Dorian Box's Blog, page 9

Analysis of a Kindle Sales Promotion

Andrew Diamond, author of an outrageously funny new private eye caper called Warren Lane, detailed his recent experiment using various Kindle sales promotions outlets and techniques to promote the book in a new blog post, Summary of an E-Book Promotion.

This post is must reading for all indie authors.  Diamond takes us step-by-step through his experiment, which resulted in raising the sales ranking of Warren Lane from 1,273,510 to 2000 in his genres over a period of a few days.

Check it out!  Even better, check out his terrific book.  A review will be forthcoming.

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Time to Abolish Semicolons?

By Dorian Box

It happened suddenly.

Too many years of deleting semicolons that editors had substituted for periods in my writing made me snap.

I was reading page edits of a recent article–converting the one-hundredth brand new semicolon back to a period–when it struck me like lightning.

It’s time to set aside our differences, to unite as a global society, rise up and shout, “Enough already with the freaking semicolons!”

And I’m not just suggesting they be used sparingly. I say go all the way. Abolish them.

I’m not a punctuation bigot. I hold no grudge  against umlauts or even asterisms.  I admit to having a few hard feelings toward commas, but enjoy emdashes, exclamation points, and spending long weekends with parentheses.

But my true love is periods. My mother was a newspaper reporter and journalism professor from the old school.  Between chewing on pencils and guzzling bitter coffee, she taught me to keep sentences short and terse.  It was good advice then; it’s even better today in our attention-challenged world.

Did you notice that? I used a semicolon above where some writers would insert one. But why? The only purpose of a semicolon is to connect two separate thoughts that could be  separate sentences.

Says one book on punctuation: “The primary function of the semicolon is to connect two complete (thematically similar) sentences, thereby making them one.” Noah Lukeman, A Dash of Style: The Art and Mastery of Punctuation. Nevertheless, the author defends semicolons as “probably the most elegant of all forms of punctuation.”

In 2006, James J. Kilpatrick attacked the above defense of semicolons  with a vengeance:

What hokum! What bosh, what baloney, what bilge! The semicolon is a belly-up guppie in a tank of glorious Siamese fighting fish. It’s girly. It is not just probably the most useless of all forms of punctuation. It is absolutely, positively the most useless of all such marks ever invented. Its sole legitimate function is to separate individual elements in a listing of linked elements.

Wow, and I thought I disliked our little comma-weighed-down-by-a-period friend.  Kilpatrick, the fiery conservative journalist who died in 2010 at 89, was never one to hide his feelings.  His aggressive debates with Shana Alexander on 60 Minutes led to a hilarious trash-talking parody by Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin in the early days of Saturday Night Live.

What do you think?  A lot of great writers, both icons from the past and current favorites, regularly used or use semicolons.  A legitimate argument I see for occasional semicolons is they don’t break up separate, but connected, thoughts as abruptly as periods do.  Accurate, but question-begging to a degree because it comes back to the same issue.  If they’re separate thoughts, why connect them in the first place?

If you’re a novice writer, refrain from sentences longer than fifty words, a guideline hammered into me back in journalism school.  If you’re struggling with a sentence, it might be because you’re trying to cram too many words (and thoughts) into it.  Just break it in two, or even three.  Some sentences and thoughts call for more words, but a fifty word-max is a good rule of thumb–and helps avoid the need for semicolons.

Darn.  Doing a “find” search of Psycho-Tropics, I discovered two semicolons had somehow infiltrated the book’s 462 pages.  The sneaky devils were cleverly hidden in a piece of song verse.

Hmm.  Maybe we should keep them around after all.

The post Time to Abolish Semicolons? appeared first on dorian box.

Book Review and Interview: Spark, by Rupert Dreyfus

By Amy Holland

Transgressive fiction writer Rupert Dreyfus, from England, made two strong new fans in the U.S. recently as both I and Dorian Box (author of Psycho-Tropics) read his debut novel, Spark.  Full of dark humor, insane plot twists, and quirky characters—just the kind of stuff we both love.

