from the archives – Page 15 – Self Publishing Advisor

From the Archives: “Avoid the 3 ‘Tell-Tale’ Signs of Self-Published Books”

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: May 2nd, 2011 ]

You’ve self-published a book, and it’s amazing that you’ve dedicated so much time and energy into writing and creating you own masterpiece. While there’s nothing wrong with self publishing, and it’s actually a great opportunity for many authors, you don’t necessarily want your book to “look self published”. That could mean inability of your audience to take your book seriously, receiving horrible reviews, suffering from poor sales performance, or worse.

Here are a few of the 3 “deadly sins” not to commit when publishing your book:

Use of cover templates – Templates are often rather dull, at best. Invest your money into really making your cover stand out.

Unedited manuscript – Run on sentences, sentence fragments, etc. are all things that can leave a bad taste in the mouth of a reader. We always recommend that you hire a professional editor for your manuscript. No, your sister-in-law doesn’t count as a professional editor. You need more than a fresh set of eyes when it comes to choosing an editor. You need someone who is professionally trained in editing.

Non-traditional interior

Double-Spaced – A book should NEVER be double spaced. Just because something works great for reports and other forms of communication doesn’t mean it will work the same for a printed book.

Strange and/or difficult to read typestyles – You like typing in Script MT Bold. It looks beautiful on screen, but will not look as good in a printed book.

Missing headers/footers – Have you ever read a book (other than a children’s book) without a header or footer? Why leave them out on your book?

Non-standard page numbering – Make sure your page numbers are in the same position on each opposite page. Also make sure font is consistent across all numbering.

When you hire a self-publishing company, all of these things can be taken care of under one umbrella. However, if you are “going it alone”, it’s important to remember the tips above to make sure you avoid showcasing an unprofessional appearance.

-WENDY STETINA

Four and a half years after Wendy’s original post, not much has changed when it comes to the aspects of self-publishing which set the final products at a disadvantage compared to their traditionally published kin.

And look, we’ve all seen a lousy book cover or two in our time. And with online compendiums like the Huffington Post––what with their readerships of thousands upon thousands––going out of their way to pick on a select few, I see no reason to get in on the finger-wagging here. But suffice it to say, many self-published book covers don’t look quite as polished and beautiful as those put out by the Big Five publishing houses. There are all sorts of reasons for this: self-publishing authors are shorter (much shorter) on funds than the average industry juggernaut, or perhaps simply prefer to allocate their funds elsewhere, or perhaps have a poor eye for what appeals to a mass market audience. Templates are rather dull, but they exist for a reason. Or a series of unfortunate reasons.

We don’t need to blame our fellow indie authors for the trend’s existence to recognize that we can, collectively, do better. How? Well, we’ve written about the virtues of a well-crafted book cover before and elsewhere at length, but suffice it to say that there are quite a few options which will result in a lovelier cover than the one you or I can churn out in a basic word processing program. More importantly, the time and money and energy you spend on an attractive cover reaps dividends that more than compensate for the expense.

When it comes to leaving a manuscript unedited, however, I must admit that I struggle to see a reason that justifies this decision. Not because I don’t recognize the limitations of a tight budget or the profound importance of exercising total creative control over one’s own work––I understand that completely––but because an unedited manuscript poses so many opportunities to lose and alienate our readers, no matter how excellent the content and construct of our work. An attractive book cover will draw readers in, while a polished and professionally-edited manuscript will keep them invested. It’s as simple as that. (And for more of our rationale on this one, check out Jodee’s thoughts here, Rob Mangelson’s thoughts here, and Elizabeth’s thoughts here.) As self-publishing authors, we can’t afford to lose our readers.

Sometimes, we miss things. The more people who have eyes on a given work, the less likely it is that any single mistake will be overlooked, which is one reason why paying a professional to edit or at least evaluate your work is such an important idea. But there’s another reason: Professional copyeditors know the rules. I don’t just mean the official rules of publication and grammar, but the unspoken rules too. They know which details are going to distract a reader, consciously or subconsciously, from your book. They know how to create consistency in the midst of chaos. All of those little details that Wendy mentioned in her original post? They are exactly the kind of thing that can hurt your sales, even though they may seem small or insignificant. Copyeditors are your partners and co-laborers in bringing your book to the world, and it’s in their best interest as well as yours to catch every single little misstep before it becomes a profit-buster.

Whether it’s presenting your book with an exterior as beautiful as its interior, or editing your book’s content, self-publishing today offers all sorts of options to the aspiring author that wouldn’t have been possible just four years ago. That is good news indeed! ♠

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, Uncategorized

From the Archives: “Self-publishing, Literature and Pop Culture”

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[ Originally posted: August 19th, 2009 ]

I opened the Books section in yesterday’s New York Times “Urban Eye” to read the headline, “Why Literature Doesn’t Matter.” Really? How sad. It matters to me. It matters to my family, friends, and colleagues. It matters to the self-publishing authors I work with every day. Literature doesn’t matter…. I wish someone would have told me.

