Jason Matthews's Blog, page 10

Amazon #1 Technothriller CyberStorm by Matthew Mather

Matthew Mather is the best-selling author of CyberStorm and the six-part hit series Atopia Chronicles. 20th Century Fox just bought the movie rights. He is also a leading member of the world’s cybersecurity community who started out his career working at the McGill Center for Intelligent Machines. He went on to found one of the first tactile interface companies, which became the world leader in its field, as well as creating a major award-winning brain training video game. Learn from his brilliant marketing strategies in this video or watch it on YouTube. Hosted by Jason Matthews and Marla Miller.

Amazon author pages:

http://www.amazon.com/Matthew-Mather/e/B006QY78Z4/

http://www.amazon.com/Jason-Matthews/e/B004A8W4BG/

http://www.amazon.com/Marla-Miller/e/B000APJYSE/

Websites:

http://matthewmather.com/

http://www.thelittleuniverse.com/

http://marlamiller.com/

G+ Pages:

Matthew Mather – https://plus.google.com/108576301307857223632/posts

Jason Matthews – http://gplus.to/JasonMatthews

Marla Miller – https://plus.google.com/104880672110890238358/posts

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Major Updates to Google Books Partner Program Finally!

For years now indie authors in the know have been laughing at Google for their lame version of an ebook store. Why was it lame? Because it was surprisingly difficult to upload a book and it was basically impossible to update an existing one (without deleting it) and it was absolutely unthinkable to get any customer support whatsoever.

You see the point–bad signs for an ebook retailer when every action an indie author might need or want is challenging to impossible. Well, things might be changing. Emphasis on “might.” About time, we know. Lucky for Google, they had some cash to kick back and do nothing for the past few years and ride out the storm of non-activity unlike some book retailers who have sinking ships (not naming names here).

You may have a notice in your gmail box that goes a little something like this:

Dear Google Books Partner,

Improving the publishing experience is a top priority for Google Books. The Partner Program has evolved over the last few years, so we decided to build a brand new Google Play Books Partner Center–a new tool that’s faster and easier to use. Starting today, you’ll be able to use the new interface to manage your titles across Google Books and Google Play.

Highlights of the new Partner Center include:

Speed: Pages load more quickly, regardless of the size of your book catalog.
Convenience: Add and remove additional users, and convert prices into foreign currencies directly from your account.
Simplicity: Both preview and sales settings for your books can now be found in the same place, whether in the interface or in spreadsheets. Manage your account more easily with updated navigation and search.
Control: View and edit book descriptions, subjects/categories, and other bibliographic information right within the interface. Remove titles from your account with a few clicks.

These changes and many more new features are available to you immediately. We’ve prepared an overview to help you discover all of the new features in your account and help you along the way: https://support.google.com/books/partner/answer/3244021?hl=en

To get started, visit https://play.google.com/books/publish/. Thank you for partnering with us to make your books available on Google Books. We’re excited to provide an improved experience for you, and we hope you enjoy your new account interface.

If you have any questions or comments, contact us at https://support.google.com/books/partner/?hl=en#contact=1.

Sincerely,

The Google Play Team

What do you think, is Google now a good place to sell ebooks? Let’s hope so because it’s always nice having another distributor with long arms.

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Gutsy Pubslush Campaign, Rewards for You

Asking for help is not easy, especially for people like Sonia Marsh, who believes she should be able to do everything herself. And yet being an Indie author is extremely challenging, so she started a Pubslush campaign asking for your support.

Note that Sonia is a great author and skilled at marketing. How many indies do you know who’ve landed Costco deals? Still she can use support.

By assistance Sonia means, “Anything you can do to support and spread my Pubslush campaign to the world.”

Sonia made a short video with 8 super “Gutsy” people which explains the campaign. The video and the contributor rewards are listed on the Pubslush page.

Sonia says, “I admit this is the first event I’ve put together and I want to do it right. You see, I feel a great deal of responsibility towards my fellow authors (64 of them) who have contributed their ‘My Gutsy Story®’ to the launch of our first: My Gutsy Story® Anthology: True Stories of Love, Courage and Adventure from Around the World.”

In order to make the September 26th, “Bring Out the Gutsy in You” Anthology launch a huge success, Sonia asks for your help in spreading the news and supporting the event. There are “Gutsy” rewards based on level of help. Featured at the event:

a professional film company to video the panel of “Gutsy People” for people who wish to share the video.
a famous keynote speaker, Marybeth Bond, aka the Gutsy Traveler.
a professional photographer taking photos of people attending our event (will be shared).
accommodations at the Regency South Coast Village Movie theater (see photos).
refreshments and a no host bar.
donations form the book’s proceeds to WomanSage, a non-profit that helps women in transition and a great cause to support.

If you have any questions, find more info here or contact sonia@soniamarsh. com

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“Bring Out the Gutsy in You” Self-Publishing Event SoCal

Southern California writers, mark your calenders for an event of inspiration, knowledge-sharing and networking with authors in the area.

