A while ago I had the pleasure of working with Author Marilyn Pontuck on a book proposal–I did a copy edit of her cover letter and shared some information on the publishing world in general. She has kindly agreed to let me share a before-and-after of her work so you can see the difference that editing makes (I’m only include excerpts, to avoid making this
Indie publishing is a viable option for many authors who don’t want to pursue traditional publishers for whatever reason. But that doesn’t mean it’s for everyone (despite some people’s claim that “anyone can do it”) and it certainly doesn’t mean indie publishing or self publishing is for you. Let’s look at qualities and skills of successful indie publishers and what might hold you back. 4
We recently looked at some of the reasons many author websites suck and I shared a few good author website designs with you as inspiration. Today let’s move on to some tools and resources that can help you improve the author website you already have or build a beautiful new site to promote your books. [box type=”info”] Note that the information below is for those
We already looked some of the reasons many author websites suck. And I promised I’d highlight a few decent examples that would inspire you to improve your own Web designs (or at least finally set up a site — I’m amazed by how many indie authors neglect them altogether). This post was supposed to be that list. But let me tell you, it wasn’t easy
Authors are notorious for having poorly-designed websites. That’s not to say all authors have dated, crappy sites littering the Web. But more in this group do than most others I’ve come across. Sometimes author site designs are downright frightening, looking like someone formatted some text in Word and slapped it on the Web in the mid to late-90s, never to update it again. The saddest
Book spines — oh, they’re important alright. I was reminded just how important they are on my weekend book-buying binge at our (sadly) closing Borders. At the end of the day I left with nearly 30 new mysteries. And then I ordered 11 more online to fill in the gaps in the series, and still have another order or two to place in coming weeks
As an e-book publisher should your rankings be based on your low-ball rates or on the merit of your work? Coming from the traditional side of e-book publishing, I’m a fan of the latter. I believe in premium pricing when you put out quality work. And I believe in letting your individual market help determine your rates — not Amazon or the general masses. Nonfiction
Can you handle more than one publishing project at a time, or do you have to be completely focused on one thing? I fall into the former group, actually thriving when other people might feel overwhelmed. And there’s no reason to push yourself to that overwhelmed status in order to handle multiple projects. You just have to know how to set limits and work with
The following is an interview with independent author, Peter Bowerman. Bowerman is the author of The Well-Fed Writer and The Well-Fed Self Publisher (a book I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone interested in pursuing indie publishing). When did you first decide to self publish, and which was your first self-published book? I decided to self-publish my first book, The Well-Fed Writer (2000), after only half-hearted attempts to
When “indie publishing” is discussed here at All Indie Publishing, we’re talking about professional independent publishing. That means there’s an entrepreneurial element as opposed to publishing just to see your name in print. You plan to make a serious go of it. You plan to make money with your books. You work with professionals to put out your best work possible. You won’t see many
There’s a not-so-new copyright infringement threat that seems to be becoming even more prevalent these days — so-called PDF search engines. In the last two weeks alone I received notification that three of these sites were publishing my content without a license or permission. What’s happening? Well, these sites purport to be about helping you find .pdf files. First of all that often means they’re
One of the best things you can do as a freelance Web writer is diversify your income streams by creating, and selling, informational products. I would hazard a guess that the most common informational products for freelance writers to be selling would be e-books or reports (you also might sell membership to premium content on a website though). Now I’ve tried a few different services
Whether you’re a freelance writer or blogger, you’ve probably had to choose niches to write about at one time or another–perhaps a niche for your new blog or e-book, or choosing what topics to specialize in for client work. There are millions of niches out there that you can write about or blog about, so it always baffled me that people have a hard time
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”
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,
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
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
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
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
If you haven’t been poking around the comments here at AFW, you may not know about my upcoming monthly writing challenges in 2008. So here’s a bit of background on the first two upcoming challenges: January: E-book Writing Challenge In January, you’ll be challenged to write an e-book in 14 days (the final 14 days of the month). During the first half of the month,
I was going to wait until the new year to really test out E-junkie, but decided to give it a go today while working on my new business site (so I won’t have to manually distribute my first e-book anymore). The setup was pretty simple, quick, and painless, and on testing, the delivery is working wonderfully. The big question was whether I should use E-junkie