According to “Urban Eye,” a recent Sunday Book Review article penned by novelist Kurt Anderson was to fill me in. Anderson writes, “During the 1960s and ’70s…people who hadn’t read a word of a first-rate contemporary novel — no Cheever, no Bellow, no Salinger, Heller, Styron, Doctorow, Updike or Roth — nevertheless knew the novelists’ names… And then everything changed.”

But book sales in the US have remained strong, and are even growing over previous years in Europe. Despite the current recession effects, statistics show that readers are still buying books. Not matter? Anderson goes on to claim, “But irony of ironies, after literature was evicted from mass culture, pop culture itself began to fragment and lose its heretofore defining quality as the ubiquitous stuff that everybody consumed.”

Ah, I’m seeing to whom, or rather to what, Literature doesn’t matter to – pop culture. Wait, then this is a good thing for authors and readers. The fragmentation that Anderson talks about is the segmenting of consumers into smaller, more clearly defined profiles. What that means to self-publishing authors of fiction, non-fiction, etc., is not that your work doesn’t matter, that Literature doesn’t matter, but that it doesn’t matter to everyone. Perfect, now you can coordinate and focus your subject matter and marketing efforts to readers who will benefit from, and buy your books.

Talk to your self-publisher early on about your custom marketing plan.

Karl Schroeder

When Karl Schroeder first wrote this blog for us back in 2009, the market for self-publishing authors had already begun to (in his words) “fragment” into smaller and smaller niche genres and industries. Authors were on the lookout for that “big hit wonder” element for their books to tap into, the mode that we’re often taught to expect or at least reach for as writers in the modern West. But despite appearances–despite the rise of J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer and E.L. James and Gillian Flynn and too many others to name–the superstar writer has mostly receded into the background. What we have today is a (more) stable, (more) diverse, and (more) opportunity-rich industry, and this holds true even for the oft-neglected self-publishing author.

So, yes, what Karl said remains true: literature does still matter, though not to everyone. What may have, perhaps, changed is that it no longer matters just to connoisseurs of hyper-specialized niche genres and so on … literature does in fact have a profound impact upon and presence within pop culture. And I’m not just talking about Young Adult Literature or the ever-popular megagenre of crime fiction … I’m talking about the supposedly “forgotten” or “neglected” classic literature.

Ever heard of the #IReadEverywhere hashtag? Well, it’s a thing. A very, very big thing … because it demonstrates that our favorite pop culture icons–whether Mindy Kaling or or–read. A lot. And they read a pretty fantastic cross-section of all genres, including, yes, classic literature. For example, we have:

Mindy Kaling reading Jane Austen (it doesn’t get more classic than that). And …

Judy Blume reading Wally Lamb. And …

The Big Bang Theory’s Mayim Bialik and Melissa Rauch reading Jonathan Safran Foer and Julia Child, while their co-star …

Jim Parsons reads Buster Keaton.

And they’re not the only ones! The #IReadEverywhere campaign has generated hundreds of pictures of celebrities catching a few classic words between subway stops, while sipping mochas at coffee shops, or playing on the floor with their cats. The age of the book may vary (Foer and Childs never overlapped with Jane Austen in the historical record, let’s just say), but the tenor of the trend remains the same: everyone reads, and a lot of people read everywhere and perhaps even often. You can’t despair for the state of classic literature or any literature at all when it’s literally a marker of “cool” to snap a selfie of you toting Hemingway along to a hip bar in NYC of a Saturday night.

And yet, Karl’s ultimate point remains as valid as ever: you still need to “[t]alk to your self-publisher early on about your custom marketing plan” if you want to create and maintain a steady stream of book sales. And you can do that most effectively by narrowing your gaze to a specific, manageable target audience. It’s better to start with a handful of very interested, very invested readers than to spread your fairy dust thinly among people who are only marginally interested. Invested fans will (sometimes quite literally) sell your book for you, and that has historically been how self-published works have come to receive broad acclaim. Think of Andy Weir and his blog readers. Think of E.L. James and her fanatically excited followers on FanFiction.net. Think of John and Jennifer Churchman and The SheepOver. You can do everything right as an author and still not sell books if you haven’t gotten your fans on board. On the flip side, you can invest just a little time and energy in wooing your readers and seizing opportunities when they arise, and sell books like hotcakes by doing so. Talk to a marketing expert at your self-publishing company, and see what magic you can make happen, together! ♠

amazon, from the archives, Kelly Speaks, metadata

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

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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. ♠

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! ♠

from the archives, karl schroeder, Kelly Speaks, Self-Publishing

From the Archives: “7 Reasons to Self-Publish, From the Top…”

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[ Originally posted: November 19th, 2009 ]

I’ve helped savvy authors transition their books away from traditional publishing houses, newly publishing authors make informed decisions to pursue other options, and even had personal experience publishing under my own traditional contract. Here are the top 7 or so reasons to re-consider holding out for that traditional contract and self-publish today…

7 – Traditional publishers lose money on over 85% of the books they publish, so they only accept 2% of those that are submitted.

