Tag: Elizabeth Javor

elizabeth speaks, Holidays, in your corner, Uncategorized

In Your Corner: The Spice of Life

Last week, dear readers, I wrote at length about how Thanksgiving isn’t just a holiday for giving and receiving things–if it were, then it would be no different from Halloween and Christmas, save for the stitching and embroidery–but I have to be the first person to own up to the fact that what I wrote wasn’t the whole picture. Yes, Thanksgiving is about doing things and not just about a fantastic dinner spread. Yes, Thanksgiving was borne as a tradition out of a time of real need and desperation–of near starvation, to be specific.

Everything I wrote last week remains true. But it’s not everything that ought to be said about Thanksgiving. And today, the final Thursday of November and Thanksgiving Day itself, I wanted to leave room for reflection. For gratitude. For joy unmixed with lingering doubts or fears over what’s to come, if that’s possible in today’s hectic world. (Oh, let’s face it: It’s always been a hectic world. Maybe once it was safe to eat those candied apples in our Halloween buckets, but by and large life has always delivered challenges in equal measure to its happinesses.)

Ugh–let me start over.

thanksgiving spice

I want to leave the door cracked for thankfulness untouched by everything else that’s happening or going to happen. For you, dear reader. For sticking with us for so many years, for your likes and your comments and your feedback and, occasionally, for calling us out on what we need calling out on. Thank you for being loyal, for being so smart, for recommending us to your friends (or at least, we’re assuming our newer followers are here because they heard about us from someone). For being writers. For bearing the torch and mustering the determination to slog forward through thick and thin. For being ours, and for being yourselves. I know I speak for everyone else here at Self Publishing Advisor when I say thank you, dear reader, for joining us as we all walk down this road together–a road that leads to new challenges, new joys, and a new year.

You are the spice of life.

~ Thank you. ~

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.
Alternative Marketing Methods, Book Marketing, elizabeth speaks, in your corner, Uncategorized

In Your Corner: Making Your Presence Felt

It would be hard to get to 2016 and not feel convicted of the importance of social media in selling books–and, just as importantly, in selling readers on you, the author. The power and influence of social media is uncontested–after all, it has helped feed and foment revolutions in the Middle East, toppling dictators and spinning the mythological webs that create internet celebrities. They have also, demonstrably, created the framework by which self-published authors become self-sufficient and successful. Authors like Lisa Genova (Still Alice) and Hugh Howey (Wool) often credit their devoted social media fanbase for moving their books out of obscurity and into the blockbuster realm.

With that kind of a recommendation on the table, it almost seems a waste to not partake in the wave of social media platforms developing today, right? But wanting to start developing your social media strategy and actually building it from the ground up are two separate propositions. And ultimately, it’s hard to know where to start.

Luckily, there’s not so much one way to get it wrong, but rather so many ways to get it right. This is because there are so many platforms out there, including:

And so many more! Because social media is a moving target–for example, the short-video-hosting platform Vine, owned by Twitter, was shut down recently for its inability to turn a profit for company shareholders–there’s no predicting which platforms will be on the ascent in a given year and which will be on its way out, like the age-old example of Myspace, a platform which more or less lost all of its users once Facebook became peoples’ primary conduit of digital social contact.

This changing landscape isn’t a bad thing, in the end. It’s a strength! It means that yes, you need to be willing to continually adapt to new platforms and to pick up new skills, but it also means that if you’re not all that good at one, you can always capture your readers by making a comprehensive social media presence, rounded out with a variety of different smaller presences that weave together into something greater than the sum of their parts.

I guess what I’m saying is: Try everything. Try everything, and don’t hold on too tightly to any one of those things. Experimentation is the mother of invention, as is necessity, and these two forces will keep your social media presence in a constant state of evolution, well-suited to the M.O. of the Internet itself. Maybe soon we’ll have options to network not just with our friends and our refrigerators, but with our books as active participants themselves. Can you imagine what that might look like? I’d bet you five dollars that someone out there is already figuring out how to make it happen. And that’s the wonderful thing about change: it’s wild and wonderful and asks very little of us except the will to keep up!

