is support links where the customer can address any queries or dissatisfactions effectively and quickly.

It is also a good idea and marketing tool to source for other merchants that maybe

http://authopublisher.com willing to form a partnership of sorts with the intention of providing freebies.

Incentives can be designed to be beneficial to all parties especially the one making the purchase. When there are added benefits such as discounts, free processing for subsequent purchases, coupons or any other valuable added incentives the entire process becomes more appealing to the customer.

It should be noted that being bombarded with too many accompanying adverts and promises of freebies is also not a good marketing strategy as it only ends up confusing the potential purchaser.

Get it Moving • Providing an intriguing synopsis of the material to be sold is the first step to reaching the target audience. Accompanying these will strong positive reviews from either previous works or the intended publication also carries a lot of weight. Compiling positive feedback and presenting it as a marketing tool is very persuasive.

• Using the blogging tool to promote the material will also help generate the interest needed to create a “buzz”. Once the attention is guaranteed the follow up processes will be much easier to garner.

• Creating an affiliate program will also be an added benefit as it widens the audience base and thus garners the well needed attention for the material. By linking to other similar material content sites the individual is able to also promote the eBook as either a complimenting element or as a fresh angle altogether which is mutually beneficial.

• Creating and actively participating in social sites is also another form of ensuring awareness for the eBook. Popular sites like Twitter and Face book are just some example of social sites that can be used to promote the material effectively and successfully.

However one should be careful in how the eBook is depicted within the promotional exercise, as most social site visitors have short attention spans and such a wide varied interest that it may prove to be hard to keep the said attention if the material is not interesting or long winded.

http://authopublisher.com

Top 10 Digital Publishing Tips.

Turning an idea for a book in your head into a successful digital publication requires co-ordinating a whole lot of different steps to create that one hit. Tens of thousands of digital books are published every month, but only a fraction of them will sell more than a thousand copies.

How do you make sure your book is one of the few that succeeds? How do you hit the top charts? How do you sell and sell and sell your books, even if you don’t have a brand or a reputation to rely on now? These ten digital publishing tips will help you do just that.

Everything You Need to Know About Pricing How you price your book makes a big impact on your sales and your ultimate profits.

Here’s what you need to know about pricing. Most first-time authors should price their books at around the $2.99 price range. Go a little higher if you’re in a high end market or if your book is especially thick. On the other hand, if you’re a well known author or if you’re publishing highly specialized knowledge for which there are no other alternative titles, then price your book more towards the $9.99 range. If you’re looking to use your book to get as many readers as possible without much care for how much profit you actually make, then by all means go ahead and publish it for $0.99 cents or for free.

More on Publishing $0.99 Cent Books It’s very difficult to make a profit on $0.99 cent books. The commissions you’ll have to pay to the bookstores will cut your profits down even further until the amount you make per sale is completely negligible. For example, on the Amazon Kindle store when you price your books at $0.99 you’ll only get paid a 35% royalty. That means that when all is said and done, you’ll only be making around 30 cents per download for this kind of publishing.

If you plan on making a living selling books, this price point just doesn’t work.

However, the one notable exception is if you want to use this price to get more people into your sales funnel or brand umbrella. For example, you might sell your primary book for $8.99, then publish 5 much smaller books on specific topics all priced at $0.99. People who buy your cheaper book who want to learn more can do so by purchasing your more expensive book. Use the $0.99 price point as a marketing tool, rather than as a profit strategy.

http://authopublisher.com Hire a Professional Proofreader Before Publishing Proofreading your own books is not a good idea. Neither is sending it to your friend to see if they spot any mistakes. A professional proofreader can turn a good piece of content into something truly phenomenal. If you’re serious about your book’s success, hire a great proofreader to look your work over. There are a few different ways to find proofreaders. For one, you can use a service like Proofreading Palto do it. These kinds of companies hire dozens of proofreaders and make them available for projects for a small markup. Alternatively, you can head over to a freelancer marketplace like eLance and find a proofreader to hire. Make sure you look through their before and after samples before making a decision.

Read it on the Digital Device If you’re publishing your book on the Kindle, read it on the Kindle. If you’re publishing it on the Nook, read it on the Nook. The same goes for an iBookstore book publishing. Just because your book looks great on screen doesn’t mean it’ll look good on a digital device. Make sure you read your book the way your audience will be reading it.

Both Barnes & Nobles and Amazon have basic devices you can purchase for under $150. If you don’t care to own the devices, you can just buy the device and sell it on Craigslist or eBay immediately after testing your books. The difference between purchase price and sale price usually won’t be more than $40.

Plant a Teaser for Your Site Put a teaser for your site in your book. For example, let’s say you’re publishing a book about fishing. Your book goes in depth into details on everything from rod selection to actual fishing techniques. However, there are a few things you don’t cover in this publishing. You don’t cover how to choose a fishing boat. You don’t cover how to predict the best weather for fishing.

Instead of putting these things in your book, you tell them you’ve put them in a separate report that’s available for free on your website. People who read your book will then go to your website to get those freebies. You can require people to give you their email address before they receive the freebies. Because they’ve already paid for your content and already have a level of trust built in for you, your opt-in rate will be very high.

http://authopublisher.com Make Your Samples Pack a Punch It’s not uncommon in physical books for people to spend the first few pages ramping up. You might talk about fundamental concepts or use the first few pages to get your readers in the right mindset to learn. With digital books however, this is a bad strategy. Your first few pages are going to be your preview pages, which means that for first few pages have to pack an emotional punch. People who read just your first few pages should feel inspired or excited. They should want to get the rest of your book. Don’t write your first 5 pages for people who’ve already purchased your book.

Instead, write them for people who’re considering buying your book. Consider it a sales-oriented piece of high quality content.

Outsource the Formatting Cheaply If you’re not great at formatting your books, why not just have someone else do it for you? Head over to Fiverr or eLance and look for people who offer to format digital book. You can easily find someone who’ll format your digital book for under $20. In fact, on Fiverr you’ll often be able to format your books for just $5.

They’ll insert the page breaks, create the Table of Contents, make sure your chapter headings appear correctly, so on and so forth.

Formatting E-books is one of the most common obstacles writers face in getting published. There are people who specialize in doing just this. Why not let the specialists handle it (cheaply) so you can focus on writing and marketing?

Target Peripheral Markets One great way to get more people to read your books is to target peripheral markets. For example, let’s say you have a primary book about weight loss that’s selling for $8.99. Instead of just continually publishing books about weight loss, why not target a few peripheral markets?

For example, publish a book about weight loss over 45, publish a book about weight loss for people with diabetes and publish a book about weight loss for mothers who’ve just had a child. Each of these books can help build your brand, as well as get more people to purchase your main product.

Participate in Platform Communities Each platform has a community. For example, there are many places where Kindle

http://authopublisher.com authors can go to network with other authors. Be an active member of these communities. There are a few powerful ways that these communities can help you: • You can learn a lot from past questions and posts. If you have a question, chances are someone else has already asked that question at some point.

• You can ask questions. If you ever get stuck in the publishing or marketing process, just reach out for help.

• You can ask for feedback. Not sure if your book, your cover or your marketing strategy is up to snuff? You can just ask.

• You can find partnership opportunities. If you and another author are in the same market, why not pool your resources so you both come out ahead?

• You can ask for reviews. Ask other authors to purchase your book and review you, and you’ll do the same.

The list of potential benefits goes on and on. Participating in these communities is a key to success on any platform.

Watch Your Reports and Optimize for What’s Working Watch your sales reports carefully. Track all your marketing activities and try to draw links between your sales and what you did to generate those sales. If you go on several Internet podcasts to market your book and see no spike in sales, you probably won’t want to spend time doing podcast interviews in the future. On the other hand, if you write a few guest articles for industry websites and suddenly see a flood of sales, that’d probably be a good avenue to focus on in the future.

Watch for unexpected stats. For example, if you’re publishing your book primarily for the US market but suddenly notice an influx of sales from the UK, ask yourself why.

Did someone in the UK pick up and promote your book? Did it strike a cord among an unexpected audience?

Try to figure out what’s working and do more of that. Also, try to figure out what doesn’t work and stop doing it. If you follow these ten tips, you’ll be one of the few self-published authors who knows both how to write a great book and how to run a great book business. Follow these tips and you’ll create a fantastic product that generates sales, month in and month out.

http://authopublisher.com

Kindle Publishing Tutorial.

Selling Your Books On Amazon When it comes to making the most money possible with Amazon Kindle publishing, your books listing, description and tags play an important part in maximizing sales and exposure. You’ll want to take advantage of the different optimization tools available within your book listing, and this tutorial will take you through the entire process, one step at a time.

Let’s begin!

Getting Started The first step is to create your Kindle account, and you do this at The Amazon Kindle Subdomain. When you create your account, you’ll be asked to provide payment information and depending on your location, you’ll be given different options. For example; • If you are within the United States, you can opt to receive EFT payments directly into your bank account. However…

• If you are from within Canada, Australia or other countries where EFT is not currently offered via Amazon, your only option is to receive payment via check.

You can change your payment preferences at any time, just keep in mind that should you change your details in the middle of a regular payment, it could delay your payments from being disbursed. Double check your bank account information to ensure that it’s accurate before proceeding to the next step. This tutorial focuses on creating your book listing for publication with Kindle only.

Amazon Kindle Publishing Your Book The first step is to click on Bookshelf from the top navigation menu, so that you can begin the listing process. You will notice a tab at the top of the page titled Add New Title. Click this to continue. You should now see your book listing page, that looks like this:

http://authopublisher.com • Begin by entering in your book title. This is a very important part of the process because this area allows the use of keywords, which will make it easier for potential buyers to find your books. Enter in your book title and separate it with a hyphen, followed by keywords.

Example: A Night To Remember – Romance Novel The book title above reflects the name of a book, followed by the genre (Romance) and book type (Novel). Using this format, you’ll be able to boost your ranking within Amazon’s built-in search function, while drawing in attention from your specific audience of readers. You could also integrate additional keywords/tags as well, such as: A Night To Remember – Romance Story, Lovers Series Book #1 The key is to provide a clear title, followed by relevant keywords that will help your book appear within on-site searches, as well as searches conducted via the major search engines. Do not include your author name, as your title length is limited and your author name will already be attached to your listing.

• You’ll need to choose whether your book is part of a series or not. If it is, other books appearing in the same series can be linked together, encouraging sales from those who have read the first book. Next, include an Edition Number (optional). An edition number is rarely used unless you are re-publishing a previous release, or updating your book. Otherwise, leave this field blank.

• Provide a detailed, keyword-driven description (Very Important!) You are limited to 4000 characters, so use this space wisely, providing a summary of your storyline, injecting tags that are likely to be used by people searching within your genre. You can update the description later on, should you wish to do so. However, it can take up to 48 hours for your new changes to appear.

• Choose your contributors. Contributors are the authors of your book, but could include other people that you wish to credit (editors, agents, illustrators, etc). You can choose any name you wish, a real name, pen name, alias – it’s your choice.

One of the great things about this platform is that you can publish under as many different author names as you wish, while managing all of your books and sales from one control panel. No one will ever see the different names that you use, and there

http://authopublisher.com will be no link between author names unless you add multiple names to one title!

• Choose the language in which your book was written. You can also assign a publication date, or if you leave it blank Amazon will assign the current date in which it is published. Further, you can now enter in an editor name, and this can be used even if you have no publisher! For example, if you wish to tie all of your books under one main “network name”, you could set your editor name to something that represents your books, your website, or yourself.

• Next, you can enter in an ISBN. This is necessary only if you have a unique ISBN for your book, otherwise Amazon will assign one for you for free.

•

Verify your publishing rights. Amazon does not want anyone to place books to which you have no legal licensing. You can however, publish public domain work and in many cases, private label content if you edit it and have proper licensing (the ability to either let the content go live, or recompile it, or sell it as a physical product in the event you wish to also publish on Amazon’s partnering company, CreateSpace.)

• Choose your categories (Very Important!) You are allowed to choose only two categories, so make sure you choose the very best ones for your genre. If you have difficulty understanding what categories are best for your work, spend some time evaluating what other authors in your genre are using and follow suit!

•

Enter in your keywords. You are allowed 7 tags, and they can consist of multiple words (long-tail keywords) such as romance book or improving yourself. Keywords will help people find your book so it’s important to use the most relevant, targeted keywords possible. Do NOT include your author name, because your name will already be associated to your listing, so use this space carefully to ensure that you are targeting the right audience with your keywords.

• Upload a cover for your book. Amazon accepts book covers in many different formats, however we recommend uploading your image in .JPG format.

