Marketing your book (Part 9)

You have written your book, it's been published in print and you have 700 copies on a pallet in the garage plus you've just listed the book on Google Play, Amazon and in iBooks. Now you are waiting for the sales and royalties to roll in - right? Ah, no - that's not how it works.

"One does not simply" meme. Source: http://www.mememaker.net/

As I tell our authors, writing and publishing your book is the easy bit, now the hard work starts with marketing. 

Back in the day, authors had publishers who would take them on publishing tours and spend $30,000 on a marketing plan for each release. And that still happens. There are authors who have those services available to them. However, these days most authors do their own publicity, especially if they want to make any money.

If you've received a $15,000 advance for a 10,000 print run from a major publisher, congratulations and we'll say good bye here. If you're still with me, let's get down to taws.

I'm assuming you've taken my advice and have a good author photo, a readable blurb for your book and social media assets developed. If you don't have social media assets let's start with the basics.

Social media assets

You need a website dedicated to your book, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account as a minimum. Depending on the book (cookbooks - think Pinterest, young adult - think Tumblr, business - think LinkedIn) you will need other assets. Stay with the mainstream social media mentioned above and/or Google+, Instagram, and YouTube because your time is limited. 
You can only manage a certain number of accounts well with the time and resources you have.

Consider using Hootsuite to manage your social media so that you can automate the scheduling of your posts. Use the strengths of your social media assets: share links on Twitter (they get a greater click-through rate), pictures on Facebook and videos on YouTube.

Once you have your assets, you need to maintain them. Try to tweet every day, Facebook once a day, update LinkedIn twice weekly and blog once a week. Add your Twitter feed to your website, so the content is constantly being refreshed (Google loves fresh content).

Add a Google Analytics code to each page of your website so that you can track and analyse your traffic easily.

The great news about all these assets is that they are free to create and operate. You only start adding costs once you start advertising, which I recommend but only once you have all your social media and other digital assets working for you.

Social media is everywhere - so you can be too.

#485987885 / gettyimages.com

 

Other digital assets

As an author there are some great sites devoted to books where you can create an account and get your books reviewed. In fact, there is an entire industry devoted to just that. goodreads is essential. It's free to create an account and you can add that great author photo, your bio and write a blog that could reach 30 million book lovers. There are other sites but goodreads is a great place to start. 

Your book's website

Your website is a salesperson who works 24/7 and doesn't take sick leave. It should be as slick as you can make it. Have a look at the sites of other authors in your genre for what works. Huffington Post surveyed its readers for their favourites and never underestimate the power of independent bloggers and reviewers - they will link to your website.

Blogging

Now that you are an author, you should make it a goal to write a blog post each week. If you have a WordPress website or blog site, you can put the goal in the settings and it will remind you to post a blog via email.

Content for social media and blogs

Clearly, if you have speaking engagements, book signings or launches you will write about these. You should also have a friend take photos of you signing books and speaking, so that you can include them in your posts. 

But what happens when you run out of ideas? Firstly, sit down and write out 10 blogging topics and set yourself the task to write one a week. Next, use the tools built into HootSuite and other sites to curate content for you. Enter a list of key words and it will suggest content for your to post from others. Follow key accounts on Facebook and Twitter and repost and retweet their content: it gives you content for little effort and the other account may return the favour and share something of yours.

For your blog topics think about things that will interest your readers - where did your characters come from? How did you work out which topics to address in your business manual? What is it like being an author? People are interested in your story. So tell a story about writing the book or how you became an author or what prompted you to write the book. Use storytelling, similes (phrases that use the words 'like' or 'as'), active language, metaphors and detailed examples. These techniques will make your posts more interesting. 

Speaking engagements

Libraries often host "Meet the author" events.
Source: www.eastlakelibrary.org/

Offer to speak at your local writers group, editors society, service club or any other group you think might be interested in your topic. Contact your local council about "Meet the author" events at public libraries.
Visit your local bookshop and see if they will have you speak at one of their author lunches. Browse your local Meetups for groups that may like a guest speaker. 

Try and line up at least 12 speaking engagements a year. Aim to sell a set number of books each time you sell. After a few speaking engagements, you will be able to gauge how many books you sell on each occasion. If you sell 20 books each time you speak, then you will need to have 35 speaking engagements (almost one a week) in a year to clear those 700 books out of the garage. 

