Kelly Speaks – Page 48 – Self Publishing Advisor

News From the Self-Publishing World: 11/16/15

This week in the world of self-publishing:

Gwyneth Paltrow to launch publishing line

In true entrepreneurial fashion, superstar actress and businesswoman Gwyneth Paltrow has decided to start yet another new venture … and this one’s into our world, the world of self-publishing. According to Andrea Mandell in a USA Today article from November 10th, Paltrow will be calling her self-publishing line “Goop”––the same name as her existing fashion/beauty/lifestyle website. It’s unclear at this point whether Paltrow will open up the new company for other aspiring authors, and how content will be selected and curated, but for now there are plans in the works for a cookbook and a beauty book at some later date. Goop (the self-publishing company) will exist in partnership between Paltrow and existing publishing powerhouse, Grand Central Publishing.

7 Reasons You Should Write A YA Novel, From One Woman Who Did

On November 11th, Jessie Rosen of Bustle published a meme-rich list of reasons why authors should write that long-delayed YA novel … and now. I’m happy to report that point #6 is, in her words, “You Can Self-Publish and See Just as Much Success.” (The accompanying GIF image is, interestingly, pulled from the recent 50 Shades of Grey film––and keeps company with other GIFs on the list from Pretty Little Liars, Divergent, and Harry Potter. It’s nice to know once and for all that popular culture has officially been infiltrated by Our People.) Anna Banks and Amanda Hocking also win mentions. And if this list isn’t enough to convince you that writing a YA novel is a worthwhile investment of time and energy, perhaps it will provide a good dollop of inspiration to publish whatever other kind of book you want to write. (Hint: it doesn’t have to be YA!)

A Three-Book Deal in Sheep’s Clothing

“There is proper etiquette on approaching a bookseller with a request to stock a self-published title,” writes Sue Corbett in this November 10th Publisher’s Weekly piece on the runaway self-publishing success, The Sheepover. The joy of this sweet little picture book’s journey to an international market with Little, Brown and Company is in fact a story of the authors’ local Vermont community: when the husband and wife team first approached a local indie bookstore owner with their book, it was an eavesdropping customer who purchased the first copy, pulled in a friend to buy a second copy, and convinced the bookstore owner not only to stock a handful but to write a blog post about the book––a blog post which ended up capturing a lot of attention both at Publisher’s Weekly and among those who subscribe to PW emails. And those original eight copies? Paid for by a Kickstarter campaign linked to the authors’––John and Jennifer Churchman––Facebook account. And if this story doesn’t warm the cockles of your heart, even after the first Autumn snow, then perhaps it will at least inspire you to try self-publishing a picture book of your own!

After Lawsuit Dismissal, Author Solutions Looks Forward

On a more “serious” newsy note, a decision has been made in respect to a long-running lawsuit leveled against self-publishing supergiant Author Solutions that has far-reaching implications for indie authors looking to publish in the near future. In his November 13th article for Publisher’s Weekly, Jim Milliot charts the progress of the lawsuit, which was filed in 2013 by three authors accusing the company of fraud, and how this case intersected with the company’s transition to a new president and CEO––Andrew Phillips. While the case has been dismissed, Phillips admits that he is “happy to be able to focus entirely on growing the company’s business.” Author Solutions, which was first formed by the merger of AuthorHouse and iUniverse in 2007, has since gone through sequential ownership by Pearson, Penguin, and finally, Penguin Random House. With all the resources of one of the Big Five publishers behind it, Author Solutions has instituted something called the “Author Care Initiative,” with the goal of improving customer satisfaction and retention in the face of an increasingly competitive market. And they’ve seen measurable improvement in their numbers, which speaks to the value of actually caring about the authors! You can read about the full set of measures as instituted by Phillips in the article.

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.

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.

digital census, e-readers, ebooks, futurebook, ipad, Kelly Speaks, Kindle, mobile

Demystifying the Digital Census : E-Readers are OUT, Mobile is IN

As promised in last week’s “News from the Self-Publishing World,” I’m going to take a closer look at the results of FutureBook‘s Digital Census of 2015 and break down just what the implications are for you and me, indie and self-published authors. FutureBook, an offshoot of the well-known institution, The Bookseller, is now in its fifth year and rapidly becoming a litmus test for the emergence of digital technologies and their assimilation into common usage across the developed world. The conference, which self-advertises as “bring[ing] together more than 50 speakers from across the media world for a day of reckoning, realisation and revivification,” may well come to guide these emergences as well as reflect upon them at some point in the future–it has become so important.