Here’s Box’s review of the book:

Disaffected Jake Miller is a self-proclaimed “bumbler” working in a boring job at England’s largest bank, a corporate world he despises.  (As an American, I picture a young John Cusack.)  If his life were a song, he tells a mysterious woman named Sky, it would be “I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish” by the Smiths.  Well, that’s about to change big-time.

Actually, it already has.  Jake has been shot by a British counter-terrorism unit.  Readers don’t know why as Jake begins unraveling the chaotic chain of events leading to his demise in this thrilling transgressive novel.

Jake does have one skill. He’s a decent computer hacker.  Even better–or maybe worse as it turns out–he’s friends with a world-class hacker named Alfie who lives in a sleazy underworld of internet cafes and disposable computers.  A cast of vividly drawn characters, including love object Sky and a gun-wielding, drug-consuming scam artist reminiscent of American writer Hunter S. Thompson, combine to leave Jake with a broken heart, shattered spirit, and really pissed off.  His solution?  Collapse the global economy, of course.

Using a direct first person voice, author Dreyfus keeps the plot moving at a fast pace, spicing it up at every turn with dark humor and genuine insights into human nature.  “The world is such a beautiful place when your heart begins to yearn,” he observes before everything falls apart.  While hilarious throughout (we’re talking laugh-out-loud hilarious), the book is also disturbing because the “Spark” that Jake unleashes on civilization rings all too possible in our current state of shaky world affairs.

An excellent book with an off-kilter worldview that is fresh and frighteningly funny.

I concur.  We’re both looking forward to reading Dreyfus’s new short story collection, The Rebel’s Sketchbook. I had the chance to “sit down” (virtual-style) with Dreyfus this week to gain some insights into Spark, his inspirations, whether his work is art imitating life (specifically, his), and the nature of transgressive fiction:

Every author has his story about what sparked his idea for a novel (pardon the pun). How and when did you come up with the idea for Spark?

Watching the London riots of 2011 is where everything begins with Spark. It basically put the UK on lockdown for a few days. I remember watching the unfolding events on live news channels and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. What really struck me is how so many people had decided to express themselves in such violent ways. I also found it curious that the media wasn’t engaging with them; they were just portraying rioters as thugs, thieves and vandals. I suppose I wanted to fill in the blanks so I decided to take one of the disaffected masses who, through the internet, focuses their frustration with the world and becomes a mouthpiece for the marginalised and downtrodden.

Your main character, Jake, knows his way around computers, and even refers to himself as a computer nerd. Do you share Jake’s passion and computer knowledge?

I’m actually fairly average when it comes to using computers. However, my interest in them is really just how much of an impact they are having. If you’re old enough to remember the days before dial up you’ll no doubt be aware that our lives have drastically changed since the internet became mainstream. A large part of what I try to do is capture both the positives and the negatives because to ignore it seems like a missed opportunity from a storytelling perspective. And while I’m not capable of hacking my way out of a paper bag, I love Anonymous. Someday I want to write a short story collection based solely on computer hackers. The possibilities for this would be endless.

Jake is sort of an odd soul; he seems to have a good heart, but then some of his actions beg to differ. How would you describe Jake in your own words?

I think you’re largely spot on. He’s supposed to represent a disaffected, slightly idiotic person whose heart is ultimately in the right place. He hasn’t got a clue what’s going on in the real world, but he knows from his own day-to-day experiences that the corporate world just doesn’t suit him or people in general. For Jake life sucks so the natural progression for him is to do something about it.

But he’s also incredibly lonely which is like an epidemic in London. There was an opinion poll commissioned by the BBC a couple of years ago which showed that about a quarter of people in London feel lonely. This is remarkable when you think just how many people are crammed into one tiny space and yet they struggle to make any friends.