Finally, upload the document for your book. This can be a bit tricky for beginners, so here’s a quick breakdown of what you need to do: Step 1: Open your document in your word editing program (Word, NeoOffice, OpenOffice, etc). You need to make sure that your original file is in DOC format. Not

http://authopublisher.com RTF, or DOCX as they will not translate well to Kindle.

Step 2: Save your document in HTML format.

Step 3: When you’ve saved it in HTML format, it will create 2 files on your computer.

One is the HTML page that contains your story, and the second is a folder that contains all images used within your book. You need to zip BOTH of these files together and upload to Amazon.

Your document should always be in .zip format when uploading to Amazon and include the 2 files (HTML and the folder with supporting images). Amazon will not accept any other format. Once you have a zip file containing your files, upload it to Kindle! It will take a few minutes for Kindle to translate your book into mobile format, and when it’s ready, you will see the success note at the bottom of the page.

Click Save and Continue to proceed to the next step.

Step 4: You will be asked to verify your publishing rights. By default, it’s set to Worldwide Rights, so unless you do not have the right to go worldwide, leave this set to default. Finally, you’ll need to choose your royalty options from either 35% or 70% If your book is priced above $2.99, you are eligible to receive 70% commissions and should always choose this option. However, if your book is priced below $2.99, you are only eligible to receive 35% royalty rates.

Step 5: Set your price, and tick the box next to every other country, including Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.es, Amazon.it and any other countries currently available. You want to set pricing automatically based on your overall price as shown below: You can now choose whether you want to allow lending for your book. When you select lending, you are enabling your readers to share your story with their friends for up to 14 days. We recommended not allowing lending of your publications to avoid lost sales.

Step 6: Click “Save and Publish”, and you’re done!

Book Status – Review, Publishing & Live Your book will take up to 48 hours to appear on the Kindle marketplace, and during that time you are unable to make any changes to your submission. One thing that

http://authopublisher.com you will notice however, is that your book will be available for purchase before the status is updated from within your KDP Publishing account, so you’ll likely see the status as Publishing, when it’s actually live on the market. You can run a quick search for your book title, or your author name on Amazon.com to see when your book is available.

When your books’ status changes from within your KDP account, you can then make changes, including price changes, description changes and even category changes but keep in mind that each time you make any changes your book it goes back into review mode and can take another 24-48 hours to update.

There are 3 main stages of updates: • Review: This means that your book is being reviewed by Amazon staff in order to ensure that it follows their publishing guidelines.

• Publishing: This means that your book has been approved and is now being published in the Amazon marketplace.

• Live: This means your book is now available for purchase.

Warning!

However there is a fourth status message that no author ever wants to see – the dreaded BLOCKED! When your book is blocked, you are no longer able to make any changes nor are you able to remove it from your KDP account. It’s just dead in the water. This doesn’t mean that you can’t make necessary changes and then resubmit it, you can (and should), but it just means that when you do resubmit, you will do so as an entirely new publication, meaning that you will have to go through the listing phase all over again.

Many of us experience the occasional block and in certain instances, it’s simply a matter of who reviewed your book. Many times if you resubmit the same book again, it will be accepted and published, so don’t get discouraged if this happens to you. Just write Kindle support requesting an explanation as to the block, and then make any necessary changes before resubmitting.

Once your book is live on Amazon, it’s time to take advantage of an incredibly valuable tool that will help you monitor your progress, ranking and maximize sales – your Author Central Account!

http://authopublisher.com The Power Of Author Central Author Central is a separate account that enables you to monitor your book ranking, and to take advantage of author-based services and special features only available within Author Central. You will need to create a new account for every pen name that you use, and you can do so only after you have at least one book published (and available for sale) within Amazon’s marketplace.

OR – you can link up to 3 pen names inside of one Author Central account in order to manage your books easier. I’ll show you how to do this in just a moment. For now, visit AuthorCentral to create your free author account.

The first step after creating your account, is to claim your books. When you create a new Author Central account for every pen name and author that you publish under, you’re able to create an author profile page that showcases all of the books under that name, giving people one simple location in which they can purchase all of your publications.

If you create your Author Central account and attempt to claim a book that is not yet live in the marketplace, it will not appear, and you should return the next day when your book is live.

To claim your books, click on Books from the top navigation bar. You can now enter in your book title, ISBN, or your author name to search the Amazon marketplace, and when your books appear in the search.

When you see your book, click on This is my book to add it to your Author central page.

Remember, that all of the books you claim under each author name are public and visible to anyone who lands on your profile page.

Linking Multiple Pen Names Before you begin, understand that linking multiple pen names within one author central account does NOT show this connection to your customers, so your pen names are safe. It’s just an easier way to effectively manage your books, check rankings and add in important meta tags and data without having to log into separate Author Central accounts.

http://authopublisher.com The easiest way to add multiple pen names into your Author Central account is to attempt to add one of your existing books (that is published under a different pen name than the one already added to Author Central). When you do this, Author Central will notify you that your main author name is not listed on the book, but that you can add this author to your account as a secondary (and third) pen name.

Just click Accept and all of the books for your secondary pen name will be available within your Author Central account. You can then switch between one pen name and another by clicking on the drop down menu in the top right navigation menu!

Securing Your Author URL When you’ve added at least one book to your profile page, it’s time to set up a full author page on Author Central. To do this, click on the Profile tab in the top navigation menu as shown below: Here is where the magic happens. You are able to create a high ranking author page directly within Amazon!

To start, you will want to add a short bio that introduces your author to its market.

Consider adding in a blog or website where people can explore your books and find out more about you.

You can also add your blog RSS feed and Author Central will pull your most recent blog posts and updates, and publish them on your author page. You can also add a photo that represents you or your genre. If you aren’t comfortable using a photo of yourself, consider using stock photos from sources such as DepositPhotos or BigStockPhotos.

Another useful feature is your ability to create a customized URL for your author page. This should be your author or pen name, so that your URL becomes Amazon.com/author/your-name. If you use Twitter, you can also add your Twitter username and Author Central will publish your most recent tweets. Just the same, you can link to video based content, such as trailers or introduction videos that promote your book!

Your Author Central account is an important part in marketing yourself, and your books. Once you have established a profile (author page) on Author Central, and have integrated your website, blog and Twitter feed, it’s time to move onto optimizing your books and you can do this directly from within Author Central. Let

http://authopublisher.com me show you how!

Optimizing Your Books Author Central makes it incredibly easy to optimize your books and maximize sales.

One of the easiest ways to do this is by providing more information for each of your book listing. To start, click on Books from the top navigation menu within your Author Central account.

• You will now see a listing of all your published books. Click on the title of any of your books to begin. You’ll quickly notice a few important features on your individual book page, including its overall ranking (current sales rank), average review, ASIN number followed by three tabs: Editorial Reviews > Book Details > Book Extras On this page, you can add a review for your product, which should come from a third party, not your author name! If you’ve managed to secure a review from a reader, ask permission to publish it on your Author Central account.

• The next step is to add a product description to your book. You should do this for each and every book that you publish, because descriptions will help potential buyers make the decision to purchase from you.

Your book description should also include keywords, again, helping you rank within Amazon’s search engine and the major search engines. Start off with a basic description that summarizes your plot, storyline or introduces characters. Keep it brief, remembering that the objective is to wet their appetite without delivering the full course meal! Give them just enough to capture their interest and motivate them to purchase your book.

You should also include relevant information about the type of book that you’re selling. For example, if it’s part of a series this is a great place to mention that it’s Book #1, or Book #2 – and introduce the series to your audience. If it’s a novella, short story or full length novel, you can also include this information within the product description section.

•

The next section gives you the opportunity to add a note from the author, and

http://authopublisher.com most people use this to introduce a new pen name and establish their presence, especially if you are a new writer. You can include the author’s bio, or a personal note from the author regarding the reasons behind the story.

Whatever you feel will help you connect with your audience!

The next segment gives you space in which you can include something from the Inside Flap and Back Cover. You should add a few opening paragraphs from your book, such as the first page of a chapter, or the first page of the actual book.

Providing an excerpt will help maximize sales, so use this space wisely.

•

Finally, you can add details from a back cover, and since this is an eBook, the best way to use this space is to provide a basic synopsis or summary of your book, keeping it to just 3-5 lines in length. Repeat this for every book that you publish with Kindle, as it will help your overall ranking and visibility. Plus, all of these pages become part of your public profile so that when a potential reader explores each book, they are given additional information to help them make the decision to buy!

Sales Information & Ranking Like every proud author, you’ll want to monitor your Amazon ranking, and you can do this by clicking Sales Info from the top navigation menu. Amazon updates your books rankings every hour, so the data will change frequently, however it’s still important to keep a close eye on your rankings so that you can determine how your audience is responding to your new publications. While your sales numbers will ultimately reflect your books success, your ranking indicates your overall exposure.

Here is a snapshot of how your books ranking might look: If you wish to further explore your overall ranking, click on See more info about this book’s rank. You’ll be given a snapshot in graph format showing you how your ranking has changed over a certain period of time (ranging from monthly to all time).

You won’t have a lot of data available for new books until you’ve obtained rank history (4-6 weeks).

Reviews & Feedback Customer reviews are important in boosting your rankings and helping you sell more books. You can keep on top of current reviews left by readers and buyers by clicking on the Customer Reviews tab from the top nav bar. You can also add comments in response to any reviews left for you!

http://authopublisher.com

Publishing on the Nook Tutorial Through a Nook Study, The Barnes & Nobles Nook device is an Android-based ereader device that incorporates Amazon’s pioneering E-Ink technology. The price of the device ranges from $99 for the Simple Touch reader to $249 for the Nook Color.

One difference between the Nook and the Kindle is the Nook’s “GlowLight” technology. This makes it easy for people who own a Nook to read books in the dark, something that the Kindle is completely incapable of doing.

Publishing on the Nook gives you access to millions of highly active readers. The Nook and the Kindle are often neck in neck in terms of sales. If you’re publishing your book on either the Kindle store or the iBookstore, there’s no reason not to also publish on the Nook bookstore. Here’s how to publish your eBook to the Nook bookstore.

Step 1: Click Create an Account Go to: http://pubit.barnesandnoble.com In the upper right corner, click “Create an account” to begin the account creation and book creation process.

Step 2: Creating Your Account Fill out the PubIt registration form on the next page.

Give PubIt your contact information.

If you have a publisher, enter your publisher’s details.

Enter your bank account information. This is used to deposit your payments. You need a US-based bank account to use the Barnes & Nobles Nook bookstore.

Give PubIt your Social Security number or your Federal Tax ID number (if you’re a corporation.)

Finally, give PubIt a credit card. They do this primarily to verify that you are who you say you are. They also use it as a protection mechanism, if your book refunds happened to exceed the amount of sales you make during a payment period. (This is

http://authopublisher.com highly unlikely.)

Once you hit “Submit,” your PubIt account will be created. You can then begin creating your first book.

Step 3: Enter Your Title and Author Details Enter your title. Then choose your list price. Look through the Nook bookstore to see what other comparable books are charging. Unless you have a very good reason to do otherwise, you should try to list your book for about what other people are listing them for. If you’re using your book as a loss leader to get more people aware of your brand, you can sell your book for a much lower price just to get more people to buy.

Your title needs to stand out among the sea of other books that your book will be swimming in. It should say something so unique that people can’t help but wonder what the description says. Finally, list your author name and publisher details.

Step 4: Upload Your Book Click “Browse” to find the book on your computer. Then click “Upload & Preview” to upload your book.

Step 5: Preview Your Book You’ll be taken to a preview of what your book looks like. You can click the “Next Page” button to see what the other pages in your book look like. Make sure your book’s formatting came out the way you want it to before continuing.

Step 6: Upload Your Book Cover Upload your book cover. Remember when you’re designing your cover that people really do judge a book by its cover. Much of your book’s ability to make sales will depend on the strength of your cover. Your cover should convey credibility, as well as make a strong promise. It should have good overall design aesthetics as well as be a strong marketing piece.

Step 7: Publishing Details Barnes & Nobles needs a few bits of information before it can publish your book. It needs to know if you have an ISBN number, whether it’s part of a series, whether it’s

http://authopublisher.com in print and whether it’s a public domain book.

Step 8: Age & Language Targeted by your Nook book What age is your book geared towards and what language is the book written in?

Step 9: Rights & DRM Let B&N know whether you have worldwide rights, or rights in only the USA or the USA and Canada. Choose whether you want to DRM encrypt your book. This helps protect your book from being stolen or passed on.

Step 10: Categories and Keywords Choose the categories and keywords you want to use to market your book. You can choose up to five categories. Try to list your book in the most obvious categories, as well as one or two non-obvious categories. Get your book into categories that your competitors might not necessarily think of, but are shared by your target market.

