Steven Lewis's Blog, page 24

Amazon is not for self-publishers

Read more great content at the Taleist self-publishing blog.

See this post on the site at: Amazon is not for self-publishers

All for the readers

I have written at length about KDP Select, Amazon's offer to self-publishers to include themselves in the Kindle Owners' Library for Amazon Prime members. There is a rich diversity of opinion about the offer but there are also some basic misconceptions circulating.

One thing I've heard several times is that it is "unfair" that Amazon will count "loans"* of books towards their ranking in the bestseller charts.

It is not unfair.

Amazon's thinking is easiest to understand when you remind yourself what Amazon's mission is:

To provide the best possible store to readers (thereby becoming the place readers choose to shop and making Amazon the most possible money)

Amazon's priority is not authors or self-publishers, it is readers.

By counting "loans" of books alongside sales of books they are being true to purpose of these charts:

The purpose of Amazon rankings is to alert readers to what their peers are choosing to read.

It is irrelevant to this whether their peers are buying the books or "borrowing" them. It is relevant only that they've chosen to read this book rather than that book.

When a friend recommends a book they've read, do you care whether they bought it or borrowed it?

Certainly this is unfortunate for those of us who self-publish and aren't embracing KDP Select but Amazon is not for us, it's for our readers. And ultimately this is good for us because the better the service readers receive from Amazon, the more likely they are to use Amazon.

* I might eventually stop putting "loan", "borrow" and "library" in quotation marks when talking about KDP Select but I think it is important for the moment to draw attention to the fact that these are Amazon's choice of terminology and I think they are misleading.

Read more great content at the Taleist self-publishing blog.

See this post on the site at: Amazon is not for self-publishers

6 things to tell your cover designer

I've been lucky enough to work with book cover designer Andrew Brown of Design for Writers on several book covers now. I introduced the relationship to you in Why I fired my cover designer (it wasn't Andrew I was firing!).

Our latest collaboration is for my review of the Indian Pacific, Hot Silver, which is now available on Amazon.

Andrew Brown's cover for Hot Silver - Riding the Indian Pacific

I call it a "collaboration" quite deliberately. The design is all Andrew's but without a decent brief from me he's left with a blank piece of paper and no idea of where I'd like him to start. I know how he would feel because as a copywriter I've had clients who clearly think they're doing my job for me if they give me too much information about what they want.

A blank piece of paper gives a designer (or a writer) an infinite number of choices. Do you really want to be spending the next 10 years saying, "Warmer… colder… warm again", as you pass designs back and forth?

When I brief Andrew on a new book there are six pieces of information I like to give him.

1. What the book is about

Andrew isn't going to read my book, which is his loss of course. If he did read the books, he'd spend more time reading than designing.

You need, therefore, to give a good description of the book in your brief. For Hot Silver, for instance, I told Andrew it's funny, it's non-fiction and I described some of the key incidents, settings and people featured in the book.

Don't just recount the plot, although that's important. This is the time to talk about themes, moods and motifs. Is your story light or heavy? Is this literary fiction or a joyful romp?

When I talked about How to Format Perfect Kindle Books with Andrew I used words like "approachable" and "encouraging". Just telling him it was a how-to book wasn't going to give him that information. Think of the difference between a textbook for heart surgeons and the Dummies' Guide to Microwaving.

2. Who will read the book

You'd love everyone to read your book but you should have an idea of what the most likely reader "looks" like. Are they men, women, how old, do they have certain interests and dispositions…? A cover that appeals to my wife is not always going to appeal to me, if glancing to the side in the bedroom at night is any indication.

In my case I was writing a travelogue, not a travel guide, i.e. the book is as much for the armchair traveller as someone who is taking the train. The book isn't a collection of museum opening times, best cafes and so on.

3. The competition

If a reader doesn't buy your detective book, whose detective book might they buy? What do those authors' covers look like?

Your book might not have direct competition. There might not be another author or publisher squarely in your area. Your readers always have choices about how to spend their reading time, however. Who else's books might they consider when considering yours?

"I want to appeal to the same people who buy Tom Clancy" is a more useful clue to the designer than "My book is about the military".

Include images of some covers you like and you don't like. Say why. Let your designer get to know your tastes. I see Hot Silver as a cross between Paul Theroux — serious taker of trains — and Bill Bryson — travelling humourist. I gave Andrew images of both authors' covers and suggested where I felt I fit between the two.

4. Anything you definitely want to include

In the case of Hot Silver there wasn't anything I definitely wanted on the cover but your book might have an element that is central to the plot — the grandmother spends a lot of time staring at a glass horse (see, I should be writing novels, no?). If you want the glass horse on the cover, tell the designer.

5. If it's part of a series

It is much, much easier for a designer to make your second and third book covers harmonious with your first if he knows from the outset that you'll be writing more and you want them to have a common identity.