This year, according to the FutureBook, the five main takeaways from the conference are as follows:

1. Mobile overtakes tablets and dedicated e-readers as the device of choice […]

2. Digital sales are still growing, but they are also slowing […]

3. Self-love levels recede as many indie authors report lower satisfaction levels […]

4. Publishing remains very much divided on matters digital […]

5. … And the majority believe publishers remain unprepared for what is coming [….]

I’m going to take these points one at a time, break them down, and hopefully unpack the important details. Here’s what the final FutureBook publication says about mobile tablets and e-readers:

This little summary is, of course, useful in its own way for delineating the boundaries of the conversation at hand–a conversation in which self-publishing authors have a great vested interest. The stakes are high for those of us who depend upon ebook sales for our income, and so knowing where to focus our attentions (and, let’s face it, our money) is handy. (And as we have suspected for a while, we should be focusing on the Kindle Store as a marketplace although perhaps not on the Kindle as a piece of hardware. For more on that, take a look at my post on Kindles in the e-reader-related series I wrapped up last week.) But there’s an aspect of the conversation that this summary neglects: why.

Why are e-readers diminishing in appeal?

Is it something to do with a lack of novelty (they’ve been around for a while now), or because the function of reading ebooks can be better performed with other hardware (like the iPad or iPhone), or because of something else entirely? Reports from industry experts seem to suggest a little of all of the above. One TechRadar article cites “multifunctionality” and “age” as driving the market these days, with readers under 25 reading far more ebooks than the national average but doing so with the devices they’re always carrying with them anyway–their phones. This puts “a demographic bomb” under the e-reader, and as the devices’ primary user base ages out of the buying population, so too will the devices themselves. And this Christian Science Monitor article argues that the whole system has been “top-heavy” from the beginning, with only a handful of companies getting in on the e-reader market in the first place and therefore rendering it fragile and dependent on sales figures that can swing dramatically from one quarter to another. We can’t ignore those other voices, too–like this one from the Independent–that the act of turning a page on an ebook simply isn’t rich enough to edge out the superior experience of holding a print book in hand.

All this to say, we can’t afford to forget that any entry into the canon of Great Technologies can be supplanted by changes in market demands, ousted by demographic shifts, and displaced by some new shiny gadget. Remember that whole “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” expression? Well, it probably originated in the early 1700s, and we still eat eggs and put them in baskets today. By which I mean to say: some things remain the same, and some things change. It seems that what needs to stay the same is our dedication to adaptability in the rapidly changing world of self-publishing.

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. ♠

amazon, from the archives, Kelly Speaks, metadata

From the Archives: “Using Amazon Tags to Promote Your Book”

Welcome back to our new 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 4th, 2011 ]

Today’s post is by book marketing industry expert, Kelly Schuknecht.

A Tag on Amazon is a keyword or category label that customers can add. Tags can help customers find similar items on Amazon. For example, adding Tags to the listing for your book on Amazon can help customers find your book when they are searching the Tags for similar books.

You can find the Tag section within a listing on Amazon towards the bottom of the page. Here’s an example of the Tags associated with the book 33 Million People in the Room:

As a customer, you can click the existing Tags and add your own Tags, up to 15 per item. As you can see, customers have Tagged this book as “facebook,” “internet marketing,” “social media marketing,” “twitter,” and several other things. The first Tag, “facebook,” shows that this book has been Tagged “facebook” by 46 customers on Amazon.

After reading this book, a customer might be interested in reading more books about Facebook. Clicking on the “facebook” Tag will open up a new page of all products that have been Tagged “facebook” (currently 585 products).

On the left side the customer can narrow the search results by other popular Tags. For example, if the customer wanted to read more about marketing on Facebook, they could select “internet marketing” and narrow the results to 101 products. The results might give the customer a few ideas of books they might want to read, such as:

#1 – Attention! This Book Will Make You Money: How to Use Attention-Getting Online Marketing to Increase Your Revenue by Jim F. Kukral

#5 – Social Media Marketing: Strategies for Engaging in Facebook, Twitter & Other Social Media by Liana Evans

# 11 – Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business (New Rules Social Media Series) by C.C. Chapman

As an author, make sure your book is Tagged on Amazon with a number of keywords that will help potential readers locate your book. Look at the Tags for similar books to be sure you are using the same Tags, when appropriate.

I’ll cut to the chase: Amazon’s tagging system officially doesn’t exist anymore. The company released a statement as far back as 2013 that they were discontinuing the service. “Originally,” the statement goes, “the Tags feature allowed customers to tag products based on their interests and suggest a different organization of products on Amazon. We’ve since continued to innovate on our more popular features such as Wish Lists, Customer Reviews, and Improve Your Recommendations.” Which is all well and good (and we’ve even written about wish lists here, customer reviews here, and recommendations elsewhere) … but it doesn’t do much to soothe the burn of the original system’s absence, as these other features look and feel completely alien to tags, and deliver rather different benefits.