You can also try to pick a category that you think you can dominate. In other words, pick a category that isn’t too competitive and try to get your book to the top.

Your keywords will help people who’re performing searches to find your book. Use tools like the Google Keyword Tool to identify keywords that people search for on a regular basis.

Step 11: Description & About the Author Write a compelling description of your book. If your book’s an informational book, try to titillate people by hinting at some of the things they’ll learn in the book. If your book is a non-informational book, try to give people an emotional dose of what they’ll experience once they’re reading your book.

Your “About the Author” section is the perfect place to demonstrate your credibility.

Talk about your past experiences that make you uniquely qualified to read this book.

Give specific figures (E.g. “helped over 8,000 entrepreneurs raise startup capital”) and drop names wherever possible (E.g. “helped raise capital for Groupon, eBay, Dropbox and more.”)

Step 12: Submit!

Once you’ve confirmed that all the information you’ve submitted is correct and

http://authopublisher.com complete, click the check box and hit “Put on Sale.”

That’s all there is to submitting a book to the Nook! What comes next is the hard part: Marketing and promotion. Leverage your social networks, your email list and you website to get the word out about your book. You need to get some attention to your book first, before people will start to come to your book on its own. Once your book gains some momentum however, at some point it’ll be able to swim on its own and become a real money earner for you without you having to constantly promote it.

http://authopublisher.com

Publishing on Smashwords.

Introduction To Smashwords In order to maximize your income as an ebook publisher, you need to leverage the power of multi-channel information networks to further distribution and enhance exposure.

While the majority of your income will come from Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble, you can boost your overall profits by showcasing your information products on external networks, including SmashWords.

This quick start guide will take you step-by-step through the entire process of setting up your SmashWords account, optimizing your profile and finally publishing your book!

Let’s begin!

Creating Your SmashWords Account SmashWords is absolutely free to use, so it will never cost you any upfront fees, management fees or distribution fees. SmashWords makes their money by taking a small percentage of your overall sales, so each time you sell a product via the SmashWords marketplace, they will keep 15%.

The majority of your profits will derive from other marketplaces, but it’s still worth your time uploading your products to SmashWords for 2 main reasons: 1: SmashWords will provide you with free ISBN’s for all of your books. You will need these ISBN’s when distributing via other channels (including BookStrand.com or AllRomanceEbooks.com if you are in those markets).

2: SmashWords gives you the opportunity to create a public profile that can help you garner more exposure from your viewing audience.

To begin, visit http://www.SmashWords.com to set up your free account. You will need a valid email address in order to complete this simple process.

The first step is to click on the “Join” link to create your account.

http://authopublisher.com You will now need to enter in a valid email address. Keep in mind that your email address will be used to send you purchase notifications and updates from within the Smashwords marketplace.

Your next step is to choose a screen name. Your screen name forms the URL for your public profile, so you’ll want to choose either your author name (if available), or your publisher name if you plan to publish a variety of books under an umbrella network or company.

For example, when I created my SmashWords account I chose the username kateanderson so my profile URL is now: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/kateanderson Note: You cannot change your username once you have created your account, so choose carefully!

Next, choose a password, and enter in your first and last name. You’ll be able to modify your name, address and password later on in the event you wish to change your contact details. The name you enter now will be used in your payment and account history.

You will also be asked to indicate whether you are under or over the age of 18.

This is used for demographic marketing and to help customize the type of content that is available to you within promotional ads as well as the categories of books that appear on the front page and after logging into your account.

Finally, enter in your location and click “Sign Up” to complete the process.

You now have a SmashWords account!

Managing Your SmashWords Account When you first log into your SmashWords account, pay attention to the tabs at the top of the screen as this is how you will navigate throughout your account. To start, let’s click on “My Smashwords”.

This is your profile area and is where you can change your real name, pen name and location. You can also click on “Edit Profile” to change your profile details, or since you are just setting up your account, you can click this link to enter in important information about your books.

http://authopublisher.com Once you have filled out your profile, you can return to “My SmashWords” to preview how your profile page will look to the public. Click “Edit Profile” to begin.

The most important component on this page is your website address. In the event you don’t have a place to promote your book, you can return to this area of your SmashWords account later on and add in your blog or website URL. You’ll discover that your SmashWords profile will quickly rank within the major search engines and will help new readers explore your books.

You can also add in a direct link to any blog, and SmashWords will pull content from your site and create clickable links, guiding people to your pages.

In addition, you can add links to your social media profile accounts including Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and even MySpace.

You should also upload a photo that represents either yourself or your target audience. For example, since some of my books are within the thriller genre, I have a SmashWords account with a “mystery man” icon. For my personal books, I have my own photo featured on my profile page, and for books that I publish within the Childrens’ Book market, I have a cartoon illustration.

You can create as many different SmashWords accounts as you wish, having a separate account for every genre and audience you cater to.

You can also establish a “Publisher Account” with Smashwords that will give you the opportunity to publish many different books all from within one account however keep in mind that when publishing books as different authors via one SmashWords profile, you can only have one publisher name appear.

To create a publisher account, click on “Manage Publisher or Agent Status” from the “Account” page.

For example, if I published books as both Kate Anderson and a pen name such as “Jane Doe”, while my books will appear under different names, the “publisher name” will be the same, linking my books together.

So, if you don’t mind people being able to link your different books to one account, consider setting up a publisher Smashwords account so you can manage all of your publications easily – from one account, otherwise set up a different account for every genre or author name that you use.

http://authopublisher.com Once you have created your profile page, click “Save” and then return to the main page. From there, click on “Account” from the main menu.

Your account area is one of the important (and widely used) places in your Smashwords account because it’s where you can keep tabs on your book sales, distribution channels and payment information.

Getting Paid Take some time to explore the different areas of this page, paying close attention to “Payee Information”.

You will need to make a decision when it comes to how you are paid for sales generated within SmashWords.

If you are within the United States, you will want to submit your Paypal address into your Smashwords payee page so that you can receive payment directly via Paypal, or you can opt to receive check payments.

US residents are required to enter in their SSN or TIN prior to receiving payment.

If you are from outside of the United States and you have a valid ITIN number, you should enter it into your account page immediately, so that SmashWords does not retain 30% of your income.

Smashwords pays out via quarterly payments, meaning that you will be paid 4 times each year.

For example, if you start selling within the month of January, you can expect your first payment to be processed 30-40 days following the end of the first quarter (March), which will land at about the last week of April.

If your sales took place from April on, your first payment would be processed by the end of July. It’s important to stay on top of your earnings and to keep a spreadsheet of your book sales making sure that it’s accurately reflected from within your Smashwords account.

One thing to keep in mind is that Smashwords is incredibly important if you are from outside of the United States and wish to distribute your books via Barnes & Noble, because it’s one of the ONLY ways for non-Americans to be included in that bookstore.

http://authopublisher.com Smashwords will also distribute your books to other marketplaces as well, including the Apple bookstore, Sony, Diesel, Kobo and Barnes & Noble.

Once you have published at least one book, you’ll be able to choose what other distribution channels you want Smashwords to submit your book to, and can monitor your sales and overall progress by clicking on “Account” and then “Distribution Channels”.

It’s time to set up your communication preferences! Click on “Account” and then “Communication Preferences” You can customize how and when you receive notifications from Smashwords, including whether you receive instant alerts each time you sell a book, or if someone submits a review for one of your products.

Configure your settings and click “Save”.

Quick & Easy Distribution Finally, it’s time to publish your first information product! When you’re ready, click on “Publish” to begin the process.

The first thing that you should know is that there’s a very specific format in which Smashwords will accept your manuscript or publication.

When you upload your document to SmashWords, they will convert it into multiple formats including text, PDF, and mobile formats such as .mobi, .litt and .epub. If there’s a problem with formatting your book, you will see a red alert at the top of your account page indicating that your book needs modifying.

Sometimes it’s little things that will cause your book to fail publication, such as forgetting to add your publisher name or copyright year to the front of your book.

In case you do experience any errors, here are a few things to keep a look out for: 1: SmashWords Copyright SmashWords requires that you add a short blurb at the beginning of your book that indicates that your book is published via Smashwords.

Here is the exact statement that we use for all of our publicatio ns.

http://authopublisher.com Smashwords Edition This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Just include that underneath your name and copyright year.

2: Font Size Make sure that all of your font sizes are the same as Smashwords may experience problems converting your book into mobile formats if the fonts vary.

3: Strip All Competing Links If you publish your books via Amazon, you will want to make sure to strip out any competitors links from the front or back of your book as Smashwords does not allow them to appear within publications distributed via their network.

Tip: I always create 2 variations of my books. One that I call “Unbranded” which is free of any links and copyright (either Smashwords or Amazon) and a second version that includes the Smashwords copyright. Amazon does not require that you include any copyright, however you should at the very least include your full name and the year of publication.

4: No PLR! All content published via Smashwords must be original and owned by you.

Smashwords will not accept content that is not submitted by the original author or exclusive publisher. Sorry folks! PLR can be used with www.CreateSpace.com though! (see our auxillary component on CreateSpace Profits).

5: We recommend downloading a free copy of the Smashwords Style Guide which will help you better understand formatting and template creation. You can download a copy from: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52 Smashwords will include your books in their premium catalog, giving you more

http://authopublisher.com exposure for free. You can preview the status of inclusion for any, or all of your books after publication by clicking on the “Dashboard” link in the top nav bar.

If you see “Approved”, it means that your book was included in their catalog. If you see “Requires Modification”, it means that you need to make changes before it can be included. Most of the time the changes are simple ones, such as including the Smashwords terms of service, or a small formatting issue.

If you click on the “Requires Modification” link by any book, you will see what changes are needed prior to inclusion.

In my example, SmashWords has indicated that one of my books contains possible corrupt formatting. It further indicates that the problem may be font sizing, so by ensuring that all of my fonts are of the same size, I can bypass this issue and re-submit my book for publication.

When publishing your book, the first step is to enter in your book title. This is a VERY important step because in order to increase exposure (and ranking), you should include keywords within your title.

For example, if I were hoping to get seen by romance fans, I might include my book title and then “Romantic Adventure”, or “Romance Book” in the title.

You can format your title using a hypen to separate your title from your keywords, like this: A Night To Remember – Fantasy Romance Next is your short description. This is included on your product’s sale page as well as the longer description which you can enter in the box below. When it comes to writing up a short description, again, make use of important keywords.

This will help your book be found by both the search engines and by on-site searches made by readers who are looking for specific genres.

Your longer description might include an excerpt of your book, or a few paragraphs introducing your storyline. Make it sizzle as this is where you can capture attention and motivate potential readers into purchasing your story.

You will now select the language for your book and choose whether your book contains adult content or not. If your book is adult oriented (includes sex scenes whether graphic or otherwise), it will not appear on Smashwords on-site search for those who have activated the adult filter.

Next, it’s time to choose pricing. The price that you set your stories at should be

http://authopublisher.com based on what is currently selling within the Amazon marketplace. You can gauge sales based on the books’ overall ranking, paying close attention to the Top 100 books in your genre.

Are authors setting the majority of their books at only $0.99 or are authors setting higher prices such as $2.99, $4.99 or $8.99? You will want to do some quick research to determine a fair and reasonable price point, keeping in mind that you can edit the price of your book later on should you choose.

One effective strategy is to price your first book low, and then all other books in the same series at a higher price. This way, your first book is considered a “loss leader”, used primarily to introduce your books to your audience and warm up readers who will likely purchase subsequent books from you.

If you aren’t writing a series you can still price your first book lower than all other published books just to gain footing in your market, develop a presence within your genre and begin to collect reviews and feedback from your audience.

You could also choose to make one book free, or let your readers determine the price by choosing this option on the publishing page.

You can also choose a sample size (default is 20%) and we don’t recommend increasing this unless you’re publishing a longer book. Just give potential readers a taste, but not a full size meal!

Next, choose the category for your book, as well as a sub-category. This is an important part of the process because your book will only appear within the categories you’ve selected, so make sure that you choose the appropriate category based on your genre and audience.

Finally, you can assign keywords/tags to your book listing. This is THE most important part of maximizing exposure and sales because these keywords directly help people find your books. You can enter in as many as you like by typing them individually, or by seperating them with comma’s, such as: romance genre, romantic fiction, romance, lovers, first love If you struggle to come with relevant tags for your books, search out other authors in your genre via the SmashWords search bar and scroll down the page to see

http://authopublisher.com what other authors are using! You can use the same tags or a variation of keywords based on your target audience.

Helpful Tip: To save time later on, consider creating a “keyword swipe file” of the tags you use for each genre. That way, you can just copy and paste them into Smashwords each time you publish a new book! Keep adding new tags to your swipe file as you uncover what other authors are using successfully.

