How to Sell eBooks Directly to Readers

Great sales = success . However, finding readers and selling directly to them seems to be as easy as searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack. However, thanks to Penny Sansevieri and her great newsletter, I have uncovered some new leads to benefit indie authors.

 

This article explains how to sell your eBook directly to readers without using an online reseller such as Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, or Kobo. Readers can get your book and revisions immediately, and you can make as much money as possible on each sale. However, this is too perfect a picture, so keep two factors in mind.

 

1. First, somehow you need to get the eBook to your customers and their money to you. This can entail website hosting, fulfillment, payment processing, shipping, and customer service.
2. Second, this method only works if you have the ability to expose your readers to your offering.

   

   While people might stumble upon your book on Amazon, iBookstore, Nook, Google Play, and Kobo because of internal recommendation engines and large amounts of traffic, this isn't going to happen with this type of sale.

 

Gumroad
Gumroad charges $0.25 per download plus 5 percent of the sale for hosting and selling your file. For example, if you sell a PDF for $3, Gumroad keeps $0.40 ($0.25 + 5 percent of $3) and you'd get $2.60. This is more than you'd get from Kindle Direct Publishing for the same transaction. Gumroad also offers a "$0+" option. This means that people can pay whatever they want to-including nothing.

I used Gumroad to distribute a PDF of What the Plus! Unfortunately, I didn't track results when I varied the price from $2.99 to as low as "pay what you want." Over the course of a month, 26,717 people clicked on the link, and 1,632 people downloaded it.

Most people paid $0, but the donations amounted to $803.23, so the average amount paid was approximately $0.50 per copy. This was four months after the introduction of the book. By that time, I had given away approximately 15,000 copies and sold 15,000 copies.

People cannot pay with PayPal because Gumroad only accepts credit cards. Also, Gumroad asks for a minimal amount of personal information, so it cannot provide information about where your customers live. Someday you may need this information to charge sales tax or value-added tax for digital content.

Gumroad requires a preexisting and loyal audience that will click on a link that you provide. As a first-time author, this may be difficult, but you'll learn how to build your "platform" in the next section of the book, "Entrepreneur." If you can make this work, there are two big benefits: retention of more of the selling price and access to the e-mail addresses of everyone who has bought the file.

E-Junkie
E-Junkie is another way to sell your book directly. Unlike Gumroad's per-copy flat fee and percentage, E-Junkie charges according to the number of files and storage space that you use. The number of downloads is unlimited.

A collection of ten files totaling less than fifty megabytes costs $5 per month. Therefore, if you had one book that is less than fifty megabytes (which is a huge size for a book), you'd only pay $5 per month, and you could sell an unlimited number of copies.

Unlike Gumroad, customers can use PayPal, Google Checkout, TrialPay, and Authorize.net but not credit cards. Finally, also unlike Gumroad, E-Junkie can calculate sales tax and VAT charges because it knows where your customers reside.

ClickBank
ClickBank is a third way to sell ebooks directly. You create an account, upload your file, price it, and sell it. There is a $49.95 activation fee to get started. Customers can use credit cards or PayPal.

A key difference between ClickBank and the other two services is ClickBank's affiliate program. The scenario ClickBank paints is that people discover great books in the ClickBank marketplace. Then they join the ClickBank affiliate program, get an affiliate link to their favorite books, and promote the link on their blog and through social media.

The company says that it has 100,000 affiliates in 200 countries. It claims to have paid more than $1.8 billion to affiliates and vendors (the people who upload files) and to process 30,000 transactions per day.

The revenue split with ClickBank is different from the other direct-sales sites. ClickBank operates on a wholesale price/retail price model, which means you set a wholesale price (the price at which ClickBank and other affiliates buy the book from you) and a retail price (the price customers see and pay). Your revenue is the wholesale price, since you are selling to ClickBank, and they are the seller of record to customers.

Ganxy
Ganxy is an interesting start-up in this segment. It enables you create a "showcase" for your eBook and sell it in EPUB, MOBI, and PDF format. Ganxy provides payment functionality, file hosting, and customer service.

Ganxy charges 10 percent of net sales, where net sales is the selling price of the eBook less a payment-processing fee. Think of it as a website like Gumroad, E-Junkie, and ClickBank that is dedicated to selling eBooks.

Caveats
If you can convince people to buy your book from these services, you can make more money per book. Nathan Barry's App Design Handbook is an example. Barry has a concentrated market of app programmers, and these programmers are willing to pay his book's price of $39.

For these programmers, the book isn't a $2.99 Gothic-romance whim. Designing apps is their livelihood, so a $39 price point for a book that can help them succeed isn't a problem. Barry makes approximately $38.20 per book, so if he sold 2,000 copies, he could buy a Porsche.

On the other hand, online eBook resellers such as Amazon and Apple pay less per copy, but they may sell more copies. Also, direct sales do not count toward sales rankings for bestseller lists, and books on these lists tend to sell more because they are visible.

If your customers are not price sensitive and you have a way to reach them, then selling direct can work. If these conditions do not exist, then it may be better to make less money per copy but sell more copies using online resellers and bookstores.

PayPal
If you're wondering about using PayPal to sell eBooks, it's not applicable to most self-publishers because this would require creating a website where your readers have an account, and you control access to your eBook's file. Essentially, you'd have to become your own E-Junkie and manage an ecommerce site.