Join societies

In every state in Australia there are societies of authors and publishers, writing centres, book clubs and writers festivals. Get involved, take a stand or stall at any relevant conferences where you think your book might sell.

General publicity

Write a media release for your book launch. Send it to your local paper as well as the major metro dailies as well as bloggers and relevant sites for your topic. Provide professional photographs of you and images of your book cover. Use a wire service such as AAP Medianet or PRWire to distribute your release (this will cost money). If you don't have a budget for a paid service use one of the free PR newswire services. At the very least, get your release indexed by Google News. 

Knock on doors

It's not very likely but you can try the direct approach to getting your book in bookshops. Try Readings, Gleebooks, Dymocks (try your local Dymocks first), and independent book stores (check the directories hosted by Australian Independent Bookseller and Danny Yee).

Use a distributor

If you have a print book, send your book to a distributor. Dennis Jones & Associates is the most used service in Australia but you can also try Macmillan Distribution Services, Australian Book Group and United Book Distributors. If you have a specialist topic  that you can approach (like Koorong for Christian resources or Co-op for tertiary education).

If you have printed your book through a print on demand service such as Lulu or Blurb, they too will have distribution services that you can pay for.

Marketing calendar 

 

Now you have all your assets developed, your distribution plan in place and a few dates for conferences and speaking engagements plus all those commitments to tweet, post, and blog and vlog (video blogging). Organise all your commitments into a Google Calendar (another free asset). Input your daily, weekly, monthly and ad hoc commitments. You will soon find that you have something penciled in for most days/weeks.

Google calender synchronises across multiple platforms and devices. Source: blog.smartvisite.com/

That sounds daunting but if you aim to be a full time writer, then you'd better get used to putting yourself into the public gaze to vend your wares. 

And the best-selling tactic?

The very best thing you can do to sell your first book, is to write and publish your second. Think of it as renewing your product line. We all want the latest, the freshest and the most up to date, however, if we can get a bargain we might very well buy an older model. Game of Thrones didn't become a hit in the first season. Some people are catching on now and Season 1 is selling well in iTunes.


If you've got this far, congratulations! You are well on your way to being a successful published author. We wish you all the very best and hope that you become a household name or at least sell all the books you have printed.

Red Raven Books is the publishing and imprint arm of The Copy Collective. Find out how we can help you today.

Selecting your publishing platform for your next book (Part 8)

You’re almost there! You’ve written the work, laid it out and now you need to get it out. But how? Maureen Shelley shares her research on publishing platforms in part 8 of Blog series “10 Simple Steps to becoming a successful published author.”

Print, digital or POD?

Once, it used to be easy. You could print or you could go digital. Now, you can print, go digital, go a bit each way with short print runs and print on demand (POD). Do it yourself, contract it all out, contract out a bit or contract a lot. It is up to you. Never have so many people been publishing books and never have there been more choices available to the would-be author to get their manuscript before a reading public.

Printing in Australia

We use and recommend Griffin Press in South Australia. They are a traditional printer with some extras for small publishers (like us), self-publishers and big publishers. People always want to know what it will cost to print their book and the answer is "it depends". It depends on book length, size, paper chosen, cover stock chosen - even the size of your margins can make a difference (larger margins equals more pages). 

Self-print options available at Griffin Press. Source: www.griffinpress.com.au

So let’s say you have 

1. 316 pages 
2. in a Trade B format paperback 
3. with gloss cover (matte is more fashionable but it scratches more easily)
4. with book cream pages 

For 1000 books that will cost you around $5 a book.

Now, you can get a quote out of China for about $2 a book for the same format manuscript, however it will cost you $3 a book to ship it to Australia. That will still cost you around $5 a book.

It will cost you more if you want proofs rather than just checking a PDF file and it will cost you more if you ship stock to more than one "drop" (address).

You then have to store your books where they won’t absorb damp, smells (cigarettes, open fires, factories etc), or be attacked by insects or rodents (so maybe not the attic, basement or garage - unless they are clean, dry, airy vermin-proof areas). 

If you must store your books in the garage, put your cartons on a plastic pallet - they at least won’t absorb damp from the ground. You can buy plastic pallets from eBay or Gumtree.