As nerdy an oddball as Jake is, Vinnie Sloane makes him look like the poster boy for normality. I have to ask, how did you come up with the idea for Vinnie? Was he modeled after someone in particular?

I knew that in order to make Spark a more interesting read, I needed to have a funny housemate dynamic because they were going to be central to the plot. Visually Vinnie is based on a poor man’s Kurt Cobain (which is why Jake says something about him living in the shadow of a rock star). The conspiracy theory aspect was actually inspired by one of my good friends who believes in this type of stuff. We’ll sit for hours debating it and I find it to be a fascinating worldview. I know that my friend reads my stories so it’s a bit of a good natured dig at him really. However, I’d like to put it on record that it’s not supposed to be a dig at conspiracy theorists in general; I’m just ribbing a good friend. On my three mile long list of potential targets; conspiracy theorists don’t appear on it once.

Your writing style is loaded with dark humor, sarcasm, and satire; some of the descriptions and analogies you use in your books are absolutely hilarious. How do you come up with this stuff?

I suppose I’ve always had a dark, cynical imagination and with age it’s just getting worse. As for the actual stories; I get the basic premises from all over the place. It’s really abstract how they can come about. For example Hatchet Job was inspired by my younger brother’s addiction to playing Call of Duty online with his friends. I thought it’d be fun to write a story about someone becoming thoroughly addicted to video games to the point where they lose touch with reality. This type of thing is also portrayed in Spark. There’s a character called Craptash who plays those crazy online role playing games where you pretend to be an orc and you take out a mortgage on a treehouse, and then you have to locate gold coins in a dragon’s nest to keep up with the repayments. You really have to suspend belief in order to appreciate it. So it’s mostly just observation and then putting these things under a dark humorous lens.

As for analogies, similes and whatnot: whenever they’re required I just try to be as creative as I can and hope that they amuse people as much as they amuse me.

Who would you say is your main influence as a writer? Are there any authors whose styles you would compare your writing style to? 

As predictable as it is I’d say that my main influence is George Orwell. I love the effortlessness of his writing and the fact that he wrote with a distinctive social conscience. As for comparing my writing style to other authors: I suppose it has a lot in common with all the transgressive authors. The style is very simplistic and conversational, and always in the first-person.

Your writing in Spark reflects a somewhat-less-than-satisfied view of world conventions. Is that just fiction or are you truly a rebel at heart? Is that what “transgressive fiction” is all about? How would you define it for readers not familiar with it?

I’m a rebel for sure. On one level I can’t agree with anyone when it comes to political issues, but I think people would be surprised at how relaxed I am in real life. I have a couple of friends who think Nigel Farage speaks the Gospel and I don’t rush to fall out with them over it—however much I disagree with them. I just feel compelled to mouth off about the failings of our leaders and aspects of society which get us all down.

As for your second and third question: transgressive fiction has a long history, but the contemporary stuff was mostly born out of the beat movement. What gets called transgressive fiction these days will often use narrators who are caught up in bizarre predicaments and will often go to peculiar places which don’t get written about so much (hence the word ‘transgress’).

For anyone not familiar with the genre, I’d say that it’s almost like an allergic reaction to the constraints of commercial fiction and, to a lesser degree, literary fiction. Both of these can be fantastic, but they can sometimes place an expectation on what a story should be. Transgressive fiction rebels against this and allows writers to take a different approach altogether; both in style and content. There’s also often a rawer representation of themes such as addiction issues, crime, social anxiety etc.

In a nutshell I’d say that it offers readers an alternative. A bit like a good punk record or a hip hop record or some other type of music which goes against the grain.

Check out Dreyfus’s books on Amazon.UK here and Amazon.US here.

The post Book Review and Interview: Spark, by Rupert Dreyfus appeared first on dorian box.

Psycho-Tropics Gets IndieReader Seal of Approval

Check out the great new review of Psycho-Tropics from IndieReader Reviews. Four-and-a-half stars earned an official IndieReader seal of approval.