Understanding Income Graphs & Stats You’ll be able to see your current earnings at any time after logging into your Smashwords account just by looking to the left hand navigation menu.

Note that for all books sold via external channels, such as Barnes & Noble or Sony, there is a lengthy delay from the time a book sells until the sale appears within your SmashWords account. For books sold directly via Smashwords, your balance will reflect your sales instantly.

In order to keep on top of books sold through third party networks like Barnes & Noble, click on “Dashboard” and then “Sales and Payment History”.

You will now see a page that outlines how reports are generated, and by clicking on the year or quarterly earnings mapping report at the top of the page, you’ll be given a complete listing of your sales as shown below.

And if you want to opt out of distribution on specific networks, click on “Account” and look for the link titled “Distribution Channel Manager”.

I personally opt my books into all distribution agents via SmashWords except Amazon, since I sell directly on Amazon myself. If you are within the United States, you will want to opt in to Smashwords only, and then distribute your books through every other channel yourself, since that way you cut out the middleman and avoid extra fees. If you are from outside of the United States, you are only able to distribute books to places like Apple, Sony and Barnes & Noble through Smashwords, so you’ll lose a bit of money by being charged by Smashwords (acting as your publishing agent) and through each retailer as well.

You can now choose the formats in which you’d like to make your book available. We recommend leaving all default options on, giving potential readers more flexible choices as to how they read your book.

http://authopublisher.com Next, choose a cover image for your book and upload to Smashwords. Your cover size should be roughly around 600x800 or so. Save it in .jpg format.

Finally, you will need to choose your document for publication. Smashwords accepts only .DOC files so if you have your story in another format, you will need to convert it to .doc prior to uploading.

Note: If you upload a new revision of your book, the older version(s) will remain available to users who bought them, so that they can still read them, if they desire.

(As the author or publisher, you will see all revisions.)

And finally, click “Publish”!

You are now a published author on Smashwords!

Your book will go live immediately – with no approval process or monitoring. It can take up to 40 minutes for your book to be compiled, but you can check where you are in the queue at any time after submitting your book for publication.

Once it’s published, it will appear under the “Dashboard” page and you can add it to your library as well.

Other Things You Should Know Here are a few other things that make Smashwords a valuable tool for authors and publishers: 1: ISBN Management Each time you publish a book with SmashWords, you can choose a free ISBN. You can use this when publishing books on other networks such as http://www.BookStrand.com - a publishing agent that requires ISBN’s for all publications.

To view and manage your ISBN’s with Smashwords, click on “Dashboard” and then choose “ISBN Manager” from the sidebar.

You can view and manage your ISBN’s with Smashwords, click on “Dashboard” and then choose “ISBN Manager” to preview currently assigned ISBN’s.

http://authopublisher.com 2: Coupon Management As a Smashwords author, you can assign coupon codes and discounts to your books, giving new readers a chance to explore your publications at a discount price! To set up a coupon for any, or all of your books, click on “Dashboard” and choose “Generate and manage coupons”.

If you wish to create a coupon for a specific book, you can generate a coupon for individual titles or for all of your books. You can also determine when each coupon expires, giving you the opportunity to launch “time limited special offers” for new readers to encourage sales!

3: Built In Affiliate Program With Smashwords, you can earn money by promoting other people’s books, or set up an affiliate program for your own books and maximize sales by giving people the chance to promote you!

To set up and manage your affiliate program, click on “Dashboard” and select “Affiliate Settings Overview” from the left navigation menu.

With Smashwords, you can assign a percentage shared with affiliates, so that everyone who promotes your book and generates sales is able to earn commissions for each transaction. Smashwords allows you to set any percentage between 11% and 81.5%, making it easy for you to encourage affiliates to promote your books!

http://authopublisher.com

The Number One Book System.

I want to introduce you to the secret weapon in my arsenal. In all that I am teaching you in this report, you still need a step by step system to guide you through the difficult road of digital self publishing.

It takes the average writer or publisher and teaches them how to become a top selling author. Dif you wanted to dominate the Kindle platform in your specific genre or niche, allow creator Ryan Deiss to guide you through the entire process, leaving nothing out.

Ryan has made such a great product that he supports everyone that joins. There are webinars/events you can get access to, all included in the course. You also get access to a great social support platform called the Number One Book Club, where authors who build publishing businesses on the Kindle platform hang out and help each other out.

What Is It? This system is designed to have you follow a proven formula to help you get to the top of Amazons bet sellers list. The key is selling kindle ebooks, rather than the process of having your book published and hoping that customers will find your book at a regular bookstore.

With market data research and information given by consumers, Ryan Deiss and his team was able to produce the Number One Book System and packed it full of information for regular writers to put their writing into motion and succeed.

If any of you have ever bought anything from Ryan Diess, then you know that it’s of the best quality and it is going to deliver. Ryan and his team always are compiling data and only bring you the best training possible I can personally recommend this program and encourage you to get it. It's worth every penny I paid for it and then some.

Continued on next page...

http://authopublisher.com I want to make you a deal: If you get the Number One Book System by clicking the image of the video below, I will send you the entire Self-Publishing Revealed video course plus all of it's bonuses I mentioned in the previous section free. I will also include an interview to give you and your book more exposure.

http://authopublisher.com

Part 6: Book Marketing.

http://authopublisher.com

Book Trailers.

So, you’ve published your book and you think you have book marketing down?

There is a book marketing phenomenon called book trailers that has apparently been coined (and trademarked) by Sheila Clover of Circle of Seven Productions. The first one was played at a book convention in Shreveport, LA. in 2003. They were first produced in 2002 but only really caught on in 2005. Question is: since everyone and their mama is doing it, why aren’t you?

Why book trailers?

Well, look at it like this: Did The Bourne series have a trailer for the movie? Well, it has a book too! And everyone knows the book is waaay better than the movie, right? It has a lot more detail, dialogue and overall attention to each character. So it make sense for the book to also have a trailer doesn’t it?

How To Make a book Trailer.

[This is a list of things to do to make the very best book trailer that you can possibly make].

Brainstorm.

Brainstorm the idea for a book trailer using mind-mapping software. You may want to do this in separate sessions with friends (who read the book), your posse (fan club, book club etc) and then the book marketing people. Take them all the ideas you gathered from the others. Get the idea signed off for the next step.

Write a script.

I know it sounds like a lot of work, but it’s a tough world out there. You want to have the best book trailer you can possibly produce. Even if it’s on a shoestring budget.

You already have the storyline, just hire a trailer script writer. Alternatively, you could just write a short script yourself.

Get some actors in.

Once the script is finalized (assuming you’re doing a mini-movie trailer), you better hire local actors. Post an open casting call on sites like Craigslist or local casting agencies or talent agencies directly. You may also want to use BreakDownExpress or , although they may be slightly too big for your project, I think there are a lot of starving actors who would love for some extra income. Other avenues are posting them on library or municipal bulletin boards. Remember to add the time, date and location of the auditions. Be specific of what you want in the ad as it will save you lots of time.

On the other hand, you could go the free route and hire local Youtube stars for a

http://authopublisher.com small fee. They will plug the ad on their channel for sure which means more exposure for you. If you have children, you could also solicit the help of their friends and rewards them with a BBQ when the job is done (assuming they will work as cast members). Then there’s also the local rec, church or school. Kids love the attention and you may even stumble upon some stars.

Visualize the final product.

I am a very visual person, so I like to ‘see’ something before I do it or attempt something. Having an idea of what something SHOULD look like is very important for me. To see what standard book trailers are (if you follow this guide your book trailers standard will already be pretty high) have a look at some book trailers.

Shooting the trailer.

You don’t have to hire a local film crew to shoot the trailer. Simply using some flip cameras or even HD portable camera (I use one of them) should do. You may want to also read up on how to shoot a good video.

Voiceover.

If you want an awesome book trailer, you need to get a voice-over done. Here a script may also be appropriate to give to the person doing the voice-over. They’re not exactly actors who can ad lib stuff? Get a movie quality voice over for $5. These generally charge this price for work on voice-overs of a minute, so you may have to buy three projects from the (if you’re trailer is three minutes).

Soundtrack.

No movie trailer (or book trailer in your case) is complete without a thrilling soundtrack. You can get a royalty free soundtrack online. You will obviously need some audio samples and sound bytes. Pass those onto your video editor when he gets working.

Editing.

Chances that you’re going to do more book tractors in the future is pretty good (because of the success you’ll have with this trailer), so you may want to invest in a video editing program. Search for a editing program for the specific software you choose ( you may get a tutorial in the packaging of the software). You can also get free editing software online. Alternatively you can simply hire a local video editor.

Test video responses.

Before you make your video official, you may want to test your video first and hear what people are thinking. Where do you find those people? Well, post it on your youtube channel, embed it into your blog/website or share the link on your social media platforms and email list. Make sure they know that it is NOT the official trailer and you’re merely looking for feedback. You will share the real macoya with them

http://authopublisher.com later and ask them to share THAT. I have a forum on my blog but made sure people know it’s a soft launch and I need to do a lot of work on it still. You can draw on action points for them to consider from a brainstorm activity sheet.

General book trailer tips.

• Your book trailer should be about 1 minute but no longer than 3.

• You could go the easy way and simply post pictures into Windows Movie Player and add music to it with text, but I won’t do it like that. If that’s what you want to do, read a Windows Movie Maker Tutorial.

• You may want to outsource and just oversee every single step in the process of making a book trailer, because after all, you need to write books.

http://authopublisher.com

Build a Book Site.

Here I want to share with you a quick and awesome way to make a website or simple landing page for your shiny new book.

Make sure you have a 3d cover.

I had my designer do the graphic magic as I directed him. Here’s the process we followed: • I looked for an appropriate image we could use for the cover. I searched

Shutterstock for it.

• We placed a title on the cover, posted the author name and the tagline.

• We got a special font for the cover, which, because it has an end-time theme of sorts, needed a special feel. So I used 28 days (yep, from the movie) as a font we got from Slodive.

• Once the cover was done. I had the designer take out the title and redesign it for me as a website banner I wanted to use later.

The result is the cover you see below.

Finished the book.

So I finished the book by pasting the above image on the first page of the book, made a pdf of the book and uploaded it onto my server. More about the server below.

http://authopublisher.com Built a website.

I thought to build a website dedicated to this specific book. Here is my process: • Having already looked for a great keyworded title, it makes sense to make the

• •

• •

domain name the same (I used the FreshKey tool I mentioned earlier in this report) I registered my domain at Namecheap.

I got hosting for the site at Hostgator. What’s awesome is when you sign up for their baby plan, you can launch many other sites on the same host server.

I got a simple theme from Woothemes called Canvas which allows me to put in pretty much whatever I want. I went with a simple splash page.

I got a great apocalyptic (well, sort of ) background for the website from Shutterstock.

I went and made a book trailer with Animoto. It came out great and has the

http://authopublisher.com

•

•

•

•

most professional touch I could give it, as a page with just a cover looked a bit lonely for me.

As you can see I posted the book cover (made in 3D) below the video. I think a 3D image is better than a normal flat book page. You can have your graphic designer do it or do it yourself.

What you don’t see in the image above is the copy I wrote. It’s barely a hundred or so words that explains the books’ content in cryptic fashion. The video does most of the selling for me, so it’s easy to keep the page rather short.

I set up a Paypal button with a funnel that works like this: As you click on the payment button, you see the payment page for $10. If you cancel, you get taken to a page that offers the book to you for half price. If you buy the book, you get redirected to a page that asks you for your email to send you the link to the book, as well as free future updates. The book’s download link is also sent to you in an email immediately, and 3 days later, asks you for a testimonial on the main page. to serve the emails and the autoresponder, I use Aweber.

You’ll see at the bottom that I inserted a Facebook comment section to add to the virility of the eBook as well as for the social proof of it. You can get your own code here. Just add it into the HTML section of your page or post.

Book promotion.

There are many ways to promote your books and I have tons of tips available here.

But I want to share some of the methods I used to promote this specific book.

• I chose this specific author and this specific book (with it’s topic), because it’s a controversial. If you can handle it, a book that divides people is great for sales as well as controversy on social media, which will forever drive discussions and sales. This is an evergreen title, as people have been discussing this for decades, and in that is it’s success.

• This author had this book written and formatted in a less desirable way, so because we’re friends, I did everything for him as I own the online tools to do so. So, we set up a 50/50 agreement with costs being deducted from the sales.

• I first went and posted the link to every testimony or mention on the authors personal Facebook page. The promotion resulted in sales immediately. Keep in mind this person is very popular and controversial – which helps.