Our recommendation is to print in Australia if you have a ready-made audience. If you are well known - even if it’s in your own niche - you have an audience already. If you then market to that audience, you should get sales and hopefully can move 1000 books inside of a year.

The books that sell the most in Australia are children’s books (however, they tend to have a lower cover price so the authors may earn less than writers for the general market with a higher price) and tie-ins to movies and TV programs (good luck with that). 

Female authors tend to do better with cookbooks and diet books, unless you are Mem Fox or writing romance novels. Andy Griffiths probably sells more books in Australia than any other Australian author but they’re cheaper so Andy may not earn quite as much as Matthew Reilly (I don't actually know, this is a guesstimate based on reported sales).

If you write a book that can be used in schools, you will have a much better chance at success. Around half of Australia's reported $2 billion+ publishing industry is for publications in the education sector.

You can view monthly top seller lists at Nielsen BookScan to get an idea of what is selling locally, who is writing them, and the retail price at local book shops.

Top 10 selling books in Australia, retrieved 1 August 2014. Source: www.nielsenbookscan.com.au/

So, if Andy, Mem and Matthew are selling (say) 40,000 books each, you can expect to sell 400. If you have an audience or have created an audience, you may sell a print run of 1000. A best seller in Australia is 3000 sales or better.

Let's say your book will cost between $5000 and $10,000 to produce 1000 copies:

• $5 to print the book 
• plus up to another $5 per book in editing, proofing, design, typesetting, and other expenses

Of those 1000 copies you may sell 400 for $19.95. So your $5,000 to $10,000 investment will net you $7,980. 

However, you could be the author that sells 990 of your 1,000 print run (10 copies for deposit at the National Library of Australia, some sold through marketing, and the copies your mum buys for Christmas presents) and you’ve made between $9750 and $14,750 profit. Start to do that twice a year and you have the beginnings of a new career.

In addition to sales, your book may also be purchased by public libraries and the Public Lending Rights (PLR) scheme may apply. If you strike gold and your education-related book is picked up and used as part of the National Curriculum, then the Education Lending Rights (ELR) may also kick in. These schemes are administered by the Ministry for the Arts, a part of the Australian Attorney General’s Department. Guidelines can be found at the Ministry for the Arts webpage.

Your decision to print should be carefully weighed. On the one hand, you are taking a risk. However, you will control your sales and distribution and, if you are a self-published author all of the money from sales (less your costs) is yours to keep. If you do want to print in Australia, then Griffin Digital can do short runs if you don't want to commit to more than 500 books.

Digital

Using a digital format to produce your books is a no-brainer. There really isn’t a good reason to not produce a digital version of your book. The difficult part is to decide what formats to publish in and whether you will do it yourself or contract out part or all of the effort. I discussed preparing your digital file in Part 7 of this series.

PDF

A PDF is the easiest, simplest and cheapest form of digital publishing available to you. You can write the book yourself, use an online program to undertake editing or proofing (some are even free to use) and you can then convert your manuscript by printing to PDF in your word processing program. 

You then have an ebook that you can give away, send to people who subscribe to your blog or sign up on your website (assuming you are marketing some other product), or upload to a platform such as Scribd. If you give away your book, you can upload to Scribd immediately. If you want to sell it, you will need to go through one of their digital publishing partners: 

If you have ecommerce on your website, you can take payment for your book and provide the PDF as a down-loadable file once payment is made.

You can also sell your PDF ebook through platforms such as those used by Scribd or through Vook or IngramSpark.

Conversion and distribution platforms

If you don't want to convert your Word doc to an ebook version yourself, there are platforms that will do it for you. This is a small selection but they offer some of the largest distribution networks with up to 39,000 outlets around the world.