Here’s an excerpt::

Throughout the novel clues are tossed out like bait, twisting and turning the storyline along, but are never handled with a heavy hand. Likewise, the characters are brilliantly constructed, each one with their own quirks and flaws that might seem unbelievable handled by a less adept writer. The dark humor is witty and serves to lessen the tension in all the right ways before it heightens again. … PSYCHO-TROPICS effortlessly captures the wonderful eccentricities of life in South Florida (not to mention in other parts of the state) and offers a dose of oddball humor.

Read other reviews here.

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Psycho-Tropics Gets Official IndieReader Seal of Approval

Check out the great new review of Psycho-Tropics from IndieReader Reviews. Four-and-a-half stars earned Psycho-Tropics an official IndieReader seal of approval. Here’s an excerpt:

Throughout the novel clues are tossed out like bait, twisting and turning the storyline along, but are never handled with a heavy hand. Likewise, the characters are brilliantly constructed, each one with their own quirks and flaws that might seem unbelievable handled by a less adept writer. The dark humor is witty and serves to lessen the tension in all the right ways before it heightens again. … PSYCHO-TROPICS effortlessly captures the wonderful eccentricities of life in South Florida (not to mention in other parts of the state) and offers a dose of oddball humor.

Thanks IndieReader! Read other reviews here.

The post Psycho-Tropics Gets Official IndieReader Seal of Approval appeared first on dorian box.

Psycho-Tropics in Publishers Weekly

Psycho-Tropics in Publishers Weekly

Okay, so it’s only a listing of new books, but we’ll take it.  Surely, the starred review can’t be far behind.

Finding Your Perfect Writing Atmosphere

By Dorian Box

A friend asked where and how I like to like.

“Let me guess,” she said. “With all the insanity in Psycho-Tropics, an asylum!”

“Nope. Tried while I was there, but it was too noisy.” Just kidding.

A wealth of articles and blog posts discuss how to create the best creative writing atmosphere. They offer great ideas, but some commentators go too far in giving definitive answers (“do it this way”) to what is a subjective question answerable only by the individual writer.

For every writer touting the writing benefits of silence and isolation, another suggests cranking up the music or writing in a public place. The only opinion that matters, of course, is yours—the writer. What works for you?

My friend laughed when I gave her my real answer. For creative writing such as fiction, I usually write with incense burning and Indian sitar ragas playing (create a Ravi Shankar station on Pandora to give it a test).  I find the Eastern vibe to be soothing, sometimes even transcendental, without being distracting. The music also filters out background noise, such as traffic or a barking dog.

Wherever I happen to be living, I set up my computer close to a window with the best possible view, even if it’s just the street. Staring at a blank wall is the worst for me, a literal version of writer’s block, I suppose.

(My nonfiction and scholarly writing as a professor, which I spend most of my time doing, is much different.)

My friend still laughs about the sitar music. Familiar with the mayhem in Psycho-Tropics, she was sure I listened to Norwegian death metal all the way through.

Public Places and Music vs. Solitude and Silence

Two of the biggest differences in preferred writing atmospheres involve public spaces versus private spaces and silence versus background music.

Some writers enjoy writing in Starbucks or other public places, even airports and train stations. The stimulation and interaction helps them find their muse.  Like everything, works for some, not for others.  The stimulation and interaction may also prevent you from connecting deep within those all-important thoughts at the fringe of consciousness, where the best ideas often lurk.

One of the most repeated suggestions for creating a good writing atmosphere is to play music. No doubt, music can move us and open doors in our minds.  Depending on the music, it can evoke any emotion or mood known, or even unknown, to humans.

But what kind of music?

I teach graduate school. The student reading assignments are demanding—long and complex. I frequently encounter students with their heads buried in one of their thick books, wearing earbuds, music blasting. Being a music fan and also curious, sometimes I ask what they’re listening to. It’s never sitar ragas or Vivaldi or any other type of soothing music, but usually something like Nine Inch Nails or hip hop.