Even if you're not writing a series, you'll probably still want to have a visual identity as an author so that readers can pull your books out of the line-up that is an Amazon index page.
6. What formats you need

Some of my books are only ebooks so Andrew just needs to make a "front" cover. Others are CreateSpace paperbacks so I need a cover for the front and back. Hot Silver is also going on Audible and they have specific design requirements (the cover has to be square), which means you can't just recycle the rectangle you've used for the book.

And that's not all…

This isn't a comprehensive list, just a starting point. Also the designer might not end up using every piece of information you give them but better too much than too little.

Is there anything you've done in collaborating with your book cover designer that you feel has contributed to your success?

Andrew and I have a special package on offer: ebook conversion service + a cover. Read more…

$500,000 isn't enough for my book. What about yours?

No sooner had a I uploaded Hot Silver, my review of the Indian Pacific, than I received an email from Amazon inviting me to be part of KDP Select. This, I thought, is going to put the cat among the self-publishing pigeons.

Let us discuss…

What is KDP Select?

KDP Select is a way for self-publishing authors to put their books in the Kindle Owners' Lending Library. The library allows Amazon Prime members ($79/year) to "borrow" one book per month for no extra charge with "no due date". ("Borrow" is Amazon's word, about which more later.)

How much will authors be paid?

Self-publishers will be paid pro rata from a pot of money determined by Amazon.

The pot is $500,000 this month and will be "at least $6 million" next year (i.e. probably $500,000 per month for the foreseeable future). Each time your book is "borrowed" you get one dip into the pot. If there are a million "loans" in a month and your book is borrowed once you will get a one-millionth share of the pot. If your book is borrowed twice, you will get a two one-millionth shares and so on.

In this example each loan would earn the author 50 cents. If your book was borrowed 10 times, you would make $5.

If the size of the pot is the same the following month but two million books are borrowed that month, a loan will earn only 25 cents. Ten loans would earn you $2.50. You have provided the same product and earned half as much.
What are the conditions?

To participate in KDP Select, authors must commit to their book's inclusion for at least 90 days.

During that 90 days the book must be available exclusively on Amazon.

The book can still be bought on Amazon, e.g. by Amazon customers who aren't Prime members or by Prime members who want to own it not "borrow" it.

My take on it

I have deliberately not read much of what's been written about this because I wanted to make up my own mind. Still, I'm reliably informed there's reams of opinion out there so you can see all sides of the discussion with a Google search for "KDP Select". I'd certainly love to know what you think.

The pie is too small

My gut feeling is that there will quickly be so many books in the Kindle Owners' Lending Library that the amount authors receive per loan will be tiny, perhaps negligible.

I already think 35 cents is too little to earn on most books. (I think 35% is a fair royalty but I don't think 99 cents is a good price.)

What you are paid for a "loan" of your book will make 35 cents seem like a king's ransom.

$500,000 sounds like a lot of money until you divide it by millions of loans.
My books have a value

My book has a value. I get to suggest that value by setting a price for my book and readers get to agree or disagree by choosing to buy or not buy it.

Because KDP Select works on a fixed pot of money determined by Amazon then divided by the number of loans of all books in the month, I'll be getting a different amount every month for the same product. I have no control over what that amount will be because I have no control over:

The size of the pot
The number of books in KDP Select
The number of times those books are lent out

It doesn't seem right to me that the more popular the Library, the less I get paid.

In making your books available for Amazon to "lend" to paying customers, you are making the Amazon Prime service more attractive. The more attractive it is, the more people will pay $79/year to join it. The more people who join it, the more "borrowing" there will be. The more borrowing there is, the less you get paid.

You are contributing to a mechanism to lower the price of your book.

That only changes if Amazon increases the size of the pot commensurate with the growth in Amazon Prime memberships and the number of the books being lent out. I don't believe that will happen.

We are teaching readers that books should be free

There is pressure to keep dropping the price of books. That's fine if you're John Locke and sell a million books at 99 cents and your greatest cost is the risk of RSI from writing too much too quickly. It's hard if you write in a niche or the costs of preparing your books are high.

When you fold books into a subscription model — Amazon Prime will not limit members to one book/month for long, I'll warrant — all books start to look free to readers because they are not weighing the value of a particular title anymore, they just get what they want for a lump sum.

Should my short walking tours of Sydney really earn me the same as Sebastian Junger's WAR, which is 10 times the length and required Junger to spend months in a war zone risking his life daily?
Exclusivity is a high price to pay

While you stand to gain exposure — how much is moot — by being in KDP Select, you pay for that opportunity.

To be in KDP Select your book has to be unavailable anywhere else for the 90 days it is available for "borrowing". (And you renew for another 90 days by default unless you jump in to stop the renewal).

If your book has already earned ranking, ratings and reviews in another online bookstore, you will have to unpublish it and lose that juice in order to participate in KDP Select.

In addition by being part of KDP Select you are:

increasing the value of Amazon Prime by making your book exclusive to Amazon
restricting yourself in how and where you promote your book.

