Author: selfpublishingadvisor

amazon, elizabeth speaks, in your corner, search engine optimization, Uncategorized

In Your Corner: Optimize your Amazon presence!

Amazon is, for all intents and purposes, the powerhouse when it comes to the book distribution process.  It doesn’t seem to be a temporary thing, either; authors and publishers alike simply must acclimate to the fact that to sell a lot of books, they first must tailor their Amazon presence to be an attractive one.  And Amazon seems to have good intentions insofar as providing resources goes: its architects have dedicated incredible resources to creating better ways to connect authors with their readers.

There are a lot of ways to promote your book on Amazon, and since sales through this website may very well account for a large percentage of your overall book sales, it’s worth making sure you’re aware of all of the options!

amazon warehouse

The first step, of course, is to figure out what you’re doing right.

To do this, locate your book listing on Amazon by searching the title or ISBN.  Once your book listing is fully loaded, make sure your cover is showing.  If it isn’t there yet, make sure to upload a quality image for your readers to view–preferably at a high resolution.  Double-check that all of the information on display is accurate, and check back every few weeks to make sure it stays up-to-date and glitch-free.  This all is predicated on the assumption, of course, that you already have your book for sale on Amazon … but what if you don’t?

Create an Author Central account.

This account differs from the normal customer account you may already have on Amazon as a result of buying something (or many things).  An Author Central account allows you to better manage your books, and the process is free, so there are zero reasons not to create one.  To begin, navigate to authorcentral.amazon.com and register your profile, following the on-screen prompts to add your books to your bibliography, create a blog, edit or revise your online descriptions, and use a number of other tools on offer.

Returning to your book listing page, it’s vital that you include only relevant and compelling sales information with a positive marketing slant that will increase both your exposure and the number of people who actually buy your book.  That’s money in the bank!  Streamline your page to avoid the clutter of white noise (information that distracts from what’s really important) and reassess regularly.

Go for those reviews.  Go for them.

Amazon rewards activity on your Author Central profile page and on your book page listings, to the more reviews you have–the more people who will be directed to your book via Amazon’s search algorithms, and the more people who will buy and review your book.  Interesting Factoid Alert: This is the definition of a positive feedback loop!  You want your book’s activity to outweigh the activity on all other books of comparable genre, content, and publication date–so in a sense, it is a bit of race to rack up the reviews.  To get these reviews, it’s a good plan to:

  1. Write online reviews for other books.  This gets your name out there, establishing you as an authority, and will occasionally be reciprocated by those authors you review.
  2. Entice people you know to review your book.  And if you don’t yet know a host of eager reviewers, consider hosting giveaways or offering discounts to potential reviewers.
  3. Mark positive reviews of your book as ‘helpful.’  There’s a link attached to each review on your book that allows other viewers to gauge the review’s usefulness (and accuracy).  You can ask your other friends and followers to do this, too.

Books without reviews are like books no one is buying–Amazon’s algorithms tend to leave them out of search engine results and “If you like this, you might also like this” recommendations.  It’s unethical (and fairly easy for others to spot) to give your own book a five-star review, but you shouldn’t shy from asking others to.  The worst they can say is ‘no,’ and there are plenty who will say ‘yes.’

Share your book using Amazon’s built-in features.

Picture this: sending an Amazon-branded email to all of your friends and acquaintances.  Imagine that the email contains a large image of your book cover along with its retail price, star rating, and an enormous inviting button saying “Learn More”!  Well, this option exists, is free, and is almost ridiculously easy to use.  All you have to do is locate your book on Amazon, look at your sales detail page, find the “Share” button (usually on the right-hand column).  Click “Share” and crack open your list of email contacts.  You can enter the email addresses for anyone you know who might like to know about your book, following the on-screen prompts to enter up to four hundred people at a time.

Amazon also makes it easy to share your book listing on social media.  You don’t have to copy the link manually; just click the Twitter, Facebook, and other social media icons on your book listing page–and again, just follow the prompts to log in and post the link to your followers.  Easy peasy!  And the best part is … every ‘hit’ on your book listing page boosts your online presence and optimizes your Amazon page within their complicated system.  Give yourself a leg up and explore all of your options!

amazon warehouse

You are not alone. ♣︎

Elizabeth

ABOUT ELIZABETH JAVOR: With over 18 years of experience in sales and management, Elizabeth Javor works as the Manager of Author Services for Outskirts Press. The Author Services Department is composed of knowledgeable publishing consultants, pre-production specialists, customer service reps and book marketing specialists; together, they all focus on educating authors on the self-publishing process to help them publish the book of their dreams. Whether you are a professional looking to take your career to the next level with platform-driven non-fiction or a novelist seeking fame, fortune, and/or personal fulfillment, Elizabeth Javor can put you on the right path.