When I did a little digging into Amazon’s decision to ditch tagging, I discovered that there is, in fact, a consistent company-wide explanation for why they disappeared. While various (occasionally irate) Amazon customers speculated in the company forums that self-publishers were using the tagging system to drive traffic to their books (presumably at the expense of others), Amazon itself has remained calmly aloof from the fray and instead told curious authors, simply, that “Since the introduction of those features [mentioned above] the usage of Tags, and therefore their value to our customers, has declined. We have removed TAGS in favor of the replacement features. Tags that you created are still available under Your Profile page.” In other words, the time, energy, and money that Amazon had been pouring into maintaining the tagging system (at least in regards to software support) wasn’t drawing enough continued interest from authors to make it worthwhile. Again, that’s cold comfort for those who actually liked tags and were using it to good ends.

What should we take away from this story? Not despair in Amazon’s usefulness to the self-publishing author, I hope, but rather a realistic understanding of what the changing landscape of massive profit-driven enterprises can look like for end users. It’s not always a comfortable outlook, since, as this one example makes clear, Amazon must be willing to shed any of its features that no longer further the bottom line for investors, sellers, and customers alike. That’s how such international titans retain their hold on their various markets: through sheer force of will, and ruthless business (as well as programming) logic. We as indie and self-publishing authors have to be prepared to adapt to whatever opportunities are offered, and never stop striving to master new ones. The more diverse our skill sets and masteries, the more flexible our self-marketing strategies ultimately will be––and the more longevity they will attain. ♠

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.

e-readers, ebooks, ereaders, Kelly Speaks

The Current State of E-Readers | An Author’s Guide : Summary Edition

Well, if there’s anything I’ve learned about e-readers over the last few weeks as I compiled information for this series, it’s that we as self-publishing authors have cause for both great hope and for concern. I don’t think I’m an unbalanced optimist when I say that I think the scales tip towards hope rather than despair, either, even though in all things I advocate both caution and meticulous research.

So, how does someone go about shaping the self-publishing process to suit the current e-reader market and distribution network? Simply put, there is no easy answer. As with any technological gadget, niche (or even mainstream) market, and expensive purchase, you have to consider all of the angles––and as an author and producer of digital content, not just as a reader! Readers have only to consider those aspects of a purchase that lead to user satisfaction; they don’t have to worry about balancing the needs of others when they think about what device to pick up in a store, and which ebook to download from the internet. Authors, particularly self-published authors, do. You as an indie or self-publishing author are probably laying out significant packets of money to make sure your book is as beautiful and well-presented and as effectively marketed as it can be, so you want to make sure you’re actually getting your money’s worth.

The key to a successful relationship with e-readers is, I think, one of establishing healthy boundaries––and knowing when to cut your losses. And while it’s true that the best of all possible situations as an author is to present your readers with as many options as possible, it’s worth keeping in mind that the Kindle, the NOOK, the Samsung Galaxy Tab, and the iPad were not all created equal––and they have not all sold in equal numbers. I set out to give you a fair assessment of the current state of e-readers, and by golly, I really hope that’s what I’ve done. It’s useful to you to know, for example, that the iPad has outperformed all of its other rivals as a physical product, but that the Kindle store sees the highest rates of ebook distribution. It’s equally useful to know that readers are turning in droves to their smartphones as reading tools––over and above their dedicated e-readers and even over their tablet computers. The future of the e-reader, ebook, and in some small part, the self-published author rests with digital clearinghouses like the Kindle and iBook store, the Google Play store, and direct downloads. (And someday, I’ll take a good long look at how digital book piracy plays into this equation, too.)

If anything I’ve said sticks with you, I hope it’s not something I’ve said you should not do; I really hope you remember how positively excited I am about the new opportunities that are beginning to emerge. Certain markets and products, like the Barnes and Noble NOOK, might be declining in popularity––but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t make your book available to those who choose to stick with it to the end. First and foremost, you have to decide what your priorities are as an author. Ease of accessibility? Or maximum profits? Or most effective use of time and seed money? (Just remember that the best way to sell your books is to keep writing and publishing new ones!) Ultimately, the state of e-readers has reached a stability and maturity that inspires me to think that, yes, we might have been feeling our way in the dark a bit, but we’ve stumbled across something truly wonderful. We live in a global network rich with innovators, and I truly think we can trust to see ever greater diversification and more specialized opportunities in the digital book market.