In return you deserve more respect and certainty than payment of an amount that Amazon can't even tell you because it depends on how much money they alone decide to release that month and how many people borrow books. (Remember, we know how much it is the month we sign up but we don't know about the next two months to which we are also committed because of the 90-day minimum.)

While the amount indeterminate, you can bet it will be tiny.

Are there many commercial arrangements you can think of where you let someone sell your product and they get to decide afterwards how much they will pay you?
This is not lending

I don't like the terminology of "lending", "borrowing" and "library" that Amazon has adopted for this service.

What is happening with the Kindle Owners' "Library" is not "borrowing".

With KDP Select there is no physical item that passes from author/publisher to reader and back again. The author/publisher isn't without the book while the reader is "borrowing" it so they don't get anything back when the reader has finished with it. There is no reason, therefore, from the author's point of view to let the reader have the book for less than the sale price.

There is nothing to lend again and ultimately make more money from lending than selling because the same item is being paid for repeatedly (cf. your local DVD rental place).

Sure, the reader doesn't get to keep the book. So what? With most ebooks there is no meaningful distinction between borrowing and owning. I am reading a couple of wonderful books at the moment but I'll never re-read them so I don't care whether I "own" them or I've "borrowed" them.

I'm not getting materially less value from "borrowing" these books than buying them so I shouldn't be able to pay a fraction of the cost for the main part of the transaction: getting to read the book.

"Borrowing" and "owning" are the same thing to me as a reader, if I don't care about re-reading, but they are very different to you as an author because you are giving readers the same thing — the pleasure of reading your book — but making a small fraction because they are "only" borrowing it not buying it.

We are teaching readers the wrong language for a new model of publishing.

We already have readers who think they should be able to lend a 99-cent ebook to all their friends. They haven't grasped the difference between a physical book and a digital book when it comes to lending.

We need to help readers understand the difference between books and ebooks, not confuse them further into thinking physical books and ebooks can be treated the same.

"Lending", "borrowing" and "library" are not the right paradigm here.

There is no public interest in this library

Libraries serve a public interest — making books available to people who can't afford to buy them. I am all in favour of libraries. Amazon Prime and its Kindle Owners' Library are for people who can afford a Kindle and a $79 annual membership. They are a privileged group so this isn't about knowledge and education for all.

What I DON'T think about KDP Select
Amazon is evil

Amazon is a business. It is their job to make offers to their suppliers and customers. As a supplier, it's your job to decide whether to accept.

I'm not impressed by KDP Select as it's presented now but it's just an offer, not something Amazon is forcing on us. (Which is interesting because historically they have forced things on those who choose the 70% royalty so it is telling that they haven't done it with this.)

We wouldn't be where we are as self-publishers without Amazon and I'm grateful to them. Their job is to keep innovating and finding new ways to get ebooks into the hands of readers and I love them for doing that. That I don't agree with them on this, doesn't make them "bad".
That you shouldn't be in KDP Select

I've put a couple of my titles in the Kindle Owners' Library because I'm all about experimenting. Whether it's right for you depends entirely on you, your book, your promotion plan and so on. I'm certainly not suggesting you don't do it. You have to make the right decision for your books.

Personally, I understand the argument about building an audience by giving your work away — it's what I do with every blog post. I just wonder if the audience you're building this way might be an audience of readers who expect all your books to be free.

I would love to know what you think. Please let me know in the comments and tweet, Facebook or Google Plus a link so we can see all sides of this discussion.

Self-publishing and ebook predictions for 2012

'Tis the season for reflection and predictions. We might pause to reflect later but self-publishing and ebooks are moving forward so fast that yesterday looks like the distant past and next week seems to be the boundary of the foreseeable future. Or I'm hyperbolising. You be the judge.

What I can tell you quite objectively is that I have conjured up some of the most original thinkers in self-publishing, gathered them in a tent with their choice of crystal ball, tarot cards or a cast of Jeff Bezos' palm. This is what they predict for self-publishing and ebooks in 2012…

Derek Haines: Things get really bad for traditional publishing

"By the end of 2012 the book publishing industry as a whole will know exactly how much trouble it is really in. It will be the year that Amazon in its Kindle form and especially in its new traditional publisher form, really endeavour to shake the tree of the publishing establishment.

"At the same time, 2012 could also be the year that sees self-publishing mature as a viable source of books in readers' eyes. But only if authors and ebook service providers continue to learn, innovate and most importantly, improve the quality of their product."

Derek Haines, The Vandal, author of February The Fifth

Joel Friedlander: Better tools

"I'm looking forward in 2012 to better and more widely available tools for creating ebooks, and hoping we'll see a way to create books with some of the typographic sophistication of print books. Also looking for a breakthrough in digital colour printing, and the continued growth of e-distributors who look ready to move into digital printing on behalf of their authors. Happy New Year!"

