Jason Matthews's Blog, page 8

Ready for 2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest?

It’s January. That means the annual Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest is right around the corner. ABNA Grand Prize is an advance of $50,000 and a publishing contract with Amazon. How did that work out for last year’s winner, author Rysa Walker of Timebound? Her book has well over a thousand reviews and is still the #36 best selling paid book at Amazon. Sounds like it’s doing pretty well.

Four First Prize winners will also get an Amazon Publishing contract and a $15,000 advance. There are other prizes as well but you must enter between Feb 16th and March 2nd–only 10,000 entries, which should go fast due to the explosion of Indie author books. Amazon Publishing will be tremendous exposure, plus it will get print books into bookstores. Factor in the international Amazon expansion that’s going gangbusters–well, you get the picture. Open to new books and previously self-published titles provide you maintain worldwide distribution rights. Click for FAQs.

Genres include: General Fiction, Mystery/Thriller, Science Fiction/Fantasy/, Horror, Romance, Young Adult Fiction.

You must register at CreateSpace.com/abna to enter the Contest. Once you have registered, follow the instructions on the entry form and upload: (1) the complete version of your manuscript that is between 50,000 and 125,000 words (“Manuscript“); (2) up to the first 5,000 words, but not less than 3,000 words, of your Manuscript, excluding any table of contents, foreword, and acknowledgments (“Excerpt“); (3) a pitch of your Manuscript consisting of up to 300 words (“Pitch“); and (4) the personal information required on the entry form. (1-4 collectively, an “Entry“). We will not review any Entry that does not comply with these Official Rules.

The ABNA contest is open to unpublished and self-published novels. Authors can submit their work in one of the following categories: general fiction; mystery/thriller; romance; science fiction/fantasy/horror; and young adult fiction. For complete eligibility details, review the Official Contest Rules.

No fees to enter, a nice feature for a book contest imo. What are your thoughts?

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Smashwords Predictions for 2014

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dordirk/

When Mark Coker speaks about e-publishing, writers listen. Or they should; the Smashwords CEO has done as much for indie authors as anyone. The following are highlights from his annual industry predictions. To see the entire article, visit the Smashwords blog post.

Highlights of Mark’s predictions:

Big publishers lower prices – Until recently, it was rare to see a traditionally published book priced under $4.00.  In 2014 their temporary price promotions will give way to a new normal.  Discounting is a slippery slope.  Once customers are conditioned to expect big-name authors for $3.99 or less, the entire industry will be forced to go there.  The huge pricing advantage once enjoyed by indies will diminish in 2013.
When everyone is pricing sub $4.00, price promotions will become less effective – If readers have an unlimited supply of high-quality books from their favorite authors at under $4.00, it means factors other than price will gain importance.
Ebook growth slows – After a decade of exponential growth in ebooks with indies partying like it was 1999, growth is slowing. [...] A normal cyclical shakeout is coming.


Competition increases dramatically – With hundreds of thousands of new books published annually, and with retailer catalogs swelling to carry millions of titles, it may come across as trite for me to predict that completion will increase in 2014 for indies.


Ebook sales, measured in dollar volume, will decrease in 2014 – Yikes.  I said it.  The nascent ebook market is likely to experience its first annual downturn in sales as measured in dollar volume.  [...]  Global sales in developing countries remain one potential bright spot that could mitigate any sales contraction.


Ebook unit market share will increase – Ebook consumption, measured in unit sales and downloads, and measured in words read digitally, will increase in 2014.


A larger wave of big-name authors will defect to indieville – Multiple market forces will conspire to cause a large number of traditionally published authors to turn their backs on big publishers.


It’s all about the writing – It doesn’t matter if you’re publishing a cookbook, romance novel, gardening how-to, memoir or political treatise.  Your job as the indie author is to write that super-fabulous book.


All authors become indie authors – The best writers will have the option to publish independently AND traditionally, or do one or the other.
Subscription ebook services will change the game – If the ebook subscription services – the most notable of which are Scribd and Oyster – can make their business models work, then they’ll drive a game changing shift in how readers value and consume books. [...] Readers will be relieved of the cognitive load of having to decide if a given book is worth the purchase price.  Instead, they’ll surf and sample books with minimal friction, as if every book is free.