 

Book Design, Cover Design, Kelly Speaks, Uncategorized

The Book Beautiful: The Cover

While the old adage “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover” is one all too oft repeated, we all know that we’ve been in a bookstore and picked up a book with an author and title we weren’t familiar with simply because the cover appealed to our senses in some way. That’s not to say that the heart of the matter isn’t what happens to be inside the book; I can just as easily recall how many times I’ve put down that same book with the interesting cover after scanning a few pages and deciding it wasn’t for me.

When you’ve completed a book that you’ve poured your heart, your soul, and countless hours into, it’s important that your piece physically reflects how beautiful of an accomplishment self-publishing can be. While the traditional means for designing a book cover happened to be very time consuming and left a lot of authors underwhelmed with the result, luckily for today’s authors, we live in a digital age which makes designing a book cover more exciting and involved (especially for a self-publishing author)!

Nowadays, you can ‘pin’, ‘Like’, and ‘Share’ graphics; better yet, you can share your potential book cover ideas on social media and get feedback from potential readers. You can get readers involved and have them vote on their favorite cover, or even host a contest that allows readers to submit cover ideas of their own! But perhaps we should backpedal before we get ahead of ourselves and ask what message do want your book cover to send?

As the author, you of all people know best what audience it is you are trying to target and the essential theme your book most embodies, be it: inspiration, achievement, mystery, romance, revenge, etc. etc. Once you’ve nailed down your audience and theme, the visual metaphors that you have to work with will become more obvious.

No matter who your audience is, you want them to be excited when they see the cover of your book. You want to stop people walking by the bookstore, or walking by the bookshelf, and you want to evoke their curiosity and pique their interest. If we take a look at the covers below we will see captivating images that begin to non-verbally communicate the scope of the story the author has also artfully fabricated:

When a book cover is able to explain the scope of a book, it allows the reader to save precious time wading through the myriad of titles in libraries and bookstores.

Remember when designing a book cover that sometimes less is more. The title, your name, and a striking image are often enough. Don’t feel the need to crowd the space with over-thought or crowded typography and definitely avoid stock images that could hurt your book’s credibility.  Need I give examples of cheesy, godawful book covers? No, but I will anyway.

I won’t annotate any further, as a picture is worth a million words.

Make sure the cover of your book, no matter how many words are inside of it, has a picture that is worth all the hard work you put into it. Remember that human beings are visual creatures and that the cover of your book is an important marketing tool. Be professional, be thoughtful, but also be bold!

 

Thank you for reading!  If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or contributions, please use the comment field below or drop us a line at selfpublishingadvice@gmail.com.  And remember to check back each Wednesday for your weekly dose of marketing musings from one indie, hybrid, and self-published author to another. ♠

Kelly

ABOUT KELLY SCHUKNECHT: Kelly Schuknecht is the Executive Vice President of Outskirts Press. In addition to her contributions to the Outskirts Press blog at blog.outskirtspress.com, Kelly and a group of talented marketing experts offer book marketing services, support, and products to not only published Outskirts Press authors, but to all authors and professionals who are interested in marketing their books and/or careers. Learn more about Kelly on her blog, kellyschuknecht.com
from the archives, Kelly Speaks, Marketing Your Self-Published Book, Uncategorized

From the Archives: “The Importance of Genre”

Welcome back to our Tuesday segment, where we’ll be revisiting some of our most popular posts from the last few years.  What’s stayed the same?  And what’s changed?  We’ll be updating you on the facts, and taking a new (and hopefully refreshing) angle on a few timeless classics of Self Publishing Advisor.

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[ Originally posted: March 27th, 2012 ]

The genre of your book is one of the most important decisions you will make when self-publishing. It will impact who buys and reads your book as well as how reads it.

The most important to thing to remember when choosing a genre is to not pick a genre too soon. Too often, authors set out thinking “I want to write children’s books” or “I want to write adult mystery novels,” but writing often takes on a life of its own and your book may not best fit in the genre you originally intended.

Once the book is finished, it is important to consider the audience you hope to reach. Are children your target audience? Are professionals in a certain field your audience, or do you want your book to appeal to a wide, general audience? A narrow genre can limit the readers who find your book. This is one of the few cases where general can be better.

Finally, think about how readers will find your book. Will they primarily search online, or will they visit a  bookstore? If your readers will be searching online, consider keywords when choosing a genre. This will ensure that your book shows up in the search results.