• I am running Facebook ads which results in a couple clicks per thousand impressions.

• As I’m selling the books, I am building a list of buyers which I can email once I have any related books available.

http://authopublisher.com • I have just joined a Christian forum, searched for the topic of the rapture and interacting with people. It took me 30 posts to get my link to show up to this book, but it’s up now. Once I got embedded in the community (which happened pretty fast, I’m going to join one or two more, look at new threads in this topic and keep myself updated.

• This is just a pdf eBook that I’m promoting. As soon as I’ve found my feet in the process, it’s off to Amazon KDP as well as Createspace for the second portion of development. I like this way of promotion because all the money goes straight to me. I don’t know how my efforts will stack up against Amazons’, because in Amazon, promotion is still pretty much up to you.

Offer.

I want to offer you, as a service, the above up until promotion. It will include the book cover, formatting of your book, cover design, website design and payment portal set up for a great price of $150.00. I only have space for ten 8 books, I hope you’ll make use of it.

http://authopublisher.com

Selling Your Book through Commenting.

Hello. I just finished a course on commenting (which I’ll share with you later), and preparing the course I did a lot of research and testing. And from what I’ve learned, and what I’ve garnered people talk about on self-publishing and book launching forums, I want to show you how you how you can sell your books by using commenting.

Why would I want to market my book through commenting?

You could be asking yourself: Why would I want market myself through commenting? And the reasons are simple.

• Through commenting you’ll grow you network faster than you can say ‘influence’ • By commenting and disposing off of your expert advice, free, people will appreciate you and listen to what you have to say.

• Because of your valued opinion, people start seeing you as an expert.

• Nothing says expert like a published book, and having one available right away means sales.

• A book can also open up opportunities for talks and keynotes, which you would have not been invited to, haven’t you worked the social circles through commenting.

It’s not rocket science. The more you comment, the more books you’ll sell. So, the question remains, how is this achieved? Following is just some of the ways you can sell your book by using commenting as marketing method.

Blog commenting Most people think when I talk about commenting, I talk about blog commenting alone, but there’s so much more to it. If you target properly and work hard at it, you can sell a lot of books by commenting. Below is a list of things you can do to make a success of this:

http://authopublisher.com • Find blogs to comment on, not within your niche, but where your target market hangs out. So, if you have a book about gardening, and say it’s a niche, like gardening in a small backyard, you would target blogs that talk about growing nutritional food in a small backyard, for instance. So, hang out on those kind of blogs instead of hanging out on gardening-in-your-backyard blogs, because that’;s not where your target is. Be creative in your targeting.

• Join blogging networks where there is some sort of social system. Blogengage is the most progressive one I know, and the owner, Brian, whose a great friend of mine, puts in a lot of effort in promoting the platform and incentivising his members for participating. What’s great about this platform is it has an array of categories in which to hang out and you could even form some groups if you like.

• Use the commentluv search engine to find blog to comment on. If you don’t know what Commentluv is all about, you can read about it here. So, you find blogs here to comment on which allows you to network, build links and market your book.

Strategies when commenting When commenting on blogs specifically, you have to get a strategy in place to assist you in marketing your blog. Some take longer than others, so choose how you want your funnel designed. The strategies follow: • Use Commentluv to link to your latest chapter/teaser.

• Use Commentluv (on Commentluv enabled blogs) to build links so you can rank for your keyword.

• Link with your comment to the actual sales page where a synopsis of your book is with a ‘Buy Now’ link.

• If you have a well thought out autoresponder series, you could link to your squeeze page where your free offer or email sign up is situated.

Forum Commenting If you know anything about Internet marketing, you know the power of forum marketing (as what it’s commonly known as), you’ll know that it could be a very powerful marketing tool to sell your book with. Below are a few tips on how you can

http://authopublisher.com achieve this: • Search for forums where your target market hangs out. Use the same method I discussed in the blogging section. On Google, you can search for keyword+forum and see what lists are returned.

• You want to look at forums which is active. Look also at how many people view the forum posts you are interested in participating in. Keep an eye on them and if there is sufficient movement. Get involved.

• First sign up for the forum, participate for w week or two and then write your signature. Your signature should have some kind of tagline that has your main keyword in it, link to your sales page or squeeze page as explained before.

• Search for forum posts where questions are being asked that you are able to add a lot of value to. Don’t hold anything back. This will build your links, authority, traffic and sales.

If you would like to chat with me about commenting, and how you use it to market and all of the intricacies involved, you can add me on Skype: ivin.viljoen and ask to be added to my Comment Mastermind group and we could connect there.

http://authopublisher.com

Press Releases.

If you're a writer or an author, then writing your own press release shouldn't be too difficult for you once you understand how they need to be written and formatted.

Don't worry, it's pretty simple and I wrote my own press release to announce the publication of my eBook after a bit of research.

Now it's time to choose distribution channels for your press release. There are tons of free sites that rank well. Find a good list I put together by visiting this link: Free and Paid Press Release Distribution Services.

I highly recommend considering an affordable paid distribution package from PRWeb if you can make a small and reasonable investment to promote your eBook.

I purchased their $140 standard package and was delighted with the awesome results I received from media contacts, activists related to my writing and was very impressed with the detailed stats and analytics provided for a full four weeks after your release goes live.

For an example, my press release on PRWeb's paid distribution landed me my first radio interview. It also resulted in an invitation to do a live reading in Sandton at a monthly event.

I was also contacted by the producer for a nationally syndicated radio show and was asked for an interview, which I accepted. Best $140 I have spent in a long time.

Great customer support!

So here's the action plan.

• Write a brief, effective email pitch that introduces you and provides a snapshot of what your book is about. Send it to bloggers who write book reviews, after carefully reviewing their submission policies to make sure your genre is accepted.

• Customize an email pitch that is targeted at radio and podcast shows seeking author and expert guests. Send it out to hosts and producers who request guests like yourself.

• Write a press release to announce your eBook publication and generate some buzz surrounding your book. Capture the interest of the public as well as reporters and media contacts.

http://authopublisher.com Following are some things you'll need to look at for more promotion of your book coupled with your press release tour: • Reader reviews from fans on Amazon, friends, family and anyone else you can encourage to give you feedback.

• Choose a free or paid (or both) press release distribution service and send out your release when it's ready.

• Always ask (politely, of course) for an MP3 copy of your interview before your scheduled date, so you can host the file on your own website after the interview airs.

• Always have proper etiquette and manners as a guest on a show. Don't forget to say thank you to the host and refer to them by name during your interview.

Be on time. Avoid background noise for phone interviews.

Press Release Submission Sites Below you will find a huge list of resource links for press release sites.

Press Exposure - Allows Public Relations Professionals To Distribute Their Press Releases To Reach Their Target Audience For Free. Get More Traffic & PR Exposure For Free!

Press Method - Free Press Release distribution! We have over 18700 media contacts, and over 150 targeted industries PRESSbooth.org 121 Press Release.com - Offers Free Press Release and News for all types of small Business. So you can submit Press Release by Country and by Category for Press release Marketing Services.

PR Zoom - Free press release submission & PR distribution online service, submit press release free of charge. Free press release distribution to Google News and thousands other sources. Free PR press release & newswire distribution services news wire distribution network sites to companies submit press relea...

http://authopublisher.com Free PR Online - A revolutionary Free Press Release distribution service that provides you with exclusive access to breaking news directly from the source.

National PR Wire - Free Press Release Distribution.

For Press Release - Press releases, media news, online press release, press release marketing Free Press Release Distribution Center Free Press Release.org - Free press release distribution service for organizations and small businesses. Press release marketing service. It is free to submit press release by category.

Flash News Release - Submit Press Release to 60+ Websites! India Press Release submission from $12! Flash News Release is your best price press release submission website online!

24-7 Press Release Release News - Press Release distribution and submission service - High Internet visibility for press releases & news instantly. Paid Google News submission services available Express Press Release

Press Deposit - Free Press Release Submission & Distribution service. At PressDeposit you can create submit free releases.

Wired PR News - Press release distribution $19.95 only! Submit Unlimited online SEO press release to Google News, large online newspapers, Twitter, Facebook social media & press wires. Creating search engine visibility 24-7

http://authopublisher.com PR Buzz - Unlimited press release distribution for $299 per year. Send an unlimited number of press releases for distribution.

EZPR - A free press release distribution service. Opitmize your press release with two backlinks to your website for SEO and submit it to EZPR.org.

WirdePR.com Post Free Press Releases OpenPR Market Press Release - Online free press release submission & distribution site where pr and marketing professionals can submit press release online for reaching media persons and prospective customers.

Briefing Wire - Free Press Release submission and distribution service. Increase the visibility of your business by submitting your press release for free.

Free PR Now - Submit Free Press Releases. Online PR submission and distribution service site. freePRnow website make your PR available to journalists and new sites for maximum exposure.

PR9.net - Press Release Distribution Service Press Media Wire - Press release distribution helps your business generate the much needed online publicity, drive traffic to your web site and reach targeted customers.

My PR Genie - A business social network and newswire. We provide press release distribution services and enable businesses to connect with journalists.

Press Release Point 1888 Press Release - Free Press Release Submission Service & Best Press Release

http://authopublisher.com Distribution with 1888 PressRelease.com. Submit your Press Releases free to our site and Publish your story to the World. We Provide Free Press Release Distribution and Optimized Pages for your News. Submit your Free PR now.

PR4 Links - Submit Your Press Releases for Free in PR4Links.com and get maximum exposure of your PR including Google News, Media's and worldwide Free Press Index - Free online press release distribution service for press release (PR) writers, journalists and freelancers.

PR Log - Free press release distribution service for all businesses - Increase traffic and visibility - Online press release submission.

Online PR News - SEO Press Release Distribution Site for SEO and Social Media. Use OPN's Press Release Services to Submit Online Press Releases & Get Exposure! http://www.free-press-release.com/

http://authopublisher.com

Free eBook Promotion Sites.

Following is a comprehensive list of platforms and websites on which you can promote your free ebook promotion on.

Pixel of Ink Pixel of Ink features daily publishing of Free Kindle Books and Hot Deals. On any given day, there are thousands of Free Kindle Books available. Each day there are hundreds of newly free Kindle Books that they sort through to bring you what you want – the best of the bunch!In addition to Free Books, they also share some really Hot Deals on other Kindle Ebooks.

Get started with Pixel of Ink here.

Inspired Reads.

I got this site looking around on the previous one. They’re Reads is all about finding and sharingChristian Kindle Books on a Budget! If you are looking for Christian or Faith-Based Content, then you will want to visit them!

Get started with Inspired Reads Here.

Ereader News Today This platform features a book a day, at least. They feature Kindle accessories and great deals on Kindle books. The most important feature here, for you, is that they feature free books on their sites, sometimes daily, sometimes more than once. You can submit your free Kindlke ebooks to them to be featured and even advertise on it.

Get in touch with ENT here.

Books on the Knob BOTK is almost the same as ENT above. It features Kindle Tools, Free and very well discounted books and provides a little bit ofsupport. I haven’t found the place where you can submit your book (because of time constraints), But, I suggest you…

Visit BOTK today.

Free-Ebooks.net I was looking for one of the sites suggested by Manny and I came across this one instead. Free-Ebooks.net claims to be the internet’s #1online source for free ebook downloads, resources and authors. It’s a membership site where you leverage them in your publishing, but they also offer the following:

http://authopublisher.com • Google AdSense – Use (or create) a Google AdSense account & profit from ads shown around your book!

• Huge Exposure – Over 7.3 million unique visitors arrived at Free-eBooks.net last year.

• Build fanbase – Gain recognition, exposure and credibility.

• Real Time Feedback – Receive and monitor comments from your readers (reviews is VERY important on Amazon, so this may just push it).

• Star power potential – Claim your opportunity to be featured on our Homepage, in our newsletter and more… while you become FAMOUS! Sign up here.

Freebooks.com They claim to be committed to helping users find the best free ebooks available online and point readers in the right direction. Here you find downloadable e-books and textbooks in popular genres and topics such as christian books, audio books, horror, romance and many more.

Visit Freebooks.com Bargain Ebook Hunter They claim to track the best ebook bargains, dedicated to hunting through the digital publishing world looking for eBooks at great deals (from FREE to $5.00) and putting them on their site to provide readers with a one-stop shopping experience. They offer titles that comprise the full gamut of styles from short stories to novels and from all genres.

Visit Bargain Ebook Hunter here.

That Book Place.

Thatbookplace.com aims to be a new home to an exciting world of books for the internet. They wish to make it a place where authors can come and meet their fans.