Traditional publishers will reevaluate their approach to self-publishing – The vanity approach to self-publishing, as witnessed by Pearson/Penguin’s acquisition of Author Solutions (operates AuthorHouse, iUniverse, BookTango, Trafford, Xlibris, Palibrio, others…), has shown itself to be a boondoggle that harmed the brands of all traditional publishers.  [...]  Their business model is expensive at best, and unethical at worst.  It’s about selling $15,000 publishing packages to authors who will never earn the money back.


Platform is king – Platform is your ability to reach readers.  Authors who can build, maintain and leverage their platforms will have a significant competitive advantage over those who cannot.
Multi-author collaborations will become more common – Authors are collaborating with fellow authors in their same genre or category on box set compilations of existing and original content.  These collaborations are often competitively priced and offer readers the opportunity to discover multiple new authors in a single book.


Production takes on increased importance in 2014 – Organize your time to spend more time writing and less time on everything else.

Great predictions and advice. One of my questions not addressed above: what will happen to Barnes & Noble and its Nook? Feels like they’ve been sinking fast over the past two years. What are your thoughts about this list or 2014 in general?

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How to Add Global Amazon Links to Your Document

This is Part 2 of instruction for adding global Amazon links to your books and author pages. Why is this important? So potential readers from nations all over the world will go to their proper Amazon, which means you’ll more likely make sales and get reviews–internationally.

Part 1 of this tutorial was a blog post demonstrating how to create the links and also included a YouTube video. Here in Part 2 we’ll show how to put these links within your website and ebook documents, and we’ll also upload then test the links at KDP Amazon. A live demonstration is in the video below. Share any questions or comments with us too.

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Smashwords 1st Update Since 2008

We’ve known and loved them since 2008. By internet standards, Smashwords was way overdue for a facelift. But this is more than a new look; this is welcome additions, hundreds of changes also behind the scenes to improve the indie author experience.

Mark Coker explains the highlights below.

The Smashwords home page – We doubled the number of books listed on the Smashwords home page from ten to 20, added 27 new book category filters to increase discoverability, added live stats for the number of books published and the number of free books, and organized the navigation elements around logical categories.
Responsive design – We adopted what’s called a “responsive design,” which among web designer circles refers to a design approach that optimizes the user’s experience across different browsers, devices and screen sizes.  View the site on your desktop computer and then resize your browser to see how every page’s content resizes and reorients as you make the width narrower or wider.
Dramatically enhanced mobile support – Our previous mobile version of the site was, to put it kindly, limited.  The new mobile experience – whether you’re accessing the site from a smart phone or tablet – is darn near beautiful.  Our improved mobile support is enabled by our responsive design.  It preserves user access to nearly all the same features you’d expect from a large browser on a desktop computer, making it easy for mobile users to browse and discover books without pining for a larger screen…. (Click here to continue reading the highlights.)

Indie authors have primarily loved Smashwords, except when complaining during the formatting lessons of the Style Guide. Please support them with a visit. And let us know your thoughts on Smashwords here in the comments section.

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SmartURL vs BookLinker for Amazon Books?

As of today, there are 12 Amazon countries selling your books (soon to be more). But are you unknowingly missing potential sales in some of these nations? Below is a tutorial video (or see it at YouTube) for making links that direct customers to the right Amazon.

Example: Jane Reader visits your website, sees the cover and description of your book, wants to buy it, clicks on the link and visits Amazon.com. That’s great if Jane lives in the USA or an Amazon.com affiliated nation. But what if Jane Reader lives in a foreign country like the UK, Germany, India, Brazil or a host of other nations where people cannot buy directly from Amazon.com?

Some Jane and John Readers know to visit their local Amazon, but they are savvy shoppers while others are not. How many others will simply leave your book page, wrongly assuming it is not available to them?

Hence the need for a global Amazon link, one that takes Jane and John directly to their proper Amazon countries to buy your book. This will convert more browsers into paying customers, get more international sales and even get more reviews.

There are several outfits for help with this (and for free). BookLinker (formerly ViewBook) and SmartURL are among the most popular, though Georiot is a good choice too. The video below demonstrates step by step how to use them and lists pros and cons of each service.