PayPal provides payment collection, and when someone pays, it tells your website to grant access-for example, if someone buys more weapons in an online game. Credit cards such as MasterCard and Visa work in similar ways. However, these companies do not act as your store by hosting your eBook and selling it.

So your customers can pay with PayPal and credit cards, but on Gumroad, E-Junkie, and ClickBank, not directly to you.

This fantastic information comes from Guy Kawasaki, who has written 12 books, 10 of which were

traditionally published. His newest book is APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur - How to Publish a Book, which helps people understand how and why to self-publish.

APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur - How to Publish a Book, by Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welch, is available as an eBook ($9.99) and in paperback ($24.99). Visit

Reprinted from "The Book Marketing Expert newsletter," a free ezine offering book promotion and publicity tips and techniques.

by Fiona Ingram

When I Judge a Book by its Cover...

When I judge a book by its cover, it means I want to show off a fabulous new book with a beautiful cover, in my huge sets of bookcases that dominate my living room. I love real books. I won’t say I hate e-books, but I’ll only buy an e-reader when no more real books are printed. Given the number of people who also love real books, maybe we can stave off that awful day. I wonder if many people know this, but when you buy a real book and take it home to gloat over, it’s actually yours for keeps. When you buy an e-book, you’re actually only buying the right to read it… But, hey, let’s not go into all that. Let’s stick to real books.

This post was inspired by my annual attendance at the Exclusive Book’s annual sale. (Exclusive Books is South Africa’s leading bookstore and cleverly align themselves with a coffee shop to add extra comfort to book-lover browsing) People love the sale because all the books are marked down, and it’s one way of stocking up on expensive items that might just break the budget. So, what did I buy this year? Aha! I generally pick non-fiction because they are usually hard cover. I also tend to read a lot of non-fiction for research into my children’s adventure series, and because I like history.

The Secret History of Giants by Ari Berk

I know giants are not strictly non-fiction, but ever since a light-fingered somebody walked off with my Book of Giants (no longer in print), I have wanted a replacement. I mean, what is a home without a book on giants? I already have Brian Froud’s Faeries and The Book of Good and Bad Faeries, so definitely a giant replacement was on the cards. This is what the blurb says: Ancient Greece had its Titans, the Celts their Green Knight, the Bible Goliath—and for those who know where to look, signs of these legendary hulking creatures still abound. Now comes a hugely engrossing chronicle of giants since antiquity, from their role in forming mountains and causing earthquakes to the mysteries of their sacks (watch out for hitchhiking humans); from their means of employment (how did the Druids built Stonehenge?) to an extensive map of places around the world where giants may likely be found. Exhaustive and lushly illustrated, this enormously valuable resource is sure to fascinate all who open its covers.

Special features include: sundry flaps, booklets, and gatefolds; a lavish foiled and embossed cover (and it is lavish!); an elegant tassel (very elegant!) dangling from the spine.

Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization by Paul Kriwaczek

Civilization was born eight thousand years ago, between the floodplains of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, when migrants from the surrounding mountains and deserts began to create increasingly sophisticated urban societies. In the cities that they built, half of human history took place. In Babylon, Paul Kriwaczek tells the story of Mesopotamia from the earliest settlements seven thousand years ago to the eclipse of Babylon in the sixth century BCE. Bringing the people of this land to life in vibrant detail, the author chronicles the rise and fall of power during this period and explores the political and social systems, as well as the technical and cultural innovations, which made this land extraordinary. At the heart of this book is the story of Babylon, which rose to prominence under the Amorite king Hammurabi from about 1800 BCE. Even as Babylon’s fortunes waxed and waned, it never lost its allure as the ancient world’s greatest city. Engaging and compelling, Babylon reveals the splendor of the ancient world that laid the foundation for civilization itself. (I can’t wait to get stuck into this!)

 House of Wisdom by Jonathan Lyons

Although I see this book received mixed reviews on Amazon, I’m willing to give it a chance. The blurb says: For centuries following the fall of Rome, Western Europe was a benighted backwater, a world of subsistence farming, minimal literacy, and violent conflict. Meanwhile Arab culture was thriving, dazzling those Europeans fortunate enough to visit cities like Baghdad or Antioch. There, philosophers, mathematicians, and astronomers were steadily advancing the frontiers of knowledge, as well as keeping alive the works of Plato and Aristotle. When the best libraries in Europe held several dozen books, Baghdad's great library, The House of Wisdom, housed four hundred thousand. Jonathan Lyons shows just how much "Western" ideas owe to the Golden Age of Arab civilization. Even while their countrymen waged bloody Crusades against Muslims, a handful of intrepid Christian scholars, hungry for knowledge, traveled East and returned with priceless jewels of science, medicine, and philosophy that laid the foundation for the Renaissance. In this brilliant, evocative book, Jonathan Lyons reveals the story of how Europe drank from the well of Muslim learning.

The Illustrated Anthology of World Myth andStory Telling by C. Scott Littleton (editor)

I was lucky enough to receive this wonderful anthology as a Christmas present. I have already dipped into it and it’s just wonderful. The blurb says: Myths are the timeless expression of the imagination born out of the need to make sense of the universe. Moving across the centuries, they resonate with our deepest feelings about the fragility and grandeur of existence. Mythology is a comprehensive, richly illustrated survey of the mythic imagination in all its forms around the world, from the odysseys, quests, and battles of ancient Greece and Rome to the living beliefs of indigenous cultures in the Americas, Africa, and Oceania. Looking at each major myth-making culture in turn, this book retells some of the most significant and captivating stories in a lively, contemporary style. Generously illustrated with more than 700 color photographs, Mythology brings you the vibrant stories that echo time and again in our lives.