Joel Friedlander, The Book Designer, and author of A Self-Publisher's Companion

Catherine Ryan Howard: No more "weekend self-publishers"

"I think that basically 2010-2011 was all about e-books becoming 'mainstream' and self-publishers — especially the Churn 'Em Out, Price 'Em Low, Buy Large Items With Cash brigade — did extremely well in this environment, because by the time traditional publishing started to turn their attention to this strange new world, self-publishers were already experts in it.

"But in 2012, I think Trad Pub will catch up considerably and this will make things harder for self-publishers.

"I'm also extremely interested to see how a few mega-selling self-pubbed ebook authors who got huge traditional deals that I know of will fare when we're not talking sofa change, ebooks and a Kindle, but 10 or 15 times that, paperbacks and bookshops. The publishers have paid huge amounts to sign them and my prediction is they won't make it back. They just won't do as well in the traditional model, I suspect.

"So while that's my bad news, I think there is some good — for readers. You can already see it happening: self-publishers are starting to get that this isn't a weekend job. They're starting to acknowledge the importance of professional editing and cover design, and self-published books are getting better and better all the time. So hopefully in 2012, the 'Weekend Self-Publishers' will get weeded out, and the general reading public will begin to see that they can find great reads in the self-pubbed pile."

Catherine Ryan Howard, Catherine, Caffeinated, and author of Self-Printed: The Sane Person's Guide to Self-Publishing

Joanna Penn: Europe reaches the tipping point, Asia comes online, and the stigma passes

"Europe is about 18 months behind the US so I would expect the tipping point for UK and mainland Europe to come for ebooks in Xmas 2012 and into 2013.

"I would also expect to see a Kindle store for India expanding the English speaking market into Asia.

"In education, the use of ebook readers will become ubiquitous for textbooks and other study material so the younger generation will start adopting the devices.

"We will also see a more mature picture book style ereader where self-publishers will be able to do more creative ebooks.

"The last traces of the stigma of self-publishing will be in the past and the new stigma will be books that fail to sell so leading a tribe and connecting with your customer will become even more important for authors.

Joanna Penn, The Creative Penn, author of Pentecost and creator of Author 2.0.

Passive Voice Guy: It's going to get legal, bigger and hacked

Either a major author or a group of authors will sue a large publisher for underpayment of ebook royalties.
More established authors will publicly abandon traditional publishing for self-publishing in both the US and UK.
Amazon will have online bookstores in the top 15 countries, ranked by GDP.
One or more hackers will discover enough about Amazon's Sales Rank algorithm to rapidly boost a book up in the best seller rankings.

Passive Voice Guy, The Passive Voice

David Gaughran: Armageddon for publishers and the rise of the ebook in Europe and Asia

"Predicting the future is a mug's game, as patterns only emerge with hindsight. Having said that, I expect to see a continuation of the trends we saw in 2011: widespread closure of bookstores, collapse of print sales, surging e-books sales, increased popularity of self-publishing amongst new and veteran authors.

"I also think 2012 will see the rise of alternative author compensation models from Amazon's Lending Library to subscription and ad-supported e-reading sites. 2012 might see large publishers finally embracing the digital future instead of trying to slow the changeover, but we'll see – they're still running in the wrong direction.

"Finally, while US growth will remain strong, the real headline growth numbers will be seen in the UK and Europe where Amazon will face strong competition from local players."

David Gaughran, Let's Get Digital, and author of Let's Get Digital: How To Self-Publish, And Why You Should

And my predictions…

Joanna Penn has kindly invited me to join her for a video podcast to discuss these predictions — and mine — on her most excellent blog The Creative Penn. I'll update this post when that's done. (We're recording on Monday.)

What about you?

Where do you think self-publishing and ebooks are heading in 2012? I'd love to know your thoughts.

The Taleist 2012 Self-Publishing Survey

Looking into 2012 seems like the perfect time to remind you about the Taleist 2012 Self-Publishing Survey.

We all want to know how our self-published books stack up in terms of sales and how much we have in common with what other self-publishers are doing and experiencing.

But there's so little data.

Our survey aims to fill that hole and we'd love it if you'd sign up to be notified when the survey launches in January .

Why should you care that Google is taking its caffeine fresh?

"Even if you don't specify it in your search, you probably want search results that are relevant and recent," says Google on its official blog. 

If you want to rank well in Google, you need to freshen up your site.

That means your website might drop down the rankings if Google doesn't think the content is recent enough.

The search engineers are right of course: searchers expect the most up-to-date information. When you type "Olympics" into a search engine, chances are you're looking for next year's London Olympics, not the Beijing Olympics, which were sooooo 2008.

Last year Google tweaked things so that it could index the web to give "50% fresher results". It called the new index Caffeine.

A note about indexing: When you use a search engine you're not looking through the web "live", you're looking through an index generated by a robot crawling the internet periodically. There's a lag between a page being published or updated and the robot catching up with the change. The faster the search engine goes through the web, the more accurate the results because they're more recent. That's what Caffeine was about.