Next week, I’m going to start with an in-depth examination of The Bookseller’s key findings in their 2015 Digital Census. Things are changing rapidly––and perhaps not so much for authors and readers as for the ever-evolving relationship between self-publishing and traditional publishing companies. More on that in weeks to come!

Elise Speaks, from the archives, Kelly Speaks, Self-Publishing

From the Archives: “How Much Do Self-Published Authors Make Per Year?”

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[ Originally posted: July 13th, 2011 ]

You want to become a self-published author, but you also have bills to pay and a lifestyle to maintain. So you pull up Google (or your search engine of choice), and search for “average income for book authors” or “average income for self-published authors”. You skim the results but can’t find any solid statistics. There’s a good reason why. Ready for it? Authors aren’t paid a salary. They earn royalties based on the sales of their book. These royalties are paid to them on a set schedule – usually provided that they meet the agreed upon “minimum earning threshold”.

So, will I be able to pay my bills if I become a self-published author? That’s an excellent question. Unfortunately, there is no “one size fits all” answer to it. When you publish a book, you are essentially taking a “gamble” on yourself. Many authors keep their day jobs until they are able to earn enough to support themselves on their book sales alone. One dedicated Outskirts Press author made $100,000 in only 180 days (6 months). However, there are some authors who don’t earn anywhere near this amount in a year. Furthermore, there are some authors who may not sell even one book over the course of a year.

How do you know where you fall? Self-publishing is all about investing in yourself. Given that successfully publishing a book involves 20% writing and 80% marketing, you should naturally spend most of your time/money on promoting the book after you write it. If you need help, you may consider enlisting the services of a book marketing consultant.

The income of a self-publishing author is 100% in their own hands. No one can “predict” how much you will earn as that is only a result of two things: the quality of your book and substantial effort in marketing it to the right audience.

Back in 2011, Elise was so perfectly on point that it’s almost a crime to revisit her post and attempt to add a touch of 2015 to it–––but I’d like to deliver some good news. With the expansion and stabilization of the indie, hybrid, and self-publishing markets, greater numbers of authors than ever before are able to make bank at the end of the year. Exceptions like the one Elise mentioned remain exceptions, but now it’s not unheard of to stumble across authors like Mark Dawson, who reportedly put away some $450,000 after selling his book through Amazon Direct. And the very fact that we can now cast a skeptical eye toward Amazon shows just how far we’ve come, I think, in that we now have established parameters for what’s “acceptable practice” and “sound ethical behavior” in our self-publishing platforms. We have options, now, and we can afford to pick fights with industry supergiants if they act like the profit-driven corporations we know they are.

That said, we also have made progress in nailing down some of those “solid statistics” that Elise mentioned––another benefit of participating in a maturing market. In May 2015, AuthorEarnings put out its annual report. AuthorEarnings, a website which has made its purpose to “gather and share information so that writers can make informed decisions” also has a “secondary mission […] to call for change within the publishing community for better pay and fairer terms in all contracts”––which is pretty wonderful for self-publishing authors like you or me, who want to know where we fall on the spectrum of wage-earners in our industry. AuthorEarnings’ report shows, in great detail, how the profits from the sale of ebooks is divided up between authors, publishers, and Amazon. And in their longitudinal study, published in September of this year, they give us a few handy statistics. For example:

“5,643 authors in our longitudinal data set — or roughly 2.8% of the original 200,000 — whose Kindle best-selling ebooks appearing on Amazon best seller lists were consistently earning them $10K/year or better.”

And:

“[A]lmost half of these 5,600 authors — over 2,200 of them — are consistently making $25K/year or more on their Kindle bestsellers, and more than a fifth of them — over 1,200 authors in the data set — are making $50K/year or more on their Kindle best sellers alone.”

Keeping in mind that we’re talking about trends and percentages, not instruction much less guarantees, these numbers present a huge leap forward from what we had at our fingertips even just four years ago. They present lots of opportunity for hope (lots of self-publishing “midlisters” are making good money), but also groundwork for caution (lots of authors are not visible in the data at all). You certainly ought to keep Elise’s admonitions to self-promote carefully, often, and effectively. The best way to sell your books is to make sure that they’re readable, “findable,” and affordable!

In closing, I’m going to ask the same question now that Elise did in 2011: What level of success have you seen as a self-published (or traditionally-published) author? Have you been able to maintain your lifestyle on royalties alone? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below. And even more, we’d love to be on hand to cheer you on. You’re not alone in this endeavor! ♠

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