One of my goals for 2009 is to take one of my three novel outlines and finish a full draft. I’ve chosen that book. I’ll be spending the New Year focused on writing a mystery that I outlined back around 2004. I’d say it’s been shelved long enough now. (This is one I outlined using the Marshall Plan, for anyone that followed my reviews of
We’ve talked about book marketing here, but e-book marketing has been relatively neglected. So today, in honor of the recent launch of my own new e-book, I’d like to talk about e-book marketing after the launch phase. I’m the first to admit I didn’t put nearly enough effort into pre-launch marketing for my new release – the Web Writer’s Guide to Launching a Successful Freelance
Today I’d like to follow-up on the topic of e-books; not on writing them, but on what comes after. More specifically, I’m going to share my new favorite PDF conversion tool, and we’ll chat about bonuses (for e-books you plan to sell). I hope you’ll share some of your own thoughts and experiences with e-book writing, publishing, and marketing! PDF Conversion We’ve talked about “types”
Not too long ago we talked about character blogs, and I mentioned that I wanted to start one for a novel I’m working on. I’m a big believer in the pre-launch, and want a blog not only setup but bringing in decent traffic and reader interaction before I even consider pitching a manuscript to publishers down the road. To do that, I needed to get
I may be taking a few weeks off before continuing with my next novel project, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about my projects or fooling around with some interesting tools, books, and such in the meantime. So I just thought I’d share a quick run-down of some of the things I’ve been toying with recently: The Marshall Plan Software The Marshall Plan
For one of the books I’m working on, I’ve thought about launching a character blog before I either pitch to publishers or decide to self-publish. I’d like to explore the potential ethical issues of a character blog and see what others here think about them. What is a Character Blog? A character blog is a blog authored by a fictional character – in this case,
You may remember that not long ago I was talking about Karen Wiesner’s First Draft in 30 Days. Well, she has a new book coming out in September, and I wanted to share a few of the tools she’s using for online book promotion during the pre-launch phase. The book is called From First Draft To Finished Novel. As far as I’m concerned, from the
I’m very happy to say that my novel outline should be completed later today. That leaves me with four more days to go through it all, fill in any holes that still exist (I’ve been keeping notes on things like that as I go along, so that should be relatively painless), and make a list of anything else I may want to research further before
I’m happy to say that tomorrow (technically later today at this hour), I should be finished up with writing the outline for the novel I’m referring to here only as Sarah. I still have four days left of my 30-day plan to clean that outline up, fill in any holes, etc., so it’s not quite complete – I’m in the home stretch though. That means
I’m nearly finished outlining a novel (this will be the second completed novel outline with a third starting in a few weeks). The first novel was outlined using The Marshall Plan. The current novel outline is being put together using the plan from First Draft in 30 Days. (The next will be outlined using the plan from Book in a Month, as a means of
Karen Wiesner, author of First Draft in 30 Days (which I’m currently using to outline a novel), got in touch weighing in on the process and addressing some of the comments I made about certain aspects just not “being me.” I wanted to go ahead and share those with you here, so you can have a bit more background on the process and adapting it
As you might remember, I’m working on a novel outline, which I’m detailing at my book marketing blog. There’s a second novel outline planned after that, to compare two novel writing systems. On top of that, I’m sure I’ve mentioned my non-fiction book that I’ve been working on (dealing with marketing, PR, social media, and indie music). And then there’s the Web Writer’s Guide E-book
One of my biggest problems in any type of writing that I do is the fact that I have an endless supply of ideas that I want to pursue. Given that there are only so many hours in a day, writing books and e-books can feel like an impossible feat. So I’m going to kick off this blog by giving you a vague list of
Does the thought of having to travel across the country (or further) to deal with interviews and book signings make you cringe as an author? Would you rather be home working on your next book instead? The good news is that virtual publicity tours have been picking up steam for a while now in the book publicity world, meaning authors can do more to promote
We all know that you have to promote your books if you want them to sell. We should also all know that book PR is a great component of that whole process – the part where you show your book is relevant to potential readers, bring it to their attention, and get some buzz generated. But when working on a book PR campaign, I think
Before you can think about promoting your book, you have to identify your target market – the people most likely to buy your book. Why? Because if you don’t properly target your audience, you’ll waste time and money on ineffective marketing or promotional tactics. Planning is as important in marketing a book as it is in marketing a business. On top of needing to know
Not too long ago, I announced that I would be reviewing two books promising to teach you how to write a novel in 30 days and that I would then be pitting them against each other in actual tests. (Read the reviews or you can visit my book marketing blog to follow my progress with the two plans.) In the comments of that announcement, I
I mentioned previously that I would be reviewing two similar books here on a topic we don’t talk about much – writing a novel. In the case of these two books, both promise to teach you how to write a first draft of your novel in just 30 days. Why Talk About Novel Writing on a Freelance Writing Blog? There’s nothing to say that freelance
Do you think you could draft a book in about 30 days? Two authors say you can, and I plan to find out how effective each of their methods are. I’m currently in the process of reviewing Karen S. Wiesner’s First Draft In 30 Days and Victoria Lynn Schmidt’s Book in a Month. When I finish reading and evaluating each, I’ll be posting head-to-head reviews
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
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,