Last month Google announced it had gone further, giving you fresher, more recent search results. The change:

Impacts roughly 35 percent of searches and better determines when to give you more up-to-date relevant results for these varying degrees of freshness.

That's big news: more recent content has a better chance of ranking high in search engines.
What does that mean to you?

Google is in the business of giving searchers what they want because that's what keeps us using them. You're in the business of being found online because that's how you get customers, especially new ones.

If Google thinks searchers want fresh content and you want Google to suggest your website to searchers, you need to be serving your content fresh.
How does Google decide that your site is fresh?
1. When you published

One indication is going to be when your information was published or last updated. If you put your website up two years ago and haven't added anything since, that's a signal that your content isn't recent and perhaps, therefore, not as relevant.

2. How often you publish

Another signal could be the frequency of your content. If you're updating your content frequently, it's a good signal that you're on top of your topic.

If you're in an area where things change frequently but your website doesn't, what does that say to an online searcher about your grasp of the material?

Maybe you don't think this applies to you because your site isn't about current affairs or a hot topic and you might be right but…

Are you in an area where things aren't "hot" but they change frequently?

Google gives the example of SLR cameras. They're not a hot topic or connected to a recent event but camera equipment is an area where change is frequent:

For example, if you're researching the [best slr cameras], or you're in the market for a new car and want [subaru impreza reviews], you probably want the most up to date information.

I write about self-publishing, you might be in financial services, medicine or another area where changes happen often. What if you're in the travel and tourism industry?

When I search for "holidays in Queensland" I'm looking for information about what's available now and even the future. I don't care what rates, packages, tours and offers were available last year. Google knows that so will favour pages that are fresh.

If you're in an area where things change frequently, the Google algorithim will know that and give additional weight to sites with new content.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is just a fancy way of saying "making sure Google thinks you're a good result for a particular search". All the best SEO practices remain. In fact frequently posting new content has always been a best practice; it just became even more important.

So what should you do?

These changes will affect 35% of results. That's enough to make a big difference to your search traffic. You need a content strategy to make sure your website is:

Relevant to the searches you want to show up in
Fresh thanks to recent and reasonably frequent updates

The opportunity for you

This change is certainly good for me because I advise companies on their online marketing strategies and I write content. It's great for you, too, because you have an opportunity to put distance between you and the competition by making your content more recent and more relevant.

If you'd like to talk to me about how I can help you to do that, email me and we can setup a time to talk. Why not make 2012 the year you used your site to bring you more business than ever before?

Why you can't afford to take your eye off your Amazon sales

"Author James Crawford reported that he lost royalties for 5,104 downloads of his book when Amazon slashed his book's price without his permission." — GalleyCat

[image error]

Keep an eye on the KDP

The mistake happened, Crawford explains on his blog, because of Amazon's price matching algorithm. Price matching happens when Amazon scans the web for books selling at a lower price elsewhere and adjusts its own prices downward accordingly.

If you're a self-publishing author who has opted for the 70% royalty, Amazon will lower the price at which it's selling your book to match the cheaper price.

I wrote about this (to some opprobrium from upright readers) that the price matching algorithm could be used to earn a 70% royalty on a 99-cent Kindle ebook. We also touched on it in our interview with a successful self-publishing travel writer because Brian Lawrenson (the subject of the interview) had fallen foul of it.

What happened

In Brian and James Crawford's cases the same thing happened:

Both opted for the 70% Amazon royalty
Amazon found their books being offered for free elsewhere
Amazon lowered the price of their Kindle books to zero

The difference is that Brian was indeed giving away his ebook elsewhere. Crawford was not. The free book that Amazon price-matched was in fact "a free teaser of the first three chapters of the full novel".
In short Amazon made a mistake with real consequences for this author.
For Crawford, it was an expensive one because Amazon pays no royalties when it sets your price to zero on the basis that your book is also free elsewhere. (This is different from when the company decides to promote a book by setting the price to zero. In that case it will continue to pay royalties, which is fair as the decision to price the book at nothing is theirs alone.)
You can read the full story on Crawford's blog.
Keep your eye on the KDP
The moral of Brian and Crawford's stories is that they were both alerted to what was going on at the earliest opportunity because they make a point of checking the KDP daily. So should you.
Self-publishing is a business and, like any businessperson, you should be keeping an eye on the money.
An alternative view
As an aside, you might also be interested in Kristine Kathryn Rusch's commentary on the story. She argues (correctly, I would say) that Crawford has not lost the royalties on sales of 5,104 books, as he wouldn't have sold that many in the same period at the list price.
She goes on to conclude (incorrectly, I would say) that he's not owed anything. This is an extraordinary conclusion to emerge from a tightly reasoned blog post.
Rusch sees the test for damages as a legal one — "harm" — but she can't seem to see any harm, despite outlining two valid claims in her post:


The loss of royalties from the books Crawford would have sold in the period (easily extrapolated from his pre-error figures)
The time he spent getting the error corrected

Neither of these would amount to much but it is wrong they don't exist is wrong.[/box]

 

 

 

Have you become an expert without realising it?