Popular conversion/distribution platforms

Platform	Your share	Fees
BookBaby	60% of list = 85% net royalties	$0 to $249+, cover design $149 - $279
Booktango	100% of net royalties	Free basic package, premium packages from $49 to $349. Booktango is part of AuthorServices, which is a division of Penguin Books.
Draft2Digital	60% of list = 85% net royalties	No fees but retain 30% for US tax if not from US unless a signed W8-BEN form is lodged (Australia & NZ have tax agreement with US), free ISBN
INscribe Digital	??	“flat fees per title distributed & a small revenue share per title sold”
IngramSpark	40% of list/agency price	$25-$49 per eBook plus $12 per title per year - dearest but also can be paired with POD (print on demand); it also distributes to the most outlets
Smashwords	60% of list = 85% net royalties	No fees, free ISBN
Vook	60% of list = 85% net royalties	No fees

Free conversion tools

There are tools that allow you to convert your word processing file to the popular formats for free. They tend to be a bit fiddly but if you have the time and are prepared to be patient, then you can convert your files yourself and upload to the popular stores yourself:

• Amazon, for Kindle - still the category killer
• iTunes - Apple's iBooks are getting more popular
• Google Play - PDF, ePub or .ASCM (Adobe's format with DRM)

You will want - as a minimum - a version for Kindle AZW, iTunes (ePub) and Google Play. You may also want versions for Sony LRF, eBook FB2, Microsoft LIT, and TCR (Symbian platforms). 

The Calibre open source program can be used for DRM-free (digital rights management-free) books and you can use the free converter at Online Convert to produce most popular formats. Both these sites request donations. Online Convert has a paid premium service as well. Zamzar also converts one ebook format to most others and is a free service.

 

Direct digital services

Amazon - Kindle Direct Services

Amazon really created the ebook market. The Kindle (love it or hate it) is still the best-selling e-reader and some authors make a living through just listing with Amazon. If you choose to publish exclusively with Amazon you will earn higher royalties (70% net instead of 60% or less). Publishing in the Kindle format is complicated (I've done it) but Amazon have excellent resources for self publishers. 

Apple - iBook Author

If you just want to publish in iTunes and your books need colour images, then I would recommend using iBook Author. It is free but you will need a Macintosh computer. Apple provides excellent resources for the self-publishing author but if you publish directly with Apple you can't sell your book anywhere else. You can give it away, though. Authoring with the iBook Author is a “drag and drop” experience, particularly if you have multimedia that you want to include.

Apple - Book Creator (for iPad) ($6.49)

If you don't have a Macintosh computer but still want to publish directly to iTunes, you can use an app on an iPad called Book Creator. It will produce a reasonable book that can be published to the iTunes store and will be available for sale or distribution. It is better for short books such as picture books for children or self-help books (not so much for 52,000 word novels) and you can incorporate both video and audio into your book. More than 5 million books have been published with Book Creator, so it is well worth trying.

Google Play

To publish directly with Google Play you need to create a Google Partner Account. Google accepts PDF and ePub formats and provides a step-by-step process for authors and self-publishers. After establishing your account and sorting how you'd like to be paid and where you’d like to sell your book, you can list your book in Google's book catalogue, set your price and distribution and then upload the book.

 

Print On Demand (POD)

Print on demand services enable your books to be listed as “in stock” or “available now” in online stores. There are a lot of POD services out there. I'd recommend you look at three: Lulu, Blurb and IngramSpark.

Lulu

Lulu has been in operation since 2002, which is a long time in the POD space. Lulu lets you set up your account for free. It has a slightly different take on fees. Lulu takes a “base price” deduction from your RRP (the cost of producing the book), as well as a “share”. However, it claims that authors receive more net than if they print with Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Ingram. These three publishers all charge less to produce the book but they have higher distribution fees. While the POD prices for Lulu are reasonable (about $10 a book), in the past shipping was a killer and often left a book costing as much or more than it would cost to print in Australia. However, Lulu now have print facilities in Australia and this is less of a problem.

Blurb

While the Blurb POD book costs more (about $11 to $12 for a 200-page book printing 1000) it allows for much more flexibility than the usual self-publishing service. You create one file and Blurb converts it to PDF, fixed format ebook and POD book. You can sell through Blurb, your own site or Amazon. This is a great platform for photo books, coffee table books, art books or similar. If you want a straight black print on book cream paper, there are cheaper options but perhaps not those that are as easy to use or as flexible.

IngramSpark

While IngramSpark is probably one of the most expensive options it also has the greatest reach. You can produce an ebook and a POD book through Ingram. If you produce your eBook and POD book at the same time, the set up fee is $49, however, if you order 50 books for your first print run the $49 fee is refunded. If you print 50 books of the one title and ship to a single address, the $49 is recredited to your credit card. If you choose IngramSpark, your book (eBook and POD) will be available in 39,000 outlets. That is as good as it gets. What you need to decide is whether you are prepared to put all the “publishing” in the hands of one partner and collect a lower net revenue or whether you want to do more of the leg work and receive a bigger share of your list price.