When: Thursday Sept. 26th at 6 to 9pm (reservations recommended).

Where: Regency South Coast Village 3, 1561 W. Sunflower Avenue, Santa Ana CA. (MAP) – (Photos of Regency Theatre)

This free event is hosted by Sonia Marsh (above left), author of Freeways to Flip-flops and My Gutsy Story® Anthology. Keynote speaker, Marybeth Bond, is a National Geographic author of 12 books, contributor to LA Times, USA Today, PBS, CNN and guest on Oprah.

Marybeth, known as “The Gutsy Traveler,” has visited over 100 countries. In 2011, she biked 3,115 miles across the United States with her 22-year-old daughter and raised $52,000 for women’s osteoporosis research. Marybeth’s goal is to encourage women to step out of comfort zones and travel beyond the group tour.

The event also features a panel of authors from the My Gutsy Story® Anthology.

Moderator: Marla Miller, author and founder of The Marketing Muse workshops.

Sonia Marsh, award-winning author and founder of the My Gutsy Story® series.
Linda Joy Myers, president of the National Association of Memoir Writers and co-president of the Women’s National Book Association, SF.
Jason Matthews, author of novels, how-to guides and e-publishing expert.

A percentage of the proceeds from book sales will go to WomanSage, which provides opportunities, experience and education to enhance and empower all women.

Thank you to Larry Porricelli, Regional Manager of the Regency Theaters, and President of Southern California Writers Association (SCWA).

Please contribute to the PUBSLUSH Campaign to help support the event, and OFFER YOU REWARDS in exchange.

Share your thoughts or comments.

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Google’s Keyword Tool now Keyword Planner

Google’s Keyword Tool has been an essential element of my blog posts for years, so I was a little miffed when they recently changed it to Keyword Planner, a threat Google made months ago that has gone into effect this week. Goodbye Keyword Tool External, and thank you for the great research.

Why miffed? Because it seems like the change is focused on selling more ad campaigns than simply updating a useful and free tool. Google is a business after all. Everything can’t be free; we get that, and people now must be logged into an AdWords account and tempted to pay for an ad campaign. Perhaps it’s a case of sour grapes or old-dog-new-tricks. Long story short, why change such a great tool? Oh well, moving on and fortunately you can still use it for free.

What does this mean to the average-Jane-Joe-blogger like me who wants to know how similar search terms compare? Most of us can still use Planner the same as we used Tool. Some functions no longer exist while a few new features do, but the main search requests are intact. For example, if you are interested in things like selling ebooks and the publishing industry, you might type in a number of terms to get ideas on search popularity. Let’s try these:

e-publishing
epublishing
sell ebooks
sell ebooks online
how to sell ebooks
sell ebooks on Amazon

This is just an example and we could go on and on. As you can see from the chart, Average Monthly Searches is still listed (though it’s now clumped into one large result instead of separate categories for types of devices). The process of getting there takes a tad longer than before once you’ve gone to Keyword Planner and logged into your Adwords account. Instead of getting sucked into a paid ad campaign, you can do this for free search results:

-go to Keyword Planner and sign in (use link above)

-Enter Keywords or select Multiple Keyword Lists

-click Get Search Volume

-click Keyword Ideas

I’m still getting used to it, so perhaps you are too. Please share any thoughts. Is it better or worse or just different?

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Smashwords Adds Flipkart India’s Online Bookseller

Meet the newest distribution partner for Smashwords–Flipkart. Haven’t heard of them? Well, they’re bigger than Amazon.in for that part of the world. In fact Flipkart.com sells more ebooks in India than any other retailer (claims 80% of online book sales).

Smashwords CEO, Mark Coker, is understandably excited about this latest development that has been years in the making. If you’re an indie author, then you should be excited too and recognize this as a nice perk to Smashwords that you won’t find at competing distributors. See the potential benefits of the deal below or read the entire scoop from Mark at the Smashwords blog.

Why should India matter to you?

India has 1.2 billion citizens.
India’s literacy rate is 74% and rising.
India has two official languages: Hindi and English.
150 million Indians are online. By 2015, the number of Internet users is expected to double to 330 million.
India recently became the world’s third largest market for smartphones. Smartphones are e-reading devices!

What do you need to get in on this great deal? If your books are already on Smashwords and approved for Premium Status/distribution, do nothing. They will automatically be distributed to Flipkart. If for some bizarre reason you don’t want to distribute to Flipkart, visit your channel manager and Smashwords and opt-out. Remember that Flipkart and Amazon.in are not the same thing at all, so you can have your books at both platforms to cover more potential Indian readers.

I’m excited. Are you? Thoughts on India?

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Amazon Mexico Global Expansion Continues

Hola, Mexico. Kindle es aquí.