Back to the covers: a gleeful giant peeking out of one cover, a Babylonian lion striding across a turquoise background, the delicate beauty of Arabian craftsmanship, and a winged Assyrian sculpture on a sandstone background, these books all merit pride of place in the looks department, and I am sure contain a wealth of knowledge!

by Fiona Ingram

Best Book Awards for Indie Authors



As the New Year begins, so you should start gearing up for book awards. Entering book awards is not as difficult as it seems. In a previous post I outlined the pros and cons of entering, and having achieved eleven awards and nominations, I find there are definite benefits. Your book’s recognition enhances its status, no doubt about it, and tells people you have reached a standard of excellence that meets the industry’s demands. I recently read four posts by industry marketing experts with their take on why you should enter book awards.

Advice from the Experts

• Donna M. McDine on children’s book awards:  The importance of entering children’s book award contests goes well beyond a win. There are two sides you can capitalize on. The obvious, if your book achieves book award recognition you and your publisher can reap the benefits of promoting you as an award-winning author. Second, even if you don’t place in the contest your book does gain additional exposure through the judging process.

Donna includes a list of helpful places to find the best contests.

• Dana Lynn Smith on choosing wisely: Begin by considering which contests are most appropriate for your book. Some are very general, while others focus on a specific type of book. Some book award contests accept entries with the current or previous year’s copyright date, while others allow entries spanning several years. Some are geared toward self-published books and others accept all books. When deciding which contests are the best fit, look for those that offer book categories most related to the type of book that you write. For example, “historical romance” is much more specific than “romance.” Also consider the entry fees and the relative prestige and publicity value of the contest. Some contests even offer cash prizes for the top winners.

Dana also includes a list of popular/best known contests. Her advice on e-book vs. print is: If a contest accepts both e-books and printed books, it’s usually best to submit a printed book if you have one because it’s more tangible.

• Sherrie Wikolaski has advice on getting the best out of your entry fee: Investment. Book awards can range from as little as $10 per submission to a few hundred dollars. Most fall somewhere in the middle, plus the cost of mailing in a copy of the book for review. It’s one of the most cost-effective ways to market your book, especially if you win.
• Marketing your winnings. Congratulations! You’ve won! Now what? When the time comes and you’ve found out that your book has won an award, you should maximize the win. Find out what the awards committee is doing to promote your award status. Take advantage of everything they are offering to you. If they invite you to guest blog, take it. If they want to promote a book excerpt, let them. Whatever they offer be sure to work with their marketing team to maximize your exposure.

Sherrie includes a list of top book contests as well as marketing tips to maximise on your win.

• Smith Publicity, book promoters for authors in every genre worldwide, includes a long list of book awards ranging from general fiction to science fiction, mystery, indie, self-help, non-fiction, cultural and youth.

The Indie Issue

Many indie authors are put off by thinking that so many contests only accept traditionally published books. Not true. I am a self-published author and by keeping an eye on industry events, I was able to enter and achieve something in most of the contests. I have compiled a list of indie awards, by date, to make it easier for authors to enter their books. Expense is also a big issue with authors battling to pay for editing, layout, cover images etc. The beauty of the e-book revolution is that many contests organisers now accept e-books. This makes entering a whole lot easier. Please visit the links from the experts above. They have many tips to offer ranging from why enter, to how to organise your entries, to the benefits, to author beware.
Here is a calendar of the most useful contests for indie authors

January:

Childrens’ Literary Classics Awards (e-book accepted if print copy not available)
Foreword Book of the Year Awards (print and e-book)
Eric Hoffer Awards (e-book accepted)
e-Lit Awards (e-book)
Beverly Hills Book Awards (print only)

February:

Next Generation Indie Book Awards (e-book accepted)
Wise Bear Book Awards (e-book accepted)

March:

Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) (print and e-book)
Indie Reader Discovery Awards (both print and e-book)

April:

National Indie Excellence Book Awards (print only)
Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards (print only)
Global E-book Awards (e-books)

May:

Readers Favorite Awards (e-book accepted)

June:

Readers Digest Self-Published Awards (print only)

September:

Rubery Book Awards (e-book accepted)
National Best Book Awards (e-book accepted) 
Sharpwrit Book Awards (e-book accepted)
Nautilus Book Awards (print only)

December:

Reader Views Literary Awards (e-book accepted if print copy not available)

Start planning and remember you can't win if you don't enter!

The Great Amazon Book Review Scam

Every author knows that book reviews are important. Why? Simple. Reviews guide the readers (your potential buyers) in the right direction. It helps to have rave 5-star reviews; it hurts to get dismal 1-star reviews. Most authors dream of having hundreds, nay thousands of reviews, like some of the top authors out there.


The NY Times says: “Reviews by ordinary people have become an essential mechanism for selling almost anything online; they are used for resorts, dermatologists, neighborhood restaurants, high-fashion boutiques, churches, parks, astrologers and healers—not to mention products like garbage pails, tweezers, spa slippers and cases for tablet computers. In many situations, these reviews are supplanting the marketing department, the press agent, advertisements, word of mouth and the professional critique.”

But getting reviews is hard work, even when there are helpful guides, such as Dana Lynn Smith’s resource page which, among other useful ‘how to’ publications, actually has a book called How to Get Your Book Reviewed. (It’s brilliant!)