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.
Alternative Marketing Methods, Book Marketing, elizabeth speaks, in your corner, Marketing Your Self-Published Book, Uncategorized

In Your Corner: Marketing for Anything-But-Dummies

Have you ever wondered what “proper” marketing support might look like, and how imperative it is to self-publishing successfully? What about implementation–have you ever wondered what effective implementation of your carefully-planned-out marketing plan might look like, too? I’m going to spend a bit of time this Thursday thinking through some of the answers to these questions.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my years of working with self-publishing authors, both as an author myself and as an author advocate and representative for other authors with Outskirts Press, it’s that there’s quite a lot of truth to the statement that “preparation is the key to success”–but as Marie Forleo puts it, sometimes “the key to success is to start before you’re ready.” How do we make these two things compatible? Aren’t they mutually exclusive?

the key to success is to start before you're ready marie forleo

Here’s a thought: what if they’re not?

I don’t think they are, and that’s because I think “preparedness” and “readiness” are two separate modes of being. Preparedness, in my mind, is the process of taking concrete steps to plan ahead for whatever you can, and putting in place measures–good habits, good coping mechanisms, and good thoughts–that will see you through any times when being prepared will do no good. Readiness, on the other hand, has more to do with confidence–and sometimes, your sense of how ready you are for a thing may or may not line up with what you’re prepared for. Sometimes, we won’t feel ready to get started on a thing even if we’ve planned thoroughly and set our good habits in stone. Those are the moments, I think, that Marie Forleo speaks to–the moments when we just need to get started, whether or not our feelings line up with reality.

Proper marketing support, then, should help you both prepare and, hopefully, acquire the confidence to feel that you’re ready as well. And as my fellow writer Kelly Schuknecht pointed out in her “Marketing Master Strokes” series of blogs earlier this year, effective marketing strategies require a willingness to reach your readers where they live, to incentivize, and to play well with others–among others. “Proper” marketing support will assist you in doing all these things–and if that seems a bit beyond the pale for the ordinary self-publishing company, luckily, there are several extraordinary self-publishing companies–and I know I’m a little biased, but I happen to think my coworkers among the Personal Marketing Assistants working for Outskirts Press count as extraordinary. So if you feel like some of these points might be beyond your reach, consider reaching out and making contact with the experts, either through a paid service or through a more casual network, as on social media.

The best part of looking to the experts is that doing so will assist you in execution as well as in planning–so you’ll get the best of both preparation and readiness. Or at least, that’s the goal.

It’s hard to boil down all of the salient points regarding marketing into one coherent blog post, but luckily, and perhaps it’s a little trite to say “oh, I’m not ready to do that” given the context of today’s subject (you can tell how some of my jokes bomb around the dinner table, can’t you?). But the fact of the matter is, Self Publishing Advisor has been a resource for self-publishing authors looking to market their books for most of a decade now, and our archives are rife with posts on the subject–including those by Kelly that I mentioned earlier. If you’re looking for those concrete steps to transform the broad strokes we’ve brushed here into tangible steps, her series is spectacular. I highly recommend taking a look!

Marketing Master Strokes:

  1. What do ears, geysers, and self-publishing have in common?
  2. Be willing to reach your readers where they live
  3. Incentivize!
  4. Play Well With Others
  5. Try Every New Thing

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.
elizabeth speaks, Uncategorized

In Your Corner: Next Steps

The end is in sight!  In fact, this week we’ll be wrapping up our epic eight-episode-long exploration of the difficult choices self-publishing authors must necessarily navigate to emerge on the other side.  It’s been a long and wild ride, with everything from …

… on the table.  And if that sounds rather … long and confusing … that’s because self-publishing can, in fact, be long and confusing.  We simply hope that, with this blog series in hand, it will be slightly less so.  More manageable.  More accessible.  More democratic.  More your own safe space.