Amazon has officially landed in Mexico. Global expansion, dare we say domination, continues with no end in sight. Many publishers see the monopoly as a ballooning problem and perhaps it is since the leading contender (Apple) has its DOJ troubles, but IMO having new countries joining the mix is a blessing. After all, Amazon has done as much or more for Indies to sell ebooks and paperbacks at no cost to the writers while delivering great royalties, and English is the most common second language in the world. So why see the glass as half empty? This indie author says, viva Mexico! May you sell even more than my books in Brazil.

What does all this mean to you? For one, when you visit the KDP dashboard and scroll through the countries selling your book, Amazon.mx will come up in the list. Unfortunately the book ranking and reviews do not carry over from the US branch as you’re probably aware, but there is a section below saying: Opiniones de clientes más útiles en Amazon.com, which means most useful customer reviews from the US site.

Also be aware there currently is no author central specific for Mexico, which is the case at most foreign Amazon’s. You know, the wonderful selling aid for creating an author profile that connects all of your books and has room for pictures, videos, twitter and blogs links. Only the US, UK, DE (Germany), FR (France) and JP (Japan) branches currently have author centrals. Surprising Amazon hasn’t yet integrated this to all foreign countries so we’ll keep an eye out.

Long story short–do nothing and hope to sell books. If you do, enjoy a shot of tequila or blend a margarita or maybe just eat a taco.

What are your thoughts? Global expansion and domination good or bad?

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#1 Ranked Amazon Author Catherine Ryan Hyde

Catherine Ryan Hyde was the #1 ranked Amazon author. How’d she do it? Join us live Monday Aug 26th 6pm PT on Indie Authors #62 (or watch that title on YouTube later) to discuss the feat, her latest books and more. Hosted by Jason Matthews and Marla Miller.

Amazon author pages:

http://www.amazon.com/Catherine-Ryan-Hyde/e/B001ITTR60

http://www.amazon.com/Jason-Matthews/e/B004A8W4BG/

http://www.amazon.com/Marla-Miller/e/B000APJYSE/

Websites:

http://www.catherineryanhyde.com/

http://www.thelittleuniverse.com.com

http://marlamiller.com/

G+ Pages:

Catherine Ryan Hyde – https://plus.google.com/104995498482118293003/posts

Jason Matthews — http://gplus.to/JasonMatthews

Marla Miller — https://plus.google.com/104880672110890238358/posts

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Smashwords Creates Interviews for Authors

Smashwords just added an author interview feature to their platform. Now every author can have a detailed questionnaire on their author profile page at the ebook retailer. You can use their questions or come up with your own. It’s a great way for readers to learn more about you. It’s fun, I just did one here.

Read the entire announcement on the Smashwords blog or the how-to’s below:

Creating an interview is fun and easy.  Here’s how to get started:

Sign in to your account, click to the Account tab, and then you’ll see the link for Create or edit your interview . Study the instructions for tips, and then jump in by clicking Proceed to Your Interview! at the bottom of the page.
We’ll present you with a series of questions to get your creative juices flowing.  Feel free to edit our questions, or create your own.  Make your interview unique!  Show off your personality and your writing.
Click Save and Show Next Question to answer the next question
When you’re done, click Preview and Publish . From this page, you can use the up/down arrow to rearrange the order of the questions.  You can also click to edit any question or answer.
Promote your interview! Share it on social media, and encourage your fans to share it too.

The same picture you use for your author profile will appear on your Smashwords Interview page.

Good idea? Definitely something Amazon hasn’t done yet. What do you think?

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Bublish Bubbles let Readers Meet Authors

Reader, meet writer–writer, meet reader using book bubbles. That’s right, book bubbles. At Bublish.com readers get insights to scenes within books and the myriad of things going through the author’s mind during moments of creation. These insights are called bubbles, designed for authors to share additional info showing readers much more than just the typical sample at Amazon. Think of them as enriched samples. Bubbles are the story behind the story, which combines the feeling of browsing in a bookstore with the convenience of shopping online. Readers can even start conversations about the books, engage dialogue with the authors and also share via social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, StumbleUpon). Follow them on Twitter @BublishMe.

Founded by Kathy Meis, Bublish lets authors create a public profile, then upload their books and make bubbles from any section. Each bubble is an excerpt of text with additional author notes–very different than a standard sample, which usually is the first 10% of a book. This way the author can select samplings from anywhere within the book and also discuss the back-story of how the scene came about, what was going on with the author, what makes that scene special and more. The insights take the reader-writer relationship to another level.

Links for buying the book are made available to every retailer where the book is sold. Free to authors and readers, Bublish makes income from their affiliate tag on any sale while the author keeps the full royalty as at any retailer. Therefore Bublish has a vested interest in helping readers buy books they will like and helping authors sell books. Win-win situation for readers and authors.

I’ve made three bubbles so far: one on the Moment of Creation, one for finding the First Intelligent Life and one for Being a Medium for Infinite Wisdom in The Little Universe. It was fun.

What are you waiting for? If you’re an author, it’s time to make bubbles. If you love books, it’s time to get to know the writers. And as usual, please share your thoughts or comments.

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