Aha, but therein lies the rub. The ‘hard work’ part. The author has to hunt down people (friends, relatives, colleagues, bloggers, and perfect strangers) and persuade them to read and review the book, giving up their time for no reward. You, the author, get the reward because ultimately their opinion will maybe persuade a (huge!) number of people to purchase your book/s.

Isn’t it soooooo much easier to cut to the chase, eliminate the middle man (reviewers), and write them yourself?

Brilliant idea! And at the same time you’re elevating your own work to the stars, you can trash the opposition, or anyone who might possibly sell more books than you.

Enter the Great Amazon Book Review Scam

This ugly phenomenon first reared its head in a 2010 article in The Guardian revealing how historian Orlando Figes praised his own work and denounced that of his rivals by using fake Amazon accounts to post reviews. He first denied it; even suggesting his wife had done this without his knowledge, and then finally crumbled and confessed, citing ‘intense pressure’ as the reason. Hmmm. One wonders. But then, academics live in the rarified atmosphere of academia and they are fond of saying, “Publish or perish,” so maybe he did just go temporarily off the rails.

However, the lurgy struck again, this time in the world of fiction writing. In August 2012, the NY Times reported a book review scam—masses of paid Amazon reviews.

“Suddenly reviews, of anything in fact, have become vitally important. … But not just any kind of review will do. They have to be somewhere between enthusiastic and ecstatic.”

A site called GettingBookReviews.com (now defunct) created 4531 reviews, mainly for self-published authors, historically the desperadoes of the publishing world and possibly capable (Ha! Ha!) of the lowest of tricks to get positive reviews. Owner Todd Jason Rutherford could not keep up with the demand, so he created a mini industry of reviewers who churned out the reviews. Even John Locke admits (unblushingly) to using his services. The axe fell when an unhappy client criticized the site and demanded a refund. Google cancelled Rutherford’s advertising services and Amazon removed many of his reviews.

Still, ‘real’ (traditionally published) authors seemed to be above all these tacky tactics.

But wait! There’s more! In late August 2012, an article appeared in Forbes alerting readers to another shocking development in the fake review department: at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, successful author Stephen Leather confessed, during an on-stage panel discussion, that he used fake accounts to promote his own books. For the uninitiated or the ethically minded, this is called ‘Sock Puppetry’ (with apologies to all sock puppets out there)

Can it get worse? Yes.

Suw Charman-Anderson reported in an article (3/09/2012) in Forbes that: “Best-selling crime writer RJ Ellory has turned out to be the latest author exposed in the ongoing saga of fake Amazon reviews, a can of worm that just keeps on wriggling. Ellory was the winner of the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2010 for his novel, A Simple Act of Violence.”

So, at the end of this dismal list, what can one derive? That even traditionally published, successful authors who actually have the advantage of a publisher at their back, grinding away at the publicity machine, seem to think it’s okay to lie, it’s okay to cheat the public, treating them like a bunch of ignorant sheep.

Although Ellory said it was a lapse of judgement in his apology, one wonders how it is possible for anyone to have multiple lapses of judgement. One assumes a lapse of judgement happens when blind rage or intense emotion takes over, and one does something stupid … once … and regrets it thereafter. Somehow, these guilty parties managed to think their way through creating fake Twitter and review profiles; managed to create brilliant reviews for themselves, and also thought up horrible snipes about their rivals—all while in the grip of lapses of judgement.

Lying is lying. Cheating is cheating.

Let’s talk about cheating.

In February 2012, The Guardian posted a cautionary article entitled Plagiarist Beware: The Internet Will Find You Out.

It did in the case of Kay Manning, who had plagiarised sections of a number of romance books. Her excuse? She thought they were parts of her own work on her computer… Huh?

Clearly, the lesson was not learned. Even worse was a report in the New Yorker about Q.R. Markham (real name Quentin Rowan), the author who pieced together his lauded debut from an amalgamation of spy thrillers. Famous spy thrillers. It was inevitable that someone would notice. In Assassin of Secrets, there were thirty-four instances of plagiarism in the first thirty-five pages. He’d cobbled together his novel from a variety of great novels. Rowan later blamed his publishers for putting him under pressure.

The bottom line is this: in all these cheating, jiggery-pokery, and smoke ‘n’ mirrors tactics, how much time did these authors waste in faking it, time that could have been more usefully employed in actually writing more books?

Although some opinions veer towards blaming Amazon, ask yourself: is Amazon the moral police officer of publishing? Amazon is a big shop front. It’s a gigantic store that sells loads of products. That’s their job.

It’s our job, as humans, to self enforce the rules for living. Thou shalt not cheat/steal/lie/dissemble/pull the wool etc. Everyone knows right from wrong. How much more reprehensible is it when writers, traditionally (like artists, playwrights, and poets) the people who hold a mirror up to society and point out our foibles/faults etc in their wonderful stories, deliberately and on numerous occasions seek to puff themselves up, and obtain praise by fraudulent means. It’s like cheating in an exam or faking your qualifications.

Although others have thought there will be little or no impact on these authors, it seems that you can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time. There has been a backlash. Crime writers like authors Ian Rankin, Lee Child, and Val McDermid were among the 49 writers to condemn the “underhand tactics” of colleagues.