There are different suffixes for each Amazon nation. For example, here are links for the same book in the US and in Germany:

http://www.amazon.com/Make-Market-Sell-Ebooks-ebook/dp/B003CJU49I/
http://www.amazon.de/Make-Market-Sell-Ebooks-ebook/dp/B003CJU49I/

Just apply the proper suffix after Amazon, followed by the book name, dp, and ASIN. Delete all the ref stuff that often follows.

United States: US – .com

United Kingdom: GB – .co.uk

France: FR – .fr

Japan: JP – .co.jp

Canada: CA – .ca

Germany: DE – .de

Spain: ES – .es

Italy: IT – .it

India: IN – .in

Mexico: MX – .com.mx

Brazil: BR – .com.br

Australia: AU  - .com.au

The good news is all of these link-builders allow you to use your Amazon Associates Affiliate tags for an extra approx. 5% commission on sales. If you don’t use one, they’ll use theirs which is how they make money. Note that you must apply to each Associate country individually:

US: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/
UK: https://affiliate-program.amazon.co.uk/
DE: https://partnernet.amazon.de/
FR: https://partenaires.amazon.fr/
IT: https://programma-affiliazione.amazon.it/
SP: https://afiliados.amazon.es/
CA: https://associates.amazon.ca/
JP: https://affiliate.amazon.co.jp/

Part 2 of this post will come out in two days and explain how to implement these links at your website and within your books. First, watch this step by step video for how to make the links.

Pros and cons:

BookLinker is designed specifically for Amazon, is fast and has a slightly better custom URL upon creation. But it only works with product (book) pages and author pages, while it does not work with review pages. Currently BookLinker only shows 9 flags; newcomers India, Mexico and Australia’s flags aren’t visible. Not to worry, an email to the admin confirmed those countries will work. “We are currently in the process of updating the ‘My Links’ page of our website to display statistics from some of the newer Amazon’s – and you can expect this feature to be available within the next few weeks.”

SmartURL works with all Amazon pages including reviews, which is wise to do in my opinion. But it takes a bit longer to use and you have to reinsert affiliate tags for every single product instead of just once.

Ultimately, both of these are great. BookLinker is nice because it is designed to be used only with Amazon, but since SmartURL also works with reviews pages, if I had to choose only one–that factor would cause me to go with it. For now, I’m using both with a memo to BookLinker Admin to add Amazon review pages to their platform.

Do you have a preference or additional thoughts about all this? Please share in the comments.

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Is Amazon SEO Affected by the Book Description?

Does the description of an Amazon book have much effect on its search engine? Many think “yes” since we know titles, subtitles, categories, keywords and actual text contribute to Amazon search results. Even KDP recommends:

To increase your book’s discoverability on Amazon, you need descriptions and keywords that accurately portray your book’s content and use the words customers will use when they search.

But is it true? Let’s do an experiment. Watch the video and see how the book’s description on the product page has no visible effect on search results. However, it’s still worth considering SEO factors in your description because it has merit with Google. The video below explains.

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San Rafael Dec 7th BAIPA Event

BAIPA is the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association, a non-profit educational organization for people in all aspects of the publishing industry.

For writers in the San Francisco Bay Area–mark Sat. Dec 7th for How to Make, Market and Sell Ebooks. The location is the San Rafael Corporate Center at 750 Lindaro Street, 94901. It will be a time to learn from self-publishing experts, network with writers, ask questions and have fun.

9am – 10am: Questions & Answers from the audience (open to all topics).
10am – 11am: Introductions, where each person attending has time to say who they are.
11am – 12pm: Speaker Presentation, followed by Q & A.

Saturday’s talk is about making and selling ebooks. From the BAIPA.info event page:

Learn the steps to make and sell ebooks from Jason Matthews, blogger and self-publishing coach. Where to publish, how to build your audience and ways to use social media to sell your books, what you need to know to build a successful platform will be covered at this event.

To make and sell ebooks, there are many steps from the time of writing to after publication. Most self-publishers handle several tasks, with some more editing.

For selling ebooks, there is a preliminary decision revolving around Amazon, which is currently the world’s largest bookseller. The program covers options for exclusivity with Amazon at KDP Select or additionally selling with other major retailers.