Where readers can come and learn of new books. They first started as a small store in 2006 and for their fifth year anniversary they decided to add an authors fair to their outdoor tent sale. They branched out into small press and Hydra Press came into being. The rest… well. They showcase free Kindle books, have a membership and have a ‘ free promo submissions’ tab in the menu up top.

Visit That Book Place Here.

http://authopublisher.com Free Kindle Fiction.

They say to bring your dragons, aliens, vampires -even sparkly ones. They claim to love dystopian, steampunk, other planets, romances, who-dun-its and other things that your imagination can form! All the books featured on their site are free at the time of posting. They share stories about free books and even have gift cards available.

Visit Free Kindle Fiction here.

Indie Book of the Day. Indie Book of the Day (IBD) is a user powered platform that recognizes the best among Indie Authors by honoring one awesome book everyday, with the indie book of the day award. They have a menu tab for free kindle books on both Amazon’s UK and US divisions.

Get in touch with Indie Book of the Day here.

Free Book Dude For the lack of an about page, Free Book Dude seems to be a site dedicated to book reviews. He also has a special section for free ebooks and even promotes it on a list he has. There’s a page with a special form to list your ebook on.

Find Free Ebook Dude here.

Digital Book Today.

Digital Book Today tries to inform readers of limited time offers while weeding out the ‘we are selling something’ ebooks which seems to increase in numbers every day. Our hope is to recommend titles that are ‘good reads’. They also have a special section dedicated to free ebooks.

Visit Digital Book Today.

Author Marketing Club When you become an AMC member you will have access to the a review request system where you can put your book in front of readers who want to read and review your book, a thriving community of authors willing to share their marketing tactics and lessons, and failures, helpful advice and resources for new and experienced authors alike, specials and offers for discounted services to help you publish your book.

Visits Author Marketing Club today

http://authopublisher.com Addicted to Ebooks A2B is a membership site where authors can submit their books for exposure, features books by genre, price and content as well as promoting free ebooks. The site also features ebooks they may think is good.

Visit Addicted to Ebook here.

Flurries of Words.

Flow is a blog hosted on the Blogger platform and do book reviews, flash fiction, interviews, bargain books and others. Most importantly, they list free Amazon ebooks.

Visit Flurry of Words here.

The Frugal Reader.

Frugal Reader does reviews of book and I assume, because this was passed to me as a source, would alo feature free ebooks.

Visit Frugal Reader here.

Free Kindle Books n Tips.

Free Kindle Books and Tips claims to have a simple purpose; to provide a quick summary of the daily free book offerings from Amazon as well as the thousands of books, short stories, and more available for you to read on your Kindle for no charge from numerous sites in addition to the Amazon Kindle Store. This blog also provides insider tips, tricks, and information you need to impress your Kindle friends with your new-found tips, and save a little of your valuable time!

Visit Free Kindle Books n Tips.

Joey Pinkney.

I know you would find value with Jeoey Pinkney’s site. I interviewed him once, and last of what I remember, he does a interview series he calls: 5 Minutes, 5 Questions With‌ and then gives a free ebook away with the post to those that choose to participate by commenting. I am sure Joey would love to add a feature to his site where free ebooks are available.

Visit Joey Pinkney here.

Ebooks habit They are a site dedicated to helping ereader readers find free ebooks. With

http://authopublisher.com thousands of books being free each day on Amazon, they work hard to curate a list of some of the best free ebooks, so their visitors don’t have to hunt them down themselves. Each day they produce 3-4 lists of great ebooks that are free at the time of posting, as well as some bargain books that day and other great sale prices and deals in the world of ebooks and ereaders.

Visit EbooksHabit here.

http://authopublisher.com

Radio Interviews One of the ways to promote your book is through a radio interview. This method is invaluable when you want to reach the masses with the message of your book.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Radio Interviews Here are some closely guarded insider ‘secrets’ successful experts don’t want you to know.

• Be yourself. There’s nothing more annoying than an interviewee that comes off

sounding and talking like someone else. Remember that if they wanted the person you’re imitating in the studio, they would have invited him. They are speaking to you, so be flattered. If you’re audience catches on to you, your message won’t be taken seriously. Remember that there’s no-one else like you.

• Be careful of political views during the radio interview. If you get asked a

question, don’t plead the fifth, be very diplomatic and acknowledge their viewpoint. Radio interview audiences are diverse and by ‘giving and taking’ you will win credibility with the entire radio interview audience. Just be careful not to sit on the fence.

• Make sure you are on top of current events, especially those pertaining to your book topic. If you can show that you are aware of what’s going on and have a clear opinion or solution on the topic, you will quickly establish yourself as an expert in your field. Portraying yourself as knowledgeable will give you credibility with the listeners of that particular station.

• Try to tie in a local angle to include the listeners into what you are saying, doesn’t matter if you are in the Motor City of Detroit, in the slums of the UK or in a remote village in Africa. For instance, if your book is about the economy or real estate, talk about the effects of unemployment or real estate values in that particular area. This will allow you to draw the radio interview listener in even further, keeping them tuned in and interested in what you have to say.

Radio station managers love that, and may even invite you for a second interview.

• Don’t use your cell phone if you are interviewed over the phone. Rather use a secure land line for all your interviews as cell phones are unreliable as static, breaking up and being cut off through a bad signal can really mess it up. Radio hosts don’t take kindly to the precedent as a failed connection means they have to scramble to fill your spot with other material. This will negatively affect the flow of his show. You won’t be rescheduled or called back.

http://authopublisher.com • Hit all your key points in the interview. Don’t get wrapped up in the

conversation. The host may be a very delightful person and a great conversationalist, but you are there for one reason and that’s to promote your book. Also, don’t get side tracked by listener calls and issues raised, if it’s not in the direction you are going, redirect the conversation.

• Match the pace of your radio interview with that of your host. If your host sounds like a horse race announcer, run with him. If you’re host is a loud, excited announcer, try speak his language without losing your identity. If the host is easy and relaxed, take a load off and join him. Adapting to the hosts rhythm will allow a certain camaraderie to be established between the two of you, doesn’t matter if its an hour or fifteen minute interview. Establishing positive rapport will keep listeners glued to the dial.

• Limit numbers and statistics. You don’t want the listener to have his head start hurting. If your book is based on a certain significant precedent, by all means include a particular statistic. If they are solely to make you sound learned and intelligent, pass.

• If you don’t know about something your host may be asking, the worst thing you can do is ‘wing it’. Admit you’re not entirely sure and move on. Handling it in a manner of integrity will greatly boost your credibility.

• Try and give the interview an intimate feel because radio is a one-on-one medium. Speak to the host in a personal and conversational manner and do the same with callers if there are any. This will keep the show’s audience interested and they’ll be able to relate to you both.

Don’t lose sight of why you are on the show. You are there to enlighten the listening audience about your book and give a call to action – to purchase your book.

Landing opportunities for radio, blog or podcast interviews can be a great form of free author publicity and are essential in the online branding process. While interviews don't always necessarily have a direct relationship to increased book sales, they do help you more as an author over the long term.

That is, if you do a few important things. First of all, ALWAYS politely request an MP3 copy of all your interviews before your interview date. Show producers and hosts are very willing to accommodate you, but in the event that they are unable to do this, you can find free tools online that will let you record them yourself.

Not sure where or how to find interview opportunities? Yeah, neither was I. I didn't have the first clue, actually. So tons of research and a handful of successful interviews (radio, blog and podcast) later, I have discovered that it's easy as pie.

http://authopublisher.com My Top Picks for Author Interview Opportunities RadioGuestList- This is a cool site that will let you sign up for email or RSS notifications to alert you whenever a radio or podcast show host or producer posts a request for guests on their show. Just read the descriptions they provide to make sure you are the right type of guest they are seeking. They are usually looking for a specific demographic that somehow relates to the theme of their show, so make sure the pitches you send make sense and are appropriate. Try not to waste your time or theirs and always be polite and respectful. I've landed several interviews through this site. • ArtistFirst Radio Network - This site has a weekly show called "Author's First" which is an hour-long interview with an independent author. You can book your show for a minimum donation of only $10. They were friendly, plugged my book and overall was a good experience. •

http://authopublisher.com Build a List of Devoted Book Buyers.

I’ve been looking through an old post of mine on preparing to self publish and looked for some holes that I can fill with explanatory posts (explaining how to do certain things). The first then on my list of ‘How-To’ posts would be on list building.

Importance of email list building.

When an author is serious about marketing his books, he will want to consider list building. I’m not going to discuss building traffic (in this post) to your website, but it will influence the pace of your list building. Even if you have a way to get prospective readers’ details, it won’t guarantee a successful book marketing plan. Before we get into the nitty-gritty, let’s first look at what an author can use a list for: • • • • • • •

To keep in contact with his fans.

To build a relationship of trust.

To build a platform to launch a new book/series.

To have an open line of direct communication.

To cross promote with other authors.

To share promotions and signing dates.

Keep readers up-to-date with news and events.

Ok, I’m sold. So how do I go about list building?

Well, first you want to think on something to give away or an offer that will drive the masses to be a part of our list building. This serves as an ‘ethical bribe’ for your fans to give you their email address so you can begin your list building. Let’s look at some ideas on what you can give away.

• A free report – This usually works in non-fiction niches, especially if you’re quite an expert in that niche. You can write an ebook and tell people how you’ve done something, you’ve achieved something etc. The idea here is to give them just enough information to entice them (in the ebook) to lookout for more from you.

• A webinar – especially if you’re in a non-fiction niche, you can give people access to a free webinar you will do or have done. The idea here is to also approach it like the report. Tell people what you were able to achieve, as you’re book (coming?) will reveal how it is/was done.

• A free chapter – In this case, of course, you could make a compelling first (or more) chapter/s available to your subscribers to entice them to want to read your book. This is of course very effective if your first chapter opens up with a bang, builds suspense and leaves the reader hanging from a cliff.

• A free book copy – You’re first book (you may have won an award for) has

http://authopublisher.com reached it’s pinnacle in sales and is starting to wind down. You have a good couple titles after the first that you can afford giving this one away. The book giveaway should serve as the carrot you hang in front of prospective readers so they get introduced to your genre, style and voice. This works on the same principle as Amanda Hocking’s price model for millions. In this case it means sales in the down line.

If you’re giving away a book.

This post will be a little theory, a little practical as well as a little technical. What I want to do now is give you the technical process of how to get the book set up as well as how to set up your list building software.

Making the ebook.

I want to quickly share with you the process of how you can optimize your report/free chapter/free book to cross promote other books, products or services.

This is important when you give away free things – so it can benefit you as well as your subscriber.

• Open up the file of your report/free chapter/free book in Open Office (File>Open With> Open Office), or convert it to it.

• Add links to other books or promos that applies in the paragraphs (or beginning or end).

• Add affiliate links to all the products and services that your peers may have available and may help (make sure they do the same for you).

• You can add a link to your blog in the header of the book (This builds fans, readership and consistent flow of new blood) • Edit the book to look neat and professional.

• Design a ‘Thank You’ Page on which you’ll find image links to your book/chapter and add here any unannounced bonuses you may have at your disposal to add great value.

List building setup.

What you want to do now is set up your list so that you can capture leads. As soon as your subscribers have signed up, you want to build a relationship from the get go, a relationship of trust. That’s why it’s important that the following be implemented to the tee. If this technical part of the process fails, you lose trust almost immediately.

Let’s look at what needs to be done: • First upload the ebook/chapter you’ve compiled to your hostserver through your FTP client.

http://authopublisher.com • Then, if you haven’t, get yourself an account with Aweber, and set up your

email list as follows: 1. Click the ‘Create and manage lists’ link on the top left side.

2. Choose ‘Create New List’ by clicking on the green button.

3. Fill in all the fields: List Name, List description, From, Email Address, Add your Contact Address (must be PO Box), fill in name and email in ‘Notifications’ so you can know when new subscribers sign up, click ‘Save Settings’.

4. At the top, click ‘Personalize your list’: Company name (your own name if you don’t have one), website URL (usually the one you want to get traffic to), Email signature. Click ‘Save settings’.

5. Next, click on the ‘Confirmed Opt In’ section and you can edit that if you want, to make it more personal, and then you’ll see a section at the bottom called ‘Confirmation Success Page URL’. Before filling in this URL. You’re going to have to create it first. So… 6. Go to WordPress, hover over ‘Pages’ and click ‘Add New’. Call the title something like: ‘Thank You! (Your Giveaway Title). In the post itself write a little personal text from yourself thanking the subscriber for subscribing, telling him what to expect from you with regards to the email you’re going to send, and a reminder that the download link to the book is accessible by simply clicking the picture.

http://authopublisher.com 7. Then copy the link to that new page and insert it in the ‘Confirmation’ section.