If you are still unsure about the genre of your book, talk to other writers and people who work in the publishing and book distribution industry. Visit your local bookstores to look at the titles in your genre and talk to the sales people. Seeing and hearing what other writers are doing and what readers are buying can help make this difficult decision easier.

– by Cheri Breeding

Genre is an important element of your book, before and during and after the publication process–but I must (politely) take a different tack from the one that Cheri Breeding took back in 2012.  In my personal (and somewhat expert) opinion, an author–particularly a self-publishing author–shouldn’t think about genre at all until after the manuscript is completely written.  I’m not saying that if you have a project underway you should intentionally scrub all thought of genre from your mind, but I am saying that your novel or book of poems or illustrated children’s book should be written the way it demands to be written, and those demands evolve over time as the characters and plot take on life of their own.  A book should not be written as a slave to notions of genre and all the expectations that go along with those notions.

genre book covers

The true importance of genre comes into play after the manuscript is written.  At that point, yes, you can take genre under consideration in reshaping whatever needs to be reshaped in order to reach masterful perfection–if you want, if that proves helpful to you–and you can take notes from the authors you admire whose works exert influence upon your source of inspiration.  But the best part is when the manuscript is done being a manuscript and has become a book you’re willing to send out into the world, because the best part happens when you start crafting something else entirely: your marketing strategy.

Genre is one of the most important discovery tools out there for authors of all stripes and colors.  In terms of importance, it’s right up there with personal recommendations and an attractive book cover–and even the most attractive of book covers doesn’t do much for sales if it doesn’t represent the tone and content of the book, giving hints and clues as to what the reader will find there.  And that’s … kind of the same wheelhouse as genre, isn’t it?   Genre is so fundamental to book discoverability that booksellers and watchdogs don’t just break down how many people buy books because of genre, but how many people buy books because of a highly specific genre–whether that’s science fiction, fantasy, romance, nonfiction, crime fiction, or any other of a number of genres available for discussion.

You can put genre to work in the marketing process first and foremost by ensuring that your marketing strategy lines up with your book’s genre–or genres.  Hybrid and cross-genre works are gaining ground in a crowded marketplace looking for fresh approaches to literature, so don’t be afraid to embrace the multi-dimensionality of your work–you just might have to use language that touches on the buzzwords of both categories in your promotional blog posts, tweets, and metadata.  And regardless of the genre of the book you’re publishing, you need to employ the language of genre in pretty much every scrap of promotion you put together.  Whether it’s in an on-air interview or in a press release or in the description you upload with your book trailer to YouTube, genre is your ally.  The more you talk about it, the more your book will turn up in the discussions–and indexed search results on Google and Bing–and that’s good news both for you and for your readers.

Never dismiss the importance of genre!  Just … don’t let your work be defined by it.  Your book enriches its genre, and informed the dimensions of what its genre or genres will be defined by in the future.

Thanks for reading.  If you have any other ideas, I’d love to hear them.  Drop me a line in the comments section below and I’ll respond as quickly as I can.  ♠

Kelly

ABOUT KELLY SCHUKNECHT: Kelly Schuknecht is the Executive Vice President of Outskirts Press. In addition to her contributions to the Outskirts Press blog at blog.outskirtspress.com, Kelly and a group of talented marketing experts offer book marketing services, support, and products to not only published Outskirts Press authors, but to all authors and professionals who are interested in marketing their books and/or careers. Learn more about Kelly on her blog, kellyschuknecht.com

 

Kelly Speaks, news from the self publishing world, self publishing news, Uncategorized

Self-Publishing News: 8.8.2016

And now for the news!

This week in the world of self-publishing:

The title really says it all, in this case: says Alison Flood in The Guardian on August 5th, “A father who tried self-publishing the bedtime story he made up for his daughters has landed a surprise order of 2,000 copies from Virgin Atlantic to help children sleep on night flights.”  The book in question, Stephen Holmes’ The Great Hot Air Balloon Adventure (illustrated by Kev Payne), was inspired by a bedtime story Holmes had been telling his daughters for years–and he never had the intent to publish or sell until Madison, age seven, requested it. The story of how his book connected with Virgin Atlantic is an interesting one: having ordered an intial print run of 1000 copies and having sold roughly half that number, Holmes decided to send a copy to an airline executive via LinkedIn as a spur-of-the-moment inspiration–and the airline enjoyed it so much they decided to order an additional print run of 2000 in order to distribute copies on their night flights. The book, according to Flood, “tells of best friends Tom and Jessica–the names chosen by his daughters – who are taken on a night balloon ride by a ‘very well spoken’ rabbit. They drink hot chocolate and bounce on clouds, before meeting a friendly owl and flying home to bed.”  The icing on the cake?  Flood gives a brief run-down at the end of her article on the progress self-publishing has made in recent years.