No email down here

I was recently at a small conference in Brisbane that was organised by the internal communications team of Queensland Rail. They were frustrated with paying $4,000 to go to conferences where everything was aimed at their peers in white-collar companies like banks and law firms. Their challenge is reaching blue collar workers who aren't conveniently located in one building with ready access to computers. Their audiences are field workers out and about all day repairing power lines or miners working in 12-hour shifts on remote mine sites (and I mean remote).

The team from Queensland Rail suspected they weren't the only ones who felt this way about the conferences on offer so they asked around other companies with blue collar workforces. Would anyone be interested in an informal get-together to share? They certainly were. On the day there were about 60 attendees from all over Australia, (and Australia, as you might know, is a big country).

With a couple of exceptions the speakers were all drawn from the attendees who talked about their challenges and the — often superbly innovative — ways they had overcome them.

It was fascinating. One team has to get posters delivered to mine sites that are two-hours by plane from Perth. Then they have to find someone on the ground who is willing to drive around the site putting up the posters, a major ask when some of these sites would take 45 minutes just to drive straight across. That round-trip with a roll of tape and a backseat full of posters has to be a three hour chunk out of anyone's day.

What's my point?

Why am I telling you this? Because these guys know something that other people don't know. They are experts in communicating with a particular group of people who are exceptionally difficult to reach. They don't want to (and sometimes can't) read memos and they're geographically incredibly hard to reach. Train drivers are, you know, driving during the working day. Nonetheless all these workers must be reached, especially with safety messages.

They don't have degrees in "blue collar communication" and they haven't published books on communicating with the working man. What they do have is hard-won experience that's invaluable to others trying to do the same thing.

When you're thinking about promoting your book ask yourself whether you might actually have become an expert without realising it. Do you have something to share with likeminded people?

If you've self-published, bingo. There will be groups of writers within a rock's throw of your house who would love to hear how you did it. Those are writers who are also readers and might buy your book. They might also mention you on their blogs and in their Twitter feeds. Those links will lead to other readers… (Oh, and people still just talk to each other about cool things they learn so that works, too.)

An expert is just someone who knows more than you do. I bet when it comes to writing there's something you know more about than anyone and it's time to think about how to get out and share it.

I know some of you have given talks or are part of writers' groups. What do you think?

3 authors on self-publishing as a business

The romantic self-image of writers doesn't always take in the business side of self-publishing

One slide in the Kindle Publishing Roadmap self-publishing seminar shows an idealised writer's desk — old-fashioned, wooden, typewriter, knickknacks and pens. It's a romantic view of how we like to see ourselves as writers — ink-stained and hidden away in a special place, creating.

I, myself, would like to write as Ian Fleming did at his Caribbean hideaway, caressed by a breeze off the ocean and cooled by a martini glass frequently topped up by lime-infused rocket fuel.

The next slide shows one of those stock-image businesswomen drawing a chart with a marker pen on a glass board. It's sterile and businesslike; there's nothing romantic about it. The slide helps me make my point that self-publishing is a business and it needs to be approached as such.

I wrote something along these lines recently when I asked whom you read to learn about the business of self-publishing. On the same day I wrote that I opened my copy of the Sydney Morning Herald to this article: New breed of writers conquering cyberspace. [Truth: I read it on my SMH iPad app but that doesn't sound as good.]

Three authors were featured and here's their advice:

Hazel Edwards

Hazel Edwards coined the word "authorpreneur" for a workshop on the "convergence of authors' creative and commercial interests". An author after my own heart, she tells the paper it's not enough just to write anymore (if it ever was):

"Writers must learn marketing, publicity, technology, and legal skills to create and maintain their self-employment in the 'business of ideas'."

She goes on:

"A professional writer is a very small business of one person; a solo trader in literary ideas. Those who are not businesslike are unlikely to survive."

(Personally I believe we're all self-employed. If you work for someone else's company, you've got just one client. But that's an argument for another time and place!)

Edwards' words here are great advice for today's authors, self-published or traditionally published. (I feel bad quoting so much of the article here so I ask you to go and read it on the paper's site so you can see the ads and everything else the SMH has to offer.)

There's a lot to learn

Edwards is quoted as saying she's had a hard time convincing other writers to publish themselves because of how much there is to learn. (Have I mentioned the Kindle Publishing Roadmap, How to Format Perfect Kindle Books, and my various seminars yet?)

Tony Park

The article also quotes Tony Park as "a model for contemporary authors".

Park is a traditionally-published author (Pan Macmillan) but he has been "tireless in his efforts to build a loyal readership". (No resting in a Caribbean breeze for Park.)