But what happens once the book is out there?

What Next?

Dealing with the impossibility of moving on.

(Sort of.)

next steps

There aren’t a lot of sign posts on the way in or out of self-publishing.  There are the usual hints and indicators that authors share in common with all entrepreneurs–

  1. measure your success somehow,
  2. recalibrate and relaunch if necessary, and
  3. start thinking about the next project

–but how can these be adapted to suit the highly specific needs of authors, precisely?  We’ll take a look at each point in turn.

Measuring Success

First of all, did you just publish a book?  Yes, you did!  Take a moment, a long moment, to gather that in and feel the full reality of that truth. You’ve earned a little touch of self-satisfaction.  The fact that you’ve gotten your book from idea to the printed page is one very important indicator of success!  Just don’t linger there too long.  (And if you’re asking yourself whether it’s “too long” already, that might be a good indicator in and of itself.)

Book sales are another indicator of success–but don’t rely on them too heavily.  Engagement–online in social media or elsewhere in person at book readings and so forth–is equally if not more vital.  The just before and just after you publish is vital for marketing purposes, and having a sound marketing strategy in place will do more for you than any sales analytics after the fact–and that’s the absolute truth.  If you have a plan in place, complete with projected sales and engagement goals, you’ll quickly understand if you are or are not meeting those goals–and be able to implement Plan B or Plan C and take action to boost them.  If you have no marketing plan in place, your goals will be tethered only to your general “gut feeling,” and any lag in sales or engagement might slip by under the radar until it’s too far along to fix.

Recalibration & Relaunch

Consider the wise words of others that have come before:

Mixing it up–being responsive to what’s working and not working–being willing to approach things differently than you have done without letting it touch your ego–is critical for entrepreneurs and self-publishers alike.  And it’s so hard, in part because authors love their books like parents love their children, and it can feel like a cruelty or a betrayal or a compromise to alter one’s approach.  But it isn’t.  It’s simply business.  And if you look at the business of selling your book as a separate animal from the identity of your book, changes might come easier.

So what does recalibration look like for self-publishing authors?  It might look at trying out a new marketing technique you haven’t tried yet, or publishing a new edition of your book–Hardback, softcover, or ebook–to reach new audiences.  It might mean consulting with an expert to figure out the holes in your existing marketing strategy.  It might even mean getting a jump start on writing your next book, since there’s no better way to promote your current one than to have another in the works.

The Next Project

Seriously, though.  If you’re feeling at a loss as to what to do next with your current book, it’s time.  It’s time to find your next project altogether.  Maybe you’ve done all you can with your current book in terms of marketing, or maybe you need the step back from it in order to see it more clearly–and what better way than painting a new book on the canvas of your mind?

And last but not least, make sure you congratulate yourself.  You’ve written a book!  That’s amazing!  Maybe circling back to that first wash of feeling after finishing your book isn’t such a bad thing, after all.  Let it be your motivation.  Let it remind you of why you do what you do–and take you to that next place you need to go as an author.

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, elizabeth speaks, Uncategorized

In Your Corner: The Proof is in the Pudding

Get it?  We’re going talk about book proofs this week as a part of our ongoing series about choices–the choices you make as a self-publishing author in the midst (and mist!) of an often long and complicated process.  Previous entries in this series have included “Choosing a Self-Publishing Company,” “Choosing a Trim Size for Your Book,” figuring out how to “Know Thyself (& Thy Genre),” “Settling on a Price,” “Choosing a Cover,” and last week’s exploration of what we called “The Guts of the Thing” and which essentially boiled down to interior design–illustrations and formatting.  The assumption with last week’s post was that if you struggle to summon up the skills, time, or energy to worry about the graphic design components of your book, you can theoretically find assistance from exterior (and even paid professional) sources.

But what about proofing your book?