“It’s the best choice for self publishers to publish their magazines easily and quickly without any delay,” writes Veronica Linn in this August 5th piece for WhaTech.  FlipHTML5, once voted the “best magazine newsstand app maker by users around the world,” gives publishers “the chance to create realistic CSS3, jQuery and HTML E-magazines from PDF versions instantly which they are distribute through online or offline outlets.” This is good news for self-publishing authors, who often need to capitalize upon timeliness in order to turn a profit.  Says Linn, “All one has to do is to upload the input material, insert personal logo and multimedia content and change themes and backgrounds to achieve the look they want.”  It’s worth noting that Linn, who as an employee of FlipHTML5, is not exactly unbiased in the service of self-publishing–but in many ways her piece hits all of the right notes.  To read the full release, click here!

“More than half of all science fiction magazines failed to publish fiction from black authors in 2015,” writes Andrew Liptak for The Verge on August 4th: “Speculative fiction magazine Fireside Fiction has commissioned and released a report detailing an unwelcome revelation: speculative fiction magazines and online fiction sites are failing to publish stories by black writers.”  Liptak reports on the report, calling it “damning” and that “of the 2,039 short stories published last year across 63 magazines, only 38 were published by black authors.”  These stats are fairly self-evident, indeed, but what do they have to do with self-publishing?  It all has to do with the part short stories have to play in boosting the science fiction genre.  Says Liptak, “Short fiction also allows authors to experiment with form, style, and narratives which can have great impact on the field as a whole. Barriers for specific groups of people hurts the field as a whole by blocking new voices and styles from reaching a wider audience.”  Liptak excerpts an interview with author N.K. Jemisin (author of The Fifth Season and Obelisk Gate), who “noted that some authors that might have otherwise published through traditional markets have found other outlets for their work.”  Says Jemisin (through Liptak), “There’s a gigantic market of self-published and small press published black fiction that kind of eschews the whole traditional published market simply because back in the nineties when all of this really kind of kicked off … the traditional publishing industry basically treated black writers as if they were anomalies.”  So in other words, self-publishing is promoting diversity in a highly structured and often exclusionary genre.  That’s good work, self-publishers!  To read the full Verge article, follow the link.

spa-news

As a self-publishing author, you may find it helpful to stay up-to-date on the trends and news related to the self-publishing industry. This will help you make informed decisions before, during and after the self-publishing process, which will lead to a greater self-publishing experience. To help you stay current on self-publishing topics, simply visit our blog every Monday to find out the hottest news. If you have other big news to share, please comment below.

Kelly

ABOUT KELLY SCHUKNECHT: Kelly Schuknecht is the Executive Vice President of Outskirts Press. In addition to her contributions to the Outskirts Press blog at blog.outskirtspress.com, Kelly and a group of talented marketing experts offer book marketing services, support, and products to not only published Outskirts Press authors, but to all authors and professionals who are interested in marketing their books and/or careers. Learn more about Kelly on her blog, kellyschuknecht.com

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Book Reviews, Self-Publishing Book Review of the Week, Uncategorized, weekly self published book review

“Still Marching On” : A Saturday Self-Published Book Review

Book reviews are a great way for self-publishing authors to gain exposure. After all, how can someone buy your book if he or she doesn’t know it exists? Paired with other elements of your book promotion strategy, requesting reviews is a great way to get people talking about what you’ve written.

When we read good reviews, we definitely like to share them. It gives the author a few (permanent) moments of fame and allows us to let the community know about a great book. Here’s this week’s book review, courtesy of Observations From a Simple Life:

Still Marching On by Lynda Stephenson

Still Marching On

by Lynda Stephenson

Publisher: Outskirts Press

ISBN: 978-1478771982

Synopsis*:

Frankilee Baxter is back! And she is as sassy and resolute as ever. In Still Marching On, Miss Baxter aspires to participate in the Civil Rights Movement, become editor of the Athena College newspaper, and marry Calvin Morris–and odds are, she’ll make her dreams come true with sheer force of personality. A witty young woman with nerve and verve, Frankilee is in no way the traditional Southern sorority girl, which brings disappointment and alarm to her family, as well as shock and dismay to Calvin’s parents. With humor and heart, this highly anticipated third novel by award-winning author Lynda Stephenson depicts the triumphs and the failures of a plucky girl determined not only to stand against the Southern customs she loathes but also to marry the man she loves.

“Here is the story of the irrepressible Frankilee Baxter, who, while she may be a disappointment to the 1960s down-south establishment, will fight to the end for life and liberty, and all that she believes in. I loved it.”

