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Book Promotion

Back to Writing on the Road to Self-Publishing

Ezines – they are a fast and free opportunity to self publish. Moreover, publishing in ezines can help you get motivated to write your book, and even promote your book after publication.

We’ve discussed the idea of publishing excerpts of your book as individual articles or stories. You can simply locate a website and query that site’s webmaster about publishing your article. Make sure you include your biographical byline, which mentions your book as well.

This is more of the same, but concentrating on ezine publication.

There really are countless ezines in existence now, each with a specific niche or category. And all of them are voraciously hungry for content.

Rather than seeking them out individually, you can place your articles into databases that ezine editors frequent for content. They use your article free of charge, and in exchange, include your biographical byline, which, again, includes information about you and your book.

Here are some to check out:

http://www.ezinearticles.com

http://www.ebooksnbytes.com

http://www.connectionteam.com

http://www.netterweb.com

http://www.ideamarketers.com

http://www.goarticles.com

http://www.knowledge-finder.com

http://www.articlecity.com

Don’t send an article you’ve already published last week. Instead, write another chapter of your book first (since finishing your book the main goal, after all.)

Have fun. Keep writing.



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Self-Publishing

Self-publishing on the Road to Self-publishing

The Internet is great. Really. There has been perhaps no more organic, democratizing invention in the world since Gutenberg’s printing press. How empowering is the ability to compose an original idea, or start a new novel, and upload it to a website for the world to see within minutes.

If you are like me and find great pleasure and power sharing your writing with the world, be sure to bring it to an appropriate forum, preferably in a place where it will provide long-term promotion assistance for itself down the road. You also want to post where you trust the people to provide worthwhile feedback, rather than pilfering your ideas for their own or criticizing your writing for the sake of self-promotion.

Where do you start?

The answer depends upon what you hope to achieve, and the way in which you want to “spread the word.” Writing online is no easier than writing offline. In fact, it may seem harder at first. The extra effort is worth it later on.

If you’re seeking instant feedback on your writing from other people, I would suggest participating in online writing groups and forums. Yahoo offers “Groups” specific to a wide array of writing subjects. You can access the Groups section by going to the Yahoo main page at http://www.yahoo.com

Google offers groups also, and you can find them on the Groups link on Google at http://www.google.com

By conducting a subject or category search from either of these venues you can find a number of possible groups in which to participate.

I recommend you spend some time exploring Yahoo and Google groups. Register for an account with the one you like best. Don’t necessarily start writing online yet. That comes later. Instead, just look around and become familiar with the “environment.”

Then, down the road you’ve accomplished two things in one – established a platform or presence in your market and generated content to bring to your self-publishing option for production into a book.


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Networking, Self-Publishing

Exploring Affiliate Options in Self-publishing

With the inevitable, ongoing explosion of print-on-demand, there are more authors than ever before dipping their feet into the self-publishing game. In fact, the term dipping feet may be an understatement considering the volume of new, developing, and somewhat esoteric information involved in self-publishing. Some authors come from the traditional arena and have a degree of knowledge and understanding corresponding with their experience. Other authors may have independently published books in the past, consider themselves savvy, and are now seeking the advantages that come from joining forces with a full-service print-on-demand self publisher.

The great majority, however, are new authors, anxious to learn, but not possessing much history or background in the industry. They often rely upon the information they read on the internet, hear from friends/associates, or receive from their publisher. In fact, the term self-publishing has expanded in scope to include publishing content in blogs, forums, online newsletters, even videos.

You may find yourself somewhere along that continuum or in the process of researching publishing options for your own material. Have you considered that your expertise can benefit other writers while at the same time earning you additional income? The process is called Affiliate Marketing and a great opportunity offered through various self-publishing leaders.

Affiliates can often earn up to 10% or more for each author they refer. Here are the nuts and bolts:

It’s perhaps the easiest and fastest way to share your knowledge as an industry thought leader while at the same time expanding your own platform and earning extra income in the home based internet business, and you do not have to develop your own service. Instead, generate revenue by simply referring authors to recognized, professional custom self-publishing services through the credibility your experience provides. What’s more, you get to see the investment that comes from seeing authors reach their publishing goals.

– Karl



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Have fun and keep writing

Book Reviews, Self-Publishing Book Review of the Week

Get Your Self-Published Book Review Posted

If you are a self-published author and have a review for your book that you would like posted online, we can help!  In the interest of helping self-published authors find success in publishing, we will post a weekly book review of a self-published book. 

To submit your review, please send it to selfpublishingadvice@gmail.com with a .jpg image of your cover.  Self Publishing Advice will post your review and cover image on our blog. 

If you do not have reviews for your book yet, here are some blog posts that may help give you some ideas on how to obtain them:

Getting your Self-Published Book Reviewed
Soliciting Book Reviews for your Self-Published Book
More on Getting your Self-Published Book Reviewed
Book Review Leads for the Self-Published Author

Karl Schroeder and Kelly Schuknecht
https://selfpublishingadvice.wordpress.com

Book Promotion, Choosing a Publisher

Quality and Control in Self-Publishing

A very informative article was recently published outlining one author’s success self-publishing over traditional publishing, most notably in terms of higher net royalties on book sales. In fact, the case study recorded significantly higher royalties on a lower quantity of book sales along that self-publishing route.

The book pricing advantages of self publishing is no stranger to this blog, nor the increasingly successful population of authors who follow that path. But this particular article also mentioned that writers should never have to pay for publishing upfront.

Unfortunately, I’ve seen authors who have been pulled in by that concept, but end up publishing an often poorly produced book sold back to them at highly marked-up costs. (Publishers are businesses and need to make money, after all.) So that model really only puts poorly produced books right back in the hands of authors, not readers.

The successful alternative does involve upfront publishing fees, which opens a direct contract between authors and publishers including quality, professional production on books that are competitively sold in the marketplace, where readers buy books. Make sure your self-publishing choice includes those things like cover design, interior formatting, and full distribution. Also, as I’ve mentioned before – and the significance here is worth the redundancy – make sure your publisher offers pricing flexibility (control) and 100% royalties on book sales.

I hope that helps. Have fun and keep writing…

Karl Schroeder