Many creative writers also listen to pumped-up music while writing. Some writers have writing playlists, often different ones for different writing sessions.  A commenter to a good blog post on the subject boasted that she has more than 22,000 songs dedicated to every mood.  Wow.

I love music. Heck, I sing and play in a rock band. But the idea of predictable playlists seems a bit antithetical to creativity.  Meanwhile, if I play any music with lyrics, I inevitably find myself actually listening to or even singing along, which means I can’t be giving 100 percent of my brain capacity to writing.

Contrary to popular belief that we are a society of effective multitaskers, scientific studies are unanimous that brain processing power decreases when multitasking. Here’s a Forbes article about a Stanford study, but there are many others.  The brain simply cannot focus on more than one task at a time, at least not on complex tasks such as writing. Something has to give.

On the other hand, whatever works for the individual writer is the point of the post.  So if it works for you, go with it!  There are no rules.  But be sure to experiment with some alternatives to make sure it really is working best.

The post Finding Your Perfect Writing Atmosphere appeared first on dorian box.

The Importance of Personal Communication Between Indie Authors and Their Readers

By Amy Holland, with Ian Sutherland, author and indie-publishing expert

Developing a substantial following and readership is the ultimate task in marketing an indie book. There are tons of readers and potential readers out there, and how you communicate with them is extremely important. Generic queries, constant email blasts, and social media spamming are often attempts in futility (not to mention annoying to the recipients). This type of barraging isn’t marketing; it’s pestering.

In his blog post, Indie Authors’ Second Responsibility to Their Readers, author and social media expert, Ian Sutherland, explains that “[t]he most successful authors apply the personal touch in all their interactions with their readership.”

An excellent point. Communicating on a real, meaningful level is more likely to get attention and positive reception, and your openness and sincerity will speak volumes to your professional character. As Sutherland defines it, for indie authors, “[e]ngagement means striking up two-way conversations with readers and potential readers. It means making themselves easily contactable. It means being personable. It means initiating dialogue in the first place.”

In the above-mentioned blog post, Sutherland gives a moving example of just how meaningful this type of genuine, personal communication can be to a reader as he shares his own experience with his favorite childhood author, Malcom Saville (click here to read it—it’s adorable!).

I can likewise attest to the validity of personalized communication from a reader’s perspective. I contacted my favorite author several years ago and received a genuine, meaningful response, for which I still appreciate and admire him. In fact, it sparked a great friendship, and I now work with him marketing his first work of fiction, Psycho-Tropics.

Of course, you don’t have to become besties with every person who reads your book or acknowledges you. Even a small personal touch can be very meaningful. It could be as simple as sending a signed thank-you note to your giveaway winners or people who order your book from your website. It could be posting a thank-you message to those who like your Facebook page or to your followers on Twitter, retweet your posts, or mention you in theirs. Whatever the gesture, the engagement will earn you respect and loyalty from your readers.

I recently interviewed Sutherland (see below), and asked him to elaborate on meaningful engagement from an indie author’s perspective. In the interview, Sutherland gives some personal examples of how engaging with his reader audience has benefited him as an indie author. He also addresses how authors writing under pseudonyms can personally engage with reader audiences online without risking revelation of their real names, and discusses timesaving strategies for busy authors using social media.

Here is what he had to say:

In your blog post, Indie Authors’ Second Responsibility to Their Readers, you wrote, “For indie authors, engagement with readers is mandatory for long-term success.” What is the most important benefit—for yourself as an indie author—that has resulted from engaging with your readers?

I’ve had lots of engagement with readers, both online and in person. One of my favourite moments of the last few months was attending the book group of a local company that had chosen to read and discuss my debut novel, but with the added ingredient of the author being present for their discussion. It was hugely affirming for me to receive such positive feedback from readers directly, all of whom had actually read the book. They enjoyed quizzing me on the creative process behind the novel and were shocked to discover I was self-published, having had no idea there was such a thing!