Setting up the autoresponder.

Once you have completed the above, there is one very crucial step needed to be completed. You have to (at least) post up your first follow up message. I have given another step-by-step on how to do it below.

• Hover over the ‘Messages’ tab at the top and click on ‘Follow Up’.

• On the next page, click on the ‘Previous Follow up Editor’ link.

• Fill in a title like: ‘Welcome to my list, (with a {!firstname} tag for that personal touch).

• In the body, tell people a little about your list, what they should expect from you regarding content, frequency etc.

• End the email with a personal greeting and tell them you’ll talk to them soon.

Keep in touch!

It’s important that you keep in touch with your subscribers on a regular basis. I usually place my blog name in the subject first like this [Authopublisher] and then my title. This helps the subscriber to identify who the email is from, and if he’s your fan, he will open the email. This one step has increased my open rate drastically.

Let’s look at some ideas of what you can provide in the email autoresponder series to keep your subscribers/fans engaged and wanting more: • In the first email, ask your subscribers if they’ve received their ebook/free chapter and provide them with a way to get in contact with you if they have any difficulty. I’ve made a couple mistakes in my career and learned that this is a crucial email. This email also serves as hooking your subscribers into the email follow-ups. Without this first email, they won’t get any others.

• Following up your could give a little background on your book, how you came about writing it, what it means to you etc. This will serve as a kind of introduction and be similar to the one in your book.

• Share some testimonials, but not your link yet. How the book impacted other fans or buyers of the book. Subscribers can hear from others what they thought of your book.

• Share some stories or accolades. How did the book do on launch day? Where was it featured? Who spoke about/quoted it? Who interviewed you (quoting a portion of it)? What lists did it reach?

• Next, tell people what they could benefit from buying your book.

• Do a webinar and have a conversation with a fan or an interviewer. Talk about the book and provide tons of value. Make the webinar available for free to

http://authopublisher.com your subscribers in this email.

• Sell your book. But don’t just do a hard sell. Make the book available for a very special price for a limited time. Perhaps you could look at building software into your pages that limits access, counts down to an expiry date etc. Urgency along with a special works great.

Additional resources.

I want to share a list of great resources I use on almost all my platforms to build my lists. They are great, powerful and help you build a bigger list. (Please note that these ARE affiliate links and will make a commission if you buy them).

• MaxBlogPress Subscriber Magnet – This awesome plugin allows the fans

•

• •

•

commenting on your posts on your WordPress blog to tick a box before submitting his comment and subscribing to your list.

Pop Up Domination – This is a light box type of plugin for WordPress blogs that allows you to place a pop up box on your blog landing page (or any other page) to offer your freebie before they read any other content on your blog/site. This is highly effective and you can even set the frequency of the pop up to 7 days (for instance) to be the least intrusive, respectable, but still remind readers the freebie is available.

Sidebar Domination - I got this plugin as a bonus when I purchased an unlimited license for the plugin above. But you can get it for free here.

Aweber - This is the list building software or email management platform I used in the tutorial above. It’s the best (according to me) platform out there and is also affordable. Click here for your 1$ trial.

List Eruption - List eruption helps you explode your list, using your current subscribers as a promotion force. With it you offer a very special freebie, coupon or discount for every x amount of subscribers that they refer to you.

After you have published a book and you’ve exhausted every avenue of promoting and marketing your book, building a list is a great way to keep book sales alive – and it’s all on autopilot. You set it up, forget about it and keep on driving traffic.

http://authopublisher.com

Ebook Reviews.

A great and easy place to start is getting reviews for your eBook from fans, readers and even reviewers/bloggers. The easiest and most effortless way to start getting reader reviews unsolicited is simply by waiting for them to show up on your Amazon Kindle product page, which will happen. It can take some time, but you can count on a few popping up once you've sold a few copies.

Now, for a bit of slightly bad news: good luck getting any newspaper reviewers or big review sites to even consider your self-published eBook. Fat friggin' chance. Just save yourself the time and don't bother.

But! Don't be too discouraged. As the self-published revolution continues to gain popularity, there are some great new review sites and online efforts being formed and some of them are definitely worth checking out.

My Top Picks for Review Sites •

• •

•

•

•

The highly coveted Midwest Book Review.

Pros: highly reputable and places priority on independently published books.

Cons: only accepts physical copies and requires two in order to be considered for review. Does not guarantee review.

IndieReader- A newer but promising review site for self-published titles that already features lots of insightful eBook reviews. Worth checking out for sure.

ReadersFavorite - Older review site that has a good reputation and allows you to submit your eBook using their submission form. Does not guarantee a review, but will notify you by email if and when your book is reviewed. I managed to score with this site.

ManicReaders - Neat social type site for authors that allows you to upload a copy of your eBook for review and offers a "review depot" that includes over a dozen review sites that you can submit your title to. No guarantee for review, but I managed to snag a review from the site!

LLBookReview - Nice blog-style review site with several regular book reviewers. Willing to accept eBooks and has good reputation for independent book reviews for several years. Must email reviewers to pitch them for review, I was able to capture the interest of Shannon Yarbrough, who was kind enough to review my eBook.

Literary R&R - A nice book review blog maintained by a friendly avid reader named Mandy. Contacted via email and she agreed to review my eBook!

http://authopublisher.com

Diy Bestseller As publishing is easier these days and it’s become expressively easier to become a published author. What is very rarely taught on these platforms, is how to make money from your book, i.e selling/marketing your book.

Special offer I have a great course available that Justin Popovich presented along with Bestselling author Brad Goss. And in this videos series they talk about and explain properly the following: • • • • • • • • • •

Who is your audience/buyer?

What is your goal/what are you selling?

What bis your topic, positioning, background?

What is your book title?

How will you finish your book?

What is your platform?

Who will design your book cover?

How will you generate buzz before launch?

How will you get publicity?

How will you prevent self-sabotage?

As you can see a great couple book marketing topics covered here by a best selling author. You can see a promo video of the course above in this post. We have both videos and PDF’s available for immediate download for the crazy price of only $5.

Take hold of this great opportunity today!

Continued on the next page...

http://authopublisher.com Watch the first video free by clicking the video image below.

http://authopublisher.com

Part 7: Social Marketing Hacks for Self-Publishers.

http://authopublisher.com

Social Media Marketing for Self-Publishers Social media has emerged in the last few years as an essential component in the marketing tool bag of any company or person wishing to promote a brand or product. Social media platforms have literally morphed into recommendation machines and are fast catching up to search engines in terms of how important they are when it comes to promotion.

Humans naturally trust other humans more than any slick marketing campaign and tend to listen to their friends when something is recommended to them. The right person clicking on the a Facebook Like button can cause a viral spread of your book over the Internet.

With new social media sites popping up on a regular basis, it can seem overwhelming, especially if you are unfamiliar with them. However, ignore social media at your own risk because by doing so, you could be leaving a whole heap of cash on the table for someone else to pick up.

Below are some basic tips on where to start when it comes to promoting your self published book via social media channels.

Build a Website The first step is to build a comprehensive website which has engaging and interesting information about your book (or books) on it. You should also have links which enable your visitors to easily buy your book from within your website, or by clicking a link to where they can buy it from.

To get the most professional feel, it is probably best to hire a professional to do this for you, however, it is entirely possible to build one from scratch yourself either for free or for a nominal fee, using a variety of website templates and tools which are available on the internet. One of the best DIY website building tools Moonfruit.

Whatever route you decide to go down, ensure that all of the latest social media plug-ins are included with the website for ease of sharing. This includes Facebook Like buttons, Google+ share buttons, Twitter buttons and Pinterest buttons. It is also a good idea to ensure that you can add any new channels as they come up in future.

Things change rapidly in the world of technology.

Finally, ensure that visitors to your website can easily navigate to any of your social media pages from within your website and follow you or add you as a friend.

http://authopublisher.com Set Up a Blog There are a whole host of free blogging platforms, the most popular of which are WordPress.com and Blogger.com. Both come fully integrated with all of the social media channels for ease of sharing. Your blog should be fully linked to all of your social media channels and to your website. Likewise, your website should have a clear and visible link to your blog from your home page.

Write articles regularly, at least once a week. You should write about things that are related to your book which your readers will find interesting. Every time you write a blog post, post the article to all of your social media channels.

There is a way to automate the process. Tools such as those provided by Hootsuite allow you to write one message with a link which is then disseminated to all of your social media channels. In addition, you can link it to the feed of your blog so that every time you publish a new blog post, it is automatically sent to all of your social media channels. At the moment, Hootsuite supports most blogging platforms, including those mentioned as well as Facebook Like pages, Facebook friend feeds, Twitter, and Linkedin.

Find out more social web tips for self publishing in tomorrows post.

Social Media Channels As discussed in part 1, all independent authors should have a proper social media marketing strategy in place. By utilizing social media channels, you effectively maximize your potential for selling your books and they are free. It may seem like hard work, but the pay offs can be huge.

There are ways to automate a lot of the process which will be briefly touched upon here. Just like traditional marketing, social media marketing is a numbers game. The more people you can reach and connect with, the more chance you have of making some money from your books. Simply publishing your books via the various available publishing channels is not enough to get the sales in. Making sales requires some effort, but it is not impossible.

Author Amanda Hocking now has a lucrative book deal, but she started out selling her books via her social media channels and famously made $20,000 within six months from selling one book.

Facebook Like Page Build a Facebook Like page. Your website address and all of your other social media

http://authopublisher.com links should be embedded at the top of the page so that visitors can easily find your other channels. It is a very simple process and some companies even use Like pages for websites. I would not advise this myself as I am of the opinion that to be as professional as possible, you really need to have your own website. In any case, Facebook has its own page with very clear instructions on how exactly how to go about the process which you can access from here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php.

You can even hire someone to build a professional Facebook Like page for you if you have the spare cash. However, Pagemodo (http://www.pagemodo.com) offers custom pages for free, but you have to do much of the work yourself.

Assuming you are already a member of Facebook, once your page has been created, your first job is then to promote the hell out of it. You can do this by using the inbuilt Facebook tools which allow you to send the page to your Facebook friends, post the page to your wall asking them to hit like, or create a cheap pay per click advertising campaign to get things moving a little.

If you are not already a member of Facebook, it is a good idea to sign up, create a profile and join any groups relating to your field of expertise. There are a lot of groups on Facebook and joining lots of them is a good way to network and make new contacts who may be interested in your book. Computer Guide has an excellent article called the Newbies Guide to Facebook (http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9070138/A_newbie_s_guide_to_Facebo ok). Have a read if you are unsure.

Twitter Signing up to Twitter is an easy enough process. Once your book profile is on Twitter, the link to your website and your Facebook Like page should be clearly visible on your profile.

Start by using Twitter’s search function to search for keywords relating to your book in order to find people who may be interested in it. Follow ALL of them and interact with them. The trick to using twitter is social interaction which does not necessarily involve continually promoting yourself, but provides useful information which helps people who follow you in short bursts. Some experts believe that 80 per cent of your time should be spent engaging with people on your various social media channels about things which can help them and 20 per cent of your time should be spent promoting your product.

Be yourself and occasionally tweet the link to your book or ask people to like your Facebook page. But for the most part, tweet articles that you think your readership will find interesting. Better yet, tweet articles written by you from your own blog. As

http://authopublisher.com a writer, you should never stop writing!

Google+ and Linkedin Signing up for a Google+ account could not be easier if you already have a Gmail email account. Even if you don’t the process is relatively easy. Google+ allows you to segment the people you follow into circles, which then means that you can target particular groups with specific information. Again, when you add people to circles, they are likely to add you back. The more popular you become, the more likely it is that you will sell your books.

The same can be said for Linkedin. Linkedin is seen by most as the top social media website for professionals as you can upload your entire CV on there. In addition, you can link all of your websites and social media channels as well as join professional groups and network with people in your field. Just like the other social media channels, you can connect with people by adding them as friends. Once they accept you, they see your posts in their time line.

Automation There are ways to automate the process. Hootsuite (http://hootsuite.com/) allows you to schedule posts to Google +, Facebook Like, Facebook friend, Twitter, Linkedin and Google + all at once. As stated in part one, you can even link it to your blog to automatically post your blog posts to all of your followers.

The best automation software for Twitter in my opinion is a piece of software called Tweetadder (http://www.tweetadder.com/). Tweetadder allows you to search Twitter using key words relating to your field for people to follow. You can then set it to follow people automatically and it even waits a few days for them to follow you back. You can pre-load tweets so that it automatically tweets information to your followers and you can pre-load direct messages to automatically say thank you to people who have followed you.