Personally, I think that it is better to put more of your time into marketing your book than distributing it so my recommendation is to go with IngramSpark. 

If you work with a company such as ours, we would put it through the publishers’ equivalent Lightning Source (also owned by Ingram, which is a big US publisher).

Red Raven Books is the publishing and imprint arm of The Copy Collective. Find out how we can help you today.

Let’s Get Technical: Preparing your digital file (Part 7)

Maureen Shelley turns technical in Part 7 of Blog series "10 Simple Steps to becoming a successful published author", on preparing your digital file.

The good news about digital files is that the ebook format takes care of all the extra formatting that are required in a print-ready manuscript. The bad news is that you have to take it all out: all those extra section breaks, foot notes etc you put in for your print book - they all have to come out. This is where you will thank yourself for using the inbuilt formatting available in word processors. 

Less is more:

 

Remove all section and page breaks, all foot notes and end notes, remove all underlining.

✎ If you want to emphasise a point use italics, not underlining. 

Remove the table of contents and page numbers. 

✎ Leave in your chapter headings. 

Remove any hidden commands. 

✎ The long dash in Word is an example: some digital programs don't deal well with these so use short dashes or change your punctuation. 
✎ Apostrophes are another punctuation mark that can cause issues. You may have seen a question mark in some digital files; it is usually in the place where an apostrophe would be.

Remove all blank pages. Remove all notes pages.

Your file should be continuous (no separate pages; the text should flow on) with your title page, frontispiece, the introduction and your body copy.

 
It may be tempting to save your file as a text file to get rid of all the formatting. This is a temptation you should resist, as it will only create additional issues, such as having to replace all the chapter headings' format.  

If only it were this easy. Source: http://donnielight.files.wordpress.com/

Ebooks aren't necessarily great places for tables and graphs. You may need to convert these to JPEG files. Then you will need to embed your images or convert them to outline files remembering to save them in the correct format if they are in colour. Your ebook platform will have specific instructions on each of these steps.

Hyperlinks need to be formatted differently for ebook versions, so if you include them read up on how to do it. There are plenty of digital publishing blog sites, so search and you shall find.

There are about 40 digital formats 

Source: newepublishing.com

and epub is the most widely used. However, as a self published author you will want to get onto Amazon and the Kindle uses proprietary software. Also, Apple's iBook store uses a modified epub (it has different cascading style sheets or CSS), so you may need at least three versions of your ebook.

Storyist is great publishing software that lets you create manuscripts (and screenplays) and convert them to popular digital formats. I recommend you investigate your options. When you upload your manuscript you will need two PDFs: one for the cover and one for the body copy.

There are dozens of ebook publishing sites and platforms. They will convert the file for you and publish to thousands of outlets. However, they will also manage your sales (which could be a good thing) and you will get the proceeds. Expect to receive between 30 and 50% of the RRP or recommended retail price.

Another way to publish is simply to use a PDF file, thereby avoiding formatting challenges. Scribd will publish PDFs and Scribd has a very large readership, or you could chose to have a downloadable file from your own website; that way you don't share your sales with anyone.

You will need to decide whether it is better to have all the money and fewer sales or less money on more sales. If you have good traffic to your website - say 2 to 3 million visitors a month - then by all means publish only on your own site.

You will need a separate ISBN (International Standard Book Number) for your digital manuscript and a separate National Library entry for the digital format. You will not need a barcode. If you publish on Amazon, you will be given their equivalent of an ISBN.

 

A last word on digital files: use the strengths of the format. 

Source: http://www.thebookdesigner.com/

You can add social media buttons and links, links to your GoodReads review page or Amazon listings for your other books - all from within your manuscript. It makes sense that if someone has just read your book, they may want more or they may tweet about it. Don't stand in the way of your readers doing your marketing for you. Read up on the HTML codes to insert these buttons into your manuscript. It could be well worth it!

We will publish a list of sites for self-published authors at the end of this series or you could just Google it if you don't want to wait.

Red Raven Books is the publishing and imprint arm of The Copy Collective. Find out how we can help you today.