Another interesting example was receiving positive feedback from one reader who was a professional penetration tester (someone who hacks into websites with the permission of the website owner in order to identify vulnerabilities). This is the same profession as the protagonist of my novel and so it was rewarding to be told how technically accurate the cyber elements were within the book. He has even agreed to proof read (from a technical point of view) future novels, which is a real bonus. It then turned out that he hosted computer hacking seminars and invited me to speak and promote the book. All this from engaging with one reader!  

In both these cases, engaging well with readers caused word-of-mouth marketing to occur. I know this because new readers have told me, having first discovered my books through recommendations from the people mentioned above. And so it goes on!

In the post, you also mention to indie authors that “engaging” means “giving more of yourself to your readers than you might be naturally comfortable with.” What advice do you have for authors writing under a pseudonym, who want to engage more openly with their reader audiences, but not in ways that risk revelation of their real names?  

I wrestled with using a pen name originally, in order to keep my work life and author life separate. Using a pen name does impact your ability to market effectively. The hardest part of being stuck behind a pen name is missing out on the marketing benefit of in person activities—no book launches, author readings, signings, etc, etc. Such a shame. Robert Galbraith received lots of positive reviews for his debut novel, but it didn’t sell particularly well until it was revealed to be a pen name for JK Rowling. Facebook has recently clamped down on Facebook Pages not under a real name, with many authors losing their pen name pages and hard-won ‘likes’. Twitter, on the other hand, doesn’t care. All you need is an email address and you’re off.

There’s absolutely nothing stopping you from being contactable online via your pen name, whether through email, Twitter or other channels. It all comes down to avoiding specifics in anything you say or write online. No names, dates, locations, etc. And by replying, you can meaningfully engage with readers, just avoiding any specifics.

Finding the time to actively engage with readers is an issue for busy authors, but there are ways to resolve that, which you discuss in your book, Advanced Twitter Strategies for Authors: Twitter techniques to help you sell your book—in under 15 minutes a day! In the book, you explain how certain automating techniques can be helpful (and completely ethical). But the terms “automated” and “meaningful engagement” might seem contradictory to some people. Could you give a brief rundown of why it’s possible for authors to use automation to their advantage, yet still engage with their reader audiences on a personal level?

In Advanced Twitter Strategies for Authors, I go to great lengths to show where automation can be effective, but only if configured well and tuned to precision. This is in the area of tweeting news stories, blog posts, and promotional stuff. It also applies to retweeting others.

While I do recommend tools to speed up the process of using follow/unfollow strategies to drive follower growth, it can never be fully automated because then you would be in violation of Twitter’s terms of service, which requires each follow/unfollow event to be enacted by a human being pressing a button.

But there is one area where automation cannot and should not be applied at all. This is when you engage with other Twitter users, who may mention you and expect a reply. While I do recommend tools and techniques to filter down on these tweets, hiding the rest of the noise that’s going on in your Twitter stream, you cannot use automation to reply to someone. This should always be personable. Otherwise, you’ve turned yourself into a robot and no one wants that! 

Thanks, Ian, for sharing your experiences and tips! And in the spirit of meaningful engagement, authors, please feel free to use the “comments” section below to share your own experiences in actively engaging with your reader audiences. Readers, if you have an example of how an author has engaged with you, we’d love to hear from you, too!

You can follow me on Twitter @aeholland2, and Ian Sutherland @iansuth.

The post The Importance of Personal Communication Between Indie Authors and Their Readers appeared first on dorian box.

Are Kindle Ad Campaigns Worth the Investment?

By Dorian Box

If you’re a self-published author and have a Kindle version of your book, you may have heard about a relatively new ad campaign service offered by Amazon Marketing Services as part of the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) Select program.

