Continuing our series of short interviews with freelance writers, I picked the brain of Kristen King (of InkThinker) on the issues of queries and rejections: What motivated you to create the InkThinker Query Challenge? What’s the most rewarding aspect of it for you personally? I wish I had paid closer attention to my early thought process, because I can’t remember as much as I would
I love swipe files. In my case it’s more of a combination of a swipe pile and collection of swipe bookmarks, but anyway…. If you’re not familiar with swipe files, it’s basically a collection of information that you can use for inspiration in your writing. Here are some of the things I keep in my swipe file: Magazine headlines if I think the format is
I’m launching a new series of short interviews with freelance writers, where I’m asking them five or so questions on a topic they’re particularly experienced with. Today you get to hear from Rebecca Garland: wife, mother, and freelance writer. Rebecca shares some of her thoughts on juggling work and family life when you’re a freelance writer staying home with the little ones. You’re a WAHM
Authors can use testimonials to sell an e-book in a number of ways.. They can be used on the e-book sales page, email newsletters, blog posts, the author’s business site, or just about anywhere the e-book could be mentioned. Here are a few ways people use testimonials: Fake Testimonials Under no circumstances do I endorse this kind of use of testimonials. People essentially use stock images
Having an e-book cover gives you a graphic element to use when promoting your e-book, and it gives e-books more of a traditional product feel (more of a “product” than just a file, from a buyer’s and marketing standpoint). But how do you design and create one? I’m no expert in this area, so I’m just going to point you to a few resources that
As far as I’m concerned, the answer is yes. If you’re trying to sell your e-book (as opposed to giving it away for free), I’d recommend using affiliate marketing (having others sell your e-book for you for a cut of the profits). The two biggest mistakes I made with my first e-book were not having it instantly downloadable and not setting up an affiliate program.
E-book marketing isn’t anything particularly unique. It can be much like marketing a website or blog, or like marketing a physical product (if anything, it’s like a combination of the two). When marketing your e-book(s), keep some of these marketing tools and tactics in mind: Your Sales Letter / Sales Page You have to have some kind of sales page that tells prospective buyers what
After your e-book is written and the price is set, but before you start aggressively marketing your e-book to draw sales, you’ll need to choose a delivery method. Here are a couple of e-book delivery options, and some pros and cons of each: Manual Distribution You receive payment, and manually deliver the e-book via e-mail (or through a link contained within a manual email). Pros
How much should you charge for your e-book? How do you set your e-book’s price? There’s no single right answer for every person or every e-book. However, there are a few factors that every e-book author should consider when setting a price that works for them: 1. What You Need to Earn Start by thinking about how long the e-book took to write, format, and
Some recent personal discussions with a few colleagues got me thinking about ethics a little bit, and how they apply to all of us as freelance writers. We talk a lot here at All Freelance Writing about how to be a successful freelance writer. Now let’s talk about some ethics-related (and just common sense) issues, and how poor judgment can actually kill your career as
Here’s a trick that just occurred to me tonight while getting the next freelance writing jobs post ready for All Freelance Writing (I haven’t tried it myself yet): Go to a site where you can find freelance writing jobs. Search for the term “freelance writers.” Now, instead of just looking for actual job titles for freelance writers, look for freelance editing jobs where the term
When you publish your e-book, should you offer resell (or distribution) rights? Here’s what I think: Paid E-books I’d suggest not offering resell or re-distribution rights on e-books that you’re using as an income stream. This was probably my single biggest mistake with my own first e-book, and one I won’t make again. Why would you want to avoid offering resell rights on a paid
Let’s keep this short and sweet: A lot of writers are intimidated by e-book writing, because they think writing an e-book is going to take a huge time commitment. That doesn’t have to be the case. There’s no right or wrong length for your e-book. It should be long enough to cover your niche topic, and short enough that your particular target market will actually
I talked a little bit before about choosing an e-book format and the benefits of PDF e-books. If you’re a first-time e-book author, I’m going to absolutely suggest that you go the PDF route (as opposed to using e-book compilers to create an EXE file for your e-book). Given that suggestion, here are the only two pieces of software you’ll need to create your very
The two most common e-book file types are PDF (read through Adobe Acrobat Reader and similar programs) and EXE (executable program files). PDF files tend to be much more popular, and there are several reasons for this. Here are a few benefits of publishing your e-book in PDF format: People are often not willing to open .exe files that they’re unsure of, because they can
There’s more to choosing a format for your e-book than PDFs versus executable files (.exe files). Here are a few of the e-book formatting decisions you’ll have to consider when writing an e-book: Do you want your e-book to be in a program file of its own (.exe file) or PDF, or another format altogether? Do you plan to protect your e-book (from copying, printing,
So you’ve chosen a niche for your new ebook, and you have a good idea of what you want to write about. What’s next? Some e-book writers may simply jump right into the e-book writing. Personally, I’m a note-taking, outline-loving, organizational junkie. If you’re even a little bit like me, you may want to plan or outline the content of your e-book before you sit
So, you’ve decided to write an e-book, have you? Well what are you going to write your e-book about? One of the most difficult parts of e-book writing is finding your final e-book idea (or the niche for your e-book). We often have a general idea about what we want to write about. We can use a tool like the Adwords Sandbox to help us
People write e-books for several reasons. One of those reasons is to make money. So why would any e-book author be willing to give their e-book away for free? If you’re planning to write an e-book, how should you decide whether to charge for it or give it away? It really comes down to why you’re writing your e-book in the first place. If your
I saw someone on a forum giving a blogger really bad advice today – essentially that sticking a stupid Copyscape banner (like the one below) will actually somehow protect their content for them. That’s such a load of BS. Here’s what sticking a Copyscape banner on your site really says: Go ahead and steal my site content, b/c I’m quite obviously not aware of how
Have you toyed with the idea of writing an e-book, but find the process a little bit intimidating? Will investing time into writing and marketing an e-book really be worth it? How can you determine if e-book publishing is right for you? Reasons to Consider E-book Publishing There’s more to writing an e-book than making money. Here are a few e-book publishing motivations. See if