A last word from the CEO of Smashwords, Mark Coker about what makes a book great:

“The most powerful marketing secret is to write a super-fabulous book that markets itself. If a book can’t market itself through the passionate word-of-mouth of readers, the author’s marketing will be less effective. How does an author create a book that markets itself? The secret is to write a book that touches the reader’s soul. The reader must love it, and this holds true for both fiction and non-fiction.

If they feel passion for the book, they’ll leave you a five star review, not a three star review, and they’ll tell all their friends and family to purchase it as well. Reader passion gets you word of mouth and social media buzz, and this drives sales.”

Bring back ethics, morality and good, hard work on creating fantastic books. Then the sales, and the reviews, will come.

Make Amazon Do Your Marketing!

I have to blog about a gem of a book I reviewed recently: Aggie Villanueva’s Amazon Categories Create Bestsellers. Not only did the book open my eyes as to how Amazon works, their review policies, and their sometimes draconian behaviour patterns, it also educated me regarding the way Amazon is structured. Learn how Amazon ticks, and you’ll have greater control over how your book is presented to the mass of readers  out there who could be buying your book, if only you can get them to see it. This book teaches you how to put Amazon to good use.

Understanding Amazon
Any author who wants to see their book up there in Amazon’s shop front needs to understand Amazon. Aggie Villanueva demystifies the giant in the sky. Far from being just a books-and-more store, Amazon has built-in marketing strategies that arise naturally from their own unique construction. Blessed be the author who manages to work out this for himself.

Get this book and implement the simple steps outlined to achieve marketing/sales success. Don’t think the length of the book (78 pages) means you won’t get the information you need. It is packed with tips! I spent time reading it to make sure I understood the strategies outlined, and then I went onto my own book page on Amazon and implemented them. What a shock to see how much your publisher does NOT do for you!

Tight Targeting Gets Your Book Places
Villaneuva dismantles the nuts and bolts of Amazon, and suggests that simply by tapping into the seemingly insignificant areas such as categories, tags, reviews and discussion groups, an incredible marketing machine starts working for the book. Why spend money on a marketing plan when merely making sure your book is properly categorized will reap rich rewards.

Here's the secret weapon: Correct category listings can catapult a book into bestseller lists. Nearly every Top-100 list is drawn from categories. Get that right (you can do it yourself) and your book will fly. You can then get into other Top-100 lists.

My children's adventure novel The Secret of the Sacred Scarab has been placed in two categories:

• Books; Children's Books; Action & Adventure
• Books; Children's Books; Science Fiction & Fantasy; Fantasy & Magic

I thought hard about this and then decided there wasn't any other category I could think of that was applicable.

The Amazon Helpdesk (and they are helpful!) had this to say about having more ctaegories: "Some books have more than two browsing categories because the categories have been updated automatically through data feeds provided by the book's publishers."

Don't Ignore the Benefits
Many authors prefer to use other or their own sites as selling points because they earn more on each book sale. However, it’s hard to ignore the benefits of the world’s largest store and publicity machine. Amazon’s automated system is simple but multilayered.

Books correctly listed will then benefit from free and automatic publicity that reaches millions of readers every day. Using Amazon Central, an author can also monitor and track a book’s performance in these different categories.

Hidden Extras
This book is also a treasure trove when it comes to hidden extras. The pages are sprinkled with links to other marketing videos or supplementary material, all designed to help you get your book from Amazon to a slew of readers. The writing is clear, and understandable to even the most technologically challenged writer (like me!) Screen grabs also point you in the right direction.

But Wait, There’s More!
More? Is this possible? Absolutely. If you follow Villaneuva’s careful step-by-step suggestions, you’ll end up in your Author Central Dashboard (a vital tool!) on Amazon where … tada! … you’ll find that linking back to your Amazon book details are your Shelfari book details. If you have a Shelfari account and wondered why recently you were asked if you wanted to log in via your Amazon account, this is why.

Shelfari is sometimes regarded as the ‘poor cousin’ of the triumvirate, with swanky Librarything leading the pack, and good solid Goodreads (which gets lots of publicity) following a close second. Not so. Shelfari enables you to load a huge amount of book detail on your own books such as: characters, locations, descriptions, quotes, awards, synopses, similar books etc. If you fill your Shelfari book details to the hilt, you’ll find many of these extras appearing in your Book Extras on Amazon.

Take advantage of every possible marketing angle that you’ll find in this book and the extras that add on, perhaps giving you the advantage over your competitors. There are many thousands of books published annually worldwide. Make sure you have an edge!

Amazon Categories Create Bestsellers is an essential guide. Highly recommended.

For more marketing advice, visit Promotion a La Carte. From tours to simple tips 'n' tricks, there’s something there for every author!

The Beauty of Book Reviews

Just how important is a book review and why should writers bother with them? The benefits to any author are mind-boggling in terms of the potential reviews have to boost an author from obscurity into the stratosphere. Dana Lynn Smith’s How to Get Your Book Reviewed opens many possibilities that encompass not just reviews and their benefits, but also the add-ons of marketing and promotion.

How to Get Your Book Reviewed is a step-by-step method to creating a winning book marketing strategy. Beginning with understanding the book review process and why many submitted books do not get reviewed, this guide takes the writer through the entire process. Given the hundreds of thousands of book published each year, the author stresses the need for writers to make sure their product meets the industry standards. This book also offers great tips on the extras that can draw positive attention and ensure their book is chosen above others: a media kit, a good press release and sell sheet—simple elements that are actually a valuable tool to further publicity.