Here’s how it works:

1.  First, you first create an Amazon Marketing Services account on the KDP website.

2.  You set the overall budget you’re willing to spend and the maximum amount you are willing to pay when a customer clicks on your ad. The minimum price you can set per click is 2 cents, but don’t get your hopes up. You’re competing in an online auction for clicks. As Amazon explains it, “Your book’s ads automatically compete in an online auction. You’ll choose your maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bid when you schedule your ad. Your CPC bid is the maximum amount you will be charged when a customer clicks your ad.”

I’ve set a maximum amount of 77 cents per click in my latest campaigns to market Psycho-Tropics, and Amazon tells me that the average amount I’m paying per click is about 70 cents. In just a few of months of using these campaigns, I’ve already noticed that as the program becomes more well-known and popular, bids for clicks are increasing fairly rapidly.

3.  You can target your ad campaigns in one of two ways: by interest (e.g., mystery, thriller, humor, romance, etc.) or by specific products. For a product-based campaign, you can search for and list as many products as you want. So, for example, I have one campaign listing books by other authors of zany Florida fiction and a much broader one where I selected about 150 books by authors whose readers might relate well to Psycho-Tropics in terms of either content or writing style.  Because my book features a surfer protagonist and has a surfer on the cover, I even targeted a few non-book surfing products.

(Take note that once a campaign expires, you have to start over. I learned this to my chagrin when I tried to re-run a product-targeted campaign and realized I had to go search for all of the books all over again. So if you have a product-targeted campaign that you’re happy with, be sure to extend it before it runs out, which you can easily do on the dashboard. Note to Amazon: Seems like this could be easily fixed.)

You can run multiple campaigns (I’m currently running four) to experiment with what works best for your book. Since you only pay by the click, it does not cost any more to run multiple campaigns.  You can terminate them at any time.

4.  Your ad (see accompanying sample) will show your book title, author name, cover image, and number of Amazon reviews and average star-rating. Thus, it it might be worth waiting until you get a respectable number of number of reviews before running a campaign.  A great new feature allows you to include a headline.  You can review campaign reports at any time, which will show you the number of page impressions, number of clicks, average price per click, and resulting sales.

5.  Customers who click on your ad are taken to your book’s detail page, where, hopefully, they decide to buy your book. Amazon recently added two nifty features that are likely to boost sales. First, for ad campaigns targeting interests (but not for those targeting specific products) your ad can appear as a display ad on a person’s Kindle. Second, as mentioned and shown by image above, you can now include a short headline (60 characters max) to accompany your ad, which gives you the luxury of adding an attention-getting teaser of some sort.

Are Kindle ad campaigns worth the investment?  It depends on what you are seeking.  As a new fiction writer with a debut novel, I’m currently paying more for ad clicks than the royalties being generated by resulting sales.  On the other hand, my latest ad campaigns have resulted in the sale of several dozen Kindle copies in a short time, which means several dozen more people are reading my book than otherwise would be.

As a new self-published author, your best hope for success is to get as many people as possible to read your book and hope they like it enough to spread the word, either by word of mouth, posting reviews, or otherwise.

So, for now at least, count me as a satisfied customer.

The post Are Kindle Ad Campaigns Worth the Investment? appeared first on dorian box.

Making Hard Copies Available: Cost-Effective Suggestions for Self-Published Authors

By Amy Holland

In my previous post, Are Self-Published Authors Who Publish E-Only Titles at a Disadvantage?, I discussed the benefits of making hard copies available. As with most worthwhile endeavors, though, coming up with a professional looking print book means extra work and added expense. But there are cost-effective ways to go about it.

For those of you who would like to make hard copies of your book available, but are on a limited budget, or don’t know how to create a print-friendly version (or both), here are some suggestions.

Hire a Student to Design Your Layout

Before you can print it, your book must be ready to print. Preparing a print-friendly version is different from preparing e-books; this can present a problem for self-published authors lacking knowledge and experience with print design. There are important things you need to do to get your book print-ready, including—but not limited to—creating a back cover, designing the print-friendly layout, and getting the spine measurements just right.