Proofing Your Book

That thing we all hate and try not to think about.

book proofing

Here’s the deal with proofing:

It’s not really something you want to outsource, even to a professional.  Copyediting, yes, but proofing … less so.  This is because the proof is the final step before actual publication, and it’s important that you be the last person to lay eyes on it before it goes to the presses.  It was your vision, after all, that led to its creation–and you want to make sure that it is your vision, in the end, which guides it to completion.

This is the moment of truth.  So how do events unfold?

The printed proof arrives on your doorstep, or in your mailbox, or perhaps you’re overexcited and actually show up at the printer’s to get it.  The point is, it’s in your hot little hands and ready to go.  Almost.

Up to this moment, the book you’ve been dreaming about and actively shaping has only ever been real to you in the way that pixels and Microsoft Word documents are real.  Maybe you’ve printed off a copy, to get a better look at layouts and formatting and illustrations and typography–but that’s not really the same thing as a finished book, is it?

And trust me, after that initial shiver of anticipation passes, it’s time to pull out the red pen, because there’s always something that’s slipped through the cracks and that needs addressing before you click the final keys or give your Publishing Consultant the final go-ahead.  Your proof is, as its name implies, the evidence that you’ve done everything correctly.  Or it ought to be.  As I said, your first proof is usually an exercise in addressing little errors that were invisible on your computer screen or in printouts but that, in printed form, pop off of the page.  It could be an incorrect font, a weird space, typographical errors, a misaligned paragraph–anything.  As perfect as your last manuscript was in digital form, sometimes it doesn’t translate perfectly to the printed page.

 

 

 

What should I watch out for?

First of all, take a deep breath.  Now, let it out.  Proofing can be painful in some ways, mostly because you’re having to spend more time obsessing over the minutiae of your book, but it’s worth it.  A few tips and tricks and mistakes to watch out for, and your book will look and feel as good as if it had gone through the entire rigmarole that traditionally published books have to.

  • Step One: Read your book like a book.

Just go for it.  Read the whole thing through, start to finish, checking for common typographical errors and inconsistencies as you would in reading a normal draft.  Check that the text is complete, and that no paragraphs are missing or sentences cut off by a page break.  Only you, the book’s author, are going to catch omissions like that.  And while you’re reading, keep an eye out for odd or inconsistent use of fonts, punctuation (particularly hyphens and the “curled” version of quotation marks), as well as line and word spacing.  You can pass the book on to someone else to double-check your impression on these last points, too–that never hurts.

  • Step Two: Squint and stare.

Once, in college, I was taking an illustration course and my professor gave me one of the most important pieces of advice I’ve ever heard: “Step back from what you’re working on, squint so that everything is just a touch blurry, and see what’s missing.”  By stepping back and letting things get a touch blurry, you as an author and artist are ignoring the content of the text and seeing it for what it is in addition to being a story: a collection of visual components.  You’ll be better able to spot orphans and widows (single lines at the bottom or top of a page), inconsistencies in running heads and chapter or part titles, and the dimensions and placement of graphic elements like illustrations, page numbers, chapter openers, and so on.  Double check that odd-numbered pages are on the right hand side of the centerfold.  Double check your references and footnotes if you have them–that they’re there, and that they’re on the right page–as well as the consistency of your paragraph indents and other alignments.

  • Step Three: Turn it over. And over.

Try it.  The front and back covers of your books should look exactly as you requested or input them to be, and they should meet your exact specifications of color, contrast, clarity, and placement.  The barcode, ISBN, blurbs, description, biographic information, and other nuts and bolts should all be in place, attractive, and correct in spelling and form like the rest of your book.

*****

Proofing your book isn’t simply a matter of going through the motions.  It’s vitally important that you care about this stage of the process the same way you care about every other stage–if you go through the trouble of correcting a proof and upload your revisions, you’ll have no doubts when it comes time to send your book out into the world to its new readers.  You’ll face whatever comes next with confidence, pride, and a sense of intrepid adventure.  And next week, we’re going to look at what some of those steps might be!

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.