-Carolyn Wall, author of Sweeping Up Glass and Playing with Matches

Critique:

Still Marching On by Lynda Stephenson is the story of a young college girl at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. She must fight against the injustice of the Jim Crow laws and as well as social practices which could keep her from following her dreams.

Frankilee Baxter is a young white college student at Athena College where her roommate, Eleanor, is African American. Together, they join the Civil Rights Movement when racial tensions are very explosive. Frankilee is the type of girl who likes to shock people and study their reactions. She begins to conduct social experiments and writing about her experiences. She is able to sell a few of her stories to the New York Times. She joins sit-ins at a local department store who refused to serve African Americans. She joins Freedom Rides which leads to time in jail. While she fights for social change, she must deal with the everyday issues at home. Her mom is sick. Her dad is having trouble with the bank. Her aunt is trying to bully everyone to follow her plan for the grandfather’s ranch land. And she falls in love with Calvin Morris, a law student who seeks the social change she does. Will Frankilee succeed in her dreams of journalism? Will she be able to forge the social change she seeks to see in the world? Will her dream of marrying Calvin come true?

I enjoyed Still Marching On. It is an interesting book with a passionate retelling of the Civil Rights Movement from a participant who seems so unlikely. The details the author put into the events are graphic but very real. You shiver as you know that person suffered injustices and cruelties as they fought for civil rights. Frankilee is passionate, rash, impulsive and ready to take on the social injustices. The debates between Frankilee and those on the other side and the opinions expressed are dealt with realistically. I highly recommend Still Marching On.

[ reviewed by Jennifer Lara at Observations From a Simple Life ]

Here’s what other reviewers are saying:

Another outstanding book by Lynda Stephenson. Great character development, and very authentic to the period. If you were a college student during the 1960’s you can really identify with the subjects dealt with in this book. The civil rights movement, the freedom riders, the limited professional opportunities for women college graduates, and the predetermined expectations of parents for their children, especially girls. Frankilee, the main character, takes on all these issues with wit, humor, passion, and, yes, her rebellious ways. Ms. Stephenson’s previous book in the Frankilee Baxter series focuses on Frankilee’s freshman and sophomore year; in this book the focus is her junior and senior year. She is more mature, more thoughtful, and more concerned about social inequality. She truly grows into adulthood. Obviously, this is a great book for anyone that was a young adult in the 1960’s, but if you have parents or grandparents that lived through that period and you want to know what they experienced and what life was like, then this book is for you. FINALLY, THE BOOK HAS A GREAT ENDING!

– Amazon Reviewer AdaBill

In Marching On, Frankilee Baxter is fundamentally the same wonderful, perplexing, and often perplexed character that we came to know and love in Dancing With Elvis and The Southern Chapter of the Big Girl Panties Club. In this third novel of the series, author Lynda Stephenson expands upon the theme of integration as it developed in the 50’s and early 60’s. The struggle for civil rights in the South becomes the central factor in Frankilee’s personal struggle to establish her worth and purpose in life. More than ever, she is an idealist who pays dearly for pursuing social and moral goals that clash with purveyors of deeply entrenched bigotry. Though tempered by her comical girlhood blunders, Frankilee at the same time leads the patient reader down (or up) a primrose path seriously darkened by physical and emotional pain.

Looking for structure, Frankilee attempts to summarize her life in literary terms: as classical comedy, which ends with a wedding, rather than as tragedy, which ends in death. Yet more specifically one might say that her willful suffering bespeaks a more complicated persona than one finds in Jane Austin or Emily Dickinson, two of Frankilee’s heroines.

Nor is Frankilee’s journey deeply tragic in the Shakespearian sense of an uber-complicated Hamlet. Her sacrificial cause is rooted in the powerful utopian dream of idealists such as John Lewis and Martin Luther King, Jr. Buttressed by the somewhat enlightened progressives among her friends and family, her optimistic belief in a more just world seems realistically achievable.

Marching On is the story of a small town girl in the throes of becoming a world class woman. She entertains us with an overlay of buffoonery, but she is defined by her capacity for love, including love for her friends, for her family (no matter how obtuse or obnoxious); for her man, and, most importantly, for the unvarnished Truth, however awkward or undignified that makes her feel. In her own personable way, Frankilee Baxter embodies the correct side of our unfolding history.

– Amazon Reviewer James A. Moore

Book Trailer:

* = courtesy of the book’s Amazon book page.

saturday self-published book review

Thanks for reading!  Keep up with the latest in the world of indie and self-published books by watching this space every Saturday!

Self Publishing Advisor

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