There are some DIY software programs you could try, but if you have no experience with them, your book probably won’t come out looking very professional. Despite the old aphorism, people can and do judge a book by its cover. You want a cover that is eye-catching technically perfect. Obviously, your best bet is to hire a pro, but that can cost several thousands of dollars.

One alternative option is to give it “the old college try.” Colleges and universities with graphic design programs may have just the type of low-priced talent you are looking for in their student bodies. There are many talented upperclassmen and grad students looking for opportunities and experiences for their résumés and portfolios. Not only will they have the necessary training, but they are likely have access to professional print design software. Because they are students who are not paying overhead to run a graphic design business, they are likely to do the work for a very reasonable price.

You could simply post a “wanted” flyer on a campus bulletin board, or visit schools’ websites and see if there are any links leading to students seeking design jobs. Some schools even have features on their websites that allow you to browse students’ work and contact them directly using the information they provide.

Art Institute design school is one example. On the school’s graphic and web design webite page, there is a gallery that allows students and alumni to post samples of projects they’ve completed. You can even narrow down your search according to your own specific criteria. If you find a candidate you’d like to contact about designing your print book, simply click on the candidate’s name, and you will be redirected to his or her Bēhance page, where you should find contact information—or links to the candidate’s website containing contact information—as well as more work samples.

As an aside, graphic design is a varied field, so be sure to specify that you need a layout for a print book to avoid any misunderstandings about what you’re looking for.

Use a Print-On-Demand Service

Once you have your layout, covers, etc., ready to go, choose a good printing service. Most authors already have a general understanding of what print-on-demand (“POD”) is. The name pretty much says it all. Unlike traditional printing methods that require an author to purchase a piles of copies up front (and store them and hope that they sell before they get moldy), POD companies print individual copies per purchase order. POD benefits self-published authors in several ways, many of which pertain to cost.

The main surprise to a lot of people about POD is the quality of the product. I challenge anyone to distinguish a high-quality POD book from a book published a major publisher.

There are several companies that offer POD, such as Amazon’s CreateSpace, Lulu, and Lightning Source, just to name a few. Keep in mind, though, that not all POD companies are created equal. There are pros and cons with each, and factors such as size and format options, distribution options and capabilities, and print quality, should be considered in determining which POD source is the best option. So, do your research (and read reviews) before you commit to one. Let’s face it. It’s pretty hard to go wrong with CreateSpace.

Benefits of Print-On-Demand

The most obvious benefit is that printing itself is cost-effective. Since payment for each print is contingent on the sale order, the author pays no up-front, out-of-pocket costs for printing (unless he orders author copies to give away). Moreover, there are typically no start-up fees associated with most basic POD programs (although, some POD companies do offer additional optional features that may require the author to pay an up-front fee).

Another POD benefit is that authors can easily make changes, additions, and corrections to the book at will, which, of course, cannot be done with preprinted books.

For example, what if you’ve already published your hard copy, and as you’re reading over it, you find a typo (it happens, even to the best of us)? No worries. Just go back and make the necessary revisions, then upload the corrected version. The next copy printed will reflect the changes you made.

In this sense, POD can also be beneficial when it comes to legal issues. Let’s say you’ve unintentionally libeled someone, or just received a cease and desist order from an entity because you’ve allegedly infringed a trademark (see Dorian Box’s post, Legal Issues Facing Self-Published Fiction Writers for more information). With old-fashioned printing, you’d have to destroy your entire inventory of books you’ve already paid for (or risk a lawsuit if you decided to continue selling them). But with POD, you can simply fix the issue, and resume printing the books.

Even if your book is perfect from the get-go, you might like to add some review excerpts to the back cover after a few people have read and reviewed it. With POD, you can do that at any time.

At the end of the day, you are going to have to spend a little money to create a quality print book, but hopefully this post has offered some insight that will help self-published authors get print versions of their books out there without breaking the bank.