The software can run in the background on your computer 24 hours a day if you wish, freeing up your time to do other things. Twitter allows you to follow up to 1000 people a day, so if used correctly, you can build up a significant following of targeted people pretty quickly.

The trick with automation is to not sound like it is coming from a robot! Your tweets should still sound natural, and you should still tweet in between your scheduled tweets as yourself in reply to people. These days, the advent of smart phones means that you can actively engage in social conversations via your social media channels from your mobile phone when you are on the move or when you are having breaks from work.

http://authopublisher.com Conclusions As a self published author, in order to get the maximum return on your significant investment (even if you published online for free, it still took time and effort), you should maximize all of the social tools which are available to you to use for free. By not doing so, you are effectively leaving money on the table.

Learn all that you can about social media marketing and develop a strategy which works for you. Work at it daily to build a following and be yourself in your posts. The advent of automation tools like Hootsuite and Tweetadder means that it need not be a full time job, but it should be done effectively.

Ensure that all of your social channels are plugged into your website, blog and each other. This is called deep linking and will maximize your efforts by ensuring that all of your followers and potential followers have access to your posts no matter what social media channels they currently use. Make direct links to your book available everywhere. Only post things talking about yourself and directly marketing your book 20 per cent of the time. Good luck!

Using Pinterest Pinterest is a relatively new social media website and is officially the fastest growing website in the world. It is currently valued at around one billion US dollars! Entirely based around the concept of pinning images to pin boards, the site allows users to share images of the things that interest them with each other. You can pin images, like other peoples pins, comment on images and re-pin images that you like.

Suitable for Authors?

You might assume that the very visual nature of it means that it is most suitable for people in the visual arts, however, many different types of businesses use it to build awareness of their brand and drive visitors to their websites or blogs, including self published authors.

In fact, the well known literary agent talked explicitly about the site on her blog saying that in her opinion, Pinterest would probably be more effective at driving potential readers to author websites than any of the other social media site purely because of the way in which it is designed and used.

How to use Pinterest to Promote your Book When you sign up to Pinterest, you get the option of signing up using Twitter or Facebook and you can link both to your Pinterest account. This means that every time you pin, like or comment on something, it automatically gets sent to your Facebook and Twitter profiles for your followers to see your activity.

http://authopublisher.com As stated in parts one and two of this series, you should also place a link to your Pinterest profile on your website, blog and other social media channels.

Below are a few ways you can use this unique website to build up your profile as an author.

• Set up a profile at www.pinterest.com and include a link to your website with

•

• • •

• •

•

•

a brief bio.

Think about who you think will want to read your book and what THEY would like to see pinned to your profile. What genre is your book in? Is it romance, science fiction or drama? Or is your book a non fiction self help book?

Create different pin boards related to each subject which you think your audience will be interested in.

Pin beautiful and interesting photos from various websites which relate to your book onto your boards with short descriptions.

Resist the urge to pin lots of things from your own website and blog! Only do this occasionally. Remember the 80/20 rule from parts one and two. Only pin things related to your work 20 per cent of the time. Spend the rest of the time focusing on things which will be of interest to your target audience.

Follow others who are interested in the things you are re-pinning.

Re-pin A LOT! Re-pinning photo’s which relate to your subject matter from people interested in it draws attention to your page and to what you do. Out of curiosity, when someone re-pins something from your page, the natural inclination is to check them out. Many people then read your bio and then follow the link to your page. The site is responsible for driving a lot of traffic to external websites.

Pin photos of things which will inspire you to write about your chosen subject.

For example, if you are writing a book about health and fitness, pin beautiful images of fit people, healthy foods and recipes to your page. Naturally, as well as inspiring you, this will inspire others to visit your page, like your pins, comment and re-pin. Every time any of those activities are carried out by a person visiting your page, all of their followers are alerted to what they have done and on whose page via their social media sites as well as on Pinterest.

This is part of the reason why the site has the potential to make any website or personality go viral very quickly.

Pinterest has collective boards which allow others to pin things that they like to your profile. For the fitness analogy, this could give you a fair idea of what THEY want to see and read which could help you immensely for your next book.

By using Pinterest in the above ways, you not only build up a network of potential fans, you also get to learn in an innovative way what they want to see and read. By

http://authopublisher.com communicating in this unique way with your potential readers, you can adjust your output and tailor it to what they want to see and read which is a big deal because your readers and your potential readers are the most important people in your journey to selling your self published book.

7 Things You Should Know About Pinterest.

Pinterest is a social media website which is based around the concept of pinning images to pin boards. As discussed in part three of this series, it is the newest kid on the social media block and has a lot of potential in terms of how it could help self published authors to get the word out about their work. Below are seven quick facts you should know about Pinterest as a self publishing author.

1. Pinterest is a record breaking website Pinterest is officially the fastest growing website in history. In January 2012, the analysis company comScore reported that the website officially hit 11.7 million hits in one month. Having only been launched in 2010, this makes Pinterest the first website in history to go past the 10 million visitors per month mark.

2. People spend a A LOT of time on Pinterest Visitors spend more time per visit on Pinterest than any other social media website.

On average, people spend 15 minutes per visit n Pinterest compared to 12 minutes on Facebook, and just three minutes on Twitter. If you get things right and use it correctly, this could mean your potential readers spending 15 minutes at a time just looking at your pins!

3. Pinterest drives serious traffic to websites and blogs Talking of visitors, Pinterest drives more traffic to the websites and blogs of page owners than any of the other social media sites combined. This includes Google plus, Twitter and Facebook.

4. Demographics Statistics show that in 2012 about 85 per cent of American users were upper middle class women aged 35 to 44. In the UK, the demographic data shows that 56 per cent of users are men and that they tend to be 10 years younger than their American counterparts according to data published by the Telegraph Newspaper. This means that overall, users tend to be 25 to 44 and upper working class. This demographic is one that likes to read so this is useful information for authors.

http://authopublisher.com 5. Pinterest is perfect for advertisers This is because of the very visual nature of the website. The majority of people are in fact very visual, meaning that their senses are stimulated by images. There is no advertising on the website yet, although the same Telegraph newspaper article reported that the founders are discussing using advertising as a way to monetise the site to take advantage of this fact. As someone wishing to sell your book, you are essentially an advertiser. This means that by using Pinterest effectively, you get to advertise yourself to your target market for free.

6. Do not use it only for self promotion Remember the 80/20 rule from parts one, two and three of this series. Only promote yourself 20 per cent of the time. The rest of the time post things which you think your potential readers will want to see.

7. Signing up requires an invitation if you are not on Facebook or Twitter If you are on Twitter or Facebook, you can sign up straight away, assuming you are signed in to either of them. If not, you have to request Pinterest to send you an invite to join. The good thing about signing in via Facebook or Twitter is that as soon as you do so, your followers are alerted, so you may find that you have a small army of followers on Pinterest relatively quickly.

http://authopublisher.com

Social Sites for Authors GoodReads This site is a must-have for all authors and aspiring writers alike. If you aren't already on the site, you must go register now. This resource is invaluable. There are so many neat things you can do. Start by creating an author profile, list your eBooks/books next. Then, add some of your quotes if you want. Start a discussion group. Make friends. Ask for reviews. You can even upload your eBook to sell on the site if you'd like. The best way to use GoodReads to promote your books is to hold a free book giveaway contest. This is only available for print books, but it's worth doing. Order a few copies from Lulu and start a giveaway. GoodReads will pick the winners, somewhat based on who is likely to be interested in your type of book or genre. This is an outstanding and reliable way to get some thoughtful book reviews on the site, from avid readers. You are responsible for shipping the books to the winners.

ManicReaders We mentioned this site for their cool review depot, but it is also a great social reader and writer community as well. Explore what it has to offer and create an author profile!

Author's Den This site is similar to the previous two mentioned. Create an author profile, upload some of your work. Play around with the features and check out the possibilities offered by this social author site.

Amazon Author's Central This is a great service provided by Amazon. Once you register your profile, it will appear towards the bottom of your eBook's product page. People can click on it and it will take them to a profile where you can add an RSS feed to your blog, upload author photos, submit an author bio and also allows you to track your sales and recent customer reviews, when you log in. Must-have for anyone selling their book on Amazon.

http://authopublisher.com

Social Author Resources.

BookWhirl This is a free (with paid options as well) promotional site for authors that allows them to create a listing for their titles and generate a neat author widget with a preview of their work.

Storify A very neat and brand new app for building and creating stories centered around a topic or person using social media search engines. Easy drag-and-drop interface allows you to add content from Twitter, YouTube, etc. Do a search for your book title and add search results to your "story." Fun to play with.

AuthorGraph (formerly KindleGraph) Very cool way to add autographs/signatures to your eBooks for fans and readers who collect autographed copies. Easy sign in with Twitter account and other users can request a signed copy.

Novelrank Incredibly useful app that will generate an RSS feed to update every time you sell a copy of your eBook on Amazon. Great sales tracking tool and totally free to use.

Odyl A new app for promoting your books on Facebook.

Zinepal Really great way to turn your blog into an eBook. Customize it, add advertisements and other images, etc. Only $5 per ebook with custom options, or you can buy a monthly subscription.

http://authopublisher.com

Bonuses.

Convert your book to an audio book and have more publishing options. Simply click on the cover image below for a free downloadable copy.

Easily convert your manuscript into kindle format using this amazing, FREE software, courtesy of Authopublisher. Simply click on the image below to download the software.

http://authopublisher.com

Make an author blog.

I want you to make the best of your journey, and if you haven't taken me up on my offer where it comes to the book site, or taken action yourself, I want to offer you a great (almost free) service.

I will set up your author blog for free, including a theme and all the plugins so you can start blogging immediately. All you have to do is get your hosting by clicking the banner below and email your welcome email that Hostgator sent you to admin (at) authopublisher (dot) com. As soon as I receive it, I will set up your blog immediately.

To make this deal even greater, I will send you 60 Wordpress training videos you could watch to assist you in getting the best out of your blog.

http://authopublisher.com I will also include a free blogging guru system for you so there is absolutely no guesswork involved.

http://authopublisher.com

Why You Should Read My Blog and Sign Up. Is it wise to brag on yourself or toot your own horn? Well, in this day and age where you have to pay high profile bloggers to write something nice about you and run big payday contests to get people to write, I think a little ‘free publicity’ in ones own free report is appropriate.

Some of my friends would not agree with this, but when you have your own product, or brand (which authopublisher have been intended to and have become), then testimonials are definitely an essential part of a marketing plan. When you have a book, doesn’t it sell WAY better when it has a few good reviews? Well, who is there to market your blog at first besides the owner.

Klout is quoted as saying that Authopublisher influences over 2000 Twitter users in the following topics: • • • • • • •

Blogging Publishing Amazon (& Kindle) Writing Money Marketing & Authors

The real reason I wrote this post is for a little blog promotion and to show you that if you hang out here, you can trust us (me and my very capable contributor staff).

Here’s how it all came about.

I did an interview with Jenifer Hancock (I joked with her in the interview about people asking for her ‘Jen Hancock’ when they ask autographs) and she played along, which was nice.

After the interview, I referred her to a post I did about Amanda Hocking’s Pricing Strategy and she went and had a look. Here’s the interactions between us.

http://authopublisher.com

http://authopublisher.com

Well, Jennifer took my advice to heart and has JUST released that book we spoke about in the comments above that introduce a topic for 99c and introduces or leads into her actual book that is priced at (under correction) $2.99. I think this is a great strategy, especially for internet marketers and bloggers trying to establish themselves as an expert.

Not only did Jennifer take my advice and write the book, she gave me and this blog a mention in her acknowledgements. Here is a screenshot of that.

http://authopublisher.com So, I hope you get involved and connected to Authopublisher. We have won an award for being the best publishing blog 2011/2012 and aim to win many more. As you may have realized, much of this report comes from my blog, and therefore I want to encourage you to connect with me online in the following ways: Read my blog daily.

Follow me on Twitter.

http://authopublisher.com Like Authopublisher on Facebook.

Sign up for my RSS feed.

http://authopublisher.com Sign up for my RSS feed updates via emails.

Care to write a review?

Have you found this report valuable? Please help spread the word about it's availability by writing a review about the report on your blog, on forums that you frequent (perhaps a forum post, blog post or signature link?), in guest posts or even sharing it on social media channels.

This is the link to the report: http://www.authopublisher.com/sign-up/ Sharing is awesome :) Share this report on Facebook.

Share this report on Twitter.

Share this report on LinkedIn Share this report on Google+ Share this report on Pinterest.

I would also appreciate your feedback using Facebook here. You'll see it's the signup page on my blog, but way at the bottom is a section for Facebook comments.

Thanks you for downloading this report and I sincerely hope you have found great value in it's content.