I think this is a critical point: authors with publishers still have to run their writing like a business. Unless you're Stephen King, your publisher is not going to shoulder much (or any) of the promotional burden.

Says Tony:

"You have to stay in touch with your regular customers and listen to what they're saying, and you have to continually look for new markets and new avenues to spread the word. Marketing yourself and your books is like writing, I think: you've got to really enjoy doing it and if you think it's a chore or a bore then you're possibly in the wrong game."

Khyiah Angel

Khyiah Angel, also profiled in the article, "spent long hours teaching herself how to format her manuscript" and "just as many hours following YouTube tutorials to learn to make an ebook cover".

(Sometimes people say "But you can find this all out for free online" about How to Format Perfect Kindle Books or one of my Sydney walking tours. It's stories like Angel's that I think of when they do. To me it's about whether $2.99 or $8.99 is good value for someone to come up with a structured, careful way to give you all the right information rather than you spending "long hours" hunting for clues on the web. If you save 10 minutes of my time, you're worth $8.99 as far as I'm concerned.)

Angel isn't comfortable with "blatant self-promotion" so she "focusses on conversation", which is another piece of great advice. (See Is your book promotion really just spam? and Why you should think of self-promotion as a value-added tax).

Angel says:

"I write blog posts and articles online so that people can link back to my site and my books. I have a few short stories up as e-books as well. People are beginning to engage with me as a source of information in the social media/cyber-safety area and I'm happy about that."

So what are their business practices?

Hazel Edwards is re-publishing "proven, rights-reverted print titles she believes will appeal as e-books" and selling them through her own online shop.

An author's website is their storefront and if they do it right it's as effective as any traditional publishers, she believes.

She has also:



Had her own books re-illustrated and re-formatted
Had her illustrator design some merchandise
Written downloadable teaching resources to go with her children's books



Tony Park:



Keeps a database of readers and distributes a quarterly newsletter through a third party
Speaks at Rotary clubs and travel roadshows showcasing Africa (the setting for his books)
Has led two safari tours to Africa (I would definitely like to find a way to build this into my own ebook promotion!)
Auctions character names in his books (wouldn't you like to be in a book and wouldn't you tell your friends if you were?)
Uses Facebook
Cultivates real relationships with his readers (some have gone on to help him to work on his books)

You don't have to do it alone

Notice how both Hazel Edwards and Tony Park have brought other people into their author business , e.g. to illustrate or format or maintain a database of readers. Just because you're a micro-publishing business doesn't mean you have to do it alone, you can be a self-publishing house.

A good business plan would involve working out what you can do yourself, e.g. learn to format your own book like Khyiah Angel did; and what you would be better off getting someone else to do for you (like using an ebook conversion and formatting service).

Finding someone else to do what you wouldn't be good at frees you up to do be effective in the areas where you are strong.

I, for instance, fired myself as a cover designer because I wasn't very good at it and I was losing sales both because my covers were weak and because time spent on that was time I wasn't spending on things I'm actually good at.

This was a great article in the Herald, which has had a number of good stories recently on the evolution of publishing and bookselling.

What about about you? What's your advice to authors when it comes to treating themselves as a small business?

The curious result of tagging your Kindle ebook on Amazon

This is a guest post by author Dave Cornford about an unexpected effect of tagging his Kindle ebook on Amazon.

Tagging your Kindle ebook on Amazon can have unexpected effects

I recently Googled my book's title along with my name – just to see how Google was "finding" me. I was curious to see if there was anything about the book on the web that I didn't know about. Or I was procrastinating on Chapter 15 of the novel . . .

Good news – the top search result was the Amazon page where you can buy my book! Second was a review of one of the stories in the book I knew about (a good review, so that's a relief) and then third was my blog. After that, various blog pages, then Facebook and LinkedIn pages. Last on the first page? My previous guest blog at Taleist about How to survey your readers.

Curiouser and curiouser

Curiosity got the better of me, and I kept paging through. On page 4 of the results, there was something strange. A "Foreclosure Guide" site. And then another. On each one, there was a sidebar with little picture of my cover, inviting me to buy.

It didn't take much to work out what was going on. These sites seem to have affiliate arrangements with Amazon, and while they are blogging about foreclosure issues in the US, they have a sidebar with links to books about foreclosure – how to avoid it, how to survive it, how to make money when it happens to someone else. Logical product placement with content readers to the site might be interested in.

My book, Cracks in the Ceiling, is a collection of short stories set in the wake of the global recession, and is tagged with "foreclosure" in Amazon.

Somehow, a person or an algorithm is picking up my book and feeding it to the sidebar of these sites. And there seem to be lots of them taking the same feed.

No complaints from me, but unfortunately I'm not seeing any evidence of this driving lots of sales at the moment.

How about you do the same search test, and let us know if your book is popping up any unexpected places?