Each chapter is laid out in user-friendly fashion, with details that will save a writer time and money: how to search for favorable outlets, how to approach potential reviewers, timelines attached to review publications, and details on print and online options. The guide also explores the formal (literary and review journals, newspapers, magazines etc.) and informal avenues (blogs, book and author sites, virtual reader communities) available to the writer seeking reviews. Approaching people or experts for endorsements and testimonials is also covered. Interspersed throughout are the succinct savvy tips for which Dana Lynn Smith is renowned. The author also provides many useful web links to review sites, and explains the process of getting reviews uploaded. A section on Amazon gives great advice on how to successfully utilize the Amazon tool.

This gem is the definitive guide for any writer who wants to get their book out there. I highly recommend this publication!

Buy More Books!

Don't you just love the word "sale" when it comes to books? I confess that not being a shopaholic or a shoe addict, the word "sale" only gets me excited when it is pasted in big red letters on the doors and windows of a book shop. Living in South Africa means that my shopping choices are rather limited. The best bookshop in the southern hemisphere is an emporium called Exclusive Books. Every branch is truly an emporium. You can get books on such a wide variety of topics that eventually you want to fling your credit card at the cashier and scream, "Load 'em all up!" Sadly, book prices in this neck of the world are prohibitive, to say the least, so such antics are out of the question. Apart from being off the beaten USA/Europe/Asia track, South Africa's currency and duty on book imports does not favor the avid reader. That's why people like me wait for the Exclusive Books Summer Sale when books go for half, nay, even less than a third of the shelf price.

I don't know why I pretend to avoid the sale when inevitably it finds me. I turn a corner and there are the tables laid out in the mall, nowhere near the actual store, but sneakily placed between the unsuspecting will-be-buyer (me) and the supermarket. How can one avoid casting a longing, hungry glance at the covers so delectably displayed. What's worse, a single book quickly becomes two, three, even four or five as one trawls the tables, eyes sliding over the tantalizing cover copy... Even worse is when assistants rush up to relieve you of the burden of six coffee table books and offer to look after them at the impromptu till so that "Madam can shop comfortably." Sigh - how quickly do Madam's arms fill up!

This year I was restrained. Sort of. Listed below are my three (yes, such is my will power, only three!) tomes. Why did I choose these titles? My children's book series is based on ancient mysteries and secrets so I made for the historical ones. The dictionary? Well, one can never have too many dictionaries in the house, and having something on literary characters appealed to my sense of the quirky in life. I have not read any of my purchases yet, but this is what awaits me!

Millenium by Tom Holland

I must admit I did not find Perisan Fire an easy read, and I think this will be the same kind of journey, but compelling cover copy forced my hand... Of all the civilizations existing in the year 1000, that of Western Europe seemed the unlikeliest candidate for future greatness. Compared to the glittering empires of Byzantium or Islam, the splintered kingdoms on the edge of the Atlantic appeared impoverished, fearful and backward. But the anarchy of these years proved to be, not the portents of the end of the world, as many Christians had dreaded, but rather the birthpangs of a radically new order. MILLENNIUM is a stunning panoramic account of the two centuries on either side of the apocalyptic year 1000. This was the age of Canute, William the Conqueror and Pope Gregory VII, of Vikings, monks and serfs, of the earliest castles and the invention of knighthood, and of the primal conflict between church and state. The story of how the distinctive culture of Europe - restless, creative and dynamic - was forged from out of the convulsions of these extraordinary times is as fascinating and as momentous as any in history.

Chambers' Dictionary of Literary Characters sounds fascinating. It offers over 6500 entries and even if I did not finish reading the Harry Potter series, I can catch up on everyone in this book! On a serious note, there are some big literary names in here from the classics as well as the fun stuff.

'This is a great plum pudding of a book stuffed with interesting titbits, pithy summaries, tantalizing tastes of those novels you've always meant to read' -- Reference Reviews

Now for the hero part! One of my most loved books as a child was a book on Greek and Roman myths and legends. I read it countless times. Which explains this purchase.

Heroes: A History of Hero Worship - the title says it all. Beginning beneath the walls of Troy and culminating in 1930s Europe, a magisterial exploration of the nature of heroism in Western civilization. In this riveting and insightful cultural history, Lucy Hughes-Hallett brings to life eight exceptional men from history and myth to explore our timeless need for heroes. As she re-creates these extraordinary lives, Hughes-Hallett illuminates the attractions and dangers of hero worship. This is a fascinating book about dictatorship and democracy, seduction and mass hysteria, politics and culture, and the tensions between being good and being great.

Phew! Can't wait to get stuck in.

If You Build It, They Won’t Come: A Guide to Author Websites — Publishing Trends

How To Boost Book Sales, Win More Fans & Attract Readers

If You Build It, They Won’t Come: A Guide to Author Websites — Publishing Trends

For the fiction author interested in attracting more fans and readers, this article is a must. For any serious author a website presence is an absolute given! Visiting an author's website is the prime method used by book lovers to get to know and appreciate their favorite authors. This holds true regardless of age.

How else are readers going to know your book exists unless there's a web link to who you are, what the book is about, a cover image and any other graphics details, links to purchase sites, links to great reviews, links to book awards ... the list goes on. In addition, website visits translate directly to book sales.

These days readers want to know more about their favorite authors, what makes them tick, what makes them real, accessible and human, what makes them touchable and yet still special. With more and more buyers preferring to browse online, a virtual bookstore may just have become more important that a real one. Fans are more likely to visit an author's website than the author's page on the publisher's website. With such a strong trend as evidence of the reader's thinking, authors would be foolish not to spend that extra bit of time and/or money giving readers and fans something special and worthwhile.