When marketing ebooks, most authors will benefit from a blog and website, and the program discusses options and strategies here. Marketing is largely connected to social media, and we’ll identify the venues that will match an author’s needs to provide the most benefit.

An overall focus on building author platform is a consistent theme and usually will make or break a book’s chance of success. Author platform is synonymous with online presence, where it all begins for networking with readers and establishing continuous outlets for marketing and sales. We’ll discuss how to build upon internet presence over time. For those considering blogs and sites, the program explains how to minimize effort for maximum results with awareness of simple steps for improved performance with SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

We’ll also discuss selling ebooks directly from the author’s website with systems that run on autopilot.

We hope to see you there for networking and to answer questions.

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Matte vs Glossy CreateSpace Covers

What kind of CreateSpace cover does your paperback need? There are pros and cons to each. Matte is often preferred for novels, gloss often preferred for non-fiction. This video and photos below speak volumes.

The matte cover is on the left. The text is a bit easier to read and there is a nice aesthetic quality. But the glossy cover has richer tones, most noticeable in the darker colors.

In the 2nd photo (right side), the sheen is much more obvious as seen at an angle with light in the background. Small scratches and fingerprints come out from the thicker layer of gloss in the laminate. However, the cover curl is already worse with the matte book, which is a concern because it’s 2 months newer than the book on the right.

Again, you can see from the back cover (on left) how different the richness of the colors comes across. It’s surprising how much more prominent the darker areas show. This may be more of a deciding factor if your cover has many rich or dark colors compared to one that has mostly white or light colors.

At an angle, the scratches and fingerprints are definitely less desirable. But the durability over time and the ability to wipe it clean with a wet cloth might make up for that.

In the end, it boils down to personal preference. For now, CreateSpace recommends matte for novels and glossy for non-fiction, so that’s my plan. Hopefully soon, they’ll let the buyer select the choice instead of leaving that with the author.

Do you have a clear preference? Let me know in the comments.

–

Home page of How to Make, Market and Sell Ebooks.

Subscribe to this blog for updates on indie authors and self-publishing.



add me to Google Plus circles +Jason Matthews

Matte vs Glossy CreateSpace covers

What kind of CreateSpace cover does your paperback need? There are pros and cons to each. Matte is often preferred for novels, gloss often preferred for non-fiction. This video and photos below speak volumes.

The matte cover is on the left. The text is a bit easier to read and there is a nice aesthetic quality. But the glossy cover has richer tones, most noticeable in the darker colors.

In the 2nd photo (right side), the sheen is much more obvious as seen at an angle with light in the background. Small scratches and fingerprints come out from the thicker layer of gloss in the laminate. However, the cover curl is already worse with the matte book, which is a concern because it’s 2 months newer than the book on the right.

Again, you can see from the back cover (on left) how different the richness of the colors comes across. It’s surprising how much more prominent the darker areas show. This may be more of a deciding factor if your cover has many rich or dark colors compared to one that has mostly white or light colors.

At an angle, the scratches and fingerprints are definitely less desirable. But the durability over time and the ability to wipe it clean with a wet cloth might make up for that.

In the end, it boils down to personal preference. For now, CreateSpace recommends matte for novels and glossy for non-fiction, so that’s my plan. Hopefully soon, they’ll let the buyer select the choice instead of leaving that with the author.

Do you have a clear preference? Let me know in the comments.

–

Home page of How to Make, Market and Sell Ebooks.

Subscribe to this blog for updates on indie authors and self-publishing.



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Kristina Ludwig Amish YA

Why is Amish so hot? YA author and blogger, Kristina Ludwig , shares her stories and tips on a fascinating niche genre. Join us live Nov 18 6pm PT or later on YouTube via searching “Indie Authors 68 Kristina Ludwig.”

Amazon author pages:

http://www.amazon.com/Kristina-Ludwig/e/B006OFZT9W/

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

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

Websites:

http://kristinaludwig.wordpress.com/

http://www.thelittleuniverse.com

http://marlamiller.com/

G+ Pages:

Kristina Ludwig – https://plus.google.com/+KristinaLudwig/posts

Jason Matthews — https://plus.google.com/+JasonMatthews/posts

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

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Home page of How to Make, Market and Sell Ebooks.

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