6 – Traditional publishers typically accept manuscripts only from established authors who have already demonstrated a proven platform.

5 – Authors lose all control of their content during the editing process with a Traditional Publisher.

4 – Authors must still invest an enormous amount of time, energy, and money promoting a traditionally-published book.

3- Traditional Publishing: Authors typically receive 5-10% royalty on the wholesale price of the book, and from that have to give 15-25% to their agent. Do the math.

2 – The majority of books published by Traditional publishers go out of print within 3 years. Many books that are stocked on book shelves remain stocked for as little as five weeks before being returned, unsold, to the publisher.

1- Traditional publishers acquire all rights to your book and keep them, even when the book goes out of print or the publisher goes out of business!

– Karl Schroeder

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If you happened to read Karl’s original post six years ago and if you happened also to keep up with current affairs in the self-publishing and traditional publishing industries, you’ll know that very little–if anything–has changed. Many authors turn to indie, hybrid, and self-publishing platforms because they’re driven away from the Big Five, either by the industry professionals themselves (i.e. outright rejections of book proposals) or by ideological differences and a desire to remain at the helm of their own publishing experiences. This is what I call “white space thinking,” in which the predominant motivation is to define our choices by what they are not (“I am not going to publish traditionally because of x, y, or z”) or by what they want to steer clear of (“I don’t want to align myself with x, y, or z trend I see at Hachette, or HarperCollins, or some other Big Five publisher”). What’s left outside of the margins, in the so-called “white space,” can be loosely described as “independent” publishing.

You don’t have to be running from traditional publishing to choose an alternate method, however. There are a lot of reasons to run to self-publishing, without reference to the ills and crimes of a more traditional path. While the reasons Karl states above remain accurate and true, I’d like to thicken out his list with a few additions that illustrate how positivity can actually be one of the foundational motivating factors for indie authors today. And so, without any further ado, here are my additional 7 reasons to self-publish:

You get to create your own timeline, from start to finish. Your book might take two months, or two years, or two decades, but it will ultimately turn out true to your vision if you get to define your own benchmarks, deadlines, and so on.
The process is simple, and not even “simpler than….” It’s just plain streamlined, start to finish, because you are your own middleman, and you are a marketing, design, and decision-making committee of one. There will always be some fine print to wade through, but on the whole it’s not uncommon to panic at the sheer ease with which you can click your way into self-publication.
The time is right. There’s a whole slew of options to choose from in terms of indie, hybrid, and self-publishing platforms–and they’re all pretty good, and they’re all continually pushing themselves to do better, since the competition between developers and software designers is fierce. We’ve crossed a kind of rubicon when it comes to forward momentum in the industry: companies have all the motivation they need to keep improving the user experience. Self-publishing has gained the luster of a successful niche market, and is rapidly leaving stigma behind in the dust, while commercially successful self-published books rake in the film options and substantial net profits. You can now make a name for yourself as an indie author!
You can actually break new ground. Without the checks and balances that tie up any big industry or company, you can quite literally strike out into uncharted waters and be at the forefront of a conversation, putting out timely book after timely book that reaches people where they’re at, while this or that specific issue is at the peak of popular interest. You can write a book that future readers will call “prescient,” simply because you’re on the cutting edge, predicting and creating new paradigms–and perhaps even new genres!
You can revise your book on the fly, at will. You created this book, you own all of the rights to it, and you can re-release it if something about it strikes you as needing a little more work later on down the line. This falls in line with other matters of creative control, as you get to call the shots on every detail that you want to … and you can offload the minutiae to a hybrid publishing company to free up your valuable time to do more of what you really love. Which is, of course, writing.
You can write responsively, because you have at your disposal some of the finest analytics tools ever designed for authors. You can watch, in real time, what readers respond to–and tweak your writing process to deliver more of the same, or, alternatively, to make an unexpected turn and give them something they never knew that they wanted, something that isn’t pandering to popular acclaim. You see everything, and you can make decisions in response to reader interactions that no one in the history of publishing–of any kind, period–has been able to make before!
You’re a believer. You don’t just own the rights to your self-published book, you own the vision for its totality, from the first splash of ink to the last burst of pixels. You don’t need a team to tell you what’s what or how good a writer you are; you already know. You already know that you have something to say that others need to hear, or see, but above all encounter. And with that kind of conviction, you can cut through all the white noise and baffling criticisms and bureaucracy and simply do what you were born to do: write your book, and publish it on your own terms. You believe in yourself and your book, and I do to. All of us here at Self Publishing Advisor do! ♠

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