A big plus is giving readers unpublished material. Maybe an extract from a forthcoming book? Letting readers know where you'll be to read from your latest work is also a drawcard. Readers love seeing authors in the flesh, and many relish the opportunity to ask questions about the author's work, get an autograph or a copy of the book personally signed.

So, when designing your book or author website, give some thought to including your voice, your attitude and your unique angle as a writer and a person!

12 Secrets to Selling More Books at Events

One of the funniest book signing videos popped up recently on YouTube: Parnell Hall singing about signing books in the Walden Books. It's an amusing video but possibly taps into every writer's greatest fears ... will anyone come to the store and will anyone buy my books? Marketing guru Penny Sansevieri offers 12 great secrets to selling more books at events, not just book stores.

So you got a book event, great! Now you want to maximize it, right? You've heard your writing buddies talk (or perhaps read online) about the lack of attendance at signings, so figuring out how to maximize the event, regardless of the numbers might be tricky. While I spend a lot of time addressing online marketing, the offline component is one you shouldn't overlook. If book events are where you want to focus, then bringing in some ideas to help you sell more books is something you should consider.



Some years back when I was promoting The Cliffhanger I ended up at a book signing in the driving rain, I mean it was pouring and the store was all but empty. It was amazing I sold even one book, let alone seven. While not a big number, the copies were all sold to people who were seeking refuge in the store from the rain and not there for my event. This signing taught me a lot about events and connecting with consumers in stores. If you have an event coming up, consider these ideas before you head out:


1. Marketing: First and foremost is the marketing of your event. But I'm not talking about the marketing you do in the media (though that is great too) I'm speaking of in-store marketing; this is what most folks seem to overlook. This is where you supply things to the store to help them market your event. Because the first phase of a successful event is driving people to it. Here are a few thoughts.


a) Do bag stuffers. You can easily do this in your favorite computer program, do two up on a page, meaning that you use one 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper to do two fliers. You'll want to ask the store first if they mind that you provide this, most stores or event venues don't.


b) Bookmarks: while most in the industry see these as passé, people still love them. You can do bookmarks and bag stuffers (or staple them to the flier) or you can do custom bookmarks with the date and time of your event. Nowadays it's pretty easy to get these done cheaply. Keep in mind that if you are having the event in a mall or other type of shopping area, you might be able to drop the bookmarks (or bag stuffers) off at the nearby stores to see if they'll help promote the event.


2. Book signings are boring: Regardless of where you do the event, plan to do a talk instead of a signing. People are drawn into a discussion and are often turned off by an author just sitting at a table. Marketing is about message and movement so stand up and speak. If speaking in public is intimidating to you, go to Toastmasters or some other local networking/speaking group and see what you can learn.

3. Unique places: If you want to get more attention for your event, consider doing events in unique places. We've done them in video stores, electronics stores, gyms, even restaurants (on slow nights); doing outside-the-bookstore events is a great way to gain more interest for your talk. Why? Because you aren't competing with everyone else at the bookstore for your crowd. When you do an event at a locale that doesn't normally do events, you'll attract more people just because it's considered "unique."


4. Show up early and talk it up: OK, so let's say you're in the store and there are a ton of people in there shopping (a book event dream, yes?), I suggest that you take your extra bag stuffers or custom bookmarks and just hand them to the people in the store. Let them know you are doing an event at such and such time and you'd love it if they can sit in. You'll be surprised how many new people you might pull in this way.


5. Customize: Regardless of what your talk is about, poll the audience first to see a) what brought them there, or b) what they hope to learn if your talk is educational. I suggest this because the more you can customize your discussion, the more likely you are to sell a book. If you can solve problems (and this is often done during the Q&A) all the better. You'll look like the answer machine you are and readers love that. If you have the answers, they'll want to buy from you. I promise.

6. Make friends: Get to know the bookstore people, but not just on the day of the event. Go in prior and make friends, tell them who you are and maybe even hand them your flier or bookmark (or a stack if you can). Often stores have Information Centers, see if you can leave some fliers there instead of just at the register. Getting to know the people who are selling the book is a great way to help gather more people into your event. If your event isn't in a bookstore but attached to a shopping area or mall, go around to the stores (and perhaps you did this when you passed out the fliers) and let them know you have an event and ask what you can do to help them promote it. If you can rally the troops to help you market your talk, you could triple the numbers of people at your event. No kidding.


7. Take names: I always, always recommend that you get names and (email) addresses from the folks who attended. Signing them up for your mailing list is a great way to keep in touch with them and stay on your reader's radar screen. If you have a giveaway or drawing, great! This will help you to collect names. If you don't, offer them a freebie or e-book after the event. Often if I'm doing a PowerPoint presentation I will put together a set of them (delivered in PDF) after the event. Attendees need to sign up to get them and then once they do, I include them in our newsletter list, which helps me to stay on their radar screen.


8. Pricing: Make sure your book is easy to buy. If you are doing this outside of a bookstore this is easy to do and will help your sales. I find that a rounded number like $10 or $20 makes for a quick and easy sale. If you can round up or down without adding or losing too much to the price, by all means do it.


9. Book pairing: One way you might be able to round up is by pairing your book with a freebie. When I paired Red Hot Internet Publicity with a second, but smaller, marketing book I took the awkward pricing of $18.95, bumped it up to $20 (so 2 books for $20) and quadrupled my sales after an event. Now the pairing doesn't have to be a book, it can be a special report or even an e-book that you send to them after the event.