[image error]Dave Cornford has long balanced a career as a senior marketing executive in the financial services sector with creative pursuits in writing, community theatre, film making and gastronomy.

He is currently writing full time, when not being distracted by his Facebook follies: What I Don't Want to See on a Sushi Roll, kitschitecture (when budget exceeds good taste in domestic architecture) and Nanna's Travel Tips.

He lives in Sydney with his wife and three children.

Dave Cornford is blogging at davecornford.com, and is on Facebook and Twitter.
2012 Taleist Self-Publishing Survey
Dave is also an experienced consumer researcher and together we're conducting the 2012 Taleist Self-Publishing Survey. Read more and sign-up to participate in the survey here.

Should you translate your ebooks ou Si vous traduisez vos ebooks?

Sylvia, Anke and Sandra laughing in English at Rick's Cafe, Negril, Jamaica, 1992

After university my father took me to Jamaica where I made friends with some young Germans. We sat around a table in Negril drinking from coconuts and talking about anything and everything in their impeccable English.

They understood why I might not speak German but what else could I speak, they wanted to know. All of them would also have been just as comfortable slurping from coconuts in French; and most of them could have done it in Spanish, too.  My answer that I could only speak English shocked them then and still embarrasses me.

Something else I remember from the trip is that I ran out of things to read and ended up reading the Gideon Bible from the hotel room. That couldn't happen in this Kindle Age of course. And, speaking of the Kindle Age (I'm getting to my point, see), my German friends now have the chance to replenish their reading from Amazon Germany and the French have Amazon France.

Both of these stores are connected to the KDP, so all we self-publishing Kindle authors are now on sale in France and Germany. In my case I don't mind telling you that I might as well not be. The Germans and French have been united as never before in showing literally zero discernible interest in my writing.

Is this because my books are only in English, even though every German I've ever met spoke better English than 70 per cent of the native speakers I work with? Does anyone choose a book in their second language over one in their first?

Should you or I translate our books?

In theory I'd be an at least half-decent candidate to consider translation because of my genres. My titles are in two categories:

How-to guides that Germans and French authors and Kindle owners might find as useful as anyone else
Travel guides to Sydney. The tourism research shows that Germans in particular are quite happy to travel under their own steam to Australia, i.e. not on an organised tour. They are, therefore, candidates to buy a guide, unlike Asian tourists who tend to travel in groups with a human guide and a tight schedule that leaves little time for private exploration.

Take it from someone who knows

In response to my post Amazon opens French bookshop for self-publishers. Should you care? I had an interesting email from Patricia B. Smith, author of two Dummies guides among other titles. Pat has kindly given me permission to share her information with you.

I cannot speak to what ebook sales might possibly be like for self- published authors in France or Germany, but I can tell you about sales of two of my legacy published books in those countries. They were negligible.

Alzheimers for Dummies and Sleep Disorders for Dummies both sold in the high twenty thousand copies range over the years since their publication in 2003 and 2004 respectively. When John Wiley & Sons (my publisher) sold the foreign rights for each, as well as those for Russia, I received very excited letters from them chortling about the "sale," and saying any books sold would show up on my royalty statement, and I would receive a complimentary copy of the edition. There were never any advances paid for these foreign sales, so it was a royalties-only deal.

I have a shelf full of my books translated into German, French, Russian, and even one in Japanese. It's fun to show them to people. What I don't have is any sort of foreign sales other than three or four here and there. I think I have made a grand total of under a hundred dollars in earned royalties combined on all the foreign titles, versus several thousand dollars in additional, earned royalties on the English editions of the two books sold in America, Canada and the UK. (Nice, but I still had to keep my day job.) That means my publisher must have lost money on the foreign titles, due to the exorbitantly expensive cost of translation you mentioned and relatively low sales.

What we as authors sometimes forget is that these other countries have established, popular authors, and emerging upcoming authors the same as English-speaking countries do. They are not waiting breathlessly for us to release our ebooks on their shores. With money tight, if a person in France or Germany chooses to buy a book, I'm betting it will be a book by a native of their country that somehow reflects their culture and heritage, that speaks to issues that may be uniquely French or German in a way that resonates with those audiences. That's something that a book written by a non-native speaker, no matter how well it is translated, can but rarely do.

While it may be different for best-selling novels that become international blockbusters, with the movie continuing to drive book sales in a variety of languages (I think the Harry Potter series was translated into 67 languages at last count) for the typical self- published author, it seems neither the effort nor the expense of translation would produce much in the way of a return, and what return you do get gets nibbled away by bank fees, as you already pointed out. Not to mention how annoying and unnecessarily time- consuming it would be to keep up with all those extra author dashboards.

I'd like to thank Pat for generously contributing her experience in this. I'm not sure how many self-published authors are considering translation but I'd love to know your thoughts. Have you had a book translated? Have you taken your Author Central account in Germany or France? Are you German or French with a view on how self-publishers might go in those Amazon stores?