10. Product and placement: As you're doing your talk (especially if it's in a non-bookstore venue) make sure that you have a copy of the book propped up in front of you so event visitors see it the entire time you are speaking. Hold up the book when appropriate and use it as an example when you can. This will help to direct the consumer's eye to the book - and making eye contact with the product is a good way to make sure it stays on their radar screen throughout your talk. When I do a speaking gig at an event that allows me to sell books in the room, I will sell four times more than I would if the attendees have to go somewhere else to buy it, so make the buy easy. If you can, make sure your books are for sale in the room.


11. Ease of purchase: Aside from pricing, if you're doing your own checkout make sure that you have many ways consumers can buy your book. I take credit cards at the event, checks and cash. Don't limit yourself as to what you can take or you will limit your sales.


12. Post event wrap-up: So the event is over, what now? Well, if you got attendees to sign up for your newsletter (you did do that, right?) now it's time to send a thank you note for attending and remind them (if they missed the chance at the event) to buy a copy of your book at the "special event price."


Speaking and book events are great ways to build your platform, but if you aren't selling books there's little point in doing them. For many of us, our book is our business card and thus, if we can sell our "business card" we can keep consumers in our funnel. If your book isn't your business card you still want readers, right? The marketing before, during and after an event is crucial to building your readership. While it's easy to say that events sell books, they often don't. I find that if you don't "work it" you often will find your time wasted. Seek the opportunities when they are made available to you - and then maximize them when they are, you'll be glad you did!


Thanks, Penny!

Reprinted from "The Book Marketing Expert newsletter," a free ezine offering book promotion and publicity tips and techniques.

How Many Times Your Book Is Sold

PUBLISHED ONCE, SOLD FOREVER AFTER

Successfully articulating the publication of a big book is the test of good publishing, involving the ability to keep in one’s head not only the numbers and their daily fluctuation but the harmonious synchronizing of publicity, manufacturing, advertising, and sales departments often run as independent fiefdoms. —MICHAEL KORDA 

As publishers shepherd books from writers to readers, they face the challenge of sustaining the enthusiasm of the editors who convinced the house to buy the books. Your book will be sold many times as it makes its way to your readers.

• You are the first person to sell your book. First you sell yourself on the idea for it.

• Then you pitch the idea to your professional networks for feedback.

• Then, assuming you want an agent, you send your proposal or manuscript to prospective agents.

• Your agent sells your book to a publisher.

• To buy your book, editors must first sell it to others in the house whose support they need.

• The editors use that support to sell your book at the house’s weekly editorial meetings. Depending on the makeup of the editorial board, your editor may need to convince the house’s publicity people, sales and marketing staff, and executive officers to take a chance on your book.

• Your editor meets with the sales and marketing departments to decide on the size of the first printing and the marketing plan that will be presented at sales conferences and in the catalog.

• Your editor presents your book to the publisher’s sales rep at a sales conference. This may be done via a Web conference to save the cost of bringing the reps and in-house staff together.

• The sales reps return to their territories and use the publisher’s catalog to sell your book to independent booksellers. Special reps sell to the chains, the two largest wholesalers—Ingram and Baker & Taylor—and other large customers.

• Pre-publication reviews in periodicals such as Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Kirkus Reviews sell your book to libraries.

• The art director decides how best to create your book’s hardcover jacket or paperback cover to sell your book to bookstore browsers.

• The production department creates or farms out the design of the interior of your book. The goal is to come up with the most effective design, paper stock, and typeface for selling your book.

• The subsidiary rights department tries to sell the publisher’s subsidiary rights, such as book clubs, first- and second-serial rights, and film and foreign rights. If your agent has retained any of these rights for you, your agent, usually helped by co-agents, will try to sell them.

• The publicity department decides how they will publicize your book to the media, which helps to sell your book to the public.

• When your book is published, booksellers sell it to their customers. Where your books are stocked in bookstores and whether they’re shelved face-out or spine-out makes a big difference. Independent booksellers use shelf-talkers—handwritten notes taped to the shelf below the book—to push the staff’s favorite books.

• For literary books, especially novels, the eagerness of independent booksellers to hand-sell books can make the difference between a failure and a best-seller. Competition from the chains and online booksellers is destroying this path to success by putting independents out of business, at the rate of three a week.

• The first group of readers reads your book, and if they love it as passionately as you want them to, they sell everyone they know on reading it. Through the comments they write for online booksellers, your readers can also help sell your books online.

The ultimate challenge your book faces is arousing enough passion in your readers that their recommendations cause whoever hears them to buy your book, swelling the size of your unofficial but unstoppable word-of-mouth sales force.

Best-selling authors have an army of such readers. That’s why they’re best-selling authors. The most clever, heavily financed promotion campaign can’t make a book sell if it doesn’t provide the benefit—whether it’s information or entertainment—that book buyers expect.

If your books don’t require revisions, you only have to write them once. But because of the endless book chain between you and your readers, your books will continue to be sold.

Even after books go out of print, libraries continue to lend them, and used bookstores and online booksellers continue sell them. Print-on-demand publishing can continue to make books available around the world until a better technology comes along.

Reprinted from "Rick Frishman's Author101 Newsletter." Subscribe at  http://www.rickfrishman.com/  and receive Rick's "Million Dollar Rolodex."